To record Jim James and Wax Fang doing a kick ass rendition of My Old Kentucky Home. 

Kate Hopkins from of the website The Accidental Hedonist has been on the bourbon trail of late doing research for a book she's writing on whiskey. The other day she was in Louisville and had breakfast at Lynn's Paradise Cafe. She partook of the dish known as Kenny's Farmhouse Scramble as well as fried green tomatoes, biscuits, and cheese grits. Of her meal she said:

"Oh Lord? Please send Seattle a breakfast like this."

Just yesterday I told you about the great conversation I had with Scott Harper, wine director for the Bristol Bar & Grille. Well today let me share with you his very cool new video podcast called the Bristol Barrel Podcast. The first episode is on Ordering Wine at a Restaurant. He touches on several of the points we discussed as well as going into detail about what information a wine list is telling you, how much wine comes in a bottle and smacking people upside the head(!) (boy, do I love Scott Harper).



Well done Scott.

The New Times gives My Morning Jacket's SXSW performance last week an excellent review which makes me excited for the June release of their new album "Evil Urges." That review also mentions that the performance was taped for NPR which is awesome because it means that you can listen to the show online.

Local web startup Metro Mapper has entered a contest with the hopes of getting some funding and making some business connections to ensure the startup's growth. The contest, by Net Squared has the ambitious goal of "remixing the web for social change." Micheal at Metro Mapper says "The contest provides funding and resources for innovative projects that foster social change and empower individuals." The winners are determined by popular vote. Anyone can vote, you just have to register.

Metro Mapper is a free service currently based in Louisville, KY. We have a set of tools that let us gather public information and put it on interactive maps, which you can see on our site.

But what we are missing is community contributions, data for other United States cities and rural areas, and the ability to show lots more information.

We want to become Your Mapper, a new site that has all of this and an empowered public. The Net Squared project would let us begin to do that. Read all about what we want to accomplish on our Project Page. Register now!

This is a cool local project, let's all support it by voting!

A new project called Create Louisville has just launched to discuss what's going on in the Louisville advertising and creative communities.

Everyone's a critic, right?  That's especially true for creatives.  How many times have you wished you could grab the person that designed an ad or billboard and say, "Hey, there are other fonts besides Myriad Pro!" or "FYI, white glows around objects died in 1987." or better yet, "Nice layout!  Keep up the great work!" 

Now you can.

CreateLouisville.com is a forum for constructive criticism and stimulating conversation.  We want to get better at our craft, and help raise the bar on work that comes out of our city.  We've found that the only way to do that is to first admit that there is always more to learn, no matter how long you've been in the industry.

I think this project is a great concept and I'm not saying that just because the project organizers hired me to do a little behind the scenes work on the site (HTML, CSS, Movable Type). I love the idea of the advertising community being able to openly discuss, praise and criticize the work that's coming out of Louisville, in a constructive manner instead of the "that sucks" you frequently hear when someone is criticizing creative work online.

The site has already looked at some work that I like a great deal like the Bill Green poster from the Five0Two project and a Ben Sollee show poster designed by Circle One Design. I can't wait to see what they talk about next.

Why did no one tell me that Heimerdinger Cutlery has a blog? You are mean people to hold out on me like that.

My cooking knives are woefully dull. I have daydreams about when they were new and sharp and could cut anything with easy. I want those days back so I looked up Heimerdinger Cutlery the other day to find out about having my knives sharpened. Yes, they do that, yay but I also found that they have an informative blog called Looking Sharp in Louisville with info about knives, scissors, sharpening and all sorts of things. If you don't have an interest in sharp cooking knives perhaps this isn't of interest to you but for the rest of us, yay sharp cooking knives.

Heimerdinger Cutlery
4207 Shelbyville Rd.
Louisville, Kentucky 40207

Looking Sharp in Louisville

I've ignored this Bushmill's Twin City contest thing for a few weeks now. I thought it was kind of a lame corporate PR thing and I wasn't interested in hyping it. Then I got a pitch from a marketing company encouraging me to promote it here on Consuming Louisville and that made me want to promote it even less than I already did. But then I got an email from a reader encouraging me to write about it. In her email she gave me information about the contest that I had glossed over. Namely this:

If Louisville receives more votes than its competitors, it will be proclaimed the twin city and will take home a $40,000 grant from Bushmills - $20,000 for the preservation and advancement of the city's time-honored traditions and culture, and $20,000 for programs that promote responsible drinking. Members from Louisville's Irish Fest and WorldFest planning committees submitted the application for Bushmill's Twin City search, and plan to use the grant money received towards the development of those festivals.

