So It Goes

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Listen: One of the greatest American writers of the last century is no longer with us.

Billy was working on his second letter when the first letter was published. The second letter started out like this:

“The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just the way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.

“When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is ‘So it goes.’”

Slaughterhouse-Five, 1969

God bless you, Mr. Vonnegut.

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death | kurt vonnegut, jr.

San Francisco Values

Sunday, April 8, 2007

Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle, Front page, above the fold:

A City Hooked on Salmon

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photos | salmon | san francisco chronicle

Naked!!

Wednesday, April 4, 2007

If the site looks different today, don’t worry, it isn’t broken.

It’s just CSS Naked Day 2007 — a day when web-standards-loving web designers take off their stylesheets and parade their nude html content for the world to see.

I won’t pretend that my code is the most semantic there is, and I’ve got a few validation errors that I’ve never bothered to fix. But it’s still pretty readable, no?

Update: Naked Day is now over. Obviously, the stylesheet’s got the site covered again.

2 Ripples Tags
css naked day | site news | web design

In Which I Have a Fantasy Involving Bush’s WHIP

Saturday, March 31, 2007

I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, but I’ve been the world’s boringest blogger lately.

I do feel a little bad about this since I know that a few of my friends have recently recommended this site to a few of their friends, not realizing just how badly I’ve lost my mojo.

So it goes, I guess.

Since I’m always looking for ways to improve, I think I’ve found a way to be even more boringester.... 

Writing about baseball.

It’s opening day, so I could bore you with my thoughts about how the Red Sox will fare this year. But that’s not nearly mindnumbing enough.

To really drive away my last few remaining readers, I need to aim higher. Yep, that’s right. We’re not just talking baseball here, but fantasy baseball.

Most of you have tuned out already, and that’s a perfectly reasonable reaction. For the one or two of you who are still interested, I’ve hidden the details of my first foray into the dark netherworld of fantasy baseball below the fold.

You can’t say I didn’t warn you…

What was that about a WHIP?

Wow. You must be either bored or a baseball fan. Or both.

First things first… I’ve never done fantasy baseball before, so I could be going about this all wrong. And I might very well lose enthusiasm for this within the first few weeks. We’ll see.

League One

The first league is an ESPN league that a friend from church roped me in to joining. It’s eight teams in a head-to-head format (which I don’t have a good feel for yet), and it has a few funky custom categories like fielding percentage, WHIP and holds. It was a live draft, which was a bit of an adventure.

Anyhow, here’s the team I’m starting the season with:

C - Ramon Hernandez
1B - Carlos Delgado
2B - Chase Utley
SS - Jimmy Rollins
3B - Garrett Atkins
OF - Manny Ramirez
OF - Adam Dunn
OF - Jeff Francoeur
UTIL - David Ortiz
Bench - Alex Rios (OF)
Bench - Willy Taveras (OF)
Bench - Lyle Overbay (1B)
Bench - Ty Wigginton (1B,2B,3B)

SP - Chris Carpenter
SP - Brandon Webb
SP - Dan Haren
SP - Brett Myers
SP - Dave Bush
RP - Jonathan Papelbon
RP - Chris Ray
RP - Akinori Otsuka
RP - Pat Neshek

DL - Eric Gagne

I really don’t know what to expect with this format, but I’m thrilled with my starting rotation (4 of the 5 are starting on opening day!) and psyched to have Manny, Papi, and Paps on the team.

League Two

As long as I was going to be following baseball for one league, I figured that adding a second wasn’t going to be too much additional work. So I joined an eight-team points league on Yahoo with some folks from the Arts and Faith board.

The tricky thing with this league is that there are a lot of point categories, and they’re weighted. The roster is also larger than the first, and there are tighter games/innings limits. The fun part so far has been that since it was an auto-draft, I’ve had to do some wheeling and dealing to balance my team out a bit. Anyhow, here’s the team:

C - Victor Martinez (via trade: Jeff Francoeur/Anibel Sanchez)
1B - Paul Konerko
2B - Chase Utley
SS - Miguel Tejada
3B - Garrett Atkins
IF - Joe Crede (3B)
OF - Matt Holliday
OF - Grady Sizemore
OF - Michael Cuddyer
OF - Nick Swisher
UTIL - Bill Hall (SS,3B, OF eventually)
Bench - Jason Varitek (C)
Bench - Lyle Overbay (1B)
Bench - Mike Lowell (3B)
Bench - Open J.D. Drew (OF)

SP - Roy Halladay (via trade: Michael Young)
SP - Ben Sheets
SP - Curt Schilling
SP - Cole Hamels
SP - Dave Bush
RP - Joe Nathan
RP - Jonathan Papelbon
Bench - Huston Street (RP)
Bench - Akinori Otsuka (RP)

It’s a nice outfield, I guess. I’m still sorting out my bench. Once the trades go through, I’ll probably pick up an extra outfielder, but I’m not sure yet.

