adrian is rad

Heading to lunch the other day with Dug, I saw a newly opened store front for My Dutch Bike. I thought it was pretty cool. After all, I think these solidly built, three speed utilitarian bikes are great. I had one in Germany and enjoyed it. And I think for a lot of the populace, they’re a good option.

But then I looked at the price. $1600? What???

I saw similar bikes in Asian: China and Taiwan especially. The one here, by Phoenix, I found in Jakarta where it was for sale for, I believe, $75 brand new. I think it was a single speed, but it’s absolutely bomb-proof and is really classy to boot. Note the mechanical linkages for the breaks instead of cables. For that price I should have gotten one and shipped it over here.

I’ve done college radio for a long time now, starting September 2002 on WMBR and moving to KZSU shortly afterwards. But it’s coming to an end. Tomorrow (Tuesday June 23) will be my final show (for the foreseeable future at least). If you’d like, you may listen online or on 90.1FM in the Bay Area from 3-6pm PST.

Here are a few links I go back to time and again and tell people about, but I don’t think I’ve ever posted:

• The LA Times had a really interesting article about a large ship repo man. Things get complicated when you have to repossess container ships.
• A Dutch guy did a series of photos of soccer fields in Europe (starts a couple images in–no direct link). There are some spectacular backgrounds. It has inspired my own photos.
• Some people play old-time baseball in Golden Gate Park. Pitchers are called hurlers and they’re not allowed to throw any pitches developed after 1886.
• Baby Evil Eyes is one of the funniest videos on youtube:
  

A person must be display at least four of the following to have Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder:

• Is preoccupied with details, rules, lists, order, organization, or schedules to the extent that the major point of the activity is lost.
• Shows perfectionism that interferes with task completion (e.g., is unable to complete a project because his or her own overly strict standards are not met)
• Is excessively devoted to work and productivity to the exclusion of leisure activities and friendships (not accounted for by obvious economic necessity)
• Is overconscientious, scrupulous, and inflexible about matters of morality, ethics, or values (not accounted for by cultural or religious identification)
• Is unable to discard worn-out or worthless objects even when they have no sentimental value
• Is reluctant to delegate tasks or to work with others unless they submit to exactly his or her way of doing things
• Adopts a miserly spending style toward both self and others; money is viewed as something to be hoarded for future catastrophes
• Shows rigidity and stubbornness

Sounds like a lot of Germans, at least for some of those. I didn’t realize cultural traits could be qualified as a personality disorder.

So there are books that are made into movies. Quite often the original book is worth reading (though not always–Forest Gump the book isn’t great).

Then there are novelizations of movies. These are cheap and basically involve someone watching the movie and writing down what happens. For some reason my brother and I used to get a fair number of these things when we were young. I remember Back to the Future (and perhaps the sequels). They were not very good.

I had an eye exam the other day. I went wearing a t-shirt, a track jacket, sneakers and some pants. The doctor made small talk.

Dr.: Did you have today off?

Me: No, I worked.

Dr.: Do you work at home?

Me: No, I went to the office like this.

Dr.: Wow.

It happened.

I had people over for the game. We had pierogies* and kielbasi from a Russian deli in the Outer Richmond and finished off with Klondike bars (originally from Islay’s). Good times.

*potato and cheddar–among the best pierogies I’ve had.

I just realized that I’ve often lived and worked in different places where I had to cross water and boundaries to get there. Examples:

• Lived in Boston, Ma; went to school in Cambridge, MA
  I crossed the Charles to get to school, crossing town and county (from Suffolk Co. to Middlesex Co.) boundaries in the process
• Lived in Menlo Park, CA; went to school in Stanford, CA
  I crossed the San Francisquito Creek, crossing town (actually going through Palo Alto briefly) and county (from San Mateo Co. to Santa Clara Co.) boundaries in the process
• Lived in Menlo Park, CA; worked in Palo Alto, CA
  I crossed the San Francisquito Creek again, crossing the same boundaries.
• Lived in Songshan, Taipei; worked in Neihu, Taipei
  I crossed the Keelung River to get to work. I’m not sure what, if any boundaries I crossed.

I don’t know why I noticed this, but there it is.

[click to see it larger]

I found this while I was home. See if you can pick out my dad.

I was a bit surprised that while there are some Johnny Weismuller types in the photo, there aren’t the Michael Phelps-like triangles-on-top-of-legs that you see in every competitive swimmer today. And the people in the photo weren’t slouches–some of these people held records and beat international competition.

Fact #4: The Pirates’ front office actually knows what it’s doing.

