The Daily Parker

Last night, my other sibling had a baby:

That's Brendan Michael, aged one hour.

Update, from the exhausted but happy dad: Brendan emerged at 2:53 PST weighing 3540 g and stretching out to 508 mm.

Stuff sent to Instapaper:

• Chicago's John Hancock Center has sold its antennae for $70m. This makes more sense than it might seem.
• No, Virginia, cars are still not greener than buses.
• Bill McBride, aka Calculated Risk, spent time letting Joe Weisentahl interview him. McBride predicted the housing bubble in 2004.
• Wonder what it's like to have an autism-spectrum disorder? Rod Dreher has an example.
• Engineering explains how dogs smell better than we do.
• Programmer jokes just aren't that funny, usually.
• Researchers have cracked a code used by an 18th-century secret society.

Time to dash out for lunch...then more coding. Gotta finish today.

Over the last two days I've spent almost every working minute redesigning the 10th Magnitude framework and reference application. Not new code, really, just upgrading them to the latest Azure bits and putting them into a NuGet package.

That hasn't left much time for blogging. Or for Words With Friends. And I'm using a lot of Instapaper. Without Instapaper, I'd never get to read Wired editor Mat Honan drawing lessons from his epic hack last summer.

Texas-based Hostess Brands has shut down in preparation for liquidation:

Hostess said a strike by members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union that began last week had crippled its ability to produce and deliver products at several facilities, and it had no choice but to give up its effort to emerge intact from bankruptcy court.

The Irving, Texas-based company said the liquidation would mean that most of its 18,500 employees would lose their jobs.

In the Chicago area, Hostess employs about 300 workers making CupCakes, HoHos and Honey Buns in Schiller Park. Hostess also has a bakery in Hodgkins, where 325 workers make Beefsteak, Butternut, Home Pride, Nature’s Pride and Wonder breads.

Union President Frank Hurt said the company's failure was not the fault of the union but the "result of nearly a decade of financial and operational mismanagement" and that management was trying to make union workers the scapegoats for a plan by Wall Street investors to sell Hostess.

Twinkies, legend has it, were invented right here in Chicago in 1930.

I will now go see if the 7-11 across the street still has any left...

Starting before 8am with an international conference call usually means I'll have a full day. Fortunately there's Instapaper, which lets me shove all the interesting things I find during the day onto my Android pad for tomorrow's bus ride to work.

So far today:

• The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald worries more about surveillance than any other part of the Petreaus scandal.
• Wunderground's Jeff Masters explains all the superlatives around Hurricane Sandy.
• Philip Bump, writing at Gristmill, thinks politicians should pay more attention to climate change.
• Nate Silver, having put the election behind him, turns his attention to the American League MVP race.
• The Chicago Board of Elections apparently exposed my personal information along with that of the other 1.7 million voters in the city. (Since voter registration information is public in Illinois, this is actually not a real story. But oooooh! Information breach! Scary hackers!)
• Chicago restaurant L20, which shares an alley with my apartment building, got its second Michelin star back. I ate there once, last May, and was very impressed. Not as impressed as the check would have suggested, but impressed nonetheless.

And...now back to work.

Two Chicago businesses find themselves on the ropes this afternoon, according to the Tribune. The first company, Groupon, has problems many people predicted long before their IPO:

Groupon and its compatriots in the much-hyped daily deals business were supposed to change the very nature of small-business advertising. Instead, it is the daily deal vendors that are racing to change as evidence mounts that their business model is fundamentally flawed.

Critics say the torrid growth that enabled Groupon to go public at $20 a share just a year ago was fueled by merchants buying into a new type of marketing that they didn't fully understand. The discounts offered through the Groupon coupons have turned out to be costly, and the repeat business they generate uncertain.

A Raymond James survey of roughly 115 merchants that used daily deals services during the fall found that 39 percent of merchants said they were not likely to run another Groupon promotion over the next couple of years. The top reasons cited were high commission rate and low rate of repeat customers gained through offering a promotion.

Yeah, no kidding. These flaws have been obvious from Groupon's beginning. I have one outstanding Groupon and one outstanding Living Social deal, and I'm not sure when I'll get to use either. After that, meh.

The other company, Hostess, has hit an unexpected and possibly fatal labor dispute that may force it into out of reorganization and into liquidation:

On Friday, Hostess-employed members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union began to strike nationwide, blaming a “horrendous contract” that they claimed could cut wages and benefits up to 32%.

Workers picketed or honored the strike in Sacramento, Los Angeles, Oakland and Seattle and in states such as Ohio, Tennessee, Illinois and Montana. Hostess said in a statement that the walk-offs could lead to layoffs for most of its 18,300-member workforce and a sale of its assets “to the highest bidders.”

“A widespread strike will cause Hostess Brands to liquidate if we are unable to produce or deliver products,” according to the statement. The Irving, Tex.-based company, which was founded in 1930, acknowledged that “the concessions are tough.”

So if you like Twinkies and Ho-Hos, you'd better stock up. (Don't worry; they keep.)

Their new baby is actually cuter than their Lab, but only just:

Also, the baby is too young to see the camera, while Uma here found it fascinating.

As if my just-born nephew and soon-to-be-born other nephew weren't making this fall all about babies, two of my friends had to go and spawn as well. This is what they produced a couple weeks ago:

Wait, it gets cuter. Photobomb!

Now that we've met all the characters, let's bring them together:

We now return to your regularly-scheduled blog.

First, while I knew this existed, it still took me aback:

At the location the BBC used as the Torchwood 3 main entrance, the good people of the world have put up a shrine to fictional character Ianto Jones, which the Mermaid Quay management have sanctioned. As much as I found Torchwood to be an entertaining television show, and even though I went to Cardiff in part to see some of their shooting locations in person, I find this...creepy.

Cooler, significantly, were these props, at the Doctor Who Experience:

From left to right, those are baby Weeping Angels, a wounded Angel (both from the most recent Doctor Who episode, "The Angels Take Manhattan"), and the Oswin Dalek from "Asylum of the Daleks."

All right, you think it's cool too. Admit it.

I've been a little swamped since getting home, so not until just now, when I have a few minutes to watch a deployment go out, have I had time to go through my Cardiff photos. Why Cardiff? I hear you cry. Well, I'm not ashamed to admit it:

Yes, that's the only place in the world that has the original TARDIS:

It was also a lot of fun to see Roald Dahl Plass; in particular, this:

Points if you know exactly what this is, and why I've included it. Major points.

More UK photos tomorrow.