October 30, 2004
More trouble than it's worth
My shoes have worn through -- my feet poke through the sole, the heel has splintered -- and I thought, aha, perfect! I'll simply order a replacement pair over the internet. That was a month ago. Dozen of shoe specialty shops later, and no go: if I'm fortunate enough to find a merchant which carries the Adidas Samba or Samba Milennium, they certainly do not have a size 46 2/3 / US 12. I tried ordering from my local shoe shop, Harput's (Motto: "We Love Adidas!"), but they don't love their customers. No-one returned my calls; I went to the shop, and placed a special order. No call, two weeks later. Finally, I found Sunset Soccer, who stock the shoe I want in the size I need, speak politely, and even gave me a 10% discount. Sunset Soccer rocks. Phooey to Harput's.
October 29, 2004
Life during blackouts
A California Court has found PG&E at fault for last December's massive blackout.
The yellow bands on the first floor are jimg's yellow plastic; I don't think there was any ambient light except the odd passing car.
from the Associated Press:
SAN FRANCISCO - A power outage that darkened busy stores near the peak of last year's holiday shopping season could have been avoided if Pacific Gas and Electric had taken preventive steps previously recommended by its own investigators, according to a regulatory report.
The California Public Utilities Commission report released Thursday covered a Dec. 20, 2003 blackout that cut power across a large section of San Francisco beginning in the early evening and continuing into the next night for some customers. The blackout affected about 100,000 customers, including downtown holiday stores bustling with shoppers on the final weekend before Christmas.
A cable failure in a power substation triggered a fire that caused the blackout, but the report concluded the lights probably would have stayed on if PG&E had followed up on the lessons learned from a similar 1996 incident.
PG&E's internal investigation into the 1996 episode produced a list of recommendations that included the installation of a smoke detection system.
But the equipment was never installed - a factor that may have contributed to PG&E's slow response to the fire last December. The utility didn't call local firefighters until two hours after the fire started, said Richard Clark, director of the PUC's consumer protection and safety division.
"We believe the fire and the outage were entirely avoidable," Clark told the PUC's board Thursday. "I find it quite troubling that PG&E didn't implement its own recommendations from its own investigation" into the 1996 fire.
Thursday's report paves the way for the PUC to open proceedings to consider whether PG&E should be fined for last December's blackout. PG&E has already paid $2.3 million in claims to customers who suffered losses during the power outage, PG&E spokesman John Nelson said.
PG&E already had reached conclusions similar to the PUC's findings in a company report released three months ago that coincided with a "heartfelt" apology from the San Francisco-based company.
The utility is making the recommended improvements to guard against future blackouts in San Francisco and other power substations, Nelson said.
October 28, 2004
flickr del sol
1001 is an OSX client for flickr ... but it crashes, which uploadr, flickr's own tool, doesn't. I really like that flickr put the OSX tool at the top of the page.
October 27, 2004
After a 28-Year Hiatus, Miss (er, Ms.) Subways Is Back
The New York Times ran a poignant piece about Ms Subway (née Miss Subway). The currently reigning regent staged a performance-art brunch on a southbound A train; lord knows, you have to wait ages for either of them (the brunch and the A, that is).
Happy Hundredth to the MTA!
I found an MTA token (RIP) in my bag today.
After a 28-Year Hiatus, Miss (er, Ms.) Subways Is Back
By ANTHONY RAMIREZ
lot was happening aboveground in May 1941 when the first winner of the Miss Subways contest smiled down on straphangers: Churchill evacuated British troops from Crete; Joe Louis and Buddy Baer were headed for a boxing rematch; and Fanny Brice joked on radio station WEAF's variety hour.
Since then, about 200 photogenic women have held the title of Miss Subways (including identical twins who reigned simultaneously, and at least one crack shot at the F.B.I.). But the contest wilted in 1976 under the heat of feminism. Yesterday, a new Miss Subways was crowned, just in time for the 100th anniversary of the subway system tomorrow. For the record, in a nod to its feminist adversaries, the name is now Ms. Subways.
Unlike her predecessors, who reigned monthly, Ms. Subways will preside for a year. Hundreds of women applied this summer. More than 40,000 votes were cast online or by mail for the finalists. The winner gets a year's free transportation on buses and subways; a 2004 crown and sash; and home delivery of The New York Post (a sponsor).
The winner is Caroline Sanchez-Bernat, 29, of Morningside Heights, an actress who a few years ago performed a piece of guerrilla theater on a subway train. (More about that later.)
For the contest, Ms. Sanchez-Bernat wrote an essay about why she is proud to be a New Yorker. Balancing a plastic tiara precariously on her head yesterday, she said her essay was about how "New York is a template for a lot of other cities, a place where different cultures and ethnicities live together relatively harmoniously."
Ms. Sanchez-Bernat is eager for the limelight, unlike two more reluctant finalists and a third who showed up nearly an hour late.
