adrian is rad

Seen in Palo Alto. And, of course, they’re sold in packs of 50.

I saw Pepsi Natural at Target the other day. You know how much I love sodas made with real sugar rather than corn syrup, so it should be no surprise that I picked some up.

It’s very very sweet, but it doesn’t taste syrupy. It’s got a more nuanced taste than the standard colas. The kola nut, I believe, gives it a sort of bitter, almost coffeeish overtone. I love drinking sodas out of glass bottles. Pretty good stuff.

I think I still like Mexican Coke better, but this stuff is a reasonable substitute.

I uploaded my mixtape to an archive folder and included all of 28ish mixtapes over the last 2.5 years. Email me if you want access and I’ll send the location and password.

yellowed page out of my circa 1992 Tim Wakefield scrapbook

Here’s some baseball stuff that I’ve seen recently.

Tim Wakefield, who, yes, I’ve followed since his Pirates days, had a no-hitter through 7 1/3 last week. He’s 45, has been in the majors 17 years and he’s never had a no-no, as they call them. Watch the highlights or read more.

A Ranger named Ian Kinsler had a 6 hit game including the cycle last week. Highlights. He has two singles, two doubles, a triple and a home run. How’s that for a good game?

Do you realize the Pirates are 0.600 and are a game out of first? Crazy. Can it last? We can—and should—hope.

The new Yankee stadium has overpriced seats and the four games in there are already empty seats.

Chris McGreal, the now-former Guardian Africa correspondent writes a long and interesting piece about Africa during his dozen or so years there.

Andy sent me an email that made my day. It was an mp3 he’d ripped from a 7″ in the collection of his grandfather, who had lived in SE Pennsylvania. It was Pennsylvania Dutch stand up comedy. It was so weird and wonderful that I had a grin for hours.

Here it is. Like I said, you’re welcome.

Prof. (Herman E.) Schnitzel – Schussel Along with Schnitzel (mp3)

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Believe it or not, Schussel along with Schnitzel is available for purchase.

the 14 Mission

So I’m thinking it might be a fun project to ride all the Muni bus, lightrail and cable car lines. As you can see below, I have ridden a decent number but I have plenty to go.

I’ve decided that all iterations of one number count as one line; for instance, 14/ 14L and 14X all count as one line. I’m not sure about some of those 80-somethingX shuttle lines. We’ll see if they count.

Here’s the list of the lines, crossing out the ones I’ve ridden.

• F-Market & Wharves*
• J-Church
• KT-Ingleside/Third Street
• L-Taraval
• M-Ocean View
• N-Judah*
• S-Castro Shuttle
• 1-California
• 2-Clement
• 3-Jackson
• 4-Sutter
• 5-Fulton
• 6-Parnassus
• 7-Haight
• 9-San Bruno
• 10-Townsend
• 12-Folsom / Pacific*
• 14-Mission*
• 16*X-Noriega * Exp
• 17-Park Merced
• 18-46th Avenue
• 19-Polk
• 20-Columbus
• 21-Hayes
• 22-Fillmore
• 23-Monterey
• 24-Divisadero*
• 26-Valencia
• 27-Bryant*
• 28-19th Avenue
• 29-Sunset
• 30-Stockton
• 31-Balboa
• 33-Stanyan*
• 35-Eureka
• 36-Teresita
• 37-Corbett
• 38-Geary
• 39-Coit
• 41-Union
• 43-Masonic
• 44-O’Shaughnessy
• 45-Union/Stockton
• 47-Van Ness**
• 48-Quintara – 24th Street*
• 49-Mission-Van Ness*
• 52-Excelsior
• 53-Southern Heights
• 54-Felton
• 56-Rutland
• 66-Quintara
• 67-Bernal Heights
• 71-Haight-Noriega
• 74x-Culture Bus
• 76-Marin Headlands
• 80X-Gateway Express
• 81X-Caltrain Express
• 82X-Presidio Express
• 88-B.A.R.T. Shuttle
• 89-Laguna Honda
• 90-Owl
• 91-Owl
• 108-Treasure Island
• Powell-Mason Cable Car
• Powell-Hyde Cable Car
• California Street Cable Car

*I’ve ridden these lines more times than I can remember.

