If you aren’t familiar with Gary Vaynerchuk, then I urge you to check out his personal video blog and hit Internet show Wine Library TV. Since 2006 Gary has been producing the show in order to educate people who might not have a lot of experience with wine in a completely unpretentious way. Basically he has made tasting and understanding great wines easy and fun for everyone - he describes himself as “the wine guy for the average Joe.”

Tonight, Gary held a live filming of his 500th episode at Crushpad in San Francisco. I finally had the chance to meet the man with the plan and honestly I can’t even express how incredibly talented and warm he is. What a down to Earth guy that knows how to treat everyone as his friend and almost dare I say, as family. The night consisted of a few hours of tasting not only some great wines from local vineyards but also a ton of bottles brought by guests. We tasted an awesome variety of wines from Pinot Noirs to Cabernet Sauvignons to Riojas. I also had the chance to finally meet Gary’s brother AJ albeit very briefly because he was under the weather (hope you’re feeling better!) and a ton of other people I’ve chatted with on Twitter but had never met in person. It was a great night all in all, the episode should be up tomorrow. Check it out!

As promised, here is my first San Francisco landmark photo. You might recognize Alamo Square Park from the opening credits of Full House, actually I’m almost positive you’ll recognize it because it’s been burned into my mind since early childhood. The park is right off Hayes Street and entails an almost 45 degree walk uphill (over exaggerating a little) to get there. Since it’s only a half mile from my house I think I might head back more often to hang out on the grass and read a book.

You know you want to hear it:

If you know me well, you’ll know that Marc Chagall is one of my favorite painters of all time. I was floored when I first came face to face with “I and the Village” in person at the MoMA in New York City. Today, July 7th is Chagall’s birthday and to celebrate Google has put together this awesome logo including the works “Birthday”, “I and the Village” and “Lover’s with Half Moon”.

Thanks Google for appreciating such a creative mind.

Last week I attended IgnitePhilly an amazing event at Johnny Brenda’s that brought together a variety of speakers who talked about inspiring ideas or projects that they are working on. One such project that is close to my heart is Bike Share Philadelphia. If you aren’t familiar with bike share programs then I wouldn’t be surprised because they are very rare here in the U.S. Overseas however and in cities such as Paris, Barcelona and Oslo particularly, bike share programs have grown to an incredible size.

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This is unbelievably cool. Robert Hodgin of Flight404 created this stunning visual interpretation of Radiohead’s “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” using an application he built that incorporates beat detection. On top of that Hodgin went the extra mile by manually inputting every single snare hit, high hat, literally every beat and it took him over 6 hours. The result is really cool and trippy - I recommend viewing it in full screen.

Weird Fishes: Arpeggi from flight404 on Vimeo

[Via Jakob Lodwick]

Photo credit: awe! productions inc.

Letter from Rep. Josh Shapiro and other P.A. Jews in support of Barack Obama.

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I’m like a year or more late on this but it’s seriously incredible. Put on some headphones with a reasonable volume and listen to this video with your eyes closed. I know it’s almost April Fools’ but I swear it’s not a prank.

Thx Diba!

Muxtape is a simple, easy to use, social way to share your mixtape with friends. I found out about it a few minutes ago from Jakob Lodwick’s tumblr. Muxtape’s creator Justin Oullette writes, “My goal is nothing short of changing the way we consume, distribute, and discover music.”

You can upload 12 MP3s (which is a surprisingly fast process) then organize them by dragging and dropping. The interface for playing tracks looks like it plays nice on the iPhone and other mobile devices too. I threw together a quick Muxtape of songs I’ve been listening to recently. Check it out.