adrian is rad

Fun exchange while chatting with a friend the other day. I’m not quite sure how much of the humor translates without all the context.

me: yp
wow, brilliant typing
friend: you are a skilled typist
me: there’s a reason I’ve made my name in the field

…

[later, after I told him not to worry about me dating someone in particular]

friend: I’m not at all worried
about you making a move
ON ANYOEN
oh damn
undone by poor typing
it’s like I’m you!
me: haha
it’s because you have giant fingers
that are unsuited to normal sized keyboards
friend: it’s true
you should see me type on the G1
me: like a clown in a midget[1] car!
friend: everybody needs an automobile!
this was the largest car I could afford!

[1] Of course I mean a very small car, not necessarily one made for or used by little people.

I referred to some reverse culture shock since I got back. I thought I’d elaborate about what I’ve noticed anew in US America.

• relative wealth
• relatively little security
• relative lack of paranoia about safety
• less of a correlation between race and class
• stores open late
• people talking like me
• people not talking like me
• big cars
• expensive food
• cheap electronics, clothes

This is really strange:

–

I really like these vintage Japanese baseball cards.

Five all time great laughs:

• Buford- it’s not the laugh he has when someone tells a joke, but the laugh he specifically reserves when he tells stories. It’s a stifled laugh in the midst of a sentence when he’s setting up something particularly amusing. “So we’re at the circus [stifled laugh] and there’s this guy, right [stifled laugh], and he…”
• Jesse – He is a perfect example of the contrast between a big, tough exterior and a giggling laugh.
• John V – When John would laugh really hard, he’d transition from his normal laugh to a higher pitched laugh. I think it rubbed off on me.
• Colin A – I don’t know if Colin still does this but in high school he’d laugh in a moderately contained manner but his nostrils would flare and contract rapidly during his laugh. I tried to imitate this; it’s inimitable.
• Jeff M – Jeff has a few laughs, but my favorite is the mouth-fully-open boisterous one when he finds something really funny.

I’m going to tell you a story every day for the week.

JW is a solid dude. He’s the sort of guy who, if you asked him to take time off work to show around a Malawian guy you barely know around New York, would probably say yes. He’s also the sort of guy who could be the first person to inform me of my receding hairline and I wouldn’t take it as an insult or an effort to embarrass me; he would simply be informing me of a fact.

JW is also the sort of guy that might have traveled to Bermuda on the spur of the moment a few years back and returned with some Bermudan black rum. And though I was of legal age, I may have never have been even remotely tipsy.

And so it may have happened that we may have mixed that rum with ginger beer to make dark and stormies. And I may have gotten drunk for the first time as we sat in the hallway outside JW’s room and laughed and chatted, stumbling down the hall to the bathroom at necessary intervals and marveling at slushy feeling I was getting in my head.

Maybe.

I’m going to tell you a story every day for the week.

Near the end of my time living in Taiwan, I decided to go to Kinmen (formerly transliterated as Quemoy), a Republic of China (Taiwan) island 2km off of mainland China for a weekend. It’s a fascinating place that’s had a lot go on in the last century: isolationist Fujianese culture followed by briefly adopting British-Asian colonial styles and then sustaining shelling by both the Japanese and Maoist Chinese.

It leads to some shocking scenes: traditional Fujianese villages with miles of bomb shelter tunnels underneath. Or sorghum fields, waiting to be harvested for traditional brews, with rusty anti-parachute spikes every 10m. Such images are endless.

The English proficiency was very low and I had mastered only a few dozen words and phrases of Chinese including such useful phrases as “This is a pair of chopsticks” and “This is my business card” so communication, or lack thereof, was a major issue. I didn’t hear any English on my flight. I was picked up at the airport by someone that couldn’t speak English; I was taken to a scooter shop where I rented a scooter from people who didn’t speak English. Only when I got to the guest house did I hear any English and then it was quite broken.

I was in over my head. I was an island.

At one point I tried going to the local-style noodle shop. Well, I succeeded at getting there. And I succeeded at standing awkwardly in the entrance for a while. I even succeeded at pointing at a bowl of noodles with pork and indicating I wanted that dish.

When the proprietor said something as she carried a bowl past me, I thought she meant it was mine so I followed her to the table where a young man and an older woman were already sitting–it’s not entirely unusual to sit with people you don’t know–and started to sit down. Then the young man’s friend returned to the table and sat in that chair and started eating the dish I thought was meant for me.

Seeing my confusion, the young man got up and grabbed me a chair. “Xie xie” (Thank you). A dish of various meats and tofu arrived. “We,” he said motioning in a circle, “together.” “Oh. Xie xie” and I tried a few pieces. My noodles arrived and I started eating them. (They were delicious, incidentally). He pushed some sauce toward me. “Spicy.”

Finished with their meals, the young man and his friend got up and paid the proprietor, who gave me a funny look. He came back over to the table. “You no pay.” The spicy sauce must have started to get to me because my eyes welled up a bit. “Xie xie.”

No man is an island, it turns out.

Post on, and filled with, profanity after the break.

(more…)

I’ve been on some photo adventures lately, first to Green Point Stadium and most recently to Cape Town’s container port. Both were fun and interesting and I think I got some decent shots.

–

Today marked, I believe, my first subconscious use of SA slang–isit, meaning “really?” or “is that so?”. What’s funny about my saying it is that it still sounds odd to hear other people say it. “I’m going to the container port” “Oh, isit?” “Uh…is what?”

–

I think it’s time to start learning some Afrikaans, even if it’s just greetings and how-are-yous and I’m-sorry-I-don’t-speak-Afrikaans. Most people at work speak it, some as a first language and its also my flatmate’s first language. I’ll just have to fit it in my head with English, German and touches of Spanish, Chinese, and Zulu. But that’s it! No more languages after that!

–

I like this fun theory business. The idea is that the best way to get people to change their behavior is to make it fun. Here’s one example.

(It’s a marketing campaign for VW, by the way. Not sure of the tie in…)

–

This is a pretty tremendous photo series covering 27 months in the life of a US soldier from graduating high school to returning from a tour in Iraq.

–

I enjoyed this piece in Wired:

According to archival footage, Brown was standing on his toilet seat on the evening of Nov. 5, 1955, attempting to hang a clock in his bathroom, when he slipped and slammed his head on the side of the sink. Upon regaining consciousness Brown reported having “a revelation, a picture, a picture in my head.” A picture which he crudely scrawled down on a piece of paper and subsequently spent 30 years of his life and family fortune to build.

That picture, of course, was the flux capacitor. And as every high school physics student knows, it’s the device that makes time travel possible.

…

The incidents leading up to the time machine demise also served as the basis for the award-winning documentary, Back to the Future.

This ad is on SA TV quite a bit. I think it’s pretty funny. What’s funnier than a guy dancing to “Single Ladies”?

There’s also the flash dance version of “Single Ladies” if you like that sort of thing. (And that reminds me of the Belgian train station version of a Sound of Music.)

And another ad that I always laugh at is this one that’s on here as well as US TV:

One funny phrase here is boerewors curtain. It’s a play off of boerewors (SAan sausage) and Iron/ Bamboo Curtain-type boundaries. Afrikaaners live beyond the boerewors curtain.

I started working last week. I won’t really say much more about that.

My route to work goes past the containerized shipping port of Cape Town. I love working ports–they have great, huge machinery moving all these building blocks filled with stuff around. Some day I’ll have to plan some extra time to explore the area around the port. The other thing I find interesting about containerized shipping is that it’s such a sign of the modern times–fast, efficient, standardized–but at the same time, they’re just steel containers that could easily have been made a hundred years ago.

One thing I find frustrating is that despite a lot of roads having numeric names, (it seems) locals give directions almost exclusively by street names. But sometimes street change names often and in such cases the numeric name seems particularly appropriate. For instance, in about 1km, De Waal Dr becomes Mill St becomes Anandale St becomes Orange St becomes Buitensingel St.; all the while it’s simply called M3. Yet people will still tell me to take ‘De Waal Drive’ and if I happen to get on the street where it’s called, say, Orange, I’m simply out of luck for sign posting.

Update: Did you know that LA is the busiest US container port but it’s only 13th worldwide? And did you know Savannah is a busier port than Oakland?

Talk about Afrigadget,

You can buy the book here, William Kamkwamba, who was then about 14, made a windmill to provide power for his family based on a picture in a library book. A pretty good interview with him above.

(Kamkwamba is now in school in Jo’burg.)

This article was written by my grandfather, Alec Milne, chronicling a horse trip across Lesotho in 1936. It’s a long but fascinating article. The photocopy of the article I have has lost all definition in the graphic and three photos that accompany it, so I have supplemented it with ones that did not run with the original story. I’ve tried to preserve the original spelling and style wherever possible. The links, obviously, are not original and have been added to add clarity to those not familiar with some particulars.

The Star, Johannesburg, Transvaal, May 16, 1936

rented Beetle on Boyes Dr.

I rented a 1977 Beetle through December. It’s pretty fun. It’s quite a different driving experience, even compared to my no-nonsense VW Golf that I had before I came. Nothing is power (steering, locks, windows, etc.). It doesn’t have AC or a radio. It takes a minute to warm up enough until it’s willing to be put into gear. There isn’t an intermittent setting on the wipers and the turn signal doesn’t turn off by itself.

–

When there’s road construction, there’s a person employed whose sole purpose is to wave an orange flag all day warning of the start of the construction area.

–

The TV at my apartment broke on Thursday and my flatmate said she’d get it fixed. I don’t know if I’ve ever known someone to get a TV fixed[1]. In the US, the cost of getting electronics fixed is rather high whereas the price for new or used consumer electronics is relatively low, so people just tend to get a new one. Here the opposite is the case. Besides washing machines and sewing machines and laptops, I’m having a hard time remembering any piece of consumer electronics that I’ve known someone to get fixed. TVs, cell phones, digital cameras, etc–just get a new (or used) one. I told my flatmate about this and she, rightfully so, thought Americans are quite wasteful.

–

A couple people have asked which way the water spirals as the toilet flushes here. Toilets flush straight down here, but the sink in my apartment drains clockwise. However, this is, apparently, due to how the vessel is construction or the water enters rather than anything to do with the Coriolis effect.

–

flowers at the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden

I spent the afternoon at the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden. I walked around for a while looking at all the things, especially the proteas, fynbos and silver trees, but I chose to sit and read by the prehistoric cycads. They’re funny looking plants and they date back hundreds of millions of years.

–

A cautionary sign on Boyes Dr.

I love this sign. I read it ¡Baboons! and it makes me laugh to myself every time I see it.

–

[1] I did know someone who fixed’s tEp’s TV while he was living there, though.

the water spigot at Okhayeni Primary School–the school doesn’t have running water

On Tuesday, I took my first hot, running water shower in two weeks. It was glorious and I wanted it to last forever, though I kept it to a reasonable length.

Immediately afterwards, though, I thought to myself: I bet that’s a week’s worth of water that I just used. I decided to do some calculations to see if I was right.

US federal regulations now mandate low-flow shower heads, which allow 2.5 gallons/ minute at 80psi or 2.2 gallons/ minute at 60 psi. Let’s assume the latter and a short, 5 minute shower. That’s 11 gallons of water or 41.6 liters of water. A pre-1992 shower head might let 5.5 gallons/ minute flow through it. Total water usage for an older, high-flow shower head for the same shower would be 110 liters.

By comparison, by the end of my visit to Ingwavuma, I was using about 25L of water every 2.5 days (plus 5L of bottled drinking water.) That works out to 84 liters of water a week. So about two showers with a low-flow shower head or less than one with a high-flow shower head is about a week’s worth of water. And let’s not even talk about washing dishes or doing a load of laundry.

This is just about facts; I’m not pointing fingers or trying to guilt-trip anyone.

Every morning, a sea of thirty pre-school voices greet me as I go past the playground. I never knew what they were saying, so I’d smile or give a little wave and half-ignore them, not knowing what they were saying. I learned yesterday that malume means uncle but is often used as a term of respect. So, oops.

By my coworker’s count, 29 people are employed at Zesize. Yesterday (and many days) there were four cars. And Ingwavuma, by many accounts, has gotten a lot more wealthy over the past few years. So that gives you a bit of an idea what gainfully employed individuals in a rural town such as this, even one that’s getting wealthier, can afford.

During yesterday’s school meeting with the radio project kids, they were asked to come up with themes for next week’s broadcast, which occurs shortly before the Heritage Day holiday and will be somewhat related to the idea of heritage. One kid suggested the theme of “Thank God I’m a black man”. After a beat, everyone looked at me to see if I was offended. I wasn’t but I enjoyed the awkwardness of the situation.

Tonight I had my first full conversation in Zulu; granted, it was merely the simplest of exchanges, but I was quite proud of knowing what to say.

I learned today that all the land around here is owned by the king of the Zulus and people have a ‘Permit to Occupy’ (PTO, as they’re known) at best. This, apparently, has its upsides (prices are low and even the poor can afford land) and downsides (can’t be used as collateral at a bank; impedes business development).

Today was quite nice. I went to watch the SA rugby test match at a local lodge with the family friend’s fiance. It was a good time. And it was my first beer in two weeks. After we had a simple lunch on his stoep and dozed for a little bit before hiking out to the edge of the mountains, where they drop down into Swaziland. On one side one can see Mozambique as well and the Ingwavuma river winds through some small hills. On the other, it faces the west and the plains of Swaziland on a shear drop of 600m or 700m. We watched a beautiful sunset from there.

It’s been nice living this little slice of African life; for me it has been a simple and calming time. But I’m not worrying about money, food, clothing, shelter or really much at all right now. I don’t want to misrepresent this area, though. For all the of the romantic ideals of African life, life here is difficult for the average person. For its increased wealth, Ingwavuma still has issues of high unemployment. HIV/ AIDs effects nearly every family and the taboo of the subject hurts the situation even more. Carrying water from the pumps, which run intermittently, a job often left to children, is time-consuming and takes up time when they could be studying or playing. There are water-borne illnesses. Mosquitoes carry malaria. I could continue on, but I think you get the idea.

Just a couple more days here. I’ll be sad to go.

No day is exactly like this, but this is sort of how things have been going:

6:30a wake up

6:35-6:45a heat water for bucket shower

6:45-7a shower

7-7:30a eat breakfast, read email/ internets

7:30-7:45a wash dishes

7:45-8a get ready, walk to center

8a-1p radio project work

1-2p lunch at my rondavel

2-4p radio project work [1]

4:15-6:30p read, play soccer [2] or go for a walk; carry up water or boil water for drinking as necessary.

6:30-7:30p make and eat dinner

7:30-9:45p read, blog, listen to music; sort photos or videos etc.

9:45p-10p brush teeth, get ready for bed

10p go to bed

[1] on Wednesdays and Fridays, for the radio project, we go to a school that is farther away from about 12:30-4:30pm, so I eat lunch earlier on these days.

[2] soccer is Mondays and Thursdays

I’ve been up to everything and nothing over the past few days.

With opening a bank account last week, logistical issues haven’t been as much of a constant concern. There’s still plenty up in the air, to be sure.

Colorful houses in Bo Kaap

I’ve been trying to decide where in the city to live. I’ve taken to walking around all the different neighborhoods I was thinking of living in: Gardens, Tamboerskloof, Bo Kaap, De Waterkant, Green Point, Sea Point, Woodstock, Observatory. I’m mostly concentrating on Gardens, Tamboerskloof and Sea Point now, but I’ve been meaning to take another look at Woodstock. Here’s a map that shows the different areas of town, if you’re curious.

the Sea Point pool and Atlantic Ocean

Driving around has been a bit of a challenge. The left-hand driving isn’t hard, but the roads are narrow and winding and one-way streets abound. In perhaps the most extreme case of it since Pittsburgh, I think Cape Town is really a city you need to drive around a lot before you know how to get around. I know the arteries and areas so I can get close to where I want to go, but once I get close, wrong turns seem to have some odd attraction to me. The sign posting also leaves a lot to be desired.

Boats in Kalk Bay, False Bay

I spent a little bit of Friday and most of Saturday down on the False Bay side of things. The towns there have a lot of charm to them. Little fishing harbors, that despite expectations of being tourist traps are still genuine fishing harbors, and towns nestled between the mountains and the sea. Kalk Bay has quite of bit of charm to it and has at least a couple great restaurants. Saturday, I spent with a family friend down in Simon’s Town. Drinking rooibos on the porch overlooking the naval base and bay while the sunset was nice. So peaceful.

The naval shipyard in Simon’s Town

While down there, the friend also drove me around that end of the Cape Peninsula. We stopped at a place called Imhoff, which probably started as a trading post/ farm shop, but has since added camel rides, a nursery, a snake zoo, and recycling center. We went to the snake zoo–wow there were a lot of snakes there and plenty of them were highly venomous. Pretty cool, but every time you came across a cage without a snake, you sort of checked around your feet to make sure it hadn’t escaped. Imhoff reminded me of the places you find in the West of the US on secondary highways–tourist stops that keep added unrelated attractions and businesses to try to get people to stop.

I figured out how to turn on the radio in the old beast of a car I’ve been driving and I kind of like radio here. I’ll just turn the knob till I find something interesting. A couple days ago I listened to about fifteen minutes of Islamic sing-chanting, which is something I was introduced to in a world music class and have only really heard one other time, in Jakarta. I have a bit of a soft spot for the heavily Muslim Cape Malays, who were probably the target audience for this broadcast. Yesterday I listened to some Indian ragas on the radio. They were pretty traditional and wonderful and even included some shehnai or the South Indian equivalent.

Some people answer phones here funny, giving the phone number first. “Eight two four eight one six two, hello!” I haven’t noticed this widely but at least a few families do it. I suppose it helps let the caller know if they’ve dialed the wrong number immediately.

According to wikipedia’s list of statues by height:

1. Statue of Liberty depicting Lady Liberty. Located in Liberty Island, New York, it stands 46 m (151 ft) tall.
2. Our Lady of the Rockies depicting Mary. Located in Butte, Montana, it stands 27 m (88.6 ft) tall
3. Golden Driller depicting an oilman. Located in Tulsa, Oklahoma, it stands 23 m (75 ft) tall.
4. Tribute to Courage depicting Sam Houston. Located in Huntsville, Texas it stands 20.5 m (67 ft) tall.
5. Dallas Zoo’s giraffe statue depicting a giraffe. Located in Dallas, Texas it stands 20.5 m (67 ft) tall.
6. Christ of the Ozarks depicting Jesus. Located in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, it stands 20 m (65.5 ft) tall.
7. King of Kings depicting Jesus. Located in Monroe, Ohio it stands 19m (62 ft) tall
8. Praying Hands depicting praying hands. Located in Tulsa, Oklahoma, it stands 18.2 m (60 ft) tall.
9. Vulcan statue depicting a Vulcan (mythology). Located in Birmingham, Alabama, it stands 17.1 m (56 ft) tall.
10. Jolly Green Giant depicting Jolly Green Giant. Located in Blue Earth, Minnesota it stands 16 m (52.5ft) tall.

Not a very impressive list, I think. I mean, the Jolly Green Giant and a statue of a giraffe are within our top ten?

Absolutely ridiculous is the planned and partially completed Crazy Horse Memorial Statue, which when/ if completed will stand at 172m, placing it as the largest statue in the world. Then again, it was started in 1948 and the designer died in 1982 so who knows if it will ever be finished.

Mellie on top of the fridge

The people I’m staying with have six cats: Timmy, Jack, Fudge, Mellie, Amber and Robbie (the robber). And they spoil them like you wouldn’t believe. Each, naturally, has its own personality, food preferences and spots around the houses they like to sit.

Moving affords one lots of opportunities to decide whether to keep or get rid of a lot of stuff. The easiest is probably just stuff: will I use this and is its size/ weight something I’d be will to pay the expense of keeping.

Sentimental and small is easy too: yeah, I’ll keep that small stack of papers from that summer job in Germany.

