Sleeping all day is such hard work!

I saw this crazy, old Coast Guard ship docked off the Embarcadero last week. Pretty awesome!

Tons of people ripping Mike Daisey to shreds over This American Life retracting their story on Apple’s factories this morning. (I reviewed Daisey’s theatrical review, The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs” last year.)

When the original 39-minute excerpt was broadcast on This American Life on January 6, 2012, Marketplace China Correspondent Rob Schmitz wondered about its truth. Marketplace had done a lot of reporting on Foxconn and Apple’s supply chain in China in the past, and Schmitz had first-hand knowledge of the issues. He located and interviewed Daisey’s Chinese interpreter Li Guifen (who goes by the name Cathy Lee professionally with westerners). She disputed much of what Daisey has been telling theater audiences since 2010 and much of what he said on the radio

Yes, it’s a huge shame that he outright lied about parts of his story. But some of the other unpleasant facts still remain: worker suicides, packed dormitories, insane and outrageous hours. These are stories that both Wired Magazine and the NY Times have written (and as Alexis Madrigal of the Atlantic notes, neither has retracted their stories).

Whether parts of the story were fake or not, I think there’s a more important take away from this: Mike Daisey made all of us think about where our products came from (and the effect they had on the people who made them) in a way that no one has ever done before.

Transmission tower in Dreamtopia, inspired by San Francisco’s Sutro Tower

Earlier this week, the ngmoco:) team behind We Rule released our latest game: Dreamtopia! (Currently only available for Android.)

The basic premise behind the game is that you have have the ability to make dreams come true — in order to do that, you need to build things to fulfill various goals for each character.

Imagine my surprise when I saw this absolutely awesome take on San Francisco’s very own Sutro Tower inside our game! I think it raises a valid point:

How awesome would it be if there were a restaurant / observation deck on top of Sutro Tower?

I’m not the only one to wonder this. Three years ago, Laughing Squid had an awesome post on what it was like from the top of Sutro Tower.

Photo by El Caganer

So, who do we have to talk to in order to make this happen? 😉

Today is Pi Day! March 14th, 3/14 and all that. Kerry and and I decided to celebrate by baking this recipe for an awesome Apple Pie.

Ingredients

• 1 recipe pastry for a 9 inch double crust pie
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 6 Golden Delicious apples – peeled, cored and sliced
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 tablespoons whiskey (!)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (225 degrees C). Fit bottom crust into a 9 inch pie plate.
2. In a small bowl, mix together sugar, flour, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Place sliced apples in a large bowl and sprinkle with sugar mixture. Toss until apples are thoroughly coated. Spoon apples into pan.
3. Dot apples with butter or margarine, then sprinkle with whiskey. Cover with top crust. Seal edges and cut steam vents in top.
4. Bake in preheated oven for 10 minutes. Lower temperature to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) and bake an additional 40 minutes. Serve warm.

The verdict? Holy awesome! Pi Day is great. 🙂

Via: http://grist.org/article/high-gas-prices-whatevs-my-phone-gets-me-where-i-want-to-go/

“The iPhone is the Ford Mustang of today,” Thilo Koslowski, Gartner’s lead automotive analyst, recently told the New York Times.

What’s caused the change? For starters, driving has lost its cool with young Americans, who frankly have better things to do than sit behind the wheel of a tin can lodged in gridlock. And then there are gas prices that are expected to top $4.25 a gallon by April.

Via: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/12/02/im-being-followed-how-google-and-104-other-companies-are-tracking-me-on-the-web/253758/

This morning, if you opened your browser and went to NYTimes.com, an amazing thing happened in the milliseconds between your click and when the news about North Korea and James Murdoch appeared on your screen. Data from this single visit was sent to 10 different companies, including Microsoft and Google subsidiaries, a gaggle of traffic-logging sites, and other, smaller ad firms. Nearly instantaneously, these companies can log your visit, place ads tailored for your eyes specifically, and add to the ever-growing online file about you.

I’ve been trying to cook a bit more lately and tried out this recipe for tofu and veggies in peanut sauce tonight. It was pretty awesome! The peanut sauce was especially tasty.

And of course, it went perfect with copious amounts of Sriracha.

We slightly modified the ingredients though and added garlic and and replaced the molasses with honey. The new recipe?

Ingredients

1 tablespoon peanut oil
1 small head broccoli, chopped
1 small red bell pepper, chopped
5 fresh mushrooms, sliced
1 pound firm tofu, cubed
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup hot water
2 tablespoons vinegar
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 1/2 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon of garlic

Directions

1. Heat oil in a large skillet or wok over medium-high heat. Saute broccoli, red bell pepper, mushrooms, garlic, and tofu for 5 minutes.

2. In a small bowl combine peanut butter, hot water, vinegar, soy sauce, and honey. Pour over vegetables and tofu. Simmer for 3 to 5 minutes, or until vegetables are tender crisp.

This image from over a year ago at Dolores Park in San Francisco is especially relevant today. Blue skies, mid 60’s, an otherwise perfect day!

Last summer, Kerry and I moved into the Temescal neighborhood of Oakland. For one reason or another, life has been pretty busy over the past 6 months, leaving us little time to explore our “new” city.

Well, that ended today! We set out to Jack London Square and the Warehouse District for some good eats at Chop Bar. It was pretty good! According to various tips on Foursquare, they serve the “best hamburgers in all of the East Bay.” It’s definitely on my todo list for next time.

Walking around Jack London Square, we discovered some tall ships docked in the harbor.

Then there was this awesome statue of Cheemah, Mother of the Spirit-Fire — it’s part of a worldwide project to celebrate ” cultural diversity, world unity and care for the earth.” Awesome!

After that, we walked around Old Oakland. The buildings have this beautiful old architecture about them and the whole neighborhood was just awesome. So, obviously, the only thing I took a picture of was a sign. D’oh! Time to go back.

From there, we walked back to our neighborhood in North Oakland. Interestingly enough, the Oakland North blog is running a series on the history of the Temescal District today.

Speaking of Temescal history, earlier this weekend, some friends and I explored the Kingfish Pub, an old dingy dive bar in the neighborhood. Some commenters on Yelp have claimed that it’s the “second oldest bar in Oakland,” but I’ve yet to find an official verification of this source.

The SF Gate wrote about it last year:

It’s a mystery what, exactly, keeps the Kingfish from collapsing.

The roof sags, the beams lean, the floors slope more than some East Bay hills.

“The whole place is twisted. There’s nothing square in it,” said owner Emil Peinert. “One of the windows just popped out.”

The Kingfish Pub in its natural environment:

All in all, it was a pretty fun weekend in the East Bay and I’ve found myself loving it more and more. Others have mentioned that Oakland is San Francisco’s own Brooklyn. I believe it!

It’s fun. Does this mean I’m about to start saying “hella” though? Maybe not quite yet. 😉