I'm a lasagna boy!

murrain

Through reading Simon Winchester's assiduosly-researched books, I am picking up much new vocabulary: murrain, a weighted word which comes from a Hebrew word for plague, and has a modern denotation for a disease of cattle or other domesticated beasties.

In which life is delicious

After using Delicious Monster for the past year or so, I find the lack of feature development somewhat frustrating. Why can't I export to formats other than text (and even that export does'n't allow me to choose delimiters, CSV format, etc. ...)
The delicious guys have posted some cool new third-party stuff on their blog, such as the DeliciTunes, but really this should be integrated into the app.

I'm dumping some of my DVD to hard drives, and they are now in brown paper bags awaiting transit to Amoeba or something. I'd post the list online, but ca'n't get DeliciousExporter to work with DeliciousMonster 1.5 and Tiger [ insert sad 'smiley' face here ].

In which others write of walking to work

I do not walk to work, but many others do.

In which he had an interview with TIME magazine

At times I would forget where I was. Cairo? Jakarta? Mexico City? Everywhere there are those same islands of wealth amid the poverty, like the green areas of Manila that are private golf clubs instead of public parks.

More of Salgado's photoessay at TIME magazine.

In which I commodify my dissent

This one's for Aram:
The Chronicle reports that the widow of Huey Newton, Al Green, et al. seek to market their very special brand of hot sauce, named "Burn baby burn".

"It was a catchy phrase, and I thought it would be reminiscent of the '60s," Fredrika Newton said Tuesday. "I sure didn't want it to be a call to burn anything other than our taste buds."

Green said: "We have a number of different kinds, and some of it is really hot -- I mean, incredibly hot."

The phrase is associated with the race riots in the Watts section of Los Angeles in 1965. Onlookers started chanting it after police arrested a young man for drunken driving. The confrontation triggered six days of rioting, resulting in more than 30 deaths, 1,000 injuries and devastating fire damage to the neighborhood.

Each bottle of Burn Baby Burn Revolutionary Hot Sauce will come with a tag noting milestones in the history of the Black Panther Party for Self- Defense, which was formed in 1966 by Huey Newton and his college classmate Bobby Seale. Newton was fatally shot by a drug dealer in Oakland in 1989.

The tags will highlight the group's social legacy, Fredrika Newton said.

"I guess I want to celebrate the history and to let people know the actual facts of the Black Panther Party and how some of these programs are woven in today, like free breakfast programs and the call for free health care, " she said.

... but really, read the whole article. It is sort of post-ironic, in a post-modern sort of way. You know, swinging on the flippity-flop and all that.

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.)

In which I hack

Over the past few days, I have been hacking a lot, mostly for work, but also a little for non-work. I have discovered or re-discovered many power-user bits of zsh, my interactive shell of choice. In between long stretches of late-night firefighting (routers melting, electrical systems failing, infrastructure subsystems behaving oddly), I am moving some of my little webapps from their miserable perl or python existences into a world of ruby. Part of this is sped along by nice interfaces such as the flickr API and instiki (wow, what a great name for a wiki!).

Another really nice thing is that, barring configuration parameters, the code works seamlessly on either the powerbook (for development) or the linux or g4 servers. Rich Kilmer blogs about some hacks to get ruby working more smoothly under tiger.

In which I tune in an Experimental Station

Our old adventurer-about-town Lauren is building a brick oven at the site of the ol' Blackstone Bicycle Co-op.

In which I get my knuckles ground down

While cleaning out a closet (why on earth do I have two tuxedo jackets? and who wears shirts requiring separate collars these days?), I found a notebook in which I had scribbled initial impressions of Pavement's Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. I poked fun at them for poking fun at R.E.M., but little did I realise the extent to which they did so until I picked up the extra-special Tenth Anniversary Edition of the album, which includes a whopping 49 tracks, including the sly "Camera", a take on R.E.M's song of ditto title. And, of course, the best band from Sacto Northern Cal also rib the Stone Temple Pilots, Smashing Pumpkins, and Dave Brubeck. And probably others.

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.