Sentimental and big: that’s hard. Last night I threw out a section of a grad school project that I was pretty proud of. But it was big and weighed a ton. Goodbye pneumatic-powered nerf gun with linear and rotational control.

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.

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.

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.’

Yesterday I saw someone at the side of the road with a flat tire. A guy stopped to help him. What was that guy was driving? A Hummer. Not what I expected.

I saw a banner today in Palo Alto in Lytton Plaza, a spot that often has some activist group or another:

The Truth about 9/11
And Cookies

The ‘O’s in “Cookies” were made of cookies. I’m not sure if they were trying to reveal the truth about cookies or if they were trying to use cookies to lure people in to hear the ‘truth’, but either way, I was laughing.

There’s something in San Francisco called Privately-owned Public Open Spaces. Under a law enacted in 1985 developers, under certain conditions, had to include some public open space in their buildings. Here’s a list (pdf) which include atriums (atria?) and sun terraces and whatnot. I’ll have to start visiting these when I’m spending more time downtown again.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Here are some recent photos from my camera phone.

The setting sun, some buildings and Caltrain managed to frame this graffiti mural on 22nd St. @ Iowa nicely.

An old-style garage door in Palo Alto.

It’s spring in Palo Alto. Flowers of all colors are out. Trees are green and grass is lush. In San Francisco, it’s still quite a bit chillier and it seems more like ‘winter’ still.

That’s not true, actually. But it might be some day.

I’ve been watching a fair amount of Jeopardy[1] recently. It’s one of the few shows I devote all my attention to; no emailing or blogging while watching, like I do with most shows. I play along–who doesn’t? I’ve been doing decently every day. I haven’t been keeping tracking of my score, but I feel like–in the comfort of my home and without needing to buzz in, mind you–that I’ve been holding my own. I’ve been feeling like I should try out for the show at some point.

The issue is the gaps in my knowledge. For every science or music category I run, there’s a Shakespeare or art category that I know zero or one question on. Ken Jennings, in his book Brainiac brings up studying for categories like these. It becomes a practice of memorization, of connecting words together that doesn’t have any other meaning or context. I like knowing trivia, but I’m not sure I’d like to know it in this way.

I day dreamed today about how to best make a practice buzzer, incidentally. Yeah, that’s the sort of thing I daydream about.

[1] Part of the reason why, oddly enough, is that my roommate got an HD tv and we don’t get all our channels in HD so I tend to watch the ones that are a little more.

There’s a store called The Jelly Donut. I had a donut–a Chocolate French Cruller. It was outrageous.

“How’s such and such going?”

“It’s trying.”

I forgot about that usage of trying. It’s a good one. I’ll try to use it more.

I’m looking for recommendations for thin wallets/ credit card holders. My situation has gotten out of control. My wallet’s giant–and I don’t even carry money in it anymore. (Both bills and coins go in my back pocket while my wallet goes in my left pocket, though I could see carrying bills in my wallet.)

I have a lot of cards and miscellaneous things I carry around: two credit cards, two debit cards, driver’s license, cards for three different transportation systems, tickets for the public pools, and business cards. That’s the minimum–I also have movie rental store cards, other people’s business cards and things that I could probably prune out.

My brother (indirectly) suggested All-Ett wallets, though I feel like the area might be too big. Or there’s those combined card holder/ money clips that you see on late-night TV. Or there’s just regular old card holders.

Is there anyone particularly happy with their solution to this problem?

Update This looks like a reasonable way to get rid of some of those club cards. Also These wallets seem to be another thin option.

I have very little interest in basketball, but I found this article about Shane Battier (by Michael Lewis, author of Moneyball) long but fascinating. Battier doesn’t have good stats, in the traditional sense, but makes his team better when he plays. It makes me want to take an interest in basketball and start running some stats about it.

On the topic of stats, Nate Silver (of Baseball Prospectus, FiveThirtyEight.org) predicts the Oscars using stats. Interesting!

And, on the topic of Michael Lewis, his book The Blind Side, a book about football’s left tackle, was preceded by a NY Times Magazine article, Ballad of Big Mike. It’s more of a narrative than a stats-filled article, but it’s still pretty interesting.

[Warning: American Apparel's ads, which are featured some of the links, tend to have people in moderate states of undress. Some links are somewhat NSFW.]

So my neighborhood in San Francisco is the Mission. It’s split in two parts–broadly generalizing–young, white hipsters and Latino families. The center of hipster commerce is Valencia Street, while more of the Mission Street.

American Apparel is a brand that appeals to hipsters. They make tight fitting clothing and make it in America. They wanted to put in one of their stores on Valencia Street–a perfect fit, right?

by gretchen robinette

Apparently not. People were up in arms (well some people were). People, plenty of whom were probably wearing American Apparel at the time, said they didn’t want a chain store on their Valencia Street. They wanted their unique and pricey boutiques instead.

Blogs and newspapers were abuzz with developments. There was a protest (where the above photo was from).

The Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition was against it but pointed out that the pricey boutiques were also displacing older stores. (Irony.) They also pointed out that people weren’t up in arms about the plans related to an old movie theater on Mission Street.

Eventually the San Francisco planning commission voted against allowing the store. American Apparel apologized and offered Mission residents discounts at their other SF stores.

Wow, what a strange place this is.

There’s a little patch of old industrial buildings at the intersection of the Mission, SoMa and Potrero Hill.

Are you getting sick of my cell phone pictures yet?

x Noe in Noe Valley. Yes, it’s early February.

It later missed the my station and had to reverse about a mile.

Conductor over the speakers: “Next stop: 22nd Street.”

[time passes]

Passengers, looking out the window: “Uhhhh wasn’t that 22nd Street?”

[time passes, train stops]

Conductor over the speakers: “Um. Give us a couple minutes while we fix this.”

Early morning last Thursday.

On Fulton and Parker. Oh, those Jesuits!

Headlines like that (on the front page of today’s Palo Alto Daily News) always make me laugh, even if they do have some reason. They remind of Onion-style headlines of the “Oxygen Still Necessary for Living” type.

I saw a few movies in the last few weeks.

Gran Torino I’m a big fan of later-era Clint Eastwood films, especially Million Dollar Baby, Mystic River, and Unforgiven. They tend to have these great conflicted characters. Gran Torino is no different. Eastwood plays Walt Kowalski, a retired auto worker and a Vietnam veteran living in a Detroit neighborhood that is becoming a Hmong neighborhood. Kowalski is set in his ways and doesn’t like his new neighbors. Hilarity ensues! Not really–but what unfolds as he gradually becomes involved in their lives (and they in his) is a pretty great story. It has still got me thinking.

Milk I’ve done my civic duty as a citizen of San Francisco and seen this movie. Sean Penn is good (of course) as Harvey Milk in this biopic. Gus Van Sant tells the story well. What stuck with me is that I didn’t know that Milk reluctantly got into politics and it was fairly late in life–he was already into his 40s.

Kenny This is an Australian movie about a guy who rents and services portable toilets. I got it because they had the following quote on the back of the box: “The Citizen Kane of romantic comedies about sewage.” Everyone puts hyperbolic quotes on the back of movie boxes but I thought I’d want to see a film whose makers were willing to put that quote on the back of the box. It was hilarious. Besides being laugh-out-loud funny for much of the film, the characters were also pretty endearing.

Here’s the trailer:

Nice sign, though.

View Larger Map

The other day I was reading in the Juri Commons, the odd, slanted mini-park between 25th and 26th, Guerrero and San Jose, reading when the little map in my head made the straight-line connection to the slanted building at 24th and Capp near where I used to live. I remember talking to someone that suggested it might have been an old railroad route.

I looked into it more and found a cool graphic depiction of the route through the Mission, SoMa and Noe Valley, and some history. It used to be the San Francisco and San Jose Railroad which was later acquired by Southern Pacific. It’s essentially now Caltrain but they added the shortcut tunnels through the hills that made this Bernal cut, as they called it, obsolete. It seems the tracks were taken out sometime between 1906 and 1942–probably in stages.

There are some sites with some cool vintage photos, like this one with Harrison Street tracks, this one of the depot at 3rd and Townsend and this one already linked above.

What I did over the last week was walk along the path, at least in the Mission part. There are still a lot of remnants in angled buildings, rights-of-way and oddly shaped plots. I made the map above. You can see in the satellite view many of the angled buildings. I also took some photos which you can see if you click the placemarkers on the map.

Juri Commons

I’m not an activist. I have opinions about things, sometimes even strong ones, and I support some charities and volunteer time (though I suppose music DJing is activism in a certain light), but I guess I’m not programmed to be the type to be moved to work in an activist manner.

So it’s a little weird that today I joined an activist group, the San Francisco Bike Coalition. They’re very vocal in local planning, organization and transportation decisions. That’s fine, but given that I spend a non-zero amount of my time on a bike in this city, I appreciate that they make my life (and those of other cyclists) easier (e.g. free bike valet at events, working for more bike storage on public transportation) and safer (both by awareness and getting bike paths and lanes put in).

I’ve never seen this bridge near China Basin/ ATT Park up before.

This came up in conversation yesterday and I did have a definitive answer–not that there is one, necessarily.

September 1, 1939 or December 7, 1941

After a lot of lead up, September 1, 1939 directly caused a war, one in which many countries declared war on others.

December 7, 1941, on the other hand, only brought one country into the war, but it probably changed the outcome.

I think August 6, 1945 is significant, but, I think, more for the Cold War than the WWII.

And, honestly, you’re just being a contrarian if you say July 7, 1937.

Adrian Chatting With Someone Off-Camera by Alex Bischoff

My brother borrowed some of my portrait stuff when we were at my parents’s house.

San Francisco has a vintage new-stock Adidas shop.

Jamie Hyneman of Mythbusters crossed 26th St. as I was biking up it. He was walking a dog with a companion.

I spent 48ish hours in Pittsburgh a little after Christmas. It was my first trip there in two years. I’ve already posted a couple from the trip, but here’s a bit more.

I love Pittsburgh. I’ve lived in something like nine places at this point, but the longest tenure and most formative years were spent in Western Pennsylvania. I didn’t really didn’t think much of it while I lived there, but in summers of college and afterward on visits, I realized how much I liked it. Let’s say that everyone I know who didn’t grow up there thinks I talk too much about Pittsburgh for their liking.

When Pittsburghers say “Pittsburgh” to non-natives, they often mean Western Pennsylvania. Culturally, linguistically and in landscape it is a region that is pretty unique region. And driving to Pittsburgh from Southeastern Virginia, I could tell when Western PA was getting near–Cumberland, MD seemed very familiar. A shrinking town in a hill with similar architecture. And maybe it’s selective memory mixed with nostalgia talking, but I think if you lean your head against a car window and look out, through the trees and at the sky, you can tell just from that when you hit Western Pennsylvania.

Pittsburgh surprises me every time I go back, both by changing and by staying the same. I didn’t expect there to be cyclists on the road or to have the same experience at a number of places that I had 8 or 10 years ago. Coming from a place where bars and restaurants and people turn over every few years, it’s odd to be in a place where something is still pretty new if it was built five years ago and many people have spent their whole lives in the region.

One of my favorite traditions is late night pizza at Mineo’s. It’s cheap and good and the company is unbeatable.

A newish place to me is Pamela’s Diner. They have great food at reasonable prices, compared to what I’m used to. I’d been introduced to the original (in the Strip) a few years ago by a friend from out this way who’d moved to Pittsburgh. It’s still good.

I’d been to Jerry’s and to Paul’s CD but I’d never been to Dave’s Music Mine. I don’t know how that hadn’t happened before, but it’s a pretty cool place. It’s got a good used selection and their soul records are pretty good.

I had a couple pinball aficionado friends that lived in Pittsburgh for a bit. One introduced me to pinball at the Beehive. I liked the Spiderman one. It had plenty of action but it was still pretty straight forward.

I love walking around the South Side. There are such great buildings. Also, there’s a sweet Salvation Army Thrift Store. I bought a suit for New Year’s Eve for $6.50.

I went back to the Church Brewworks for the first time since 2000ish. It was still good and, hey, possibly even better now that I can/ like to drink beer.

I went to Gooski’s for the first time. We didn’t spend a lot of time there, but I can imagine spending a lot of time at a place that’s halfway between its hard scrabble Polish neighborhood and the hip and alternative side of the clientele. Next time I’ll have to have the pierogies.

Primantis is as good as I remember it, but I’m glad I have Giordano Brothers the rest of the year for my Pittsburgh-style sandwich cravings.

I rode the incline, had cheap draft beer at a dive bar, and watched a football game.

Oh and did I mention I got to have buckeyes for the first time in a while? They’re a Christmas tradition for me and the region for whatever reason.

Pittsburgh always seems to tease me when I’m leaving, as if to say, look, Pittsburgh can have enticing weather sometimes.

Finally, all my friends now seem to have GPSs in their car. These are pretty funny in Pittsburgh, with its convoluted roads, one way streets and difficult geography because the driver inevitably says/ yells: “Why does it want me to go that way?? No, no, no, this other way is much faster.”

I was at my parents’ new place in Charlotte-ish, North Carolina for Christmas.

I finally did portraits of the two of them:

We ate well, thanks almost entirely to my mom:

We went ice skating on Christmas eve. I’m not very good at ice skating anymore, but it was fun.

We opened some presents:

As is tradition, we sang carols around the tree, achieving our least dissonant sound in recent memory.

I took silly photos without looking:

My dad was the captain of the boat for our Christmas ride.

At PIT, statues of George Washington and Franco Harris (mid-Immaculate Reception) next to each other.

Tied 0-0.

Update: Final 31-0.

Merry Christmas and whatnot.

Total produce: 822
Organic produce: 91
Locally grown produce: 16
Total organic products: 670

I’m surprised that a big supermarket in North Carolina lists this right up front. Even supermarkets in SF aren’t transparent about it.

Can you tell in figured out how to blog from my phone? Don’t worry, I’ll get tired of it eventually.

Just one week till Boxing Day! I’m so excited

I’d forgotten I came down with a cold last time I went to South Africa.

Also, the cough syrup is in a glass bottle. Who puts medicine in a glass bottle these days?

This is by far my favorite glass.

Probably the highlight of my day was that I found a home-made chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich in the back of the freezer. It was one of a a batch that I made for my birthday party at the end of August.

It was as good or possibly even better than I hoped it’d be. The ice cream had sort of soaked into and saturated the cookies, making them super cookies of sorts.

Animation of a day’s worth of flight patterns in a bit more than a minute. Pretty fascinating:

via core77

A pretty slick bike storage/ locker system in Japan. I’d love to see the mechanism.

via boingboing

Judit and I made gingerbread houses again. I like this part of the year.

Mine:

Judit’s:

xkcd has some nerdy shirts, like the one below.

However, if you really want to turn the nerd up, you have to go over to mental floss:

or

If there can be class action lawsuits against the tobacco companies and McDonalds, why not against the Girl Scouts? Those cookies are serious.

Oh boy! I love Christmastime (and Trader Joe’s).

This is pretty funny.

Sandwiches, even meaty and hot ones on buns, are usually cut in half, either straight or at an angle, and then eaten from the middle to the outsides. Hamburgers and hotdogs, though, are eaten from the outside or end and are rarely cut.

You don’t look classy and timeless in that black trench coat and fedora. You look ridiculous.

There were at least two noteworthy David Lawrences: David H. Lawrence, the English writer of Sons and Lovers among other things–probably the better known of the two–and David L. Lawrence, the Pennsylvania Governor and Pittsburgh Mayor, for whom the convention center is named. Next time you’ll know that D.L. didn’t write Sons and Lovers and D.H. didn’t govern Pittsburgh.

Yesterday morning I saw my breathe for the first time in many months. It’s getting brisker here, but it’s overall still pretty warm compared to the eastern provinces.

The sunrise that morning, seen from the 2nd deck of Caltrain, starting around Millbrae or San Mateo and developing through Redwood City was one of the most beautiful I’ve seen[2]. The photo on my camera phone failed to capture it. It was red-orange on a light blue sky with plenty of wispy clouds, the kind that tend to spread the colors of a sunrise/set so nicely.

[1] Not really cold by any real standards. Just chillier than a few weeks ago.

[2] Just because waking up before dawn is generally the domain of crazy people, I usually avoid it. As such, I haven’t actually seen that many sunrises.

This web game where you have to do various geometric things by eye–finding midpoints of lines, convergence of three lines, sides of a parallelogram–is pretty addicting, at least for me. My natural talents apparently, lie more in bisecting angles than finding the center point between three edges of a triangle.

Wow. What a world we live in.

HD TV commercials are funny: they try to demonstrate that their picture is better despite the fact that you’re (probably[1]) viewing it on a TV that can’t actually show any of the advantages.

[1] And if you’re viewing it on a TV that can show the advertised TV’s great picture, then their TV isn’t better than yours.

my first earthquake. It was tiny. In the five years since I’ve moved to California, I’ve had an amazing ability to be out of town for earthquakes, at least 3 of the noticeable sort. Additionally, there was another small one a month or so back where I was at a ballgame and people were stomping their feel and otherwise shaking the stands anyway, so it was not noticeable.

Nilla Wafers shouldn’t come in a “Stay Fresh” bag within the box, they should come in a “Go Stale Quicker Please” bag. They’re best that way.

from maps.google.com

A couple weeks ago Saturday my dad and I did the Alcatraz swim. It was the second time for me.

the swimmers at the orientation

My elbow’s been hurting for weeks so besides some kicking in the pool I hadn’t swam since the end of August. My elbow hurts a bit more now. Otherwise, the swim went decently. I sighted better and picked a better route (important because of the currents) than last time. I came in 2 minutes faster than last time.

Yeah, my pop beat me by 13.something minutes. 55:01 for me and 41:15 for him. He’s still speedy.

It was really cold, but you only notice for the first few minutes. Last time I swam Alcatraz I had quite a bit more–let’s say–insulation. But it was warmer (63 vs varied reports of 57 to 60). The currents were present but not too hard to handle. I swam a conservative route so I ended up west of the opening of aquatic park, despite a west-to-east current, but only maybe 200 yards upstream, which is far better than ending up 100yards down current, for instance (which I did last time).

my pop, wet-suit clad

swimmers walking toward the boat

mom and dad enroute the boat

mom and dad passing fisherman’s wharf

I didn’t see this info on the internet, so I’m adding it. 12 (glass) bottles of beer in a carton weigh 16.0 lb by our measurement.

arrangement keeps the ‘e’ but judgment doesn’t?

A label on a Cold Stone Creamery ice cream cake, paraphrased:

Your health is of utmost importance to us. Please beware that Cold Stone Creamery products may contain trace amounts of tree nuts, soybeans, eggs…

If you’re so concerned about their health, how about warning people that the products may contain massive amounts of fat and sugar?

Sometimes I have my phone with me but not my regular camera and so I take camera phone pictures.

[click for bigger image on any of them]

I walked over Bernal Hill last weekend. This is a photo from the top with my neighborhood, the Mission, in the middle of the photo. (Bernal Heights is in the foreground; SoMa and downtown are to the back and right, Hayes Valley to the back and left). From the tall yellow building left-of-center, I live toward the viewer and to the left a little.

I went to an SF 49ers pre-season game a few weeks ago. This is the view from our seats.

I went to Camden Yards when I was in Maryland in early August. It was my first trip there. I liked the stadium a lot, especially how it was built into some existing buildings (or walls, really) in the area.

I liked this sign on Del Mar beach in the San Diego area. I was there in early July for a wedding.

I’ve noticed that there are a number of instances where I use different prepositions when some other people use “on”:

• “on line”: e.g. “Where are you? I’m on line for the movie.” I say that I’m “in line”.
• “on accident”: e.g. “I bought two of the same thing on accident”. I’d say that I’m did that “by accident.”
• “on the…station” [I've only heard this once, I think] e.g. “We are now on [the] Civic Center station.” I would say that we are “at the Civic Center station.”

