Chris Risner . Com

The MIX conference is hosting (and has for at least the last year) a little competition called Mix10k.  The goal is to make some sort of web application that only takes up 10 kilobytes of space.  Now it’s pretty hard to impress upon someone what 10K really is.  I’ll try to give you a few examples:

• Windows 7 Notepad is 189 K
• Windows 7 Calculator is 897 K
• A typical browser is between 500 and 1000 K
• 10,000 typed characters is 10 K
• It’s not uncommon to see terabyte drives these days.  A terabyte is about 1024 * 1024 * 100 * 10 K.

So suffice to say, 10 KB is not exactly a lot of space to write a program in.  The challenge here is to do something that is at least decent without going over.  It’s not easy to do.  Most of the time by the time you’ve thrown even a simple image into an application, you’ve already gone over that limit.  As I am going to MIX this year, I felt participating in the challenge would be a great way to get revved up for the conference.  The first challenge was figuring out what to create.  A few years ago my friend Scott made a convenient way for us to figure out where to go to lunch, a Lunch Wheel.  It was basically a windows app which you could use to spin a wheel with different eateries on it.  The wheel would randomly spin and you would have your restaurant.  It’s been a while since I saw this Lunch Wheel and didn’t really have any idea where it was, so it was definitely time for a new one.  So, for my Mix10k application, I made a Silverlight LunchWheel which you can see here.  There are obviously some (a lot) improvements that could be made, but I was working with limited space.  Once the wheel was submitted and approved, I put a few different versions up on the site.  A slightly improved (spacing and spelling issues) LunchWheel can be found here.  A very helpful BeerWheel can be found here.  And lastly, a lovely LiquorWheel can be found here.  Sooner or later I’ll post more information on how I made the LunchWheel as well as the source code so you can make your own!

From September 18th through the 27th, several (17) of Detroit’s “finest” restaurants are taking part in an event known as “Restaurant Week”.  RW is basically a “week” of preset and cheap offerings from pretty nice restaurants with the goal of getting you to experience places you normally might not (and then come back and spend big money there).  As I only found out about RW today and I have a pretty packed weekend, I went about trying to figure out which of these restaurants Erin and I could hit up this week.  After checking out the list and getting some recommendations from people, I first wanted to go to the Rattlesnake Club.  The entree options there included a 14oz strip steak and a 1.25 lb Maine lobster: tasty.  Alas, it wasn’t meant to be as they were already booked for the rest of the weekend.  Evaluating the rest of the places led to us deciding upon the Whitney.  TW doesn’t offer any parking at the actual location outside of valet.  Oddly enough the entrance and exit for valet are the same single lane so try not to run into another car.  We both knew what we were going to order off the minimal list before we arrived so the only thing we had to decide upon was what to drink.  Being fans of Cabernet we looked there first.  The cheapest bottle was $35 which we ordered.  A few minutes later the waitress returned to tell us that they were out (despite them later serving it by the glass to a couple sitting behind us) but brought the next bottle up (which we were fully charged for).  The food and service were pretty good.  That being said, I don’t think I’d be happy paying $50+ per person for what we got for $27 each.  The location is pretty dark due to the dark color of the wood but very classy as well. While seating another group one of the servers actually showed them a hidden vault hidden behind one of the very old house’s walls.  So while the Whitney was good, I wish we’d had a chance to try some of the other restaurants and look forward to Restaurant Week 2010.

Being the awesome boss that he is, my team leader Jona sent me this fantastic link today.  The site offers custom chalkboards with your name in them.  Now if it weren't for my lack of appreciation for chalkboards and a complete lack of knowledge about how these chalkboards actually turn out (the site unintelligently doesn't post any other photos than the stock images) I'd be all about getting one.  That being said, it would be a swell way to let people know what kind of beer is in the kegorator and could come in handy if I ever start brewing my own beer (one day maybe).  For now, please get by with images of my good friend Bastardi's beer sign.