May 15, 2008
November 28, 2007
In which we drink from a Kleinsche Flasche
For many years I was not an adherent of the television program "Futurama", although it fit my "A"-list criteria: animated, amusing. Now that I know how many nurdalicious maths jokes the show has, I am eager to watch it. A Klein bottle has neither inside nor outside; it is a closed, nonorientable surface of Euler characteristic. Legendary sysadmin Cliff Stoll makes these "One sided, boundless, and mathematically nonorientable" bottles for sale, as well as steins after the same fashion; one could indeed drink from a Kleinsche Flasche!... Read more
April 5, 2007
March 31, 2007
In which we give credit where it is due
I don't really use tivo anymore, what with not being at home, with the troublesome problems of distributing media from the tivo to other devices, and also because sites such as Throw Away Your TV, YouTube, and the like make accessing clips and content quite straightforward. To get from a tune wedgie to the Safety Dance was but the work of an instant. And the video has a "little man". Excellent.... Read more
November 5, 2005
In which we are out of sight in the night, out of sight in the day
Just before sitting down to a drink at a sidewalk café along the Embarcadero, I found myself wondering about which jobs society deems "tip-worthy" and how restaurants, especially, are able to regularly under-pay their staff because of the collective anticipation of tips. 10%? 12% 20%? A sawbuck on top of a benjamin? Tip on the cost of drinks, or $1 per, plus the percentage of the food? How does it work? Why ca'n't restaurants around here pay a living wage, and not force the ignominy of a tip jar on every coffee-shop counter from the Haight to Potrero? "Excuse me, I didn't realise you had a degree in medicine. Are you a doctor? Are you a doctor? Answer me, please. Are you a doctor? Okay, then you admit you do'n't know what you're talking about." This is such a great movie. I saw it by myself at the Pittsburgh Playhouse in autumn of '92.... Read more
August 3, 2005
In which the old becomes new again
San Francisco's beautiful, majestic Market St. receives a historic remake through the recreation of a 1905 short film: ... Jack Kuttner attached a camera to a San Francisco trolley and shot black-and-white film as the streetcar rolled east from 10th Street on Market Street. The result, a herky-jerky 20-minute film, is a time capsule of industrial age mobility: Horses pull wagons, motorcars zoom past and newsboys bound around giddily. The Ferry Building, at Market's east end, looms ever larger as the camera-mounted trolley approaches it. Few copies of Kuttner's film exist, but the Exploratorium, a museum in San Francisco, owns one. San Francisco filmmaker Melinda Stone saw it six years ago; transfixed, she decided to re-create it at its centennial. She is nothing if not patient. Years of planning came to fruition recently when she and a small crew shadowed Kuttner's feat. The result will be shown, along with Kuttner's film and local artists' transportation-related work, at "A Trip Down Market Street 1905/2005," an outdoor screening on Sept. 24 in San Francisco's Justin Herman Plaza, sponsored by the Exploratorium. "I'm hoping that all of that will get people to think about the future and how we can effect change on Market Street," Stone said. Market Street dissects San Francisco, running northeast-southwest from the close, high-rise-pocked grids of downtown to the climb of Twin Peaks. Plainly, the boulevard has changed through the years, and not always for the best. Some midtown areas have decayed to the point of civic embarrassment. It wasn't always so. Even a half century ago, Stone noted, "that place was hopping. It was more than a shopping center. It was a promenade. It was a place to go and check out the scene and really be alive."... Read more
July 19, 2005
In which I hack, more
After frustration with the un-hack-ability of the Series 2 TiVo units, I unwrapped the nice ol' Series One that Shawn gave me (after he got his replay!!) and picked up a copy of the O'Reilly hacks book. Let's see how far I get without a phone line now! (I'm still irritated that the Series 2 requires a POTS connection to work its DVR magic.)... Read more
July 17, 2005
In which I call in the wolf.
Well, not quite television, but something called "Starz" which has produced very amusing Flash-y animation synopses of popular movies. I like their take on Pulp Fiction. And oh yes: all of the animations entail casting bunnies.... Read more
February 7, 2005
Here comes your man
Joseph hooked me up with a home-made DVD of the Pixies' recent incongruous appearance on Austin City Limits. Thanks to DVDBackup, I now have the disk on my local drive, and, since Joseph is a filmmaker by avocation, the DVD is pretty stellar. He exported the footage from TiVo to Final Cut Pro, thence to iDVD.... Read more
August 12, 2004
... this is the sound of settling
The high-definition beauty of last year's breath-taking Transatlanticism forms the audio track for two television shows, Six Feet Under and The O.C.. Meanwhile, Death Cab for Cutie frontman Benjamin Gibbard hits the road to advocate a Vote for Change.... Read more
August 2, 2004
Trust me. I know what I'm doing.
Your stereotypical doughnut is nothing but dough and sugar, fried in fat. Am I right? Now that fat gums up your arteries, and goes into your brain, and you turn liberal. And the next thing you know, Barry Manilow's on the turntable, and you're not going to work, and you're voting for gun control. You see what I'm saying? Courtesy the SledgeHammer Season 1 DVDs, which arrived in today's post. Alas, something that the TiVo won't ever catch, because the show didn't run long enough to become worthy of syndication (the magic 100 episodes). I never realised that this show is set and filmed in San Francisco! The establishing shots and many of the chase scenes all feature typical San Francisco landscapes: The Golden Gate Bridge, the Presidio, downtown.... Read more
April 28, 2004
Exit does not exist!