I find it strange that the language hasn’t converged on one usage by this point.

The top article on the front page of the Palo Alto-based Daily Post was the following:

New Homes Under $1M

I kid you not, an ad further down the page was:

Expert Birkenstock Repair

I really need to get out of California.

Football: A friend got tickets to the 49ers v Packers preseason game last night. I’ve never been to an NFL game (and I rarely even watch NFL games on TV) that didn’t involve the Steelers, but this was still pretty fun.

Candlestick is an old relic of a stadium, but it’s got some charm to it, even if the winds are pretty chilly. The new Packers guy didn’t look great. The 49ers didn’t look amazing, but they were infinitely better than the Packers and won the game easily.

Also, there was a funny guy next to us. He and one other person tried to start the wave. It failed.

track: The men’s 100m dash was last night. Usain Bolt destroyed. He was so fast that with 20m left he was already showboating, his arms out and then pounding his chest. He was decelerating before the finish line and still easily broke the world record and won gold. It sort of reminds me of that Manny home run when he just admired his own brilliance instead of running. I’d like to see what he can do when he actually runs the race through.

swimming: You know what Phelps has done by this point. I’m pretty inspired and impressed. Incidentally, during the 3rd quarter of the above game, they announced that Phelps had won his 8th gold and everyone applauded.

I also realized that no Olympians look like normal people. Marathoners are stick thin and lack body fat entirely. Sprinters have quads that are bigger than my waist. Swimmers are triangles on top of smallish legs. Pistol or archery are probably the closest to normal people.

I’ll be posting a lot of my trip photos–and some older photos too–up on the collective photo blog over the next week or two. Check in there for new photos. Here are a couple so far:

You Go Girl, Brooklyn

Monk outside Snake Alley, Taipei

For some unknown reason, it was open yesterday on the the car I was on.

It’s been just over five years since the road trip. I still go back and read through the travel log every year or so. . .

Citibank, so far, has sent me two notices in the mail telling me when my paperless statement are ready to view online.

my favorite herb is basil. I’m a big fan. It’s a big reason I love san bei ji. It’s one of the reasons I love my salmon burgers with tomato, basil and feta.

Mark Twain didn’t say “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco”.

I think the notion is quite silly. I think the coldest winter I ever spent was 1993ish in Pittsburgh when it hit -22 degrees F and with completely clear roads they canceled school simply because they didn’t want kids standing outside in those temperatures. (The only thing better than snow days is really freaking cold days…and typhoon days.)

But it is chilly here for summer. I leave the house in the morning with a light jacket and yesterday that wasn’t enough. As the sun set at the outdoor afternoon concert, I found myself thinking about the heat lamps that I’d thought were silly earlier.

I don’t know why I remember things like this sometimes.

One day when I was 10 or 12 my parents decided that I wasn’t getting enough protein with breakfast. I asked how I could get more protein. If they were so adamant about this, they should be able to come up with some things that were high in protein. Milk, yogurt, peanut butter, steak…

Wait…steak? I know it has plenty of protein, but breakfast?

And so my mom made me steak for breakfast everyday for a few weeks in 1992ish.

I had an odd childhood. I know: you’re surprised.

I live above a Peruvian restaurant. Not a lot of bad things about that (except the exhaust fan on Saturday mornings) and if I run out of food–hey, food downstairs.

A few weeks ago we went there to check the place out and say hi. I got pescado frito. You know, old school.

Anyway, we finished up and I’m at the register paying. There are these deserts with two soft, round, floury, sugary bits with a chocolate creme filling. Here’s the conversation:

Me: And could I get one of those.

Proprietress: sure

Me: And what are they called?

Her: Cookies.

Me: Oh…

I think I was swallowing my pride for much longer than I was swallowing the cookie.

[I posted this on my music blog a while ago and was just wondering why I didn't also post it here. It is, after all, pretty personal.

It's not uncommon for Americans to go over to Europe and ride the rails all over but most haven't ridden this nation's rails extensively.

From September 7 to 10, 2003, for three and a half days I rode trains from Boston to Emeryville, changing trains once, in Chicago. I moved to California on those trains. I had known Boston as home for four years and Pittsburgh before that. Three thousand miles away, the Bay Area was almost a complete unknown. It was to be a time of new friends, new living arrangements, new streets, a new school, new supermarkets, and a new barber. I left half a day after a friend's wedding and leaving that wedding was sort of like my farewell moment for most of the people I counted as friends there. I got on board with an ipod with only a few hours of battery life, my laptop with even less, two suitcases, a guitar and a backpack.

I didn't have a cell phone and the train rarely stopped for long enough to have meaningful contact with people outside the train. I was very isolated for those few days.

I wrote down some thoughts at the time, when I was on the train. A few distinctive names and details have been changed to protect the innocent and I edited some small sections to make it easier to read. The rest appears as typed at the time.

--

Vernon L Sutphin - Lost Train Blues (mp3)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

9.7.03

Deer Tick – These Old Shoes (mp3)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

the Impressions – People Get Ready (mp3)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

(more…)

I saw the craigslist headquarters in the the Inner Sunset yesterday. I was pretty excited.

Here’s my photo through the bus window. The ladies on the bus looked at me very strange for taking this photo.

Watch out! Bad language!

Did you eat meat today? Preferably prepared on a fire?

That’s what an American would do…

The other day, I saw a ThumsUp! while eating at an Indian restaurant. I decided to have it with my Desi chicken flatbread wrap.

This is my rating:

It tasted old timey–like Coke with sugar or Pepsi Retro. I like that old time taste!

26th and Noe: I like the city for having things around and it’s quieter than Taipei. But I miss the quiet sometimes. At a touch after midnight, it’s quiet here, so quiet that I could think I was in a different city. But I’m only a few blocks away from louder blocks.

…

26th and Guerrero: It’s getting louder now.

I literally groaned when my alarm when off this morning. Time to get more sleep, I think.

Andy trying to slap me with his tie makes me really happy:

Trying to practice portraits, this was what I could find to be my subject:

For Colin, the only thing I could find (besides myself) to be my subject was the 2004 roadtrip bobblehead mascot:

I like this poster I’ve been seeing in my neighborhood. “No more!”

Wandering around Chinatown reminds me of Taipei:

My philly photoalbum and ghm.

My friend Dave (not this one) found this in the Palo Alto Daily News and cut it out.

I thought it was pretty funny.

[I feel it sort of stands alone, but if you really want to read Abby's response you can find it here.]

The other week I saw a photoset of a very cool building mural/ graffiti in San Francisco, based on an icanhascheezburger image (this one to be specific).

I was running errands in Chinatown during lunch and thought some things looks familiar so I went around back, down the alley and saw this:

It’s still there! As it turns out, the building owner consented to having that painted on there. It’s still pretty cool, though.

The left side of my butt chin is bigger and lower than right.

And you know what they say about symmetry.

I was all excited because I saw I’d gotten an email
but it was from me
the one I just sent
sad

I don’t mean to brag, but I think it displays a lot of promise.

Almost a year and a half after Pittsburgh got it, Google Transit is now available for the Bay Area.

We had 511’s Transit Trip Planner already but–let’s face it–google’s going to do it better.

Internetworking:

involves connecting two or more distinct computer networks or network segments together to form an internetwork (often shortened to internet), using devices which operate at layer 3 of …

But don’t you think it should mean networking on the internet? Internet networking–>internetworking! You know Linked In and things like that. Makes perfect sense to me. Let’s reclaim the word for its new use.

A subset of that could be interblogworking, for blog-to-blog networking.

Past words I may or may not have coined:

• nowtro
• comfort music
• geek crush

I buy fresh bread. It used to go stale. I bought a bread box. Now it stays fresh longer. Amazing!

You know when you go to Buci di Beppo or Vinny Testa’s or any of those Italian places that give you a mountain of food and you eat a full meal and it looks like you haven’t even started?

Yeah, that’s what my moving status is right now.

I saw a motorcycle the other day with a disabled parking placard.

Is that even useful let alone possible?

I’m sure I’m the first person to express this sentiment.

I spent basically all the time from 8:30am to 10pm yesterday moving. By the end of the day boxes I thought were light earlier were feeling really heavy. By the end of the day, I was threatening to drop couches and things after just a few feet because my forearms were atrophied to such an extent.

I got one of those stylish back support things that you see movers and home depot employees wearing. I pretty much wanted to look professional while I moved, but it did have some benefits in back support. (And, really, I don’t want a back support device, I want an Impenetrable and Invincible Back Exoskeleton Now Made with Super-Alloy-Z.)

Our one break was a visit to In N Out in the evening. We parked our Budget rent-a-truck across three parking spaces laterally and I had the biggest meal I’ve had at an In N Out. It was the most guilt-free meal I’ve had since the Tahoe century.

Today I hurt. Back, forearms, calves, quads and all the other areas that contain muscle.

Post-easter half priced candy time! I love it.

Wii swimming.

[fin]

When I moved to Menlo Park in 2003, there were three car dealerships along the main drag, El Camino Real. By the time I moved away in 2007, all of them were closed up. I’d meant to do a photo essay on them for a while and I finally did one time in December when I was back there.

Click for larger images.

when I’m in a hurry and I think I’m grabbing peach yogurt and it’s actually orange creme.

Note to yogurt making companies: orange creme is not a good flavor. That it’s patterned after an artificially flavored ice cream snack should be enough of a hint to that effect. What’s next Jolly Rancher Watermelon flavor yogurt?

In Mexico I had a Pepsi Retro.

It has “natural ingredients” and “no artificial flavors or colors” (that’s what the Spanish says, I think). As we know, I like my sodas sans corn syrup.

It has an old timey taste. Jesse tried it as well and said the same thing. I liked it. Generally I like Coke a lot better than Pepsi but if Pepsi Retro was available in Estados Unidos (apparently it’s Mx only), I might even buy it over regular coke (though probably not over Mexican Coke (w/ sugar rather than corn syrup) in a glass bottle, which is available in some stores around me.

Last night, Dug, jwerberg, Helene (and a couple others) and I went to Lucky Ju Ju, which a pinball museum in Alameda. You pay $10 admission and then all the machines are on free play. You can play as many as you want! There are some really old gems as well as some modern oddities, like one with a convoluted surface that makes the ball jump around in a crazy way (it’s a Martian theme, or something) and a soccer one that’s timed rather than a given number of balls–you have to score more times than letting the balls through the paddles. This place is a total blast.

It’s got pretty weird hours (6pm-midnight Friday and Saturday, 4-8pm Sunday), but it’s worth a trip or ten.

Here’s one flickr photo set.

My wrists still hurt from all that pinballing!

Best entertainment for the money around here outside of Musee Mechanique.

The strangest alternative-Super-Bowl TV ever had to have been Animal Planet’s Puppy Bowl. Did anyone see this?

There have been Bud Bowls and Celebrity Death Matches, but putting a bunch of puppies (and kitties, for the half-time show) on a small field-looking play area and filming them? That’s absurd.

Also, we missed at least one or two plays of the actual Super Bowl watching it.

Decisions: do I bike the Wiggle or take one of ‘em Muni buses?

Oh learning new things in a new city!

I just saw snow flurries, unmistakably and confirmed by other witnesses.

It’s crazy! I was practically speechless.

• George Washington Carver
• Martin Luther King
• John Wayne Gacy

Who else can I add to the list?

I only listed [(first middle/last) last] name variants up there, but I figure there must be some [first (middle/first last)] names as well. If someone was famous and was called Mary Elizabeth Taylor, that would be an example of that variant.

The other implied thing is that the 3-named famous person actually went by or was call by all three names regularly.

[Yes, I'm consciously stealing the title.]

Lucerne (Safeway’s house brand) now has a green tea light yogurt. It’s really good. I’ve been enjoying it frequently. The mango green tea is also good, but I’d give the peach green tea flavor a skip.

Fight Quest is a pretty fascinating show. I caught a couple episodes of it today. Two guys travel to different regions of the globe to learn regional martial arts styles. They have 5 days of intense training and then they have to fight a skilled fighter of the style. I’m not quite sure why it’s fascinating; maybe it’s seeing these guys push themselves to the limit.

(Here’s another post from my Taiwan backlog.)

I found the bathrooms in Taiwan pretty interesting. I sort of wanted to take photos of them except that it would make me a bit creepy[1], so I didn’t.

In America, many, if not most, urinals are of the short and blocky variety, like this American Standard one, but in Taiwan and other parts of Asia, they were of all sorts, short, tall, down to the floor, curved, blocky, narrow, deep and so on. Many of them were made by Toto (”I bless the raaaaiins down in Aaaaaaaafrica!” is what I’d sing in my head each time I saw one of those.)

There were also numerous funny signs. Two of my favorite are below.

In the MRT stations in Taipei:

Come Closer Please
automatic flushing when you draw near

This one I’d always imagine the “come closer please” said low and breathy, like a movie monster or serial killer. Because, I mean, when else do you hear “come closer please”?

In the train station in Hualien:

Stand Closer
to be discrete and clean

There was also a theme in many bathrooms of things that said something like “Let’s learn English!” with an English idiom and its Chinese meaning. Some of these idioms were not very common or possibly not idioms at all. I’d love it for a Chinese person to come to America and then say one of those and when people looked at him questioning, he would have to explain that he learned it in a bathroom so it must be right!

There were also a lot of proverbs and old sayings on walls. These were also translated into English. Most of them were not very funny.

I did take one photo of a sign in a bathroom in Thailand:

I hadn’t really considered washing my feet in the sink but now that they mention it, it does sound like a good idea!

Outside of a bathroom, but still related:

[1] Is this post creepy anyway?

(I have a backlog of posts started when I was in Taiwan. Here’s one of them.)

I recently [well, I started this a while ago, so more like a month or two ago] finished Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet. It’s a memoir of his life with savant syndrome and Aspergers.

You might recognize him from his appearance on Letterman a few years ago:

I found it pretty interesting. Daniel is one of the people on the autistic spectrum that is most able to describe going on in his brain. For instance, each number has a shape and texture in his head. If he’s multiplying two numbers the shapes/ textures come together to form a new shape and he just says what that new number is based on the shape. Interesting, but not exactly helpful in getting my to do complicated multiplication or sums in my head…

There’s also quite a bit about dealing with Aspergers, unrelated to any special abilities he has. He has problems socializing and with making eye contact and things like that. I do too (though not as extreme), but people seem to just tell me to get over it.

It’s well-written and the reading goes smoothly and quickly (in case you’re concerned about reading a book written by someone who talks about his problems communicating). Overall, it’s an uplifting book, with plenty of hope and overcoming obstacles.

You can also check out another interesting video. He also has blog.

While reading this list of US Presidential assassination attempts I realized I have a new favorite president. The description of the attempt on Andrew Jackson:

At the Capitol Building, a house painter named Richard Lawrence aimed two flintlock pistols at the President, but both misfired, one of them while Lawrence stood within 13 feet (4 m) of Jackson and the other at point-blank range.[11] After firing the two pistols, Lawrence was apprehended after Jackson beat him with his cane.

Number of days: 112

Number of days or parts thereof spent traveling: 47 (3 to/ from, 7 intra-Taiwan (3 Kaohsiung, 2 Taroko, 2 Kinmen), 37 intra-Asia (7 Indonesia, 5 Thailand; 15 Hong Kong, Macau, China; 10 Japan)

Number of countries visited (since moving): 6 (Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand, China, Japan, U.S.) + 2 special administrative regions with separate border controls (Hong Kong, Macau)

Number of countries visited (year to date): 8 (above + South Africa, Swaziland) + 2 S.A.R.s

Number of flights (since moving): 14 (SFO-> TPE-> CKG-> DPS-> CKG-> TPE-> BKK-> TPE-> HKG-> TPE-> NRT-> TPE, TSA-> KNH-> TSA, TPE-> SFO)

Number of flights (2007): 31 (SFO-> CVG-> IAD-> JNB, DUR-> CPT-> JNB-> JFK, BOS-> JFK-> SFO-> BOS-> DFW-> SFO-> HNL-> LIH-> HNL-> SFO + above + SFO-> CLT-> DCA)

Miles flown (since moving): 27,406 miles (44,106 km)

Miles flown (2007): 63,569 miles (102,304 km)

Number of high speed train journeys: 4 (Taipei->Kaohsiung->Taipei, Tokyo->Kyoto->Tokyo)

Number of train journeys: 6 (above + Taipei->Hualien->Taipei)

Approximate number of km ridden on scooters: 225

Best hotel (overall): Kamandalu Resort, Ubud, Bali. A connection to the cousin of the owner opened the door for staying in this swanky place. Gorgeous surroundings and really nice rooms. Private verandas looking over rice paddies. The service was also excellent. We went out riding bikes around the rice paddies one day and came back sweating. Pretty soon after we entered the lobby we had cool moist towels to wipe our faces with. Perhaps the only nicer place I’ve stayed is the ridiculous Schlosshotel Veir Jahrezeiten (Four Seasons Palace Hotel) in Berlin. (They had a Ferrari convention while we were there and it didn’t seem out of place.)

Best hotel (value): Hirano Guesthouse, Kyoto. 3500 yen a night in Kyoto is very cheap and besides a nice place to stay, the owner was very friendly, helpful and accommodating, making us tea when we came home for a break in the afternoons. She also made us breakfast every morning, let us use her bicycles and computer/ internet. Oh and there was a candy bowl and after we ate an unreasonable amount of it, she didn’t complain, she just refilled it.

Number of American chain stores patronized (not counting convenience stores, exact): 3 (2 Subways-Taipei, 1 Denny’s-Kyoto)

Number of American chain stores patronized (counting convenience stores[1], approximate): 22.2 (the above + Circle K’s in Taiwan, Bali, Thailand, ampm’s in Japan, plus 0.2 for a Mister Donut in Japan[2])

Oddest food obsession: Harbo’s Happy Cola gummy candies

Most common food eaten: rice (~ >1.5 servings a day)

Most common food product eaten: Kinder Chocolate (~ 0.6 a day)

Most “exotic” foods eaten: crickets, silk worms, frog

Number of Dr. Peppers consumed: 2 (one in Japan, one in Thailand)

Foods most missed: good bread, good cheese, Dr. Pepper, good beef, shelled shrimp, deboned fish.

Number of Hello Kitty products seen: in the thousands

Number of Hello Kitty products purchased: 1 (alarm clock, convenience store, Japan)

America: so quiet, so dark, so many English speakers, so many whites/ latinos/as, blacks. big supermarkets. low population density.

Least useful piece of clothing: dress shirt (the greenish one, never worn, given away at the end)

Most useful piece of clothing: shoes (the brown Adidas, nearly daily)

Most useful piece of clothing out of its original purpose (and new use): board shorts-style swimsuit (exercise shorts)

Piece of clothing I most immediately realized I’d forgotten: navy blue cotton boxers (that I use as warm weather pajama bottoms)

Number of books read: 5.75 (2nd 0.5 of Slow Man by Coeztee, Love is a Mixtape by Sheffield, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: a Story of the Hip Hop Generation by Chang, Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs by Klosterman, Born on a Blue Day By Tammet, You Don’t Love Me Yet by Lethem, first 0.25 of About a Boy by Hornsby)

Number of concerts attended: 3 (Emily the Band @ Underworld, Apples in Stereo @ the Wall, Sugar Plum Ferry @ the Wall)

Number of CDs purchased: 19 (5 in Hong Kong (Monitor), 5 @ WWR (1st trip), 5 @ WWR (2nd trip), 2 @ IMPO, 1 @ FINAC, 1 @ Roses(?))

Number of pieces of mail received: 6 (3 packages of promo CD(s); 1 each from Ian, Lauren, Gumbeaux)

[1] This is tricky because things are confusing. 7-11 is Japanese for instance.

[2] Mr. Donut is an American brand but the Asian stores are run by Duskin Co out of Japan under a licensing agreement.

