Browsing through the pages of the Buffalo Bayou Partnership, I found the site for the Buffalo Bayou Art Park. Cool stuff (-:

The Katy Copperheads Official Podcast is giving away tickets to the Copperheads game this weekend. They will be taking on Bozeman Sunday April, 30th at 3:00PM. The cool thing about this game is that Bozeman is one of the worst teams in the NIFL so it should be another great victory for the home team.

The Katy Copperheads are the brand new indoor football team right here in the Houston area. The field is only 50 yards long and is wall-to-wall fun. As everyone knows, we take our football serious in Texas and at least one of our local teams can claim to be at the top of their division.

Enough about the team… how do you get the tickets? Well, the podcast is giving away 20 pairs of tickets and the first 20 people to shoot an email to lonestargridiron@gmail.com with their name (as it appears on their driver’s license,) will be getting in completely free.

The games are played at the Leonard Merrell Center, not far from Katy Mills Mall. Come on out and support the winningest pro football team around and do it for FREE! Look for your very own HouDog doing the Copperheads podcast from the table between sections 113 & 114. Swing by and say “Hi.” See you there.

According to the US Census Bureau, Houston commuters spend, on average, a little under an hour a day commuting to work. That’s approximately 200 hours a year. Driving in your car. Getting cut off. Gazing towards a red sea of brake lights. Cursing construction companies and city planners.

Houstonian Brandon Hansen (of OmniNerd) has created a tremendously detailed account and analysis of his Houston work commute from March 2005 to March 2006.

And I do mean *seriously* detailed – taking the time to record every workday’s departure and arrival times, minute route alterations (like taking a different street to avoid a road full of fast food restaurants), school holidays, etc.

Not for the faint of heart, this mathematically-charged analysis is pretty impressive. Brandon’s final conclusion – we need to work for better a mass transit system. A-freaking-men.

Sure puts my old ‘Check Transtar 5 Minutes Before I Go Out The Door’ routine to shame. I think I’d like to carpool with this guy….

Asian Pacific American Heritage Festival

(Time: 2:32)

206-202-3644 Call in your news!

This coming Sunday, April 30, is World Pinhole Day. Photographers, students & enthusiasts from all over will be pulling out their lensless cameras and taking pictures.

Anybody in Houston want to get together for a pinhole outing Sunday afternoon? All formats welcome–film, paper neg, Polaroid, digital; any size; store-bought or homemade. We could meet in Hermann Park or any other location someone suggests, and final images could be shared on the Metroblogging Houston Flickr Group.

Any takers?

From the Chronicle, Southwest School’s Texas Virtual Academy offers education online for grades 3 through 6 in the Houston area. The article is mostly positive, narrating the experience of eight-year-old Brian Reynolds, but it does have it’s creepy moments with quotes like this:

“He, at first, really missed going on the playground, but I think he’s accomplishing so much more,” said his mother, Lynn Reynolds.

Anyone out there with actual virtual school experience? I’d love to know what reality is like for a virtual education. Most of my memories of grade school center around social experiences. It makes me wonder if there isn’t a social aspect missing from the virtual school experience, or if that aspect is made up from other sources – church, neighborhood, online friends?

Links: Houston Chronicle, Pilot electronic education projects debut here, CS Monitor, Virtual schools, real concerns, Texas Virtual Academy, HISD Virtual School, K12.

If you’ve got some extra time on your hands, and you’re craving ice cream in this hot Houston weather, stop by Ben and Jerry’s today. It’s Global Free Cone Day, which means that you can get a free cone or cup of ice cream. You can get in line as many times as you want, and since the cash registers won’t even be used, the line should go somewhat smoothly.

The free ice cream is offered from noon to 8pm.

Update: Thanks to Luke in the comments for pointing out a store locator on Ben and Jerry’s web site.

I’ve been back in Houston almost 8 months now. (Taking a moment to wrap my head around that…) Today I’ve got one more item to add to the list of things I miss about Los Angeles: high-volume pro film labs. I got spoiled in LA living two blocks from A&I. When I was starting photography classes their hours had them open until 2AM. With three hour turn-around on slide processing, I could still drop a roll of at 11PM and pick it up before they closed for the night. Great for the photo student trying to push his deadlines.

Today I had to get a roll to AZ Lab that I’ll need for an 11:30 class at UH tomorrow. Getting the roll to them right at 2:30 this afternoon, it won’t be ready for me to pick up until 10:30 tomorrow morning.

I know most pros are transitioning to digital–I am too. And I know that in spite of FotoFest, Houston really isn’t a very big photography town compared to LA or NY. Still, a pro camera shop and an extended hours lab shouldn’t be too much to ask from the 4th largest city in the country.

Remember the classic board game of Monopoly? For those Monopoly lovers out there, a new edition is coming out! This new edition is called The Here and Now and will be made to accurately (or at least almost accurately) reflect the real life of Monopoly! That means, real places and real things! I’m definitely looking forward to this!

So every day until May 12th, you can vote for a famous city landmark to be on this new edition! But we should represent Houston, so that our city can be on there! We need lots of votes to win! So spread the word!

You can vote for your favorite from one of the three Houston landmarks: the Johnson Space Center, the Kemah Boardwalk, or the Museum District. So far, our wonderful Johnson Space Center is off the charts!

And it makes sense, beccause NASA is the savior of the nation.

So, Houston, we have a problem! If you want Houston to be on Monopoly, show your love by voting every day by clicking on the link below:

http://www.hasbro.com/monopoly/

*Note: Photo courtesy of Hasbro.com.

Gas prices got you down? It could be worse. Yeah, predictably, our brethren in California are worse off than we are. I was surprised, however, to notice that Utah, Wyoming, Montana and Idaho are so much cheaper than here. Guessing that lower state gas taxes may be a factor there. Can’t think of much else that would cause such a drastic shift… after all, when you think “oil”, Utah isn’t really the first state that comes to mind…