Monday, October 1, 2007

Monday, August 20, 2007

PowerPoint Rule

Guy Kawasaki 1.5 min blip on YouTube detailing his 10-20-30 rule for PowerPoint Presentations. He's addressing a specific circumstance - entrepreneurs pitching their business plans to Venture Capitalists - but the rule seems relevant generally as well.






Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Buckminster Fuller

Saw this and heard his name mentioned on NPR today...

Friday, May 18, 2007

How many times to get this right?

We are a company called Connected Ventures, a group of friends who work for: Vimeo, CollegeHumor, Busted Tees, and Defunker.








Lip Dub - Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger from amandalynferri on Vimeo




Thursday, May 17, 2007

Saturday, May 12, 2007

Bones of 129 year old Shipwreck on Ocean Beach

I'm going!!! Tonight!!!



The bones of a 129-year old shipwreck that surfaced on San Francisco's Ocean Beach this week appear and disappear every 20 years or so, like Brigadoon, the mythical Scots village that appears out of the spring mist.

The wreck is of the clipper ship King Philip, which appeared out of the sand Monday. The King Philip was wrecked at high tide in January 1878 and shows itself on very low tides every so often. The last time the ship showed up was after storms in 1985.

The King Philip's latest appearance has drawn hundreds of people, who come and stare at the old ship's timbers, which are awash where the foamy surf meets the shore at the foot of Noriega Street.

"It's wonderful,'' said Stephen Haller, a National Park Service historian who is one of the authors of a book on shipwrecks of the Golden Gate region. "People can see history right under their feet.''

A small piece of wood no bigger than Haller's foot was all that poked though the sand at the stern of the ship. The bow, 174 feet north, was much more impressive. Its pointed prow rose several feet out of the wet sand, exposing vertical ribs, a double row of sealing planks on the interior of the hull and wooden pegs called trunnels holding exterior sheathing planks.



Ocean Beach is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, so the wreck is federal property, like Alcatraz, or Half Dome in Yosemite. "I would hope the public treats the ship with respect,'' Haller said.

So far people have treated the relic with curiosity and awe.

Mila Zinkova and George Kaskanlian live nearby. They'd taken sea trips to Antarctica and the Galapagos Islands. And here was history on their doorstep. "It's just amazing,'' said Zinkova. "I put a picture of it on a Wikipedia site for Ocean Beach history.''

Like most artifacts from the past, the King Philip comes with a story.

The vessel was built as a full-rigged, three-masted clipper ship -- one of those long, lean ships that historian Samuel Eliot Morison called "the noblest of all sailing vessels.''

American clippers were built to sail from the East Coast to San Francisco around Cape Horn at the tip of South America. They carried high-value cargo and were built for speed, as the 19th century defined it. The fastest of the clippers, the famous Flying Cloud, made the trip from New York to San Francisco, 14,500 miles, in 89 days, eight hours, a record that stood for 135 years until a yacht broke it in 1989.

The King Philip -- named for the Indian chief who was involved in King Philip's war in 1675 -- was not as fast as the fastest clipper. It was launched in 1856, in Alna, Maine, and was advertised as "a strictly first-class clipper ship with quick dispatch.''

However the King Philip was advertised, it seemed to have been a hard-luck ship. There were at least two mutinies -- one in Honolulu in 1869 and one off Annapolis, Md., five years later. In both cases, the mutinous sailors set the ship on fire, seriously damaging it twice.

"They worked the ship hard in those days,'' said James Delgado, a maritime historian, "and they worked the crews hard, too."

After its glory days as a clipper, the King Philip went into the lumber trade, working for Pope and Talbot, a San Francisco lumber merchant.

The King Philip was old for a wooden ship, and the best cargo went to newer iron and steel sailing ships, and steamers. The King Philip carried grain and even guano, a fine name for bird droppings used as fertilizer.

On Jan. 25, 1878, the King Philip left San Francisco without cargo -- in ballast, sailors call it. It was customary in those days for steam tugs to tow sailing ships out of the Golden Gate.

There were two other sailing ships in the area, and one of them -- the collier Western Shore, had a serious accident in which the captain was killed. The tug went off to help the other ship, and the King Philip dropped anchor. The seas were heavy, the ship rolled, and the anchor did not hold.

The King Philip ran up on Ocean Beach at high tide and was stranded there, high and dry. No one was killed but the ship was a total loss. The next day, the wreck was sold at auction to a San Francisco businessman named John Molloy for $1,050.

He salvaged the metal fastenings, cut down the masts and sails, and blew up the hulk with black powder.

Storms and human activity -- like building the Great Highway or the San Francisco sewer outfall, changed the beach.

