I'm a lasagna boy!

thixotropic

thixotropic is a medical term meaning "The property exhibited by certain gels of becoming fluid when stirred or shaken and returning to the semisolid state upon standing," it also describes the liquefaction of the earth during a 'quake, and turns up in the oilfield glossary. It comes from the Greek: thixis, n., the act of touching; and thinganein, v., to touch)

In which you'll never wait so long

Many years ago I turned my ears in disgust from a band called The Pixies, who were opening for (my favourite band at the time) Love and Rockets at the (late, lamented) Syria Mosque in Pittsburgh. The bassist could not play three notes without stumbling through the transitions, and the guitar sound was a little more abrasive than the goth-pop I was there to hear.
And again, they opened for L&R on their return trip to Pittsburgh (also at the Mosque?). A few years later, the student activities board at College proudly hosted The Rollercoaster Tour with fuzzbox favourites The Jesus and Mary Chain, Curve, and headliners The Pixies. I went with a small group of friends, and we sat in the balcony until the band started playing "Here Comes Your Man", which was so completely awesome that it brought down the house (Mandel Hall, in this case).
I have not seen The Pixies since then, the defining point of their music to my ears, but have come to enjoy their albums. I finally bought Surfer Rosa / Come on Pilgrim, Doolittle, and Trompe le Monde my last year of college, and still play them loud. I also have a curious 10" anthology copy of Death to the Pixies.

In which BART reboots, again

BART is out for the third straight day -- and the third commute-hour outage. Trains are stopped on the tracks, but BART are not placing blame on the computer systems that delayed trains the past two days.

BART stopped regular service after the problem hit at 5:27 p.m., moving all trains under manual control to the nearest station.

BART spokesman Linton Johnson said the problem is different than the software glitch that plagued the system Tuesday, but has the same effect -- a service shutdown.

Johnson said the network is showing signs of returning to normal operation, but could not say when service would resume.

melisma

melisma comes from the Greek melizein, meaning to sing: melodic, but not mellifluous, comes from this same root (note the double ell in the latter). Melisma means "A group of many notes (usually at least five or six) sung melodically to a single syllable. Melismas are found especially in liturgical chant."
I saw this word in the caption to Sasha Frere-Jones's current essay in The New Yorker. Alas, the online edition lacks the stunning photograph of Mariah on a Vespa, with the caption: Carey established R.& B. as the sound of pop and made melisma a requirement on "American Idol."

Frankly, other than her airbrushed smile, the only thing I know about Ms Carey is that she shares an (impressive!) vocal range with Frank Zappa.

... when she sang her perky dance hit “Emotions” at the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards, she reportedly sounded a G-sharp three and a half octaves above middle C, one of the highest notes produced by a human voice in the history of recorded music. (Party poopers say that the note was actually an F-sharp.)
Carey’s freakish vocal ability explains part of her appeal. In the same way that people went to a San Francisco Giants game in order to see Barry Bonds hit a home run, people buy Carey’s records in order to hear her do things with her voice that no one else can do.
... Carey can sing lower notes, like an alto, and extremely high notes, like a coloratura soprano, which says something about her range but little about her style.

cwm

from the German or Welsh ("hanging valley", pl cymau, cymoedd), cwm means "a steep-walled semicircular basin in a mountain; may contain a lake". It is synonymous with cirque and corrie.

In which we discover stoopless Brooklyn

Who will make the stoops?

"If I can't afford to do somebody's stoop anymore, you know who will? Riff or Raff -- and they'll just dump their stuff illegally," Kiamie said. Every dead-end street will become a dumping ground. There's your follow-up story."

In which the south takes what the north delivers

It is a recursion: the Material Safety Data Sheet for water suggests flushing the eyes with water in case of accidental exposure. "INGESTION: Give several glasses of milk or water. Vomiting may occur spontaneously, but it is not necessary to induce. Never give anything by mouth to an unconscious person."

On spending lottery winnings

Everyone has a plan for what they will do when their ship comes in. A few years ago, while unhappily noting the number of jacked wheels, bent tubes, and looted remnants of bicycles chained to New York City -- artfully realised in John Glassie's book, Bicycles Locked to Poles -- I vowed that I would make whole each bicycle, and true each wheel, oil each chain, repair every broken cable.

