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01.30.05 i've been waiting for it for days, but cityscape finally weighs in on muni's proposed new fare increase. another year, another quarter. it's total bullshit, and if the agency can't make ends meet with the 25% increase they got from us last year, then they certainly should be looking at other options before asking city riders (who are, last time i rode the bus, from various economic backgrounds). increased fares will only mean decreased rider-ship. the road to hell, you know, is paved with quarters. and driven on by the 38L. # the nytimes has a really cool article about fashion week dj's and the music they introduce to their audiences. of course kenneth cole wants music with a message. and check out that byline. # 01.29.05 weekends: the best time to read david. # do you use mozilla or firefox? flashblock is a handy little extension that (predictably) blocks flash animations from displaying. nice, because i've been noticing the firefox becomes a HOG on my pokey ibook at work whenever i have more than two tabs loaded with lame flash-based ads. and the way sites are throwing these things up these days (i've gotten THREE flash ads at a time on the same page) it's nice to have a solution. of course, if you want to see the flash, flashblock gives you a little placeholder button that will call it back up. # 01.28.05 i'm walking down a long sand spit, or barrier of some kind. i'm there with evan and we're on a resort island. he's hurt his foot, maybe it's broken or stung by a jellyfish, and i'm carrying him. up ahead, the sand walkway breaks up and is washed over by a suddenly stormy sea. trying to carry evan across, i slip and we both fall into the water. i'm worried because i don't think he can swim; certainly not with a broken foot. but i can't seem to fight the waves and pull him back towards the sand at the same time. steven appears on the spit, reaching out and grabbing evan to pull him back up. i let go as steven takes evan from me, and i slip down under the water. the tide forces me down, and i'm swimming along the edge of the barrier, following it as it turns into a reef, trying to get away from the raging waters above me. the pink reef grows more smooth as I follow it away from the sand spit, until it finally gives way to a strange concrete wall. i pass a fogged over port-hole window in the side of the wall, and realize that a heavy steel door is looming just ahead of me. my breath is finally running out and i push on the door as it slides open. the cell i enter appears to be an airlock of some kind, and the water quickly evacuates around me. another door opens to reveal some sort of root cellar, dark walls of musty earth crumbling down around me. there are pens and corrals cut out from the dirt. in each one is a different, bizarre animal. they're unlike anything i've seen before, and i'm certain that they have not been made in any form that god intended. i emerge from the labyrinthine cellar, to find myself standing on a very small island. there's a cottage and a little garden and an empty animal pen. the foliage says nantucket more than tropical island now, and i feel a powerful sense of comfort come over me. someone is walk out from inside the house and i hide behind a row of bushes. i realize that it's peter, and i run up to him. he's as friendly as ever, but seems not to recognize me. marisa (a former coworker) appears at that moment, with a tall young girl in tow. they explain to me that peter has lost his memory and is being raised by the people here as their own child. his blank expression seems to confirm this. marisa warns me to be careful of the younger son who lives here with peter, and then she leaves me. as if on cue, a lanky, sweet-faced teenager approaches, yelling for peter. i introduce myself and peter walks away. the boy begins talking to me quickly, and i feel the quick burn of shame as he tries very obviously to flirt with me. at this point, the dream begins to dissolve, and i find myself falling in between time and place, until i am with jessie, standing in a driveway in some los angeles suburb. in a grocery store parking lot across the street, we see barrett, who is accompanied by jimmy (a straight friend of mine from high school and college). barrett introduces jimmy as his new boyfriend. i am surprised, and feel a twinge of jealousy, followed close behind by a rising fear that jimmy will hurt him. i pull jessie with me and we walk away, my waking mind filling with memories of jimmy's various witnessed indiscretions, as his imagined counterpart slips a hand down the back of barrett's pants, the two lovers laughing and waving. automatic doors whoosh open in front of me and i step into the bright store lights and wake up. # 01.27.05 i've recently been swallowed up by a wave of productive desire. by which i mean, i'm craving new toys. i've been obsessing over new, fun, nerdy ways to use software and services to make my life even more complex and script-driven. jessie'll love it. like, for instance, how i'm writing this post in marsedit (verdict: nice integration, but it wants more customization time than i've been willing to donate so far). or using cocoa.licio.us to manage my new del.icio.us bookmarks. del.icio.us is really interesting to me. it's been on the edge of my vision for a while, but i've always been highly dismissive of the idea of web-based bookmarks. but now that i'm in there, i'm seeing the immense power of this very simple system. i want to use it to keep my bookmarks synced between home and work browsers (safari & firefox). or to use it for my own note-taking, to make the notational velocity concept work seamlessly between work and home. or using the HTML output functions to manage my sidebar links. or even to run a small links-only blog. or all four. off the same account. because it's so. perfectly. simple. other cool time-wasting entries into my life? organizing photos (i'm jealous). and posting them to flickr. and to mt. not that i take photos. you know. but just in case. # 01.24.05 google just recently released a new version of their photo-organization (i.e. iphoto for windows!) application, picasa. it looks, from what i can tell, like a stellar photo organization tool. i love these kinds of applications (well, this one and iphoto) but don't spend enough time cataloging and organizing my photos (mostly porn, natch). one feature i really like about picasa however, is the fact that it builds a library of your images without copying or moving them. iphoto, bless