More lessons from Adrian. Former/ latter is comparative between two objects. For example:

I like apples and grapes. I like the former because of the crispness while I like the latter because of the sweetness.

(I’m just making stuff here.)

First/ last point to the ends of a string of things. If you have three or more objects, you may think you sound smart using former/ latter, but it’s not right.

For example:

I like ladybugs, lightning bugs and butterflies. I have fond memories of the first [not former] from my younger days.

That makes for an a bit of an awkward sentence so perhaps “first of those” would be most appropriate.

Basically just a caribeann-style sound system but on bikes. Pretty good photo essay.

This is awesome:

For a year from September 2005, under the nose of the Panthéon’s unsuspecting security officials, a group of intrepid “illegal restorers” set up a secret workshop and lounge in a cavity under the building’s famous dome. Under the supervision of group member Jean-Baptiste Viot, a professional clockmaker, they pieced apart and repaired the antique clock that had been left to rust in the building since the 1960s. Only when their clandestine revamp of the elaborate timepiece had been completed did they reveal themselves.

It reminds me somewhat of a higher art version of what I saw at the ‘tute’.

(via wax)

Statistics lesson number 1, by me.

There’s a difference between percent and percentage points. People often get this wrong.

For example (bugmenot can help):

When it came to side effects, Effexor’s greatest liability was that it could cause hypertension, a side effect not shared by S.S.R.I.’s. Sussman showed us some data from the clinical trials, indicating that at lower doses, about 3 percent of patients taking Effexor had hypertension as compared with about 2 percent of patients assigned to a placebo. There was only a 1 percent difference between Effexor and placebo, he commented, and pointed out that treating high blood pressure might be a small price to pay for relief from depression.

Wrong. There was only 1 percentage point difference between the two.

3% is 50% more than 2%. (And 2% is 33% less than 3%). There is no form of comparison between the two of those percents that is only 1 percent.

(To the credit of the author, he points out that it can be seen as 50% more, though he doesn’t call Sussman’s version wrong.)

This logic puzzle is bugging me. I got a few steps in and now I’m stuck.

I’ve never been good at those logic puzzles. In fact, I’m probably the only person I know who was helped immensely by the GRE switching away from those. But maybe I’ll get better if I practice.

made a good point: don’t worry about little stuff and everything is little.

The weekend in Kaohsiung was good.

Friday

High Speed Rail from Taipei to Zouying (outside Kaohsiung). It’s fast and smooth. I’m a fan. There was a mix up with the hotel about the shuttle and I ended up waiting at the station for 45 minutes and then taking a taxi. The hotel paid for it (their mix up).

Saturday

Breakfast. I’m not sure if I’d ever get used to traditional chinese breakfast. I had some toast. Then I walked to the ferry pier to Chijin island. The walk isn’t far but it crosses a bridge that doesn’t have a sidewalk. It wasn’t too busy and I’m alive.

Chijin’s a small community in a big city. Small houses, lots of bikes[1]. I like it. The temple near the ferry terminal is small but one of the nicest I’ve seen. Built in 1666 or something. Lots of nice detail. I sat outside and read for a while.

I walked up to the fort and lighthouse on the hill. Nice views obscured a bit by smog. On the main drag there are seafood stalls with the stuff still alive or freshly caught and on ice. I had soem fantastic mussels and shrimp. The mussels were among the best I’ve had–done in a similar style to 3 cup chicken [2].

I took the ferry back to the main island (Taiwan Island, that is) and walked back over the scary bridge to the hotel and took a break. After that I walked to the Tuntex Skytower and went to the observation deck. It’s an interesting building that’s like a stick figure person with no arms or head; there’s a gap at the bottom, basically. Between the Skytower and Taipei 101, I’m thinking that the Taiwanese do skyscrapers pretty well–they’re attractive.

From there I took a taxi across town to the Liouho Street Night Market. It’s bustling and big and fun. I got some weird and great food and did some people watching. I’ll post a separate photo essay on this.

The taxis from Skytower to Liouho and from Liouho back to the hotel were about $4 each. Why had I been walking so much?

Sunday

Struggled through breakfast again.

I went to mass at the Holy Rosary Cathedral, one of the oldest churches in Taiwan. Really beautiful. Mass is given in English by an Italian priest. I was wondering if the place would be half full. Catholics and English speakers aren’t exactly numerous around here, but it was packed. The answer: Filipinos, who often come to work as domestic workers, are very Catholic and often, I would guess, speak English better than Chinese.

Another thing that’s nicer about mass rather than just a walk around in beautiful old churches is the time to sit and absorb it. Holy Rosary is really nice. I went to mass in the Koelner Dom back in 2002. It was nice to sit there.

From there, I walked around, getting some papaya milk at the Kaohsiung Milk King and then sitting by Love River and reading for a bit.

A quick tour of Yancheng’s temples, lunch at the City of Steamed Glutinous Rice, and then I went back the hotel. They took me back to the train station.

I had dreams of the most efficient tourism route ever for this trip. I was doing pretty well. Lotus Lake, in Zouying is close to nothing…except the high speed rail station, so I’ll just go early, drop my bag in a locker and then walk around the lake, I thought. Brilliant plan, except for the fact that the HRS station doesn’t have lockers. The two things a train station should have–take note if you’re planning on building one–are trains and luggage lockers. So I ended up walking around the lake for a few hours with my fairly heavy bag. My knees are not happy.

The trip back was as smooth as the way there and the MRT connections once I got back to Taipei were fast, so I was back in my room ~22 minutes after I got off the train.

[1] There were a whole lot of bikes–I might have seen dozens–set up with bullhorn barns and a single gear. I’m a big fan of this style and I was happy to see so many of them in Kaohsiung.

[2] The best chicken you’ll ever taste, as made by Joy Restaurant in San Mateo. I’m now determined to make my own 3 cup chicken/ mussels.

I didn’t get any photos of these things. Sorry!

• yummy season: A sign for Subway had these words along with a lot of chinese characters. It is yummy season
• ninja cupid: a shirt I saw on the subway said this along with a few chinese characters and a depiction of what is apparently a ninja cupid. I am definitely buying one of these if I see it.
• boring pie: a cookie/ biscuit-like product with this name and the slogan something along the lines of “get out of boring time.”

Note: I carry my camera around a lot, but I can’t always get a photo of everything.

One of the weirder wikipedia pages: list of people who have disappeared.

The older ones are full of mystery and are pretty interesting. The newer ones are largely kidnapped kids; kidnapping kids is not interesting or fun; kidnapping kids is sad.

What’s with having 12 months? Does that make sense at all? Years and days make sense–they are determined by the behavior of the earth, but months? That’s just silly. I vote for ten 36.5 day months.

And while we’re at it, 24 hours? Why not 22 or 28. At least 28 is a perfect number. All 24 has going for it is that game [1]. Come on, split up the day into 10 hours, each of which would have 10 minutes, each of which would have 864 seconds [2].

Throw out those old archaic systems. Who’s with me?

[1] It is a fun game. Who’s up for a 24 tourney when I get back??
[2] No, not 10 seconds. The second is already the SI unit of time.

Driving into Ubud from Kuta when I was in Bali, we saw a lot of floats in the street. We asked the driver and it turns out that there was a parade that day commemorating the day. We got various stories about who it was for, whether it was for anyone at all. It was an annual parade, or it was for the husband of a woman we talked to, or it was for a baby that had died a couple weeks prior. Or it might have been a combination, a planned parade but when the baby or the husband died, they became part of it.

The plan, we learned, was to parade these floats about a kilometer and then burn the floats. As it was tradition, all the men, including my group, all wore sarongs.

Some floats prepared on the road.

Everyone turned out, it seemed.

It took quite a bit of coordination to lift each of the floats.

There was a lot of noise and excitement as the parade started.

On some of the floats, younger boys road up top.

There was a music group from the local school marching along with instruments from the gamelan tradition.

People who didn’t walk along the route with the parade watched as it went past.

At the end of the parade route at the cemetery area, all the floats were lined up around the edge of the area. Every family in town prepared an offering which were then placed in the floats before they were burned.

After a lull in the excitement there was a lot of yelling off to one side. Suddenly I realized that the locals had dug up some (apparently recently buried) bodies. Wrapped in thatched blankets, they were rushed over and placed in the floats amid a flurry of yells.

This man was the man with the matches, one presumes an important person on this day.

One float with offerings lined up around it and in the back.

Everything goes up in flames.

Man Charged With Beheading Hotel’s Duck:

Police said Clark — an auditor in the Office of Inspector General — tore the duck’s head off near the hotel’s atrium pond Saturday and then told witnesses: “I’m hungry. I’m gonna eat it.”

“It sounds like there was quite a bit of alcohol involved,” police Sgt. John Wuorinen said.

On the bus, seen on a young woman presumably going to work:

WHAT DOES “FUCK” MEAN?
F = FOREVER I LOVE YOU
U = UNHAPPY WITHOUT YOU
C = CARE ABOUT YOU
K = KISS YOU WITH A HUG
I GIVE YOU BIGGEST F.U.C.K.

Oh, Taipei, how you amuse me.

I could easily spend 3 months being amused by the signs here. Here are just a few I’ve seen.

[Some of the signs are hard to read in this size. Click for larger versions.]

Taiwan

There are signs everywhere, many of them lighted. They can easily fill your view.

Beef and beer, how can you go wrong?

Lobster and beer, is the only improvement, I guess.

On some signs, the iconography is unusual:

On some signs the language is–how should I say this–awkward. (Note, the screen they’re referring to has never been on that I’ve noticed).

Yes, they go fast, I get it! 39 m/ min fast!

Announced Tuesday along with the iPod Touch and the other things is the best designed cake in the world. It can hold 8 billion songs. 8…billion…songs…

Is the skin eating food or is the skin the food? I’m confused.

There is something about chicken restaurants. Thumbs up! You’re about to eat me!

“The best saporous fried chicken in Taiwan”. Where’s my dictionary? Is that a word?

“Super chicken” is the newest superhero…you can eat.

I know where I’ll go next time I need some mockery.

Hello! Damper Baby!

“Deep flied pork cutlet”. I’m not putting words in anyone’s mouth.

Some bring out the giggly high schooler in me.

Summer BEER Rock Festival

Beer
SUMMER
Rock
Festival
ACTIVE
->Activity Girl With Dream
Active girl has inside herself to be confident, fulfilled, happy and healthy. Active girl Power! is the power to speak your mind, to stand up for yourself, and to know what’s right for you. We want every girl to know: you are unique, you are valuable, and with your Girl Power! you can succeed. The future is yours.

Indonesia

No “tipping” <wink><wink> Ah yes, I see.

The only I saw can be disturbed aviation safety was me taking the photo of the sign.

Car maintenance shop, but in Indonesian!

Sort of like a Walmart but in Indonesia.

a) I dislike change. It ends up my floor because my pockets get too heavy. I had $41.68 on my floor as of this morning.

[Also, the Page Mill branch of the Stanford Federal Credit Union has a coin machine like those at Safeway but no commission! You get a receipt from it to exchange it for cash or deposit it.]

b) I have a lot more stuff than when I moved to California just under 4 years ago. It’s still manageable but barely. I can also be brutal when it’s time to pack up in terms of what I throw out and what I keep. Like today I threw out my coke can birdman costume (after it had sit on Craiglist->free a few days, I should note) even though it took me a ridiculous amount of time and energy to make but I knew I wasn’t going to use it again.

also:
c) I’m moving to Taiwan, well, now.

Thanks for the good suggestions. Here’s who I ended up donating too.

• local 1/4 Catholic Charities CYO, San Francisco Archdiocese They provide a variety of good services to people in San Francisco and San Mateo (my) county.
• national 1/4 American Red Cross national disaster relief fund. I think the Red Cross does really good work and you never know when the next disaster will be.
• international 1/4 African Medical and Research Fund I like that they’re doing research into malaria, which is a major problem, in addition to many other major problems (HIV/ AIDS, TB, safe water, etc.)
• international 1/4 Compassion International A suggestion of Colin last year. Worthwhile services for impoverished children in the developing world.
• international 1/4 South Africa Development Fund They sponsor a wide variety of worthwhile programs of all different sorts in my ancestral home.

Yup, that’s 5/4. I ended up finding more worthwhile charities than I originally was going to donate to so, I just ended donating more.

I saw Superbad last night. It’s really funny and uses some dirty language.

I give it four fingers and a thumb.

On Sunday I saw the Pirates and Giants play at ATT Park with dug.

The pitching match up was $126 million Barry Zito (the highest paid pitcher, 2007’s stake is $10 million) vs. $380,000 Tom Gorzelanny. Zito walk the first three batters, gave up a two-run home run and a two-run triple (both to Josh Phelps). Meanwhile, Gorzelanny had his first complete game shut out, helping him earn the National League co-player of the week honors.

It was a fun game to watch and it was the first time I’d sat in the left field bleachers (5th row–nice grab, dug!). All in all a good way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Both teams then flew to Pittsburgh for a make-up double header on Monday. I’m only mentioning it because there was some craziness with the line-up on the Pirates behalf. Between the two games, here’s some of the odd positions:

• Doumit, normally a backup catcher, playing right field (until he sprained his wrist)
• Castillo, normally a 3rd baseman (or utility infielder), playing right field (once Doumit went out, first game)
• Bautista, normally a 2nd baseman (or utility infielder), playing left field (second game)
• Phelps, normally a 1st baseman, catching

Wow!

inches from my head. It’s so close the sound feels like it’s coming from inside my head. It’s sort of freaking me out.

We did suit Friday at work (a play off of casual friday). I looked dashing:

They look like this:

Possibly the best japanese game show, or any game show. A foam board with a shape cut out in it moves toward you. You have to fit through the shape or you get knocked into a pool of water. Unexpectedly hilarious. (From Melissa.)

A bunch of inmates in the Philippines do the Thriller video. It’s meticulous and awesome. We’ve seen it at a wedding and in a movie but this may be the most impressive. (From Dave)

Michel Lauziere performs “The Toreador Song” from Carmen on 300 some bottles, hitting them with sticks attached to his roller blades. Very cool and I never would have thought of doing it this way. (From Andy)

It had never rained (in recorded history going back to 1849) on July 18th in San Francisco until this past Wednesday:

San Francisco has the oldest consecutive rain record in California. Wednesday’s rain left July 7 and July 14 as the only days San Francisco has never recorded a measurable amount of rain, 0.01 inches or more.

Man, it’s so weird here….

I’m really sorry. I know my server/ blog is intermittent and slow if it’s even working. I don’t have the time to change servers right this minute.

I’ll try to take care of it this weekend.

I was just thinking about some things I said in situations where I was looking for a job. I’m pretty amused (and proud) of a couple of the things I said.

1. To an Autodesk (makers of AutoCad) representative at the MIT job fair:

So why doesn’t MIT use or teach AutoCad?

2. To an engineer at NASA – Ames interviewing me about a environment-surveying robot that used a parachute with a grappling hook to land on and drag itself up a hillside.

I can’t understand why you would want to solve the problem that way.

Needless to say, I didn’t get either job.

(I’m not actually that irreverent in general but sometimes I just get in a mood, I guess.)

(I should also note that I think both things are fair statements, even in retrospect.)

Google SMS is awesome. You simply text what you want to GOOGLE (466453) and it texts you back almost instantly with what you need.

Traveling in Boston last week, I used this a lot. (It should be noted that I have unlimited text messages.) Don’t know where that bar was? Text “the littlest 02116″. Is my flight on time? Text “AA 631″. What time is that movie showing? “Eagle vs. Shark 02139″. What’s that froyo place’s phone number? “Ankara Cafe Boston”. What’s the weather going to be the next day? “Weather 02139″.

All of these things got me the exact information I wanted quickly. I’m impressed!

I’ve been a bit slow on the updates here. I’m catching up!

Libs and I managed to wait possibly four hours between the two of us on the day the tickets were released (back in February), but we managed to get six tickets for the Red Sox while I was in Boston last week. The final groups was Jesse, Colin, Heather, Lauren (no blog!), Libs and I. Good group.

The game was hilariously lopsided (another recap here). By the end of the 3rd inning the Devil Rays were down 13-2, they were on their 3rd pitcher and the Red Sox had hit a grand slam (Coco Crisp) and a 3 run HR (Lowell).

We could have left at that point, but that would have been no fun. Plus we would have missed Sweet Caroline (you should have heard me singing!).

Afterwards, in what’s becoming a bit of a tradition, we hit up Ankara (”For the Gen X-ers”) for froyo. Brownie and reese’s pieces could possibly be the best combination of add-ins ever.

UPS is following my lead!

Last year, it cut 28 million miles from truck routes — saving roughly three million gallons of fuel — in good part by mapping routes that minimize left turns. This year, U.P.S. began offering customers a self-service system for redirecting packages that are en route.

via scott

I did a radio show for the first time in three weeks last night.

Here’s the playlist.

I played it pretty loose and I was pretty happy with the results. I’ve found a lot of great music in the last few weeks and I got to share that.

Now for the musak:

I Once Was Canadian – KZSU – 7.11.07 (mp3)

Times like these make me think of this a e housman:

“Is my team plowing,
That I was used to drive
And hear the harness jingle
When I was man alive?”

Ay, the horses trample,
The harness jingles now;
No change though you lie under
The land you used to plow.

“Is football playing
Along the river shore,
With lads to chase the leather,
Now I stand up no more?”

Ay, the ball is flying,
The lads play heart and soul;
The goal stands, Up, the keeper
Stands Up to keep the goal.

“Is my girl happy,
That I thought hard to leave,
And has she tired of weeping
As she lies down at eve?”

Ay, she lies down lightly,
She lies not down to weep:
Your girl is well contented.
Be still, my lad, and sleep.

“Is my friend hearty,
Now I am thin and pine,
And has he found to sleep in
A better bed than mine?”

Yes, lad, I lie easy,
I lie as lads would choose;
I cheer a dead man’s sweetheart,
Never ask me whose.

The family, at dinner.

Brother: I got a few movies from Netflix and we could watch one tonight. I got Melinda and Melinda—from Woody Allen—Before Sunset, To Be and to Have[1], and a Hitchcock movie: Two Men on a Train [sic]. [explains some of the plot of Strangers on a Train for a couple minutes.]

Dad: So which Hitchcock is that?

Me: Alfred. [laughs for eight minutes]

[1] This is one of the best films I’ve seen in the last five years. A really really good documentary.

Adrian is not(??!!!) rad.

I beg to differ. I beg to differ, my friend. Do you have shirts supporting your argument? I think not…

Yup, it’s not even June anymore. Pathetic! This is the 12th mix tape. It’s been almost a year since I started these things. Yup, pretty long ago. You enjoying them?

This is heavily delayed, I know. It was probably in part due to all the time I put into my loop mix.

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 2007june playlist in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

If you want to read the liner notes before downloading the whole thing, they’re here. This one includes a lot of great indie pop/ rock, including a lot of new finds (of new and old bands) like Emily Sparks, the New Year, and My Latest Novel.

Adrian’s June 2007 mix tape (zupload link with zip file)
(I’m trying this because hosting the zip was a significant bandwidth drain. let me know your thoughts on it; maybe I’ll switch to something else next month if that doesn’t work well.)

As always this’ll be up for a limited time (~1 week), so grab it now.

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.

7-11 has transformed eleven stores into Kwik-E-Marts as a promotion for the new Simpsons movie, even including Simpsons foods like the pink donut and squishees.

Luckily one of the 11 is near me, so I’ll stop by in the next month. I’m excited!

ESPN does a story (/video) entitled “Death Race” and I sort of want to do it. It’s about the annual tough guy race in the UK. Parts of the race include running through icy water and mud, running through hanging strips of wire, some of which are electrified and bounding over hay bales on fire into icy water.