I dig the Irish Fest and I'm sure the WorldFest is wonderful too so if I can encourage people to help them get some grant money then it'd be lame of me not to do so.

So this is me encouraging you to go to http://www.bushmills400years.com/, put in your birth date to prove that you're of actual legal drinking age and vote for Louisville.

I'm spending some time these days writing about startups in Louisville and the startup community here over at forgelouisville.com. Forge Louisville is an organization that was founded late last year to foster entrepreneurship in Louisville and to help grow the entrepreneur and startup community here. There are a lot of startups in a different industries based in Louisville and a lot of cool projects going on.

The Forge Louisville website is still in beta, meaning we're getting the editorial tone and content focus just right but I wanted to share what I'm up to. If you're interested in startups and entrepreneurial ventures I encourage you to check it out.

Is there anything better than grandmotherly types dancing to Freak Nasty while packaging bottles of bourbon? No, I don't think there is.

The Five0Two Campaign has announced that February's work of art is available. The piece is a new Bill Green (he of Lebowski Fest fame) poster featuring Hunter S. Thompson and a fleur de lis thrown in for good Louisville measure. 

Every month we pick an artist that we admire or think deserves to have their work seen around the city. That artist then creates a piece of artwork that is printed on postcards and posters and distributed around the city for all of us to enjoy. The artist gets some money and the city gets a work of art in the voice of that artist. There are no restrictions on the art that is produced, only that it reflects the vision of that particular artist.

We may choose for that piece of art to be distributed in other ways, like tshirts or beer cubbies. We'll sell those in hopes that we can keep this project alive indefinitely.

Coverage of Louisville's dining scene in the blogosphere (yes, I said blogosphere and that's ok) is growing by leaps and bounds. Last week I told you about Louisville Lunch a new blog focusing on reviews of lunch spots around town. This week comes the official launch of 'Ville Voice Eats. The site is brought to you by the fine folks who publish you The 'Ville Voice and Page One but it's written by Steve Coomes. Everyone be nice and welcome Steve to blogging.

"For a mid-size city, Louisville has one of the most diverse and sophisticated dining markets in the country, and there are so many great but untold stories we plan to share through the Web site," Coomes said. "Ville Voice Eats is all about staying in touch with the buzz surrounding the town's incredible food and drink culture."

Sounds like a good goal to me.

I suck for not going to the Sharon Jones and The Dap Kings show this past weekend. I really wanted to go but didn't really have anyone to go with (not my beloved's kind of show) but that's a poor excuse. I feel even worse about not going now that I've read Cory's review of the show over at Backseat Sandbar, including some great photographs of the evening.

What amazed me about this show was that this was music I could share with my father. I mean that slightly metaphorically because my father actually likes a lot of my music, but this show included every age group from 18 to people in their 50s or 60s, and I imagine many brokenhearted kids under 18. I guess that's not too much of a surprise when Sharon herself is 51 (going on 23). But who would ever imagine a soul/funk show selling Headliners completely out? I met kids from St. Louis who drove the 4-5 hours because the show had sold out there at a much smaller venue. They drove all that distance thinking no way would a venue of over 700 capacity would sell out. Fortunately it did only after they got their tickets at the door. Soul music selling out Headliners in Louisville, KY? Simply amazing.
- Cory, Backseat Sandbar

Metro Mapper the local company that creates interactive maps for the Louisville metro area have released an interactive TARC Map.

Have you ever wanted to take the TARC, but had trouble navigating the myriad images and PDFs of all the routes on their site? Here is an interactive map that shows a satellite road map with a toggleable TARC route overlay on top! Zoom and pan instantly to your heart's content to see how to get around Louisville.

The New York Times ran an article on January 20, 2008 about the state of New York's tax code "which in some cases double-taxes nonresidents who work for companies based in New York but occasionally telecommute." That article led one of Fast Company blogger Cali Williams Yost to compare and contrast the state of New York's position of inflexibility to the detriment of telecommuters with the state of Kentucky's position on similar work issues. In her words "One Resists Flexibility, the Other Embraces It."

