Author: paulryburn

Today is the day when many websites are blacked out to protest SOPA and PIPA, two bills that have the potential to bring China-style censorship of the Internet to the U.S. Wikipedia is perhaps the most well-known site that has gone black. Google blacked out its logo but stayed online. If you click the blacked-out logo, it takes you to a page where you can sign this petition protesting SOPA and PIPA. I did that, and I also tweeted Steve Cohen (@RepCohen) asking him to vote against SOPA. I strongly considered blacking out this blog today, but I didn’t have time to get the plugin installed.

Speaking of Wikipedia: One thing I discovered yesterday is that there’s a version of it called Simple Wikipedia (and it’s not blacked out). This is a wikipedia written in basic English, so it can be more easily understood by children and non-native speakers of the language. I had no idea it existed until work asked me to edit a page that had an incorrect fact.

By the way, if you’re desperate to access the full Wikipedia today, there is a workaround. Just add a “.m.” before “Wikipedia.org” in the URL. So, en.m.wikipedia.org rather than en.wikipedia.org. That will take you to the mobile Wikipedia site, which is still online. For an interior page, also use the “.m.”, so en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memphis rather than en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memphis. Also, mobile phone apps that display Wikipedia data should work. (I just tried this with Wikipanion on my iPhone.)

He may not have been able to play, but Zach Randolph was at the Grizzlies-Bulls game Monday, where he presented MIFA a check for $20,000 for its Plus-1 program. Plus-1 helps families in need keep their utility bills paid. View a photo of the check presentation here. The kids in Memphis are so lucky to have a positive role model in Z-Bo.

If you have an iPhone 3G or earlier, you don’t have an official upgrade path to iOS5. However, there’s a jailbreak called Whited00r that will let you stuff iOS5 on your older phone and enjoy many (but not all) features. More details here. I’ve never jailbroken an iPhone before, but I know that Whited00r has been around for a while and is one of the more reputable jailbreaks. Jailbreaking voids your warranty, but if you own a 3G or older you’re out of the warranty period anyway.

(Edit: Crap, I had the Silly Goose party listed as tonight. It’s tomorrow.)

There’s a Woot-off going on right now at Woot.com. Having watched past Woot-offs, I think it’s highly likely that there will be a Bag of Crap for sale sometime between 1 and 5 this afternoon. If you see it, buy immediately and pray that your order gets through before the servers crash. You never know what you’re getting, but a few people have received TVs and Xboxes among their crap.

Gotta cut it off here, but I easily have enough news left over for a second post this evening. Preview of tonight’s post: Eat unlimited soup, drink unlimited beer, win a bike, and possibly more.

LaunchMemphis is extending the entrepreneurial culture to our teens. Friday and Saturday of this week, they’ll hold a shortened version of their intense 48-Hour Launch program. Event won’t actually be 24 hours, but 4-7 PM Friday, 10-5 Saturday at Hutchison School on Ridgeway. Participants will pitch an idea, create a viable business model and product, and finally present the fruits of their labor to the public. Instructors will be the LaunchMemphis team and local industry experts. I don’t know how many high school students read my blog, but this is an incredible opportunity to form an entrepreneurial mindset. Well worth giving up your Friday evening and Saturday, especially in January when the weather is lousy anyway. $25 to participate and you can register here. Parents, if your kids ask you for money so they can attend this, I highly recommend you give it to them.

First there was planking, then owling, then Tebowing… now it appears the latest trend is Z-boING. According to the Facebook fan page, Z-boING is “The act of mimicking Z-Bo’s defensive stance, preferably while wearing a headband… and you get style points by utilizing your surroundings for a mouthpiece.”

Paulette’s is offering 3-course dinners for $20.12 every Monday in January. That info probably would have been more useful if I’d posted it yesterday, but I didn’t know at the time, and hey, you still have two Mondays left.

The Memphis Daily News blog has another update about plans for A. Schwab’s. The new owners of the store seem very interested in preserving the history of their store and Beale Street. Very, very happy to see it. There’s a lot more to Beale than Big Ass Beer and “Mustang Sally.”

Weird weather today… high around 70, low tonight in the 20s. If you think today’s weather is something to complain about, check out this map of highs and lows 30 years ago today, known as “Cold Sunday.” Memphis had a high of 33 and a low of 0. The entire US east of the Rockies experienced some of the most frigid temperatures ever recorded.

