Best of Katrina Fraud:

3. Mitchell Kendrix of Memphis and Paul Nelson of Lisbon, Me., have pleaded guilty in connection with a scheme in Mississippi in which Mr. Kendrix, a representative for the Army Corps of Engineers, took $100 bribes in exchange for approving phantom loads of hurricane debris from Mr. Nelson.

2. In New Orleans, two FEMA officials, Andrew Rose and Loyd Holliman, both of Colorado, have pleaded guilty to taking $20,000 in bribes in exchange for inflating the count on the number of meals a contractor was serving disaster workers. And a councilman in St. Tammany Parish, La., Joseph Impastato, has also been charged with trying to extort $100,000 from a debris removal contractor.

1. (my favorite)... Tina M. Winston of Belleville, Ill., was charged this month with claiming that her two daughters had died in the flooding in New Orleans. But prosecutors said that the children never existed and that Ms. Winston was living in Illinois at the time of the storm.

Click here to read the full New York Times article

God Bless America (but not these seven)

What is wrong with people (or more specifically Mr. Batiste, Abraham, Phanor, Herrera, Augustin, Augustine, and Lemorin)?!? These seven Americans have been arrested after seeking out work with al Queda with solid plans to take out the Sears Tower, intending such an attack to be "as good or greater than 9/11."

Unreal.

Oh, and stop complaining about the Patriot Act if you have nothing to worry about. It just saved your ass.

Arnaud Frich Photographie

Ok, so I thought these photos were taken by the photographer Sato that I linked to in the last post, because they're so ridiculous and so similar. But it's his French counterpart, Arnaud Frich.

Check out his la Défense photography series.

Shintaro Sato Photography

This artist's urban photography is some of the most astounding work I've ever seen. He had to Photoshop the hell out if it and if he didn't, I would love to know how he captured these colors. A wide open lens wouldn't be enough.

One defining feature is his subject matter - the lesser-known outskirts of Tokyo, places normal tourists would not be found. The setting, often lacking in the over saturated signage of downtown areas, provides the original surfaces of buildings and shows the real structure of Tokyo's architecture

Here's the full series of Tokyo shots.

M&D Wedding Website

Morgan and Danielle .com

I just launched this wedding website through my design company Michael Nix Design for my friends Morgan and Danielle, who are getting married in a few months.

I'm pretty excited about the site which they'll print on their invitations for people to RSVP online.... the site is designed using web standards and will soon feature a Content Management System that I'm configuring now for them to allow weekly updates in a news / blog section.

Visit it again in a few weeks for that and a couple other features.

An Event Apart

I just attended "An Event Apart," a national web conference here in Chicago (tour in Atlanta, New York, and Phily) from the authors of web standards, CSS, and overall just good web design. It was awesome.


So much better than an entire weekend at South by Southwest (SXSW).

I setup an entire blog with notes pretty close to the entire presentation by Meyer, Zeldman, Coudal, and Santa Maria, but I think they requested I don't give that out. If this changes, I'll send it to you or email me and I'll give you the best stuff they said. The web is going to be like nothing you've ever seen. Wow I'm a geek.