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April 1, 2009
Customer Feedback
It’s nice to get great customer feedback:
This weekend, I wrote a humorous piece entitled “Moses is Departing
Egypt: A Facebook Haggaddah.” Not having easy access to any other
hosting service, I stored it on my Joyent Accelerator account. (I am
very glad that your terms of service permit this, so long as my
Facebook application is being tested.) This piece unexpectedly went
viral, and has received over 100,000 visits in the 60 hours since it
was posted. I have been delighted that there have been no problems
associated with my rapid increase in bandwith needs (page loads seem
as fast as ever in informal tests), and even more delighted that this
entire service has been free for me. (In fact, you don’t even have my
credit card number or address.)Signed: Carl Elkin (creator of “Moses is Departing Egypt: A Facebook Haggaddah”)
You’re welcome, Carl.
The April Deal: Free Shipping on Orders Over $20!
Enjoy free shipping on orders over $20 in April. No coupon necessary! Just choose the Free Shipping option at checkout. Good on all orders over $20. UPS Ground. Contiguous USA only. Expires April 30, 2009 -- so go shopping! Subscribers to our monthly News & Discounts email get great deals every month. Sign up today so you don't miss another month!
Accident vs. Crash: The View from Savannah
Here at Streetsblog, we often discuss the ongoing carnage caused by drivers on the nation's roads and streets -- and the near-total lack of accountability for those who are anything but staggering drunk. And we often discuss, too, the role that language plays in our perceptions of accountability. Today's Streetsblog Network featured post, from Sustainable Savannah, is a particularly thoughtful and reasonable examination of the importance of terminology -- "accidents" vs. "crashes":
As dependable as morning delivery of the paper (at least for now), any news item describing a car vs. pedestrian “accident” will be greeted by comments from readers sympathizing with with driver and vilifying the pedestrian -- no matter who is at fault. Many fret over the cost of the car’s bodywork.Photo by Brittany Randolph via Flickr.
This is indicative of a kind of thinking that imagines cars as being autonomous from the people who drive them. I’m guilty of this as well. When I was struck while riding my bicycle several years ago, I described it as being “hit by a car,” not “hit by a person driving a car.” And I’ve done it again in this post. Every reference to car vs. pedestrian or car vs. cyclist above should really read “motorist vs. ...”
Elsewhere around the network, many members are having a little April Fool's fun, so be careful when you click. But these items seem to be for real: Kansas Cyclist reports on a growing network of bike trails in Little Rock, Arkansas; City Parks Blog posts on the recent call for a new urban vision from New York Times critic Nicolai Ouroussoff; and our friends over at Santa Rosa CityBus take stock of their blogging experiment, four months in.
Understanding Exponents (Why does 0^0 = 1?)
Shared by AJ
Really interesting stuff..We’re taught that exponents are repeated multiplication. This is a good introduction, but it breaks down on 3^1.5 and the brain-twisting 0^0. How do you repeat zero zero times and get 1 — without melting your brain?
You can’t, not while exponents are repeated multiplication. Today our mental model is due for an upgrade.
Viewing arithmetic as transformations
Let’s step back — how do we learn arithmetic? We’re taught that numbers are counts of something (fingers), addition is combing counts (3 + 4 = 7) and multiplication is repeated addition (2 times 3 = 2 + 2 + 2 = 6).
This interpretation works for nice round numbers like 2 and 10. Strange concepts like -1 and sqrt(2) don’t work. Why?
Our model was incomplete. Numbers aren’t just a count; a better viewpoint is a position on a line. This position can be negative (-1), between other numbers (sqrt(2)), or in another dimension (i).
Arithmetic became a way to transform a number: Addition was sliding (+3 means slide 3 units to the right), and multiplication was scaling (times 3 means scale it up 3x).
So what are exponents?
Enter the Expand-o-tron™
Let me introduce the Expand-o-tron 3000.
Yes, this device looks like a shoddy microwave — but instead of heating food, it grows numbers. Put a number in and a new one comes out. Here’s how:
- Start with 1.0
- Set the growth to the desired change after one second (2x, 3x, 10.3x)
- Set the time to the number of seconds
- Push the button
And shazam! The bell rings and we pull out our shiny new number. Suppose we want to change 1.0 into 9:
- Put 1.0 in the expand-o-tron
- Set the change for “3x” growth, and the time for 2 seconds
- Push the button
The number starts transforming as soon as we begin: We see 1.0, 1.1, 1.2… and just as finish the first second, we’re at 3.0. But it keeps going: 3.1, 3.5, 4.0, 6.0, 7.5. As just as we finish the 2nd second we’re at 9.0. Behold our shiny new number!
Mathematically, the expand-o-tron (exponent function) does this:
or
For example, 3^2 = 9/1. The base is the amount to grow each unit (3x), and the exponent is the amount of time (2). A formula like 2^n means “Use the expand-o-tron at 2x growth for n seconds”.
We always start with 1.0 in the expand-o-tron to see how it changes a single unit. If we want to see what would happen if we started with 3.0 in the expand-o-tron, we just scale up the final result. For example:
- “Start with 1 and double 3 times” means 1 * 2^3 = 1 * 2 * 2 * 2 = 8
- “Start with 3 and double 3 times” means 3 * 2^3 = 3 * 2 * 2 * 2 = 24
Whenever you see an plain exponent by itself (like 2^3), we’re starting with 1.0.
Understanding the Exponential Scaling Factor
When multiplying, we can just state the final scaling factor. Want it 8 times larger? Multiply by 8. Done.
Exponents are a bit… finnicky:
You: I’d like to grow this number.
Expand-o-tron: Ok, stick it in.
You: How big will it get?
Expand-o-tron: Gee, I dunno. Let’s find out…
You: Find out? I was hoping you’d kn-
Expand-o-tron: Shh!!! It’s growing! It’s growing!
You: …
Expand-o-tron: It’s done! My masterpiece is alive!
You: Can I go now?
The expand-o-tron is indirect. Just looking at it, you’re not sure what it’ll do: What does 3^10 mean to you? How does it make you feel? Instead of a nice tidy scaling factor, exponents want us to feel, relive, even smell the growing process. Whatever you end with is your scaling factor.
It sounds roundabout and annoying. You know why? Most things in nature don’t know where they’ll end up!
Do you think bacteria plans on doubling every 14 hours? No — it just eats the moldy bread you forgot about in the fridge as fast as it can, and as it gets more it starts growing even faster. To predict the behavior, we use how fast they’re growing (current rate) and how long they’ll be changing (time) to figure out their final value.
The answer has to be worked out — exponents are a way of saying “Begin with these conditions, start changing, and see where you end up”. The expand-o-tron (or our calculator) does the work by crunching the numbers to get the final scaling factor. But someone has to do it.
Understanding Fractional Powers
Let’s see if the expand-o-tron can help us understand exponents. First up: what does at 2^1.5 mean?
It’s confusing when we think of repeated multiplication. But the expand-o-tron makes it simple: 1.5 is just the amount of time in the machine.
- 2^1 means 1 second in the machine (2x growth)
- 2^2 means 2 seconds in the machine (4x growth)
2^1.5 means 1.5 seconds in the machine, so somewhere between 2x and 4x growth (more later). The idea of “repeated counting” had us stuck.
Multiplying exponents
What if we want to two growth cycles back-to-back? Let’s say we use the machine for 2 seconds, and then use it for 3 seconds at the exact same power:
Think about your regular microwave — isn’t this the same as one continuous cycle of 5 seconds? It sure is. As long as the power setting (base) stayed the same, we can just add the time:
Again, the expand-o-tron gives us a scaling factor to change our number. To get the total effect from two consecutive uses, we just multiply the scaling factors together.
Square roots
Let’s keep going. Let’s say we’re at power level a and grow for 3 seconds:
Not too bad. Now what would growing for half that time look like? It’d be 1.5 seconds:
Now what would happen if we did that twice?
partial growth * partial growth = full growth
Looking at this equation, we see “partial growth” is the square root of full growth! If we divide the time in half we get the square root scaling factor. And if we divide the time in thirds?
partial growth * partial growth * partial growth = full growth
And we get the cube root! For me, this is an intuitive reason why dividing the exponents gives roots: we split the time into equal amounts, so each “partial growth” period must have the same effect. If three identical effects are multiplied together, it means they’re each a cube root.
Negative exponents
Now we’re on a roll — what does a negative exponent mean? Negative seconds means going back in time! If going forward grows by a scaling factor, going backwards should shrink by it.
The sentence means “1 second ago, we were at half our current amount (1/2^1)”. In fact, this is a neat part of any exponential graph, like 2^x:
Pick a point like 3.5 seconds (2^3.5 = 11.3). One second in the future we’ll be at double our current amount (2^4.5 = 22.5). One second ago we were at half our amount (2^2.5 = 5.65).
This works for any number! Wherever 1 million is, we were at 500,000 one second before it. Try it below:
Taking the zeroth power
Now let’s try the tricky stuff: what does 3^0 mean? Well, we set the machine for 3x growth, and use it for… zero seconds. Zero seconds means we don’t even use the machine!
Our new and old values are the same (new = old), so the scaling factor is 1. Using 0 as the time (power) means there’s no change at all. The scaling factor is always 1.
Taking zero as a base
How do we interpret 0^x? Well, our growth amount is “0x” — after a second, the expand-o-tron obliterates the number and turns it to zero. But if we’ve obliterated the number after 1 second, it really means any amount of time will destroy the number:
0^(1/n) = nth root of 0^1 = nth root of 0 = 0
No matter the tiny power we raise it to, it will be some root of 0.
Zero to the zeroth power
At last, the dreaded 0^0. What does it mean?
The expand-o-tron to the rescue: 0^0 means a 0x growth for 0 seconds!
Although we planned on obliterating the number, we never used the machine. No usage means new = old, and the scaling factor is 1. 0^0 = 1 * 0^0 = 1 * 1 = 1 — it doesn’t change our original number. Mystery solved!
(For the math geeks: In reality, 0^0 is defined to be 1 to make various theorems work smoothly. If that satisfies you, great — I need to know why it should be 1).
Advanced: Repeated Exponents (a to the b to the c)
Repeated exponents are tricky. What does
mean? It’s “repeated multiplication, repeated” — another way of saying “do that exponent thing once, and do it again”. Let’s dissect it:
- First, I want to grow by doubling each second: do that for 3 seconds (2^3)
- Then, whatever my number is (8x), I want to grow by that new amount for 4 seconds (8^4)
The first exponent (^3) just knows to take “2″ and grow it by itself 3 times. The next exponent (^4) just knows to take the previous amount (8) and grow it by itself 4 times. Each time unit in “Phase II” is the same as repeating all of Phase I:
This is where the repeated counting interpretation helps get our bearings. But then we bring out the expand-o-tron: we grow for 3 seconds in Phase I, and redo that for 4 more seconds. It works for fractional powers — for example,
means “Grow for 3.1 seconds, and use that new growth rate for 4.2 seconds”. We can smush together the time (3.1 × 4.2) like this:
It’s different, so try some examples:
- (2^1)^x means “Grow at 2 for 1 second, and ‘do that growth’ for x more seconds”.
- 7 = (7^0.5)^2 means “We can jump to 7 all at once. Or, we can plan on growing to 7 but only use half the time (sqrt(7)). But we can do that process for 2 seconds, which gives us the full amount (sqrt(7) squared = 7).”
We’re like kids learning that 3 times 7 = 7 times 3. (Or that a% of b = b% of a — it’s true!).
Advanced: Rewriting Exponents For The Grower
The expand-o-tron is a bit strange: numbers start growing the instant they’re inside, but we specify the desired growth at the end of each second.
We say we want 2x growth at the end of the first second. But how do we know what rate to start off with? How fast should we be growing at 0.5 seconds? It can’t be the full amount, or else we’ll overshoot our goal as our interest compounds.
Here’s the key: Growth curves written like 2^x are from the observer’s viewpoint, not the grower.
The value “2″ is measured at the end of the interval and we work backwards to create the exponent. This is convenient for us, but not the growing quantity — bacteria, radioactive elements and money don’t care about lining up with our ending intervals!
No, these critters know their current, instantaneous growth rate, and don’t try to line it up with our boundaries. It’s just like
understanding radians vs. degrees”:http://betterexplained.com/articles/intuitive-guide-to-angles-degrees-and-radians/ — radians are “natural” because they are measured from the mover’s viewpoint.To get into the grower’s viewpoint, we use the magical number e. There’s much more to say, but we can convert any “observer-focused” formula like 2^x into a “grower-focused” one:
In this case, ln(2) = .693 = 69.3% is the instantaneous growth rate needed to look like 2^x to an observer. When you enter “2x growth at the end of each period”, the expand-o-tron knows to grow the number at a rate of 69.3%.
We’ll save these details for another day — just remember the difference between the grower’s instantaneous growth rate (which the bacteria controls) and the observer’s chart that’s measured at the end of each interval. Underneath it all, every exponential curve is a scaled version of e^x:
Every exponent is a variation of e, just like every number is a scaled version of 1.
Why use this analogy?
Does the expand-o-tron exist? Do numbers really gather up in a line? Nope — they’re ways of looking at the world.
The expand-o-tron removes the mental hiccups when seeing 2^1.5 or even 0^0: it’s just 0x growth for 0 seconds, which doesn’t change the number. Everything from slide rules to Euler’s formula begins to click once we recognize the core theme of growth — even beasts like i^i can be tamed.
Friends don’t let friends think of exponents as repeated multiplication. Happy math.
Mimic gimmick
Designer Naoto Fukasawa has designed juice boxes that both look and feel like their juices' fruits of origin. That newly-reinstated orange on Tropicana cartons is turning green with envy.
Tags: advertising art design food packaging
Better World Advertising
Better World Advertising. “I started Better World Advertising because I saw the power that social marketing could have in helping individuals, and society as whole, in solving issues that cause a lot of pain and suffering. I still believe that getting information to people and delivering messages that motivate them to make better decisions has unlimited potential for good.” BWA is an ad agency that focuses on LGBT, HIV and public health campaigns. Some of the work is quite stunning. Groundswell and Osocio have published an interview with the founder/creative director and art director.
Secret Lives of Pants, #1
I thought that I was destined for higher things. Really, looking back on it now, I don't know why I thought that, but I did. I'm not even sure what I meant by "higher things," even. A hat? That would have been higher.
I know I didn't expect to never fit. I mean, I never fit ANYBODY. I must have been passed on to ten women, maybe twelve ... and nobody was happy. I was too baggy in the thighs on one; too loose in the waist on another; indistinguishable from a sausage casing on the third. Too short, too long, too liable to ride up in embarrassing ways: if I could be uncomfortable, I was. It's not that I meant to; I really didn't. It's just what I was.