At long last, we come to the final obstacle, the newly added Viagra Falls. To get there, we wade 30 yards in neck-deep water before climbing up the muddy hill and sliding down a slick tarp into icy water as course marshals use fire hoses to spray us. The hoses and subsequent dunking aren’t the worst part, though. No. After all we’d been through, the added wading to reach the slide just seems cruel.

Cruel and, well, unnecessary.

It’s a pretty well-written story and the video’s good too.

I went for a short bike ride today. It was strange, riding around, hair-in-need-of-a-cut in a wind [1], with tension in my shoulders and a bit of discomfort in the seat. The discomfort was in a way comfortable, familiar. It was good being back on the bike. In the end, my knee only wanted to do a few miles, but I’m hoping it won’t show any ill effects of this exercise later today or tomorrow and that I can ride more in the near future.

[1] I’m a big fan of wearing a helmet, but on this gorgeous Sunday afternoon on a slow ride of a short route of all no-risk right turns on small suburban streets, I didn’t wear one.

Yesterday, I went to the Taiwan Cultural Office of San Francisco (in Sunnyvale) yesterday. They serve some consular functions and I was investigating visa stuff for the fall.

I got there and there are people sitting around, forms, papers and signs everywhere, but no one is speaking, reading, writing in English. It ended up taking me 15 minutes to find where to get the forms I needed.

I’m sure I showed a little of a deer-in-headlights look in my eyes, but my mental dialog went something more like “oh my gosh what am I doing?! how am I going to do four months of this when I’m having a hard time with fifteen minutes?!”

It was pretty sweet. I’m sure it’ll work out.

There are very few things I can convince myself to do daily. Brushing my teeth, getting dressed, eating and showering are about it and those I notice very soon if I don’t.

Things that take a longer time to see the effects of, I’m not very good. Physical therapy I can do for a while but it’s hard to stick with. Exercise I can handle on the times per week basis, but not on the daily basis.

Starting today, I’m going to start two things (that may or may not help me in the long run) that take 90 days (at least) to see an effect: Glucosamine and Minoxidil.

Glucosamine is a supplement that’s been shown to help some portion of the population’s joints in rebuilding. Now, I don’t have joint problems because I’m not old (and only old people have joint problems), but if I did they’d be left ankle, right and left knees, and right elbow and to a lesser extent left elbow, right and left shoulders. The dose that’s been studied is 1.5g (1500mg). This is a very large pill.

Minoxidil is just for fun. Any problem that it treats that you might think I have is a figment of your imagination. This problem simple does not effect me.

My mom was telling me this weekend that my parents’ new house is quiet. This astounds me because this is compared to Candlewood[1]. I can’t imagine a quieter place. I remember going into the basement during a break from college and my ears and head hurt it was so quiet. I was so used to four or six or eight computers humming in any room, people yelling, laughing, chatting, arguing, snoring in deep sleep, the belabored breathing of a cold that just won’t go away, the music playing, someone drumming or singing or playing guitar, the street cleaners slowly making their way up the street, the shovels of the snowplows scraping along the street in winter, the garbage trucks coming to empty the dumpster, the cars whizzing past or honking if they weren’t, the drunken college kids yelling or laughing on their walk home from whatever bar or pub, the planes making their way out of Logan. I was so used to a constant din, a background of noise that this silence was shocking.

If Double Eagle[2] is quieter than that, I may have a hard time. I’ll be sure to bring my laptop and music to play.

[1],[2] Through lots of moving, business relationships, and a spread out set of relations, my family has need to refer to a number of different houses. We invariably choose the street name. “Which house was that?” “Smits Road”. “Where was it that Wolfgang visited?” “General Allen Lane”. An odd case of synecdoche. The Candlewood house was always just the “house” but now that my parents have moved away, it’s taking on ‘Candlewood”.

Our cars also had an odd nomenclature: their color. “We’ll take the green car.” “Which car can I take to Andy’s house?” “Take the red car. Mom needs the blue car.” Somehow every car we’ve purchased since the late 80s has been a mutually exclusive color to all that came before. My family is rife with synecdoche.

Reading today, I realized I had an opinion about something that most likely no one cares about…so of course I must blog about it.

For me, the ideal bookmark is a reasonable size, is a bit thicker than standard paper and is plentiful, as I often lose bookmarks.

4 good bookmarks:

1. business cards: I have a box of 500 and I give them out pretty rarely. They’ve got a nice thickness and if I lose the book it’s already labeled. the downside is that they’re a little small and can slide around on the page or fall out of the back cover (which is where I store my bookmarks when I read).
2. business reply cards from magazines: these things are annoying when they fall out of magazines, but they’re always around and they’re a good size and thickness for bookmarks.
3. receipts: I buy usually one book at a time and often keep the receipt in the back cover in case I want to return it, so this is often my default bookmark. they’re pretty thin and often too big so they get crinkled and folded.
4. ticket stubs: a great size and thickness. I go to enough shows, ball games, and movies that these are often around. I get a little nostalgia trip whenever I look at them too.

From metafilter:

5 seconds of pure fun!

[click for bigger version]

Gelatin? Really? That’s all I can get in this aisle? An entire aisle of gelatin?

And gelatin is a “frozen choice”?

It’s about as official as it can get without having tickets: I’ll be going to live/ work in Taiwan for the fall (early-mid September to mid-late December).

Generally I’m a more of a descriptive linguist, but I do have a couple language pet peeves, one of which is misuse of binary words.

Perfect, for example. Something is or it isn’t. It can’t be pretty perfect or very perfect. It can be almost perfect; that works.

Unique, is another example. Is it one of a kind? Then it’s unique.

I’m all for saying over or understating things for effect. Like “I’m pretty much very perfect”. Hilarious, but grammatical error is still not correct and such a statement should only be used for its humorous value!

Menlo Park is dead at 10pm on a Sunday.

[personal thoughts, ramblings after the jump]

(more…)

I saw Knocked Up on Friday night.

The basic plot is that a rather plain-looking slacker impregnates a beautiful go-getter during a one night stand. Hilarity ensues.

I thought it was really funny and worth seeing. Between all the laughs there is a bit of sappiness, but not bad sappiness. This is the least well-written review of anything ever. Sorry. I’m going to stop typing now.

Here’s my playlist from this week.

here’s the mp3 of the show which you can download and listen to if you wish (mp3).

Local folksy band Beatbeat Whisper appeared on the show and play a live set.

I went to quite a game between the A’s and the Red Sox last night. Mark Ellis hit for the cycle. The Red Sox made a comeback in the 9th to tie it and send it to extra innings. David Ortiz almost homered in the 10th and then Chavez hit a walk-off home run in the bottom of the 11th. Haren pitched really well (whereas Tavarez did not).

Pretty exciting stuff.

Update: Photos here.

I just deleted the “Bischoff” phone number on my phone as my parents moved out of my childhood home yesterday. Goodbye, Pittsburgh. It’s been good.

I won’t be doing the Escape from the Rock triathlong which I signed up for back in December. I’ve been having some knee problems so I switched to the swim-only event. It’ll be my second Alcatraz swim. This time will be not quite as bone-chilling, I think, as I’ll be using a wetsuit.

Mister Rogers was pretty incredible.

In high school, I remembering visiting a friend, Waller, who was doing a week-long camp/ program at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, where Mister Rogers did his theological studies. Mister Rogers had stopped by the previous night. Waller was so excited about that; it had made her week. At the time I thought it was a sort of nostalgia-based, ironic excitement but now I realize it was probably authentic.

So I’m thinking of becoming a stand up comic. Here’s part of my routine.

so. have you noticed how “hola” looks like “holla“? I like imagining mexicans saying “holla!!”"
[with mexican accent]: “hollaaaaa, seniorita!!!”

have you noticed that outside calipers aren’t like vernier calipers at all and yet they’re both called calipers? What’s the deal with that???

so there are all these apples product that have names that sort of make sense: iphone, imac, etc, but what the crap is ipod supposed to mean? it’s my ‘pod’? it doesn’t look like a pod at all!

This all comes out of a coversation with my friend, Andy. I’ve included the full conversation below because I think it’s funny.

(more…)

Check out Cracked’s list of ‘that guys’. It’s a pretty good list; I recognized all of them but only knew the name of one of them.

In my line of business, it’s not unusual to get a couple packages from Asian (mostly Taiwan, China) a week. Sometimes the packing material is pretty cool. Some parts were packaged in this box last week.

I like the font (the ‘E’ in erasing and red-dotted ‘i’ in particular) and general graphic design. Also, having all that Chinese script just makes it that much cooler. It’s like someone’s bringing the traveling to me.

I went for a 3/4 mile swim in Aquatic Park today and I was reminded of some necessities for cold open-water swimming:

• silicone ear plugs: keeping cold water out of your ears helps keep you warm
• barracuda hot head neoprene swim cap: keeping your head warm helps keep you warm
• bodyglide: sounds dirty, but actually it’s just to stop chaffing. I use it in my arm pits mainly. (especially useful for salt-water swims)
• a swim suit: really, I recommend a swim suit for all swimming, just for modesty’s sake. I mean, really, you don’t want people to see everything.

Oh, and one more thing. So this is actually “5 things…”

• goggles: these things keep water out of your eyes

One optional other recommendation if you aren’t doing so well in the far sighted department:

• corrective lens googles: if you’re sighting off a far-off object, being able to see it helps. These goggles are relatively cheap and pretty comfortable.

I was talking to my friend Jesse on the phone. He was about to head to a bbq with some mutual friends.

me: Say hi to people for me.
Jesse: I probably won’t actually do that but I’ll say I will because it will make you feel better.
me: …

Thanks, pal.

I tried my hand at high speed photography courtesy of quake electronics

It started 10:30 last Sunday morning. I was still in bed and my other friend Dave gave me a call. The Maker Fair was great, he said, and that it’d be worth a trip to San Mateo to see it, so I headed out and met him there a little while later.

I got there and he was right. It was pretty awesome. I saw a bunch of really cool things, like what is below. I also got to hang out with the awesome folks at instructables, try my hand at welding (with the tech shop people), try high speed photography (see above), see some incredible and cool robots, talk to some interesting folks and eat a funnel cake. The presenters ranged from middle school kids who made lego robots to octogenarians with hand made, very precise engines that ran. All in all, if you have any geek in you, I’d recommend going to the Maker Fair next time.

Tesla coil!

A really cool cart with all mechanical, hand-cranked, hand-made mechanisms/ toys/ displays:

A really cool stylized sculpture with moving engine parts in the head:

more after the jump:
(more…)

Imposter Caught: High school graduate pretends to be a Stanford student, even living in the dorms, buying textbooks and ‘studying’ for exams

I can’t believe I was ever associated with that weird place….

Quite possibly the worst yogurt flavor ever is Yoplait Light Orange Creme. I don’t want that flavor in my yogurt! (I think I must have grabbed it thinking it was the much better apricot mango flavor.) It’s worse than the odd apple turnover flavor.

It’s mixtape time!

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 2007may playlist in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

If you want to read the liner notes before downloading the whole thing, they’re here. This one includes a lot of great indie pop/ rock plus some great soul and oldies songs. New Laura Veirs, some French Quarter, Bishop Allen, Elliott Smith.

Adrian’s May 2007 mix tape (zupload link with zip file, I’m trying this because hosting the zip was a significant bandwidth drain. let me know your thoughts on it; maybe I’ll switch to something else next month if that doesn’t work well.)

As always this’ll be up for a limited time (~1 week), so grab it now.

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.

I have been swimming a mile at a time these days, approximately 1600m, or for ease, 1600 yards (yes, I know they’re not the same). I count in 50 m/ yard increments, 1 length if the pool is set up in the 50m direction, 1 lap if it’s set up in the 25 yard direction, so that ends up being 32 increments.

I often get distracted by the thoughts of the day—one of the best parts of swimming is the time to think—and some days, the hardest part of the swim is keeping track where I am. (Other days, it’s pacing, speed or endurance.)

The three points (or ranges) where I often lose track of where I am:

• 3-6
• 10-13
• 18-21

Do you like the part where I find the most mundane details of my life and blog about them?

“This is my favorite” is a new series in which I show you my favorite things. I am going to start with kitchen items.

This is my favorite fork. It gives me joy when it’s in the drawer when I go to get a fork. It has clean and attractive lines.

The spork resemblance has been noted, but I didn’t actually see it until someone pointed it out.

It is a marked “US” “United Silver Co.” and “Stainless Japan”.

My other friend Dave and I were out getting some snacks when we saw “X-13D” Doritos and we had to get them. The bag says “All American Classic”. What could go wrong.

We got back and cracked them open

and gave them a try.

Note: backup Fritos

Man, these things are weird.

“What did I just put in my mouth?”

Dave said they tasted like a McDonalds Cheeseburger but a little spicier. After trying one myself, I think I have to agree. It has that bad mustard-dill-fake onion-maybe-even-ketchup taste. Very very strange. I stopped at just one on these chips.

Old Joy (wikipedia, trailer) is a minimalist story of two old friends who go camping for a weekend.

Kurt (Oldham’s character) is a free-floating and free-thinking friend who comes back into town and calls up Mark (Daniel London’s character) asking if he wants to check out some hot springs in the woods outside of town. Mark “asks” his pregnant wife(?)/ girlfriend (?) if he can go and then sets off. Kurt is that unreliable asshole friend that you have, the one that you love but you don’t count on for anything. Kurt gets them lost on the way to hot springs and delays the whole plan.

Friends change; that’s what this movie’s about. Mark is on the verge of fatherhood while Kurt has gone, it seems, from one hot spring and wild forest adventure to another. At the same time, it sort of shows you why those friends are still important even if the two don’t have that much in common.

Yo La Tengo’s soundtrack is great and works really well in the film. I must say, though, it didn’t quite floor me like their soundtrack to Junebug.

[1] “subtle” in critic-speak means the same thing as boring, but in a positive sense.

Tomorrow is Bike To Work day in the Bay Area, but everyone can take part.

I encourage you to take part. I’d also encourage you to do something extra: bike from work too.

[Yeah, I know, that's the same joke I made last year.]

A much funnier potential alternative to microdermabrasion: microdermlaceration[1].

“Oww! Why is my face covered in tiny little cuts! Seriously, how is that going help anything? Seriously!”

[1] types of wounds

I lived in Germany during the summer of 2002 and I traveled nearly every weekend. I arrived in Germany May 28 and left August 23. Sometimes I use this blog to put things down that are at the edge of my reach memory-wise, so I can make a record of them. I actually have all of this written down in a notebook, but I can’t find it.

• May 31- June2: Bremen, to visit Colin[1]
• June 7-9: Düsseldorf to visit my Oma[2], Frankfurt to visit Sam Breuning[3]
• June 14-16: nothing
• June 21-23: Solingen, Köln to visit the cousins Füser[4]
• June 28-30: München[5, 7], Bayrischer Alpen[6] for MIT-Germany/ MIT Club of Germany meet up
• July 5-7: Vienne, Strasbourg France for the Vienne Jazz Festival[8]
• July 12-14: Berlin, for LoveParade 2002 and visit with Justus[9]
• July 20-22: Hamburg[10], Lübeck[11] w/ Christian
• July 26-28: Karlsruhe for the “Savage Seven” ultimate frisbee tournament as a part of die Sieben Schwaben[12]
• August 2-4: Romantic/ Clock Road, Rottweil; Stein am Rhein, Switzerland; Rottenburg ob der Tauber w/ Meredith Gerber[13]
• August 9-12: Pittsburgh, USA for Colin and Heather’s wedding. Surprise![14]
• August 16-18: Köln (to see Bugge Wesseltof) and Frankfurt, w/ Sam Breuning[15]

Footnotes:

1. Bremen smells like hops when the wind is the right direction because of Becks. The Schnoor area was neat, with its small and odd houses.
2. My Oma didn’t realize I was related to her for the first hour of my visit; the Alzheimers had started to take its toll. This ended up being the last time I saw her. I regret not having stayed with her for the whole weekend, but at that point I thought I was going to visit again that summer.
3. Sam was a cool British kid also with a German father; he’d been on the Cambridge-MIT exchange. We ended up hanging out a number of weekends that summer. I’ve since lost touch with him.
4. My dad’s cousin (my “Tante”/ “aunt”), her husband and kids (my “cousins”) were all gathered at their palatial family estate in Solingen for a sculpture showing of a local artist set up in their gardens. At one point we all, including the artist, were sitting under some trees eating a snack and they asked me if I liked one of the statues near us. I said, in stilted German, that I did (it was actually one of the few I did). It came out wrong and they made fun. I said “echt!” in vain. At another point this weekend, another cousin-by-marriage of my dad’s who was also visiting announced, after having talked to me for five minutes that I spoke “perfekt Deutsch.” Right…
5. We all met at a Biergarten, all the current students and the MIT Club of Germany members. I was stuck at the Club table for most of the night, which was extremely awkward. At some point I excused myself and snuck over the student table. Seeings as it was social interaction with people I didn’t know well, it was still awkward, but not nearly as much.
6. We went hiking in the Alps and stayed in a rustic ski cabin that one MIT Club member had access to. Sam and I got a ride down with a guy who spoke with a typical German accent except, because he’d spent multiple years as a ski bum in the US, mixed it with ski bum slang and inflection all the time. At the cabin, I learned I was ace at splitting logs with an ax, usually splitting decent sized logs in one swing. During one of our day hikes we stopped at an inn, where a 10 year old kid was drinking a 1 litre “maß” glass of beer.
7. It was the day of the final when we got back to Munich and I had the surreal experience of watching Germany play (and lose) in a World Cup final with 10,000 Germans in a public square where they’d set up screens. Turkey won the consolation match so there was some celebrating. (Note: Turkish is the largest minority in Germany by a factor of 4, at least at the time.)
8. Vienne has a Roman amphitheatre with gorgeous acoustics. Sam knew the mayor of Vienne so we got VIP passes into the events, including into a VIP area the first night where we passed the London Times jazz critic. Vienne was about 450 miles from Stuttgart, a good 7 hours, which we drove non-stop on Friday afternoon, on half a tank of diesel in a pretty amazing VW Passat TDI. We still missed most of the first act. Also, French radio sucks. I bought a CD-tape adapter after this road trip.
9. The LoveParade is a parade along a mile-long route on which 40 heavy duty trucks with world-class DJs and sound systems drive for an entire afternoon. Estimates for my year were 500,000 in attendance. Oh and there were a lot of topless girls there.
10. My (second) cousin Christian lived in Hamburg at the time. He’d stayed with us in America in the early 90s and he was out to repay the favor by showing me a good time. We went out with some friends. On the way there, he’d talked to them and said he was bringing his cousin (”eine Cousine from mir”) with him. We got there and the friend said “this is your hair dresser (Friseur)??” See, they might sound alike on the phone; yes that doesn’t work in English and I don’t care. This was the first night that I drank more than one beer in a night, in fact, probably quadrupling my total beer consumption ever in just that night. The goal was to stay up all night and go to the Fischmarkt when it opened at 6am, but it ended with me falling asleep in a bar at 4:30am, having had multiple beers (mostly Heinikens while watching a crappy, but, let’s be honest, fun American cover band) and a good quantity of vodka. Incidentally, trying to explain complicated concepts in German wasn’t easy, let alone to a group of strangers in a loud bar while intoxicated. And, Malta, I can’t say your name correctly sober either; but you can’t say “squirrel” to save your life, so there.
11. The bells of the main church had fallen and melted from the bombings in WWII. They’d be left as a beautiful and poignant reminder. Lübeck in general is a wonderful small town.
12. “Savage seven” means no subs (the seven you have to start is all you have). Having gotten roped into this at the last minute, I played seven games of no-subs ultimate frisbee in two days. I can still remember the intense pain, mostly in my calves that I felt for the rest of the week. Walking on flat ground and up stairs, my right calf hurt intensely; my left calf hurt similarly walking down stairs. I couldn’t, and didn’t, win. Of course there were 6 flights of stairs between my office and the cafeteria/ train level at work.
13. This was a fun little road trip with another MIT-Germany person; Meredith was in Munich for the summer. We went to some classic historic German places. I also made my only trip to a Switzerland, to the town of Stein am Rhein, which was noted by the “strict” border crossing. “Passports? No, we don’t need to see those. In fact, you don’t even have to come to a full stop. Just roll on through!”
14. After the rehearsal dinner, I had some friends over, got tipsy on Mike’s Hard Lemonades and had to search for the right words to use in English. That I was thinking partly in German was a big step for me and I noted my progress.
15. Bugge Wesseltof had impressed Sam and I with his electro jazz stylings in Vienne. Plus we liked his awesome name, so we drove like maniacs (once again) to get to Köln by show time, only to be disappointed by his collaborative work with a female jazz singer.

