ljc and Aaron’s Halloween dinner was last night. A great time was had by all! We’re all trying to get the sauce recipe… a secret that Aaron’s grandfather made him swear not to share under the threat of “dying ’till he’s dead.”

On Monday, at approximately 10.oopm, the Rochester citizen journalism site Rochester Turning broke the news the state is partnering with Patec to help absorb the costs of demolishing Rochester’s Midtown plaza to make way for a new corporate headquarters for Patec. Spitzer made the announcement on Tuesday. Today it was the lead story in the D&C.

The announcement is huge for the region, as it means at least 600 jobs moving into downtown, a major employer keeping it’s hq in the area, and an end to the ongoing saga of what to do with Midtown.

Its also significant from a CJ perspective. Rochester Turning’s post was a day and a half ahead of the D&C. This may be the furtherest a local CJ has been ahead of the traditional press. The question is now will RT get credited with breaking the story? Nothing was mentioned in the D&C article about the posting.

As for me, I learned about it through an e-mail list that quoted the RT article.

This past weekend was the Renaissance Martial Arts festival, an event we’ve been running out of our Kung Fu school for the past 7 years. Below is a slide show of pictures from the festival. Since I was typically behind the camera I only appear in one of these pictures.

Flickr continues to impress me. While it has some draw backs, galleries that used to take me hours, if not days, come together in under 60 minutes. Which is a nice thing, especially since my work as the RMA webmaster is purely voluntary.

LJC organized “Mexican Museum Night” in honor of an exhibit of Mexican Wrestling Photography that just opened at the Eastman House and a show of Latin American and Latino art at the Memorial Art Gallery.

Dre and I agreed that, of the two shows, the MAG’s TRANSactions: Contemporary Latin American and Latino Art, is the one to see. While I loved the Mexican Wrestling photos, that exhibit was marred by some of the worst signage I’ve ever seen. Not only were the notes written in incomprehensible academic speak (and I’ve read many of the works they were referencing), but they were full of typos and mispellings (enough that I even I noticed). It was pretty embarrassing all things considered.

TRANSactions, on the other hand, was uniformly excellent. The art was really challenging (its one of the more “gutsy” shows I’ve seen at the MAG) and the presentation was excellent.

After the museums, we headed across the street to Selena’s. Aaron’s new friend Domo came along for the ride. Unforunately, when Aaron’s back was turned, Domo got a little frisky with Jenny. I’ve been told that Domo has chalked up this unfortunate incident to the booze.

In recent weeks, my back has been acting up a bit. By a bit, I mean a lot — most likely due to all the driving earlier in the month. Dre, being the sweetie she is, decided that my birthday gift should be a new laptop back that carried better on the back. After looking at a lot of options we decided on the Timbuk2 Hacker bag.

The bag arrived yesterday in this awesome, rocket pop themed shipping bag. While it might look small, it snugly fits my 15 inch G4 Powerbook without a problem. And there’s still plenty of room for both papers and ancillary electronic devices (digital cameras, digital voice recorder, wireless mouse, etc).

What makes the Hacker pack extra cool is that it also has a “backpack mode.” Like a Transformer, you can pull out hidden shoulder straps and convert it to a full on backpack. I haven’t had a chance to test that mode yet. As a messenger bag, the weight seems distributed better than with my old pack (which put it all on my shoulder/one half of my back).

If all goes well I post some more on the bag next week.

This was the week of getting to see Internet luminaries.

On Wednesday, Ze Frank lectured at RIT. Throughout the course of a very manic and funny talk, he shared his thoughts about the online content space and discussed his experiences producing his daily video podcast, the show. Both his presentation and his ideas were excellent.

Then, thanks to Liz Lawley, on Saturday, Dre and I got the chance to chow on BBQ with Technorati founder Dave Sifry. It was an awesome night of sharing ideas and great food. Dave and I had a great conversation about some of the things I’m working on with the Open Publishing Lab. He also confirmed that others feel the same rss guilt that I do when unread post counts get into the hundreds.

Dave’s shot of all of us.

Dave enjoying some excellent ribs (shot by your’s truly)

Things have been really crazy. RIT has been taking more time than ever. And I’ve just not been able to find the time to write. I expect that should change in the next few days.

In the meantime, I need help with some .htaccess redirects to synch up my RSS feeds. Anyone out there feel helpful?