That finalist, Karen Allison Bobb, 33, of Brooklyn, a personal assistant, said that she had gotten up early for the 11 a.m. crowning ceremony but that "it's a trek to get to the L train from my house in Canarsie."
Another finalist, Elaine Chan, 23, of Manhattan, is a second-year medical student at SUNY Downstate Medical School in Brooklyn. Ms. Chan said she was very happy for Ms. Sanchez-Bernat because she seemed more poised in public than Ms. Chan would have been.
"I'm assuming there would have been a lot of ribbon cutting," Ms. Chan said, with a slight grimace.
The remaining finalist, Kerry Kent Smith, 27, of Manhattan, is an account executive for a financial-software company, Intralinks. Her mother, Eileen, was a Miss Subways in 1967. The younger woman has enjoyed being photographed with her look-alike blond mother, who urged her to enter the contest.
Is Ms. Smith disappointed that she did not win? "Well," she said, "I'm in corporate America (pause) and, uh (pause) it's been enough exposure, let's put it that way."
The Ms. Subways winner was announced at Ellen's Stardust Diner, at Broadway and 51st Street. It is owned by a former Miss Subways, Ellen Hart Sturm (1959), who has helped keep the memory of the contest alive with reunions. Yesterday's event was attended by 18 former Miss Subways.
The oldest was Dorothea Mate, 84, a 1942 Miss Subways. Mrs. Mate said her brother, who was in advertising, got her an interview with the agency that picked the winners. "In those days," she said, leaning over conspiratorially, "you had to know somebody."
She never sat underneath her poster in the subway cars, but her father-in-law did. He proudly buttonholed other passengers about his daughter. But she was shy, Mrs. Mate said, because she was "chubby."
A diet company spotted her and paid her to use its diet. Mrs. Mate lost 25 pounds and won a modeling contract. "How about that," she said.
Over the years, the winners of the Miss Subways contest were far more diverse than winners of other contests of the period, like Miss America.
Long before 1984, when Vanessa Williams became the first black Miss America, there were Latina, Asian and black Miss Subways.
And then there were others who didn't fit into any neat category. Eleanor Nash, a Miss Subways in 1960, was described in her poster as "young, beautiful and expert with a rifle." An F.B.I. clerk, she was a member of a bureau pistol club who "consistently scores in the 90's."
The Keeler twins were winners in 1958. They were described as "identical as two cigarettes in a pack" but could be distinguished because "Mary smokes, Kathryn doesn't."
And now about that guerrilla theater.
In December 2000, Ms. Sanchez-Bernat, this year's winner, and a group of fellow actors boarded a southbound A train for a performance of "Sunday Brunch 4."
It was a 35-minute piece of performance art re-enacting a Sunday brunch. Riders were perplexed, The New York Times reported.
The dialogue was improvised, Ms. Sanchez-Bernat said at the time. "We were excited, but we were also, 'What are we getting into?' "
Yesterday, as she was surrounded by television cameras and news photographers, Ms. Sanchez-Bernat seemed to know exactly what she was getting into.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
Scruitinize every word
Greg, as excited and mysterious as I've ever seen him, showed me Eminem's new video yesterday.
Download the video or get the torrent.
October 26, 2004
October 25, 2004
Who has the best housecoat?
Read This Paragraph
At my local Barnes and Noble, there is a huge wall of Java books just waiting to tip over and crush me one day. And one day it will. At the rate things are going, one day that bookcase will be tall enough to crush us all. It might even loop the world several times, crushing previous editions of the same Java books over and over again.And This Paragraph Too
This is just a small Ruby book. It won’t crush you. It’s light as a feather (because I haven’t finished it yet—hehe). And there’s a reason this book will stay light: because Ruby is simple to learn.But Don't Read This One!
Why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby is released under the Attribution-ShareAlike License. So, yes, please distribute it and print it and read it leisurely in your housecoat. In fact, there will be a contest at the end of the book for Best Housecoat. It’s a coveted award and you should feel honored to even read about it! (Especially if you are reading about it in your soon-to-be-prize-winning housecoat.)
I really like the straight-forward nature of ruby, and contributions like Why'sadd to this enjoyment.
Photographing your city block
Heard a talk by Marc Levoy et al. from Stanford today, presenting their CityBlock project.
Some other sites which present panoramic city views: Cambridge Live; and Seamless City, in which the photographs are manually stitched together.
Selling secondhand tobacco?
Phillip Torrone posted about Jeffrey Early's gpsphotolinker, which uses a GPX file to stitch lat/lon information into your photograph's EXIF data.
This is exactly what I wanted. Well, ideally I'd have the GPS embedded in the camera. Soon.
October 24, 2004
in all ways remarkable
Began reading a comprehensive edition of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn.
This particular edition, a nice hardcover example of which I found while tidying my room, contains facsimile pages from recently-discovered textual addenda. Although the manuscript reproductions are perhaps most satisfying to a more scholarly attitude than mine own, the included period illustrations accompany the text beautifully.
Some reading material
A bevy of articles (all PDF) about public transportation.