I’ve more or less halted training for the triathlon and haven’t done anything serious for the last week and a half. My knee is injured, so I’ve been taking it easy, taking naproxen or ibuprofen, icing it, heating it, etc.

Things I have done in that time: swam twice (1.0 miles, 0.75 miles), aqua-jogged* twice (10 minutes, 20 minutes), bike a small amount (3.3 miles, 4.7 miles, plus practicing track stands for 20 minutes) and walked quite a bit.

It’s starting to feel better, so I’m going to be slowly testing it out: a flat and easy 10-15 mile bike ride tomorrow and if that works, ~1-2 miles on the track (soft surface) on Thursday. Both will be with my new knee brace.

I’m a classic over-doer, but I’ve learned my lesson for this month at least, so, don’t worry, I’m not going to do too much.

*Aqua-jogging is possibly even more boring and stupid than regular jogging. But it’s low-impact.

I’m pretty proud of myself: I cleaned my desk yesterday…for the first time since I moved to my current house (August 2004).

I’m pretty happy about this. Probably a little too happy. It’s the little things…

And it wasn’t even on my to-do list!

Yeah, I’m about a weird as the following posts make me seem, but not as ornery.

Hi?

“Now your gums are bleeding a little bit because you don’t floss enough.”

I’d beg to differ. I believe my gums are bleeding because you just spent the last half hour jabbing them with a crude shive.

Seriously, why do we take this from dentists? This is the 21st century and they’re sitting there with midieval steel tools ready to poke my teeth and gums. What’s next? Blood letting? I could probably have my gallbladder removed less invasively than having my teeth cleaned.

I’ve been tired before. Back when I was at that place, I had weeks on end that were a complete haze, working on problem sets, projects, soldering until 4am then waking up at 7am so I could be at the machine shop at 7:45am when it opened so I could beat the rush.

There were times I was tired enough that I didn’t notice I was moving the tool into a piece of brass on the lathe axially instead of radially and I cut the piece in two and had to beg for replacement stock.

There were times when I was sitting in class and—dozing off in class was quite normal for me, even the over-caffeinated me—that I just woke up and the class was over. There was no head drooping and then waking with a nod repeatedly or really any idea or memory that I was dozing off. I was sitting there, taking notes and then, suddenly, I was waking up and the class was over.

I used to consider the amount of sleep I got last night a good night’s sleep. You got it pretty easy, boy.

playlist

mynewspecialfunmp3ofmyshowthatyoucanlistento (mp3)

Dave and Tina were in town yesterday, so I headed up to SF to hang out with them in the afternoon and evening.

We walked from Ghirardelli Sq, down Columbus to Giordano Brothers, a restaurant that serves “Pittsburgh-style” (aka Primanti’s) sandwiches. I love this place. They do this style of sandwiches well and it always helps/ calms my nostalgia needs. There’s also some good people watching in the area.

We then walked down Columbus (past the transamerica building) and then down to the Embarcadero. From there we made our way down past all the piers (picking up a much needed Slurpee near the end) before going to Musee Mechanique. It’s on Pier 45, right at the end of all those piers by Fishermen’s Wharf.

Musee Mechanique is a collection of coin-operated devices: penny arcade games, photo booths, flip-card movie machines (“Mutoscopes”), fortune tellers, moving dioramas and music boxes and other music machines. The collection has items from the late 1800s up until probably the 1990s, but most of them probably come from the first half of the 20th century.

It’s an amazing collection. More importantly, it’s a lot of a fun. I’m a big mechanical geek so the intricate mechanical ones are really cool to me. It’s pretty cheap: free admission and the games are 25 or 50 cents each for the most part, so for $5 or $10 you can play a lot of them.

An ancient and gorgeous sounding disc-based music box

After that we headed over the Mission to eat at Walzwerk, the always-delicious East German restaurant. Good food, good beer, not too pretentious. Winners!

Mel’s Bowl rounded out the night. It was really quiet, save a bunch of Warriors fans in the bar. We were one of two groups bowling. There was this really cute old couple next to us. The wife was asleep while he bowled. He was slower but was obviously good in his day. He had a lot of finesse still and was pretty good (he could easily beat me). I was cheering him on the whole time.

I bowled pretty badly with a 113 and 115, but I still beat out Dave to be the absolute champion.

more photos after the jump (way below)

(more…)

Required valet service for one of its dorms.

I could say many things, but I will only say one: I wouldn’t be surprised if I push my far-in-the-future kids to go some college where it’d be silly to have a car at all, and definitely away from one that has a valet service.

I’m pretty sure my fastest growing finger nails are as follows:

1. right ring finger
2. left ring finger
3. left index finger

At least going by the ones that are always the longest when I need to cut my nails.

Extreme ironing competition. It is what it sounds like. Some great ones in there.

Palo Alto has a gas-powered leaf blower ban. Okay, seems a little extreme, but you know, you want to do well for the environment, right?

Well twice in the past couple months, I’ve seen this: an electric leaf blower plugged into a gas powered generator.

For those of you who aren’t engineers or this isn’t obvious to: an electric leaf blower plugged into a gas powered generator is necessarily less efficient than a gas powered leaf blow. It’s quieter, though, while it’s killing the environment more so at least we got that!

This week’s triathlon training:

• Running: 6.7 miles
• Cycling: 18 miles
• Swimming: 2 miles
• Bricks: none

I had some knee pain this week. I think I’m going to take it easy, especially on the running for the the first half of the next week. If I try any, it’ll probably be on a softer surface like the track.

Here’s the playlist. Here’s the mp3 NEWSPECIALFUN.

Percentage of times I eat yogurt that I spill some on myself: approximately 50%. It’s pretty bad.

I was listening again to NPR’s story about Brinkley, AR and the Ivory Billed Woodpecker (and the associated “Lord God Bird” song by Sufjan, I’ve posted about it before) tonight. It got me thinking (and I’ve thought before…

The SF Peninsula isn’t changing. I mean, it is, but it isn’t really. What am I doing here? There are places like Brinkley, serious small town America, that are changing irreparably and getting closer to extinction. Maybe I should plan a week next year (or in the fall) to drive around small town America, staying in small inn’s and talking to locals. Hopefully even catching some local music. It wouldn’t be exciting or crazy like vising NYC is, but it’d be pretty cool. It’s not like I Cache River National Wildlife Refuge and the Big Woods has been called America’s Amazon.

I’m serious about this. Let me know (here or offline) if you’re interested.

Last night I saw another film at the SFIFF: Bunny Chow (official site, wikipedia).

[Note: the film is named after a food popular primarily in Durban by the same name. Despite the description, it's not a sandwhich. It's hollowed out bread filled with curry.]

It’s a South African film (so I have an immediate bias) about three comedians and a random fourth guy who travel to a primarily music (but also comedy) festival together. It’s also about the comedy business and different approaches to women.

It’s a good film. It’s was a bit here-and-there, very conversational and, though it had an obvious plot, seemed like you were just watching friends hanging out a lot. I found it engaging. On the negative side, though I did laugh, I thought a film about stand up comedians would be funnier.

I’m fairly used to listening to various South African accents, but Gumbeaux had a hard time, he said. There were some parts that had subtitles even for English in the film (the Zulu and Afrikaans were obviously subtitled). I think the film could use subtitles throughout for American audiences.

Last night I saw Jonathan Richman perform live accompaniment to the 1921 Swedish silent movie Phantom Carriage at the Castro Theatre.

I haven’t been to the Castro Theatre in a couple years and as I went in and saw the beautiful molding and ornamentation in the theater, I remembered how amazing that place is. There was an interesting mix of people milling around and finding their seats: Jonathan Richman fans, silent movie aficionados, indie movie people, etc.

If you’ve never seen a silent film with live musical accompaniment, I’d recommend it. It’s usually a pretty good experience. The semi-improvisational nature of the music adds a lot of excitement to the movie.

The movie itself is pretty complex for the time. The plot’s based around a Swedish folktale. The idea goes that the last to die in a year that has bad things has to spend the rest of the year being Death’s carriage driver. It employed a few techniques that I was surprised were employed then, including non-linear story telling and some fairly good special effects techniques for the ghosts.

On now onto the music. I’d seen Jonathan Richman before. He’s really quirky live and has a lot of charisma and stage presence, so I was really curious how it’d end up when these things were taken away. The set up was Jonathan on (nylon string) guitar and pump organ. Other players were two hand bell players, a trumpet/ baritone player, a bass clarinet/ saxophone/ flute player, a violinist and a cellist. I thought their accompaniment was really good and all the players were very talented. It worked really well with the movie. The main characters had motifs and there were parts were these two motifs were almost colliding when two characters were talking or arguing. A daring move was during certain particularly intense moments in the movie there they left it completely silent; I think it paid off.

View the full photo album.

Update: I’ve noticed the bad justification to the text next to the photos. I have tried to fix it, but it’s stubborn. Sorry!

This Thursday’s My Name is Earl is going to be the TELEVISION EVENT OF THE CENTURY: Laugh N Sniff. You buy this week’s TV Guide which has a special card in it and at certain points in the show you scratch so you can smell what’s going on in the show! It’s like Smell O Vision! For the masses!

I have purchased my copy of this week’s TV Guide; I’m not missing this opportunity.

I was totally right. I saw one of those minature personalized license plates yesterday and bought it. It was pretty excited. I never see “Adrian.” My roommate said that “Adrian” had to be in the top 50 most popular names. How to resolve this? The Social Security Administration to the rescue!

Their site will show you top 20, 50, 100, 500, and 1000 names for any year back to 1880 (1880’s most popular names? John for boys, Mary for girls). In the year I was born, 1980, Adrian was the 115th most popular male name with 2,387 total Adrians that year.

The top 10 names from that year:

1. Michael
2. Christopher
3. Jason
4. David
5. James
6. Matthew
7. Joshua
8. John
9. Robert
10. Joseph

You can also check out the fads, how a particular name changed in popularity over a period of time.

After the jump how “Adrian” has varied since my birth year.

(more…)

Hi. I don’t know if we’ve met. I’m Adrian and I’m crazy.

Last week’s triathlon training.

Saturday: 2.0 miles bicycling -> 0.9 miles swimming -> 17 miles bicycling -> 3.2 miles running

Sunday: 22 miles bicycling (Old la Honda, 2000 ft elevation gain)

Monday: 3.5 miles running

Wednesday: 1.0 miles swimming

Thursday: 3.5 miles running

Totals (and the goals in parenthesis):

• swimming: 1.9 miles (2.0)
• running: 10.2 miles (10-11)
• bicycling: 41 miles (15-22)
• brick: one triathlon (at least one brick)

I don’t know if I can keep this up. The running is starting to become a real problem, like a joint pain problem. I think I’ll try to just keep up this week.
Goals:

• swimming: 1.9 miles
• running: 10.0 miles
• bicycling: 15 miles
• brick: at least one

Here’s the playlist of tonight’s show. I am a bit sick and loopy, but I think the music, at least, didn’t suffer.

There’s just so much good music out there right now. I’ve been picking about 1.5 hours too much music for my show pretty regularly.

I got multiple calls asking about the One AM Radio track, “Lest We Forget”. It’s a good track. (And it’s streamable at his myspace.)

I Once was Canadian, KZSU – 4/25/07 (mp3)

The 50th San Francisco International Film Festival starts later this week. Here are some of the ones I’m interested in seeing.

Bunny Chow A South African comedy. Despite the description, “bunny chow” is not a sandwhich and is not popular in Johannesburg (it’s a Durbs thing)

Phantom Carriage A classic Swedish silent film with live musical accompaniment by Jonathan Richman

The Old, Weird America: Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music About the second best collection of American folk music and its effects.

Audience of One A documentary about an SF preacher that gets divine instructions to shoot a film and he goes about doing so on 70mm film.

Ghosts of Cite Soleil Documentary about Haitian gang rivals and rappers.

The Monastery Documentary about a former university librarian who wants to turn his ancestral home (a castle, actually) into a Russian Orthodox monastery.

Bamako An allegory about the Western World’s influence on Africa.

Third Monday in October A documentary about the heated battle for middle school president in a variety of schools in three states.

Once A rom-com (as I call them) about two Dublin musicians. I just love Irish musicians, alright?

Emma’s Bliss A German film about a man with terminal cancer and the woman whose pig farm he crashes his stolen car into.

Aqua About two swimmers in different parts of their careers. Minimalist and apparently good cinematography.

Eagle Vs. Shark quirky and compared to Napoleon Dynamite. I’m intrigued.

Rocket Science From the director of one of my favorite movies, Spellbound this is a feature film about a stuttering kid who joins the debate team to win over a girl.

Off the news wire:

April 21, 2007

Menlo Park, CA – Adrian took the prize by a narrow lead in the first annual Adrian Classic sprint-distance triathlon. Adrian held off competitors to take first place in the first running of this tough race.

The course started at the scenic Stanford pool with a 1600 yard (0.909 miles) swim. Then competitors cycled 17.5 miles around hilly Portola Valley, ending in Menlo Park. They then ran 3.2 miles around Menlo Park.

Adrian took the lead at the beginning and never let up. “I’m just glad I could hold them off,” Adrian said. “I think I had a strong swim leg and I really just held on after that.”

“I have to say, the hardest part was the Gauntlet.” What’s come to be known as the ‘Gauntlet’ is part of the run leg where the competitors have to dodge gypsy-moth caterpillars hanging over the route from trees overhead. “After the Gauntlet, though, I was home free.”

A spectator at the finish line who asked not to be named said about Adrian “He looked like shit.”

Twice yesterday this happened at two different social functions:

Dev/ Kyle: Hi, I’m Dev/ Kyle.

Me: Yeah, we’ve met. I’m Adrian.

Both of these people I’ve interacted with a few dozen times. Do I look different? Why are people not recognizing me?

Which reminds me of a pretty great story. At some point Natalie Portman, who went to the little brick schoolhouse up the road was at an MIT party. She was milling around outside. My friend Will was waiting outside for people so that they could all leave. He’s there; she’s there. Both milling. So he walks up to her and says “Hi, I’m Will.” She apparently grunts and doesn’t shake his outstretched hand.

This was in post-Phantom Menace, pre-Attack of the Clones period; there had been a young Anakin but no grow Anakin yet. He had this intricate plan in which he’d bust his butt and get the Anakin part for Attack of the Clones. On the first day of shooting, she’d introduce herself to him, her male co-star. “Hi, I’m Natalie.” He’d then yell “Oh, we’ve met!” and storm out.

Needless to say, this plan did not come to fruition.

I have interesting friends.

At an engagement party/ shinding tonight.

me, to the engaged: Congratulations!

him: you don’t look fat!

I forgot to post my playlist from this week’s show.

Also, here’s the mp3
I Once was Canadian (KZSU) – 4-18-07 (mp3)

I really liked the last set: Andrew Bird->Sigur Ros->Adem.

Miranda July’s new website for her book No One Belongs Here More Than You is lo-fi (so to speak), reminding me, actually, of spultek’s old website which was scanned from a hand sketch. She made the entire website by taking photos of a “whiteboard.” It’s a good idea and great execution.

Miranda’s the same person who wrote, directed and acted in the quirky and funny 2005 film Me and You and Everyone We Know. I’d recommend it.

I’m training for one of the Alcatraz triathlons. Today and last Thursdays I’ve done biking and running in a row and it has hurt. Today was slightly better than the last, I think.

What I did:

• swimming:
  • goal: 1.5-2.0 miles
  • actual: 2x 1.0 miles = 2.0 miles
• running:
  • goal: 9-10.5 miles
  • actual: 2x 3.5 miles + 1 X 3.0 miles = 10 miles
• biking:
  • goal: at least 15 miles
  • actual: 1x 16.0 miles (+5x 1.65 miles to/ from work) = 16.0 or 23.2 miles, depending what you count
• brick (bike then run):
  • goal: at least one
  • actual: today 16 miles biking then 3 miles running w/ ~ 3 minutes transition time

I bought one of these this week. It was nice to have water on the longer runs, especially when I’m in the sun. It think it’ll also be nice to have if I decide to do something like run to the pool, swim, and then run back. It has a little pocket where I can keep my keys and maybe one of those gel/ goo/ power shot sort of things.

Next week, I should do something like:

• swimming: 2.0 miles
• running: 10-11 miles
• bicycling: 15.0-22.0 miles
• brick: at least one

I don’t want to over do it. I have been starting to ache quite a bit, both muscularly and in joints and tendons and whatnot, so I’m not going to push it much this week.

Apparently, the Nike Airs that Marty wore in Back to the Future II might be release. Honestly, the thought makes me grin.

ESPN Page 2 has a great and extensive story about rabbit chasing/ catching in rural Florida and about how it makes the football players there fearless and fast. When I was young, maybe 7, my parents told me that if I could put salt on a rabbit’s tail, I could catch it. (They figured that if I could get close enough to put salt on a rabbit’s tale, I was close enough to catch it, my mom later told me when I confronted her with this.) So, of course, I spent days chasing rabbits around our yard with a salt shaker. Those things are really fast. I can imagine this would make you fast, especially if you do it in mud.

Both from Mefi.

Here’s my latest mixtape. It’s a tad bit late, as usual. I hope you enjoy it. I like these songs a lot!

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes
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 2007april playlist in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

If you want to read the liner notes before downloading the whole thing, they’re here. This one includes a lot of great indie pop/ rock plus one soul number. There are great local bands like the Finches, the Dodos (what’s with SF bird bands?), and Beatbeat Whisper. I also have national acts like Andrew Bird (ah! more birds!) and Ted Leo. There are a few interesting quirky songs in there too.

Adrian’s April 2007 mix tape (zip file, right click and ’save as…’)

As always this’ll be up for a limited time (~1 week), so grab it now.

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 other day I opened a packed of peanut m&ms. I found this one:

Look familiar? Anyone else thinking of this?

That’s right, a Katamari peanut m&m. Do you think I should try to sell it on ebay?

a couple more photos after the jump.
(more…)

I went to bed last night. I always fall asleep to music. I wanted to fall asleep to Beatbeat Whisper’s song “Play Me a Time” (a lullaby, so very appropriate), but I also wanted to hear their “Old River” (3:55) and “The Cowboy’s Lament” (3:02). If felt like a century trying to stay awake for that 6 minutes and 57 seconds before “Play Me a Time” was to come on. In the end I didn’t make it. I think I got into the middle “Cowboy’s Lament” before falling asleep.

I’ve always been able to fall asleep easily. If I have my head on the pillow for more than seven minutes before falling asleep, it’s a truly extraordinary night. The only times I can’t/ couldn’t fall asleep easily, at least usually, was the night before my first final and when riddled with jetlag.

Last week I sent out my goals for triathlon training for this week (my training weeks go Saturday-Friday for this, for whatever reason).

