St. Mary's is on Fire

While most of the world focuses on other, dire news from my original stomping grounds, my parents can actually see St. Mary's Wilderness Area burning. And for those of you who know me well, you can guess my feelings here. I know it's a natural part of the ecosystem, but I'm still gutted by it.

We're OK

Thanks to all that have e-mailed, blogged, called, etc. We're OK even though the tornado passed within 50 or so yards of our loft. For some pictures of the damage in my 'hood, here's a link to Flickr images tagged "Atlanta" and "Tornado". Oh yeah, that Loft they showed on the news all day Saturday? It's just on the other side of the cemetery. And yes, it is as bad as it looks.

Kottke.org is 10 years old today.

Google Sky. Like Google Earth for Stars. I could probably waste hours with this.

The 100 best last lines from novels.

Spinner ranks the 25 best band logos.

Common People Comic

This is so right on so many differently levels. Pulp's "Common People" as a Archie comic.

Archie in a different class... Indeed. (via Information Leafblower).

Falcons Release Warrick Dunn

File this under I don't believe it. Warrick Dunn has joined a long list of other fan favorites. Dunn was released by the Falcons today.

Long time readers know I don't pay much attention to American Football, but the major moves being made by the Falcons lately have attracted even my attention. Sure, Dunn may be past his prime a bit, but the guy has been such a pillar of the community here in Atlanta, I'm still wrapping my head around it a bit. Don't they think he could hang around and mentor some of the running backs at least. To me, this looks like housecleaning going a bit too far. This is not a move the Braves would have made. (Though, the Patriots on the other hand....) So there goes a little bit more goodwill for the team in the community. And I can guarantee the interest in the Falcons will return to almost nil once again. Thank God for the EPL.

New Project

I doubt you've noticed it, but I've added a couple of new blogs to my sidebar. Also, I've started a new project that's much more work focused: Contented: a weblog dedicated to content strategy and web copywriting. I don't know how far I'll get with it alone, but I felt the need to write about some of the things I deal with on a day-to-day basis at work. Hopefully, I can expand the authorship over there as well. In any case, that stuff really didn't really seem to fit here. So, if you're interested, click on over. If not, nothing to see there, please move along.

Brand Obama

A Newsweek blog has an interesting post describing how Obama's branding efforts are more thorough and complete than any campaign thus far, and certainly more so than his rival. It explores something I've been thinking about as well. Obama's "brand" looks way more Apple or Target than Hillary's or McCain's (Dell and Wal-Mart/Army circa 2003).

Also, his "O" logo scales much better online than Hillary's.

From a copy perspective, Obama definitely has a tagline, whereas Hillary doesn't that I can find. "Ready from day one" just doesn't cut the mustard. While "Change I can believe in" isn't great (is that a preposition I see at the end of that sentence?), at least it's an attempt.

What does this mean. Not a heck of a lot, but I still think it's interesting. Could something like this influence those of us that work in such matters? Perhaps, but we were probably pre-disposed to support him anyway.

[Cross posted sort of at Contented]

UPDATE: Now, the Obama logo has been goat.se'd... It must be all Web 2.0.