August 21, 2008
WE’LL DO IT LIVE!
I realized something today about blogging. Titles are evil. When I come up with a title. It sets the direction of the entire post. I always have trouble veering from that direction to write anything else that’s on my mind. Well, I shouldn’t say “always”… sometimes I write things that are quite random indeed. Anyway, I think without titles blogging becomes easier. If I just wrote short posts perhaps I could stay on topic, hit the post button, then move on. If I have more to say there’s no problem with starting an entirely *new* post. However, there’s a point at which one can post too many things. Perhaps an appropriate balance is the holy grail of blogging. Or, perhaps it’s all relative and I can post as much as I want without anyone even reading it in the first place.
I’ve been watching the olympics. Table tennis mostly. I don’t really participate in any of the other sports so I just kind of stare in awe when i watch things like swimming or gymnastics. Table tennis, on the other hand, is something I play quite a bit at work. So much, in fact, that maybe it should be on my business card. Perhaps the job title of “Software Engineer” underneath the text “imeem.com” presumes a certain level of table tennis skill and I should just leave it at that. Perhaps…
This weekend was quite a weekend in San Francisco. At least from where I was standing. Saturday the city performed a simulated terrorist attack in which many local and federal agencies participated. They even got some students to come out and pretend to be dead or dying from the adverse effects of said attack. Cool huh? I got pictures: simulated terrorist attack on San Francisco
After that, zombies started to take over the city. Starting at 2pm, zombies (and a few people wearing masks and fake blood) met at SFMOMA to begin terrorizing helpless citizens. At the rallying cry of BRAAAAIIIINNNSSSS, the zombies began following a predetermined path through downtown up to the Transamerica Building. At this point, the zombies saw a large group of scientology protesters and attacked mercilessly. I’ll leave out the gory details suffice it to say, there was a zombie/protester dance-off. Then the police showed up and the zombies quickly shuffled off to Chinatown.
Ah Chinatown. A few blocks of which are year-round tourist central. Turns out it’s actually a lot like China because actual Chinese people live here. But don’t mind that, there are plenty of trinkets and dim sum. I always wonder how much tourists have heard about San Francisco. Sure they’ve heard it’s a beautiful place and there’s a lot to do and so many cool things to see and the weather is always pretty good. Do they know about all the protests? The crazy homeless people? The Castro? I’d bet very few of them have heard of the flash mobs. They’re such a local thing and by their very nature, don’t exist for long enough for any big news crews to show up. Anyway, getting back to the point, a flash mob through Chinatown is hilarious. All the tourists, of course, have cameras so you’ll see them clicking away happily without a care in the world. Maybe they think something unusual is happening and it’ll be on the news later and they’ll be able to say “oh I was there, I have pictures!” Maybe they’re just confused and they need to take pictures so they can go back to their hotel and digest what has just transpired. They’re certainly not afraid that zombies are taking over the city. That’s rather unfortunate…
After Chinatown, the rallying cry came again and the mob continued through Union square, interrupting a Korean Day festival that was taking place and causing quite a stir among the attendees. For the final stop, the zombies proceeded to the cable-car turnaround at the end of Powell St where some performers were playing drums. Everyone got into the zombie spirit of things and… just stood there waiting in line for the next cable car. Oh well, at least we tried. Pictures are here: zombie mob
On Sunday, Barack Obama came to San Francisco and made a record $7.8 million. I didn’t make it out to that event (the $2,300 entrance fee was a bit high for me) but I did take pictures of the Gumball 3000 start just one week earlier at the same location: Gumball 3000 Pictures. Of course, the entrance fee to that event was $100,000 but they let people hang out and stare at the cars for free. I’m all about the free.
In other news, I’ve fallen somewhat in love. It’s going well. I was getting so sick of caring about myself all the time it’s nice to have someone else to care about. Perhaps there will be more on that later. Perhaps…
In even other news, they’re now selling absinthe at Safeway. It’s the good kind too: Lucid Absinthe Superieure from France. And the not-quite-so-good-but-still-absinthe-kind from Alameda (just across the bay): St George Absinthe Verte. I’m excited that people are catching on and actually stocking this stuff instead of being afraid that it’s still illegal or something. It’s good stuff, and quite a bit different than any other kind of alcohol.
In even other news, I’m reading The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. It’s pretty classic (seeing as it’s 30 years old and #1 in the Genetics and Zoology categories on Amazon). I like it a lot.
In even other (looks like I’m running out of text-alterations) news, I’ve been working on a fancy perl script lately that makes Meevoos. You can see my most recent example here: Aphex Twin – Come to Daddy (Meevoo). The process involves extracting each frame from a video, then recreating each frame using tile-size versions of other frames. It makes more sense if you look at it. So, just do that.
Since I’m running out of text-alterations, I’ll just treat this “other” news as a new paragraph. Hey, look at that, more news! I’ve been meeting with a local group of hackers called NoiseBridge. We’re trying to pull together enough money and people to create a sustainable “hackerspace” where people can go to be creative and make things using computers, or microcontrollers, or lasers, or anything really. The group will incorporate as a non-profit once we get the paperwork finished up and we already have a promising location to begin operations in the office upstairs from the EFF.
Well that’s probably enough news to keep you busy for a while. It’s certainly keeping me busy.
I’ll leave you with a cut off of Sting’s new album:
