Schoolie alum Ryan Buckley checks in
"...I switched jobs (and careers, pretty much, I suppose) to take up a job as an economic litigation consultant. Using my econ degree now to make better use of my enviro stuff later. That's the idea, at least.
"I think it's a good switch and I can tell already I have lots to learn. I'm working on the 60th floor of the tallest building west of the Mississippi. Crazy, huh? Running econometric regressions for companies that are in the process of being sued for millions of dollars...it will be an eye-opening foray into corporate America..."
Rockstar Schoolie
Ryan Buckley will be governor of California one day. You watch.
Scary thing is, it actually makes sense
"As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also uknown unknowns. The ones we don't know we don't know."
-Donald Rumsfeld, at a DoD news briefing, 2002
"...to disarm this weapon of mass destruction that we call our president...for the present..."
I'd be really surprised to see
Eminem's new video, "Mosh," on MTV. This is possibly the most politically charged video ever seen. But one can hope.
Green with...er, red with envy
If you thought the new black and red iPod is cool, check out
ColorWare's pallette of colors. And you can even have them paint your PowerBook, iBook, or just about any other item for your digital lifesytle.
Eliot Van Buskirk's article on MP3.com about his ColorWare experience gives a good indication of the quality.
Bet ya didn't know I had my MD
Come here, lovely lass, and show
the doctor where it hurts...
Please pass the scorpion
Edible.com founder Todd Dalton experienced some amazing culinary experiences in his years as a conservation and wildlife specialist in locales such as Thailand, Venezuela, Australia, and China. He founded Edible, Ltd. to bring us some of the bizarre (by Western standards) epicurian curiosities enjoyed around the world.
It's a well-designed Flash site, but they need a copy editor.
OS X icons for Ynnej
...who is going to be a Hobbit for Haloween:
LOTR -- Armoury of the Third Age, swords, shields, and other Middle Earth objects by Dave Brasgalla.
These ones go to 11
Apple today introduced two new products:
iPod Photo and a sleek black
U2 special edition iPod. Yes, as in Bono and the lads.
I'm starting to wonder what's in store for us at MacWorld in January...
Word of the Day: Ashcrofted
ashcrofted [ash'-krofftid]
adj. removed from or disqualified for public office on grounds of religious delusions. Derived from The People v. President Ashcroft, the landmark Supreme Court decision that disqualifies all candidates for public office who espouse a religion and/or other organized forms of magical, delusional, or psychotic thinking, on the constitutional grounds of separation of church and state, a decision taken at the time of the restoration of the Constitution following upon the dynastic, so-called "anti-terrorist" or "neopatriot" era.
Today's Word of the Day is from
The Future Dictionary of America from
McSweeney's, described as "a guide to the American language sometime in the future, when all or most of our country's problems are solved."�The book's entries are from almost 200 writers and artists, and it comes with a CD of new songs and rarities from R.E.M., Sleater-Kinney, Elliott Smith, Tom Waits, David Byrne, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, They Might Be Giants, and Death Cab for Cutie, among others.
�
Read some other highlights...
�
Buy the book at Amazon...
Rachael Yamagata
Stellah passed me this CD last week with the words, "I think you'll really like it."
So my multitasking Monday has so far had me tapping feet and swaying in my chair while listening to
Rachael Yamagata's
Happenstance. Needless to say (but apparently I'm saying it anyway), I really like it.
I checked out
her website briefly (a well-done Flash site; warning for Ynnej: auto-music), and I must say, she's not only got a wonderfully lush voice, but she's also quite beautiful. Lovely freckles.
� Listen... [launches iTunes]
MIA
I stop posting for a few days and my scores of readers (um, I think it's six, actually) go nuts.
To explain my absence:
1) I have moved, as many of you undoubtedly already know. Boxes, boxes, boxes. I have a lot more still to move, and a lot to unpack.
2) I don't have a land line yet, and therefore don't have an Internet connection at home yet. Friday, hopefully...
3) Having just started this new job, I think you can understand that I'm not excited to be seen blogging ten times a day at work, instead of actually doing what they're paying me to do.
4) I've been incredibly sick this week. Even had to take a sick day.
So, after this weekend, when I have DSL again and a little more time at home, your regularly scheduled enews.org blogging experience will return.
Isabella Rossellini on learning
On
"Forum" this morning,
Isabella Rossellini was talking about her continued joy of learning new things from other people. She put it like this, which I thought was a nice way of saying it...
"If you can make yourself available, you can take a trip into someone's mind; and anyone's mind is interesting."
Branding is as easy as 1-2-3
"It takes a lot to differentiate your brand in today's 'me too' world of electronic business solutions..." claim the branding experts at
Enormicom. They've developed the brilliant Nametron 3000™, which "uses a complex system of algorithms and formulas to combine morphemes, phonemes and gigonemes to create a Singular Cohesive Action Moniker (S.C.A.M.®)."
A little light fare from the real experts over at
37signals.
First night in new place
I finally got to sleep in my new place for the first time last night, after having hauled another truckload of stuff up from MV (Mostly books, which I moved alone, my friends will be glad to hear... But there are more, hint hint).
Here's a photo from last Saturday, before I had moved much in.