Contrast New York's active resistance with that of the State of Kentucky. Not only is Kentucky embracing flexibility and innovation but sees it as a key lever for future growth and development. Business and community leaders from across the state, and within cities such as Lexington, are working with the Institute for Workplace Innovation at the University of Kentucky and its director, Dr. Jennifer Swanberg, as well as the University's President, Lee T. Todd, Jr. to achieve their collective vision.

Naturally I wish she'd name checked Louisville in the article but I love the Bluegrass at large so I'm always pleased with positive publicity for our state.

At 3:00PM today, January 22, 2008 the University of Louisville will be unveiling new logos, new tagline and anthems, desktop and mobile phone wallpapers and just about everything else having to do with the school's visual identity. It's a whole new branding campaign and you can be among the first to see it.

Go to: http://louisville.edu/itshappeninghere/ and in 8 minutes and 43 seconds (as of this writing) you'll see the newly designed icons and logos that will shape the University of Louisville's brand identity for the next however many years. Perhaps they've found a way to rewrite history and will actually make this past football season a successful one. That would be a definite brand booster.

Update: OK so the new stuff is live now. As the address above hinted the new tag
line for the University of Louisville is "It's Happening Here."

The sentiment behind that tag line is "Everything that is happening at the best schools across the country also is happening here."

Other than the obvious issue of sort of leaving yourself out of the "best schools" category by saying "we're doing what the best schools are doing too" I dig it. It's actually very similar to  the sentiments that drive me to write Consuming Louisville. So much good and cool stuff is happening in this city and people just don't know. We've got to get the word out about our great city and the fine folks at the University of Louisville have got to get the good word about the university out as well.

That said, I'd love to hear other people's opinions on this new branding campaign, including from people who are actually in the advertising/branding/media/design fields. Any thoughts?

As part of the new branding they've got two new desktop wallpapers in various sizes (including for iPhone). So go forth and download them if you're so inclined.

Mr. 43 Folders himself Merlin Mann was of course at Macworld last week and filmed a couple interviews for the fine MacBreak program. These interviews are interesting if you're a Mac geek (and I am) but we're most interested in the "Abide" shirt Merlin is rocking in the videos.

That shirt is a fine example of the superior quality materials our friends from Lebowski Fest have sent out into the world. You should buy one. You might also considering buying a sticker or other Abide materials.

All this reminds us that the 7th Annual Lebowski Fest is happening July 11 and 12, 2008 here in Louisville. Being the 7th annual event here in Louisville is cool enough but when you consider this year is the 10th anniversary of the film's release, well then you know that excellence will abound. 

Did you know that the fine folks at Proof on Main have a generous collection of recipes they're sharing with all of us? No? Me either until the other day when I stumbled upon them. Foodies, cooks and wannabes get thee to the current and past recipe sections of Proof's websites for the secrets to making such loveliness as Woodland Cider, Proof's Signature "Darkened Manhattan", Sea Salt Caramel Gelato (in a word? Yum) and several other fantastic sounding items. 

Let me preface this by saying I'm not an Insight hater. Until this issue I've had absolutely no complaints with my Insight service. That being said a few weeks ago I started noticing that if I mistyped a URL or went to a web address that was down instead of getting the typical, blank "Page Not Found" or "Can't find the server" pages I was instead being directed to www33.not-found-entry.org and a page full of ad links. If I were a Windows user I'd have been really concerned that my machine had been infected with spyware or malware that was hijacking my browser and sending me to a spammy page full of paid links. Being a Mac user though I noted the weird spammy page and made a note to look into it a bit later.

A bit later turned out to be yesterday and when I looked into this issue I found out that, well, Insight has done something that at best can be considered tacky and at worst could be considered a dirty business practice. Several weeks ago Insight rolled out a bug "feature" in the Louisville area (after first rolling it out in Northern Kentucky) that redirects browsers to www33.not-found-entry.org pages whenever the browser should be delivering a server not found message. The www33.not-found-entry.org pages are populated with links that are, in a best case scenario, related to the site you were actually trying to find. All of these links are ads. If you click on these links you're clicking on advertising. Whoever owns the pages running those ads (and I assume but haven't been able to confirm that Insight owns the pages) gets money when you click on those ads. I'm ok with online advertising but I'm not ok with hijacking my browser to show me a page full of ads instead of the  generic informational error pages I should be seeing.