Once again, a television advertisement caught my ear just as I was starting to beeep-boop with the TiVo remote: the warped guitars, lyrics, and vocals of Modest Mouse praising a Nissan minivan of some sort, while soccer moms (literally!) cavorted gleefully. Sunny dispositions and a minivan do not jive with the pub-brawling, morphine-dampened-singing, battered-blue-van-touring of Modest Mouse. Nissan are trying to promote a subversive image? This is weak doublespeak! Then again, Modest MouseSony are no longer "indie".... Read more
February 19, 2004
In praise of the peanut.
The New York Times has an encomium of the TiVo remote, including commentary by Jakob Nielsen, Mr Usabiility himself (who uses ReplayTV, apparently).... Read more
September 26, 2003
Dang, it's the new thang.
Watching Newlyweds at the Dopehouse, and the lilting vocals of the Shins' New Slang are in the background. They're source music playing at a mega-pop-star's house? Yowza. The newlyweds are spending time apart for the first time since the big day; they take an SUV limo to the airport, which afford us an excellent view of LAX, but it's not quite Garry Winograd's. Sublime! Okay, here's a snippet that hearkens back to the confusion about tuna (which is, unbeknownst to Jessica, a fish. This takes place over an appetizer of wings: Jessica: I don't eat buffalo. Other Girl: They're not buffalo. They're chicken. Jessica: It's not? Then why are they called buffalo wings? Nick: I think barbeuced wings started in Buffalo. Other Guy: Yeah, they're chicken. Didn't you ever find it weird that buffalos don't have wings? She knows the Jaws movies by number, but didn't know that dolphins have blowholes.... Read more
September 8, 2003
A toast.
While eating rice and beans at Justin's a few weeks ago, he suggested drinking some 2-for-$1 pounders of Night Flight (cheaper even than Night Train) and watching South Park in French (superbly well-done, especially the songs).... Read more
September 4, 2003
Where the alphabet starts with Z.
Sitting at the Dopehouse writing code (duh) and half-watching tivo (duh!) and thinking about Sara's cooking (duh!!), and I hear the strains of Tones on Tail's "Go!". It's the backing sound for a commerical. However, since that song was also on the soundtrack to Grosse Pointe Blanke, it's not as surprising as sitting at the counter of Bob's Donuts and hearing a Nissan ad set to "Gravity Rides Everything" by Modest Fuckin Mouse. Do a Google search on "Nissan Modest Mouse" and you'll get a bunch of smart alterna blogs on this same topic.... Read more
September 1, 2003
Kitchenware? That's where I used to keep it!
Watching Clueless for the Nth time. I need to figure out a good Clueless drink. Wonder how many times I've seen this film: at least three times in theatres, starting with a college-break trip to a suburban cinema with Arshad and Erica. And with how many people? Since then I've broken the times-I've-seen-the-same-movie-in-the-theatre record with Rivers and Tides, Th. Ridelsheimer's beautiful film about Andy Goldsworthy's sculpture (aka "The Movie That Saved the Roxie"), and then again with The Italian Job (the pants-dropping Marky Mark remake, not the Michael Caine original). ... but until TIJ appears on DVD (October 7th), I'll probably keep watching Cher climb into Christian's Nash convertible and delightedly say "I love him!" when he asks her "Do you like Billie Holiday?". If iTunes, or tivo, or some software or appliance kept track of how often I watch movies, or scenes therein, I'd be a lot happier. All of this technology, and it falls *just* short of doing what I want. I spent way too much time over the past week trying to get my new phone (Nokia 3650) to talk to a wireless headset (Jabra FreeSpeech) and powerbook (via a D-Link USB adapter). The problem stemmed from the incompatibility in Bluetooth implementations in the Nokia device and the Jabra, but became irritating when Amazon refused to ship the revised Jabra to me, insisting that I RMA the unit from Jabra. So much technology.... Read more
Tell me what's going on.
A company with origins in the Bay Area and operations in the UK, Shazam, will identify and tag a song using your mobile. Hold your mobile to the sound source -- a jukebox in the bar, speakers at the mall -- and the phone gets an SMS with the song info. It also updates a home page with a link to purchase the CD. The FAQ explains that you can tag any song playing over speakers -- not live! -- in the U.K.(orange, 02, tmobile, vodaphone) or Germany (vodaphone only), and that the sercice will expand to other countries.-- but Shahid pointed out that the service is not available in the U.S., for licensing reasons. And it doesn't work with humming. Yet.... Read more
August 22, 2003
Elimidate, baby.
Watching Elimidate at the Dopehouse while (attempting to) write code. Alison: "Over the years I've changed a bit. I used to be superficial, but now I surround myself with cool people." This show fascinates me. My dates are *never* like this, all three-way kissing and flashing and grinding out on the dance floor. This show is only fun to watch at the Dopehouse, preferably while writing rb and drinking difficult lemonade drinks.... Read more