The worst part, though, was what they called me. Did you know that there are people in this world who use the word "pants" to mean something is ludicrously terrible? "That film was utter pants." "Slacks" is also just plain awful. Why "slacks"? Why not "sharps"? "I think I'll put on a pair of slacks." You might as well say "I think I'll go shoot myself in the foot." Pantaloons? Loony. Knickers? What a horse does. Britches? "You betchure." Breeches? Once more into the breeches, my friends. Trousers? You've got to be kidding me. TROOOOOOW-zers. Just say it a few times, you'll see. I prefer "nether garment" myself, but, of course, nobody asked me. Hardly anyone even tried me on more than once, so we didn't get to the "what should I call you" stage.
I haven't given up hope, though. Somebody picked me up in a thrift store (I have sunk so low, I admit it) the other day. When she stopped laughing, she held me up to her friend. "I think I can do something with this," she said.
"What, violate non-proliferation agreements?" (Her friend was holding a chartreuse batwing sweater, so I don't know where she found room to talk.)
"No -- what if I did that jeans-to-skirt thing?"
Her friend stopped, considering. "Well, that COULD be cute ... and if not, there's always turning it into a tote bag. Your mom would love it."
So that's what I'm waiting for now. To be a tote bag. Or maybe (oh please!) a skirt. Being a skirt wouldn't be completely pants, would it?
This post was written by a Google algorithm.
Bizarro Owen Thomas line of the day:
But isn’t the ultimate April Fool’s joke here that Google, which worships at the altar of the algorithm, actually employs a veteran of the world’s most prestigious magazine?
Er… No? It isn’t?
I can’t decide what’s more bizarre: that he’s suggesting it’s unusual or ironic for people who have nothing to do with Google algorithm dev to perform functions at Google that are not algorithm-driven (recasting that question: “But isn’t it the ultimate April Fool’s joke here that Google, which worships at the altar of the algorithm, actually employs human beings to do business development instead of creating algorithm-based applications to auto-contact potential corporate partners? Weird, no?”), or that he’s suggesting that Time is the “world’s most prestigious magazine.”
Positive Deviance in hospitals reduces the instance of antibiotic-resistant bacteria
A new study shows that hospitals that empowered low-level staff members to innovate and intervene when they witnessed unsanitary practices showed a decline by between 26 percent and 62 percent of the deadly antibiotic-resistant bacteria, MRSA.
Holy Crap
Sources are telling Nina Totenberg that the DOJ is planning on dropping all charges against ex-Sen. Stevens.
Presented By:
In a conspiracy keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Click to Learn More stateofplaymovie.net
Thanks To Mugabe...
From Deb comes these images of a clever advertising campaign for a small Zimbabwean newspaper. They've printed all their advertising on actually money - which, unfortunately, has become completely worthless:
The movie looks back at us
DB, still at the Hong Kong International Film Festival:
Abbas Kiarostami has the widest octave range of any filmmaker I know.
His humane dramas of Iranian life, from The Traveller to The Wind Will Carry Us, have justly won acclaim on the arthouse circuit. He has written scripts as well, some—like the under-seen The Journey (1994)—that are as compelling as a psychological thriller. He can conjure suspense out of the simplest acts, such as whether an adult will rip up a child’s copybook (Where Is the Friend’s Home?) or whether a four-year-old boy locked in with his baby brother can figure out how to turn off a stove (The Key). Indeed, I think that one of the great accomplishments of much modern Iranian cinema, with Kiarostomi in the vanguard, has been to reintroduce classic dramatic suspense into arthouse moviemaking.
But at times Kiarostami has moved to an opposite pole, that of extreme minimalism and “dedramatization.” The drift toward a hard-edged structure was there in Ten (2002), which gave us one of his drive-through dramas—people conversing in the front seat of a car—but in severe permutational form (different drivers, different passengers). Rigor was pushed to an extreme in Five Dedicated to Ozu (2003): Five lengthy shots of water landscapes, each many minutes long, taken at different times of day. The biggest dramatic action was the ducks walking through the frame. With Kiarostami, it seems, we cinephiles can have it all—Hitchcock and James Benning in the same filmmaker.
Now Shirin (aka My Sweet Shirin, 2008) marks another highly original exploration. I don’t expect to see a better film for quite some time.
After a credit sequence presenting the classic tale Khosrow and Shirin in a swift series of drawings, the film severs sound from image. What we hear over the next 85 minutes is an enactment of the tale, with actors, music, and effects. But we don’t see it at all. What we see are about 200 shots of female viewers, usually in single close-ups, with occasionally some men visible behind or on the screen edge. The women are looking more or less straight at the camera, and we infer that they’re reacting to the drama as we hear it.
That’s it. The closest analogy is probably to the celebrated sequence in Vivre sa vie, in which the prostitute played by Anna Karina weeps while watching La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc. Come to think of it, the really close analogy is Dreyer’s film itself, which almost never presents Jeanne and her judges in the same shot, locking her into a suffocating zone of her own.
Of course things aren’t as simple as I’ve suggested. For one thing, what is the nature of this spectacle? Is it a play? The thunderous sound effects, sweeping score, and close miking of the actors don’t suggest a theatrical production. So is it a film? True, some light spatters on the edge of the women’s chadors, as if from a projector behind them, but no light seems to be reflected from the screen. In any case, what’s the source of the occasional dripping water we hear from the right sound channel? The tale is derealized but it remains as vivid on the soundtrack as the faces are on the image track. What the women watch is, it seems, a composite, neither theatrical nor cinematic—a heightened idea of an audiovisual spectacle.
Moreover, there are the faces. We see some more than once, but new ones are introduced throughout. Spatially, they float pretty free; only occasionally do we get a sense of where the women are sitting in relation to one another. All are stunningly beautiful, whether young or old. We get an encyclopedia of expressions—neutral, alert, concentrated, bemused, amused, pained, anxious. During a battle scene, faces turn away, eyes lower, and hands shift nervously. The best person to review this movie is probably Paul Ekman, world expert on the nuances of facial signaling.
The weeping starts, by my count, about thirty-eight minutes in, during a rain scene uniting the two lovers Shirin and Khosrow. Thereafter, tears run down cheeks, along jaws and mouths, down necks and nostrils. The film is an almost absurdly pure experiment in facial empathy. It arouses us us by our sense of the story unfolding elsewhere, somewhere behind us, enhanced by lyrical vocalise and brusque sound effects, but above all by these eloquent expressions. It’s a feast for our mirror neurons. If you’re interested in reaction shots, you have to recall Dreyer remarking that “The human face is a landscape that you can never tire of exploring.”
I once asked Kiarostami how he got the remarkable performances in shot/ reverse-shot that we see in films like Through the Olive Trees and The Taste of Cherry. He said that he simply filmed one actor saying all his lines and giving all his reactions, then filmed the other. Often the two actors were never present at the same time, especially when he shot the car sequences. This montage-based approach, creating a synthetic space simply by cutting, has been taken to an extreme in Shirin, where the soundtrack supplies the reverse shot we never see. We’re told that Kiarostami filmed his female actors here reacting to dots on a board above the camera! Indeed, Kiarostami claims he decided on the Shirin story after filming the faces. Despite that, Shirin becomes one of the great ensemble pieces of screen acting, although the actors almost never share a real time and space. (Take that, green-screen wizards!) Like Godard, Kiarostami has been busy reinventing the Kuleshov effect (perhaps by way of Bresson).
This catalogue of female reactions to a tale of spiritual love reminds us that for all the centrality of men to his cinema, Kiarostami has also portrayed Iranian women as decisive, if sometimes mysterious, individuals. Women stubbornly go their own way in Through the Olive Trees and Ten. The premises of Shirin were sketched in his short, “Where Is My Romeo?” in Chacun son cinema (2007), in which women watch a screening of Romeo and Juliet. But the sentiments of that episode are given a dose of stringency here, particularly in one line Shirin utters: “Damn this man’s game that they call love!”
One last note: Kiarostami built movie production into the plot of Through the Olive Trees. Now he has given us the first fiction film I know about the reception of a movie, or at least a heightened idea of a movie. What we see, in all these concerned, fascinated faces and hands that flutter to the face, is what we spectators look like—from the point of view of a film.
For more on the production background, see the lengthy interview with Kiarostami here.
Breaking News!
Typeface: Verlag Condensed Black
We're resisting the temptation to go against last year's declaration that April Fools' Day website goofs are inherently unfunny, so it pleases me to instead have an genuine update regarding someone else's typographic silliness.
Eighteen months ago, we reported on a mysterious typographic gift that materialized outside the H&FJ offices. Today, I am delighted to report that the culprit (artist) has come forward! Rob Keller — who may well be a typeface designer graduated from the University of Reading, but will always be known to me as The Grecian Bandit — apparently included us on his rounds when distributing ceramic letter sculptures throughout the city, as part of a project called Left Out Letters. Check out the collection of photos on his blog: in addition to Plaintiff's Exhibit A documenting his Acropolis Italic "h" and "fj," there's a fantastic tableau showing a French Clarendon lowercase "m" being worshipped by a field of dairy cows. Which is exactly how type designers like to imagine our planet looks like from outer space, at least metaphorically. —JH
March 31, 2009
Letter to our customers
April 1, 2009
Dear valued customer,
It's with great sadness that I announce that in a few weeks, murky coffee will be relocating from here in Clarendon to a new location in Washington DC.
The property here at 3211 Wilson Boulevard was sold last year, and market rent is simply more than we can afford.
In the coming months, I hope that you'll join us in welcoming a new coffee shop here, brought by the talented folks at the renown "Liberty Tavern" just up the street. They'll be bringing their years of experience, a full renovation of the building, and top-quality service. We are proud to call them our friends, and plan to support them in setting up their coffee program. That said, we ask that you'll join us in welcoming and supporting them.
Our new home (at 5th & H Streets NW, two blocks east of the Chinatown Gate) will be a brand-new shop (called "Wrecking Ball Coffee") in a new neighborhood. While we're excited at new possibilities, leaving Clarendon isn't going to be easy. We've made many friends here, and we're very sad to leave. All of us here at murky are heartbroken about this move, so please be sensitive to our feelings during the transition.
We've been honored to be a place for you to visit over the last four years--especially our regular customers, but also those who we see less frequently.
Thanks for your friendship, love, and patronage. In so many ways, our customers have inspired us to work harder at providing you the best coffee experience we can, and for that, we cannot than you enough.
We hope that you'll be sure to visit us at our upcoming location. Dates for this move are yet to be specifically determined, but renovations will begin soon, starting with the upstairs.
I welcome your questions or comments: nickcho@murkycoffee.com
Sincerely,
Nick
Mets Red Sox Exhibition Games: Food Prices
well, they're the same prices as at regular season games. what did you think I was going to say? you should be happy that I'm back with another post. it's been a long day of Mets Mets Mets for me. where the heck are my Yankees tickets? neither my season's nor my exhibition game has arrived. what gives? I hate to say it but the Mets treat their fans way better than the Yankees do. that's not good.
breatheclick on the below menu to see some food prices at Citi Field.
nice new crowd-sourced appraisal feature on Brownstoner
Just noticed this new feature on Brownstoner. In time he promises to look back and see how accurate the collective guess is.
First Look at Citi Field Stadium Food
Today, Citi Field opened its gates to let the media check out the concession dining. Three leading New York restaurateurs, wearing honorary Mets jerseys, were there, representing their new booths, in addition to some Shea Stadium veterans like Mama's of Corona.
Danny Meyer will oversee the Shake Shack, Blue Smoke, El Verano Taqueria, and Box Frites booths behind home plate, as well as all the food and drinks at the Delta Sky360 Club, the premium-ticket-holder area with enough room for 1,600. Esca's Dave Pasternack will oversee the Catch of the Day fish shack just beyond right field. And Drew Nieporent of Nobu and Tribeca Grill consulted for the Acela Club, the 350-seat restaurant overlooking left field.
Photos, after the jump.
Much like spring training, everyone had bright hopes and chipper attitudes today, undeterred by long lines, wailing fans, or the threat of running out of food. No drama, not a bit. We'll see how this translates to real game days—this weekend, the Mets will host the Red Sox for two exhibition games—but with people coming into this with such low generic stadium food standards, they will probably leave impressed. And full.
Note: These portions may not accurately reflect the game day portions. Many were altered for today's press event.
Shake Shack
Shackburger. The kind you know and love. Tastes the same, thankfully.
Box Frites
Belgian style frites that are fried on the spot—not frozen, like the Madison Square Park and Upper West Side locations of the Shake Shack. (Ed likes to raise his fist at this.) Dipping sauces included fire-roasted tomato chipotle ketchup and some bacon creaminess.
Blue Smoke
Pulled pork sliders, sauced up with the house Blue Smoke 'cue sauce, on mini brioche buns. These are extremely porky.
El Verano Taqueria
Skirt steak taco in two corn tortillas with chopped onion, cilantro, and roasted tomato salsa. During the season, they will sell a taco platter with three fillings: chicken mole, grilled beef, and carnitas.
Catch of the Day
Fried flounder sandwich: fresh-caught flounder fried in breadcumbs with a homemade tarter sauce on a Martin's roll. Yum.
Long Island clams and corn in a creamy dry vermouth chowder. One of the tastiest things of the day (hopefully they can keep it warm).
Not available today, but look forward to: Blackened shrimp po-boy. "When you bite into it, I guarantee you'll have a shot on the shirt," Pasternack said of the juiciness factor. He was also plugging his "Bayside Fries," topped with smoked sea salt, Old Bay seasoning, and sharp cheddar. During the press conference, he turned to Meyer and challenged his competition from Boxed Frites.
Mama's of Corona
Mama's special: peppered ham, salami, fresh mozzarella, with pickled mushrooms and peppers. You gotta love this one. Mama's has been a Queens institution for 80 years, and it was at Shea Stadium for eight years.
Acela Club
"This is on a whole different level from the old dining club at Shea," Nieporent said. Macaroni and white cheddar with pancetta (pictured above). There will also be: Heritage pork porchetta with kraut and grilled skirt steak.
Other Things We Learned
The view from the concession line.
- How will they keep everything fresh? "During a test run, we stopped the Blue Smoke line after four or five orders to keep up," Meyer explained. "And at Box Frites, we threw out any fries that had been sitting for more than two minutes."
- Price points aren't too far off from the New York restaurants these booths are inspired by. At Meyer's concessions, everything is a buck more than it might normally be. Pasternack believes his $17 lobster roll is also a great deal—"it's all cooked, never frozen. That's like a $30 item at Esca."
- At Citi Field, you can actually watch the game while you're waiting in line. At Shea, you had to rely on the tunnel monitors, "which usually didn't even work anyways," as Pasternack pointed out.
- You can bring food into the stadium, but it has to be "reasonable." No glass, that's for sure. Meyer told a story about going to Enron Field in Houston (when it was still called that). He snuck in three kinds of barbecue but was frisked by guards, and tragically had to give up two. He talked his way into keeping his third.
- Meyer is the only New York restaurateur of the three spotlighted today that's not actually a native New Yorker. He's a St. Louis boy, but has been a Mets season ticket holder since 1986—only to see his Cardinals play, but still!
What we've nicknamed Danny Meyer Land, his amusement park-like territory behind home plate.
