God Bless John Hume

No Country for Old Moustache on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Dear Bill Clinton - Shut Up.

For everyone who wishes Bill Clinton should let Hillary run her own campaign, this website says it all: Dear Bill Clinton - Shut Up.

Fairfax Waterfalls

  Yesterday, Tracy rolled up to our place (first time I've seen her since I've been back from Oz) so we could do a little post-holiday hike and see some waterfalls which would be swelling after the rain. We were joined by Chris who was up from San Diego to see family, so we all rolled out down Sir Francis Drake past Fairfax and made a right turn into one of those developments near the golf course. I want to say that the trail was called "Glen"-something, but I cannot remember the name for the life of me. In any case, we had alot of fun checking out phosphorescent moss, bay trees, and listening to some of the loudest frogs that I have ever heard. It took us a while to find the right trail to the falls, but eventually we made it. After we got back, we had a beer at the famous Pelican Inn on Muir Beach, which was lit by candles after they lost their power. All in all....a good day. Photos here.

Post Christmas Cheer at Cafe Elysian

 

Here's me hanging out with Chris and Dave at the refurbished Cafe Elysian in Hoboken the day after Christmas while we were home in NJ.

Fingers Crossed

The apartment that we live in was struck two years ago on New Years Eve in what was the latest strike of what they called the San Anselmo '28 Year Flood'. They call it that because it happened last 28 years before. The flood destroyed most of the businesses in town, as well as the entire apartment complex we live in. They rebuilt the place and rented out the new apartments, which happened to be about the time we were looking for a new pad.

In any case, we have two floors and flood insurance so we're not super worried about property destruction. Regardless, when you find out as you're eating dinner that in the middle of the night your house could be filled with water, you get a bit freaked out.

Today we watched the news and worked from home since most of the highways around us are closed. We also watched as the creek outside our window rushed rapidly by and rose to meet the street level (see movie).The coolest thing so far that we have found is that there is a website maintained by the Ross Valley Fire Department where you can watch how the creek rose hour by hour. (http://www.rossvalleyfire.org/sa_creek.html ) A few hours ago, it rose over a foot in an hour. Once it gets to 11 feet you have to evacuate. It got past 9. It has started to temporarily subside to 8.something. Problem is it is supposed to rain all night.

Fingers crossed. Please put the kettle on; we might be stopping over.

Update: the creek did not overflow, but I have some good pictures and movies of the exciting moments. Here's one below:

Respect the Umlaut

Thanks to Dave for passing along this great reference article as to the origins and evolution of the umlaut in heavy metal music.

Reference.com/Encyclopedia/Heavy metal umlaut

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of blogging (Scripting News)

Great post by Dave Winer today on the anniversary of blogging (his creation, along with RSS).

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of blogging (Scripting News)

Notes from Iran military led to U.S. reversal - International Herald Tribune

Here is a great summary of the events that lead up to the latest NIE in which the Iranian nuclear program was found to have been halted.

Notes from Iran military led to U.S. reversal - International Herald Tribune

robots gone buck-wild

Do you remember how Chuck-E-Cheese and Razz-Ma-Tazz used to have those robot shows that would sing and dance. Check out this hack job that someone did to make one into a hip-hop crew over at engadget:

showbiz-pizzas-rock-afire-explosion-hacked-to-rap-on-stage

I don't know if it's legit or not, but it's hysterical.

Don't let it kill you like it nearly killed me

If you don't have tickets to see Gomez yet, you should probably drop everything and get some. This is double for you clowns in Chicago and New York who are going to get two shows apiece. Jen and I went to see them on Monday night at the Mystic Theater in Petaluma, and they blew it out, as Randy Jackson would say.

If you've never checked them out, they do an interesting mix of styles with little bits of rock, jazz, and dub. Lance introduced me to these guys about 10 years ago, and I have scooped most of their stuff since. This was my first time seeing them live.

Overall, I was just super impressed with the show. Some highlights (in absolutely no relevant order):

• rhythm and blues alibi
• how we operate
• rosalita (first time they ever played it live)
• hamoa beach
• ruff stuff (one of the highlights where ian forgot the second verse)
• charley patton sings
• see the world
• bring your lovin' back here
• girlshapedlovedrug
• devil may ride
• hangover

On a side note, I also have always found a strange similarity between Ben's voice and the lead singer of Widespread Panic, whose album Everyday was one of my college favs. Let me know if you think the same thing.

In any case...you should know that the band has a big sound which is even bigger live. Double drums, triple guitars, keyboards, vocals and all sorts of musical goodness. We also got a good treat in the opener, Joe Purdy, whose band was TIGHT. I think I heard of Joe as having had a hit on one of the WB shows or something, but his songs were pretty top notch. I might scoop something.

ps ....Skiba and Doug: you cats missed out :P

back to basics and a rant about ghosts

Working close to home has certainly been helpful lately, as it has allowed me to focus on taking care of myself in a way that I hadn't for a long time.

Whereas I used to work out religiously, I had let that slip away. Now I find myself back on the bike a few times a week, tooling through the woods and winding hills around our home. It's just wild; I never imagined I would live in such a cool environment.

We've also started eating alot better and getting more sleep (I know...I need to go to bed now), and I feel 10x better than I did a couple months ago. As Oskar would say: "I feel like One Hundred Dollars."