I will say this: as awesome as my starting five were on the first team, I’ve managed to put together a complete staff of pitchers who do nothing but throw strikes. We’re talking 2006 numbers like 8.12 K/9, 1.7 BB/9 and a 4.8 K/BB ratio. That’s just a few strikes short of Santana territory. For the entire staff!

So that should be fun.

If you’ve read this far, you’re definitely a bored baseball fan. So… Do you see anything I’m missing on that second team that I should try to shore up with my bench?

And yes, this post was mostly an excuse to use that headline.

Play ball!

UPDATE (04-02): I’ve now filled the open spot on my bench with J.D. Drew.

2 Ripples Tags
baseball | fantasy baseball

Evidence That God Might Not Be Listening When We Pray “Lead Us Not Into Temptation”

Friday, March 23, 2007

Is there any other possible explanation for me discovering GodTube on a slow Friday afternoon?

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christianity | faith | godtube | videos | wacky christians

Mashaboom! Ahhhh!

Thursday, March 15, 2007

This works way better than it should… Feisty Stevens: The Zombies Are Inside Out (via Opus)

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feist | mashups | mp3 | music | sufjan stevens

Occupational Hazard

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Paula Poundstone says the reason why adults ask children what they want to be when they grow up is simple: they’re looking for ideas.

I guess that’s comforting. I’m 32, after all, and hell if I know.

Days like today, though, make me wish that I could be an astronaut. Or a thoracic surgeon. Or a sword swallower.

There are excellent reasons why I’m none of those things, chief among which is the fact that I’d be catastrophically bad at each of them.

All I’m saying is that it would be really nice to find an occupation someday where my clients won’t be tempted to think that they can do my job better than I can.

5 Ripples Tags
web design

Context Matters

Friday, March 2, 2007

There’s something disturbing about that poster in the McDonald’s window.

It’s not the headline at the top that says “Celebrate Abundance.” Although if that were the point of the poster, it would admittedly be six kinds of troubling.

And it’s not that the rest of the poster is devoted to celebrating the Chinese New Year. That’s just strange, seeing as how McDonald’s doesn’t serve any food that you’d think of as Chinese. (Then again, they’ve apparently got a franchise in the Forbidden City now, so who am I to quibble?)

No, what’s truly disturbing about this display is that someone has taken this poster, which proudly extols 2007 as the “Year of the Pig,” and placed it right next to a large advertisement for… the Sausage McGriddle.

Lovely. Let’s just say that next year can take its time.

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ad wizards | mcdonald's | signs | signs gone wrong

Dreaming About Music on a Rainy Saturday Night (or, I’ve Got My YouTube to Keep Me Warm)

Saturday, February 10, 2007

It’s been raining for days here, and it’ll probably keep raining through the weekend. I don’t know that it’s necessarily the rain’s fault that I don’t have anything of substance to write, but it makes for a convenient scapegoat.

I do, however, have a few tasty music tidbits. Lordy, do I have tidbits....

Feist!

For example, Feist announced the tracklist from her upcoming album, The Reminder. And I’ve already seen more than half of the songs live!

Back in December, when we saw her open for Death Cab for Cutie, she mentioned that she’d just finished the album and then went on to play something like six new songs. Here’s “I Feel It All” and “Sea Lion Woman” for your anticipatory excitement:

(There’s more where that came from… the whole set in six parts. Enjoy!)

Iron & Wine!

In other album news, Sam Beam played the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee this week and informed the audience that his new record will be called “The Shepherd’s Dog.” No official release date yet, but I’m awfully excited about this. He played eight new songs, including one called ”Flightless Bird, American Mouth.” Since YouTube doesn’t want to let me embed that track, you get to see Sam rock the falsetto on “Upward Over the Mountain” (quite possibly my favorite Iron & Wine song):

Radiohead?

This probably means nothing, but Amazon.co.uk lists the new Radiohead album for pre-order. They claim it will hit August 6 on EMI (in the UK, one assumes). Seems a little premature, since they don’t have a title, much less (as far as I know) a contract with a label. Well, that and they haven’t even finished recording. All I know is, the sooner I get studio versions of “15 Steps” and “Down Is the New Up,” the happier I’ll be.

