Zoom, Zoom, Zoom

June 9, 2009

I started using Safari 4.0 yesterday, and I like what I see so far. The new Javascript interpreter is fast. The controls for Google Maps are so quick they’re frightening. Just try using your scroll wheel (or two-finger gesture on the trackpad of your new non-removable-battery MacBook Pro) to zoom in. If there’s a faster way to reach the surface of the earth from space, I’m sure Burt Rutan is working on it.

Err, the opposite, I’m sure he’s working on the opposite. Sheesh.

Anyway, I will leave you with the coolest, blockiest typeface I have ever seen in my life. Seriously, check out these titles:

Golden Gate Bridge Plaque

Beautiful. Let’s get a little closer, shall we?

PAST OFFICERS, PAST DIRECTORS

And once more, for the people in the balcony:

DIRECTORS detail

Man.

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The One In Which Dane Discusses AT&T Service Plans for Five Hundred Words, Much To Everyone’s Dismay

June 8, 2009

Well shucks. I was just about ready to toss my first-generation iPhone down a well, until I dug a bit further into how much this new service plan was going to cost me.

All I can say is, ouch.

Right now I’ve got 450 anytime minutes and 5,000 night-and-weekend minutes for $39.99 a month. In addition I have my iPhone data plan, which includes 200 text messages, for $20 a month. Finally, I do a lot of dialing across multiple time zones, and so to keep those long family conversations from bankrupting my lavish estate I have early nights and weekends for an extra $8.99 a month.

This comes to a grand monthly total of $68.98, or approximately $72 after those bullshit fees. The last I heard we had finally finished paying off the Spanish American War, and so the phone companies have been quietly rewriting their terms and conditions such that they are no longer charging you recovery fees for the taxes they incur, but service fees for whatever the hell they want. It was this breach of contract that allowed me to duck out of my Sprint contract back in January 2008 and avoid their $200 early termination fee.

So. The data plan for the iPhone 3G bumps everything up an extra $10 a month to $30. Now, from what I’ve heard 3G is pretty freakin’ amazing compared to EDGE, but unfortunately I never seem to live or recreate in a place that supports 3G (San Francisco, of course, being a civilized anomaly in my trek through the backwaters of America).

Thus, for my purposes it would be an extra $10 a month for the privilege of potentially enjoying a service that I will never get to use. Now, I do get other amazing things with an iPhone 3G S, such as GPS and voice control and more storage space and a compass and a faster CPU and a non-recessed headphone jack, but it hardly seems prudent that I should reward AT&T on a monthly basis for enjoying a set of features that has nothing to do with their service.

What’s more, I would have to pay an extra $5 a month to get the 200 text messages that are currently included in my (cheaper) data plan. Now, I don’t text much, but I find it indispensable when coordinating with friends, or sharing short bursts of information that don’t require a proper phone call. Indeed, it is criminal that they charge money for something that rides as heavy as a hobo fart on the network’s backchannel and costs them nothing to support. That said, if I have to pay for texting I want a flat rate, as the last thing I want to think about when I’m composing a text is whether or not it’s worth 25 cents.

I have been with AT&T long enough that I qualify for the $199 pricing on the new phone. The question is, then, how enthusiastic I am about getting burned for an extra $180 a year for the same mobile service that I currently enjoy (as 3G does not yet penetrate the windswept mountaintops and tree villages that I typically inhabit). To put it in perspective, that’s a monthly payment I could spend on hosting my intertubes at Media Temple.

Which. If things go as planned, both these expenditures might well be worth their while.

In other news, I wrote my first iPhone app today.

Filed under Civilization, Consumerism, Nerd | Comments (2)

Urban Excursion

June 7, 2009

You can tell a lot about a neighborhood in San Francisco based on how frequently they need to clean the streets. While biking around Sea Cliff today in a super-ritzy part of town I noticed that they have scheduled street cleanings twice a month.

My street? Three times a week.

I went for another bike ride today, starting out towards SoMa then up Embarcadero into Fisherman’s Wharf. I took lunch at the In-N-Out Burger, based on its legendary status in certain enclaves. A number of folks from WWDC were haunting the joint, along with perhaps the rest of humanity. Tables were scarce, and people were hunched over their claim hissing at passersby who would dare wrest it from their filthy clutches. I stood and waited for fifteen minutes in that awful purgatory between “In” and “Out”, getting jostled and manhandled by every other packet of flesh in the joint. That’s the thing about cities. No matter where you are, someone else always wants to occupy the space that you are taking up.

