This seems like it will come in handy. I’m definitely guilty of committing a number of don’ts listed here!

[Via The World’s Best Ever]

I’m releasing a new augmented reality application for San Francisco’s Muni system soon. How does it work? Basically, you just point it at your stop to see the latest arrival times. Here is a preview screenshot!

Seriously though, everyone is getting on the bandwagon with augmented reality applications lately! A local developer just released a new augmented reality application for the iPhone, called acrossair.

(N Judah fail image courtesy of N-Judah Chronicles)

Last weekend, Kerry and I saw the latest Cirque du Soleil show, Ovo, which is currently playing in San Francisco. It was stunning! This was the second time I’ve seen a Cirque du Soleil show and it was every bit as impressive as the first time I saw it! I’m pretty sure my mouth was hanging open the entire time.

Here’s the trailer for the current show.

One of the coolest parts of the show was towards the end, when a number of actors started using a series of trampolines and running up and down a wall. It looks incredibly fun! (Unfortunately, an awesome video showing the Cirque crew practicing this routine was pulled from YouTube)

This is by far the coldest apartment I’ve ever lived in.

Seriously, DISH Network doesn’t offer as many HD channels as Tegan does.

She just had surgery to remove a bladder stone. Yuck.

Last year, I read Walter Isaacson’s fascinating biography on Albert Einstein, titled, “Einstein: His Life and Universe.”

Earlier today, I decided to look for more work by Isaacson and found that he wrote another great biography, this time about Benjamin Franklin. The book was titled, “Benjamin Franklin: An American Life.”

The tagline, “an American life,” struck a chord with me because it sounded so familiar. Where else have I heard that term recently? Ah yes.

Seriously? It’s kind of insulting and sad that these books share the same tagline. Here are a few differences between the subjects of each book.

• One book is about a great person, who had a profound effect on the founding of our country. The other is about someone trying to inadvertantly destroy it.
• One book is about an inventor, intellect, and scientist. The other is about someone who despises those descriptions and the people behind them.
• One book is about is about someone who strived to persevere in all facets of life. The other is about someone who perpetually quits when things get too tough.
• One book is about a great American. The other is not.

A few weeks ago, I went walking through San Francisco and took my trust Canon S90 along with me. I shot a few photos of the Transamerica Pyramid, one of the more distinctive high rises in San Francisco.

Seriously!

It’s 50 degrees in here right now! I shouldn’t have to bundle up like this just to use my computer. San Francisco can be unpleasantly cold.

After Dreamhost decided to failwhale on my site one too many times, I’ve moved this domain over to Laughing Squid’s hosting service! Looking forward to newfound stability and availability! Yes!

I’ve also included an awesome little LS logo in the sidebar, to advertise my love for these guys. They’ve done a fantastic job hosting Geology News.

Source: Mohamed Somji, via flickr (2007).

Just read this fascinating article about the dark side of Dubai, posted by the Independent in April of this year. The article is quite long, but it’s a pretty gripping exposé on the seedy, behind-the-scenes underworld of Dubai and the blind eye that rich tourists, ex-patriots, and locals take to the city.

There are three different Dubais, all swirling around each other. There are the expats, like Karen; there are the Emiratis, headed by Sheikh Mohammed; and then there is the foreign underclass who built the city, and are trapped here. They are hidden in plain view. You see them everywhere, in dirt-caked blue uniforms, being shouted at by their superiors, like a chain gang – but you are trained not to look. It is like a mantra: the Sheikh built the city. The Sheikh built the city. Workers? What workers?

Every evening, the hundreds of thousands of young men who build Dubai are bussed from their sites to a vast concrete wasteland an hour out of town, where they are quarantined away. Until a few years ago they were shuttled back and forth on cattle trucks, but the expats complained this was unsightly, so now they are shunted on small metal buses that function like greenhouses in the desert heat. They sweat like sponges being slowly wrung out.

Sonapur is a rubble-strewn patchwork of miles and miles of identical concrete buildings. Some 300,000 men live piled up here, in a place whose name in Hindi means “City of Gold”. In the first camp I stop at – riven with the smell of sewage and sweat – the men huddle around, eager to tell someone, anyone, what is happening to them.

Of course, there are numerous choice quotes in this piece, and it’s pretty hard to cherry pick just one.

One day, after yet another beating, Mela ran out onto the streets, and asked – in broken English – how to find the Ethiopian consulate. After walking for two days, she found it, but they told her she had to get her passport back from Madam. “Well, how could I?” she asks. She has been in this hostel for six months. She has spoken to her daughter twice. “I lost my country, I lost my daughter, I lost everything,” she says.

As she says this, I remember a stray sentence I heard back at Double Decker. I asked a British woman called Hermione Frayling what the best thing about Dubai was. “Oh, the servant class!” she trilled. “You do nothing. They’ll do anything!”

You can read the rest of this article here.

More information about Dubai can be found via this write up I posted to Laughing Squid earlier this year, titled, “BASE jumping off the Burj Dubai, the world’s tallest building.”

[Via personal correspondence with Mark Rebec]