Louisville Underground is a new podcast about "the Underground Culture of the River City." Mostly it looks like that means underground bands. Though now that I think about it I'm not really sure what an underground band is but that's probably because I'm old and boring. I'm thinking punk rock. Right?

If you're younger and hipper than I am and the phrases "Underground Culture" and "Underground Bands" sound good and interesting to you, or you're just the adventurous sort definitely check out the Louisville Underground podcast.

Local web show Daily Idea heads out to a Shelbyville Road shopping center to get some insight from shoppers on dealing with families during the Thanksgiving festivities. While I'm not sure what they came away with can be called insight it's pretty funny nonetheless.

LEO has picked up the story of Page One Kentucky's battle with WHAS over media criticism and fair use of video clips. The headline writer gets a thumbs up for using "www.YouSue.com." Some might say it's a little obvious but I say it's brilliant in its obviousness

Right now on YouTube, you can find clips of WHAS-TV newscasts, everything from a story about a boy who died from electrocution by a garage door to an interview with the grown-up members of Hanson or footage of a cute but nervous puppy hurling on the anchor’s desk. Keying “WHAS11 video” into Google brings up hundreds more hits.

But there are 10 clips you won’t see, those posted by Louisville blogs The Ville Voice and Page One Kentucky, both published by Full Signal Media. The clips were used in commentaries about news coverage and other issues at WHAS. Page One co-owner Jacob Payne said he believes that’s made them a target: Two weeks ago, the station filed a copyright infringement claim with YouTube against Page One and Ville Voice for using those clips.

A little mainstream media attention (LEO counts as mainstream media right?) may have been all it took to knock a little sense into WHAS over this whole incident. Page One reports:

As a result of this story WHAS11’s management have approached us. We’re optimistic that a resolution is just around the bend!

Yay for conflict resolution that doesn't include lawyers.

In case you missed it yesterday the New York Times had a nice travel piece about our region called, naturally, Bourbon & Bluegrass.

I could be wrong about this but I've got a feeling not enough people are enjoying the Louisville based humor of The Spotted Bass (though again I say an RSS feed for The Spotted Bass would help in that department) so occasionally I'm going to give you a little taste of what you're missing.

New study finds Rhode Island has no sense of humor

"A study published in the Journal of Human Communication has found that Rhode Island is the lone state without a well-developed sense of humor."

"The study's author, Dr. Maury Morse, said he and his colleagues found the result surprising. "Rhode Island got off to one of the best starts when it was named since, ha, ha, it's not even surrounded by water! We found that's where the humor level peaked and has steadily dropped with Americans' decreasing knowledge of geography and land mass terms."

"Internationally, RI also falls behind many humor-deprived countries, such as Qatar, American Samoa, and Hungary, which all have a greater appetite for good humor than the non-island island."

Louisville History & Issues a discussion board described as "A place for Louisville area citizens to discuss our rich local history as well as current
political/community issues" has just relaunched with Version 2 of the site.

What's new? Well, basically, it's a visual redesign that attempts to make the board more friendly and inviting to use while taking care of a good number of issues reported to me in recent months.

It looks like a good place to discuss both Louisville history and contemporary issues. Stop by and have a look

I can probably just throw out some keywords and buzz phrases and you'll get the picture:
Old media versus new media
YouTube
Media Criticism
Copyright versus Fair Use

Want more detail? From Page One:

"Four days ago, WHAS11-TV (”WHAS11 News”) filed a complaint with YouTube regarding the posting of video comparing, contrasting, discussing and criticizing reports and incidents from around Kentucky. At 7:10 P.M. that evening we received notice that YouTube removed our content.

We believe our use of WHAS11’s video falls under the “Fair Use” doctrine. The same doctrine under which WHAS11 presumably operates when they use video from other sources in their newscasts without express permission. The same doctrine under which thousands of other outlets like ours do the very same thing with the very same content.

Additionally, a number of stories have been broken and first reported by our websites only to be run as news on WHAS11 without any credit being given. Meaning the station looks to our web outlets as sources of major news which the station then reports as its own."