Plans for tonight: I’ll probably hit the last hour of Flying Saucer’s happy hour (most pints $1 off) as usual, then head over to the Blind Bear for poker with Jamie at 8. Actually, I plan to get there a little early and make sure I get a seat with a TV view. At 8 tonight, Mike Anderson and the Arkansas Razorbacks take on Slimy Calidouchebag and the #2 Kentucky Wildcats on ESPN. It’s time to CALL THOSE HOGS!!!

If you operate a WordPress blog and want to participate in the anti-SOPA demonstration this week, go to this article and scroll down to the bottom. There are two plugins for WordPress. One will replace your blog on one day only, January 18, with a page you can customize. The other will add a “STOP SOPA” ribbon to the top of your blog.

Thanks to Robo for making me aware of these plugins.

That’s all I’ve got for now. Keeping lunch break short because I have a ton of work piled up. I’ll possibly do another post after work.

Started the day at the Majestic Grille for brunch. This legal Tennessee moonshine was sitting on the shelf and I speculated whether it was a call to 1-800-BAD-IDEA. Air Traffic Mike reminded me that, other than a period last year when the Downtown Monkey did karaoke, he had a trademark on that phone number. I decided to leave the moonshine for another day.

Next stop was the Flying Saucer. They had the NFL playoffs on with sound.

Don’t eat the yellow snow. Rogue Yellow Snow IPA. Very hoppy.

Blind Bear opened at 3 for “Hung Over Like a Bear” brunch. This is their sausage and egg burrito.

The Memphis Jazz Orchestra conducts their weekly rehearsal every Sunday night at Alfred’s from 6 to 9. This is probably the best time of the week to be in Alfred’s and is a good way to chill out and slow down as the week ends. Unfortunately chilling out was not in the cards for us…

Professional dancer BBQ Steve shows the Mad Hatter a few new moves.

Why is Joe racking? Because the Mad Hatter beat him at pool.

Photo of me with the Hatter. She had to be taught to position the PBR logo toward the camera. Also, she just (forbidden verb)ed a pickle, where (forbidden verb) is a proper noun which among Downtowners means “to eat off other people’s plates.”

Bums workin’ it on Beale Street

The Hatter at the Absinthe Room

So about 10:30 the idea came up to do a venue change to the Saucer.

“Is the Saucer a dance club?” asked the Mad Hatter.

“Yes,” I replied. Here’s a pic of the Hatter tearing up the dance floor of Club Saucer with Joe. Thanks to Cayla for putting up with us for the last hour of her shift.

Anchor Liberty is the $3 Fire Sale.

One of the most-asked questions at Downtown bars is “What channel are the Grizzlies (or Tigers) on?” I’ve watched bartenders and managers spend 5 minutes or more flipping through channel guides, trying to find Memphis games.

Well, now there’s an easy way to get an answer to that question. Follow @MemphisOnTV on Twitter. They tweet the channel and time that local teams will appear on. It’s powered by MemphiSport, who you can follow on Twitter at @MemphiSport and who you can listen to live every Saturday from 11 AM-1 PM on AM 560. Very nice use of a niche Twitter account, and it reminds me of what I do with @firesale. Twitter is the Swiss Army knife of the Internet.

Speaking of sports on TV: Last night I went to the Flying Saucer, and they had the NFL playoffs on, with sound, on the big screen. They’ve been putting playoffs and Tiger games on with sound, and you know what? They’ve been drawing much bigger crowds than usual. I’m glad to see management is finally realizing that if you put the sound on for games, customers will come in and spend money. It’s very simple really. I hope they do it consistently. When the sound is on there’s no place better in the Downtown core to watch a game (if you’re on the South end of Downtown, Max’s is the place to watch).

While I was watching the game, an iPhone commercial came on – the one with the little girl with the umbrella. It caused me to discover a feature on my iPhone I never knew existed. If you open a photo in your Camera Roll on your iPhone 4S, there’s an Edit button. One of the options at the bottom of the screen in edit mode is a little magic wand called Auto-Enhance. I decided to play with it, and pulled up a photo I took of the new, clean, improved Bardog that I took two weeks ago. Here’s the photo as I took it:

Not a bad photo by any means, but I always felt it didn’t do justice to how clean and shiny Bardog looked when they re-opened after renovations. So I ran the photo through Auto-Enhance and this is what it looked like:

WOW. Quite a difference, and that’s how Bardog actually looked! Auto-enhance really improves photos that were taken in less than ideal light. I played around with other photos on my camera roll. It made them much better about 50% of the time, somewhat better 40% of the time, and about 10% of the time it made photos slightly worse and I had to undo the changes. Overall, though, this is a feature I will be using a lot, especially when I want to post a photo directly to my blog or social media account from my phone, without taking it home to run through image editing software first. Surprised I’ve had my iPhone 4S for two months and am just now discovering this. I guess this illustrates why it’s a good idea to read the manual!

