You know how sometimes you sit across the table from a buddy and talk about “what if”? With 15+ years of history you can read each others minds and the possibilities for amazing things flow like water. A couple months back Guy and I had one of those moments where we discussed whom would be the ideal officiate for his wedding.

Here’s a very representative photo of Guy. It’s not representative because he’s tough or anything, it’s because he spends his entire fucking life living and breathing video games. It’s really quite sad, and I fear that his fiancé doesn’t know what she’s getting into.

I guess that this obsession worked out. While at an E3 party where Guy was trying to find new ways to market addictive games to 13-year-old boys he bumped into Jordan Morris. Jordan is one half of the podcast Jordan Jesse Go. If you don’t subscribe to that podcast then stop reading and do so now. It’s great.

Guy asked Jordan if he thought that his buddy Jesse Thorn would be up for officiating the wedding. A couple of emails later and HOLY FUCKING SHIT he’s going to do it!

You see, Jesse is a man who knows something about appropriate dress. Check out Jesse’s Put This On project and you’ll see just how serious he is about dressing like a grown up. He’s really going to class up the joint, and we’ll need it.

I expect the wedding, taking place in Seattle this December, will truly be a momentous occasion.

For the last week and a half I’ve been staying in the Bloomsbury part of London. I’ve noticed that this particular part of the city loves bikes. There’s a lot of dedicated bike lanes and green strips in front of traffic at intersections. There’s also a lot of bikes, all commuters. I’ve yet to see someone out for a recreational exercise ride. I’m surprised at the number of women riding in dresses and skirts… that’s dedication!

The area where I’m working is especially bike friendly. From the window of this office I can see two bike shops. The London Bicycle Workshop appears to be a small place focused on quick fixes. Around the corner is the larger and VERY shiny Condor Cycles. They have a large selection of folding bikes, city bikes and Rapha gear.

Map of the office region

Condor Cycles’ selection of folding bikes

Track standing in wait for the green

Two bastions of technology reporting are now available online: WIRED Magazine and Popular Science.

Popular science recently added it’s entire 137-year archive to the web, including an article from 1962 about jetpacks.

A fan of WIRED is scanning and posting articles and advertisements from past editions. Remember Microsoft Bob from this 1995 ad?

On February 29, 2008 I signed a petition (#5724) asking Google to add bicycling directions to their popular maps product. Public transit directions had recently been added, thanks in part to my brother Chris, the tech lead on Google Transit. While bus, train and walking directions are great, but as a cyclist I wanted something just for the bike.

Two years later, the Google Seattle team adds support for biking directions. It sounds like this was a lot more than simply flipping a switch and adding a new option in a drop down. A post on the Google LatLong blog describes some of the data and algorithms that go into great biking directions.

• Bike trails: Our maps contain over twelve thousand of miles of biking trails. First, we had to figure out where trails are…

• Bike lanes: For more than 150 cities in the US, we know which streets have dedicated bicycle lanes…

• Recommended routes: For many cities we also provide information on streets that have been designated as good for cyclists, so we them into account in our algorithm…

• Uphill slopes: … Our biking directions are based on a physical model of the amount of power your body has to exert given the slope of the road you’re biking on… Sometimes the model will determine that it’s far more efficient to make you ride several extra blocks than to have to deal with a massive hill. My teammates in San Francisco were relieved to see that this does indeed work!

• Downhill slopes: Many cyclists will tell you that going downhill is annoying for a different reason: you may have to ride your brakes all the way down…

• Busy roads: Cyclists often tend to prefer to stay off of fast roads, and not even cross them unless it’s necessary…

• Busy intersections: We try to avoid making you cross busy streets with a lot of car traffic and long wait times.

I tested out the new feature and it works great for my neck of the woods. True to form, I plotted directions from a brew pub in San Ramon to another in Walnut Creek. I’m not recommending that you ride your bike after sipping a few pints of Pliny, but it’s certainly better than driving. Google correctly plotted a route along the wonderful Iron Horse Trail, taking into account the various hops onto local roads as need.

Inspired by Bicycling’s feature on Brews and Bikes, here’s five bike themed beer labels.