Suggestion Box
If we could just make one suggestion for additions to their concession stands, it's that they go hyper-local and bring in some dumplings or sandwiches from Flushing's Chinatown. Lamb and pork burgers from Xi'an Famous Foods, anyone?
Related: Citi Field Menus, Prices Included
GV Integrates Google Voice into Android
Android users who are switching over to their Google Voice phone number full-time like I am need a handy little app called GV. GV provides calling and SMS support via your Google Voice number in Android that isn’t perfect, but is getting there.
GV’s About dialog says that GOOG hasn’t released an official, supported API for the product, so it’ll only work as long as Google Voice’s mobile interface doesn’t change. No doubt the Android developers at Google are busy at work building default hooks to Google Voice into a future release of the mobile phone operating system. But until Google Voice support comes out of the box, GV’s the way to go.
Install GV from the Android Market (it’s free), and hit up the settings to enter your Google Voice username, password, and phone number. From there, any time you make a call or send an SMS, you have the choice to use your Google Voice number or your cell phone number.
Here’s what that looks like.
Tap and hold on a contact you want to text or call, and GV will ask which method you want to use, as shown.
Since I’m switching to my Google Voice number full-time, I checked off that “Use by default for this action” box before I chose GV for both texting and calling.
For the most part the transition to Google Voice with GV is going well for me, save a couple oddities that take some getting used to.
First, to place a call, you tap your contact, and GV calls you first. You pick up, and then it rings your contact. That’s the only way to have your GV number show up on the caller ID on the other end–but it’s still weird when you’re used to just picking up a phone and dialing.
Update: Commenter Oren points out that in GV’s settings, you can choose “Dial out” instead of “Call back” as the method for calling a contact. That option calls Google Voice, which prompts you to “dial the number of the person you want to call.” Hang in for a moment, and do nothing, and GV will ring the contact you chose automatically. Awesome, thanks, Oren!
Second, when you text message a contact from your GV number via GV, and that person replies, you can reply back to their message–but the “From:” number is an unknown 406 phone number. Again, you can save that Google-Voice-to-contact specific number in their contact record, but it introduces yet another phone number into the scenario.
Google Voice is still young and needs more work to grab the folks without high tolerances for multiple-phone-number complexity in exchange for the convenience it provides. But for the early-ish adopters on Android, the GV app is a good bet. (Thanks for the tip, emailtoid!)
Justseeds Exhibit at Sewanee University
Greg Pond at Sewanee University of the South put on a show at the rural school's art building which included a hefty selection of Justseeds prints this past month. Greg has been on the road with his own projects so we just recently got a couple of photos of the exhibit, which includes a wall of the Celebrate People's History posters.
This is how Social Media really works
Earlier this month, my wife and I were thinking of what to get our daughter for her upcoming fourth birthday, and upgrading her small plastic swingset that she was out growing was high on our list. I had started scouting around the web trying to find companies that did custom playground stuff that wasn't just huge because we don't have a ton of room in our yard. Everyone thinks bigger is better, but I was looking for smarter, for small spaces.
A few days later I'm reading RSS feeds in Google Reader, which consists mostly of friends and writers I admire. Lilly from Girlhacker posted a great entry about the Obamas getting a swingset playground (March 10th entry) for their kids to have a somewhat normal childhood, and it was the first playset at the White House since the Kennedy family. The post also paints the awesome mental image of an ex-military man on some swings and testing out slides for the Obamas. Lilly does the classic blogging thing that in addition to pointing to the news story she found out about it, she dug up the manufacturer of the swingsets and a few archival photos.
I visited the manufacturer's site, ordered a catalog, and found out I had a local seller. The local seller has a nice big lot where they encourage anyone in Portland to come down and try everything out (yes, including adults, the sets are heavy duty), so we did just that. A few days of figuring out what would fit, and we ordered the set, which got delivered and installed today, just a week after buying it.
I mention this entire story because there are thousands of people all over twitter and blogs that think throwing thousands of dollars at people that describe themselves as a "marketing guru" is the way to increase their company sales. I'm here to say I think that may very well be a waste of money, time, and energy. The Rainbow company makes awesome stuff, has a great website (pretty damn slick all-CSS one at that), and helpful catalog materials (both online and off). They got on my radar when a friend dug up their details for a blog post, in a way no marketing budget could influence.
So maybe instead of getting your company on twitter, paying marketers to mention you are on twitter, and paying people to blog about your company, forget all that and just make awesome stuff that gets people excited about your products, hire people that represent the company well, and when your stuff is so awesome that friends share it with other friends, you may not even need "social media marketing" after all.
"En ce moment, je regarde Shakira et Beyoncé. Je vais sur
"En ce moment, je regarde Shakira et Beyoncé. Je vais sur YouTube à 2 - 3 heures du matin, je mets Single Ladies de Beyoncé et je fais danser tout le monde. Je monte sur la chaise et je danse pour me doper. Souvent, je ne me couche pas. Alors, je vais me brosser les dents, je me lave la figure, comme si je me réveillais." - Alaia, on his adorable late night pick-me-up routine, in Vogue Paris Avril 09.(click for English translation)
Fast Unit Testing Iterations
It’s not as though unit testing is completely new to me, but even years after I wrote my first tests, I still consider myself a naive amateur in many regards. I’ve been ramping up my use of tests lately thanks in large part to a technique I read about in Michael Feathers’s book Working Effectively With Legacy Code.
Essentially, the idea is that before you do any major refactoring in your existing code base, you should attempt to locate a “bottleneck” to how that code is reached, and test the interface at that bottleneck. So, if all the code paths to Class A and Class B are through Class C, I can effectively just cover Class C with unit tests and be relatively certain that the functionality of Classes A and B are covered to the extent that I care about them.
Refactoring then becomes a lot less stressful, because you’re more likely to catch stupid mistakes and changes in functionality you might cause in the process. I realize that no set of tests is a guarantee against introducing new bugs, but in the process of covering classes with test coverage, you also end up learning quite a bit about what the classes actually do. This is no small victory when working with code that you either didn’t write, or that you haven’t reviewed in a number of years.
As I’ve become more and more dedicated to testing in my Mac and iPhone projects, the size of my test suites has grown. I’m subscribing to guidelines for good test writing: that they should be fast and as isolated as possible. But they still take a non-trivial amount of time to run. It’s gotten to the point where the tests for my “web publishing frameworks” take at least a minute to run on my MacBook. This is pretty fast in the big scheme of things, but a long time to wait when I’m engaged in a rapid edit, build, and test iteration.
I figured there must be some way to limit the test cases that get run to just the specific one I’m working on at the moment. And it turns out there is. Thanks to the “Other Test Flags” build setting in Xcode, I can temporarily change the behavior so that it runs only a subset of all the tests contained in my test bundle. For example, right now I’m working on tests that cover the functionality of my RSRESTCall class:
The -SenTest option is passed on to the test rig, in my case the default “otest” command that comes with Xcode. This lets the test rig know that instead of the default behavior of finding and running every test in the bundle, it should just run the tests in the “RSRestCallTests” SenTestCase subclass.
Something I didn’t mention yet but which is also aiding me greatly in the measuring my test coverage is the “gcov” library that also comes bundled with Apple’s developer tools. I’m using this to create a “Code Coverage” build of my code, that makes it possible to see exactly which lines of code did or did not get run during a particular set of tests. This, in conjunction with a cool application from Google’s Mac developers, makes it pretty easy for me to seek out uncovered areas of code, think about how to cover them with tests, and iterate.
Peek-a-BOO the Wrong Way
About 20 minutes ago I was going through my Google Reader feed trying to find something worthwhile to write about when I made the mistake of clicking on this link:
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2009/03/its_only_a_matter_of_time_befo.html
and saw perhaps the scariest photo/thing ever, which is conveniently located after the jump (you’ve been warned)
The Peekaru from TogetherBe.
I honestly don’t know what to say about this. It is truly terrifying and unfortunately not a joke.
Now I am all for making baby-caring easier for people but this may be too much.
1) This costs 80 dollars! 80 dollars for something that you or the baby can easily grow out of.
2) As one blogger pointed out, the resemblance is uncanny : http://www.alvarezwax.com/Film%20Gallery/kuato.htm
3) It has to be sweaty and I’d imagine a chore to keep clean - you have to wash it, you can’t just wipe it down - which takes a lot of water.
4) And like Daily Intel pointed out - what happens when the child goes #2??
5) And back to point #1 - do people really need to be spending 80 dollars on this - esp during these times? People were able to take care of their babies just fine before fleece alien outfits were invented.
Ahh well - such is life in the blogospehere.
For now, takepart to fight against awful blue fleece baby wear and learn how you can support your baby sustainably.
Google Maps: Cheating Husband Said Caught Via Google Street View
Gawker.com:
Cheating Husband Said Caught Via Google Street View By Ryan Tate, 11:29 PM on Mon Mar 30 2009, 28,489 views A woman, checking out a female friend's house on Google Maps, was surprised to see her husband's Range Rover parked out front, complete with blingy hubcaps, reports The Sun. A divorce is underway. It's a story so tidy, one almost doesn't want the British tabloid to bother fact-checking it. The paper's initial (and thus far only) source is a "top media lawyer" named Mark Stephens. Presumably, then, the anecdote will be confirmed as the case winds its way through the British courts. It's worth noting that the Sun doesn't yet know so much as the name of the husband, much less posess the "Street View" image in question. But there have been enough examples of unexpected and embarrassing Street View pictures that he point of the story stands regardless of whether it's fact or fiction: Google is happy to provide you with enough privacy -- say, via GMail and GChat -- to get yourself involved in some illicit scandal. Then it will happily bust you as that scandal unfolds in the real world. (Pic: Amsterdam's red-light district on Google Street View, via The Next Corner) UPDATE: Stephens mentioned this divorce case in a sly piece he wrote for the Times of London poking (it would seem) a bit of fun at the hubub over privacy as it related to Google Street View. After tracking the media lawyer down (via email, alas, not Google Street View) for a chat, we're confident the Sun is relaying his story correctly (in broad terms at least). We're confused, though, as to why a random blogger, "Idiot Forever," is claiming to have "duped" the Sun when he or she is clearly not the source of the paper's story. Maybe "Idiot Forever" was trying to put one over -- on us. Shrug.
It’s Only a Matter of Time Before These Frightening Creatures Invade Park Slope
"Hee, I just shat. Isn't that so cute?"Ahhhhhhhhhh! Ahhhhhhhhh! Oh my GOD! What is that THING?!?! It looks like a two-headed monster!
Oh, good Lord, it's a mom-and-baby Snuggie.
We know the recession has made everyone want to retreat into the comfort of soft, warm blankets, but honestly, this is too much. What if it poops in there? The horror.
Peekaru Original Fleece Baby Carrier Cover [Mom4Life via Babble]
Read more posts by Jessica Pressler
Filed Under: babies, blobs, parenting, Parents Do the Darndest Things
29 Ways to Add More Fiber To Your Diet
Written by Stealth Health
How to plant more “good carbs” into your diet.
Fantastic Fiber
Virtually every weight-loss program — be it Atkins, South Beach, Weight Watchers, or Dr. Dean Ornish’s — welcomes “good carbs” as part of a healthy, lean, long-term diet.
In the lexicon of weight loss, the term “good carbs” refers to complex carbohydrates. These are foods like whole grains, nuts, beans, and seeds that are composed largely of complex sugar molecules that require lots of time and energy to digest into the simple sugars your body needs for fuel.
One of the biggest benefits of foods rich in complex carbs is that they also contain large amounts of fiber. Fiber, in basic terms, is the indigestible parts of plant foods. It is the husk on the grain of wheat, the thin strands in celery, the crunch in the apple, the casings on edible seeds. Fiber protects you from heart disease, cancer, and digestive problems. Depending on the type of fiber (there is more than one!), it lowers cholesterol, helps with weight control, and regulates blood sugar.
Bottom line: This is one nutrient you don’t want to miss. Yet the average American gets just 12-15 grams of fiber a day — far below the recommended 25-30 grams. And that was before so many of us started cutting carbs for weight loss — and cutting fiber in the bargain.
Here’s how to sneak “good carbs” and extra fiber into your daily diet with a minimum of effort.
1. Eat cereal every day for breakfast. Ideally, aim for a whole grain, unsweetened cereal with at least 4 grams of fiber per serving. Just eating any cereal might be enough, however. A University of California study found that cereal eaters tend to eat more fiber and less fat than non-cereal eaters. Healthy, high-fiber cereals you might want to consider include Kellogg’s All-Bran Original, Kashi GOLEAN, and Kellogg’s Raisin Bran.
2. Eat two apples every day. Not just to keep the doctor away, but because apples are a good source of pectin, a soluble fiber that contributes to a feeling of fullness and digests slowly. One study found that 5 grams of pectin was enough to leave people feeling satisfied for up to four hours.
3. Make a yogurt mix every Wednesday for breakfast. Take one container of yogurt and mix in 1/3 cup All-Bran cereal, 1 tablespoon ground flaxseeds, and 5 large, diced strawberries for a whopping 12.2 grams of fiber — nearly half your daily allowance!
4. Eat baby carrots and broccoli florets dipped into low-fat ranch dressing as you afternoon snack three days a week. You’ll fill up the empty space in your tummy while getting about 5 grams of fiber in each cup of veggies.
5. Keep a container of gorp in your car and office for the munchies. Mix together peanuts, raisins, a high-fiber cereal, and some chocolate-covered soy nuts. Allow yourself one handful for a sweet, yet high-fiber, snack.
6. Switch to whole grain crackers. You’d never think a tiny cracker can make a difference, but one regular whole wheat cracker has 1/2 gram of fiber. Ten crackers give you 5 grams of fiber. So next time, spread your peanut butter on whole grain crackers (look for brands that proclaim they’re trans-fat-free) instead of bread for a different taste treat.
7. Mix your regular cereal with the high-test stuff. Okay, we’ll be honest. We wouldn’t want to face an entire bowl of All-Bran either. But just 1/3 cup packs a walloping 8.5 grams of fiber. Mix it with an equal amount of Apple Cinnamon Cheerios and you’ll barely know it’s there (but you will be one-third of the way to your daily fiber intake). Check out the Nature’s Path brands, which offer several truly delicious, high-fiber choices.
8. Add kidney beans or chickpeas to your next salad. A quarter cup adds an additional 5 grams of dietary fiber, notes Lisa Andrews, R.D., a nutritionist at the VA Medical Center in Cincinnati.
9. Make sure that the first ingredient in whole grain products has the word “whole” in it, as in “whole wheat,” or “whole grain.” If it says multi-grain, seven-grain, nutra-grain, cracked wheat, stone-ground wheat, unbromated wheat or enriched wheat, it’s not whole wheat, and thus is lacking some of the vitamins and minerals, not to mention fiber, of whole grains.
