Doylestown, Pennsylvania.

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Doylestown, Pennsylvania.

A reader wrote in to say that the photo of fall leaves from 10.22 would make a good desktop picture. I agree. See also cows and frown.

Headline of the day, from the Philadelphia Inquirer: Is disestablishmentarianism dead in college newspapers? I'm not sure, but I do know that vocabulary show-offs are alive and well.

New Haven, Connecticut.
Gordon Bunshaft's Beinecke Library at Yale is a big marble box on little feet. Interior shot.

Matt Blackcustard's photo-montage-log.

Rion.nu: Monument shop.

The search engine for people who cant spel.

New Haven, Connecticut.
Poking around inside Paul Rudolph's weirdly decrepit Art & Architecture Building at Yale, which is both loved and hated.

I've posted a polished-up version of the little speech I gave at the weblog conference at Yale on Friday. It's less a speech than a string of disjointed anecdotes. More conference coverage at LawMeme.

Take a stand against inappropriate font use. Ban Comic Sans! Via Metafilter.

Park Slope, Brooklyn.

There was some interesting feedback on my story about photologs in Slate from Photodude and the people at Blogroots. Also I forgot to thank Roberto, Ranjit and John for their thoughts on my early notes for the story.

A reminder that I'll be on a panel at Yale Law School tomorrow that's part of a full-day conference on weblogs called Revenge of the Blogs. If you're in the area you should come by and say hello. The Kitchen Cabinet will be critiquing the participants' fashion sense.

Torn Posters, Soho, New York City. Via Ephemera.

No time for homework? Outsource it.

Far West 30's, Manhattan.

Did you know that napping on the subway was once considered disorderly conduct?

This weblog is two years old today. Little known fact: Before I figured out what to do with it, the home page of this site was a never-ending hell of useless splash pages.

The High Line, Manhattan.
Last month I did some reconnaissance on the northern end of the High Line, a defunct elevated railway on Manhattan's West Side. Due to inclement weekend weather my initial scouting has yet to lead to a full-blown expedition. But I saw enough to understand that this is a pretty extraordinary place. Some people think it should be turned into a park, like the Promenade Plantee in Paris. Not a bad idea.

I took a lot of photos. Some more of them are here.

Exploration inspiration was provided by The Morning News and Q Daily News.

I wrote a story about photo weblogs for Slate: Picture Pages: Web sites for people who hate to read.

After some waffling I decided to call these sites 'photologs' instead of 'photoblogs.' The latter is just a little... overcrowded. The masses seem to agree with me.

Links to more photo-oriented sites are in the left column of my links page. Find your own favorites on Photoblogs.org, which is off to a good start even though its voting system has more holes than a Lite-Brite.

Related: The Smoke screenplay. Search for "millimeter" on this page to find the scene I quoted in my story. This quote also seems appropriate: "Sometimes it feels like my hobby is my real job, and my job is just a way to support my hobby."

Houston Street, Manhattan.

Park Slope, Brooklyn.

Life in the Freezer is a photolog from Antarctica. Brrr. Via EBLO.

Adams Lodge, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, Wellfleet, Massachusetts.
I'm not sure what the ceremonial function of the radioactive Masonic lightbulbs might be. More Masonry.

Steven Johnson, whose book I will get around to reading one of these days, has a new weblog. Via BuzzMachine.

I responded to John P. Taylor's note, and he calmed down a bit.

The fact of the matter is I had a terrible weekend, like on a bad, disastrous sitcom, and I took it out on you by means of my letter. ... Incidentally, on a sorely needed positive note, especially after a rant like that, I recommend an excellent movie. Luc Besson's 2001 movie "Yamakasi. " It is an action movie with altruism at its core. An admirable and much required quality. ...

Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Randomentality is a good photolog despite its Canadian origins.

Forgot to note that I wrote this for yesterday's NYT, at the request of an editor: Service Plans to Sell Answers on Hoover's.

Reader mail, with links added:

From: "voxim" <...@ms15.hinet.net>
Subject: David F.Gallagher - Mr.Qaddafi You've Got Mail
Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2002 11:18:51 +0800

??
Dear Mr.Gallagher,
As if the title was not puerile enough, you had to include absolutely time wasting comments from a "14-year-old boy in Melbourne."
Why waste our time and your print space with such absolute and complete rubbish. Mr.Gallagher if you are struggling to become a completely irrelevant and time-wasting pseudo-writer, congratulations! You have succeeded ! Why on earth even entertain this kind of crap in you brain, let alone print it....
My God man! What are you trying to do, lobotomise us with your literary cattle prod...!
Somebody should send you to China and hopefully to one of the many gulags, or labour reform camps. Maybe you could talk to some of the Falun Gong people about torture and complete denial of human rights.