**I’m 99.9% sure I’ve ridden this at least once.

Update 4/24/09 rode the 26 Valencia, 67 Bernal Heights and J Church. (also, realized that I’d ridden the J Church once before last May).

Update 4/26/09 rode the 21 Hayes for half a dozen stops.

Update 4/30/09 rode the Powell-Mason cable car, the California cable car and the 19 Polk.

Update 5/3/09 rode the 28 19th Ave and the L Taraval.

Update 5/20/09 rode the 30 Stockton.

On Sunday, I went to the BYOBW (warning: annoying auto-play music), Bring Your Own Big Wheel event. It’s a race down Vermont Street with a Big Wheel, kid’s tricycle, or really any sort of non-powered transportation method. This is the 9th annual one, though only the second on Vermont. Previously it was on the more famous and not quite as dangerous Lombard.

the organizer was the first down the track

my friend Alan is in the white helmet

guys dressed as Koosh balls walked down the course at some point for no apparent reason

View my full photo album.

I’m against taxis on principle. They’re usually really expensive and I should just walk or take a bus if it’s available. But occasionally the other options aren’t good/ available.

• 3/22/09 2am, Austin, TX (getting back to my friend’s house after a show at SxSW after he’d left earlier)
• 3/20/09 1:30am, Austin, TX (getting back to my friend’s house after a show at SxSW after he’d left earlier)
• 3/12/09 1:30am, San Francisco (getting home with Dave and Tina after a show because their flight was early the next day)
• 2/17/09 10pm San Francisco (splitting a taxi back from the airport with coworkers)
• 2/16/09 6:05pm Lahaina, HI (with two others, getting back to the hotel after a 20 mile hike and 2 bus rides because the last bus/ shuttle stopped 6-7pm for the driver’s dinner)
• 12/17/07 5pm Taipei, TW (from work with two coworkers at their insistence)
• 12/09/07 1am Taipei, TW (post-subway hours trip back to my hotel)
• 12/3/07 8:30am Taipei, TW (to work after a bus came that was too full to fit on)

That’s right, I don’t think I took a cab in 2008.

Also, I have no idea why I thought I should make this list.

If you’d like to ship some things via the the Postal Service (and have them see you waving from such great heights–no that’s not right…), how much should you mail at once? Basically, is it better to ship a lot of small boxes or a few big boxes?

I went through and figured it out for you based on their current rate chart. If you have media (books, CDs, notebooks, etc.), definitely do that, as media mail’s really cheap.

For media mail, the per pound price flattens out pretty quickly. You actually don’t get any break after 54lb (it’s all $0.38/lb at that point), but anything above 25lb is within 15% of that lowest per pound price.

On the other hand, parcel post–which takes equivalent amount of time as media mail but covers other types of contents–continues to decrease all the way through 70lb. To get within 15% of the per pound price of $0.73, you need to ship 55lb or more.

If what you’re planning to ship via parcel post is particularly dense and you only have a little bit to ship, priority mail flat rate boxes might actually turn out to be a good deal.

I believe in both cases, the cheapest option is to package things into the fewest number of boxes and evenly split the weight between the two.

Note, I believe this information is accurate as of April 2009, but make no guarantees after that.

This is my last day without caffeine.

It’s been interesting. I had some caffeine on Sundays–usually one per–but otherwise I survived. I had two non-caffeinated sodas on other days. Some days I didn’t miss it at all and some days when I was a pile of yawns, I thought hard about having something to get me out of it.

Longer term, I’m hoping to keep it to a more reasonable level.

For the curious, in lieu of soda, my consumption of the following increased: water, juice, rooibos and beer.

WHY NOT WASH YOUR HANDS?

Protect the water you swim in and the health of those you swim with. Keep poop out of the pool by washing your hands.

Is that necessary? Was their a rash of problems with feces in the water?

So, what do vegetarian Catholics do? Vegetarian Protestants don’t have this trouble because they don’t believe in transubstantiation.

Catholic Good Friday services have communion rather than eucharist, so I think they get around this issue for the majority of people.

I forgot a couple music related things.