10. Every week, try one “exotic” grain. How about amaranth, bulgur, or wheatberries? Most are as simple to fix as rice, yet packed with fiber and flavor. Mix in some steamed carrots and broccoli, toss with olive oil and a bit of Parmesan or feta cheese, maybe throw in a can of tuna or a couple of ounces of cut-up chicken, and you’ve got dinner. Or serve as a side dish to chicken or fish. Make sure all grains you try are whole grains.
11. Once a week, make pearl barley (which doesn’t require any soaking before cooking) as a side dish. One cup sports 10 grams of fiber, nearly half your daily allotment.
12. Sneak in oatmeal. Use regular oatmeal in place of bread crumbs for meat loaf and meatballs, sprinkle it atop casseroles and ice cream, bake it into cookies and muffins, and add it to homemade breads and cakes.
13. Use whole wheat bread to make your sandwich every day. Even Subway and other such sandwich shops offer whole wheat options for lunchtime munching. If you want to gradually break into the whole wheat club, use whole wheat bread as the bottom slice of your sandwich and regular bread as the top layer, suggests Joan Salge Blake, R.D., clinical assistant professor of nutrition at Boston University’s Sargent College. Eventually, make the switch to whole grains.
14. Every week, switch from a white food to a brown food. So instead of instant white rice, you switch to instant brown rice. Instead of regular pasta, you switch to whole wheat pasta. Similarly, whole wheat pitas instead of regular, whole wheat burritos instead of corn, whole wheat couscous instead of regular. Within two months, you should be eating only whole grains, and should have increased your daily fiber consumption by an easy 10 grams without radically changing your diet!
15. Spread your sandwich with 1/2 cup hummus. Bam! You just got 7.5 grams of fiber in a tasty package. Lay some spinach leaves and a tomato slice atop for another couple of grams.
16. Make beans a part of at least one meal a day. They’re packed with fiber (15 grams in just a cup of black beans) and, since they come canned, so easy to use. Just rinse before using to remove excess sodium. Here are some tips for getting your beans:
- Puree a can of cannelloni beans for a tasty dip. Add 2 cloves garlic and a tablespoon each of lemon juice and olive oil to the blender. Use as a dip for veggies and whole grain crackers.
- Spread nonfat refried beans on a whole wheat burrito and sprinkle with chopped chicken and shredded cheese.
- Use 1/2 cup black beans and salsa as a filling for your morning omelet.
- Make a bean salad with canned black beans, fresh or frozen corn kernels, chopped cilantro, chopped onion, and chopped tomato. Drizzle with olive oil and a dash of vinegar, salt, and pepper.
- Make your own special chili pizza. Top a prepared (whole wheat) pizza crust with some kidney beans, shredded cheese, and ground turkey cooked with chili flavorings.
- Start serving edamame (soybeans) as a side dish. You’ll get 4 grams of fiber in 2/3 cup of the sweet legumes, not to mention the cancer-fighting phytonutrients inherent in soy.
17. Add pureed cauliflower to mashed potatoes. You won’t taste a difference, but you will get some extra fiber, say the nutrition twins, Tammy Lakatos Shames, R.D., and Lyssie Lakatos, R. D. The two are the authors of Fire Up Your Metabolism: 9 Proven Principles for Burning Fat and Losing Weight Forever.
18. Have a beet salad for dinner. These bright red veggies have virtually no fat, no cholesterol, no sodium, quite a bit of potassium, and 2 grams of fiber. Try roasting whole, peeled beets for 45 minutes, chilling, then dicing into a summer salad.
19. Make rice pudding for dessert tonight. Only instead of white rice, use brown to, as Emeril would say, “kick it up a notch.”
20. Snack on popcorn. The microwave variety works just fine, but we prefer air-popped popcorn without the oil. Each cup of popcorn delivers 1.2 grams of fiber.
21. Switch to whole wheat flour when baking. You can start by going half and half, eventually using only whole wheat flour for all your cooking needs.
22. Throw some flaxseeds, wheat germ, or other high-fiber add-ins into batter. They add crunch to your cookies, muffins, and breads — and loads of fiber.
23. Eat the skin of your baked and sweet potatoes. Eating baked potatoes with the skin instead of mashed ups the fiber at least 3 grams (depending on the size of the potato).
24. Start every dinner with a mixed green salad. Not only will it add fiber, but with a low-calorie vinaigrette dressing, it will partially fill you up with very few calories, and thus offers great benefits in weight loss/control.
25. Always add lettuce and tomato slices rather than cheese to sandwiches. Not only do they add fiber, but they also reduce calories.
26. Use beans or lentils as the main protein source for dinner once or twice a week. A classic dish such as pasta e fagioli works well.
27. Make your fiber sources suit the seasons. A cold lentil salad, or corn and black bean salad in summer, then vegetarian chili in winter.
28. Snack on dried fruit every day. Tasty, chewy, satisfying, easy to eat on the go — and loaded with fiber. Try dried apricots, dates, figs, peaches, pears, and bananas.
29. Drink your fiber. Make your own smoothies by blending whole fruits (cut out the big seeds). If everything in the fruit goes into your glass, you’ll get the fiber from the edible peel, often missing from fruit juice.
Don’t Forget To…
Drink plenty of water. You need water to help the fiber pass through your digestive system without getting, ahem, stuck. So as you’re increasing the fiber in your diet, also increase the amount of water or other unsweetened beverages you’re getting.
Also, don’t up your fiber load all at once. That’s just going to overwhelm your system, leading to gas, bloating, and constipation. Instead, start slowly. Try one tip a week for the first couple of weeks, then two, then three. By week four or five, you should be up to the full 25-30 grams — or more.
Tip: Save money and calories with Mediterranean-inspired brown bag lunches. View a shopping list and recipes for 5 lunches.
What Israel Does Well (Beyond Tech)
Yossi Vardi-- the famous Israeli investor and entrepreneur (see right)-- insists that people give positive encouragement to start-ups. I plan to blog about the risks and benefits of this for TechCrunch, but as people feel free to flame me ALL THE TIME, I can certainly see the merits! Also, Yossi is one of those guys like Roger McNamee: He may have crazy hair, (or in the case of this picture, a crazy hat) but I'd never question his general wisdom on a host of subjects.
So, Yossi, consider this post my homage to you: A list of things I've found that Israelis do incredibly well over the last two weeks of my visit that aren't in the tech category.
1. Wines. One of the best things about being a reporter is when I travel, part of my job is a ton of dinners, parties and lunches, and I have ordered only Israeli wines at each of them. I don't remember all the names (usually I let someone else pick) but I do remember Flam and The Cave. (Made a Plato joke when we ordered the latter a few nights ago that only my corny philosopher father would have laughed at.) According to a Twitter friend, Israeli Wine Direct is a great resource for Americans buying Israeli wines, and he's hosting an event in San Francisco in April!! I'll be attending if I'm in town. And, um, invited.
2. Flowers. They are stunning everywhere I go, and apparently Israel ships these flowers though out the world.
3. Cotton. Being from Memphis, Tenn. it seems weird to give Israel props for cotton, but I bought a beautiful cotton dress last time I was here, and I understand fashion designers here are known for designing with cotton. Unfortunately, I've been working too hard to go shopping, but I hope to remedy that before I leave town!
4. HOTEL SERVICE. Roi Carthy, the Israeli correspondent for TechCrunch, recommended the Hotel Montefiore, and I have absolutely blown away by everything about it. There are only about a dozen rooms, and each one is beautifully designed, with a full library of classics in English and Hebrew and art and design books. Everyone on the staff knows me by name, by my preferred wake up time, even by how I like my coffee. I've had some of the best meals in Tel Aviv here (which is saying something). The Wireless Internet is even pretty good. They've arranged cars for me everywhere at a moment's notice, and this morning, one guy even ran out and fetched a cappuccino for me because they don't have to go cups here, and I was running late. They look like they are going to cry if I lift my own bag. I can not say enough great things about this hotel, and I'm paying less here than I did for a hotel in Africa; FAR less than I've paid in New York, Paris or London for lesser experiences. It's so great, for such a great value, I worry they might go out of business! Please, if you come to Tel Aviv, do yourself a favor and go to the Montefiore and tell them I referred you because I plan on staying here every time I come to Israel and would like *even better* service, if possible.
And do yourself another favor: Order the crispy duck Vietnamese-style. The shrimp cocktail also makes a delectable snack even with the creepy eyes. (See left.) And by all means, if you have a cold or need comfort food, the Montefiore's club sandwich rivals any one I have ever had. just polished one off in the lobby and a French woman walked across the restaurant and said "Sometimes you see someone eating so sweetly and enjoying it so much that it just moves you and you wish you were part of the experience." I'm not kidding. My last time in Tel Aviv, my hotel experience wasn't so great. But considering this post is an homage to Yossi, I won't name names.
5. Interior Design. I am not one of those architecture buffs that swoons at a Bauhaus building. So I don't particularly find the exterior of Tel Aviv compelling. But inside unassuming buildings you find a trove of stunning bars and restaurants that could rival any in Paris or Manhattan. (Below, a painting I found in a bar and wish I owned.)
6. Food and nightlife. Ok, so Tel Aviv actually gets huge cred for food and nightlife. But it's so rich, it bears another shout out.
7. Shedding Inhibition I think in the U.S. we're always concerned with "looking cool," even in Silicon Valley. This might be a KinnerNet thing, but everyone at the event felt safe to do absurd and wacky things and make complete fools of themselves without any fear of looking like a nerd. Ahem, photos of yours truly getting sucked up in just that below...
More Than Vaguely Terrifying: The Peekaru
It’s like a Snuggie and a chestburster from Alien all in one:
Gizmodo has all the disturbing details here.
i want to know why you still read slate
Slate is too bored with ER to cover the final episode...
We have approached both staff writers and a series of reliable correspondents, inviting them to weigh in on the final episode and the legacy of the drama's 15-year run. No one wanted the assignment.
...so they're turning the job over to their readers and asking them to file reports on the series finale.
There's a whole mess of interestingness packed into this little nugget (Slate's wink wink nudge nudge that ER's just not good enough for them to cover (but it's fine if their readers do), the attempt at editorial direction for contributors, the obvious and lame poke at Clooney, the fact that I'm sure their readers will do a better job of it than they would have), but I'm just too busy to unpack it all.
Instead, I'm leaving it to you, my readers, to do the hard editorial work for me. Why do you still read Slate? Is Slate right for not covering the ER finale? Should they be paying more attention to culture that's actually popular? Is their editorial voice as grating to you as it is to me? Leave all your thoughts on Slate not covering ER in the comments, and I'll pick the best ones and repackage them as my own content in a future blog post!
i want to know why you still read slate
Slate is too bored with ER to cover the final episode...
We have approached both staff writers and a series of reliable correspondents, inviting them to weigh in on the final episode and the legacy of the drama's 15-year run. No one wanted the assignment.
...so they're turning the job over to their readers and asking them to file reports on the series finale.
There's a whole mess of interestingness packed into this little nugget (Slate's wink wink nudge nudge that ER's just not good enough for them to cover (but it's fine if their readers do), the attempt at editorial direction for contributors, the obvious and lame poke at Clooney, the fact that I'm sure their readers will do a better job of it than they would have), but I'm just too busy to unpack it all.
Instead, I'm leaving it to you, my readers, to do the hard editorial work for me. Why do you still read Slate? Is Slate right for not covering the ER finale? Should they be paying more attention to culture that's actually popular? Is their editorial voice as grating to you as it is to me? Leave all your thoughts on Slate not covering ER in the comments, and I'll pick the best ones and repackage them as my own content in a future blog post!
Bite right
Sea urchins have teeth so powerful they can munch through limestone. These teeth are composed of calcite, a form of calcium carbonate, which happens to be the same material in the limestone they're snacking on. So how do they chomp through the rock without grinding down their tusks? By aligning the calcite crystals that make up their teeth.
The structure and composition of the tip, particularly the orientation of the calcite crystals, is exquisitely controlled.
Maybe as dentists investigate how to spur humans to generate teeth like sharks, they can devise a way to make them as strong as those of a sea urchin. A scary prospect when you think about playing hockey.
Tags: dentistry marinebiology science
The Great (or Grand) Renaming
When Python was first created, I always envisioned it as a stand-alone program, occasionally linking in third-party libraries. The source code therefore freely defined global names (in the C/linker sense) like ‘object’, ‘getlistitem’, ‘INCREF’ and so on. As Python’s popularity grew, people started to ask for an “embedded” version of Python, which would itself be a library that could be linked into other applications – not unlike the way that Emacs incorporates a Lisp interpreter.
Unfortunately, this embedding was complicated by name clashes between Python’s global names and those defined by the embedding application – the name 'object’ was especially popular. To deal with this problem, a naming convention was chosen, whereby all Python globals would have a name starting with “Py” or “_Py” (for internal names that had to be global for technical reasons) or “PY” (for macros).
For backwards compatibility reasons (there were already many third party extension modules) and to ease the transition for core developers (who had the old names engrained in their brain) there were two phases. In phase one the linker saw the old names, but the source code used the new names, which were translated to the old names using a large number of C preprocessor macros. In phase two the linker saw the new names, but for the benefit of some laggard extension modules that hadn’t been ported yet, another set of macros now translated the old names to the new names. In both phases, the code could mix old and new names and work correctly.
I researched the history of these renamings a bit in our Subversion logs. I found r4583 from January 12, 1995, which signalled phase two of the great renaming was started by introducing the new names to all header files. But in December 1996 the renaming of .c source files was still going on. Around this time the renaming seems to have been renamed, and checkin comments often refer to the "Grand Renaming". The backwards compatibility macros were finally removed in May 2000, as part of the Python 1.6 release effort. The check-in comment for r15313 celebrates this event.
Much credit goes to Barry Warsaw and Roger Masse, who participated in the unthankful task of renaming the contentes of file after file after file (albeit with the help of a script). They also helped with the equally tedious task of adding unit tests for much of the standard library.
Wikipedia has a reference to an earlier Great Renaming event, which apparently involved renaming USENET groups. I probably unconsciously remenbered that event when I named Python's Great Renaming. I also found some references to a later Grand Renaming in Sphinx, the package used for generating Python's documentation. Zope also seems to have had a Grand Renaming, and some recent Py3k discussions also used the term for the PyString -> PyBytes renaming (although this is a minor one compared to the others).
Great or Grand Renamings are often traumatic events for software developer communities, since they requires the programmers' brains to be rewired, documentation to be rewritten, and complicate the integration of patches created before the renaming but applied after. (This is especially problematic when unrenamed branches exist.)
Shanghai's Wujiang Snack Street to Be Demolished at Year's End
Photograph from avezink on Flickr
Sad news out of Shanghai, as yet another story of street-vendor abatement crosses the news desk at SEHQ. From channelnewsasia.com:
Flip through any guide book on Shanghai and the Wujiang Snack Street is listed as a must-see for tourists. But come end-2009, reprints are in order. This is because the famous tourist attraction will soon be demolished to make way for up-market shopping malls.
It was already partially renovated last August.
