Conner's Blog

If I owned a bar, it would be a brewpub.  I would hire a brew master who enjoyed the heck out of his profession and was all about trying new and crazy brews.  We would brew no typical beers at my pub.  Of course, I would also have a large selection of other beers, both on tap and in bottles.  I would try to carry any beer that was brewed within 150 miles of my bar and have a solid selection of imports.  Liquor would be limited to the high-end variety.  When possible, we would make our mixers in house.

The music selection would vary with the focus on indie and local bands.  Customers would be encouraged to bring in mixed CD’s that would be rotated in and out at the staff’s discretion.  The volume would always be conducive to talking.  TVs would be allowed but would only show games of local sports franchises and college teams.  If no games were available, they would be shut off.  There would always be a $4 beer special and a $5 drink special.  This would rotate daily.

The bar top would be large with the focus on the bar itself.  It would be a round bar with very comfortable stools.  People would be encouraged to sit at the bar and not at the tables scattered around it.  It would be lit dimly but also provide enough light to read comfortably.  We would provide copies of newspapers, along with magazines like The New Yorker, The Atlantic Journal, and McSweeny’s.  A bookshelf where patrons could both take books and leave books would be located somewhere in the bar.

The food would be of the bar food variety: wings, nachos, pretzels, and the like.  Soups and chili would be the specialty, along with excellent sandwiches.  Locally sourced ingredients would be used whenever possible.

The atmosphere would be homey. It would be a place you would go after work, or early on a Saturday afternoon. Not to get drunk of course, but to enjoy something tasty and have a conversation with a stranger.  It would be named Samuel’s, for no reason at all.

Long overdue and inspired by Colin, Andy, and others.

It’s a good thing I’m under no obligation to write or I would probably go insane.  I have been trying to come up with a few post ideas and keep coming up empty.  Here are a few ideas I’ve mulled over the last few days.

• 15 way to bleed on stage -  A list of stupid injuries band members received while performing on stage.
• 10 things someone tried to sell me this week – A trip through my spam folder.  Actually other than viagra, male enhancement, and porn there isn’t much else in my spam folder.
• 20 things I didn’t know – A trip through the Wikipedia random article link.
• 15 other things I didn’t know – A sampling of random websites presenting ridiculous theories as facts.

Obviously I’m stretching for ideas here.  Although I think the 20 things I didn’t know idea actually could be kind of fun.

Would a pause button be a great feature on some webapps?  RSS readers would greatly benefit from this.  As I’m writing this post there is currently a Woot Off in progress.  This means that my RSS feed from Woot gets about 30-40 items every 4-5 hours.  It would be great if I could just hit pause and then it skips the items that occur during the time period I specify.  

Twitter would also benefit from this. I follow many people who live twitter confences and other events that do not interest me.  This information fills up my Twitter client and I sometimes miss other tweets that interest me.  The only solution I have is to unfollow the offending party and then remember to follow them again the next day.  This is clunky and the ability to skip updates from individual users for a period of time would be a great feature. 

Any other web applications that could use a pause button?