Authenticating office:
Orig:
Ben
Unit:
Date:
15 December 2006
Classified Message
Secret
Approved for release
15 Dec 2006
x
Routine
 
Deferred
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A cartography of work

work1.jpg
My first job, working as a groundskeeper at a college in St. Paul.

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Later I worked at a local hardware store. Once again, there is a baseball field and college in the vicinity.

work3.jpg
This is in Bloomington, MN near the Mall of America. Note the recurring theme of yet another baseball field at the top of the picture.

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Here is a fancy suburban Minneapolis office park. I worked at the building on the left, then ended up working at the building on the right side of the street several years later.

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This interesting shape is at an office park near the Oakland airport in Alameda, CA. It was right near the water, which explains the weird brown stuff and water in the bottom left. Another recurring theme: a football field, which is the practice facility of the Oakland Raiders.

work6.jpg
Embarcadero Center on the water’s edge of downtown San Francisco.

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A warehouse space in Minneapolis on the edge of downtown. Not quite the Warehouse District, but close enough.

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I worked at the fairly nondescript building at the end of this T-intersection in Edina, MN. The weirdly shaped building is a library and government center, but is entirely less exciting architecturally than the shape suggests.

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In St. Louis Park, MN, I worked in the lower of the two buildings with the wedges on top and the white parking ramps to the left. Further to the left was a large pharmaceuticals distribution warehouse and abandoned tennis courts.

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This is as far away as I ever worked from my house. This was in Eden Prairie, MN, and across the street from yet another professional football team’s (Minnesota Vikings) practice facility.

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This was in St. Paul, MN where I worked in the fairly simple square block in the center. I actually started in the building right below it, but it was torn down and an expansion of about the same size was built and attached to the existing square building. While the newer building was being built, I worked in the tall building on the right, which is the Wells Fargo Tower. You can actually even see my parking spot to the left of my building!

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This is in Redmond, WA, as part of the largest and most well-known campus in Redmond. I work in the H-shaped building (#25 out of hundreds, none of which are more than a few stories high, probably due to some city codes put in place to not block rich people’s views) in the north central area of the picture.

Orig:
Ben
Unit:
Date:
28 October 2006
Classified Message
Secret
Approved for release
28 Oct 2006
x
Routine
 
Deferred
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Redesigned

I know nobody looks at web sites any more because there’s RSS feeds, but like I mentioned before, I was just using something out the box to start, and felt it my duty as a web designer to create something myself eventually. Plus I got called out for using Hemingway recently, and it actually kinda helped kick me in the ass to do something about it. Thanks, Ben.

If it’s not obvious, the design is based on the concept of declassified documents, and was brought on by the idea of actually starting a blog which would announce newly declassified documents and comb through them for interesting tidbits. I soon realized that I would never be able to put as much time into that as it would take, so I just took the design and put it to this. (By the way, I would still love it if someone made a blog about declassified documents. You’ll get a free design out of the deal if you do!) I already discovered a happy accident as I was making it: I personally love the way the page transforms into a more censored document as you follow the links. It’s also terribly easy to scan for new content because of it.

Anyways, I’m sure this is wrought with CSS and template problems, since I basically made it in a day with little prior knowledge of WordPress templating, but feel free to note your thoughts, suggestions, problems, &c. in the comments.

Orig:
Ben
Unit:
Date:
30 September 2006
Classified Message
Secret
Approved for release
30 Sep 2006
x
Routine
 
Deferred
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Cleaning house

Part of my massive shift with blogs and domains is a bit of house cleaning. I finally set up permanent redirects for the RIAA Radar and BPI Radar on their own domains, so my large projects are separated from my personal web space (including Mixmatcher). It gives each project some room to breathe, and sure cleans up my virtual desk space quite well.

Next on the docket is figuring out what to do with my movies and music databases. I like what Jason does, where he combines multiple blogs with specific purposes into one uber-blog system for the front. Do I incorporate Netflix somehow? Any ideas/suggestions?

Orig:
Ben
Unit:
Date:
27 September 2006
Classified Message
Secret
Approved for release
27 Sep 2006
x
Routine
 
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Hello world.

Hello everybody. My name is Ben, and I’m starting a blog.

I know right now you’re thinking, “But wait, you’re already a terribly infamous, amazing person who’s had an infamous, amazing blog since before the term existed, and before there was blogging software.” Well, it’s one thing to have a blog. It’s another to actually blog.