But then something like this gives me pause:

In which we harness the power of the command line

I think of quicksilver as a visual command-line, with completion, but having a genuine cli is often very valuable, as Mohit Muthanna points out in this nicely-put-together piece on using mdfind and mdls.

gasconade

gasconade, n.: boastfulness; bravado. From the French word for Basque. Used as a verb, it is a synonym for rodomontade, a reference to the Sarzian ruler of Orlando Furioso.

Two days in a row I have stumbled upon references to the Basques. Perhaps a visit to Euskal Herria is in the cards.

In which we have no cache nor context

... but ebay will happily sell us batasuna. Click on the image above to see how the Basques are'n't cached, aren't a recognised file format, and are handily available for purchase online.

In which we paint inside the lines

from the San Francisco Bicycle Program:

This project includes several improvements to what bicyclists commonly refer to as “The Wiggle,” a portion of Bicycle Route 30 that “wiggles” between Market Street and The Panhandle along Duboce Avenue , Steiner, Waller, Pierce, Haight, Scott, and Fell Streets. This route helps bicyclists avoid streets in the area with steep grades. The proposed project will stripe a northbound bike lane on the east side of Scott Street between Haight Street and Oak Street . On Scott Street between Oak and Fell Streets, a northbound left-turn bike lane will be striped for bicyclists turning left into the existing Fell Street bike lane. Refer to the striping drawing for details of Scott Street (Fell to Oak). A bike box will be added for northbound bicyclists at the intersection of Scott and Oak Streets to help position bicyclists in front of the queue of motor vehicles waiting at a red light. A bike box is a striped area for bicycles located behind a crosswalk but ahead of a motor vehicle stop bar. Bike boxes will allow bicyclists to wait in front of a queue of motor vehicles and position themselves for turning movements. In this location, a bike box will help bicyclists access the left-turn bike lane on the block of Scott Street between Oak and Fell Streets. San Francisco has installed one bike box on eastbound 14th Street approaching Folsom Street, as shown in the photos below. MTA Bike Program staff is currently examining the feasibility of adding a bicycle-only traffic signal at this intersection to provide bicyclists with a head-start phase in front of motor vehicle traffic.

Other proposed improvements include shared use lane markings and enhanced route signage along several portions of “The Wiggle,” and a widened westbound lane on Haight Street between Pierce and Scott Streets to allow bicyclists and motorists to travel more comfortably in a shared lane.

This project was approved by the Interdepartmental Staff Committee on Traffic and Transportation (ISCOTT) on January 12, 2006 . The project will be heard by the City Operations and Neighborhood Services Committee next, prior to going before the full Board of Supervisors.

In which the storms outpace us

The San Francisco Chronicle has a piece on the problem of San Francisco's ageing sewers. The story notes the 13 per cent per annum increases in sewer rates for San Francisco residents, and that the $1 bln cost of the 30-year Master Project will inevitably go up.

Jack Hoffbuhr, executive director of the American Waterworks Association, an advocacy group based in Denver, said getting public support won't be easy. ... He also said San Francisco isn't alone in trying to improve an old system. His group estimates that about $300 billion is needed nationwide just to replace public sewer pipes. That doesn't account for all the other projects that go along with the pipes, such as pumps, holding tanks and water-treatment systems.

Work on San Francisco's sewers -- replacing mains, patching breaks and dealing with cave-ins -- is constant, with close to 500 repairs made a year. The older, brick tunnels are only 3 feet wide and 5 feet high -- oftentimes shorter because of built-up sludge and debris -- and full of rats and roaches, not to mention the obvious: human waste.

I was excited to recieve the nice comment card from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission th' other day.

In which we put human achievement in perspective

What makes an astounding achievement: Building the Golden Gate Bridge? Running twenty-six point two miles in just over two hours? Flying a rocket to the moon -- and back? swimming the Channel? Surviving in the Antarctic? Climbing the Seven Peaks?

No: making the world's largest pizza is "one of the most astounding feats". (More on pizza in pittsburgh.)

Related: why did the guys at Burger Meister think I could not possibly finish all of the wings I ordered today? I placed an order, and the cashier started to ask, "for here or to go?" and then interrupted himself, saying "To go -- of course you could'n't possibly eat all these." (I could, I really could. I've put back more than two dozens at a single sitting, one all-you-can-eat wings night in North Beach these many years ago.)