In which it takes a village to make a wiki

A useful wiki, especially if I had a more modern 'phone: the New York Wiki. Oh, if only it used Google Maps, as do so many sites do. Another interesting New York City pedestrian site: New York Songlines.

In which private industry gives the locals a run for the money

The Chronicle reports that Zipcar, flush with $10mm in VC largesse, are bringing their act to San Francisco. This is direct competition for the uppity local (and gov't-funded) City CarShare.

“There are hundreds of thousands, if not a million, people in San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland who could benefit from Zipcar.”

In the Bay Area, for instance, Zipcar sees the potential for as many as 1,000 cars. City CarShare now has about 90 cars available for sharing in San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley.

Zipcar uses the Internet, phones, and wireless technology to make cars available 24 hours per day to its members.

Here’s how it works: Each member gets a card, called a Zipcard. When a member makes a reservation online, or on an automated phone line, the member’s card is activated. When the member waves the card at the reserved vehicle’s windshield, the car unlocks.

Reservations can be made anytime between one minute and a year in advance. Members pay $8.50 per hour or $59 per day, and like most car-sharing programs, the price includes gas, insurance, cleaning, and maintenance costs.

The technology and policy are very similar to City CarShare and to Portland's FlexCar program, but perhaps having additional resources available will spread the use of carshare programs, rather than decimating the public service. Or then again, perhaps the West Coast is not capable of sharing cars?

In which we annotate Google search results via del.icio.us

The Ponderer has a nice Greasemonkey script to annotate and bookmark google search results; the script checks for feeds from the resulting pages, and also summons lists of related tags from del.icio.us.

In which Caltrain hits the mark, again

Caltrain commuter-rail service is expanding services again. Caltrain, unlike many other of the twenty-odd Bay Area transit agencies, focuses effectively on their bottom line. They realised last year, with the introduction of the Baby Bullet service, that they had hit on something that made extremely effective use of resources: each train was filled to capacity. The trains fast and on-time; and they are a cost-effective alternative to driving (and to other public transit services!).

... and one of the newly-added trains leaves San Francisco southbound at 9 AM. Suits me fine!

In which I'm really too exhausted

I nodded off in front of the computer screen this evening: quite some time has passed since that happened. I am not quite sure why, but this week felt draining even on Monday. I missed the regular (-ish) wings night that jimg and I usually enjoy, although Monday night's dinner (Ethiopian) was quite tasty and with excellent company. I have no tbeen spending much time on the bicycle, nor have I enjoyed much opportunity to read. Excelsior, and enough of complaining.

In which the budget still does not balance

although the board approved the increases, some supervisors are still working to decrease the fees for residential parking permits with further increases to parking costs in commercial areas. The new parking penalty schedule already has a higher fee for missing payment on a meter downtown $50, rather than the $40 fine for overtime parking in other areas of The City.

Details on the rate increase appear on the Department of Parking and Traffic's web site.

Aside: isn't "The City" a particular area of downtown London? I cannot abide how The Examiner insists on referring to San Francisco as "The City".

In which I am not a knouter

One of my favourite stories is Richard Connell's The Most Dangerous Game (anthologised in a paperback my father read to us often; the collection also included "Miss Hinch", a creepy story indeed). The famous hunter Dr Zaroff mentions that his hench-man Ivan was a knouter for the tsar. Where does this word come from? Russian via French? French via Russian?

update A knouter uses a knout.

In which I write in praise of Mitchell's Ice Cream

Mitchell's ice-creams delight. I love creamy, rich ice creams, and this venerable San Francisco shop at San Jose and 29th (do'n't forget to take a number as you walk in the door, or you wo'n't get a cone!) never fails to satisfy my ice-cream craving. Now that Greg is gone from Rick's Rather Rich Ice Cream, the best bay-area ice cream is a toss-up: sometimes I am happy to head over the bridge to Piedmont's bustling (and renovated) Fenton's; I am always happy to visit Mitchell's.
Five years ago, the San Francisco Chronicle's Scott Ostler decided to write about one interesting tit-bit of San Francisco each week over the course of a year, finding the one story for his weekly column in each of the city's forty-nine square miles. A good conceit, but it never came to fruition. His piece about Mitchell's omits my favourite aspect of the place: that you can have absolutely any cone dipped in chocolate. Yum.