So this, my surprisingly long-term and loyal audience, is where I attempt to turn the corner and actually post.

I may not have anything new to say, but you may have not necessarily heard everything I had to say before. This time, I plan to post things relating to my work, which I have never done before. (Since the time that I stopped blogging regularly, I’ve notice that I probably need to check my work’s policy on this matter, but this I will do.) I also plan to post more often about anything interesting to me, and plan to steal plenty of other people’s ideas (you can bet that an implementation of Dack‘s “in the bag” is in the works) in order to expand and vary the amount of content.

I have installed actual blogging software, and plan on implementing it to it’s utmost potential. For now you get a pre-packaged theme, but to keep the honor of my profession, I do plan on creating my own design. But until then, it’s writing, posting, and linking. Like you’re not reading the RSS anyways…

Fairly ye be warned, says I.

Orig:
Ben
Unit:
Date:
24 May 2006
Classified Message
Secret
Approved for release
24 May 2006
x
Routine
 
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Fun with Google Trends

Ran across two interesting bits of information recently, and thought I’d do an old school “mashup” (as the kids are calling it these days) of Google Trends and the highest paying keywords for Google AdWords. Some of the results are quite interesting, particularly the timeframes, spikes, and locations of the searches (plus, I’ll probably get some amazing ad revenue from posting this kind of stuff):

Orig:
Ben
Unit:
Date:
7 March 2006
Classified Message
Secret
Approved for release
7 Mar 2006
x
Routine
 
Deferred
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The Targhetto Project

Follow the link to access a Google map of the Twin Cities area, with Target store locations denoted. Using the average household income (from 2003 income tax data) and home sale price (from February 2006) of the given zip codes for each location, the hope is to pinpoint which Target store is the definitive Targhetto.

The Targhetto Project

Orig:
Ben
Unit:
Date:
10 January 2006
Classified Message
Secret
Approved for release
10 Jan 2006
x
Routine
 
Deferred
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Note to Apple owners

Note to anyone thinking about buying an Apple: Don’t buy a fucking new one a few weeks before MacWorld. Something new is coming out every single time, and it’s going to be better than what you just got. I thought Apple owners were supposed to be smart?

Orig:
Ben
Unit:
Date:
5 January 2006
Classified Message
Secret
Approved for release
5 Jan 2006
x
Routine
 
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Snakes on a motherfucking plane

I’m sure you all have heard of “Snakes on a Plane”, right? Best movie concept ever. This screenwriter told an excellent story about being offered to help work on the script, including these two paragraphs which completely made my day/week/month:

Now out of both loyalty to the sacred bond between studio and screenwriter and also a serious desire to keep getting hired in this town, I will not give away any of the plot details of SNAKES ON A PLANE. But know this. As the great Sam Jackson would say: There are motherfucking snakes on the motherfucking plane.

What else do you need to know? How the snakes get on the plane, what the snakes do once they’re on the plane, who puts the snakes on the plane, who is trying to get the snakes off the plane…This is not for you to ponder. There are snakes on the plane. End of fucking story.

Orig:
Ben
Unit:
Date:
28 June 2005
Classified Message
Secret
Approved for release
28 Jun 2005
x
Routine
 
Deferred
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EPA Minnesota Superfund site tour via Google Maps

It’s very cool to see interesting places and famous landmarks in Google Maps, but to me it’s also interesting to see places that are important but don’t really have a fixed address. For example, here are all of the on the EPA Superfund (meaning hazardous waste sites) National Priority List (meaning the worst of the worst) that are in Minnesota:

Now you can get driving directions to and from your local dangerously unclean landmarks!

Update! I whipped up a Google Map of all of these coordinates together using their fancy new API. Enjoy!

Orig:
Ben
Unit:
Date:
6 April 2005
Classified Message
Secret
Approved for release
6 Apr 2005
x
Routine
 
Deferred
0
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Baseball stadium tour via Google maps

In honor of the new spring baseball season, a tour of all the Major League Baseball parks:

For Office Use Only
This is the personal weblog of Ben Tesch, a web designer and developer who lives in Seattle, WA, and has more ideas than free time.

Ben is the proprietor of cumul.us, RIAA Radar, BPI Radar, and The Triumph of Bullshit, among other things. More personal data collections can also be found at the sites listed below.

Contact: ben@magnetbox.com

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