More news here: "Last Call on Skewers." And a guide on what to eat there—while you still can. [via Coldmud]
Are Drew & Justin Back to Longing for Each Other?
-Photo by Getty Images-
I don't know about you, but a reconciliation between Drew Barrymore and Justin Long would be just what I needed today to restore my faith in celebrity love.The twosome, who were just so cute while they were dating last year, have been palling around again a lot lately, and now they will be spending even more time together!
According to Variety, Drew and Justin will be costarring in a new romantic comedy called Going the Distance. They'll play "a young couple navigating their way through the perils of a long distance relationship who quickly discover that 'going the distance' might cost them everything they have, including one another."
I'm so hoping that this brings them back together. I know, I'm a sap.
Can design save the newspaper? Jacek Utko on TED.com
Jacek Utko is an extraordinary Polish newspaper designer whose redesigns for papers in Eastern Europe not only win awards, but increase circulation by up to 100%. He asks, Can good design save the newspaper? It just might. (Recorded at TED2009, February 2009, in Long Beach, California. Duration: 06:05.)
Watch Jacek Utko's talk from TED2009 on TED.com, where you can download this TEDTalk, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 400+ TEDTalks -- including more talks about media.
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Facebook Haggadah on Joyent
We’re pleased that the Facebook Haggadah is running on a free Joyent Accelerator as part of our program for social network developers. The Haggadah is the telling of the events of Passover and the liberation of the Israelites from Egypt as described in the book of Exodus of the Torah. The Haggadah itself is a religious text to be used during the Seder supper to fulfill the scriptural commandment “to tell your son” about Jewish liberation.
I don’t know if the Facebook Haggadah fulfills the scriptural commandment. Those that work with me at Joyent might be able to guess my response, but I won’t hazard an opinion on this blog.
Nevertheless, happy Passover to all. Follow the Facebook Haggadah.
Stuff about Fluff
Archibald Query was the inventor of the pasty, sticky, somewhat offensive "creme spread" known as Marshmallow Fluff. The sugar shortage during World War I cost Query his confection. He sold the recipe to H. Allen Durkee and Fred Mower, two candymakers who quickly figured out that combining it with peanut butter creates the "Fluffernutter," which in turn creates sandwich-obsessed mobs of thieving children. The Fluffernutter may soon be the state sandwich of Massachusetts, even though it was almost legally banned from school lunches back in 2006.
Marshmallow was originally used as a throat-coating precursor to the lozenge, but these days it's molded into everything, from cereal squares to baby chickens and moon pies.
This Croque Madame is a fancy, sweet version of a fried ham-and-cheese, made with Nutella and Fluff on cinammon-raisin bread. Yum.
Tags: fluff food history laws video
Stuff about Fluff
Archibald Query was the inventor of the pasty, sticky, somewhat offensive "creme spread" known as Marshmallow Fluff. The sugar shortage during World War I cost Query his confection. He sold the recipe to H. Allen Durkee and Fred Mower, two candymakers who quickly figured out that combining it with peanut butter creates the "Fluffernutter," which in turn creates sandwich-obsessed mobs of thieving children. The Fluffernutter may soon be the state sandwich of Massachusetts, even though it was almost legally banned from school lunches back in 2006.
Marshmallow was originally used as a throat-coating precursor to the lozenge, but these days it's molded into everything, from cereal squares to baby chickens and moon pies.
This Croque Madame is a fancy, sweet version of a fried ham-and-cheese, made with Nutella and Fluff on cinammon-raisin bread. Yum.
Tags: fluff food history laws video
Creating Animals from World Map Parts
Piece together for Peace [graflexdirections.com] is a neat project that rotates and pans around parts of the world map to visually form life-like animals, ranging from a cow over a dog to a horse.Via Swiss Miss.
'If You Like Coffee'
If you like coffee, why not try these other great suggestions from Drew of Toothpaste for Dinner? They're great if you're already addicted—but if not, oh, you will be.
March 30, 2009
Music Share: Media Remixed
Long before Jon Stewart made a career of media criticism via judicious editing, and back when media went viral at the glacial pace of traded bootlegs, a few studio pioneers were using clips from television as their raw materials for media criticism.
Here's Emergency Broadcast Network in 1992 remixing Dan Quayle in Watch Television:
(Get Flash to see the MP3 player.)
And here's another track from 1992—Steinski setting George Bush I to The Jackson 5 with the surprisingly relevant It's Up To You (Television Mix):
(Get Flash to see the MP3 player.)
See also on YouTube: We Will Rock You by EBN. And there's info about a great collection of Steinski's work here: What Does It All Mean?
Don't hate the media, become the media! (And remix it.)
Browsing time
Highly intriguing notice in this newsstands visited in Venice Beach yesterday afternoon: the indication of the time customers are allowed to flip through the magazines. Temporary consumption of products indicated in the place where you can access them (see of course “The Age of Access” by Jeremy Rifkin). As a customer, you then know the rules you’re subjected to and act accordingly.
Interestingly, the duration is conditioned by the type of content one might want to access as attested by these two other signs:
Why do I blog this nothing particular in mind… this is fun at first glance but there are some interesting lessons to draw here about media consumption (signage to prevent certain behavior), the importance of certain types of content (and the inherent need to refrain people from spending too much time on it), design choices (3-5-15? I wonder how the owner made it up!, besides 15 seems quite a long time). The different shapes/typefont of the 3 signs is also curious: as if the norm was this “15 minute browsing” classic sign from back in the day (back in the days before people were soooo much into this “access” meme), followed sometime after by a more temporary “5 minutes ONLY” printed in black-and-white, and eventually by this quick-and-dirty “3-minutes only” sign (as if it reached a climax).
Citi Field and Shea Stadium, March 2009
Here are a few photos of some Shea-related artifacts at Citi Field's coming-out party, courtesy of Kingman Senior. First off, a great shot of the "field" in Citi Field, with the new Home Run Apple in lock-down position:
Here is another view of what was once Shea Stadium:
The NY panorama from atop Shea Stadium has made the journey to Citi Field, and resides above the Shake Shack:
See also:
Part 1 of Citi Field Debut
Part 2 of Citi Field Debut
Citi Field Rotunda
Loge13's New Home
Crayola doesn't make a color for your eyes, or a reason to learn to pattycake
I guess we first heard this song on A Prairie Home Companion. I wanted to put that right up front as I know for some readers that will be enough to skip this post. For those of you undettered by this, be aware that this tune is infectious, you won't be able to get it out of your head. If you are a man then you can look forward to trying to do this with your wife or child and being corrected often (possibly a sexist comment but I'm willing to guess that most small boys don't pattycake). If you want to play it not only will you have to learn a new long song, but a new motor skill to boot. You could also just sit back and play this video over and over, and then sing the chorus to your baby (big or small). Lyrics after the jump.
Lyrics copied from the video info box on youtube of some other people who have come down with the pattycake sickness.
I went to see the doctor
I had come down with the blues
She said that I cant cure you but here's something you can do, take out a piece of paper and go sit down for a while and a draw a pretty picture of something that makes you smile.
I know what makes me happy I didn't have to think for long but when I tried to draw it, it always came out wrong
I had a box of 12, 48 and 64 but no where could i find that one shade I was looking for.
I guess I had realized it should have come as no surprise, crayola doesnt make a color for your eyes.
There is no way that i could possibly describe you
crayola doesn't make a color to draw my love
At first I thought of green-blue but than I saw blue-green and than again in bright light they look aquamarine i think at night their darker i looked again for you saw grey and black and when Im walking at the midnight blue but hues are the deepest skies would be a compromise
crayola doesn't make a color for your eyes
There is no way that i could possibly describe you
crayola doesn't make a color to draw my love
spring-green, spring-green is much to yellow
sea-green is far too pale
cornflower is way to mellow
so Ill try again and fail
theres no way i can capture the way you make me feel one look from you is rapture whether blue or green or teal no color qualifies that crayons telling lies
CHORUS
hey look its periwinkle so sure i got it now
But you wink and theres a twinkle in your eye and still somehow I just cant get that sparkle those glitter crayons wont. Maybe Glow-In-The-Dark ll get it right aw, no they dont
Mr. Crayola tries, but Im left to fantasize
CHORUS
For your eyes something darker lets see what I can find melted mahogany and got the depth not the shine just about gave up and then I peeled the paper off a little end of Really thought it coulda been ahh, not even Burnt Sienna!
Your passport says they're brown, but I'm gonna keep lookin round
crayola doesn't make a color for your eyes
There is no way that I could possibly describe you
crayola doesnt make a color to draw my love
crayola doesn't make a
crayola doesn't make a color for your eyes
There is no way that I could possibly describe you
crayola doesn't make a color to draw my love
no color to draw my love
New Moleskine site, new print-your-own pages
Moleskine, that beloved notebook of so many so far and wide, has just relaunched their website with a new "MSK" format that lets you print your own pages (including a wizard that helps you along--why do things always need a "wizard"?!) It also boasts a gallery of special projects, user-created artwork, and a line-up of special editions. Things are just getting populated, but let us know in the comments how you like the printable pages and links to your favorite (or your own!) artwork.
Too rich for your blood? There's always this old standby.
(more...)Originally from Core77, ReBlogged by ken on Mar 30, 2009 at 08:23 PM
It's a Kindle World Now
Shared by anildash
"Deep down, I know there's something wrong about abandoning 500 years of beautiful history"
Moments after I first saw a spy shot of the new Kindle 2, I placed an order for one. I'd seen a couple of the first generation units out in public and loved the screen, but the rest of it looked clunky and the new design fixed at least the outside visual aspects of it. I received my Kindle soon after they began shipping and now that I've used it for a month, I figured it'd probably be high time for a review.
The Great
First off, the screen is great and though a subtle backlight would be handy, it's not too hard to treat it like a book and just keep a small bedside lamp on when reading. In the outdoors in direct sunlight, it's really amazing and crisp in a way you'd never suspect a computer screen ever could be.
Before I got a Kindle, I would typically buy 1-2 books every month and only finish reading a book every 3 or 4 months, starting a lot more than I ever completed. It may just be the novelty of this device, but I've read (and completed) 2 books/week since I got the device. The other day I read an entire book in one day, something I haven't done in almost ten years. I haven't read this much since college.
I think there may be a few reasons for the uptick and enjoyment in reading. I really love how you can read the Kindle in the same position. Like most people, I read a bit before going to sleep and I have to say reading a paperback or hard cover book is a little uncomfortable in bed. I love that with the Kindle I can get all warm and snuggled under the covers and I don't have to turn to read opposite pages. I can just lay sideways and I don't have to crane my neck to see opposing pages like I would with a book. I really like the simple % done status in the lower left. I occasionally glance at it every ten page refreshes or so, and it's a motivating metric to see you're actually 27% done with a book or 74% done and it makes me more inclined to complete books after I surpass 50%.
I love the flexibility of getting material to the device. It's easy to buy books online at Amazon.com with a web browser (already whenever I hear about a book, I rush to amazon to see if it's in the Kindle format) and the search within the Kindle is fast enough and usable enough to work (I bought a book on the runway before a flight after hearing about it from a friend, and I got to read it on that flight). I loved that I could buy books for it while it was being shipped by UPS to my door, and when it arrived they showed up on the Home screen.
I'm really impressed with the text conversion via email feature. I've been dumping long blog posts and essays I find online to Readability to trim all the sidebars, navigation, and ads from them, then I copy and paste into a text file that gets sent (as an attachment) to my kindle.com email address. 30 seconds later, it shows up on my Kindle ready to read. It goes without saying that when I copy a 10,000 word piece from a magazine site, I feel bad for stripping the ads so I can full read the article, but I'd also gladly pay $0.25 or $0.50 for the article sent clean to my Kindle without all the copy/paste/email hassles if sites offered an instant "Send to your Kindle for a quarter" button. Hopefully Amazon gets on that.
I've also had the "Send random attachments to your Kindle" feature come in handy for early book reviews. I've gotten two preview copies of books written by friends sent to me as Word documents, which were easily emailed to my Kindle for comfortable reading.
Oh, and as SBJ mentioned on twitter, the Kindle makes it easy to read a book while eating lunch in a way most paperbacks and many hardcover books make nearly impossible without smashing the binding flat to keep them stable.
Lastly, the battery life is amazing. I charge my Kindle once a week and even with reading an hour or two a day in between charges I don't get below 50% battery life with the wireless connect left on. Turning the networking off on the device, I've gone nearly two weeks without a charge. It's nice to not have to take a charger along if I'm heading out for a trip because I know the battery can hold up for at least a week of normal use.
The Fair to Middling
I have to say that I'm not entirely happy with the button layout on the device. Along the right side (middle) there is a Home button that goes to a central device contents menu and below that is a Next Page button used while reading books. On the left side of the device opposite those buttons is a Previous Page and Next Page set. Since I usually hold the device with my right hand, I use the right side, and on more than several occasions when I wanted to go back a page, I accidentally hit the Home button, dumping me out of my book entirely. I guess I wish the Home button was in a prominent place, but not up against the Next Page button in a spot I intuitively think a Previous Page button should go.
There are no real page numbers on the device (due to varying font size you set), just some numbers attached to a book describing its total length and a small indicator of which parts the device is currently showing (like a page might say showing "234-244" at the bottom with a total book length of 3572). I personally like the % done number on the lower left, but the content location and total length number in the bottom middle and bottom left are meaningless data junk to me. I'd personally prefer a clock in the lower right that I could glance at every few pages to see if I'm up past my intended bedtime. It's actually kind of a hassle to figure out what time it is because it's not shown by default while reading a book, and I usually hit the menu button to see the time and hit it again to return to my reading.
Overall, the experimental web browser support is about as good as your average cellphone browser. Gmail kind of sorta works but text wraps badly and the joystick navigation is slightly clunky. The keyboard is seldom used and the buttons are small and require more effort than they should. I've never been in a situation where I used a Kindle over my iPhone's superior browser but it may come in handy in a pinch.
The Bad
I'll admit my biggest problem with the Kindle is imaginary. I have to say that I trust Amazon and I love books, and the Kindle is the most convenient device on earth for any book lover, but deep down, I know it's a dangerously convenient device. There's a central point of control (Amazon, which I trust to do the right thing for now, but in the future, who knows), there is DRM, it isn't the most open device (no PDFs), and you can't really share e-books with anyone like you can an actual book. I say this as a book lover -- I have walls of bookshelves and I love to loan stuff to friends, and I love that my nightstand no longer is crowded with a dozen titles stacked next to it, but I fear for some future 10 years from now where libraries suffer from people no longer having huge amounts of physical books to donate and share, or something awful happening to Amazon and books being banned from the device, or even if the central servers fail and I lose my fake electronic books. I wish there were more free public domain options and I wasn't just lining Amazon's pockets any time I pick up the device. Deep down, I know there's something wrong about abandoning 500 years of beautiful history of the printed word to embrace an electronic commercial text reader but I guess I haven't read enough Sci-Fi to fully articulate why I should be more afraid than I already am at the ramifications of the device.
