Great news to cyclist across the US! Google has just released a new feature on Google Maps that allows you to view bike lanes and bike friendly roads across 150 US cities. The new feature makes it really easy to navigate busy cities by highlighting low traffic roads, bike lanes and dedicated bike trails. It also tends to target flat roads and avoiding hills. You can even customize your trip by creating your own path along bike lanes. I bought my bike last fall and haven’t been able to use it as much as I want to, now with the spring and summer coming this will be a great addition to my NYC bike adventures.
I haven’t been more excited about a band since the Postal Service released their album, and that’s quite a while ago. Broken Bells is the collaboration between the guitarist and lead vocalist from the Shins, James Mercer and artist-producer Brian Burton aka Danger Mouse. Brian Burton is well know for his contributions in The Grey Album and producing albums for artists such as Gnarls Barkley, Beck, and the Gorillaz. James Mercer is the iconic voice behind the indie rock band The Shins, whose music was predominately featured in the movie Garden State.
The pair decided to work together after meeting at a Danish music festival in 2004 and finding they were fans of each other’s work. Mercer and Burton began recording together in secret at Burton’s Los Angeles based studio in March 2008 and describe their material as “melodic, but experimental, too”.
Check out the video for their single “The High Road”:
Saturday night I was DJing at a friends house party with over 200 people. Plenty of alcohol, beautiful people, great vibes all around. It all came to a halt minutes after playing this one song, just as cops busted the party and told us to leave. The song, Zero Machine a remix of the Smashing Pumkins by Le Castle Vania off the Voice Of Treason Album.
I cannot believe the positive feedback I got on this track after playing it, so I thought I’d share it with everyone. It’s a thunderous electro remix, great synth leads, heavy bass drums, and powerful guitars, perfect theme song to a night of mayhem. Check it out:
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The massive 8.8 quake that hit Chile last week was amongst one of the most powerful quakes recorded. Not only did it impact the lives of thousands living in Chile but is has permanently changed the very shape of our planet.
A megathrust earthquake is caused when one one tectonic plate is shoved violently underneath another in a process called subduction. These earthquakes are very rare; they tend to be 7.5 magnitude or higher, and there are only about 14 in recorded history (including the 2004 Indonesian quake that caused huge tsunamis).
As the Nazca and South American plates collided, the Nazca plate slid under and all that mass was pulled closer to the center of Earth, affecting it’s spin. The planet is now spinning slightly faster, making our days 1.26 millionth of a second shorter.
How does this work? Think of it just like a spinning skater brings her arms in closer to her body to rotate faster.
Where might the next megathrust quake hit? Scientists believe it could be in a subduction zone off the Pacific coast of the Northern US and Canada, where the Juan de Fuca plate meets the North American plate. Geophysicists have used computer modeling to show what such a quake would look like, based in part on data they’ve reconstructed about a 9 magnitude quake there in 1700. The researchers estimate that megathrust quakes hit the region about every 400-500 years, so we’re about due for another.
One cloudy afternoon and a little wine can produce beautiful images. Check out my latest story with friend, Julia Kristin from Click Models NYC: “Feels like I’ve been here before”
The New York Times Style Magazine’s blog is running a great series of photographs by Greg Kessler. He captures the before and after looks of models after they go through hair and make-up. Check it out: http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/model-morphosis/