Now the King Philip has appeared again. Haller says the low tides from now until the weekend, will make the ship visible most afternoons for at least a while.

"I thought it was really romantic,'' said Darla Bernard, of San Francisco, who stopped by with her dog, Kodi, to see the ship. "Until I learned that the Philip used to haul manure.'

STOLEN from the blogs of John & James Sakkis:

Here's the tide chart for the next few days. Since the moon is near the New Moon phase, it's pull is waning. In two weeks the tide will get lower and the wreck will become more visible.

2007-05-10 12:31 PM PDT -0.07 feet Low Tide
2007-05-10 7:59 PM PDT 4.78 feet High Tide
2007-05-10 8:08 PM PDT Sunset
2007-05-11 1:30 AM PDT 2.30 feet Low Tide
2007-05-11 6:03 AM PDT Sunrise
2007-05-11 7:04 AM PDT 4.45 feet High Tide
2007-05-11 1:24 PM PDT 0.19 feet Low Tide
2007-05-11 8:09 PM PDT Sunset
2007-05-11 8:33 PM PDT 5.18 feet High Tide
2007-05-12 2:29 AM PDT 1.47 feet Low Tide
2007-05-12 6:02 AM PDT Sunrise
2007-05-12 8:24 AM PDT 4.39 feet High Tide
2007-05-12 2:15 PM PDT 0.54 feet Low Tide
2007-05-12 8:10 PM PDT Sunset
2007-05-12 9:08 PM PDT 5.61 feet High Tide
2007-05-13 3:21 AM PDT 0.55 feet Low Tide
2007-05-13 6:01 AM PDT Sunrise
2007-05-13 9:40 AM PDT 4.44 feet High Tide
2007-05-13 3:03 PM PDT 0.94 feet Low Tide
2007-05-13 8:11 PM PDT Sunset
2007-05-13 9:43 PM PDT 6.04 feet High Tide
2007-05-14 4:11 AM PDT -0.34 feet Low Tide
2007-05-14 6:00 AM PDT Sunrise
2007-05-14 10:49 AM PDT 4.54 feet High Tide
2007-05-14 3:50 PM PDT 1.39 feet Low Tide

Monday, May 7, 2007

Noise from the void

More good music... off the wall eclectic grooves from another cosmos, turn on, tune in and drop out... I will be! :D


Cleavage

Dictionary definitions are great beacuse it's only through lexigraphical examinations of the English language do we realize how fucked up our vernacular is:



Main Entry:
cleav·age Listen to the pronunciation of cleavage
Pronunciation:
\ˈklē-vij\
Function:
noun
Date:
1816

1 a: the quality of a crystallized substance or rock of splitting along definite planes; also : the occurrence of such splitting b: a fragment (as of a diamond) obtained by splitting

2: the action of cleaving : the state of being cleft

3: the series of synchronized mitotic cell divisions of a fertilized egg that results in the formation of the blastomeres and changes the single-celled zygote into a multicellular embryo; also : one of these cell divisions

4: the splitting of a molecule into simpler molecules

5: the depression between a woman's breasts especially when made visible by a low-cut neckline


and so we always go with the lowest form of the word, (<-- insert denominator here)

Tuesday, May 1, 2007

Noise from the void

Tune into Noise From The Void, Jeno's weekly Radio Show on www.90hz.org from 9pm PST till around midnight, for a cosmic smattering of acid house, interstellar rock and whatever else the shaman dishes up...

Lightening the mood

Nose... yeah... so if a picture is worth a thousand words, then what do you think this might be saying???

Black Sheep

Hollywood is out of ideas?

The other club...

Choking back tears, Christian Golczynski accepted the flag from his father's casket Marine reservist Marc Golczynski. Photographer Aaron Thompson described this moment as "the most emotionally moving event I may have ever witnessed and may ever witness in my life."
















This picture has had me crying at the most inconvenient times this week every time I see it. As a father and a son, I can't imagine the amount of unnecessary growth and understanding this child of eight (8) has had to conceive in a short amount of time. I wish this was something I could do for him. I'm crying again...

A picture is worth...A million words isn't even a good start. Christian gets my vote for bravery in action...

Saturday, April 28, 2007

Das Leben Der Anderen

If you haven't seen The Lives of Others yet, then you're missing out on the best film of the last 1 1/2 years... so run don't walk to your local theatres, it's that good.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

B-Boy Documentary

If anyone is interested, there's a really good documentary on B-Boy culture, with amazing shots of them in action, it's called The Freshest Kids.

I had the pleasure of seeing it, kind of, one night when I was spinning in the woods and they had a screen stretched between two tress and playing it in the background... unbelievable gravity defying manuevers and an interesting perspective on a kind of urban sub-history, or anthropological insights into a certain subculture...