In which I take a mundane journey

Kate Pocrass has been collecting stories and minor adventures in San Francisco for three years, and has published the first volume resulting from her Mundane Journeys project. One can call 415 364 1465 for a selection, updated weekly, or thumb through the pocket-poet-sized book, which is quaint and quirky and smacks of utter uselessness. But she did it, not I, so props to her.
Adah Balinsky's marvellous Stairway Walks in San Francisco is another favourite San Francisco book.

In which we are short of sight

A few months ago, I walked the length of Divisadero between Haight and McAllister, photographing the vacant store-fronts. I did ditto along Haight between Scott and Buchanan, and ultimately found the endevaour too unsettling to continue. Meanwhile, our hard-working supervisors have introduced legislation to ensure that this ""vibrant small business sector" continues without improvement. Unlike many residents in this area, I do not want to prevent chain stores from moving in -- our neighbourhood needs more incentives for small and individual business owners to hang out their shingles, but we should not prevent a hated or feared chain store from opening. The corner lot at Hayes and Divisadero, across from a chain fast-food restaurant!, has been vacant these three years because we fought tooth and nail to prevent a chain video-rental emporium from opening there, midway between two locally-owned video-rental places. The old fire house on Oak near Divisadero might have become an outlet for a locally-based chain clothing retailer, but the neighbourhood lobbied against that, as well. The building is now the temporary headquarters for the construction on the site at Baker and Oak. Meanwhile, we have liquor stores, check-cashing stores, and chalkboard cafés. But we have no book-shop, no bakery, no theatre, no delicatessen, no doctors (few professional offices at all) ....

In which an interface cheers me

The two-step login for a Bank of America ATM has long irked me: the first screen asked which language I wanted, and the second asked me to enter the PIN. I suggested that the two screens be combined. Several years later, voilà:

In which the promise of pizza overwhelms me

Although I have become old and crotchety about donuts, I still succumb to the promise of pizza. Something sublime in that scent of melting cheese and toasted bread. Still, in the six months so far this year I have eaten pizza (whole or a slice) on two dozen occasions. Notably, however, on my most recent trip to New York City I had not a single slice. Ditto Chicago.

In which we get the scoop on the poop

The San Francisco Chronicle has the latest on the fragrant dung-heap that is Duboce Park.

In which I am exposed to the elements of murder

After another enthusiastic reading of Dorothy Sayer's romantic piffle, Strong Poison, and watching the filmed dramatisation of the inept adolescence of Graham Young in The Young Poisoner's Handbook, it came as little surprise that I jumped on a recent Oxford title, "The Elements of Murder".
Much of the narrative, half popular science and half murder-mystery, unfolds through inane run-on sentences reminiscent of an enthusiastic high-school scholar who has done a vast amount of research and simply cannot wait to express everything on paper. At times, I suspected that the author and his editor were founding members of the Royal Society for the Conservation of Commas, so infrequent was the use a comma when changing subjects in a complex-compound sentence.
To his credit, he works in many useful, and sometimes significant, historical nuggets: "Seaweed is also rich in arsenic and on the remote Scottish island of North Ronaldsey there is a breed of sheep which feeds exclusively on seaweed and they appear to thrive on it."
He tells the story of the Styrian peasants who reportedly took arsenic regularly, to improve their complexion and to aid their respiratory systems. He credits the defence of Mary Ann Cotton, a noted poisoner, with using the story of the Styrians at her trial. (Anachronistic? I wonder how widely known the Styrian legend was in mid-19th-century England.)

Other of his questionable writing: the excitable etymology. "The name merury, by which we known this element, comes from the name of the planet and its first recorded use was by the Greek philosopher Theophrastus around 300 BC." In fact, the association of the planets and metallic elements did not occur until 1500 years later, during the alchemical writings of the Middle Ages.
Aside: I have a vivid memory of a National Geographic issue on mercury, which featured a striking photograph of a man floating on his back in a pool of quicksilver.

Nicholas

I picked up a copy of Anthea Bell's new translation of Nicholas, the classic illustrated story of a puckish French school-boy. The elegant, cloth-bound Phaidon edition features the charming illustrations by Jean-Jacques Sempe.

