Aku Aku

in passing...

I remember stumbling on this site years ago, just found it again today in a side-effect google tangent:

In Passing...

Samples:

"David... David got me salmon for my birthday. Not out to dinner for salmon, no, he bought. Me. A. Salmon."
--A woman in the restroom at a climbing gym

"I don't call him 'Mr. Serious Artist' anymore."
"Why? *chuckle* Did he actually smile at something?"
"Ah, I'll miss stalking stoic boy. *pause*Anyway no, I saw him on one of those scooters, and after that I couldn't take him and his 'melancholy art' seriously."
--A girl behind the counter at a cafe, and a customer

"I think general stupidity, as opposed to fatal stupidity, is harder to evolutionize out though. So you've got some dim cats, and some bright cats, but no cats that run into walls until they're comatose, or jump out windows into traffic."
"I suppose you're right, evolution's slow. And if we did wind up with a breed of sentient cats, we probably couldn't feed them cat food anymore."
--A girl and a guy walking on Oxford st

"Here, here, gimme a funny point. What's big and purble and eats rocks?"
"Dude..."
"A big purple rock eater!"
"I hate you."
--Two guys in the parking lot next to my building

"She thought that my T-shirt that says 'Mind the gap' was a political statement about corporations."
--A girl in Berkeley Market

harry potter and the chamber of zzzzzzzzzz

Went to the AMC 1000 on Van Ness with Sion and Elaine to see Harry Potter: Chamber of Secrets tonight. I saw the last film which I thought wasn't too offensive, and I've never read the books (and don't plan on it). I thought this movie was pretty dumb. Ah well, I get what I deserve; San Francisco theaters have some of the best film schedules in the country and I dash off and see something like that. I should have gone to see Unspeakable instead like I intended.

top dog gizmo

This guy's blog entry details his idea of the uber-techno-geek device:

I want a combination Apple iPod and SonyEricsson T68i (WITH the "CommunicCAM" camera... and why not a CHA-30 digital pen).

I really like the pen part, being able to scribble-input rather as an alternative to thumb typing, and voice control for some contrained operations.

fruit's crepes

There's a place down the street from me here in San Francisco that sells these ice cream and fruit crepes. It opened up just recently and I thought it was odd because it looks more like an asian restaurant (the other big seller seems to be fish balls) and I thought crepes were a french thing. I don't normally go in for that sort of sweets, but I tried one and it was delicious.

Then when I was in Tokyo in Harakuju (apparently the main shopping/hangout area for Tokyo's hip youth) I noticed a plethora of fruit crepe shops. I guess it's the in thing now.

So, just wanted to shizzle yonizzle to

Fruit's Crepes
Crepes De France
932 Geneva Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94112
415-333-2182

:)

apocalypse now redux

DVD: Apocalypse Now R E D U X (1979/2001).
I greatly enjoyed the added scenes in this director's cut. There is one surreal scene concerning a french plantation in the middle of the vietnam jungle, and I think there is some added exposition at the beginning. The infamous "charlie don't surf" segment is filled out a bit more too. I've looked over a few reviews that state that the extra scenes detract from the mood as compared to the original, but I feel that the extra scenes are more honest. Thumbs up.

the vikings

Well, I tried watching The Vikings (1958) starring Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis and Ernest Borgnine. But frankly it was just a bit too predictable so I cut it off before the half way point. Maybe it was interesting in 1958, but probably not.

hiptop nation

I was looking at the Danger Hiptop as a way for me to get in on the moblog action here in the States, and I found another moblog site that has done something else I was thinking about: a moblog where anyone can send in photos for inclusion. This one is specific to the Danger Hiptop (or the T-Mobile Sidekick as it is branded in retail). I might have to get this, but unfortunately there's no coverage for it in NC yet (where I often find myself travelling to on business), so it can't replace my regular cell phone yet.

By the way, for the record, I don't really like the term blog and I don't care much for moblog either. But I can't think of anything better really...

moblogging

When I was in Tokyo, Mie bought a cool au cellphone that takes photos and can email them (at near-DSL speeds no less). So I set her up with a special email address on my server, and wrote some code so that when she sends a photo to that email address the code will take the email and turn it into a blog entry.

This was a couple of weeks ago. A few days ago an article called "It's All About The Mobile Internet" came out that coined the term moblog. This article went a little further into something I had also been thinking about: the phones can also embed a GPS-derived latitude and longitude and you could use the phone combined with blogging software to create an on-the-spot amateur journalism system, so this could be a great way to get news on breaking events people are interested in.

I had a startup idea before I co-founded the company I'm with now that involved mobile phones and social groups. Turned out someone else had already had a very similar idea a year sooner so I didn't pursue it but this new technology has me thinking in that direction again.

Moblogging seems to be catching on all over too. in the last couple of days I've found two other blogs that are linked to these cell phones (Stuart Woodward and JoiIto) and I'm sure the popularity of that article has inspired hundreds of more.

A little technical info if anyone is interested: my system uses procmail, perl xmlrpc and moveable type. Supposedly the system will also work with other blogger software because the XML-RPC code is written for the multi-platform Blogger API but I haven't tested this on any other system.
 
Mie has been busy with work so she hasn't had much time to work on her blog yet. I'll go ahead and put the link here but there's not much there yet. She needs to pick a domain name for it and decide on a site design before we really consider it live. I also set up a 2nd blog that gets each email i send to her phone or that she sends me from her phone. There's a lot more activity there, but it's private.

grandma

I've been travelling a lot lately, mostly business trips. Last Sunday my grandmother died and I was unable to attend the funeral because of some critical meetings (my company is undergoing a crucial round of investment funding).

I'd been meaning to go visit her for months, and of course now I feel awful about putting that off. She had been having some health problems, but her passing was sudden and apparently unrelated to these health issues.

She was actually the only grandparent I ever really knew, and I rarely got to see her having grown up on the other side of the continent ...and she reminded me so much of my mother (who died many years ago). I'm going to miss her.

FOTR special extended dvd

My copy of the The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring (Collector's Box Set) (Four Discs) (DVD) (Widescreen) special extended version came yesterday. It's 4 discs, with an extra 30 minutes of footage. The extra 30 minutes are quite satisfying, my most missed scene (the gift giving when departing Lothlorien) is included plus a lot more character development bits. Yes very satisfying. Yes I'm a geek.

There's also four (4!) separate audio commentary tracks, plus hours of behind the scenes footage. Very very cool.