Pa. Pizzeria Goes for Record-Size Pizza
By DAN NEPHIN, Associated Press WriterMon Mar 20, 6:48 PM ET
A pizzeria is vying for a spot in Guinness World Records for the world's largest commercially available pizza. The $99, 150-slice pizza isn't a one-time deal. In fact, The Big One is already available, though Mama Lena's Pizza House has had few takers so far.

The would-be recordsetter measures about 3 feet by 4 1/2 feet and takes up nearly all the space in the shop's brick oven.

The current record holder is a 4-foot diameter pizza offered by Paul Revere's Pizza in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. Dubbed the Ultimate Party Pizza, it uses more than 10 pounds of dough, 48 ounces of sauce and about five pounds of cheese.

A tip for Mama Lena customers: Call ahead. The Big One takes about 15 minutes to prepare and another 20 to 25 minutes to bake, said Rob Carrabbia, whose wife, Wendy, owns the pizzeria in the suburban Pittsburgh town of McKees Rocks.

"The only way you're looking to order it is if you want a big pizza," Carrabbia said.

Mama Lena's was already offering a 30-inch by 30-inch, 64-slice pizza when Carrabbia read about the current record holder in a trade magazine and figured he could beat it.

"If I'm already making one this big, I can make one another half as big again," he said.

The pizza has been on the menu for more than a year. So far, about 10 have been sold, including for birthday parties and to a school for its basketball team.

"It's 20 pounds of dough, it's a 1 gallon of sauce, 15 pounds of cheese and a lot of tender love and care," Carrabbia said Monday. "We cook the old fashion way, stone and cornmeal."

Carrabbia said Guinness requires that the pizza's making be videotaped and witnessed by a public official. He planned to attempt the record Monday.

Besides the novelty, Carrabbia said anyone who orders The Big One is getting a bargain.

"It's less than a dollar a slice" for a plain cheese pizza, he said. Toppings are extra and a white pizza — no red sauce, but garlic, cheese and marinated tomatoes — costs $120.99.

The category is different from the world's largest pizza. That record was set in 1990 in South Africa, where Norwood Hypermarket made a pizza 122 feet, eight inches in diameter, using 9,920 pounds of flour, 3,968 pounds of cheese and 1,984 pounds of sauce.

For its 50th anniversary in 1994, Guinness named that pizza one of its top 10 most astounding feats.

In which I make a difference, engine

The geek bandname generator is a little formulaic, but made me chuckle. I always wanted to be in a post-math-rock band called "The Difference Injun".
UPDATE: Ten Thousand Statistically Grammar-Average Fake Band Names provides such gems as "Alibi Encyclopedia" (which could be a Hall & Oates album, actually), Cluck Glen, These Myrtle, and Northwest Broom (fantastic!).

In which I convert to Baptism, so as to guarantee a parking spot for when I go to meet the Lord

These parking permits seem easy enough to make, but the city's seal of authority appears only if they are held by double-parking Baptists. What is the story with their ability to block in everyone else on the street? To block one lane of traffic on Guerrero and Dolores? What secret covenant does the City of San Francisco Department of Parking and Traffic have with Baptists that allows them to flaunt the law? I know that they are not members of this community, otherwise they would not be driving and double-parking -- they would easily walk or bike in their Sunday best. Nothing on the DPT's web site suggests that Baptists should receive special traffic-buggering privileges. Were I Presybterian, could I obtain a similar permit? Quaker? Hindu? et c.
How do people blocked in by Baptists get out? If they call the DPT, does the dispatcher say, "Oh, worship of The Lord (praise his mercy!) is part and parcel of Sunday in San Francisco"? does the metermaid drive up in the Interceptor, fall to his knees and speak in tongues? What arcane interaction between San Francisco and the collected Baptist Churches makes this possible?

The City of Falling Angels

The City of Falling Angels is John Berendt's collection of vignettes about aristocratic life in Venice. The episodes tie together loosely around the destruction of La Fenice, the fading Venetian opera house, but touch on the lives of the well-known and sociable throughout the city. Berendt once again improbably insinuates himself into the daily lives of the people he meets, finding himself invited to cocktails, protests, celebrations, and into salons and archives out of the reach of most. How does he manage this? Like his previous book, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, The City of Falling Angels tells stories of deception and murder amid a dissolute setting, in a city of langorous decay.

