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07.26.05 uncontrollable...gadget...lust... # NAARRRMMMMM! # 07.24.05 Supposed screenshots from the beta of the next version of Windows (now Vista, once Longhorn). Clearly some folks are in love with transparency. I'm a little bothered by the overabundance of "rounded" surfaces. OS X has lots of curves, but you'll find most surfaces are "flat" and only a few have the cylindrical curve that all of the window surfaces here seem to have. All in all though, I think Microsoft has struck out on a good path here, a much much nicer and cleaner look than the bulbously, Rubbermaid look of XP. I only hope that they will put the effort into making all of those thousands of icons across the system look nice; Windows is notorious for throwing up aged, ugly old pixelated icons. And they would benefit from offering some kind of tool for developers to do the same. On a side note, I think the name Vista is actually a really great one. It's the first time I've seen Microsoft employ decent creative thinking into their application naming schemes. Windows 2000? Didn't it release in 2001? And what the hell does XP mean? This new name is pretty, it's flexible and it has some nice, or at least thought-out, metaphoric connection to the actual OS. Or whatever is left of the actual OS by the time they finally release it. My bet is that it'll keep getting trimmed down until it's just an XP service pack. And now back to my usual Mac-addicted ramblings... # 07.23.05 i had had had to post this new mp3. it's a guaranteed good time. and a good laugh too, if you don't recognize it right away. thanks, steve! # "Are you a warrior or a snoreior?" Melanie asked me, as I slid in next to her in the back seat of the cab. I promised to give it my all, despite the very Thursday-nightishness of the whole thing. Kate and Jen came tumbling out of the front door to join us in the waiting car. The Utah, famed and fabled shanty venue, under new ownership since my crazed coworker/friend's roommate sold the place over a year ago, was our destination. Brandi Carlile (is it any wonder I kept wanting to call her Belinda?) was performing on that cool Thursday evening, herself arriving after we did, in the middle of the opener's set. He was down in the stage space (kind of a pit shaped area, if you haven't been; very intimate.) rocking out and tossing his thick, curly black hair back and forth with a kind of abandon reserved for someone who's probably not rocking out the Utah on a Thursday night. Which is an awful thing for me to say. But Kate backed up my assessment, doing her best impression, an awful soaring vibralto with hair-toss. My hopes were not high for the main act, mostly due to Kate and Jen's impassioned assessment ("We're totally in love with this girl's album!! But you probably wont like it. It's not really your thing."). I get that a lot. But I was content to sit in for a few songs, if only to stare at the hot indie boy twins who were supporting her on stage. It was, however, an impressive show. And the singer, whose pixie-rocker cuteness might have played some part in drawing the crushing throng of adoring lesbians to that night's show, proved impressive herself. A kind of folk/country pop radio rock jumped out of her; a heartfelt (and skillful) performance of Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah finally won me over. From there, the night degenerated. Another beer for everyone. Scott's pipe comes out. Kate argues with the cabbie was we ride back to her house. Spinning Melanie in the office chair until she falls over. Then Scott is spinning each of us, one by one, on our backs on the floor, a kind of assisted-backspin that must have been driving the downstairs neighbors crazy. By the time Jen's friends (and clients) Kaki and Holly showed up, sometime after 1, Melanie was turning into a snoreior herself, and I was being haunted by visions of my alarm clock, mere hours away. Too high to get into any kind of coherent conversation with Kaki, who's an interesting if not intimidating little thing, and too worried about working in the morning to ratchet myself up to Holly and Kate's level, I opted out for whatever was left of the night. But for you, I only wish godspeed and great stamina for your future Thursday nights. # 07.22.05 kcrw is now offering a podcast of morning becomes eclectic. they're only offering the live-in-studio sessions, i guess, but that's still pretty cool. # 07.21.05 it's a birthday fest around here. happy's go out to dan, who shares this day with my grandma of all people, and also to barrett, who got his birth on earlier this week (tuesday, actually). they grow up so fast, don't they? # anyone (specifically dreamhosties) ever fool around with this php app to work properly? # interesting, praising (nearly fluff) piece in the new york times about costco as the anti-wal mart. the mega-warehouse pays it's employees well above average, offers lower-cost and broader range access to health coverage, contributes (heartily) to employee retirement plans, and freely allows employees to unionize. they do this while maintaining competitive discount pricing, the times claims, by reducing price from the product's margin, running somewhere around 14-15% markup (vs. 25-50% at other retailers). smart, smart, smart. the only area the article neglects is supplier relations. while the mention the subject, there's no real exploration of whether or not costco practices the same stifling, extortionist buying techniques employed by everyone's favorite hate-chain. i don't want to buy into the hype too bad, nor do i want to buy toilet paper in bulk, but it sounds like costco is the place to shop if you've got a conscience as well as a big family to feed. # 07.19.05 did you know that a major part of the touristy-downtown chicago area is in fact a neighborhood known as streeterville? named after this crazy old drunk (two qualities that suggest that we're related). you learn new things every time you travel. # 07.13.05 i'll be wandering the great state of illinois for the next week with jessie, so don't miss me too much, ok? i promise to send you all a postcard from the world's largest catsup bottle if we make it there. considering my regular posting frequency, you might not even notice the interruption in service. # 07.11.05 support the movement to bring back cactus cooler in northern california! mmmm, orange-pineapple. # 07.10.05 it's been a pretty