Some more BBoy fun

B is for B-Boy

B is for Basil assaulted by bears.

Monday, April 23, 2007

A is for Amy who fell down the stairs...

The circle of 3's

In the celebrity world, death happens in threes. So Kurt V. was 1st, Yeltsin today... who is next? Then again, shall we count political leaders as celebrities? He did drink as much or more than Slash. Taking bets now...

Sunday, April 22, 2007

Achiotte Press

Sunday April 29th at 3PM
Canessa Park Poetry

Help us welcome Achiote Press into the world
with two new chapbooks:

"the immaculate autopsy" by Todd Melicker &

the chap-journal "Achiote Seeds" featuring work
by Barbara Jane Reyes, Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor
& Rich Villar.

& readings from:

Oscar Bermeo
Todd Melicker
Barbara Jane Reyes
Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor
& Alfred Arteaga

and possibly echoes of Antonin Artaud

DISCOUNTED chapbooks will be available!!

$3-5 suggested donation at the door

curated by Tiff Dressen

Can you Canessa? Come to 708 Montgomery Street (X-Street Columbus)
tucked among the inner organs of North Beach
***************************************

Achiote Press was founded by Craig Perez, Jennifer Reimer, and Len Shneyder in 2006.

Born in Ecuador and raised in the Bronx, Oscar Bermeo is a BRIO (Bronx Recognizes Its Own) award winning poet, educator, literary events coordinator who now makes his home in Oakland, Califas, where he is the poetry editor for Tea Party Magazine.

When not writing, Oscar devotes his time and energy towards new culinary experiments, working admin at a local charter school
and enjoying the bliss of married life with his wife, poeta Barbara Jane Reyes.

***

Todd Melicker is a graduate of the MFA in Writing program at the University of San Francisco. His poems have appeared in Switchback, Five Fingers Review, Volt, and the Colorado Review. He currently lives in Santa Rosa, California.

***

Barbara Jane Reyes was born in Manila, Philippines and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She received her undergraduate education at UC Berkeley, and her MFA at San Francisco State University. She is the author of Gravities of Center (Arkipelago, 2003) and Poeta en San Francisco (Tinfish, 2005), for which she received the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets.

Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous publications, including 2nd Avenue Poetry, Asian Pacific American Journal, Chain, Interlope, New American Writing, North American Review, Notre Dame Review, Parthenon West Review, and XCP: Cross Cultural Poetics. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Mills College, and she lives with her husband, poet Oscar Bermeo, in Oakland, CA.

***

Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor received her MA degree in English with honors from Western Washington University in 2003 for her thesis “Notes from the Margins,” a mixed work of memoir and fiction. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in the Katipunan Literary Magazine and the online magazine Haruah. In addition, she has served as a freelance writer and editor for several trade journals. Currently she is working on her first novel, tentatively titled Maganda’s Comb, and she performs regularly as a storyteller in her local area. Her blog Binding Wor(l)ds Together can be found at http://wordbinder.blogspot.com.

Saturday, April 21, 2007

Daisy Buchanan's

As the crow flies, somewhere, in a movie, I remember someone saying no politics and no religion in a bar room conversations. So what does that leave us really? Chicks and sports? Last bar room frolic featured conversations about all of the above, that's when you know you've reached a golden moment, or one of clarity, in vino veritas est. Or then again, these are those lies that make familiars out of strangers.

We got to talking about history. Someone proposed that marketing was simply the history of human desire. I think there's some truth in that. Thinking back on it now, what makes a good historian? What is history to you? At one time I thought it was about narrative; the best history was a good narrative that rendered the facts into a kind of story. Today I'm not so sure. When I think of historians like Raul Hilberg and his epic treatise: "The Destruction of the European Jews", that's a kind of history that is so far outside of narrative that you can't breathe because every word and every insight is a kind of climax. When you listen to him speak, in Lanzma'ns Shoah, about documents and artifacts of the war years from 39-45 you realize that artifact isn't necessarily unearthed in a 2000 year old tomb. The materiality of the modern age, it's documentary artifacts can be realized as equally important as the Rosetta Stone, or the clay objects found on an ancient strata of Babylon that were interpreted as the beginning of abstract counting systems.

So all of this leads to a question: what makes a good history? What is history? Do you differentiate between personal history and a more global history? Having heard/read about revisionist history, is there such a thing as an objective history?

night night

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Mosh Pit for dinner anyone?





















One of the best concerts I have been to in a LONG time... Edgefest is the brain child of one of our oldest alternative stations (KDGE) in the local Dallas area. I've been to all but one (1) - 16 all in total after today.