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feist | iron and wine | music | radiohead | videos | youtube

I’d Skip the Barrel Tasting if I Were You

Tuesday, February 6, 2007

The NRA Wine Club — because nothing demonstrates your love for guns and America better than a 1999 Château Pomeaux Pomerol.

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absurd products | guns | nra | wine

Now All I Need Is More Time and Money

Monday, February 5, 2007

Some of the greatest products seem obvious in retrospect. The truth is, simple, elegant solutions to the obvious are a lot harder than you’d think. So when someone creates something in this category, it’s well worth celebrating.

Here’s an example of what I mean....

I’ve always found it a bit of a challenge to keep abreast of upcoming concerts. I’m subscribed to dozens of band and venue email lists, I scan the alternative newsweeklies for concert calendars, and I’ll occasionally drop by something like Pollstar to see what might be on the horizon. But I have to filter through a lot of listings I don’t care about, and when I find concerts, I don’t always remember to add them to a useful calendar.

What I’ve needed is a tool that would aggregate upcoming concert calendars and personalize a calendar for me, based on artists that I listen to. Sounds great, except most tools require me to do a lot of initial training before they will know to look for particular artists. It has to be easier, right?

It is.  In fact, it’s downright obvious.

This past week, I stumbled across iConcertCal, an iTunes plug-in for Mac and Windows that will build an upcoming concert calendar based on — wait for it — the artists in your iTunes library.

It’s a quick installation, and it just works. A few minutes after downloading it, I had a pretty impressive calendar in front of me. 

Upcoming shows for February.

It’s extensive, but it’s by no means exhaustive. For example, it hasn’t yet picked up Patty Griffin’s concert at the Warfield on March 16, which is odd, since that’s a pretty major venue.  But that’s a minor complaint, and one that will probably diminish in later versions.

Now I just need to find the time, energy and money to see more shows.  Fortunately, the calendar doesn’t retain past concert info from week to week, so I don’t even remember all the great stuff I missed last week.

6 Ripples Tags
concerts | iconcertcal | itunes | music

Groundhog Day

Saturday, February 3, 2007

Phillip Carter, who has served in Iraq with the 101st Airborne, explains that “Groundhog Day” (the movie, not the holiday) has become a useful part of our military’s vocabulary:

Groundhog Day is now an important part of the soldiers’ lexicon — use it in a sentence in Iraq, and everyone will instantly know what you mean. I would even say that it ranks up there with “FUBAR” or “BOHICA” as immortal parts of the American soldier’s vernacular. I’ve heard soldiers from the rank of private through colonel use the term. (For more on the modern soldier’s patois, see this LA Times listing of soldier slang by Austin Bay, which includes Groundhog Day as an entry.) That’s because “Groundhog Day” does more than describe the situation — it also comments on it. When a soldier gripes that today is another “Groundhog Day,” he’s also making a statement about his perception of events. It may be that he perceives a kind of stasis in the mission, or the lack of change/progress. This soldier may also be making a statement about futility — that we’re going through the same motions, day after day, only to make no difference. Or the soldier may just be griping, a time-honored tradition in the American military. I’ve even heard it used positively, i.e. “We’re going to slog through each day, just like in Groundhog Day, and eventually we’re going to make a difference.” It’s just a great all-purpose military term, one of many to emerge from this war.

Maybe it’s a hopeful metaphor, maybe it’s not. In the words of Dustin Hoffman’s character from Stranger Than Fiction, “The thing to determine conclusively is whether you are in a comedy or a tragedy.”

If you’re keeping score at home, Bill Murray was in a comedy.

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iraq | language | movies | politics | war

Friday Random 10 (Unchained Melodies)

Friday, January 19, 2007

Lack of snow be damned, we’re Tahoe-bound this weekend. While a little extra moisture in the air might make snowshoeing a bit more enjoyable, at least we won’t have to worry about this. Or this.

I just put together an iPod playlist that I’m optimistically calling “Unchained Melodies.” It’s four days of music for a two-day trip, but who’s counting?

Let’s give her a trial run and see what the first ten songs might look like....

  1. Corona – Calexico
  2. Renaissance Affair – Hooverphonic
  3. Uncle Walter – Ben Folds Five
  4. Sing You Sinners – Erin McKeown
  5. Master and Everyone – Bonny ‘Prince’ Billy
  6. La to the Left – Lyle Lovett
  7. Off the Rails – The Notwist
  8. One Foot in Front of the Other – Bright Eyes
  9. I Want to Sing that Rock and Roll – Gillian Welch
  10. Ngankarrparni (Sky Blue - Reprise) – Peter Gabriel

That’ll do. Tahoe Ho!

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friday random 10 | memes | music
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