Archive for September, 2006
I’m closeted VoIP junkie. That being said, I got a SkypeIn number a couple of months ago and have found it cool to use, but… I’m particularly excited about starting to mess around with Grand Central, a service that links all your phones together. I’ve had it working for about one week.
My personal issue isn’t so much a problem with the number portability so much as the fact that I live in the Bay Area and carry around a New York City number (of course, because I’m keepin’ it real youknowwhatimsayin). Admittedly, it has a couple of locals in my life bizznitching. So, I am not the only one with this problem of carrying a cellphone with an area code to a city I don’t reside in more than 60% of the time, nor am I the only person that needs this sort of caller management in my life. A very useful and very cool tool — one that is actually HELPFUL in my opinion.
In fact, read Om’s excellent rundown on the things you can do with Grand Central for starters. Gah, it’s so frickin’ sweet you’re going to thank me for firing you the link.
September 29th, 2006
It’s almost time for the Fall Classic, but I guess I have an odd question. Why is Chicago Cubs‘ superfan Ronnie Woo Woo Wickers‘ site so much better than Yankee superfan Freddy “Sez” Schuman’s website? It’s not a joke; I’ve been just wondering is all.
(I know all you wiseapples from Chicago are going to mess with a rhetorical question like that — “You mess with the bull… and you’ll get the horns!“)
[Insert joke about Ben Affleck and the BoSox here for everyone's amusement.]
September 29th, 2006
Because I jones for pizza more than your average ninja turtle and most would agree that California-style pizza never cuts it (yes, pun intended) — How to make authentic NYC Pizza via LifeHacker. Dear God, someone hand me my oven mitts. In the Bay Area? My local favorite just shy of close to the actual thing that carries me over is Arinell Pizza. And when you travel? Try the blog New York Pizza Blog — a hat tip to Boren for the link, who needs a band-aid ’cause he’s that cut.
September 24th, 2006
Donating to Jane Kim’s campaign for San Francisco School Board is easy. You can do it online here. Thanks Jay, for the link. UPDATE: It appears that ChipIn has disabled the creation of new ChipIn accounts because they’re launching a new version in the next couple of weeks. So, in order to donate with that link you’ll need a pre-existing account with them. HOW INCONVENIENT. That must really suck for people that have fundraising in progress on the site, and new users of the site trying to donate. I’m just saying.
September 24th, 2006
I was at MJ’s blogging workshop as part of APAture a little bit later than I would have liked today, only because I was manning the monthly Locus Arts‘ Rent Party and stayed the duration of it the night before. There was a lot of great conversation during her workshop and it was really great to see more people in the APA community with a genuine interest in blogs and self-publishing.
I approached and helped with some answers to some small technical and business questions and after, there were some individual inquiries and requests that I could only breeze over as time to the next workshop would allow. So please, if anyone needs to follow-up, feel free to contact myself, MJ, and Alex. (Also, someone asked about disallowing hotlinking and modifying .htaccess files during the event, so here’s that link for you.)
A lot of the events have been pretty great thus far, and I’ll be on deck to kick off Tuesday and Saturday night at Space 180, so if you’re looking for something to do, by all means come out and support the arts!
September 24th, 2006
Weird. I just was looking for something in the garment bag that I trekked to New York City recently, in order to attend my best friend Dean’s wedding the other week. I took with me to NYC two bags; my bridesmaid’s dress was contained in the garment bag. Along with my usual coast-to-coast stopover at O’Hare in Chicago, I proceeded with the normal full-on run from one terminal to another to catch a connecting flight (yet again) by the skin of my teeth.
As it happens to be, this garment bag was also the bag that I ended up losing on touchdown in San Francisco. It appears that I failed to notice the red $5 poker chip from Caesar’s Palace with Gloria Estefan on it that came tumbling out of my bag just now. No lie. It appears to be #1178 of 2500 Gloria Estefan poker chips. What’s peculiar about this circumstance is that I had just missed a plane bound for San Francisco while on a stopover in Las Vegas, a couple of days before I flew out to New York. The thing is that I never took this garment bag on that trip.
Where on earth could this little lost phantom poker chip have come from (other than Vegas, obviously)? Are there other little $5 consolation prizes with Gloria Estefan’s mug on them for lost luggage across America? Is this an elaborate tourism ploy for everyone to go back to Las Vegas to see the Gloria Estefan shows? (Running October 10-12 and 16-19, mind you, I read it on this here poker chip!)
In the spirit of this strange find, I thought it’d be fun to fill these maps I recently bumped into on Jason’s blog.
Create your own visited states map.
Create your own visited countries map.
Now I have Miami Sound Machine’s “Conga!” stuck in my head and it won’t stop — the whole blaring of horns and the whole nine yards! C’monshakeyourbodybabydothatconga!
September 23rd, 2006
On Tuesday here in lovely San Francisco, APAture festival kicks off at 6pm at Space 180. APAture, a long-running multidisciplinary arts produced by Kearny Street Workshop now in its’ 8th year, showcases the various works of 100+ Asian Pacific American artists that either live or work in the San Francisco Bay Area. It “includes a visual arts show, film screenings, workshops, literary readings, performances in spoken word, music, dance, theater, and other performance genres, and an area for zinesters and comic artists to display and sell their work.”
Particularly of note this year are the participation of eight Mission District venues to showcase works, as opposed to previous years’ one. Yours truly will be on-hand to emcee the literary arts/spoken word and music events held on Tuesday the 26th with filmmaker, Bantercut bassist, buddy, and fellow Filipino Jim Espinas. In addition, I’ll be co-mastress of closing ceremonies on Saturday the 30th with neighbor, wacky gal pal, and fellow APA female blogger MJ Kim.
And lastly, in addition to all that — APAture’s organizer, Samantha Chanse — is sitting here in my living room right now. So if you’d like a brush of greatness, be sure to thank her if you do make it out to an event and enjoy it. (And she didn’t put a gun to my head to write this; I totally started it before she got here.)
September 18th, 2006
Originally uploaded by head.zoo.keeper.
My friend, neighbor, and a fellow Co-Director at Locus Arts, Jane Kim is running for San Francisco School Board! I recently had the chance to read her platform on her site, entitled “Working Together to Fix Our Schools”. I couldn’t help but notice one distinct parallel, among others, between both the use of technology to make media and local politics here in San Francisco; the keyword being democratization. (That is, I found it impressive that Jane’s campaign did outreach to the bloggers and not necessarily mainstream media, with thanks to MJ.) Using grassroots means to deliver huge impact it is not only a reflection of the fact that Jane “gets it” (after all, she is also a blogger herself), but isn’t this what technology lately has been all about?
And speaking of the democratization of media and the web in so many words, it was good to run into independent journalist and recently imprisoned vlogger Josh Wolf again at the event, who’s been fighting for his constitutional rights (and yours and mine for that matter) since I last saw him. He’s a free man and out on bail for now. Let’s hope it stays that way.
September 17th, 2006
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