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ios/osx software developer, ice hockey player, canucks fan, sharks fan, usw.

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Back to the question of whether or not we can allow ourselves to like someone’s work knowing they might be a despicable human being, hold abhorrent views, or possibly be a complete pervert. Do we care that Picasso may have been a bad father and mistreated all his wives? Not particularly—we tend to separate his work, or at least our judgement of its quality, from his private life. Do we care that the poet Elizabeth Bishop made excuses for the brutal dictatorship in Brazil? Does that invalidate her work? The composer Gesualdo murdered his wife. Mussorgsky was an alcoholic. The composer Henry Cowell went to prison for molesting young boys. Caravaggio killed a man over a game of tennis! And the contemporary painter John Currin goes against most of his peers and often espouses conservative Republican political views.

david byrne

i gave this question some thought by rephrasing it slightly: should we care what kind of people our beloved artists and heroes are? i think that the answer is yes. my belief is that we should hold ourselves and our heroes to high standards, and hopefully set the bar high for future artists who will wish to be remembered. consider the people that we know and look up to: we try so hard to better human beings so as to not disappoint them or tarnish their honor. having a high standard matters, because eventually it just becomes normal and a new higher standard will be set: i think that much of civilization's progress came about from a similar mechanism.

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alice coltrane's "journey In satchindananda".

hat tip to my friend jake

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Monk was one of the first to show me how to make two or three notes at one time on tenor. (John Glenn, a tenor man in Philly, also showed me how to do this. He can play a triad and move notes inside it—like passing tones!) It’s done by false fingering and adjusting your lip. If everything goes right, you can get triads. Monk just looked at my horn and “felt” the mechanics of what had to be done to get this effect.

—john coltrane in his 1960 downbeat magazine interview http://www.downbeat.com/default.asp?sect=stories&subsect=story_detail&sid=1034

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However, the Great Depression was not the same as the Long Depression. And there's no probability that history will repeat itself. What made the GD extra-special-bad-with-special-sauce on top was that it occurred less than a generation after a gigantic political realignment -- loosely, the collapse of the old monarchical system and interlocking empires across Europe -- and the successor systems did not have the benefit of widespread popular legitimation. There was, in short, a howling power vacuum and different models of how to order a polity were competing (democracy, fascism, communism, technocracy, you name it). Today there's a model of political legitimation throughout Europe: representative democracy with human rights. It's not unquestioned and it's not universally observed, but it's there, in much the same way that Monarchism and the Monarchical principle was "there" before 1917. And that will almost certainly make a huge difference (although what difference is anybody's guess right now). My guess is: we will not see Hitler 2.0. However, we might see Lenin 2.0 ("what is to be done?"), although he won't be calling himself a "communist" or running a vanguard party of the proletariat. (The middle classes have supplanted the proletariat in today's world. Instead of the workers and peasants, it'll be a vanguard party of the teachers, nurses, and programmers.)

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/05/this-is-what-the-future-of-the.html#comment-440915 

comment by charlie stross in his article "This is what the future of the EU hinges on"

revolutions with highly educated masses will be much different animals.

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places

this is a semi-structured list of places that i keep around for reference. it is primarily focused on eating & drinking around seattle, but has sprawled out over time.

seattle—

chef liao http://www.chefliao.com/ — phinney ridge

bar del corso: http://www.yelp.com/biz/bar-del-corso-seattle — gina and jerry's new joint.  get there early!

berliner http://www.yelp.com/biz/the-berliner-doner-kebab-seattle — looks good place in pioneer sq, john gave it an enthusiastic thumbs up

great nabob http://www.yelp.com/biz/the-great-nabob-seattle — might be interesting

dot's delicatessen http://dotsdelicatessen.com/about/ — 4262 fremont ave north

penzey's spices — recommended spices store by the great panic people, was good but i generally prefer an indian grocery store, http://www.yelp.com/biz/penzeys-spices-seattle

gorgeous george—get the rack of lamb, greenwood

panos—lamb inside of bread

kasbah on 85th

mr. gyro—just off of market st and my favorite lunch place. get the lamb platter. super nice people.