I know it's a bargain for the device if you think about a lifetime free 3G connection comes along with it, but I have to say the $359 price tag seems too high. At $99 or $199, I'd give these away as gifts to everyone I know and I would hope many more people would buy them. I've already read a dozen books and I purchased those along with at least a dozen more so hopefully in the future they could treat the Kindle as the free razor with the ebooks as the razor blades that make up for the hardware costs. I'm sure over the next year I'll eventually match the sticker price of the Kindle and over the next few years I may end up spending thousands on the device.
I guess lastly, I kind of hate the name Kindle. It doesn't make me think of a brain getting excited. My first association wasn't "oh it kindles your interest" but rather "kindle, you know like kindling, like how paper is used in a fire." It's probably just me, but the first thing I think about when I hear the word "Kindle" is book burning and censorship and every ugly mental image from Fahrenheit 451.
Conclusion
I love the hell out of the Kindle 2. I wish it were cheaper and I wish there were open APIs to the device and tons of free book options, but it's really simple to use, the screen works great for me, and I'm reading tons of books without having to send a UPS truck to my door several times a week. I can't recommend it enough.
My “hot” list for next InnoDB features
InnoDB scalability problems seem fixed in InnoDB-plugin-1.0.3 and I expect InnoDB-plugin will run fine on 16-24 cores boxes for time being. And now it is time to look on systems with 32GB+ of RAM which are not rare nowadays. Working with real customer systems I have wish-list of features I would like to see soon:
- Fast recovery. Both recovery after crash and recovery from backup can take unacceptable long time, especially if you crashed with full 32GB buffer_pool. There is reported bug http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=29847, with ETA MySQL-6.0
- Preload table / index into buffer_pool. You can use custom queries by primary / secondary key to “warm up” part of table, but this solution is ugly and may be slow due to random logical I/O. Implementing preload of full .ibd file with sequential read would be much better solution. This is actually more important feature than it may appear at first look - for example if you put load on slave which is not warmed up properly - slave may never catch up slave, but with small load warm up may take hours to complete, so basically it adds several hours for operations team to complete task which requires restart of slave
- Copy single .ibd table from one server to different or (basically the same) restore single table from backup, possibly on different server (different slave). It’s all about time - copying whole 500GB backup while you need to restore only single 20GB table is very non-productive
- Open InnoDB tables in parallel. Currently opening table is serialized, and it is especially bad at start time, when InnoDB takes probes during opening table, as it is slow operation. See also http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2006/11/21/opening-tables-scalability/. Partially it can be fixed by recent patches by enabling / disabling probes and changing count of probes, but still the solution is far from perfect
As you see the list list is not about performance but mostly about operations tasks, but with current amount of data and memory on servers they become critical. I do not know what is InnoDB plans about it and would like to hear if this is will be implemented anytime soon or never. Anyway I was asked what are our current plans about XtraDB with recent InnoDB-pluging release, as performance improvements in plugin may make XtraDB out of game - so I consider list above as roadmap for XtraDB and hope some or all features are implemented this year.
Do you have any other features you miss in current InnoDB ?
Entry posted by Vadim | One comment
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'Friday Night Lights' renewed for two more seasons
"Friday Night Lights" has been renewed for two more seasons.Ausiello has been saying the announcement is coming for a while now, but it seems to be official today: DirecTV has agreed to order two more seasons of "Friday Night Lights,"...
Developer Notebooks
I learned a long time ago that the two best debugging tools I own is a nice piece of paper, and a good pencil. What I never really learned all those years ago, was to keep track of those wonderful pieces of paper*. Especially the ones where I worked out tricky problems involving trigonometry.
See, I'm pretty bad at trigonometry. Luckily for me, and indirectly yourself, my wife Kirstin is pretty good at trig.
So a little while back as I was bugging Kirstin about some math (which I knew I had already bugged her about a couple of years previously, but couldn't find my notes on) I decided to get a little bit more organized. And I've now got two pretty thick sketch books, pictured above, with mostly empty pages in them but rapidly filling up. And I thought I'd just pass this tip on to you.
Of course I still use VoodooPad for notes, and I still draw some things out using Acorn + a Wacom tablet (with grids turned on so it looks like graph paper). But I just can't get the feel of it right, even with what I consider the perfect pencil brush, with the perfect color. Maybe some day if Wacom comes out with a tablet which has some sort of texture feedback on it, I'll be 100% happy with a digital solution.
Until then, paper and a blue col-erase pencil are my best friends.
P.S. - the above image was made using AcornNewImageWithCurvedDropShadow.jstalk.
* For some reason, I have all my notes from my previous job all together and right where I'll never need them. I'm not sure why I managed to keep track of these.
targetted ads?
on last.fm tell me cannabis can wreck my mind
many things can wreck your mind
music is not one of them
my desktop has all the buttons
Jay Rosen is collecting data on local news in your papers
Over at MediaShift's IdeaLab on PBS, Jay Rosen is collecting information from commenters on the # of local news stories in their papers.
This link/tip in from a reader. I note this as I'd love more tips and links from readers. It is pretty thrilling to have readers in the first place, so thank you. And the fact that this comes from Simon Owens is great.
Update: the NYObserver is reporting that the NYT is going to drop the City Section and possibly its regional weeklies. So one less thing to count.
Sarah Bishop Memorial Poster
Kate Brandy Sarah Bishop Memorial Poster $8 This poster was produced as a memorial for Sarah Bishop, a Portland area activist, who died in 2004 on a hiking trip around Mt.Hood. These were printed bby our friends over at Stumptown Printers and they are a benefit to a scholarship set up by her family for youth to attend Camp Adams. Offset Poster 12"x12"
Nothing But Net
Below is an amazing video of LeBron James under-handing a shot and drilling it from beyond half court. He’s done this several times. On video. It’s not a special effect. I know, because he dropped this on me one time during a game of pig. (I’m happy to report I at least hit the backboard.)
When I was a marketing consultant, I helped LeBron define his brand, an odd process that entails looking at a person and describing them as a product. LeBron has always been savvy enough to know that this somewhat artificial construct is his public persona. Incredibly, he’s also savvy enough to know that in today’s world, maximizing his brand potential also means keeping it as real as possible.
That’s why he’s perfectly happy to be in Cleveland, just up the road from his hometown of Akron. That’s why you’ll find him eating at a Chili’s in a mall. He’s just ‘bron, even though his alter ego is “King James”. Given that he’s considered the third most valuable individual sports brand in the world (look out Tiger and Becks– ‘bron is only 24 and coming on strong), he’s incredibly down to earth. The core of his brand is his love of all aspects of the game and his recognition that he is incredibly fortunate to be doing what he’s doing. We called it being an “accessible hero”– someone whose greatness is only enhanced by familiarity.
LeBron is almost a perfect athletic analog to President Barack Obama— they both make it look easy and intuitively understand that accessibility is a strength in today’s world, that the days of iconic figures being hermetically sealed off from real people are long past. Now, if President Obama would only start his press conferences with a talcum powder explosion…maybe at the G20?
takepart with the Lebron James Family Foundation and takepart with Darfur Dream Team Sister School Program
MacBook Decoration
So I had been toying with the idea of getting my unibody MacBook etched for quite a while. I had my artwork all picked out. But then I lost my nerve. Although I have no plans to sell my MacBook anytime soon, I may want to someday. Etching my laptop will most likely completely ruin the resale value. So I decided against etching.
Instead I had a custom decal of the artwork made. Overall I am very happy with it. I think it looks elegant and gives the same idea of etching. Except of course its completely removable. I'm a fan. <3
Just for fun, here is a second photo of the MacBook alongside my cat Daisy who is sunning herself on my bed...
Shooting Yourself in the Foot with Customer Branches
This weekend a colleague described his frustrations with a software project at his job. I suggested that he leave a few copies of
The Art of Agile Development (Powell's affiliate link) lying around his office. In particular, the largest problem I heard in his discussion is that his team has no idea how to release software.
"It's weird," he told me. "You'd think we'd stop making the same mistakes over and over again."
One such problem is rampant and divergent customization. The project makes an embedded device for sale to OEMs. They've based their product on a standard hardware set and use the Linux kernel to drive the hardware and provide a common API for manufacturers to develop their own products. The hardware and software are both flexible. A manufacturer can specify a custom set of behaviors, and the hardware and software configuration will enable or disable features from the baseline set of components.
One of the danger signs James Shore wrote about in the Version Control chapter of the Art of Agile Development is rampant branching for customization. One common and dangerous temptation is to create a branch for each customer, making changes for that particular customer in code. If you must develop a new feature for that customer, branch the current stable codebase at that point and develop that feature on the branch. If another customer needs that feature as well, branch from the branch and maintain that branch for the new customer. Repeat until you have little hope of unifying all of those features and additions again. (In my experience, that happens the first time you branch from a branch.)
When I first read the draft of Jim's chapter, I said "I don't believe in branching." Fortunately, he didn't take my advice (and I've since repented of that). I don't believe in long-lived branches. A branch should be a simple, single-minded, and temporary divergence from trunk. The goal should always be to merge the branch back into trunk as soon as possible.
Besides the complexity of managing (and even remembering) the state of all of these customer branches, my colleague casually mentioned that his team is trying to upgrade from Linux kernel 2.6.23 to the newest version. Imagine propagating that through the gnarly tree of branches!
If instead, as Jim suggests, customer-specific configuration used a data-driven approach, and if current development always took place on an unambiguous and unified point, the work of upgrading dependencies would be far easier. It's the Don't Repeat Yourself principle expressed in terms of your version control system.
(Please note that I have no problem with distributed version control systems, as long as there is a single unification point and a strong community push toward unification. Tracking and merging changes, especially at the individual level, is very useful. Rampant and divergent branching is not.)
Back to the Grid, Part 2: John Norquist on Reclaiming American Cities
As mayor of Milwaukee from 1988 to 2004, CNU President John Norquist made urbanism and livability top priorities. Some of his most notable achievements centered on the redevelopment of highway corridors with street grids and infill, culminating with the demolition of the Park East Freeway in 2002 -- one of the largest voluntary highway removal projects undertaken in America. Other projects, like the introduction of a light rail system, never reached fruition.Brady Street, which boasts some of the best street life in Milwaukee, has flourished thanks to the defeat of a nearby freeway spur and the redevelopment that followed.
In the second part of our interview (read the first part here), Norquist discusses these victories and setbacks, and how federal policy can help cities and towns do the right thing.
Ben Fried: Expanding the transit system in Milwaukee has been a very long, protracted process. You wanted to build light rail. What sort of resistance did you meet from other public officials?
Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Buffalo, Detroit, Cleveland -- the regional planning commissions they have really aren’t looking out for city interests, they're looking out for the exurban interests.John Norquist: Any time I had to fix a problem at one level of government, there was another one that would pop up. We had a Democratic governor, but then we had a county exec who was against light rail. The mayor wasn’t really for light rail. When I got elected mayor, I was for light rail but the county exec was still against it, that was Dave Schultz in 1988. And then we had Tommy Thompson as governor who wasn’t for it. He said he was open to it at the beginning when Schultz was against it. And then once Schultz left, then Thompson became more against it. The right wing talk shows went after it and so he followed their lead, you know the local Rush Limbaugh types. And then it just seemed like every step of the way, we get one group that had to be for it on the other side. The county runs the transit system, so it’s kind of hard to do it without them. If the city had run the transit system we would have been able to do it right away.It’s frustrating, because Milwaukee was always ranked by the Federal Transit Administration as one of the best places to put in a light rail, because it was built around the street car system. There was over 350 miles of street car in Milwaukee at the end of the war, 200 miles of inner urban. We had a really, really good transit system and by 1958 it was all gone. But the land use patterns were all built around street car lines. Now I think my successor, Tom Barrett, has got himself some clout with this. They put an earmark in the budget bill that just passed that gave him control of a nice big chunk of money, so he might be able to get that street car going.
BF: So the dispute between you and the county executives, is that emblematic, would you say, of the basic problem with MPOs?
JN: It depends on who runs the MPO. New York and Chicago have their MPOs under control. We have enough clout in Chicago that the local regional planning commission -- CMAP -- they're not going to turn around and screw Chicago. Chicago has a lot of representation on CMAP’s board. In New York, basically New York runs its own regional system -- sometimes the metro system has too much interference from the state, but basically New York City can call its own shot when it comes to planning. And that’s not true in a lot of cities. Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Buffalo, Detroit, Cleveland, the regional planning commissions they have really aren’t looking out for city interests, they're looking out for the exurban interests.
BF: We’ve got a potential freeway teardown project here in New York, the Sheridan Expressway, it was number two on CNU’s list of the top teardown candidates. Could you walk us through what you had to go through with your freeway teardown in Milwaukee -- who did you have to win over to achieve that?
JN: The Sheridan is ready to go. It has a nice low traffic count, so it’s hard to argue that it’s really necessary. But what did I go through? Well, the first thing was, it’s so counterintuitive to do these things that the first reaction was from very reasonable people -- ordinary citizens, the traffic engineers, neighborhood people, even very progressive people -- “You want to do what? You want to tear that -- what?” You know, it doesn’t compute, it sounds like a wacky thing to do. You have to have patience and spend a lot of time in meetings letting people beat the living hell out of you. And then you get to a certain point where people say, “Hey, wait, I think I understand what you mean. You’re saying the freeway’s a blighting influence.” And you just go through all the arguments against it, but the biggest argument for it is it just makes the place function a lot better and add more value and be a place where people actually want to be.
In the mid and late 70s a whole bunch of legislators were elected who were against freeways, people who organized and went door to door. If we hadn’t won those battles Milwaukee would have been devastated.Most people don’t like standing next to freeways, it’s not a big tourist attraction to stand next to a freeway. People kind of get the aesthetics first and then eventually they get the economics. The downtown property owners in Milwaukee really ended up being the most enthusiastic supporters, with a few exceptions. And then you have to overcome the bureaucratic obstacles. First obstacle is the state DOT people have a hissy fit and tell you you’re going to have to pay the money back on the structure you're tearing down, which isn’t true. On any of the projects that have come down -- Portland, New York, San Francisco, Milwaukee -- not in even one case has there been reimbursement for the road. Because the roads are at the end of their design life, they have no positive value anyway. And then the other thing they’ll say is, "It’ll cost money." They make the teardown costs all visible, 100 percent, you know, "an overwhelming burden on the backs of the hardworking taxpayer." And then the costs of rebuilding the freeway, which in Milwaukee’s case were four times higher than tearing it down and putting in a boulevard, they try to make that all hidden, like that’s all paid for, you don’t even talk about that.So you go through all these value calculation fights, and then finally you need to play your political cards. In Milwaukee the anti-freeway movement began in early 70s, and in the mid and late 70s a whole bunch of legislators were elected who were against freeways, people who organized and went door to door, they won the battles. If we hadn’t won those battles Milwaukee would have been devastated, but we’ve killed about half the freeways they had planned on building. And that saved the city really from being in a very similar situation to what Detroit is in right now.