hectic few weeks recently. i've meant to post about a couple of specific events, but have fallen behind as i try to craft them into something that, quite frankly, they're not. at work, i asked for and received a big, interesting, and highly visible new project. it was quite a surprise, because i was expecting a typical corporate response, given the particular situation that is transpiring in my office (no details, sorry). more or less, they said yes without hesitation. it means that i'll be much, much busier (already feeling that one), but also more invested and engaged. plus, it means a lot more travel. (i may yet be able to see kevin in his new habitat.) on top of the work thing, i've been to a few concerts (spoon was awesome) and seen a few movies (batman was great; me and you and everyone we know might be my favorite movie of the year). next wednesday, jessie and i leave for illinois for a week. i'm pretty excited to see his hometown, but also just for the sheer joy of traveling. and hanging out in chicago with byron? priceless. interesting finds in musicland include volcano, i'm still excited!!, the organ (thanks noah!) and tilly and the wall. books? i just finished bird by bird, a book on writing and being human by anne lamott. it's old news to those of you who write or want to write, but i'm late to the game. she's conversational, inspiring and touching, and it really helped me clear out my roadblocks. i'm writing again with a kind of furry and passion that i thought i would never capture. also, the book includes the most sad and touching story ever. republished after the jump, because i don't want people crying all over the front page of my blog. An eight-year-old boy had a younger sister who was dying of leukemia, and he was told that without a blood transfusion she would die. His parents explained to him that his blood was probably compatible with hers, and if so, he could be the blood donor. They asked him if they could test his blood. He said sure. So they did and it was a good match. Then they asked if he would give his sister a pint of blood, that it could be her only chance of living. He said he would have to think about it overnight. # the new york times magazine has a brief article written (or dictated?) by steve vaught, the 400 pound man who is walking from san diego to new york in an attempt to loose weight (physically and mentally, it seems). it's nice of them to give him that kind of attention, but i think the washington post article (syndicated on sfgate) is a much more telling, and moving, piece. # the 'fist points us to burritoeater, a daring attempt to chronicle the rise and fall of the san francisco taqueria scene. sort by neighborhood, name or rating (on a scale of mustaches, naturally). also available is their monthly newsletter, intestinal apocalypse monthly which gets props for name alone. and while we're at it, let us not forget that venerable message board of eats, chowhound. tracking the thread on myth at the moment. # 07.06.05 david sets my world on fire, sends everything crumbling into a beautiful flower of harmony; he's got a blog. and a feed. now, my life will have peace. # 07.04.05 i came home last night, after bombing around town all night with Christian, and look what i found. jessie had scouted it in the lobby of our apartment; there's a table by the mailboxes where packages go, along with the stuff that people in the building want to give away. he knew i had wanted something like this for a while, partly for decoration and partly for the sheer joy of clicking some hammer to paper. it's hard! how long has it been since you typed without correction tape? i love it.  
# 07.03.05 someone's written a really nice dashboard widget for google maps. seriously, try it out. very well executed. # as reported by pitchfork, also noteworthy, mr. stevens will be touring beginning week-after-next, with two nights at the great american music hall in sf. two nights that i will not be attending, since jessie and will be in illinois that weekend seeing family. so you should make every effort to go and to enjoy yourself and to bootleg the show for my sad self. update: a strangely brief message on the asthmatic kitty website indicates some kind of legal issue over the artwork on the new album is halting it's sale through the label's website. no word on whether this will affect the july 5 release date. further update: pitchfork confirms. another update: in case you missed it, pitchfork also has an excellent review of the album, completely nailing it for it's staggeringness, both in beauty and in length. sit down with this album and listen to it, start to finish, on headphones, and you'll understand why i'm so completely in love with it. # 07.02.05 i've been loosing my grip recently. i spend almost as much time correcting my capitalization as i do writing. used to be, when i started this blog, i wrote everything except Very Official Documents, like letters and term papers, in all lower-case. there was a reason for this, i think, but it's lost on me now. today, i do it to achieve some mental separation between work-life (Upper Case) and personal-life (lower case). mostly though, it's just been a force of habit. now, however, i'm using Upper Case in my writing as well as my work-life. and i'm writing a lot more at work. so the degree of capitalization is shifting the balance. which is breaking the habit. so now i find myself going back through my personal emails and lower-casing at least a paragraph per email. that's a lot of time and effort for a pretty adolescent cause. so i'm thinking about abandoning the idea all together. not on the blog, where i prefer the lower case for 1.) aesthetic reasons and 2.) the huge pile of lower-case posts that i'm not going to ever think of fixing. but i could just make the switch all the way back into Proper English and force the case on my blog using CSS. only, it hurts a little to let go, even of my most useless ideals. # let's anoint this No Hope Moment #3056: an early list of folks bush may be considering to replace justice o'connor. nothing on this menu looks appetizing. in fact, i feel the need to purge. # 07.01.05 today was a monumental day in my own private history. today i moved my folder for radiohead related bookmarks inside of my music bookmarks folder. at last, reason triumphs emotion. # « June 2005 | archive index | August 2005 » built with movabletype |
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