cafe munir — sounds great, but only open for dinner on 80th & 24th in ballard, http://www.yelp.com/biz/cafe-munir-seattle

el camiño — taco truck near the Safeway by the pet store, highly recommend by friend

mlk & grand st — vietnamese deli sandwiches

ocho — good tapas place on 24th and market

vietnam café & sandwich — sounds like another nice vietnamese place here in ballard @ 5701 15th Ave NW

plaka estiatorio — greek place in ballard open tues-fri on market & 20th ave, http://ballardrp.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/vietnam-cafe-sandwich/

bastille — happy hour lamb burger moroccan style

night kitchen — on stewart between 2nd and 3rd. 6-7pm to 9:00am.  purportedly amazing fries. 

unicorn — on cap hill good fried food and cool bar (pike & 11th)

paratii — brazilian place in ballard. tasty but expensive http://www.myballard.com/2011/05/05/ballards-new-brazilian-restaurant-opens

mistral kitchen — was great cocktail and high end place, but @AndrewBohrer left so not sure anymore

revel — korean street food in fremont.  nice bar but still need to try the food there someday

loretta's northwesterner—need to get there, 8617 14th ave s, south park http://lorettasnorthwesterner.com/

liberty bar, cap hill http://www.libertybars.com/

heidelberg haus—2122 NE 65th st, http://www.seattle-eats-german.com/ 

ba bar— vietnamese cafe with a nice bar by the Monsoon people.  sounded great, but just ok, http://www.yelp.com/biz/ba-bar-seattle

coffee

analog coffee — nice sounding place in cap hill and recommended by owner of revolver coffee, http://www.yelp.com/biz/analog-coffee-seattle

tougo coffee — another nice cap hill coffee shop, http://tougocoffee.com/

milstead & co. — great coffee shop in fremont, open til 6pm., http://www.milsteadandco.com/

non-edible

bike shops

hub and bespoke — sounds good in fremont: outlier stuff, http://www.nwsource.com/ae/scr/edb_vd.cfm?c=&ven=72071&s=nws

taxi services

http://www.yelp.com/biz/aces-for-hire-seattle [phone] — been good to me so far but expensive

http://www.yelp.com/biz/a-abc-transportation-seattle [phone] — ok. more available than aces, cheaper and flakier

http://www.yelp.com/biz/atlas-town-car-seattle [phone] — another possibility

greater seattle area

shin sung — federal way korean bbq http://www.yelp.com/biz/shin-sung-restaurant-federal-way?no_splash=1

naan -n- curry, 709 south 3rd st, renton

ho soon yi — scott recommended in lynnwood

gingogae — recommended by etsuko for oxtail soup! n 160th in shoreline

further out

vancouver—

l’abattoir—craft cocktail bar in Gastown presided over by the talented Shaun Layton.

bao bei

cork & fin — cannot remember exactly how good it was

coffee

nelson the seagull — nice coffee shop and bread bakery on 315 carrell St (gastown), worth going back

revolver coffee — nice coffee shop on 325 cambie St (gastown), worth going back

elysian room — recommended by owner of revolver coffee, across the river on the kits side, http://www.yelp.ca/biz/the-elysian-room-vancouver-2

shops

smoking lily—recommended by my friend shin, a nice shop for the ladies.

portland—

http://www.olympicprovisions.com/

sf & bay area—

http://www.japacurry.com/home.htm — downtown. curry cart

bars

house of shields — nice cocktail place, near market & new montgomery

monk's kettle — über beer place in the mission, http://monkskettle.com/

alembic bar — craft liquors and food on the haight (near cole), http://www.alembicbar.com/directions.html

heaven's dog — late night chinese food and cocktails, 1148 Mission Street at 7th, http://www.heavensdog.com/main/HD.html

toronado pub — serious beer list, 547 haight st (near hayes valley) http://www.toronado.com/draft.htm

biergarten — 2-8pm weds-sun, http://www.BiergartenSF.com/

naschmarkt in campbell looks ok but limited beer and spendy http://www.yelp.com/biz/naschmarkt-restaurant-campbell-2 http://maps.google.com/?q=Naschmarkt+Restaurant&cid=501271233112563356

coffee

four barrel

sightglass

blue bottle

philz—recommended by @fazil

bitter+sweet—nice café in cupertino

shops

taylor stitch 383 valencia st

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Updating to Ruby 1.9.2 on Snow Leopard