No. Really. And trust me, that was a hard sentence for me to write. The Microsoft Word paper-clip guy even popped up and said, “You appear to be talking crazy. Need me to contact the psychiatric hospital?”

There are some other funny lines and there are even some insightful lines in this Page 2 article about the Pirates.

I guess it’s almost a month ago that I went to Yosemite for the first time. I went with my friend Dave and his girlfriend Sarah, who’d just gotten off the plane from the UK.

Dave has gone multiple times a year for many years, so I just let him say what we should do. We went hiking from Glaciar Point down to the valley floor. We ate and drank. We lay in a field and tried to pick out climbers on the face of El Capitan. We found a grove of Giant Sequoias. We did a midnight hike up to Mirror Pond and saw it again in the day time.

Photographically, I brought my D80 and my ’60s-era Yashica A TLR. (I ran Velvia 50 through the Yashica.)

More photos after the jump

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I was looking through my lease today and noticed that there was a clause about how the owners may enter the premises (with prior warning) during business hours, from 7am-7pm.

I don’t remember doing this, but on the lease, I’ve crossed out 7am, written in 9am and initialed it. 7 to 9am is not during business hours; it is during sleeping hours.

This one’s quite overdue at this point. My apologies.

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->library->import playlist and then select the song list (the txt file). you should now have the 2009may in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

Go ahead and check out the playlist (below) or the liner notes.

Adrian’s May 2009 mixtape (mediafire link)

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. Dawes When My Time Comes
2. J Tillman Earthly Bodies
3. Olof Arnalds Vi Og Vi
4. My Latest Novel Sister Sneaker Sister Soul
5. American Analog Set Punk as Fuck
6. mk ultra The Dream is Over
7. Archers of Loaf Web in Front
8. Les Savy Fav Precision Auto
9. The Twilight Sad Reflection of the Television
10. The One AM Radio The Landmine
11. Sebastian Schuller Midnight
12. At the Close of Every Day The Jesus Heart
13. Iron & Wine the Trapeze Swinger
14. Adele Hometown Glory
15. Camera Obscura My Maudlin Career
16. Naomi Shelton & the Gospel Queens What Have You Done?

I thought this blog version of what Doogie Howser types at the end of the show is funny.

Natalie pointed out that Hulu has all the episodes of Doogie Howser.

please please please please

I got a new lunch box! I was thinking of getting a construction worker’s box for a while but it seemed too big to put in my bag every day. Then I saw this one at an antique story in Virginia and I had to get it.

It even has the thermos!

I know my friend Andy’s reaction to this will be: ‘you’re a strange guy.’

Dave before the wedding

I just got back from 10 or 11 days on the east coast (depending whether you count from the time I left or landed, etc). The original reason for the trip was to go to Dave’s wedding, which was over Memorial Day weekend so I just extended it. I flew in and out of Charlotte, where my parents live now, and drove to Southwestern Virginia where the wedding was. (Though, couldn’t it have been in East Virginia so the song would have been applicable?)

The trip felt like four distinct parts parts and I’ll cover some of the highlights:

Pre-wedding:

painting the fauxtobooth

There was plenty of work left to be done when I arrive for the wedding, so most of the wedding party spent the days leading up to the wedding helping out in any number of ways.

We also needed to get the fauxtobooth v2.0–a DIY digital photobooth–up and running. Andy and Randy wrote code, I debugged a circuit and soldered some to fix it, Dave built the photobooth box. We all (plus Crystal!) painted.

no photos at the court house, but I surreptitiously took one of the application for marriage license

There was a lot of delirious laughing about things, about the situation. Dave was going so strong he forgot to eat on Friday and the rest of us didn’t demand food so we ended up eating our first proper meal at 10pm. A fierce-looking spider crawled up my shorts in the car the day before the wedding. My understanding was that I said some funny things in my panic—I was not focused on what I said.

Wedding:

goofy Jeff at the wedding
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To try to prescribe language for everyone is futile but within a journalistic institution it makes sense. The Economist Style Guide has a section on solecisms. It’s pretty interesting and informative.

Still, some of it is obvious:

Simon Pure is the real person (or thing), and has nothing to do with Caesar’s wife or driven snow.

Duh, right? And how about this one:

Soi-disant means self-styled, not so-called.

In all seriousness, though, some are quite useful:

Continuous describes something uninterrupted. Continual admits of a break. If your neighbours play loud music every night, it is a continual nuisance; it is not a continuous one unless the music is never turned off.

Are there any other style guidelines online? I didn’t find any in a brief look.