My cousin Brian Hague weighs in on whether "Captain America: The First Avenger" has any substance -- or whether it's little more than an intellectually vapid moving comic book.

Also check out Brian's observations on "Did J.J. Abrams Ruin 'Star Trek'?" and whether Edgewater Inn Has the Best Pizza.

ChicagoScope feedback line: 312-683-5272. ChicagoScope@gmail.com.

Thanks to Paul Swansen for letting me know about ipadio, a nifty and free service that allows you to create audio programs on your iPhone or Android and then publish them to the Web.

You can listen to ChicagoScope's brief mobile podcasts by clicking on the player at right. The ipadio shows also are being sent through my Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr accounts.

I've been impressed with the audio quality, and the interface couldn't be easier. Sometimes, ipadio has even converted speech to text. It hasn't done so for the past couple, so maybe I accidentally changed a setting. I'll have to check into that.

Is ipadio a success? Time will tell, but I'd be willing to pay for it.

I'm having a ball with ipadio. Why don't you give it a try yourself?

ChicagoScope feedback line: 312-683-5272. Send email to ChicagoScope@gmail.com.

ChicagoScope visitors might have noticed that a number of photos, graphics and related images have disappeared from this site. For the past several years, I'd been manually posting images and uploading them into what turned out to be a non-supported directory path. When Liberated Syndication moved to a new publishing system, those links broke.

The good news is I've figured out how to fix things. The bad news is that I'll need to manually replace five years worth of URLs.

In the meantime, please enjoy this actual Chicago Tribune headline from a couple of years ago. Doesn't it make you think of that famous scene from Federico Fellini's "La Dolce Vita"?

 

There's a bunch of stuff that I probably should have included in this podcast about my round trip between Chicago and Los Angeles on Amtrak's Southwest Chief -- but I couldn't figure out how to anonymize it enough so I wouldn't make anyone too uncomfortable. Still, I hope there's enough interesting here to make it a worthwhile listen.

The occasional electronic interference is caused by transmissions from track-condition devices.

The photo here is of the station in Raton, New Mexico, one of the many classic stations the Southwest Chief visits on its journey.

ChicagoScope feedback line: 312-683-5272. Send e-mail to ChicagoScope@gmail.com.

I had a great time riding Amtrak's Southwest Chief from Chicago to Los Angeles and back again last week. I'm working on the podcast account of my travels and should have it posted within the next day or so.

I took the above photo in New Mexico, where many mesas are surrounded by fields of black-eyed susans.

 

The controversy surrounding flat iron steak continues unabated!

Faithful ChicagoScope followers recall, of course, that I concluded that the flat iron steak on Amtrak totally sucked.

Phil and Lingo of The Brit and Yankee took notice, too, and challenged me to try their flat iron steak and see how it measures up to that served to unsuspecting passengers on America's subsidized passenger rail service.

It turned out to be a kind of railroad experience, anyway, as I had to take a Metra train way out into the hinterlands of unincorporated DuPage County to join them in The Brit and Yankee Beer Garden. There, I consented to subject their own special flat iron steak to a taste test.

And guess what? It was great!

I also got a chance to sample some of their home-brewed beer -- and was a quest on their podcast. Listen to The Brit and Yankee.

ChicagoScope feedback line: 312-683-5272. Send e-mail to ChicagoScope@gmail.com.

Here's a photo I took with the Pano application for iPhone. This clever little program takes up to four separate images from the iPhone camera and stitches together a panorama. The building is the Tower of Memories at Crown Hill Cemetery in Wheat Ridge, Colorado.

I'm hoping to take some panoramas on the way back, but they'll need to be done when the train is at rest, since alignment is crucial to pulling off the stitchery. Not sure how many more photo opportunities there'll be, since even though the train leaves Denver at 8:15 tomorrow night (or supposedly does; we were an hour late arriving from Chicago), most of Colorado and much of Nebraska will be in darkness.

At the very least, perhaps I'll encounter more eccentrics.

NOTE: Unless I'm favored with some unexpected 3G network connections, I won't be posting anything here until I return to Chicago. Look for photo updates on my Flickr pages.

ChicagoScope feedback line: 312-683-5272. Send e-mail to ChicagoScope@gmail.com.

This Saturday at 2 p.m., I'll be boarding Amtrak's California Zephyr and taking it to Denver. I'm pretty excited about this trip -- and am hoping to post text and photo updates from the train on Thrillarama, Chicagoscope's companion website.

I had hoped that TypePad's iPhone application would do the trick, but although it posts text just fine, photos are handled badly and appear fuzzy and pixelated. I've discovered a couple of possible workarounds that use either CellSpin.net or Flickr.com.

Amtrak wasn't my first choice for transportation. I had originally wanted to take a Greyhound bus from Chicago to Denver, changing in Omaha midpoint so that I'd see a nice range of rural America, albeit from the interstates. Although a couple of people suggested I might get decapitated, I decided on Amtrak because Greyhound didn't ultimately seem as if it would have been a particularly relaxing experience.

ChicagoScope feedback line: 312-683-5272. Send e-mail to ChicagoScope@gmail.com.

Above: After my first workout with Nike+ shoes.

Podcasters often are told we ought to take a cue from broadcast radio. In that spirit, I've decided to adopt a recurring element that's been a staple of your favorite AM station for many years:

LOSE WEIGHT WITH THE OVERWEIGHT ON-AIR PERSONALITY!

For my birthday last month, I received a pair of those new Nike+ shoes -- and after just one run, I'm amazed. Using an embedded sensor, the shoes and an iPod nano communicate using their own Wi-Fi network. The Nike+ shoes did a great job measuring my run and keeping track of my pace. Even better, you can buy music that's designed to "program" your workout. I couldn't find anything suitable by Dwight Yoakam, so I bought the album by The Crystal Method. This approach really works: I found myself pushing to keep pace with the varying beat of the cool electronic music.

I'll keep you posted. And I promise not to embrace that other radio staple, the live remote from the car dealership.

ChicagoScope feedback line: 312-683-5272.