They were and how I did:

• swimming:
  • goal: 1-1.5 miles
  • actual: 2x 0.75 miles = 1.5 miles
• running:
  • goal: 8.5 miles
  • actual: 2x 3.0 miles + 1 X 2.5-2.6 miles = 8.5 miles
• biking:
  • goal: at least 15 miles
  • actual: 1x 15.0 miles (+4x 1.65 miles to/ from work) = 15.0 or 21.6 miles, depending what you count
• brick (bike then run):
  • goal: at least one
  • actual: today 15 miles biking then 2.5 miles running w/ ~ 3 minutes transition time

The brick was a whole new experience for me. I’d only biked and run in the same day once before and those were hours apart. It feels very strange to do that to your legs. They’re already tired and then you ask them to do a different and (for me) more painful movement. The feeling was assaulting. It wasn’t pain necessarily, not acute pain at least, but just a general feeling of wanting to not be running at that moment and tiredness in my legs.

I know it’s no great physical feat and wasn’t about to collapse, but I’m not quite sure how I did it. I certainly wanted to give up. I think it was very mental: if I couldn’t do that today, then I certainly couldn’t ready and do a triathlon. I had to prove it to myself.

Really one of the things that got me through the run part of the brick was the great album from Beatbeat Whisper which I just posted about on my music blog.

Next week, I should do something like:

• swimming: 1.5-2.0 miles
• running: 9.5-10.5 miles
• bicycling: 15.0-22.0 miles
• brick: at least one

My radio show will be at the same time this quarter: Wednesdays 10p-midnight (PST (or PDT?)).

Meanwhile, if you want to read me ranting about music in a different forum, you can check out my music blog.

Update: Here’s this week’s playlist

And here’s the NEWSPECIALFUN:

I Once was Canadian – 4-12-07 (mp3)

I feel like I must have posted on this last year, but I can’t find any references to it.

Yesterday was the annual big wheel/ tricycle race down Lombard Street. It seemed like it was all big wheels this year. Here’s a great photo gallery.

I’d been talking with a friend about going to watch this year. I guess I missed my chance. Next year!

I think it was a lot more tricycles in previous years.

My dad’s German and extremely efficient. I’m not German.

However, I do like efficiency. I was quite chuffed with myself today when I figured out the most efficient route to do all my errands: swim, then KZSU, then haircut, then picking up my glasses. It is almost all right turns with the only left turns coming at 4 way stops and a fast-cycling traffic light with a left turn arrow. It also allowed for enough time for my hair to dry after the swim and before the hair cut.

Yeah, these are seriously the sort of things I think about. I’m glad I’m not the only one that thinks about path efficiency.

Passive activity credit?? You mean I can get credit for sitting on the couch and watching TV? That’s awesome!@!

Wikipedia has everything. Including Bristol Stool Scale.

[Update: Graphic removed; it was too...graphic.]

A couple guys (professorial types) in Bristol wrote a paper on it. Goodness.

I signed up for the Alcatraz triathlon a while ago. Running’s not quite working right yet and it’s got me a little worried. I was having second thoughts at the beginning of the week about whether it’d be possible at all to do this (1.5 miles swimming, 13 miles biking, 8.5 miles running) at all, but now I am think it might be possible. This past week consisted of:

• running: 5.2 miles
• swimming: 0.5 miles
• cycling: 43.3 miles

I think this coming week I’d better do something more like this:

• running: 8.5 miles
• swimming: 1-1.5 miles
• cycling: at least 15 miles
• at least one brick (cycle and then run, or run, cycle, run)

Last night’s playlist is there.

The mp3-rip (NEWSPECIALFUN) had problems and got split up into a bunch of small pieces.

I Once was Canadian – 4-4-07 (mp3, first hour)

I once was Canadian – 4-4-07 (mp3, last hour and change).

To some people, “Pittsburgh sound” might conjure up Don Caballero and other math rock groups. Other might think of Girl Talk. Now people might think of Wiz Khalifa. He’s a young Pittsburgh MC (a senior at Allderdice, in fact) with a song out by that name.

Rolling Stone has a write-up about him. Ed Masley at the Post Gazette talks much more about Pittsburgh.

I like the video because it shows a number of familiar sites. As for the music, it’s competent and listenable, but not great. I’ll give it time.

You can find out/ hear more at his his myspace page.

I scanned and uploaded a bunch of black and white photos to my picasa thing.

Galleries include Pittsburgh over Christmas, my first try at fisheye, the Oakland A’s last game of their sweep of the Twins in the playoffs, Jose Gonzalez @ Stanford, and John Vanderslice @ Stanford.

I noticed today when I logged in to Netflix that they had a new option “watch now.” They have a whole lot of movies that you can stream and it’s included in my subscription.

It’s a win for them (server bandwidth << shipping costs + wear/ depreciation of DVDs) and a win for me because I don’t have to wait…

except they don’t support mac.

Keep trying, Netflix.

I’ve been doing this in stealth for a couple days, but I feel like it’s time to announce my other blog. It’s a music blog.

I’ve felt for a while that I was writing too little about music for this to be a music blog and too much about music for this to be a personal blog. In one case, outside readers see too much personal ranting and in the other, friends get alienated by the constant music talk , so I’ve split it off.

I’ll still be blogging here. I won’t be posting here about music, unless it’s related directly to me, like music I write/ record, radio playlists or if it’s a mixtape. I’ll be co-posting the last two of those.

I feel a bit weird about it—I’m always written this for myself and maybe a couple friends, but writing about any specific x is an admission that someone wants to read that. Now I have a whole blog where I pretend that people want to read my writing about music.

I had a 3 hour slot–from 6-9pm tonight. Playlist.

The streamripper had to reconnect so it split the mp3 into two parts for this week’s NEWSPECIALFUN:
I once was Canadian, KZSU – 3/28/07 [1/2] mp3
I once was Canadian, KZSU – 3/28/07 [2/2] mp3

For the record, it appears it split it right in the middle of Spanish Harlem.

5 odd questions people (totaling 5) in my car were asked by a member of the MPPD after being pulled over for an out left tail light on Sunday:

• “Hey, engineer in the back, what operating system do you use?”
• “Are you brother and sister?”
• “Are you married?”
• “Saving on gas, are you?”
• “What do you have against the regular units?”

And, yes, I’ve replaced the bulb; it’s fixed.

Last night, Sulu and I saw the Last King of Scotland.

It’s the story of a Scottish doctor who goes to Uganda in the early 70s to escape his controlling father and to have a fun. He gets into the good graces of Idi Amin shortly after the coup that puts Amin in power and becomes his personal doctor.

The doctor is fictitious (though apparently based in part on Bob Astles) but Amin was unfortunately very real. As a story, it’s enthralling and gripping. As a historical perspective on Amin, it makes me want to learn more about Amin’s life and rule. He was a ruthless man.

That the doctor being taken in Amin’s character is a testament to the really impressive acting from Forest Whitaker, a role for which he won an Oscar. He completely takes on this role and it’s tough to see him as anything but Amin in the movie.

It’s really good overall. There is one obvious complaint, though. As some reviews have noted, this story is centered on a European and all of the bad that comes to him—it’s a human story, after all— but it obscures one’s view of what really was happening: hundreds of thousands of Ugandans dying. I guess you could explain that away, saying that it’s more a story of how reasonable people can be taken in by unreasonable but charming dictators. I’d recommend this, though, even if it’s just to see Whitaker’s performance.

My radio show will be on early tomorrow and next Wednesday, from 6-9pm Pacific (a reasonable hour for you east coasters!) on KZSU. You can even Listen online.

I might have a special guest tomorrow, Adem, a great indie folk artist out of England. It’s still a bit up in the air so check back here frequently for updates.

Were there help desks before computers?

Well executed!

Last night I saw Elvis Perkins (in Dearland) at the Cafe du Nord. I got there a little bit before he went on when they were finishing setting up and sound-checking their mics. I was a bit surprised because they had large diaphragm condensers for his vocals, the harmonium and as an overhead for the drums (?!).

When Elvis and co. came out, they pretty quickly launched into “While You Were Sleeping” which was fine with me, as it’s my favorite track off of his album Ash Wednesday. The band consisted of Elvis on guitar and vocals, a guy that switched between guitar, harmonium and trombone; an upright/ electric bassist and a drummer/ percussionist. Everyone sang back up vocals. “Ash Wednesday” followed soon afterwards. His sound from the get-go was really good. His voice was clear and the mix was nice.

His set quickly veered away from album songs. “Weeping Pilgrim” was a great song. I think it’s a traditional song. It was rollicking and fun. On a few songs including that one, the drummer got out from behind the set and played a marching bass drum with a mallet on one side and a set of jingles (like on a tambourine, but in a line) on the other.

All in all, the show was a lot of fun and the band and sound were good. I’d definitely recommend it if you like Ash Wednesday or if you’re on the fence about Elvis Perkins.

Perkins did do a couple things that could be taken as arrogant or endearing, depending on how you look at it. The one that I’m mostly thinking of was before the last song he said “Well, the last song before we go backstage and you clap for a while and we come back out.” and then later while people were clapping he stuck out his head out of the dressing room and said “louder!” It was a little much

more photos after the jump

(more…)

where does dracula go for his movie listings?

that’s right: fangdango!

get it? FANGdango.

A pretty good evening last night.

First Uncle Frank’s BBQ in Mountain View w/ andyl and liz. This place is awesome. You walk through to the back of Francesca’s bar to get there and it’s the sort of place where there are paper towel holders at the tables. They don’t mess around. Ridiculous brisket, good links and ribs, good corn bread. I couldn’t get to the sides (baked beans and greens) due to stomach capacity issues. Hilarious waitress.

Second, my friends the Light Footwork played at Make Out Room. They have cheap beers. When’s the last time you got two pints (Anchor Steam and PBR) for $6? (Answer only if you live in an overpriced city.) The Light Footwork put on a fun show, as always. I also ran into KZSU alum Nick Mirov again. We chatted about SXSW and various bands.

Really, I can’t complain. Good times.

Those google people are CRAZY.

I noticed the other day that there was a new option on my google map, traffic.

Looks like I should take the 280 and avoid the 101. It’s a bit slow around 92.

[I just learned it's about three weeks old and it's only available in 30 cities so far. When's the Bay Area going to get google transit anyway?]

Should be worried that I can and sometimes do finish a 2L of Diet Dr. Pepper a day without really noticing?

Yes, I think I should be worried.

I did my radio show last night (with some help). Here’s the playlist and the NEWSPECIALFUN:
I Once was Canadian – KZSU 3/21/07 (mp3)

Also, I never posted my playlist/ mp3 from last show. Part of it was there were some problems with the mp3. It was half Irish music (for St. Paddy’s Day) and the rest indie. Anyway, if you’re interested:
playlist
NEWSPECIALFUN
I once was Irish – KZSU 3/15/07 (mp3)

The mp3 has two bad edits where it was split up before and one part where there was a chunk of maybe 10 minutes missing (just showed up blank in the recording) so I just cut out all that dead space.

Here it is, a little late as always… (I should just say that I’ll post it on the 21st of every month instead of mid-month…maybe I’d be on time more often).

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an m3u file—I think the m3u file might actually be right this time)

(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to file->import and then select the song list. you should now have the 2007march playlist in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

If you want to read the liner notes before downloading the whole thing, they’re here (first time as a google doc). This one includes a strange variety of music. I have a few indie pop/ rock songs (Benoit Pioulard, The One AM Radio, etc.), a couple field recordings of prison work songs and then a few South African songs, given that I spent much of February there.

Adrian’s March 2007 mix tape [zip file]

This’ll be up for a limited time (~1 week) before being moved to a password protected folder.

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.

I should have all my posts written for me like this:

From: Randy X <x@x.com>
To: Dave X <x@x.com>,
Adrian X <a@ab.com>,
Andrew X <x@x.com>
date: Mar 21, 2007 2:35 PM
subject: Three things that if I were Adrian I would post to my blog….

… but I’m not Adrian and I don’t have a blog, so I’m just emailing them. And really, you 3 are the only ones who would care. It also constitutes a majority of the readership of Adrian’s blog.

Funny story about how kids see things (as seen from Daring Fireball)
http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2007/03
/26/070326sh_shouts_rich

Andy, you could do this!
http://www.coudal.com/pinsetter/
(also seen on DF – I’m bored, still at work, waiting for a friend for
coffee, and determined not to do work anymore because its after 5.)

And
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SO5JY1KKYZo
for the impatient, skip to around 1:20.
Again, reminded me of Andy, and his Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii.

Thanks, Randy!

There’s an interesting study on genetically modified mosquitos that can resist malaria. Malaria is serious business. Once you get it, you never get rid of it and if you don’t catch it early on, it can be fatal. I chose one of my charities based on the fact that they supported research into malaria in addition to HIV/ AIDs and other prominent medical problems in Africa. I’m worried about malaria every time I go to high risk areas.

I’d always thought that a solution to the malaria problem would come from the human medicine side of things. Of course getting rid of mosquitos helps the problem a lot too, but I’d never even considered that it might be possible to change the mosquitos themselves.

This story seemed cool, but worried me at first. I mean, couldn’t this just be a mongoose-introduced-into-Hawaii sort of situation? That’s the cool part of the findings, though. Feeding on non-malaria-infected hosts, these mosquitos replicated the same as normal mosquitos. On infected hosts, they have lower mortality and were more fertile.

I’d like to see follow up studies, of course, but this seems like one promising path.

on the phone a minute ago:

me: hello, this is Adrian

caller: Hi, this is X.

me: Oh, hi X. how are you?

X: good. how about you?

me: good. how about you?

X: …

me: <awkward laugh> so….what’d you call about?

[fin]

Note to self: don’t let brain go into autopilot.

After seeing some good reviews, Libs and I decided to see Into Great Silence (Die Grosse Stille auf Deutsch) (wikipedia/ imdb) on Sunday. Check out the trailer.

It’s a documentary about the Grande Cartreuse, the head monestary of the Carthusian Order. The wikipedia page on the Carthusians is very interesting and gives you a good overview of the Order, but the basics are that they speak only when necessary (not a vow of silence, per se, but they also don’t speak much) and spend much of the day in solitude praying or meditating or performing manual labor. They sometimes get together for communal meals (where they don’t talk, it appears) or other communal time, where they do talk.

There’s also no narration (or music).

And the film is close to 3 hours long.

A three hour film with little-to-no talking and no narration. Sounds like it could be boring, right?

This movie is strange, though. It’s boring, in a sense, but it’s also interesting and fascinating and extremely artistic. The movie goes in cycles; it sort of reminded me of the rondo form in classical music. The repeated elements give you a grounding and then new stuff comes up. It’s also visually very striking. There are many shots throughout the movie that would make great photographs. It also helps that the Grande Cartreuse is isolated in the beautiful French Alps.

Obviously, it’d be silly to say that watching a three hour movie is like living in a monestary for any length of time. But this movie does, in a way. At the end, you feel sort of serene and meditative.

The movie lacks plot in the most obvious ways, but it does have an arc, starting with the newest members and their initiation into being novitiates (I’m guessing) and going to some of the oldest members over the gradual course of the movie. (I’m totally stealing some of these ideas from Libs.) There are some particularly strong moments later in the movie with an old, blind and partially deaf monk talking about life and death.

The movie isn’t entirely made of serious moments, though. It has some moments where the entire theater laughed, particularly a very cute moment of these serious, usually silent monks laughing and sledding/ skidding down a snow-covered hillside.

There are some interesting things that I learned after the movie: the director, Philip Groening, asked the Grande Chartreuse about filming there. Their response was that it was too early, perhaps in 10 or 12 years. 15 years later they called. He spent 6 months living there and did all the filming himself over that time.

I’m a little backlogged as far as the concert review posts go, but here’s one I definitely wanted to mention.

[As a side note, does anyone but myself like these concert reviews?]

On Friday I saw Hrishi Hirway and the One AM radio at Fort Oregon in Berkeley. I’ve mentioned the One AM Radio before in this post about his kickball music video (which I still love) and this concert recap of his last Fort Oregon show.

Gumbeaux and I got to the Fort around 10pm. It’s just a house in Berkeley with occasional shows in the basement. As a venue it’s pretty odd–you’re standing under ducts or next to a furnace quite often. The opening band was the Golden Birds. It was quite a turnout for them and I think they have a following around here. The basement was pretty full. They were good indie pop but the sound seemed a little bit like a band playing in someone’s basement.

The One AM Radio’s sound combines the electronic elements with intimate vocals and colorful arrangements. Their live set up this time through was Hrishi on guitar, vocals and laptop operating; a tenor saxophonist, a tenor/ alto saxophonist and an upright bass player. The only things that were amplified were the vocals, guitar and laptop.

The One AM Radio started out with the Greatest of Ease (mp3). A really nice version of “Drowsy Haze” with the audience singing backups followed [1]. After a few songs from the new album (including In the Time we’ve Got (mp3)) he asked if there were any requests and after hearing a few, he played Flicker (mp3). He then played my favorite new song (”Echoing Airports”) and favorite old song (”All I Can Recall is the Haunting”) in a row.

His last show I was pretty tired and wasn’t all that into it. This one was completely different. I enjoyed it a lot. The mix was great (despite the fact that the mix was being done by the guitarist/ vocalist/ laptopist and the rest weren’t being amplified); Hrishi’s voice was great; the song selection and the songs were great.

[1] I have mentioned it before but I’ll mention it again: I like when bands ask the audience to sing along. I like it a lot.

Conan’s coming to San Francisco April 30-May 4. Here’s where you can get tickets. I asked for May 4.

Check it!. The presitigous Stanford Daily published an article I wrote about indie music on TV. KZSU is trying to get a regular column in the paper.

It’s marginally interesting.

(It’s an expansion of this post.)

First: Winner of the Noise Pop one day music video contest, the Blammos “Girl of My Dreams” video. The guy walks around the Mission and sings a love song to strangers.

Second: (for the jdawg, a pinball wizard) a Pepsi commercial with San Francisco as a giant pinball machine.

(both via sfist)

I’m catching up on a blogging backlog.

Last weekend I saw Das Leben der Anders (aka The Lives of Others).

It’s the story of a well regarded Stasi agent, Gerd Wiesler, in East Berlin (circa 1984) who starts spying on a playwright who they suspect might be a sympathizer. Wiesler learns that the real reason that they are spying on him is that the Minister of Culture, a high ranking official, wants the playwright out of the way so he can make advances on his girlfriend unencumbered. Wiesler becomes more sympathetic with the playwright because of this, even though he’s a strong party supporter.

It’s really an amazing film. The writing and direction (both by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck of the famed Henckel von Donnersmarcks) are both superb. The lead actor playing Wiesler, Ulrich Mühe, has a very Kevin Spacey quality to him, both in looks and some of the restrained, subtle acting he does.

It manages to be a lot of stories in one. It’s at least love story and a political thriller.

Last week, I saw Mr. Ted Leo a couple of times, first as part of Noise Pop and then as part Stanford Concert Network’s campus concerts.

I came to the first concert with a familiarity with Hearts of Oak and Shake the Sheets. I like those albums, but didn’t play them too often.

I got there on Friday just before the Georgie James set. They were competant musicians, but it was sort of take it or leave it in the end… I might post separately about some thoughts it got going in my head, but I don’t want to connect them directly with this band, because the thoughts aren’t.

After the usualy pre-headliner shuffle and push toward the stage, Ted Leo came up to much applause and excitement. Immediately he started rocking out with high energy. After a handful of songs, I started thinking “oh, he’s just playing the hits. what’s he going to do when those run out?” After a few more songs I realized he wasn’t just playing hits; his catalogue is just really good.

He bantered well between songs, answering people yelling out from the audience and whatnot.

Ted Leo live is like the best things from punk, indie rock, and folk. Punk: high energy and a DIY melody. Indie: great melodies and chord progressions. Folk: interesting and multi-layered lyrics.

Ted really goes all out with the whole show. I’m surprised he can put so much into his vocals and not completely destroy his voice. His falsetto is pretty amazing, too.

He played a handful of new songs, including a really great one called “Lost Brigade” with a really nice repeated line “Every little baby has its own song” (which doesn’t sound great when I write it, but you can check out a live version of the song here). They also did a live covers of Chumbawumba’s “Rappaport’s Testament: I Never Gave Up” and the old Irish tune “Dirty Old Town.”

