April 27, 2003
restaurant recommendation numero one
Cafe Jacqueline (1454 Grant Avenue, San Francisco, 415.981.5565) is one of my favorite special restaurants in San Francisco. The specialty is souffle, in fact, that's about the only thing you can order aside from soup and salad. You can choose between various entree souffles or dessert souffles, or both of course. It is a small, wonderfully charming little place in North Beach. Reservations are recommended and parking is impossible but you can valet around the corner to keep your blood pressure down. Plan to spend some time, Jacqueline makes every souffle to order, one by one in one oven. So don't go if you're in a hurry. Do go for a wonderful meal in a wonderful atmosphere.
April 25, 2003
making me laugh...
via boingboing, this little transcript is too funny… regarding Santorum's misstep into a pile of “being himself,” it will be interesting to see if the Republicans decide to eat one of their young over this… I tend to think not, but this certainly has the potential to haunt Santorum in the future.
background is here: NYTimes article (free registration required).
April 22, 2003
portland whirlwind...
I flew up to Portland yesterday to pick up a group of books that I bought a few weeks ago… 73 boxes, each 18×12×12 = heavy! I'm rather exhausted. All this because I have the idea of opening a general used bookshop one day. This of course is folly… but I've always been in favor of learning by doing (also, that seems to be the only way of getting things through my thick skull). Anyway, now I have a 5×10' storage space completely filled books, maybe 175 boxes total…. that's probably 4500 or so volumes… just a start… after all, you can't decide to open a bookstore one day and then magically obtain 20-30,000 books… at least not at an advantageous price. I do feel good about the quality of the books I have purchased so far, which is a good thing.
I'll write more about the folly of bookselling and art dealing in a future post… for now suffice it to say that the intersection of passion, commerce and success in small business isn't on any map.
April 18, 2003
awesome pdf browser plugin for OS X
it's late and i want to write a new post, but I am too tired to get creative… so chock this up to the practical info/tip category… my friend Ryan turned my on to this great PDF Browser Plugin by Schubert it a few weeks ago and it has given me no end of pleasure. It is for Mac OS X, and works in Camino, Safari, Omniweb 4.5sp7 and possibly others (I haven't checked every OS X browser). It goes without saying that it is slightly bizarre that someone had to write a 3rd party plugin for OS X to display PDFs in web browser windows on the fly… but anyway, this person did and it works really well. If this is old news to everyone but me, please excuse my exuberance… but I was excited.
April 17, 2003
in Chicago last Saturday
April 16, 2003
a short review of Apple's 17" Powerbook G4
(disclaimer: these are the informal thoughts of a admittedly picky Mac user)
I've had Apple's newest Powerbook for a few weeks now and I have the following observations:
1. Build quality is excellent… everything fits nicely, no warping or bowing, fittings are nice and flush.
2. the screen is quite nice… not incredible, but quite acceptable for a laptop LCD. With the included calibration tools, or even better, SuperCal, things can be made even better. I have no pixel problems (dead, stuck, etc) on mine, but your mileage may vary.
3. Speed is very good.
4. Heat is not at all extreme and the fan very rarely (as in hardly ever) cranks up to levels high enough to be noticeable.
5. Wireless reception is good and the built-in Bluetooth works well.
6. Speakers are better than average for a laptop.
7. Regarding weight: it is heavy, but not absurdly so… this thing is big compared to a 15” (or a 12” obviously)… it is a portable desktop… I wouldn't buy one if I were commuting daily… still, if you are carrying just the Powerbook and little else in a case like the most excellent (I have one a black one myself) Acme Made, 17” Slim featured here, it is more than doable.
8. the Superdrive is great to have when you need it… DVD playback is excellent… optical drive vibrations are less than in previous models.
9. It runs OS X, OSX is wonderful, thus the AlPB 17” is wonderful (if a=b and b=c, then a=c)
10. Battery life is adequate, but not amazing in real world use… buy extra AC adapters and leave them everywhere you spend any more than a few hours a day…
11. Negative: the only issue I have with this machine is that the processor or graphics chip or something causes a rather medium to high pitched “sizzling” sound that seems to come from right below the keyboard… in a quiet room with no “white noise,” this is annoying… changing the processor speed in the Energy Saver control panel to “Reduced” makes this noise go away… but it also throttles the CPU down to a G4 667 and turns off the L3 cache and that just ain't no fun… I hereby volunteer to be Apple's acoustic tester for all future hardware… I'll do it part-time for 50k and a couple free Macs per year.
Overall: I love this machine… if I could get rid of the sizzling sound it would be the best Mac I have ever owned/used (though I still have a soft spot for the Classic and the Powerbook 160)… with the sizzle it is still the best Mac I have ever owned, but with one annoying aspect…
finis…
your experiences for the 17” Powerbook are welcome in comments or trackback…
April 15, 2003
portrait in one of Kertesz's mirrors
April 09, 2003
it's the content, stupid!
I'm going to have to make little paper notes about all the things I want to write about in this blog… I have been somewhat preoccupied with getting a preliminary setup/design that I like… when of course, the raw content is the most important thing… so many things running through my head these days… networks, “smart mobs,” blogging, civil liberties, privacy… it's overwhelming… and in about eight hours I'm off to the Midwest to try to make some money for my home economy… in any case… I finally put my MT key in and clicked off the other publicity pings… so maybe one or two people might look here…
I am open to any constructive criticism regarding either the design or content here… suggestions are more than welcome… so spout off!
April 08, 2003
Testing moblog functionality...
I spent the last 36 hours in Portland… untethered from the internet… even my Palm to Nokia setup was giving me trouble… now I have that working again and I am trying 'Kablog' to see if it's possible to post to my blog from this Tungsten.
(added a few minutes later from the desktop) the preceding text is as far as I got with Kablog… unfortunatlely it seems to have a word limit for entries, or maybe it is shareware crippled until you pay the fee… I can't tell for sure because the Kablog webpage is down… one of the nicer 404 pages I have seen though :) … in any case, it's a cool little program… it just needs a longer word limit (assuming this isn't shareware crippling) and it needs to let you choose a category… pretty cool though… moblogging…
April 04, 2003
a year ago, in paris...
April 01, 2003
POLLEN!
the pollen count must be at an all time high in the Bay Area right now, I have been choking for four days… never have I had so many problems with hay fever before… including this nagging cough (which seems weird for allergies)… anyway, suffice it to say, it sucks.
the site customizing is coming along… I know it doesn't look like much, but at least I am learning something… I am training to be a customizer rather than a designer… I still wouldn't mind hiring a real professional designer with Movable Type experience… but it seems like unemployment hasn't hit those people yet… either that or I have simply set my sights to high as far as the level of talent/skill I want…
I notice that Nick Denton is hiring… $2000 for a whole site… hell, I might pay that for the right person… and I'm a web nobody… maybe that means I have to pay more? anyway… I'm pretty sure no one is looking this way yet… cause the config isn't quite done and I haven't advertised yet… but soon…