Well, I missed the Christian Bale appearance at WonderCon, but I did make it to the Joss Whedon panel, among others. Lots of good stuff, even if it was raining most of the time. And I did catch some of the Chinese New Year parade.
Month: February 2005
Good songs
Two songs that got me through the day:
(1) Nina Gordon’s cover of “Straight out of Compton”.
(2) Nerdy Girl by Dealership.
NJ Tax Information
You can find some interesting pointers to NJ tax info at the Morris County Library Real property & tax information page. A link on that page, for instance, lead me down a path that eventually showed me the assessed value for my apartment building. Apparently, this place is worth $1.8 million.
Rent vs. Buy
I’ve been plugging a lot of numbers into this Rent vs. Buy Calculator, and most of the scenarios I come up with point me towards continuing to rent. The big variable is the expected appreciation of the home you’re theoretically buying. There’s no real way of knowing that, of course. If I pick a conservative value, like 2% or 4%, it usually comes back telling me I should continue renting. If I assume a 10% annual appreciation, and I stick with the place for 10+ years, then it tells me I might want to buy.
This calculator, on the other hand, is pointing me towards buying over renting in most scenarios. It’s taking into account a number of variables that the other one doesn’t ask for. Who really knows what calculations they’re doing behind the scenes, though. I guess I need to do some more reading.
The Gates
I went to see The Gates today. I have to admit that I was impressed. The whole thing looks great. The effect is quite surprising. This article in the Times sums things up pretty well.
I took about 50 pictures, and uploaded them here. Looking through them again, I find myself wanting to go back for another look.
For the record, I edited some of the pictures in Paint Shop Pro, and left others as-is, so the color is sometimes a bit different between pictures. I found that most of them looked best without any finagling, even if they were a bit dark.
(Edit: these photos can now be found on Flickr.)
Cinema Treasures
I found this nice page on old movie theaters while looking for movie showtimes this morning.
The Gates Project for Central Park
The New York Times has a nice page on The Gates, pulling together various articles they’ve published on the project.
Guitar Wolf
Nice page on Guitar Wolf. There’s some really funny stuff in the interview they did with Seiji.
The Gates
I may be taking a trip into NYC this weekend to see The Gates at Central Park. I’m not a big Christo fan, but how often does something like this happen? Not often, I tell you! Not often.
Comic Book Guy
Comic Book Guy’s real name was revealed during last night’s post-football Simpson’s episode: Jeff Albertson. Not terribly exciting, but it sounds about right. Also, there was a brief shot of CBG’s web site, www.dorks-gone-wild.com, which is, of course, now a real web site, presumably created by the Simpson’s folks.