Rail 3 was released a few days ago.  According to the getting started guide, to develop for Rails 3, I needed to install Ruby 1.9.x onto Snow Leopard, which ships with Ruby 1.8.7.  Here are the steps that I cobbled together from google searches to replace the 1.8.7 version:

curl http://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/1.9/ruby-1.9.2-p0.tar.bz2 -o ruby-1.9.2-p0.tar.bz2

tar -xvzf ruby-1.9.2-p0.tar.bz2

cd ruby-1.9.2-p0

./configure --prefix=/usr --enable-pthread

make

make test

sudo make install

i forget what 8 was for

sudo gem install rails

sudo gem install bundler

Now you should be up on the latest Ruby and Rails.

FMI http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/news/2010/08/18/ruby-1-9-2-is-released/

http://github.com/rails/rails/tree/v3.0.0

http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html

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21 Jump Street

I missed 21 Jump Street the first time around so I though I would check out the series.  It is not the deepest TV you will find, but is surprisingly good for a 1987 show, which is mostly due to Johnny Depp not being a superstar yet, so he would deign to be in a TV show.

Love this scene when Johnny's character, Officer Tom Hanson, defends himself against allegations of being a liberal.

I was also surprised to see Vancouver as the setting for a TV show that long ago.  I guess they were ahead of the curve much like another well known Fox show the Simpson's who outsourced much of their animation to the talented animator's in South Korea.

I go to Vancouver only twice a year these days, but spent a week of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Gastown.  While it has been gentrified quite a bit, it is still fun to see this historic neighborhood over 20 years ago looking surprisingly similar to today.

Overall it is a fun show to watch for unwinding after a few tense episodes of a more intense show such as Treme or the Wire.

What is somewhat embarrassing to admit is that I just assumed this was one of those LA shows until I saw in the credits this picture of a hockey goalie.

Well that was a surprise so then I did a little digging to find out the show was set in "Evergreen State." The only place that fits that description is Washington state, which is just a small remove from Vancouver.  I guess the northwest was a bit more on the map back then, aside from the Twilight bubble which will hopefully just go the fuck away.

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"With respect to clarity, simplicity, and boldness of line, the Japanese have been a thousand years ahead of us in fine art and graphic design. Our best painters learned minimalism, cartooning, and much else from the Japanese during the “Orientalism” period of the late 19th century. Before that, western fine art was judged in part on its complexity and detail. And our posters and advertisements! Don’t ask."

 Great article and comments many of which have touched on the visual complexity of newspapers & other media, the Kanji writing system, and the places people live.  One factor I have not seen mentioned is the effect of the population density on Japanese comfort levels with visual complexity.  

I go to Sapporo regularly, and while it is considered a smaller city, I've been exposed to such large numbers of people in concentrated spaces that it makes NYC appear sparsely populated.  There was one festival in Odori Park where there were so many people, most of who were in motion, that I could not visually track my fiancée who was a foot or two in front of me.  I had to hold on to her physically because my brain was in overload.  It took a while to get used to that kind of thing, but I would imagine growing up in such an environment would account for the high visual complexity that you see in media: lower complexity would reduce the concentration of information to below accepted levels.

One other factor I should mention is that many of the truly minimal and peaceful places in Japan are meant for special occasions such as a vacation or to take a quick rest from the frenetic pace of daily life.  These are exceptional places rather than the rule and there is usually a place like that not too far away.

Lastly Japan is a contradiction.  In many ways it is still the 1980's there, while at the same time feeling like the future.  Sometimes this is detrimental, but it is also part of what makes Japan great.  People still make things in Japan, and hopefully the current wave of caring about the provenance of  things we buy will reinforce that and prevent them from repeating our mistakes in that area.  At the same time, not always the people making things are specialists in their field.  Sometimes people within a large company are assigned projects in an area where they have no experience.  I could see the company website falling under this category. :)

[mrgan]

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mrgan:

Apple has a new page with dimensional drawings of iPods, iPhones, and iPads. It’s a resource for businesses looking to build cases for these devices, but it’ll also come in handy to those who are modeling said products for marketing materials and such. I love Apple’s single-serving pages of this sort.