it's OCD-heart, insists on taking my photos and owning them, shuttling them into a bizarro hierarchy of folders that i am pretty much terrified to venture into. which is all fine and good, in the name of hyper-simple organization, but i really hope that apple starts to get away from the forced silo-style organization systems they like to build into their apps. at least once tiger comes out and gives the mac the firepower to find all my disparate image files across the hard drive. because, frankly, i'm not entirely cozy with the idea of that picture of mom, dad, sis and dog hanging around in the same folder with all my favorite cum shots. # wired has an article looking at vinoveneu, the new big-deal wine bar with the mechanical pours that recently opened near Yerba Buena. the article makes a few valid points about the place (a broad selection and a tracking scheme make it ideal for that quick scavenge for a good bottle) but the space, in execution, is pretty mediocre. the whole machine-poured thing really takes all the fun and personality out of the wine-bar concept. in contrast, i would highly recommend hotel biron for ambiance and ferry plaza wine merchant for selection and staff. put away those smartcards and raise your glass! # did you see my orchid? it's blooming again. i'm taking that as a sign of settling in. do you remember the point when you finally realize you're at home somewhere? not that revelatory feeling of knowing that you're home, but the diminutive, slight cousin of that feeling, when you realize that you've become comfortable where you are? it can happy for anything; apartments, cities, jobs, relationships. i guess it's just a crossing-over point, a line that you didn't notice yourself stepping over. i never mentioned to you that i saw the arcade fire recently. what an amazing band. really. cataclysmic. almost everyone in san francisco made it to one of those 3 shows, so there's not much i can say that hasn't been said already. i'm so happy that audioscrobbler is properly updating again. although i'm afraid i need a much larger back-catalog of listening data before my profile can withstand the force of my all-consuming hysterical listening style. i'm going to be whittling on that decemberists binge for a while. and it will never fully understand my radiohead history, either. i mean, what would my personal charts look like if audioscrobbler knew that i spent 2 solid years listening to nothing but radiohead? today is ryan's birthday. go slap him on the ass. once for good health, once for good luck. # 01.18.05
such a good point. i got into a bit of an argument last night (thanks, evan) over this concept (from this times article about the band i love to hate, but feel like i should reconsider). there were some very well-made, lucid points to last night's argument, but they've escaped me now. no doubt you've all been in that same argument yourselves. # 01.14.05 my coworker just returned from a harried, hectic week of traveling. she was in three locations over four days. her flight landed late this morning and she came directly into the office. it was not a good day for her. her laptop decided that it was 1974, and that she was 5765 days late for every meeting she had over the last year. then she opened her burgeoning inbox. then she found the message dumping a fresh new pile of paperwork on our team. 2 hours into her wrong-time-zone afternoon, she needed to relax. "this is terrible! i'm so stressed out!" she exclaims, reaching for the tiny bottle of Origin's "Peace of Mind" aroma therapy stress creame that was a christmas gift from our boss (a gift that seems to say: you have no idea what's in store for you this year). she didn't look at the tiny instructions that came with it. had she done so, she might have seen the warning that she not place it on or near her eyes. lesson? deep breathing is always the key to job satisfaction. # 01.12.05 helen thomas is a national hero. # 01.09.05 did i fall asleep? (answer: yes.) six apart bough livejournal. that's a surprise. an interesting surprise. no, revise, a good surprise. mena's post about the acquisition (and her links to the SA FAQ and the LJ FAQ) is really good (i'll pass on debating a few of matt's comments about it tho; otherwise i'll get way too blogging about blogging, which i always have to watch out for). it should be a really interesting move for six apart; they've come up with some really excellent tools in movable type and typepad, but they've never quite succeeded (and i think they've always wanted to, which is why i say this) at making real, living communities within the blogging world. livejournal, of course, has that problem whipped. like a misbehavin' stepchild. i mean, just wander over to someone's livejournal (matt's is a great place to start). it'll take you about 2 minutes to get lost in a labyrinthine world of journals, friends, comments, and cross-linking. the thing, i think, that separate's livejournals from blogs is the fact that they're so inward facing; wandering between various LJ's feels more like wandering around a single, fascinating website with a thousand tiny nooks and crannies than it does reading an individual someone's web-bound thoughts. and hopefully, a little of that interconnectedness can cross the chasm now, and bloggers can learn to love. that, and like, now it's really on between six apart/livejournal and google/blogger. which promises great, nerdy fun. # back to that old dead horse, six apart has put out a very thorough guide to combatting comment spam. i'd already implemented some of the recommendations (thanks jamison) but was able to gleen bad choate's dsbl open proxy blacklist plugin as well. i've set it up to moderate, rather than deny, just for a week or so, until i feel confident that nobody who regularly reads this site is coming through an open proxy (including myself, behind the roman firewall at work). # i've eyed it for a while, but yesterday i finally took the plunge and installed audioscrobbler. after leaving itunes (muted) playing a shuffled selection of my 3+ rated songs, i finally have my own (albeit still mostly uneducated) personal radio station. please, because we need another addictive element to the technology/music nexus. # 01.02.05 ranchero software just spit out a new beta of netnewswire 2. check it out. hopefully this one is a touch more stable. # a very, very happy new year to each and every one of you. # « December 2004 | archive index | February 2005 » built with movabletype |
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