Even if I didn't think Page One was in the right here (which I absolutely think they are) I'd take their side just because WHAS's web presence sucks so badly it's pretty clear they need to be strongly urged to update their web strategy and figure out a much better way to deal with bloggers and website owners. Hopefully this incident will help do that.

During the storms last night Ben Thomas of Louisville Geek Dinner fame shared a little tidbit I was unfamiliar with, namely you can stream live feeds of Louisville Metro Police scanners. The feeds are broken down by neighborhood and a handy key to police codes is provided so you can figure out just what the heck they're talking about it.

I've yet to get streaming working on my Mac but I'm going to try it on a Windows machine later where I suspect it'll work without a hitch.

While we're talking about local websites, have you seen The Spotted Bass? Think The Onion about Kentucky sports, news and politics. But mostly sports.

The Consuming Louisville staff (um, that would be me) enjoys satire a great deal so we're looking forward to reading The Spotted Bass through the rest of this depressing football season and through a hopefully glorious Cardinal basketball season. We'd enjoy it even more if they'd get an RSS feed though.

Some quotes from The Spotted Bass that made us chuckle or in some cases even guffaw.

"University of Louisville head football coach Steve Kragthorpe announced at his weekly press conference Monday that he plans to grow a line beard, also known as a "chinstrap", in a desperate attempt to regain the trust of Cardinal fans.

“It appears the Papa John’s posse wants me to do two things: fix the defense and grow a line beard,” the embattled coach said. “I plan to do both.”

"Despite the Governor's troubles on the campaign trail, a new Bluegrass Trot poll shows the incumbent has a commanding lead over Democrat challenger Steve Beshear among likely non-voters in the November 6 gubernatorial election. Fletcher leads Beshear 94.2% to 5.8%, with 0% undecided (which was not an option in the poll).

In response to the Bluegrass Trot poll results and another poll among likely voters, which shows Beshear with a commanding lead, Fletcher campaign director and intern Jason Keller, one of the two remaining staffers, said, “Ernie Fletcher has always believed in the right not to vote and stay out of the elections altogether. We were actually thinking of changing the ‘No Casinos Tour’ to the ‘No Casinos and No One Can Force You to Vote Tour,’ but that seemed a little long. Ernie Fletcher and Robbie Rudolph have always believed in the non-voters. We fully support their rights, and we hope they all stay home for us.”

A new blog has launched to cover Kentucky politics. Called Page One Kentucky it's brought to you by the same folks who do The 'Ville Voice. Already they've had some interesting independent coverage of news stories, I can't wait to see what they do in the future.

(LOUISVILLE, KY) - A new website focused on Kentucky politics and media, Page One, has launched and is now being published at http://www.PageOneKentucky.com.

The site is owned and operated by Full Signal Media Group. The principals are Jacob Payne and Rick Redding of Louisville. The new company also owns The 'Ville Voice, a year-old website covering Louisville media and politics.

Since its Aug. 13 launch, Page One has posted several original news stories, including an exclusive interview with Oldham County physician Michael Kelley, who announced his challenge to U.S. Rep. Geoff Davis for Kentucky's Fourth District Congressional seat. The new news organization also was the first to report that University of Louisville football player JaJuan Spillman had a court appearance related to a DUI charge.

"My vision for Page One is to become a primary source for political news in Kentucky," said Jacob Payne, a political consultant with extensive campaign finance experience. "We plan to use our political resources and contacts to provide an alternative to the mainstream media."

Both Payne and co-principal Rick Redding most recently were on the campaign staff of entrepreneur Bruce Lunsford, who ran for the Democratic nomination for governor in May.

"There's a great business opportunity for a new media venture like Page One," said Redding, a veteran journalist who has written for Business First and LEO, among others. "We expect Page One to include not just our voices, but those of the premier political voices in the Commonwealth."

Over at LouisvilleHotBytes Richard Meadows has posted a great article about where to find free WiFi in the city's coffee shops and restaurants. Perhaps even better than the article though is the really impressive, detailed directory he's put together of WiFi hotspots in Louisville. Not only does he tell you where you can find WiFi he even describes how fast the service was when he used. It gives you an idea what kind of speeds you can expect. Very useful.

37 Flood is a music blog that focuses on Louisville bands, shows in Louisville and bands based in Louisville. 37 Flood has mp3s, concert reviews with photos and set lists, show dates and just generally all kinds of good info about music in Louisville.