Who was heard?

The Killers - My Chemical Romance - A.F.I. - Muse - Blue October - Jet - Papa Roach - Bowling for Soup - Red Jumpsuit Apparatus - Kaiser Chiefs - Sparta - Saosin - Bullet for My Valentine - Say Anything - Placebo - Finger 11 - Ataris - Miser - The Vanished - Madina Lake - Howling Bells - Forever the Sickest Kids - Dropping Daylight - Fair to Midland - The Barrons - The Almost - and ODIS

There was also an Edgefest Pre-Party at the Palladium Ballroom in Dallas the night before that we attended as well... BuckCherry - Saliva - Exies - Smile Empty Soul - Autovane - Dropping Daylight - The Vanished - Miser.

I feel young again!, but once I recover from my deafness, I will post pics and sound bytes.

-thenose (my shoulder hurts from moshing)


Friday, April 13, 2007

Poverty

Tom stone, a photographer I found on Flickr is doing a series on poverty and the images are absolutely amazing, I thought I'd post a recent one he uploaded...



Check out the whole series, which brings to mind Dorthea Lang's work during the great depression, here.

For my road warrior friends

If you are sitting next to someone who irritates you on a plane or train follow these instructions:

1. Quietly and calmly open up your laptop case.

2. Remove your laptop.

3. Start up.

4. Make su re the guy who is annoying you, can see the screen.

5. Close your eyes and tilt your head up to the sky.

7. Then hit this link: http://www.thecleverest.com/countdown.swf

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

My smurf itches...

who's who

not knowing, kind of cool

Monday, April 9, 2007

ok dammit, a poem

Want Year

This spring’s will ebbs

can’t last the thin run

euphoria’s high altitude

crabs along the branches

and blues

in pools

a long day’s hot bored dismissal archives

perspective into parchment

and fall’s

awaiting some lung’s thirsty

exhalation

so long later

a whole winter’s being’s

still

awaiting.

Friday, April 6, 2007

B U L L C H A R D

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Bull

Thursday, April 5, 2007

Recently, someone asked me about Spam...

and then I received this from a colleague...

Wednesday, April 4, 2007

A serial?

Is anyone up for a serial story, in prose and verse... first the epilogue, how about a story about people trying to write a story online and the distractions that come between them and a work of polyphonous (________) << [insert favorite genre here]... or is that just so passé? Yeah... that...

on another note... Kaiser Chiefs, very British, very cool... very RUBY!

Rondellus - Sabattum

It came in the mail, I've been waiting for some time to get my mits on this CD, it was out of print for a while... but here it is... imagine you're in the 14th century and you're hangin' out in court, chillin' bein' all courtly n' shit and then you hear Magus, and it's sir Ozzbourne that's performing it with his minstrels known as black sabbath... yeah... that's right... this is a classical interpretation of black sabbath a la 14 century latin and instrumentation, it's bloody brilliant... go check it ...



listen to me ==>WAR PIGS

ladies and gentlemen...

These are your contributors...

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no comment

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

Anticipating.... the grind

Ok so two credits here, first goes to ilya for finding this damn quote, which cracked us up to no end... and the second goes to it's author: Neil Cumpston





"This one was directed by Quentin Tarantino, who’s been an actor in stuff like RESERVOIR DOGS and PULP FICTION (he’s also in PLANET OF TERROR and DEATH PROOF). This is his first directing job and the dude KICKS ALL SPECTRUM OF ASS. He kicks ass that isn’t even in the ass area. Like, his director skills are so stripper-with-chainsaw good they make you grow asses on other parts of your body that he then kicks. I hope he directs more movies. I would see them, burn down the theater, and then call the fire department so I could tell all the fireman about what a kick-ass movie it was. When they started to attack me with axes, I’d fly away because Quentin’s movie would have given me ninja flight."

best date movie ever?



First thing's first

Top 5 date films that appeal to both genders (andy why??):

The English Patient (love story +war)
High Fidelity (great music + cusak quirkiness)
The Lover (Well its just downright sexy, but I don't know if that'll work on a 1st date)
Magnolia (a family affair with falling frogs, what could be better?)
Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind (uuuummmm... )


NEXT?!

The Classic

1 1/2 ounces (1 jigger) vodka
1/2 cup tomato juice
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
Worcestershire sauce to taste
Tabasco to taste
1 celery stick for garnish
1 lemon wedge for garnish

Combine the vodka, the tomato juice, the lemon juice, the Worcestershire sauce, the Tabasco, 1 cup ice cubes, and salt and pepper to taste, shake the mixture well, and strain it into a tall glass filled with ice cubes. Garnish the Bloody Mary with the celery stick and the lemon wedge.