Seriously! The sky above San Francisco just decided to open up. My Twitter timeline was, let’s say “flooded”, with thoughts about the storm.
Galco’s Soda Pop Shop
The next time I’m down in LA, I totally want to visit Galco’s Soda Pop Shop. He knows his soda!
Via Jon Ursenbach.
Fighting dirty in Scrabble
Recently, I downloaded a game for the iPhone called “Words with Friends.” It’s very similar to Scrabble, with a different board and slightly different letter values (one would assume to avoid Scrabble’s IP lawyers).
Many of my family and friends are playing the game and we’re all having fun trying to best each other’s scores. I like to think I have a good vocabulary, but apparently I don’t know how to effectively play for points, as evidenced above by the 60-point bomb that Kerry dropped on me, two moves into the game!
No matter though. I’ll just have to brush up on the following video, “Fighting dirty in Scrabble.”
State Radio at the Fillmore
This weekend, we saw one of my favorite bands, State Radio, play at the legendary Fillmore in San Francisco. It was my first time seeing them, and it was fantastic.
Here’s the music video for their song, “Gang of Thieves.”
My first cast iron skillet
Lately, I’ve been considering picking up a new cast iron skillet for cooking. There’s a few reasons that have made me interested in owning one. Their durability, versatility, and even potential health benefits (source of iron!). I stumbled across an article on Lifehacker recently, talking about properly seasoning your skillet. This made me even more interested!
Earlier today, we stopped by a local hardware store and picked up a 12″ skillet.
Of course, we had to immediately break it in! So we cooked a 5-spice apple stir fry. It was a complete success.
Here’s to even more cooking adventures with our new cooking tool. I’m excited to try and make a deep dish pizza with it!
The Haitian Earthquake
Photo via the United Nations photo stream on flickr.
The latest news and the images coming out of Haiti are absolutely tragic and indescribable. My heart goes out to those affected by the earthquake. I wish there was more that we could do. For now the best thing to do is donate toward the relief and recovery efforts. Google also has a pretty comprehensive page for Haitian disaster relief.
You can see some of the latest images from Port-au-Prince here (via flickr).
Photo via U.S. Department of Defense on flickr.
Photo via U.S. Air Force on flickr.
Canon PowerShot S90 Review
The Canon PowerShot S90 is by far the most versatile and impressive point and shoot digital camera that I’ve ever used. From manual controls, to impressive image and build quality, this consumer camera has all the bases covered. It’s not without a few minor issues, but it definitely offers many features that are not yet standard on similarly priced point and shoot cameras.
What do you get when you open up the box for the S90? A pocket-size camera with built-in image stabilization, macro mode, ability to shoot VGA video, a 3.8x zoom lens with a maximum aperture of f/2.0, the ability to shoot images in RAW format, support for SDHC cards, maximum ISO of 3200 (and ISO 12800 in a special mode), and a large 3-inch screen.
You can also read this entire review on gdgt.
Continue reading “Canon PowerShot S90 Review”
No, really. I love dogs.
Tosh just doesn’t want to seem to leave me alone today! He thinks that I actually like cats.
A gallery of failed calls
This series of screenshots is only from the past month! This happens all the time though. AT&T is horrible.
Best Photos of 2009
Another year has closed, and once again, San Francisco photographer Jim Goldstein is calling for your top photos taken this year! It’s always a blast to participate in and review some of my favorite shots taken over the past year.
You can also see my best photos from 2008.
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Protestors gather at Civic Center in San Francisco on January 12, 2008 to protest the shooting death of Oscar Grant by a BART police officer on New Years Eve.
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Buzz, a friendly elephant seal pup that we encountered while backpacking along California’s Lost Coast.
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While traveling through Canada this past summer, we took a gondola ride near Banff. The first part of the ride was enveloped in fog. Right after we broke through, I stuck my DSLR out the window (yikes!) and captured this shot!
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Visited Seattle for the first time this summer as well and took this shot at the foot of the Space Needle.
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Steve Jobs made his return to Apple, after being sidelined with health problems. It was my first time attending an Apple keynote / Stevenote and the first time seeing Steve Jobs in person. Shot photos for gdgt. Definitely a moment that will stick with me for a long time.
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The Blue Angels always provide fantastic opportunities for shooting photos. I took this photo as Blue Angel #7 screamed right over the top of our apartment building.
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In March, the California Supreme Court ruled on the validity of Prop 8 (and made the unfortunate decision to uphold it). I took this photo and thought it represented a nearly perfect representation of each side (literally, metaphorically, politically). Two people on the left, in love and making a point about equal rights. On the right, an older white gentleman, holding up a sign in support of Prop 8.
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Robogames 2009 at Fort Mason in San Francisco. Two competitors chat after a battle and examine the damage inflicted upon their robots.
