life, coding, technology, outdoors, photography
Kerry passed on some info about The Juliana Theory coming to San Francisco in August! They're another one of my favorite bands and I'm sad I've never gotten to see them.
There's a few things that surprised me.
1.) They broke up 10 years ago. 2.) I had no idea they were on a reunion / farewell tour.
Count me in! I'm absolutely excited.
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
Oh man, a physics student at UC Davis has proposed that the number 1027 carry the prefix of "hella-". As in a hellawatt, a hellagram, or a hellameter.
From the Urban Dictionary:
Hella Originated from the streets of San Francisco in the Hunters Point neighborhood. It is commonly used in place of "really" or "very" when describing something. The Fillmore is hella better than the Mission.
It's amusing, but as someone who's always found this distinctly Northern Californian word annoying, I can't help but shake my head.
Regardless, if you're interested in that sort of thing, you can join the group on Facebook.
(Via Cosmic Variance.)
Are you constantly confused on who is responsible for putting a grocery divider down when in line at the check out stand? It's a dilemma that I often find myself in as well. Stephen Pastis breaks is down.
I am constantly confused by the rules of etiquette for the little plastic dividers you use to separate your groceries from the other guy’s groceries on the conveyor belt at checkout. I never know if it’s my responsibility to lay it down behind my own groceries, or if it’s my responsibility to lay it down behind the guy’s groceries ahead of me. Sometimes I end up doing both, guarding the front and the rear. That makes me mad, because it means someone in line has shirked their responsibilities. It’s people like that who deserve to pay for my wandering Wonder Bread should it stray across our shared border. [...] But yesterday, I decided to do something new. Rather than set the divider down perpendicular to the conveyor belt, thereby neatly walling off my groceries from everybody else’s, I laid it down parallel to the belt, right down the middle of my own groceries.
I picked up a new bike this weekend from someone on Craigslist! A ~1995 Schwinn Passage in perfect condition. It's a great little touring bike and I've already put 25 miles on it.
Looks like Sid Meier and the gang at Firaxis have announced Civilization V, the latest game in the greatest video game series that has ever existed!
Here's the trailer.
It's going to be an extraordinarily long wait until Fall 2010.
The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article this morning on how carpenter ants have been borrowing out of their exhibit at the California Academy of Sciences.
One of the anecdotes they relate is the story of an octopus that snuck out of its enclosure at night and would snatch crabs from another tank. I'd actually heard this before, but didn't realize it happened here!
About 10 years ago, Mr. Shepherd says, crabs kept mysteriously disappearing from a tank in the old academy. The culprit was a giant octopus two tanks over, which used its tentacles to sneak out at night and snatch crabs, he says. The octopus tank has since been wrapped in AstroTurf.
I've written about crazy octopi before.
One day, I'll have my pet penguin...
I always wondered how they filmed a number of these outdoor scenes in movies / television. This is devastating though. It's like finding out Santa Claus isn't real.
[Via Kottke]
Went out shooting some photos today, for the first time in what feels like ages. This is one of my favorite photos that I've taken in a long time. The sculpture is Ecstasy by Dan Das Mann and Karen Cusolito and was installed at Patricia's Green in Hayes Valley last week. It's on display until June 18, 2010.
More information is available on the Black Rock Arts Foundation blog.
First displayed at the Burning Man festival in Nevada in 2008, Ecstasy is one of the eight monumental metal figures of the artists’ masterpiece, Crude Awakening. In Crude Awakening, these eight figures surrounded a 99-foot tall wooden oil derrick in gestures of prostration, worship and exaltation. Alone, Ecstasy embarks on a hopeful journey. Instead of throwing her head back in reverie to the oil derrick, she gazes wistfully into the open sky as she steps forward into an optimistic future, free of dependency on fossil fuel.