You sir are a grade A, number one, outstanding, ponce!

Congratulations! If the Guiness Book of Records had a section for completely puerile and offensively obnoxious writing, I reckon you would come in third. Mainly because you are completely mediocre, even when it comes to being offensive or irrelevant. You cannot even be number one at being an arsehole...Do not give up your day job unless you intend on being professionally irrelevant....

Good luck to you dear fellow. You will no doubt need every drop you can get !

John P. Taylor.

Where can I get one of those literary cattle prods?

Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

Some related links for my NYT story on contacting the Axis of Evil and friends:

-- North Korea: The Great Leader KIM IL SUNG lives forever!!
-- China.org.cn: Letters to Editor. Includes the recipe for Sweet and Sour Fish in Squirrel Shape and the letter from a remarkably articulate Australian boy. I tried writing to the editor but was told the address did not exist. Hmmm.
-- Libya: Contact Col. Qaddafi using the SMS to Leader page.
-- Iran: E-mail President Khatami. It looks like the Java thing on this page only lets you type in Farsi. But it makes up for this by letting you insert anyone's address at the top. This could come in handy if you've forgotten your Hotmail password and want to fire off a note to a friend who can read Farsi.
-- President Khatami's guestbook is a bizarre free-for-all. "Hi-just want to wich you a happy easter from sweden."
-- Brian McWilliams' story about hacking Saddam's e-mail. He justified the snooping in a post on Slashdot that was not very well received. Brian has another story today on Saddam's brother.

Not entirely related but worthy of note:

-- "I made pizza for Kim Jong Il." A long and bizarre account. See also parts two and three.
-- Did you know that anyone can get a domain name with Libya's .ly extension for just $50 a year? If you can get past that country's minor image problems, the adverbial possibilities are total.ly endless.
-- China's main government site features a big pop-up ad from China Telecom. Whitehouse.gov could earn some serious cash doing this.

If there is some kind of watch list for people with suspicious surfing and e-mail habits, the research for this story definitely put me on it.

A story I wrote for the Week in Review section of Sunday's Times: Mr. Qaddafi, You've Got Mail. It's an attempt to answer this question: How easy is it to contact the world's least friendly regimes using the Internet? I'll post related links and such tomorrow.

Park Slope, Brooklyn.
More old cars from the movie shoot.

Park Slope, Brooklyn.
The movie people (see yesterday) wanted the church on the corner to have that sunglasses-at-night look.

ImplosionWorld.com presents "an insightful look into the world of explosive demolition with perspective and integrity." Via some Dutchman.

Park Slope, Brooklyn.
They're filming a movie down the block: Mona Lisa Smile.

Extras.

Spectators.

The old lady next door swept all the wet leaves off the sidewalk so Julia Roberts wouldn't slip and fall on her skinny butt.

This is as paparazzoid as I get so you'll have to squint to spot the movie star.

The Morning News: Ads Are Stupid. If you don't watch television, this is a good way to catch up on what you're missing.

Wacky redesign at Moonmilk. Send Ranjit some feedback.

Times Square, Manhattan.
At the gift shop of the International Center of Photography I picked up a cheap sideways mirror thing that, when held in front of my camera, lets me take sneaky spy shots, sorta like Walker Evans. This was fun for about ten minutes.

Everything at the ICP right now is worth seeing, especially the Garry Winogrand show.

I'm behind on my magazine reading so I just noticed that Coke's description of its war on tap water, as discovered by Rob Cockerham and elaborated upon by me, was excerpted in the October issue of Harper's. What took them so long?

Upper East Side, Manhattan.

Central Park.

On November 22 I'm going to be on a panel at Yale Law School, talking about weblogs and journalism. The panel discussion is part of a day-long conference called Revenge of the Blog that's being organized by Yale's Information Society Project, the people who bring you the excellent LawMeme weblog. John Hiler, Jeff Jarvis and Joshua Micah Marshall will be on my panel. If you're in the area, come by and check it out. I should be able to come up with something interesting to say by then.

The New Yorker hangs out with the editor of Found magazine. Via Romenesko.

I got spammed by a German "business-to-business marktplatz" with an unfortunate name. Maybe it sounds more businesslike in German.

Garment District, Manhattan.

Chinatown, Manhattan.
See also tinnybeauty.com.

Downtown Brooklyn, June 2000.
I recently rediscovered this gem.

Nikki S. Lee is a photographic chameleon. More here. Via Travelers Diagram.

Ghost Town Gallery has photos of 174 ghost towns out West, like for example Rochester, Nevada, which is looking pretty ghostly. (At least Manhattan still has a bar.) The site is by an obsessive couple from Switzerland.