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A second photo from Robogames 2009. A competitor cheers in victory after his robot scores a critical hit on an opponent.
It’s Twenty Ten
The latest in single serving websites: It’s twenty-ten, not two-thousand ten.
Beats Antique at the Independent
Last night, we checked out Beats Antique (also on Last.fm) at the Independent. They’re a pretty awesome fusion of electronic music with a middle eastern bent. Pretty awesome stuff! I love this sort of ambient music as it makes perfect background music for working and such!
They also feature belly dancers during their live performances, who move in sync to their music. Here is a video recorded from the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco last year.
Star Wars intro mashups
Rube Goldberg Machine of Beer
Hah, this commercial is pretty awesome. It's like the Rube Goldberg machine of beer.
2009 – The Year in Review (Photos)
Nike soccer commercial
Just saw this brilliant advertisement again. I first noticed it last year, during the Euro Cup. It’s a commercial by Nike, following the career of an unknown teenage soccer player through their eyes. In two minutes, the commercial goes from playing in a youth league, to playing for Arsenal, to playing for Holland in the Euro Cup.
It’s really well done and quite creative!
Where do I go in San Francisco?
Where Do You Go is an interesting mashup that shows the areas you most frequent in a city, using a heat map layed on top of Google Maps. The data is derived from your Foursquare checkins.
The above image represents the areas of San Francisco I most frequent, based on nearly 400 checkins with Foursquare over the last year. Red / white are areas visited the most, while blue / green (and grey) are areas I visit the least or not at all.
This is a pretty fantastic use of one’s geo-location data and it’s something I’ve always been curious about. Just where exactly do I go all the time, and what areas do I frequent. This sort of thing might help plan further adventures to parts of the city that I neglect. I just might have to reinstall Foursquare on my iPhone after all!
Of course, when I do finally reinstall Foursquare, what happens?
Go figure.
Two things you never talk about in an Irish pub
(Photo via Wikipedia)
“There are two things you never talk about in an Irish pub: religion and politics…”
Last summer, we traveled to Europe. The campaign to elect the next U.S. President was starting to ramp up and at that point, Barack Obama was a household name. This lead to an interesting conversation with a fellow in Dublin, Ireland.
Right before we arrived in Barcelona, we stopped over in Dublin for a few days. On our last night there, we happened upon an old pub named Mulligan’s Pub.
Apparently, it’s one of the oldest pubs in Ireland, and there has been a watering hole at that spot since 1732. Incredible! People have been drinking beer at that spot since before the United States even existed as a country.
While Sanjin and I were enjoying some glasses of Guinness at the bar, an old Irish fellow sitting next to us strikes up a conversation. After finding out we’re from the States, he looks around and then whispers to us:
“There are two things you never talk about in an Irish pub: religion and politics. That said, what do you boys think about this Obama character?”
Fantastic. It was pretty amazing to think that Obama, who hadn’t even been officially nominated by the Democratic Party yet, had already piqued the interest and curiousity of people overseas.
Funny shorts in Barcelona
While traveling through Europe last year, we stopped for a few days in Barcelona to check out the capital city of Catalonia. The hostel we were staying in gave us a flyer of interesting things to do over the next few days.
One particular entry caught our eye.
“¡Una nit de curts còmic!”
It’s written in Catalan and basically translates to “a night of funny shorts!”
That was pretty amusing to us, especially because we all agreed that Sanjin had just bought some ridiculous and funny shorts right before we left on our trip.
So we made plans that evening to set out for the bar / lounge (called the Mau Mau Underground) that was hosting “funny shorts night.” Sanjin decided to pack the shorts in his messenger bag and change into them when we got there, just in case the night ended up being a bust.
When we arrived, we noticed a distinct lack of activity in front of the bar. We paid a small cover and went inside, only to find the place fairly dead. A few people sitting on couches and either drinking beer or smoking.
We decided to make the best of our time there and plopped down on a couch and ordered a few beers. After a few minutes, they started playing some ridiculous and hilarious movie. It was over within a few minutes. Another one immediately started, and it was also over within a few minutes.
One of us turned to the rest and asked, “what’s with all these funny short movies…”
Their voice trailed off and instantly, we all knew what funny shorts actually meant! We shared quite a bit of laughter over our pretty obvious mixup. We sat down, content to enjoy the rest of the evening, watching funny shorts and having some tasty Spanish beers.
As an aside, one of the short films we saw that evening particularly stuck with me. It was an amazing stop-motion film focused on photography. Which is why I think it made such an impression on me. Ten Thousand Pictures of You.
“¡Una nit de curts còmic!”
Funny shorts night. It’s a phrase that will always bring a smile to my face.
This octopus is nuts
This octopus is using a coconut shell for shelter and carrying it around wherever it goes on the ocean floor! The more I read about octopi, the more fascinated I am with them.