The nocturnal ambient sound level in Venice is 32dB, much quieter than the 45dB of Milan and other Italian cities. A/V geeks attribute this to the absence of automobiles (!!).

In which I do not understand the sign

What does it mean?

In which we do'n't even finish

The Return of The Big Burger beats their previous six-pound monster. And I, who kicked the Big-ass Burger's ass (and have the t-shirt to prove it), am disgusted, disgusted I say.

On the other hand, I ate about a pound and a half of tuna poke for lunch today. Yowza.

Customers who can finish the burger in less than five hours win a cash prize, a T-shirt and have their name posted on the pub's wall of fame. Not to mention the burger is free.

I did'n't pay for the burger at State St., at least not with cash. I think I paid for it when I realised that I still had about 25k of cycling before I would hit that evening's camp site.

in which we get off of this english roundabout

What do you call a traffic situation in which several roads meet in a circle and you have to get off at a certain point?
The Harvard Dialect Study has the answers -- or at least the questions. The New York Times has some words on regional dialects, and especially Pittsburghese.

In which some other people complain about MUNI

Matt Baume has a great précis on MUNI service recommendations suggested by SPUR. I have complained enough about MUNI. But neither Matt nor I have belly-ached about their atrocious web site, which is neither aesthetic nor useful. When I say that it is not useful, it is not readily available for mobile devices (although other sites provide a third-party interface), nor is it in itself especially navigable or intuitive.

In which web services rox0r

zooomr and amazon web storage (how cool is that!?!?) join the ranks of wacky widgets available on the web.

and through the magic of SOAP, REST, xml-rpc, and myriad other buzzy words, I bring you:

In which we lose our temper

I think I am going to pull out the old Opinel and disembowel the next person who responds to my "Thank you" with "Uh-huh", "No problem," or "Sure."
How nice 'twould be to fit "shiv" into that preceding sentence, somehow, but I suppose that will happen readily enough once I am hauled off to the hoosegow.
I am mad that really cool web apps like eyespot do not work with Safari (which apparently lacks certain features necessary for being fully buzzword-compliant).

My temperament probably would be worse had I not eaten a superb, nutty sheep-and-goat cheese earlier. What was that mysterious cheese? Frustratingly, the cheese counter (which usually wraps the cut cheeses in plastic, and even when they cut to order always pull a sheet of cling wrap tight across the still-breathing cheese. Horrors!) only marked this as a "tomme", but it looked and smelled so good I had to buy it. And eat it, with a fresh demi-baguette and a pint of ale.

UPDATE: the guys from eyespot say that they are working on safari integration. Hats off to them (hat's off to them? I was only wearing one when I read the email ...). How many times has this happened, though: a nifty javascript-based webapp that barfs under Safari's immature or non-standards-compliant engine, api, support, whatever, -- gmail, google maps, usw.

In which the Lower Haight is disgusting above all things

Kendall sez it all in his winning entry in SFist's Fake Tales of San Francisco contest.

A man in chef's garb passed by, carrying a broken saucepan. "Which way is the pot club?" he asked. As I pointed him up towards the 400 block, I saw the 71 making its way around one of the hourly meter patrols. "Darn, my watch must be slow!" I muttered.

... high-larious.

In which the mac dumps core

Of all the osx applications to barf, I least expected Terminal.app to throw up all over the place. Yet it did:

Date/Time: 2006-03-12 15:37:11.304 -0800 OS Version: 10.4.5 (Build 8H14) Report Version: 4

Command: Terminal
Path: /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app/Contents/MacOS/Terminal
Parent: WindowServer [64]

Version: 1.5 (133)
Build Version: 13
Project Name: Terminal
Source Version: 1330000

PID: 203
Thread: 0

Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0x0001)
Codes: KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE (0x0002) at 0x00000000

Thread 0 Crashed:
0 <<00000000>> 0xffff8a60 __memcpy + 704 (cpu_capabilities.h:189)
1 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x9074e410 copyBlocks + 164

In which the teflon president receives airbrushed tribute

Unexpectedly sighted in the Lower Haight, an 80s A-Team stylee van with an airbrush wheel cover sporting a tribute to the Teflon President.

mad props to anna for being the adept wheelman who maneouvered so that I could shoot this from a moving rental car.

In which I dream of juicy kebabs

As one who knows well the pleasures of enjoying some of the dreamless while on a long train commute, I laughed out loud when I saw the "Wake Me Up At" stickers. Although I journey to the end of the line, and can at worst saw logs while someone pilfers my bicycle helmet, I do know the anxiety of someone who wants to sleep for a few minutes yet still wake up in time to get off at, say, San Carlos and sleeps through the stop (although then you have a different set of problems ...!). I disagree with the anti-Brixton sentiment, I do like the schematic representation of the average sleeping rider's dream.

Oh yes: and wake me up at Farringdon, where we will find the Jerusalem Pub, minding the ps and qs with St Peter's. Aside: All in London has a nice tube-stop-by-tube-stop guide to what's on in London; Mark and I tried something similar with the CTA and our nascent "Gate Culture" journal. ... but we got nowhere, other than my enjoying lots of bicycle-riding along the once-derelict Jackson-Englewood and Lake elevated lines. Ooooh, the CTA.

In which we have bad luck with cars, Part Two

(Part One is here).

In which we find our wallet a little thin

GREEN BAY, Wis. - A rare $10,000 bill is getting a new home. The bill — one of 15 large-denomination bills at a Chase Bank branch in Green Bay — was shipped to the bank's corporate archives in New York for safe keeping.

The $10,000 bill bears the likeness of Salmon P. Chase, for whom the bank was named. Chase was a U.S. senator who served as treasury secretary under President Lincoln.

The large bill was discovered in a bank customer's safety deposit box after the owner died 20 years ago. The woman's family exchanged the currency at face value, and the bank stored the bill in a plastic sleeve for protection.

But bank officials decided the bills would be safer at the JP Morgan Chase & Co. corporate office in New York. The bank sent the bills there last month by armored truck.

The government stopped printing bills larger than $100 in 1945 and hasn't issued any since 1969. The Green Bay bills were printed in 1934.

"The bills had been in our vault so long that many of us were sad to see them go, but we're glad to know that historic bills will be properly preserved," said Green Bay branch manager Carrie Liebhauser.

Pick one up for ninety-three-and-a-half.

swale

I knew the geographic term swale, "a trough that carries water following snow melts", a "marshy depression", but recently came across it used as a verb: "to consume or waste away", as a candle guttering in the late night. Apparently this is a North Yorkshire meaning, but must have some Scandinavian etymology. One of the characters in Bram Stoker's thrilling novel Dracula bears this name: a cantankerous, chatty old Scotsman, he lends the sombre tone to the beginning of the adventures that befall Mina Murray. I think of her as the heroine and protagonist of the novel, for she imbues strength in all the other central characters: Seward, Holmwood, and her husband Jonathan.

In which we have no common sense

I complain about MUNI an awful lot (and I am hardly alone in my frustration with San Francisco's Municipal Railway), but happily other people are trying to improve the use of public transit in San Francisco. Traincheck is a nifty SMS tool that responds with BART train arrival times. The technology is sound, but, really, who thinks of the Dublin-Pleasanton train as the "Blue Line"?

This brings to mind the old chestnut: You cannot fight city hall, win a land war in Asia, or predict MUNI arrival times. Something like that, yes. Have you ever waited for the J-Church in the evening? in the morning? The damned NextBus LED displays read "Next train in 8 minutes ... in 18 minutes ... in 58 minutes ..." and you half expect it to read "Next train when hell freezes over ... when hell turns to slush ... when hell enjoys springtime ..." because NextBus technology cannot cope with the chaos of MUNI scheduling.

In which I slag on MUNI

The time: 1745 today
The place: Market St., the heart of San Francisco's Financial District, Civic Center, et c., et c.
The quotation: "I just got on the bus. I had to wait forever."

