When I started playing around with creating Google calendars for free events in Chicago, I realized that the Movies in the Park event calendar wasn’t as useful as I wanted it to be.

Since there can be multiple screenings on a given day, and those screenings are all over the city, the calendar entry alone didn’t tell me at a glance if I should plan on seeing the film.  Let’s be honest; I’m only going to go to a Movie in the Park showing if it’s in a convenient location for me.

I’d seen a cool timeline mashup a while back, so the first thing I tried was a Google Maps/SIMILE timeline mashup.  Although I was pleased that I got it to work successfully and I was glad to learn that Google Spreadsheets has a lat/long lookup function and that it’s possible to convert the spreadsheet into a JSON file for a map like this, it wasn’t really the right format for the data.

My next project  included a program to scrape and reformat the Movies in the Park schedule from the Chicago Park District, as well as the creation of a Movies in the Park locator.  It’s still not perfect, but you can see where the movies are being shown across the city for any given date.

Since there are so few movies being shown on any date, I might take out the ZIP Code input all together and use mapstraction’s center and zoom instead.  There are a ton of other features that could be added, but for now I’m quite pleased with myself, and I think I did a pretty good job for a non-developer.

Watch out, ladies, I just organized my fabric, and I’ve got a big basket to bring.

This woman and her three small childen, costumed as iPhones, were standing near the iPhone line at the Apple Store on Michigan Avenue.

These are the original founding documents of the Irving Park/Elston TIF (Tax Increment Financing) District, created in Chicago on April 22, 2009.

I was inspired to do this by Dan O’Neil, who I met through the Open Government Chicago(-land) group. We had our first “official” meeting last night, and there are a lot of good ideas floating around. If I haven’t talked to you about this, I probably will soon. If I have, well, I will probably be talking to you again soon.

I didn’t hear about the Chicago Craft Social until just now, so I’m not sure if I’ll be able to go, but this looks interesting, and I’m going to try to make it.

Wouldn’t it be fun to meet other creative girls, enjoy some dessert, and spend an evening whipping up a nifty project to take home? We think so, too.

The Evanston Vineyard Church is graciously allowing us to use their giant lobby, where dozens of tables will be set up. Each table will feature a different project theme, ranging from decoupage, to knitting, to jewelry making, you name it. You can bring your own project* to work on and sit with other people doing their own thing. Or pick a table and join a project leader who will show you how to make something cool.

Evanston Vineyard Church
2495 Howard St.
Evanston, IL 60202
http://craftsocial.blogspot.com/