BF: Are some of the freeway projects the Wisconsin DOT is planning now, are those in metro Milwaukee?
JN: We have several on there, they're all unnecessary, they're all dead weight loss. It’s really disgusting and it shows you how hard it is to get them to look at it in a different way. The I-94 widening -- it’s already six lanes, they want to make it eight lanes from Milwaukee down to the Illinois border. And they want to do a new interchange, called the “Zoo Interchange,” which will cost close to $1 billion. A lot of these stimulus projects are completely unnecessary and they don’t make sense. To route your grade-separated traffic through the most expensive real estate in the state of Wisconsin? It’s insane. They don't do it in Europe. They have freeways, but they're between cities, not in cities. They go around the outer edge with belt lines, but they don’t jam up through the most built-up places, because it just concentrates traffic and creates more congestion at the nodes.
A lot of these stimulus projects are completely unnecessary and they don’t make sense. To route your grade-separated traffic through the most expensive real estate in the state of Wisconsin? It’s insane.You can of course defeat congestion. Environmentalists sometimes say that you can’t build your way out of congestion; that’s not true. It’s been done in Detroit, they built their way out of congestion. They built all these freeways all over Detroit and congestion is now probably their lowest priority problem. They have a lot of other problems, like they lost more than half their population, most of the jobs, the real estate values collapsed. They tore down all the streetcars by 1956 and built these freeways all over the city. So it does work, if the only priority you have is reducing congestion, you can do it by building these giant roads across cities. But then it’ll hurt the city in every other way and they hurt the national economy too, because your cities are what really drive value.Look at it not just from a big city standpoint, look at it from a medium- or small-sized city standpoint. Let’s say you were in New York wine country and you come to Ithaca. In the old days, instead of a bypass they’d have a truck route around the outer edge of the street grid. You might go a little bit faster, 35 miles an hour instead of 25, but it’s a little longer distance, so it’s pretty much an equal choice whether you drive through the middle of town or you go on the outer edge. And if you're driving a truck and you're going on through-traffic you take the truck route. Well now they don’t even have that option anymore, all they have is a Mercedes-Benz test track, a highly-banked, grade-separated freeway that routes all the traffic around the city and then you get the inevitable death of any retail in the middle. You end up with antique shops and empty buildings. And then you get the big boxes out on the beltway.
These small towns, they don’t need beltways. Give them another option and they might choose it. If they still want to build a beltway and they want to help pay for it, fine, but the feds should give them the kind of options that allow urban real estate development, job development, walkability, connectivity, all these things. Higher economic performance, higher environmental performance. Those are all possible when you create a wide variety of choices, instead of just going right to grade separation. That’s basically saying, "We only fund through-traffic -- if you want to go a long distance, we’re into funding it."
The feds don’t look at it in terms of the economics. Traditionally, there’s three purposes for a road: movement, economic and social interaction. Those are the three things that traditionally a thoroughfare in an urban area did for thousands of years. That’s what it was. And then in the last 60 years it’s all dumbed down to just one thing -- vehicle movement -- and the other stuff doesn’t matter. Well that’s really stupid. The federal government collects a lot of taxes from hardworking people in the United States, and they shouldn’t just think that the only purpose of investment in transportation is through-traffic.
Links: MVP for Hanley, Burgers, Worries, etc.
Ken Rosenthal of FoxSports.com explains why he is predicting Hanley Ramirez will win the National League MVP.
In a post to his blog for Newsday, Ken Davidoff wonders, “Will the two new stadiums provide a bounce, a drop or neither?
Speaking of which, Zoe, from Pick Me Up Some Mets, has uploaded images of price menus from
the concession stands in Citi Field.
According to Zoe’s pictures, a single burger, an order of fries and a soda, from Shake Shack, will run you $14.
In a post to his blog for the Bergen Record, Steve Popper simply asks of Mets fans, “What is making you worry?”
Scott Lauber of the News Journal breaks down the Phillies roster.
Lastly, the Dodgers made a one-year, $1 million offer to free-agent LHP Will Ohman, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The Soul of Baseball.
If you’re here, you’ve probably already read Joe Posnanski’s The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O’Neil’s America
(still just $5.99 hardcover at amazon.com), so I’m not going to belabor the point - it’s a great, great read, much more than a simple baseball book, but more of a biography of a human being.
JoePo followed Buck O’Neil around the country for a year as O’Neil stumped for the Negro Leagues Museum and more generally worked to preserve the memory of the Negro Leagues as real baseball, rather than the minstrel show of the Hollywood depictions of those Leagues. Along the way, the two men ran into a handful of other former Negro Leaguers and gave us a window into their memories, some told by the players themselves with others retold through Joe’s voice. Some are hilarious, some touching, some downright sad.
O’Neil’s personality - his soul, really - dominates the book, which at times seems to border on magical realism with the incredible effect that O’Neil has on other people, most of whom are complete strangers, and his perceptions of others even based on a look or a few sentences. At the book’s close, my overwhelming thought was, “Wow, I wish I had met him.”
It’s hard to compare it to Lords of the Realm, which I’ve always called my top baseball book, but I’d say I enjoyed The Soul of Baseball more - it’s a serious book but has substantial entertainment value, particularly from the stories about other characters like Satchel Paige, but also from the glimpses into the (then) current lives of Willie Mays, Monte Irvin, and the questionable Johnny Washington.
Next up: Lonesome Dove
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Gratuitous Contrarianism
Bacon: overrated!
That Would Look Great on Elke
It might come as a surprise to some of you that I *love* modernism in dress. Clean lines, abstraction, angles, a palette of neutral colors ... basically everything you never see on this blog. You mostly don't see them on this blog because all of that? Looks like hell on me. Pure, unadulterated, where's-Virgil-when-I-need-him, ooh-look-there-are-the-blasphemers Hell. I could handle the looking-like-hell part (I often look like hell now) but I couldn't handle the part where I FELT like hell -- this stuff just isn't me.
And it not-being-me used to really bother me -- I know, really, that I'm much more of a cardigans (ones with the usual number of sleeves) and bright-colors kind of person, but I still drool a bit over stuff like the dress in the picture above.
But instead of mooning helplessly over these things, or, worse yet, trying to remake myself into someone who looks good in an asymmetrical cream-colored wool ANYTHING, I've invented my dear friend Elke.
Elke, I've decided, looks FANTASTIC in this stuff. Slash of brightly colored eyeshadow? So Elke. Vertiginously high shoes with geometric heels? Elke's signature! Camel-colored anything? All Elke's cup of tea (and she even drinks chamomile, which I can't abide).
Elke can rock both the pixie cut and the long straight hair; Elke can carry a beautiful, elegant squared-off leather tote without being forced to lean to the other side to counterbalance it; Elke has even figured out how to wear those swimsuits with metal trim without it getting too hot in the sun. (And she has a sense of humor, too.)
The reason I've invented Elke is that I find it helpful to imagine SOMEONE loving those clothes and really enjoying them, even if it's not me. The models wearing them always look as if they'd rather be subjected to electric shocks than wear an exquisite dress, and when they're pictured on starlets or socialites those women only seem to be thinking "I really hope this doesn't show up on the DON'T page of Glamour".
Not Elke. She revels in this stuff! She wears it to the grocery store! Her friends all know that what she really wants for Christmas is jewelry made out of a single slab of something that's never been used for jewelry before, or a hat that's indistinguishable from a science-fiction movie prop.
So now, when I see something like this dress in the "editorial" of the fashion magazines, I can think "Ooh, that would look *GREAT* on Elke," and flip on by to the pages where they show the clothes I might actually wear. (If, in fact, they have any of those pages in that issue, which, usually, they don't.)
I highly recommend you get to know Elke -- she always has time for her friends.
There Otter Be A Law Against Being This Cute
Sea World may be famous for its killer whales, but two new arrivals may have guests saying "Shamwho?" The San Diego park welcomed two Asian small-clawed river otter pups, born Feb. 7 to first-time parents Leo and Giselle. A new otter/sea lion show debuts next month.
From Sea World via Cute Otters.
Earth Hour 2009
Started in Sydney, Australia in 2007, Earth Hour quickly grew into a global observance. More than 1,000 cities in over 80 countries observed Earth Hour 2009 on Saturday March 29th, as homes, office towers and landmarks turned off their lights for an hour starting at 8.30 pm local time to raise awareness about climate change and the threat from rising greenhouse gas emissions. Collected here are a series of before-and-after photographs - which (starting with the second one below) will fade between "on" and "off" when clicked. Let me state that again, since I know not everyone reads the whole intro here - starting with image #2 below, click on the image to see an animated fade between "on" and "off". This effect requires javascript to be enabled. (17 photos total)A combination of handout pictures shows a view of the Taipei 101 building before and after (L-R) Earth Hour in Taipei March 28, 2009. More than 80 countries have signed up for Earth Hour on Saturday in which homes, office towers and landmarks will turn off their lights from 8.30 pm local time to raise awareness about climate change and the threat from rising greenhouse gas emissions. (REUTERS/Taipei 101/Handout)
Stargazing
An excerpt from one of Galileo Galilei's letters to Don Virginio Cesarini:
Long experience has taught me this about the status of mankind with regard to matters requiring thought: the less people know and understand about them, the more positively they attempt to argue concerning them, while on the other hand to know and understand a multitude of things renders men cautious in passing judgment upon anything new.
Want more Galileo? The Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza in Florence is loaning out their exhibit, Galileo, the Medici and the Age of Astronomy to The Franklin in Philadelphia. It features one of the last two telescopes belonging to the astronomer, as well as his notes, paintings, and other instruments, including the cylindrical sundial and Michelangelo's compass.
Tags: art astronomy galileo science
The More Things Change...
Earlier in the week, unconfirmed reports of a knife-wielding assailant had Williamsburg residents on edge; South Williamsburg in particular has been flooded with patrolmen all week, and we’ve heard from readers who say they’ve been written summons for minor offenses like jaywalking. Though the 90th Precinct and the NYPD press liaison are unforthcoming about the dragnet, two officers walking their beat by the future Pies ‘n’ Thighs location on Driggs and South 4th Street told us the increased police presence was in response to a spate of machete-wielding gang violence.A long search by the police yesterday failed to reveal the hiding place of a man who has come to be known as “Jack the Slasher” in Williamsburg. Although five police arrived within a few minutes after he had attacked John F. Nolan, 20 years old, of 221 Kent Avenue, yesterday, they were unable to capture the man who has terrorized the Eastern District of Brooklyn for many months.–The New York Times, May 11th, 1913
Something's Gotta Give
Ways I have watched The Wire, a television show:
- Rented it on DVD from the video store
- Watched it on HBO OnDemand
- Downloaded it from Bittorrent
- Purchased it on iTunes
Ways I have not watched The Wire:
- On regular live TV
Cooking Communities on the Web
I keep wishing there was a Ravelry for food. Here are two sites that might qualify: Bake Space (which covers all kinds of cooking) and The Fresh Loaf (which is baking-only). For reference only, take a look at Cook Think and of course the ancient The Searchable Online Archive of Recipes.
March 29, 2009
The History of Hip-Hop: 1979
Last year, The Rub's Cosmo Baker, DJ Ayres, and DJ Eleven completed their epic journey into the vast crates of the '80s and '90s hip-hop era, mixing each year of a decade's hits, lost gems, street classics and party anthems. We took the series down for a while because its popularity crashed the site. But with a stronger infastructure, we're ready to bring it back. Year by year, week by week. We'll kick off the first decade of hip-hop with a set from DJ Ayres. Let's take it back to 1979!
The Rub Presents The History of Hip-Hop: 1979 (Tracklist and Download)
Mr. Met
Mr. Met
Originally uploaded by Lizzy Vegas.Thank you, Jen Chung.
I Love My Wife: A Peculiar Noise Called Tomigatchi
Tough Love and Wife Material aim to please in this episode of I Love My Wife. Weird gets complicated as Balearic disco and surf pop enter the equation. Can weird music only be defined to noise music or are more experimental and eclectic touches transcendent of genre? And if music of a variety of genres is capable of causing a frenzy in fans 40 years ago as much as it can in the post-modern haze of the new millennium, does that mean that musicians can in turn create a more free-for-all and up-close (and even Twitter-based) relationship with their fans?
I Love My Wife: A Peculiar Noise Called Tomigatchi (Tracklist and Download)
The Best of Times and The Worst of Times
Since 1954 there have been 43 instances where a player has started at least 100 of his team’s wins in a season.
Five players have each accounted for 2 of those seasons.
Year Games Link to Individual Games +-----------------+----+-----+-------------------------+ Brooks Robinson 1969 106 Ind. Games Brooks Robinson 1970 105 Ind. Games Pete Rose 1970 100 Ind. Games Pete Rose 1975 108 Ind. Games Andruw Jones 1998 103 Ind. Games Andruw Jones 1999 103 Ind. Games Derek Jeter 1998 104 Ind. Games Derek Jeter 2002 100 Ind. Games Miguel Tejada 2001 100 Ind. Games Miguel Tejada 2002 102 Ind. GamesSince 1954 there have been 27 times when a player has started 100 losses in one season.
Only 2 players have managed to do it twice.
Year Games Link to Individual Games +-----------------+----+-----+-------------------------+ Frank Thomas 1954 100 Ind. Games Frank Thomas 1962 109 Ind. Games Billy Williams 1962 102 Ind. Games Billy Williams 1966 103 Ind. GamesThere have also been 3 players who have pulled off one of each:
Year Games Link to Individual Games -----------------+----+-----+------------------------- Rocky Colavito 1961 100 (wins) Ind. Games Rocky Colavito 1964 101 (losses) Ind. Games Eddie Murray 1979 102 (wins) Ind. Games Eddie Murray 1988 107 (losses) Ind. Games Ichiro Suzuki 2001 107 (wins) Ind. Games Ichiro Suzuki 2008 100 (losses) Ind. GamesIchiro - Welcome to the club.