Why does this quotation sound so out of place for rush-hour in the bustling nerve center, brain, and shopping heart of a metropolis? How come bus-riders and I waited a quarter hour for any of five lines that should have stopped along Market St. during the height of rush hour? The mind boggles, but then again, it does'n't. MUNI, which faces ongoing management and fiscal problems, degrades daily: the quality of service, the ontime record, but worst of all, the public perception. MUNI, an agency that cannot effectively collect fares critical to its revenue, has already increased fares twice in the past three years; at the same time, it cannot meet its reduced service levels. This means more people waiting longer for fuller buses.

In which we have a new family

From the wire, a story about a furry lobster "about the size of a salad plate". How convenient a measurement.

Scientists said the animal, which they named Kiwa hirsuta, was so distinct from other species that they created a new family and genus for it.

The divers found the animal in waters 7,540 feet deep at a site 900 miles south of Easter Island last year, according to Michel Segonzac of the French Institute for Sea Exploration.

The new crustacean is described in the journal of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris.

The animal is white and just shy of 6 inches long — about the size of a salad plate.

In what Segonzac described as a "surprising characteristic," the animal's pincers are covered with sinuous, hair-like strands.

It is also blind. The researchers found it had only "the vestige of a membrane" in place of eyes, Segonzac said.

Dracula

The Norton Critical Edition of this astonishing, vivid, and thrilling novel adds to its readability. When reading a book so steeped in jargon (for example, backsheesh, var. baksheesh) I find the inline annotations immensely useful. Similarly for Moby-Dick, for which Norton Critical Ed. I suffered through several incomplete bookshops in San Francisco before turning up the Second Edition in Los Angeles some years ago. And like Moby-Dick, Dracula has strong use of vernacular (Scots brogue, Eastern-European slang and Romany-inflected phrases), as well as the maritime vocabulary that seeps in to any book which employs the ship as a practical metaphor.
Bram Stoker articulated the action of this novel through letters, phonograph transcripts, and primarily through diary entries: the protagonists' journals, captain's logs, and newspaper cuttings. Not any part of the narrative is impartial third-person: every paragraph is full of the passion (or dispassion, in the case of Dr Seward) and perspective of its author.

A Shropshire Lad / The Invention of Love

While reading Tom Stoppard's The Invention of Love, I fell to thinking about poor, downtrodden Alfred E., and plucked a slender paper-backed copy of "A Shropshire Lad" from the shelf. Woebegone this is, but the collection contains one of my favourite poems: "Terence, this is stupid stuff" in which Housman's alter-ego hears that "Malt does more than Milton can / to justify God's ways to man." And how. I am off for a pint.

In which I lament the ipod

Although my ipod has suffered from neglect since the arrival of the Mac Mini -- the two simply do not get along! the ipod refuses to sync through the mini, for reasons that seem somewhat obscure even after running various profiling tools -- I have begun to really miss listening to records. The music room which has most of my records does not enjoy much use, either. I went looking for The Pogues' If I Should Fall From Grace With God and could not find my copy, although I turned up a digital copy replete with the navvy "South Australia" bonus track. That Pogues album gave me such a start when I first heard it that I nicked myself while shaving: it was like a rowdy party all on vinyl. And the cover, as with the Pogues' first three records, was awesome.

I cannot find the two-disc set of Modest Mouse's Lonesome Crowded West, either. Did I ever have one?

In which I stuff the slang into my wallet

Aram and I are both excited about the United States' new ten-dollar bill. I stopped at the bank on Tuesday to see when they will have some, and they said probably over the next few days, but that they could not promise me any until next week.

The five is a finif, the twenty a sawbuck, the fifty a nifty, the hundred (recently, I suppose), a benjamin. Even the lowly one-dollar-bill has a moniker: the single. What of the ten? Do Americans call it a tenner? And let us not speak of the two-dollar-bill.
And I suppose that I should fess up: finif is my favourite of the slang names, not for what it's a palindrome and all, and also quite pleasant on the tongue. Sawbuck ... ugh! Gives my mouth the shivers just to say it.
UPDATE: Aram says that "ten-spot" is what he calls the bill, and Greg calls them "Hamiltons".

Fast-Food Nation

I was re-reading Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, after reading his outstanding collection of essays, Reefer Madness. Prompted by a yearning for beef (steak, a real big slab of it, that is), I started perusing his book, his portrayal of America as a society in thrall to the convenience of cars and seduced by the prettily-wrapped food.