(va Jacob Bijani)

For people who are making cases for Apple products, this kind of documentation is perfect for their needs.  

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My little contribution to the Treme music documentation: 

When Davis broke into Tower Records to recover his consigned cd's, he stole a few extras, the most interesting of which was The Spirit of New Orleans: The Genius of Dave Bartholomew, which is unfortunately out of print according to the dialog.  

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"Won't bow, don't know how."

-- Chief Lambreaux

I'm in the process of catching up on missed Treme episodes, so I decided to start back at episode 1.  This show is packed with so many great moments, but to me the Indian Chiefs are such a wonderful aspect of New Orleans culture that I never heard about before, that this is the moment really stood out to me.  I can't believe that Terry Gross grilled David Simon on Fresh Air over his choice of actors for Treme: Clarke Peters really brings it here.

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John Gruber says

But whether Gates would have done a better job than Ballmer is a different question than whether Ballmer has done a good job. Apple’s growth this past decade can largely be accounted for with two words: iPod and iPhone. Microsoft wanted in on both those markets, and got smoked. That’s on Ballmer.

I think what it really comes down to is that Microsoft is and was ungovernable.  Gates is not blind or stupid, and perhaps Ballmer is not either (which would make him a flagrant liar), but if you look at these internal emails published by the Seattle Times, you can see that even Bill Gates could not get traction with Microsoft management to make things better:http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/archives/141821.aspHere is a short excerpt, and note it does not get better:

From: Bill Gates Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 10:05 AM To: Jim Allchin Cc: Chris Jones (WINDOWS); Bharat Shah (NT); Joe Peterson; Will Poole; Brian Valentine; Anoop Gupta (RESEARCH) Subject: Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame

I am quite disappointed at how Windows Usability has been going backwards and the program management groups don't drive usability issues.

Let me give you my experience from yesterday.

I decided to download (Moviemaker) and buy the Digital Plus pack ... so I went to Microsoft.com. They have a download place so I went there.

The first 5 times I used the site it timed out while trying to bring up the download page. Then after an 8 second delay I got it to come up.

This site is so slow it is unusable.

His staff was so pathetic, to call them useless would be an insult to useless people.  Bill Gates: welcome to hell and here's your accordion.

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The six then turned on the coach, reportedly beating him with wooden traffic signs that they found by the side of the road.

Another one for the Truth is Stranger Than Fiction files:

Slovenian players cut for beating coach

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"The first thing you see at the beginning of HBO's new series Treme are the superimposed words that define the setting for David Simon and Eric Overmyer's New Orleans drama: "Three months after." It doesn't say after what, and it doesn't have to."

Can't wait.

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David Simon's latest creation: TREME.

via Warren Ellis

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In technical terms, 5.5 million is a really big number.

Quotes like these are why I like to save Macalope articles for a rainy day: http://www.macworld.com/article/146750/2010/02/macalope_jerk.html

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This is something I've noticed for a long time but could not put my finger on it: the preponderance of Canadian hockey players shoot left-handed, while in the US the opposite is true and majority of players shoot right-handed.

What this article does not say, but which I think is true and important is that this comes down to much of the competitive differences between the two countries in international tournaments with the advantage tilted in favor of the Canadians: the same percentage of the population that is naturally right-handed* should shoot left-handed in hockey (and golf, archery, billiards, etc).  While some players in Canada default to shooting left-handed when they would be better served by shooting right-handed, an ever larger amount of US players shoot right-handed who would be better off shooting left-handed.

Perhaps the downside of shooting with the dominant hand low is minimal, but many things in the world are decided by tiniest of percentages in favor of one side.  Basically over time these small percentage biases accumulate and to provide a significant long-term advantage.   Examples of this are Casinos and Evolution.

(*) AFAICT the percentage of left-handed people in the world is 10%.  I wonder how much of this is influence by cultural bias against left-handed people, aka me, aka southpaws, aka left-handed people are at a disadvantage in the world, etc.