Some thoughts on Google Street View in the US and UK
From the draft of my Street View chapter: 2.2 "Street View" and the politics of pervasive surveillance In March of 2009 Google debuted its "Street View" service as part of Google Maps in six cities in 25 cities in the United Kingdom. It caused instant uproar among the British public. Newspaper columns decried Google's new surveillance power, worried about Google's influence on daily lives, and questioned the service's utility. This service allows users of Google Maps to take a 360-degree view of streets and intersections in (as of early 2009) the Netherlands, France, Italy, Spain, Australia, New Zealand and Japan, in addition to the United States and the United Kingdom. Google captures these images by sending automobiles (Vauxhall Astras in the United Kingdom; Chevrolet Cobalts in the United States; Toyota Priuses por "Prii" in Japan) with special cameras mounted on their roofs to drive every street in a city. When Google Street View debuted in the United States in 2007 it sparked similar reaction as it did in the United Kingdom in 2009. Launched first in May 2007 in New York, San Francisco, and a handful of other large cities, Google Street view now covers most of thousands of small towns across the United States - even tiny Charlottesville, Virginia (population 50,000). At first, American users flocked to the service to check if there were embarrassing or revealing aspects of their own lives as they discovered their abodes captured by Google's global eyes. Many commentators declared the service to be too invasive, too embarrassing, and too revealing for comfort. Google, in its standard style, defended the service by saying - as it always does - that if anyone reports an image to be troubling, embarrassing, or revealing of personal information such as clear faces or vehicle license plates, Google would be happy to remove or smudge the image. But, as usual, the defaults would be set for maximum exposure. In the United States, the critical suspicion of Google Street view faded after a few weeks. Over time, as no horror stories emerged, Google users got used to the odd new function and started coming up with creative ways to use it. As I followed the reaction across the Atlantic in the spring of 2009 I wondered to what interesting uses my fellow Americans had put Google Street View in the two years since its launch. So I solicited some input via Twitter, Facebook, and my blog. Overwhelmingly, my respondents (overwhelmingly technologically adept and educationally elite) reported using Street View to scout out potential homes. Some used it to assess the prospects for parking in a busy area. Others wrote that they often remembered where a restaurant was but could not remember its name or precise address to offer to friends when recommending the place. A few of my responders had particularly interesting applications for Street View. David de la Peña, an architect based in Davis, California, uses it daily in his work:[Google Street View] is a very useful tool that I use regularly on community design and streetscape projects. It saves me from the drudgery of taking hundreds of photographs of a site, and the user interface is more intuitive than flipping through, say, 100 photographs of a street. For community design projects, it allows designers to see a neighborhood scene more or less from eye-level perspective. When we see a neighborhood from this experiential level, rather than from an aerial photograph, we have a better shot at creating more livable environments. The eye-level views also allow us to verify elements of a streetscape that just aren't apparent from a plan or an aerial photo, such as architectural character, yard and porch layouts, and tree types. For streetscape projects, the eye-level views give a very realistic view of a street's character, which are comprised of building facades; types and varieties of street trees; locations of street lights and power poles; and arrangements of drive lanes, bicycle lanes, parking and sidewalks. I started using it as soon as it was available. I immediately saw it as a useful tool to be added to my toolbox. Before [Google Street View], we relied primarily upon aerial photographs, MS Live 3d aerials, and photos we would take ourselves. Of course, none of these replaces on-the-ground research. I have been using [Google Street View], for example, on a project near Sacramento that is located 30 minutes from my office. We are trying to locate a new community center and park within a low-income neighborhood on foreclosed fourplexes that the city owns. GSV gave me a better sense than any other visual tool about the feel of each of the potential sites. Today I visited the sites to confirm our intuitions and to take more photographs. While walking the neighborhood, I was approached by eight different neighbors asking what I was doing. People naturally get suspicious when you're taking pictures of their homes, but if you're open to talking with them, other doors will open. I met a few single mothers who had great suggestions for locating a tot lot, and an on-site building manager who had suggestions for how the city deals with code compliance. These chance encounters gave me more information than any visual tool could, and more important, they helped me to establish as sense of trust.And Cory Doctorow, an author, blogger, and free-culture activist told me that he had used Google Street View to describe in detail a scene in San Francisco when he was writing his successful young-adult novel, Little Brother. Here is the scene from his novel:I picked up the WiFi signal with my phone's wifinder about three blocks up O'Farrell, just before Hyde Street, in front of a dodgy "Asian Massage Parlor" with a red blinking CLOSED sign in the window. The network's name was HarajukuFM, so we knew we had the right spot.Doctorow wrote to me that he had written much of the novel while living in Los Angeles, but had done a lot of globe-hopping during that time as well. "I think I was writing from Heathrow that day, or possibly Croatia," Doctorow wrote. "I know O'Farrell pretty well, but it had been a few years. I zoomed up and down the street with [Google Street View] for a few seconds until I had refreshed my memory, then wrote." One counter-example to the general acceptance of Street View was the case of Aaron and Christine Boring, a couple living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Concerned that Street View included clear images of their driveway and house that sat far back from the street, the couple sued Google in April 2008 seeking $25,000 in damages and alleging Google had effectively trespassed on their property through the power of its lenses alone. The judge in the case dismissed their claims in February 2009 because the couple had not taken the simple step of requesting that Google remove the offending images. By 2009 Google Street View, perhaps the most pervasive example of the Googlization of the real world, barely causes a gasp in the United States. The reaction in Britain in 2009 echoed the American reaction from 2007 - but with a few significant amplifications and ironies. On the first day Street View was active, Google had its busiest day ever in the United Kindgom with a 41 percent increase in traffic. Google already controlled more than 90 percent of the Web search traffic in the United Kingdom. The problems that first day were fairly predictable: a few embarrassing scenes caught on camera; a few sensitive sites had to be deleted upon request. But then, the press coverage revealed that Google officials misrepresented some important aspects of the service. In a speech at the MediaGuardian Changing Media Summit announcing the launch of the service in the United Kingdom, the head of Google UK, Matt Brittin, said that he had discussed the security implications of Google Street View with Metropolitan Police in London "and they have said it actually helps track and monitor crime." And Ed Parsons, a geospatial technologist for Google, told The Guardian that Google's automatic image-blurring technologies detect and scramble "99.9" percent of the faces and license plates in the index. Google quickly undermined its credibility in the United Kingdom by handling its public relations in an uncharacteristically sloppy fashion. Two days after Street View debuted, the British public learned that Brittin had never discussed the project with London police. As a spokesperson for Scotland Yard told The Independent, "We have not been involved in discussions with Google regarding their product development." And that claim from Parsons that Google catches "99.9" percent of faces and license plates automatically turned out to be "a figure of speech," as a Google spokesperson had to admit to the Independent. "The technique is not totally perfect," the spokesperson said. "The idea is not to blur every single face, only those that can be clearly identified." The ensuing fury was quite spectacular and exceeded any such concerns that had popped up in the United States two years before. A former criminal wrote a column in The Sun claiming that Street View would be a "gift to criminals." Former Prime Minister Tony Blair had to request that his home be removed from the service. And thousands of people requested that Google remove specific images of their homes and businesses from the service. Bloggers quickly found and copied embarrassing images from Street View, including a man vomiting outside a pub, a man exiting an adult video store, and a naked child playing in a park. Despite Google's quick action to remove all these troubling images from the service, they remained part of the larger Web - easily discoverable via Google Image Search. But ultimately, Google did not suffer long-term damage from these high-profile incidents. If anything, the voyeuristic interest generated by the news coverage and peer-to-peer buzz about Street View enhanced Google's presence in the country. ...
Frightful Kindle
Until quite recently, I'd seen a Kindle only once. It was at a friend's house, only for a moment, and my general impression was that it was clunky and only borderline readable. But I'm very partial to my iPhone. So a few weeks ago in my never-ending quest to find iPhone 'apps' I might actually use, I noticed that Kindle, or rather the Kindle software, was now available for iPhone. So I promptly downloaded it and bought my first book.
Like everything else on an iPhone it was very easy on the eyes. Maybe even beautiful. But after reading a bit, it struck me mostly as a clever novelty. The text was crisp and readable. But the physical thing itself was just too small. Maybe half as small as anything you could hold and get comfortable with like you can with a book.
But then my habit betrayed my first impression. I kept reading -- when I had a free moment, before I went to bed at night and then just when I wanted to read my book. Even at that small size the system provided me what you need from a book, which is that you fall into the writing and forget the book. Or in this case, the imitation of a book.
Then, with me reading my Alexandria book on my Kindlefied iPhone, my wife got the idea to order the real thing and promptly got hooked reading on an actual Kindle.
Now, here's the thing. And I'd appreciate hearing from those who've used either or both to see whether others agree. But I still find the greyness (which is mainly the non-backlitness) of the Kindle inferior to my iPhone. It's designed that way in part because it allows the battery on a Kindle to last an insanely long period of time but also because it's supposed to be easier on the eyes. Maybe I just spend so much time in front of a monitor that my eyes are trashed and I don't know the difference. But for me, on the iPhone, it just looks more crisp and readable.
All that said, though, I tried reading a book on the actual Kindle (the new one that just came out) and I fell right into the reading there too. It maybe took me 10 minutes to get acclimated. Even though I like the cleaner, whiter screen better, the physical size won me over, at least on the initial use.
(Porting the product to other devices is very clever on Amazon's part. Not only does it expand the market for their digital books. I suspect it will function something like the iPod has with Apple, a gateway gadget that gets people to switch to Mac from PC once they see how well Apple technology works compared to PC drek.)
What I'd intended here, though, wasn't just a product review. I've always been an inveterate collector of books. Not in the sense of collectibles, but in the sense that once I buy a book, I never let it go. As I made my way through adulthood it was while dragging a tail of several hundred books along with me.
Finally, only a few months ago, I purged a decent chunk of my collection. And most are now in storage. But in our living room we have two big inset shelves where I keep all the books I feel like I need or want ready at hand. And last night, sitting in front of them, I had this dark epiphany. How much longer are these things going to be around? Not my books, though maybe them too. But just books. Physical, paper books. The few hundred or so I was looking at suddenly seemed like they were taking up an awful lot of space, like the whole business could dealt with a lot more cleanly and efficiently, if at some moral loss.
Don't get me wrong. Book books still have some clear advantages. Kindle is a disaster with pictures and maps. But I didn't realize the book might move so rapidly into the realm of endangered modes of distributing the written word. I was thinking maybe decades more. The book is so tactile and personal and much less ephemeral than the sort of stuff we read online.
I hope it's clear that I'm not of the attitude that this is a good thing or something I welcome. When I had the realization I described above it felt like a sock in the gut, if perhaps a fillip on the interior decorating front. All the business model and joblessnes stuff aside, that's how I feel about physical newspapers too. There's a lot I miss about print newspapers, particularly the serendipitous magic of finding stories adjacent to the one you're reading, articles you're deeply interested in but never would have known you were if it weren't plopped down in front of you to pull you in through your peripheral vision. Yet at this point I probably read a print newspaper only a handful of times a year.
When I think about it I kind of miss it. In a way I regret not reading them. But I just don't. I vote with my eyes. And I wonder whether I'll soon say something similar about books.
Three Generations of Boelter Baldies
Daddy and Louis and Grandpa Paul Boelter.
Grandpa was so excited to meet Louis, and Louis was pretty happy about it, too!
Play time on the mat (thanks to Robin and Stephen Breton for loaning it to us!).
Louis and Grandpa wore each other out!
The Boelter men in Prospect Park, in Brooklyn.
Louis snuggles up with his new Monkey (Thanks Granpa Paul and Judy!) while Daddy snuggles up with Louis.
Golden Cup Espresso?
For more, look here.
Montreal Spring
Thursday night we decided to go out on a date. We wanted to go to a movie, but we were saving that for dessert. We wanted something with a little more substance for dinner.
So, we packed a couple of our AEB Bánh Mì and we went to the Canadian Centre for Architecture to check out "Actions: What You Can Do With the City," an exhibition that features 99 actions intended to "instigate positive change in contemporary cities around the world."
This was our kind of exhibition: a topic we feel strongly about, and a massive--somewhat playful, somewhat haphazard--assortment of displays and artifacts.
We found inspiration at every turn, and we were happy to see that quite a number of the 99 actions turned on food-centric and food-related issues like urban gleaning and urban greening. There were things that we'd heard about, like New York City's Freegans (#12) and "Wildman" Steve Brill's foraging tours of Central Park (#23). But there were plenty of things that were new to us too.
Like the Fallen Fruit collective in Los Angeles (#9) who've mapped the city's vast number of publicly accessible fruit trees (orange, lemon, lime, kumquat, peach, plum, apple, and so on),fig. a: fruit-hunting instruments, fruit maps of Los Angeles, etc.
and who host nocturnal fruit gathering excursionsfig. b: fruit-hunting foray
and jam-making parties (!).
And the Continuous Picnic project in London (#82),fig. c: London lemon
which supports "low-intensity urban farming" and hosts a market and an endless picnic (!!), both of which serve to showcase the city's impressive biodiversity while encouraging its growth.
Hell, there were even some recipes on display, like Helen "Ladybird" Nodding's brilliant recipe (#56) for creating organic graffiti (suitable for what Nodding calls, "a quiet revolution" (!!!) out of moss (!!!!):fig. d: life & death in London
1 can of beer
1/2 teaspoon sugar
Several clumps garden moss
You will also need a plastic container (with lid),
a blender and a paintbrush
_________________________________________________
To begin the recipe, first of all gather together several clumps of moss (moss can usually be found in moist, shady places) and crumble them into a blender. Then add the beer and sugar and blend just long enough to create a smooth, creamy consistency. Now pour the mixture into a plastic container.
Find a suitable damp and shady wall on to which you can apply your moss milkshake. Paint your chosen design onto the wall (either free-hand or using a stencil). If possible try to return to the area over the following weeks to ensure that the mixture is kept moist. Soon the bits of blended moss should begin to re-couperate into a whole rooted plant – maintaining your chosen design before eventually colonising the whole area.
[We haven't a chance to test Nodding's moss shake recipe yet, but we'll let you know when (and where) we do.]fig. e: heaven & earth in Montreal
Anyway, the city looks different to us now, even more full of promise than it usually does.
"Actions: What You Can Do With the City," Canadian Centre for Architecture (1920 Rue Baile), through April 19, 2009
aj
Computers, Clocks, Astronomy and The Making of the Modern World
Long Now member and close friend Susan Shea sent me this astoundingly good episode of James Burke’s “Connections”show from 01978 (It is in 5 parts). It is the best tracing of computing technology through time and culture I have ever seen, and shows the lineage of ancient clocks to modern computers (if a computer in 01978 can be called modern, but you get the idea.) This also reminded me how good this TV show was, now I have to watch the other episodes…
ping-pong dining table by hunn wai for mein gallery
ping-pong dining table by hunn wai, © daniel pehk.l.
ping-pong dining table harks back to the origins of table-tennis with its duality of both being
a table fit for dining and playing on. what started off as impromptu after-dinner amusement
mimicking tennis in an indoor environment for upper-class victorians became an international phenomenon with rules and standards. this is an official-sized game table with a
DuPont™ Corian® surface CNC machine-routed with french rococo patterns interjected
ping-pong iconography filled with gold lacquer, supported by stately hand-lathed timber legs.
in the middle, a long rectangular vase filled with dainty blossoms does double-duty
as a game-net and a table floral arrangement.
ping-pong dining table by hunn wai, © daniel pehk.l.
ping-pong dining table by hunn wai, © daniel pehk.l.
ping-pong dining table by hunn wai, © daniel pehk.l.
reinstating grandeur and pomp with neo-classical inspired embellishments ,
the ping-pong dining table creates a remarkable conceptual statement
in the true heart of the home, the dining area.
ping-pong dining table by hunn wai, © daniel pehk.l.
ping-pong dining table by hunn wai, © daniel pehk.l.
this design piece is the first collaboration of mein gallery shanghai,
and singaporean designer hunn wai.
detail of CNC machine-routed pattern
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