I slept like a log because I was exhausted from moving boxes. But I gotta wonder if the 3am trash pickup outside my windows is going to wake me each Tuesday morning.
One thing I'll miss about taking the train for the past 6 workdays is that it's a great way to catch up on the newspapers (yeah, everyone knows that), but it was an excellent opportunity to go through and sort some ancient email boxes on my laptop. I was able to ping a few people I hadn't really talked to in a while.
But I must admit, a 15-minute bike ride to work is a lot cooler than an hour-and-fifteen-minute train ride and walk.
This is why they call it Heat the Street
Photo of the Day | Burning Man Decompression: Heat the Street | San Francisco, CA | October 10, 2004
The blogosphere, pt. 2
This article in the Detroit News about teens blogging is pretty interesting, but most intriguing to me were the stats about age ranges of bloggers.
According to market research company
Perseus, there are some 4 million bloggers out there in the blogosphere, and more than half of them are in the 13-19 age range.
Exploring my new (work) neighborhood
I've been taking the train to SF each morning (read: I get up at 6am and get to bed at 3am), and if I'm lucky (read: get up early enough and haul ass to the station) I have a little time to kill on my walk (or bike ride) to the office, so I meander a little.
Even if I don't have the extra time, I've been taking a slightly different route each morning. It's only six and-a-half blocks from the train station to the office, but these are city blocks we're talking about, not suburban blocks. Not even surburban city blocks. A city block is about 100 yards long. That's the length of a football field. So I walk (or bike) about six and-a-half football fields.
But it's very interesting to look at the architecture, and the different stores, businesses, apartment complexes, and lofts. And I've passed several companies already that are right near my office and I didn't even know it.
Font Shop International's SF office is right down the alley next to CNET (they have some of the best fonts in the world). And well-known designer
Jennifer Morla's office is about a block away down Bryant.
Aside from that, it's fun to just take photos in The City.
Photo(s) of the Day
The worst kind of ghosts | Clementina St, SF, CA | October 6, 2004
Downtown a.m. | SF, CA | October 6, 2004
Another killer thing about where I work
I fire up iTunes and discover that under
Shared Music I have 34,000 new songs available for my listening at work. I suddenly love coworkers I haven't even met yet.
The loft
The leasing company says I've been approved. Needless to say, I'm ecstatic!
I need to work out the deposit and first month's rent and sign the lease and get the keys all that stuff, but I may be able to start moving in this weekend, or certainly by early next week.
Yay!
Ouch, head hurts
My friend
Brad Borevitz is smart. Certainly his recent work as a grad student at UCSD's Visual Arts Department is too smart for my puny brain.
As he describes it, "i write code that produces images as output on the screen in realtime or as output to files that can be printed or concatenated into animated video."
An example is one of his compu-artistic endeavors,
"A Children's Game Transformed by the Solvent of Computational Method Thus Allowing for the Displacement of a Moral Overlay by a Free Play of Algorithmic Patterning", which was done in JSP (so perhaps Ynnej will be interested), but whose text description makes me blink rapidly and ensures that I need to read it three times.
Brad's essay,
"Visions of 'The Iron Man': Industrial Culture and the Cyborg's Monstrous Sexuality", is another example. Ouch. My head hurts. Need more coffee...
I love Brad for many reasons, the first and foremost being that he's smarter than I, and I really enjoy working with smart people. And although it's been many years since we worked together (or even seen each other), I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Brad for being the person who laid the groundwork for my skills as a web designer all those years ago (I think we met in 1995). Every time I explain the compression algorithm differences between GIF and JPG, I think of Brad.
I also love his leather pants.
And now, for the rest of the story
Paul Harvey it ain't.
GNN.tv is the Guerrilla News Network.
A month ago today
...I was broiling in the desert heat, and loving every minute of it.
Photo of the Day | Black Rock City, NV | September 5, 2004
Why Ynnej would want to work at CNET
Photo of the Day | One of many reasons.
First day
Today was my first day at CNET's Download.com, where I'll be one of two designers in charge of the graphics on
Download.com and it's sub-sites for
Music and
Games, plus Chat.com (coming later), and eventually some other stuff. CNET has a ton of
other properties, but considering there are only two designers in my team, we've got our hands full.
It's been a great day so far, the people are reeaaallly cool, the workplace environment is really cool, the building is even really cool, the free coffee is Peet's, and hell, I work at 2nd and Folsom, so I'm like a six block walk from the train station.
That said, I'm definitely moving up here. I looked at no less than 15 lofts last week, and I may have one secured in a couple days.
Aaron
Alexis
Anne
Anya
April & Matt
Ari
Bo
Brian
Bryan
Chris
Cousin Carol
Dave & Terri
Dave H.
Debby
Drue
Fibu
Four Waters
Fwegan (aka Ynnej)
Gary
Holly
Hilary
Internet Rockstar
James & Eric
Jason
Jen
Jesse
Jessica
Joey
Kansinee
Karl
Kelly
Laura
Leah
Marc
Martin
Matt
Mike
Morgan
OkayDave
Olya
Paco
Peter
Rick
Rocky
Ryan
Stellah
Tatum 
Trent
Velma
Veronica
Whiskey Media
Yuliya
Yu-Po