My music blog recently hit two milestones: two year anniversary (some of my favorite posts and comments; remember when it all started?) and 1000th post (10 desert island albums x 100 desert island songs).

One of my favorite photos I’ve taken recently is one that I took with a plastic, disposable camera without really looking.

I guess I get in ruts sometimes where all my photos start looking the same and it takes something outside of that to catch my attention again.

Two Sheds @ Beauty Bar

A few weeks ago I went to SxSW and saw 46 bands and 23 shows in 4 days. I recaped it at my music blog but I got a number of questions about what the highlights were, so here’s some of that.

Top five shows:

1. the Rural Alberta Advantage @ Central Presbyterian Church
2. the Wooden Birds @ Okay Mountain
3. the Avett Brothers, the Wrens @ Radio Room
4. Fanfarlo @ Central Presbyterian
5. Tallest Man on Earth @ Red 7

Band that most changed my opinion about them: Mumford & Sons (I went from being blah to liking them)

Local band that I liked most: Two Sheds

Any questions?

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes (pdf)
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an m3u file)

(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to File->import and then select the song list (the txt file). you should now have the 2009feb in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

Go ahead and check out the playlist (below) or the liner notes. It’s got all sorts of stuff: lots of folky stuff and intricate droney pop.

Adrian’s March 2009 mixtape (mediafire)

If you like the artists or songs, I suggest supporting them by buying their music, going to a show, buying merchandise from them or at least telling other people about them.

The playlist:

1. Shirley Ann Lee There’s a Light
2. Sam Cooke Rome (Wasn’t Built in a Day)
3. Gospel Supremes Sinner Man
4. Deer Tick Beautiful Girls
5. An Horse Little Lungs
6. Lucky Soul Whoa Billy
7. The Low Anthem This God Damn House
8. Bon Iver Brackett, W9
9. The Avett Brothers Die, Die, Die
10. The Welcome Wagon But For You Who Fear My Name
11. Mumford & Sons Little Lion Man
12. Ohbijou St. Francis
13. Great Lake Swimmers Pulling on a Line
14. Venice is Sinking Ryan’s Song
15. The Weakerthans Plea from a Cat Named Virtue
16. Viva Voce Octavio
17. Red Cortez All the Difference
18. The Wooden Birds Sugar
19. A Classic Education Stay, Son

I just realized I never posted this over here.

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes (pdf)
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an m3u file)

(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to File->import and then select the song list (the txt file). you should now have the 2009feb in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

Go ahead and check out the playlist (below) or the liner notes. It’s got all sorts of stuff: lots of folky stuff and post rock/ ambient.

Adrian’s February 2009 mixtape (rapidshare link [1])[2]

If you like the artists or songs, I suggest supporting them by buying their music, going to a show, buying merchandise from them or at least telling other people about them.

The playlist:

1. Fanfarlo I’m A Pilot
2. Bishop Allen The Ancient Commonsense of Things
3. Andrew Bird Tenuousness.mp3
4. Throw Me the Statue Ship
5. Casiotone for the Painfully Alone Old Panda Days (w/ Nick Krgovich)
6. Realpeople My Night With The Prostitute From Marseille
7. Birds & Batteries I’ll Never Sleep Again
8. Laura Gibson Spirited
9. the Gentle Guest Longfellow
10. Blind Pilot Oviedo
11. Iron & Wine Dead Man’s Will
12. Frontier Ruckus Orion Town 2
13. .tape. Rosa Luxemburger
14. Lymbyc Systym Processed Spirits
15. Grandchildren Cold Warrior
16. Riceboy Sleeps Happiness
17. Amiina Gl-mur
18. J. Tillman Kids

[1] If you’re having trouble with the rapidshare link, here’s what you do, step-by-step. 1) Click on the link. 2) scroll down and click “FREE” 3) wait till the counter gets to zero 4) enter the letters in their graphic into the box 5) click “download”

[2] Also, I realize Rapidshare is sort of a pain. I’m trying to find other options. I’m open to other suggestions.

A few days ago some DJs at my radio station ran a fake NCAA Magic the Gathering tournament broadcast. It was pretty hilarious and nerdy.

Here’s a snippet.

KZSU – NCAA Magic the Gathering Tournament (mp3)

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