Goscinny died in 1977, but both the Nicholas series of books and the phenomenal Asterix comics, produced in collaboration with the devilish Albert Uderzo (whom I met unexpectedly at Hamley's in London), have become classics, in no small part due to Bell's lyrical and humourous translation.

In which a vague ethnic slur is made

Living in a city which does not feature an abundance of taxi-cabs, I often call a dispatch when I require a hackie to take me from point to point. The conversation goes something like this:

Me: Yes, good morning, I need a cab at such-and-such number on Scott St.
Dispatcher: What is your phone number?
Me: (provides ditto)
(At this point the Dispatcher usually says, "Fifteen to twenty minutes" and rings off.)
Dispatcher: Ah, that's near Haight St.!
Me: Yes.
Dispatcher: You're around the corner from that crazy Indian guy?
Me: I do'n't know, I just want the cab.
Dispatcher: Oh, you just want the cab? You do'n't know the guy?
Me: (click)

Has a descendant of Crazy Horse settled in the Lower Haight? Are a lot of silly Sikhs in residence on Haight Street? Or worse: am I the crazy Indian guy?

and what does any of this have to do with my getting a cab? Barely had I rung off when the door-bell rang and a stereotype with ruddy cheeks and a soft hat appeared at the door.

In which bad news for BART means good news for downtown hotels

If you cannot stand the commute without BART, the agency helpfully suggests spending the night in a downtown hotel.
... I imagined that they would publicise Casual Carpool a little more. At least the agency mentions it, and will provide space at its parking lots for carpools to meet. They also suggest taking a vacation.

In which we work on our manners

After visiting the same café more or less every morning for the past nine years (wow! that is how long I have been in San Francisco -- !), I expect that the person behind the counter knows, if not my name, what I drink. So far so good: I walk in, and the nice Italian woman, the always-sleepy-but-very-cheerful German woman, the pleasantly-tweaked tattoed man, and the indie-rock chick all know that I put back a double espresso with hot water, and the mug I prefer to drink from. And they always say "Good morning" and "How are you" or even, simply, "Hello". But this morning I say "Thank you" to the woman with the weird mouth, and she says, briefly, "Yeah." A response that is unexpected and jarring, if not rude. Compounded with her blank stare when I said "Good morning", I felt more intensely disrespected than when I hear "No problem" in response to a polite, straightforward "Thank you". After I greeted her I paused, so that she could say something in return -- she had been bantering with the previous customer -- but she simply stood and stared expectantly. Perhaps I smelled bad? But no: a moment later the man who had been sleeping in the doorway across the street walked in, after emptying out his piss-bottle onto the kerb, and she handed him a cup of coffee. I must smell bad and have another offensive trait. From now on when I see this woman, I will experiment: no cursory dollar bill stuffed into the solicitous cup on the counter, no expectation that she knows my drink, no idle chit-chat. Or I might turn around and walk to the shop down the street. Or I might learn to make coffee for myself at home.

The calculus of manners often breaks down in this spectacularly complex and rushed world. I sat down at the airport lounge, and the man next to me leaned over and said, "Hey, are you a football fan?", to which I answered, "No" and wondered "Is it football season?" because all I have on my mind right now is the end of Wimbledon and the beginning of the Tour de France. The man continued: "Well, one of the greatest players in the NFL is over there right now. Curtis Martin."
And I started: I attended high school with Curt, and we sat through electonics shop (three periods! every day!) together, often watching his tapes from the previou day's game in the A/V lab (Yes, I was an A/V geek. Big surprise.) He set rushing records throughout high school, then at University, and has become an icon in American football: an elegant, talented football player. I went up to him, nervous for interrupting his privacy but very excited, because -- well, because he is a great guy. And he is: when I said my name, his face lit up and he said, "Yes, from Mr Karsin's class!".

In which we are on track for safety

Despite the appeal for common sense on the Houston Metro web site, the light rail in Houston has acquired the unwelcome nickname "Wham-bam tram!" (and accompanying Dashboard widget). Didn't Barcelona suffer through something similar on the recent expansion of their surface-tram system into the suburbs?