We have another bar anniversary to celebrate this week. The Silly Goose has announced their third birthday party for this Thursday night, January 19. Party starts at 9 PM. Drinks, party favors.

Question for my readers: A number of months ago I posted about a service which would send you fake phone calls and text messages at your request. You could text it commands like “CALL 3” and it would call your phone 3 minutes later. Very useful when someone has you trapped in a boring conversation in a bar, and you need a way to escape without appearing outwardly rude. Someone asked about this last night, and I searched both my old posts and Lifehacker (where I heard about it) but couldn’t find it. Does anyone remember the info? Just the name of the service would be enough. I can find the rest from there. If you can help shoot me an email at paul@paulryburn.com.

Best Twitter quote of the day comes from @jesus: “Sorry, I wasn’t ready for some football.” I guess we’re done hearing about Tebow until fall.

My plan for today is as follows: Mimosas at the Majestic at 11, beer at the Saucer at 12, Hung Over Like a Bear brunch at the Blind Bear at 3. If Saucer does indeed do big screen/sound for NFL I’ll update Facebook and Twitter with that info. Heck, I guess I could put it on the blog too, since I have the WordPress app on my phone.

The Phoenix Club has set the date for their annual Mardi Gras party. It will be Saturday, February 11 at the Cadre Building at Second and Monroe. A $40 ticket gets you beer, wine and specialty cocktails from Silly Goose, Dan McGuinness, and other sponsors, as well as entertainment by The Covers and DJ Mario. They’ll have a full casino sponsored by Harrah’s, where you can buy Phoenix Bucks to gamble at blackjack, craps and roulette tables. At the end of the night you can use your Phoenix Bucks to enter raffles for prizes provided by Harrah’s, Oak Hall, the Redbirds, and others.

They’ll also have a VIP section for $35 more. It will be on the Cadre’s mezzanine, and there will be a premium stocked bar, wine, appetizers, beer and gaming tables. Budweiser has agreed to unveil new products in the VIP section before they’re released anywhere else in Memphis.

The Phoenix Club does a lot of good work supporting the Boys & Girls Club of Memphis, and so proceeds from your ticket price will be put to good use. You can buy tickets here.

Sorry for the late notification about this, but I just found out myself. Tonight is Max’s Sports Bar’s 4th anniversary party. There will be live music inside at 10 PM, and $2 Bud and Bud Light bottles.

If I remember correctly, they opened New Year’s Eve 1997, but why quibble about a couple of weeks’ difference? Cheap beer.

I’d like to ask a favor of all my readers. If you’ve heard of a bill in Congress called SOPA, but you don’t know exactly what it is, please click this link and read about SOPA now.

Up until today, I’d heard that it was something that a lot of people opposed, including big tech companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Twitter, and that I should oppose it too. Now that I’ve read about SOPA, I realize how much it could limit people’s freedom on the Internet. Honestly, if someone showed me this proposed law and asked me to guess which country was trying to put it into effect, I would guess China, Syria, or Iran. Please take the time to read about SOPA and make up your own mind, but to me it seems like it would send social media into the Dark Ages.

Okay, on with the news. Grace Askew plays an acoustic set at the Blind Bear from 8-11 PM tonight. Should be a good show and I plan on being there.

Congratulations to the Union Mission. Their expansion was approved by the Land Use Control Board yesterday, so they’ll soon have more space to serve those in need.

I’ve posted this once before, but in case you missed it, @RealTimeWWII is a great Twitter account to follow. It’s tweeting the Second World War day by day from 1939 to 1945. Today it’s tweeting wartime news as if it were January 13, 1940. Things are starting to heat up: Belgium is mobilizing its forces at the German border in preparation for an invasion, and Jews in Poland are being sent to labor camps. Berliners are required to get an ID card for their half-pint daily ration of skim milk. The account lets you learn about the war in a way not possible with history books. There are often links to photos or historical documents in the tweets.

This is really cool: Amazon now provides software to make documents available to Kindle devices. The documents are converted to PDF and then sent to Kindle. Over the past three years, I’ve typed up a lot of notes on poker books I’ve read. I’d love to have those notes on my Kindle Fire and iPhone Kindle App. The downside: I’m going to have to fire up my rarely-used netbook to get the files transferred, because the transfer tool is not yet offered for Mac OS.

All right, time for lunch. I’ll be at the Bear for Grace Askew’s show. Plans before and after TBD.