I went in not knowing what to expect and in the end, I was pretty much floored by his performance.

Sunday’s concert (which the Stanford Daily covered) had different openers: Stanford bands. They weren’t really good at all, though the last, the Bee’s Knees were an interesting combination of 50’s throwback and modern pop.

It was in an odd venue, Kresge Auditorium. Immovable seats close to the stage made for awkward standing during the show. The crowd was not your standard indie rock crowd. Far more—what do you call them?—frat boys in attendence.

But for Ted’s part it was a fairly similar performance in that he brought his A game once again. There was a fairly similar set list, but he was still great. One amusing anectdote from the evening was when Ted started saying that their set was originally going to be longer but … (then he sort of trailed off, I think he was going to say that his voice was starting to go or that he wasn’t feeling well). Someone from the crowd then shouted “Fuck you!” to a completely stunned Leo and crowd. He then just said something like “Okay. I guess we’ll keep going” and then they rattled off another half dozen songs.

Overall, two really enjoyable shows.

Recommendation: go see Ted Leo when he comes to your town. He’s touring the US starting at the end of March. Check to see when he’s in your town and buy tickets.

R2D2 post boxes!!~

USPS is pretty cool after all.

I’m giving away some shirts, cleaning house. Let me know if you want any. They could be yours for the low low cost of free (plus shipping).

Overheard at last night’s Mountain Goats show at the Bottom of the Hill.

Peter Hughes: You know, we’ve been playing at the Bottom of the Hill for so long that I remember a show where my now ex-wife’s best friend was buying us shots of liquor.

fan, from the back: yeah, it was Old Grand Dad

Peter: yeah, it was.

and later in the show

fan, diferent from the first: T SHIRT SONG!

John Darnielle: There is no such song!

fan: T SHIRT SONG!

JD: It was an improvisation and therefore not a real song!

A portamanteau for all of you:
bischawkwardness

bischoff + awkwardness! to describe my awkwardness and its peculiarities.

playlist

NEWSPECIALFUN:
I Once was Canadian – 3.7.07

yup

that’s it.

nor can it be. NYC is out of luck as well.

At least according to this essay about what it takes to be Silicon Valley.

I subbed for someone tonight on the radio. I did an hour and change of old-time music.

playlist

newspecialfun (mp3)

The strangemaps blog is a blog about, well, strange maps.

It’s a bit weird, quite a bit interesting.

(via kenjennings)

Grab the latest mixtape now. I’m moving it into a password protected folder a day from now.

So my ridiculous pursuit of the moment is my concert list

It’s meant to be a list of every concert I’ve ever been to. It’ll never be complete, but I’m trying. I have a lot of concerts on there already and then I have a lot of concerts that I don’t remember/ can’t find the dates of.

Fionn Regan topped my list of best albums of ‘06 and for the first time (I believe) he’s touring America.

Well, actually he’s just playing four dates. But if you’re in Austin (or will be for SXSW) or NYC, you really shoud go:

15 Mar Stubbs Austin SXSW
16 Mar BD Rileys, 204 East 6th St Austin SXSW
17 May Mojo BBQ (1-4pm) Austin SXSW
20 Mar Mercury Lounge (7.30pm) New York w/ Get Cape Wear Cape Fly

So buy tickets already!

There’s a great interview with John Vanderslice on the Merlin Show which is a new online/ iTunes free short TV show (video show?).

Merlin Mann of the Merlin show is the internet famous guy who also runs 5ives and 43 folders. He also goes to some of the same rock shows I do.

The episode after the John Vanderslice one is another good one with Chris Wetherell, a Google employee/ touring drummer.

I’m not talking about the movie, but rather about reposession men and more specifically about this story of a guy who reposesses large ships. It’s fascinating, like something out of a movie.

From the same people that brought you that spectacular bouncy-balls-in-San-Francisco Bravia ad (which, incidentally, first alerted me to the amazing Jose Gonzalez) comes another amazing commercial. It’s basically a building demolition/ fireworks display, except done with paint.

The commercial is pretty great by itself, but go ahead and watch the making of as well. The actually did all of that (as they actually dropped a quarter of a million bouncy balls down the hills and streets of San Francisco). There’s something really cool about doing something that would be a little cheesy with computer graphics instead with real materials, people and dollars (or pounds, as the case may be). The Brits seem to have the corner on that market, starting with that ridiculous Honda ad a few years back.

Last minute^H^H^H^H^H^Hfew hours, I’ll be filling in for a sick DJ tonight from 6-9pm PST on the KZSU. Listen in!

Give it a listen—it’ll actually start at a reasonable time for you east coasters. Also, I won’t be on tomorrow in my normal slot because of the aforementioned Sebadoh concert.

[Update:] playlist

I saw Half Nelson tonight. Basically it’s a story of a gifted inner city teacher whose life is also falling apart and who has a massive drug problem. The teacher also develops an unusual (and at times inappropriate) relationship with a student.

Ryan Gosling (I love those cupcakes like McAdams loves Gosling. Two, no six, no twelve, BAKERS DOZEN.) plays the teacher, a role for which he was nominated for an Oscar (but did not win).

It’s a hard movie to watch;—umcomfortable enough that I physically squirmed at a few parts. But the acting and story are good. Gosling and Shareeka Epps, who played the student, both turn in stunning performances.

The ending seems to happen about five minutes too soon. The future is indicated, but weakly enough that there is still a hint of doubt.

I meant to post this the one day I was back between South Africa and Mexico, February 14, but I got held up. I had a brilliant theme, given that it was St. Valentine’s Day: Love Songs: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Well, it almost worked out but I feel like it won’t have the same relavence or weight posting it today. Oh well.

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an m3u file—I think the m3u file might actually be right this time)

(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to file->import and then select the song list. you should now have the 2007feb playlist in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

If you want to read the liner notes before downloading the whole thing, they’re here. There are a bunch of great songs on here, from 60s girl groups, to Pedro the Lion (he sure is good at the Bad and the Ugly), to Jose Gonzalez. I also took this one apt opportunity to throw in a couple ‘emo’ songs.

Adrian’s February 2007 mix tape [zip file]

This’ll be up for a limited time (~1 week) before being moved to a password protected folder.

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.

Anyway, I hope you like this one even if it’s a bit past its due. I have a bunch of great songs in my mind for the next one, so hopefully I can get back on track for that one.

I haven’t been to a rock show in a while and all of a sudden, it seems like I’ll be going to quite a few, with Noise Pop this week, a couple of Stanford Concert Network shows and some random bands coming through (some of which I’m considering/ am seeing multiple times). Here’s what it looks like:

• February 28: Noise Pop: Sebadoh (original line up) at Great American Music Hall
• March 1: Noise Pop: Alexi Murdoch w/ Aqueduct at Cafe du Nord OR
• March 1: KZSU presents Hella at the 750 Pub, Stanford
• March 2: Noise Pop: Ted Leo at Great American Music Hall
• March 4: Ted Leo at Kresge Auditorium, Stanford
• March 7: Mountain Goats at the Independent
• March 9: Mountain Goats at the Bottom of the Hill
• March 10: Long Winters at the Independent
• March 16: the One Am Radio at Fort Oregon, Berkeley

There are also Badly Drawn Boy w/ Adem, Elvis Perkins, Adem (headlining) and other bands at the end of March. Goodness, life’s so hard.

I saw a review of I Belong to this Band: 85 Years of Sacred Harp Recordings in the latest Rolling Stone (which I apparently have a subscription to, maybe because I’m a world famous radio DJ.) I tried to find Rolling Stone’s review online, but I did find one in Stylus.

From that CD, I found a documentary about Sacred Harp, Awake My Soul. Did anyone see this? Apparently it aired on PBS recently. The trailer actually give a decent, quick introduction to Sacred Harp singing.

For a taste of it, listen to my favorite song in this style (from the Alan Lomax-recorded Southern Journey, V. 9: Harp of a Thousand Strings – All Day Singing From the Sacred Harp by the Alabama Sacred Harp Singers):

Alabama Sacred Harp Sings – Sherburne (mp3)

Sacred Harp (wikipedia!) is a form of shape note singing, which was developed as a form of notating music such that four shapes on either a line or a space indicate the eight notes of the scale. Sacred Harp was a hymn book written using shape notes in 1850s. It’s been sung in pretty much the same way since that time, largely in the American South. See also: how Sacred Harp is sung.

Usually there is a different conductor for each song. The singers run through the melody once on solfege before running through the song once. They then move right on to the next conductor and the next song. There’s no practicing or rehearsing songs.

My favorite idiosyncrasy the style are that the singers just sing. There are no pretenses of being polished.

In much the same way that it’s been sung for the last 150-odd years, it’s still sung today, in fact, I could (and am considering) sing in a group in Palo Alto though, I have to admit I’m not very good at site singing.

Last night I saw Ralph Stanley at St. John’s Presbyterian Church in Berkeley. Laurie Lewis opened. Tickets were due to my wicked smarts and quickness with the internet in responding to a flavorpill quiz.

Laurie Lewis (and Tom Rossum and the Right Hand Band) was up first. She’s a local bluegrass fiddler and singer. Her band’s set was good and her band’s tight. It went by pretty quick.

Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys came up next. Right at the beginning of the set, Laurie came back on and made a big deal because it was the eve of Ralph’s 80th Birthday. They had a cake and a proclamation from Berkeley’s mayor.

Once the festivities ended, the set started in earnest. Ralph introduced the members one by one (including Ralph Stanley II and Nathan Stanley, the grandson) and they did a short number featuring that member. They then did a few full band numbers, Ralph did ‘O Death’ solo and a capella, and then went back around featuring each member that had a solo CD out (which was most everyone). From there it was a couple more full band numbers before the set ended. Ralph didn’t do all that much in the set aside from singing on the full band numbers and playing clawhammer banjo for one song. It seemed a bit obvious to me that this was, at this point, a franchise. They were selling the Stanley name and artistic vision more than his actual musicianship. It sort of reminded me when I saw the Count Basie Orchestra 15 years after Count’s death.

All of that said, his band was tight. When you’re Ralph Stanley, you can get some good pickers for your band, certainly. Going into the show I was actually a bit afraid that the show would drag on a bit, but, even though the set was well over an hour, it didn’t bore or drag on. For Ralph’s performances himself, he certainly can still sing and play a mean clawhammer banjo. I enjoyed the night.

(more photos after the break)
(more…)

Daytrotter has some mp3s of a recent in-studio by Elvis Perkins. They’re four songs, all originally on Ash Wednesday. The voice recording is a bit boomy but they’re otherwise good.

I haven’t talked about music much lately. I’m about to unleash a slew, so steady yourselves.

NPR has Arcade Fire’s performace from last Saturday at Judson Memorial Church in NYC both streaming and download. The first few minutes are a bit rough fidelity-wise because the band starts the show in the audience for the first song.

Also heresay has mp3’s from the Friday Judson show, all split up nicely.

I understand writing stupid things in wikipedia, but sometimes people write really, really odd things. For example, someone ammended hair:

Sometimes the hair can become transparent. I don’t know how this happens but it just does. Beware of transparent hair, and if it does happen to you quickly use your own urine as shampoo.

Of course, it has since been editted out.

(Thanks to Jesse for this. I can’t link to him anymore because he abandoned his blog.)

Dylan, Melissa and I went to the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford to see their exhibition of In the American West by Richard Avedon. It’s a set of photos taken from 1978-1983 of largely working-class inidivudal from the “West” against a white backdrop. It’s mostly working class and non-working people: miners, housewives, farmers, drifters, house-wives.

They were originally taken on 8×10 negatives. The prints are huge, 1.5-2x life size. You can see every detail and with the white backdrop, the audience is left to study the face, the eyes, the scars, the oil or coal or gypsum or drit from the hard day’s labor in the mine.

The exhibit is arresting. As a photographer, I feel like I would done it differently. I wouldn’t have done the white backdrop, for example, though I think it worked to good effect.

Ipod Breathalyzer with FM Transmitter

Better or worse than that ipod dock/ toilet paper dispenser?

I found a site which is a nice bike route maker. In a lot of ways it’s similar to runthere.com (or many others, I’m sure), but it does a few nice things that are important to cycling; in addition to the total mileage, it’ll tell you total and net elevation gain, average grade and max grade and show you a nice elevation profile. It also gives you the current weather conditions. Apparently it’ll show you where steep grades and even show you photos along routes but I didn’t run into either of these features actually in use. I found the interface a little slow at times, but nice otherwise.

It uses google maps, so it probably works everywhere, but lists a dozen or so cities, probably because it has weather information, etc coded for those.

Apparently the O.C. is over. I’m not sad. I hadn’t ever followed it or really cared about it other than for the music. Articles have been written on the effect the O.C. had on music buying habits related to small time bands. I’d heard so-and-so was going to be on the show here and there, but today I read down down the list of songs (or this one if you’d prefer) on the show and it’s really an amazing list in a way. I mean there are some really pretty small time bands in there, and many bands (and even songs) that I’ve put on my online mixtapes. The shear volume of music is quite amazing. There are 12 songs in some of these episodes.

Anyway, the other conclusion that I have from this is that it might be very very expensive to put out the DVDs of this show. It sort of depends. In the past a different license was needed to get the music for the broadcast as opposed to the DVD, but now, as far as I know, the contract usually covers both.

Now it seems quite common for indie bands to be well-represented in TV shows and, for that, I thank you, the O.C. For that and for the excuse to call my town, the MP.

I’m back on the radio.

the playlist

and the NEWSPECIALFUN
I Once was Canadian – 2-21-07 (mp3)

(yes, I’m clever: the first song on Ash Wednesday was Ash Wednesday)

The last week (Tuesday-Monday):

• time in the air: 28 hours
• other time on airplanes: 5 hours
• time standing in lines at airports: 9.5 hours
• other time waiting at airports: 4 hours
• number of airports visited or passed through: 7
• approximate distance in miles sprinted in JFK: 0.25
• number flights missed, skipped, or unable to make: 8
• number of tickets sold to me without tickets being issued: 2
• time waiting for luggage at baggage claim: 2.5 hours
• time in the car: 8 hours
• number of meals with friends: 9
• number of delicious, home cooked meals for which I will be eternally grateful: 1
• number of giant, greasy meals at favorite Boston establishments: 2
• number of absolutely awesome froyos at places claiming to be “for the Gen-Xers” (flavor):1 (reese’s pieces and reese’s cups)

Not all bad.

I walked around all weekend in a Boston covered in inches of ice. I walked carefully and I did not slip and fall. I got back to sunny California and one of the first things I did was slip after getting out of the shower. My hip and elbow hurt.

Some people are accommodating. These people are nice. Some people are too accommodating. This can be destructive. If you find yourself in this latter group, just think to yourself, “I will not give in so easily. I will not roll over at the first chance I get. I am not France.”

I really like traveling and I’m usually not ready to go home, but I’ll tell you, when I got back yesterday, it was nice to sit on my couch, sit on my chair, sleep in my bed, eat out of my cupboard.

people dance the thriller dance at a wedding!! funny!

holy crap. I think this is the best blog post I’ve seen, possibly ever. Well, done, Wax.

New proposition for outlawing: very tall (say over 6′8″) heavier-set men (you know, not skinny, with some bulk) should not be allowed to grow beards. They look too menacing. I mean, those lumberjacks could just tear your in half!

So, no beards for them. And no coffee.

madiba is my homeboy. I got a shirt that says this today.

I’m totally a south african hipster now.

it’s awesome having fast internet again. my mind has a problem slowing down to dialup speeds.

After a mostly crazy and ambitious itinerary for the first ten days of my trip, I’ve arrived in Cape Town, where I’ll stay for the rest of my trip.

Dug said yesterday that I looked energized and asked why. I like this city. I like it a lot. It’s definitely in my top five cities ever (though I don’t have time, or really care to make a full list right now).

This city is also familiar to me. I know people here; I know places here. The Cash Converters (thrift store) is still down the street in Sea Point and it’s still a great place to pick up an extra suit case on the cheap in case you bought too much stuff to fit in the luggage you brought with you. The Vondi’s Holistic Pet Nutrition store that I like to make fun of is still here too. I know where to get a good bite to eat and where to do laundry. We’re even staying in the same place
(where my parents have a time share). Perhaps the only other foreign city I have this familiarity with is Stuttgart, where I lived for a summer.

Traveling in a foreign country is largely about learning and experiencing new things, so you may wonder why I enjoy this familiarity. Well, it’s hard being out on the road and rushing around in a very different culture for ten days and coming here has the feeling of coming home and that’s always nice. It’s very encouraging for my thoughts of moving to this city in a couple years.

The water off of Camp’s Bay (Atlantic side) is freezing, but even that was nice somehow. Sundowners on Camp’s Bay is still one of the best things.

The cycling shop that I liked in Sea Point has been torn down though. I don’t know if they relocated or what.

Just a handful more days here. I’ll try to make the most of it, but I also don’t need to wear myself out any more on vacation.

[Oh, Ali's daughter is on TV. She's fighting here in South Africa. The other day I heard her on the radio say that she puts Mandela on the same level as her father. Um...Ali's good and all, but Nelson Mandela's slightly more important.]

I guess this is my first real update about my South African trip with Jon, Helene and Dug.

My goodness, it’s been quite a trip so far.

I started in Jo’burg for a few days, mostly running errands and spending time with my aunt and uncle. I did go to the Apartheid Museum in Soweto, though, and it’s really good, a very well done museum.

Once everyone arrived we headed out to Graskop (hint–not pronounced with a ‘g’ sound at all). That was our home base for exploring the Blyde River Canyon. The views from God’s Window and at the Three Rondavals were amazing, both in the foggy evening and the clear next morning. We also saw some beautiful waterfalls and swam in some of the natural forming pools.

We had our first braai of the trip too (though I’d had one with my aunt and uncle already). mmmm lamb boerewors and steak. delicious…

It was a fairly long decent drive from there to Kruger Park, Satara Camp the next day. We found an elephant before we’d even gotten into the park–it’d trampled the fence at a neighboring private reserve, it appeared. We didn’t even stop for that long and, as you might expect if you expect irony, that was the only elephant we saw. The night drive was a bit of a disappointment, but the drive right as the gates opened the next day was amazing, with fairly close encounters with lions, rhinos, buffalo (not bison), zebra and giraffe. We just kept on driving south from Satara, out of the camp, through that little stretch of Mpumalanga and into Swaziland. It was a long drive that day, with a stretch of KwaZulu Natal after Swaziland to get to Ingwavuma.

Ingwavuma is a rural town up in the Lebombo Mountains on the border with Swaziland. It, like much of the rural towns in that area and much of southern Africa, has a massive problem with AIDS and unemployment. A family friend is working up there with an NGO called Zisize, who are doing some great work with the children of the village. We also visited a couple income-generating groups for the local women: Fancy Stitch and Ingwavuma Women’s Center. We bought some of their beautifully made, locally produced goods.

Bridgie, the family friend, and everyone else we met there was really great to us.

Yesterday was our last big drive of our trip was yesterday, from the dry heat of Ingwavuma to the hot humidity of Durban. We’re still figuring out what we will be doing these next two days before our short flight to Cape Town, where I’ll meet up with my family.

Since my South Africa/ Tanzania trip of 2004, I’ve thought a lot about how lucky I am, but I’ve been reminded once again. If you’re reading this, you are probably quite lucky, too: you are reading the internet. You are probably sitting comfortably in a home or apartment. You can probably open the tap and get fresh, clean drinking water. You have electricity. You probably are able to purchase food for dinner and earn a reasonable wage for your work. This isn’t the norm of the world, not at all. I don’t mean to preach.

I’ve arrived. The two days on planes wasn’t all that horrible, actually.

I’m pretty sure I’m going to rock this jetlag thing. I am multitalented, after all.

Incidentally, The Queen is good. The Guardian is not.