In any event, I've had a long day of conference calls and emails which all took longer than I thought, and then I ended up reading a couple of rants by some dudes that think blogging is all about the next generation of public relations (I won't make their day with a trackback). To me, this is the perfect explanation about why medium has been corrupted just a few years along. 6 years ago, no one wanted to know what a blog is; now everyone has to be syndicated with feeds. Back to the PR thing; what was I referring to? Well...just like the spammers did with email, some guys figured out that if you created a "campaign" to put your message out using the newest technology available (which in this case might be blogs with feeds), you could plant lots of bogus news. Well, guess what, morons? This has been going on for YEARS with every technology and in every industry. Now, it's just easier. The point is, it's just not new enough to justify it by calling it PR two dot oh, or anything else. I'm affording it too much attention by talking about it.

I guess I'm just annoyed that people don't spend more energy on being interesting. There's still creative folks though. Remember the Blair Witch Project? Now, that was a cool campaign. The only flaw was that they didn't count on everyone telling their friends about the movie after they saw it.

Jeez. That was a bit of a rant that probably makes little sense since, I'm sleepy. In any event, tomorrow's a new day. And even better....only one month until Gomez.

Cool But Frustrating

So, now that blogger accounts are getting converted over to the new google-ified versions, there are alot of cool new features, however, they've got some catches.

For one...If I want to use the new drag-and-drop template functionality, I've got to have a blogspot hosted blog; I can't continue to run my own site. This could have some benefits, although, then I'd have to figure out what to do with all of my legacy pages from the days when I had my lost weekend with Radio.

I'm sure I will figure this all out soon, but for now, it's just very annoying. I just want to go back to the days when having a site was just fun and hassle free.

i think dead links are stupid

I just learned that the site that hosted my old glossary no longer exists. It's url was snapped up and now it's one of those really lame keyword spiderweb sites that is meant to lure you into some junk that you didn't intend to find. So...I've removed the link. No muss, No fuss. Goodbye glossary.

It would have really sucked if that were a friend's site. Actually that happened recently, but I'm saving that for my post about how I got started in this technology stuff.

New Year New Entry

It's 9 days into the new year, and as the past few weeks have been all about introspection anyway, I imagine that I'm due for another blog post about why I haven't been writing anything. After all, it seems that most of the posts I've made within the past two years have basically said that. But seriously, there has been quite a bit going on inside my noggin' and it seems like this is as good of a time as any to start laying it down.

The past few months had pretty much left me feeling physically exhausted, emotionally drained and mentally mush. After returning from our honeymoon in mid-May I went straight into a full-on onslaught of work which did not let up until Christmas. I can say that I returned from a nice trip home for the holidays with a fresh outlook on life, family, friends and work. With that, I'm exercising again, eating better, and am energized to do good work.

Things that inspired me this past year:

• Getting married
• Meeting Melissa and her fiancee in London
• Eating curry on Brick Lane at 2am
• Sunday roast in Shepherd's Bush
  
• Walking in Paris (and eating in Paris)
• Train ride through the Basque country
• Seeing the Spanish wineries
  
• Meeting cool Brits in a Sevillian tasca and partying with them until the wee hours of the morning
• Drinking vermouth from a tap
  
• Winning a halloween costume contest
• Getting Dave to visit SF and seeing the Decemberists!
  
• Edward Tufte
• Reconnecting with old friends from high school and college
  
• Seeing Feist live in concert
• Making connections between old friends that you never realized knew each other
• Getting a call from Greg Phillips at a Samples show in the middle of the night
• Having friends from NJ move to SF
• Having two bachelor parties in Vegas and New York
• Having Luke join us for Thanksgiving
  

Things that I learned (or re-learned) this past year:

• I'm good at my job
• People can disappoint you
• Trust but verify
• Drink lots of water
• Get a good night's sleep
• This is a very small world
• Patience is a virtue
• Anger will destroy you
• Memory is powerful
• Friendships can be re-kindled

I haven't made any fancy resolutions this year but I have resolved to work on having a healthy body and mind, on spending more time doing the things I love, and spending more quality time with friends and family. I also intend on maximizing my time on the west coast and getting out to see some of our friends in the northwest.

I've been doing quite a bit of thinking lately on how and why I got into technology, the internet and the people that turned me on to it, but I think that is a post unto itself. Until then....here's to a good year.

no salsa on the couch

Star Trek Cribs - The Director's Cut is the shizzle.

more than meets the eye

In case you didn't actually know where that song Dirk Diggler sang came from....
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8688577315402891785

For all of you Transformers fans, here is actually a link to what's purported to be a clip from the new movie: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3691206919018741873&q=transformer

Just When You Think No One Remembered That Photo

I stumbled across this today and realized that it was too good not to post again. I miss you, big fella.  

Where is Mr. T when you need him?

So, while I was looking for some Emmet Otter related stuff last night, I stumbled upon this website called Movie Criticism For The Retarded. Now, I'm not usually one to go looking for goofy websites, so when I stumbled upon this little diamond in the rough, I was pleasantly surprised. Not only did they have a review of my favorite muppet special, but they also had fantastic track by Mr. T and the T-ettes, called "Treat Your Mother Right". You can find it here.