As for the burger? Not very good. The fries have promise, being truly potato-based in origin, but mine were as though they had been dipped in tepid oil and set to soak through their paper basket.

I continued on my journey, stopping at the Palace of Fine Arts on my way to the Golden Gate Bridge. I crossed over this time around, buffeted by strong winds for the entire length, and got to witness firsthand the circus that is the parking lot at the north overlook. I crossed back and continued west to Land’s End, a decidedly classy locale where a woman with a solid gold tooth asked if I could point her to the nearest restroom.

I dropped in at Seal Rocks and headed south past the Cliff House, and swung back east through the south edge of Golden Gate Park. Following my usual route I went out through the Panhandle, and took the Wiggle to Sanchez to Delores Park. It was here that the jeans got noticeably tighter, the keys began dangling on carabiners clipped to belt loops, and the U-locks were safely stowed in the left back pocket. I spun down Valencia and was soon hauling my (beautiful, lightweight) bicycle up to our third-floor flat.

All in all it was probably a 25-mile bike ride, and I’m hoping I slathered myself with enough sunscreen to stave off any further burns. My arms are peeling like crazy after last week’s ride, and everywhere I go I leave a disgusting trail of skin in my wake.

Kate noted how funny it was, that I had to move to one of the biggest cities in the country to become active in the outdoors again.

Filed under Biking, Civilization, Life, Outdoors, San Francisco | Comments (3)

Too stoked to stoke the stoke.

June 6, 2009

I had a fairly mellow day today, taking in the sights and sounds of my own neighborhood. I explored 24th Street and browsed the murals of Balmy Street, which celebrate the Hispanic heritage of this fine area in a lovely visual format.

Balmy Street Murals

Balmy Street Murals

What’s incredible, too, is the Google Street View of Balmy Street. It’s not nearly as cool as being there, but it’s still a pretty fine treat. If you haven’t played with the new Street View UI, do it now. It’s totally dope, and it addresses many of the reservations that had previously tempered my Street View stoke.

In other news, El Salvador took down Mexico in the World Cup qualifiers, and my neighborhood has been absolutely nuts in celebration. Really, it’s been like this all evening:

Man, I just can’t help but smile when diggin’ on people who are this stoked. Make sure to turn up the volume. If your ears don’t hurt, you don’t know what it’s really like.

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Sublety and Nuance in Physical Interaction

June 5, 2009

I had a great conversation during tea time at Adaptive Path this evening with Jesse James Garrett, about the role of subtlety and nuance in physical interaction design. Central to the conversation was Microsoft’s Project Natal, an upcoming system for the Xbox 360 that lets you use your full body to control games.

While large motions, like punching and kicking the air, make for an impressive flourish, it’s interesting to consider what a system like this would look like in a few years, as it becomes increasingly fine-tuned. What if it knows where each one of my fingers is, like a musical instrument? What kind of interactive applications could this have in a non-game environment? Or, as Jesse mused, how can we learn from gaming to bring more game-related themes, from the concept of play to the interactive vocabularies we establish therein, into everyday computer-mediated interactions?

Part of Jesse’s work on the Ajax approach to web development was based on a desire to make web interactions feel more game-like in nature. Before we had instant asynchronous updates, whether backed by XML or not, the web had a distinctly evaluative feel to it. The cost of submitting web input was high, as it resulted in a long pause before I would know whether or not my submission had been accepted. Games typically offer instantaneous feedback and so this delayed, high-cost transaction felt more like taking an exam than playing a game. Thus, the web-two-point-oh-social-media-user-generated-content revolution is not about Ajax or Prototype or Scriptaculous or jQuery or MooTools, but about removing the barriers of time and cost previously associated with contributing to the web.

And so, with sophisticated physical input devices on the horizon, how can we use the most familiar input devices ever, our own bodies, to enhance our computer-mediated experiences? Further, given the fine-grained control we have over our physical selves, how can we draw on the rich human tradition of having a body and allow people to interact with a system in a more subtle and nuanced manner?

Just something I’m pondering.

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I’ll bet you can’t guess how this one ends.

June 5, 2009

The new bike is fast. It shaved five minutes off my three-mile commute this morning.

Chris, John and I, in celebration of surviving our first week as interns, took the Muni from SoMa through Chinatown to Italytown to grab some tasty slices of pizza. We ate them in a park while an old woman lurked behind us, waiting impatiently for Chris and John to give her their hurriedly-emptied cans of soda. Meanwhile, I gestured at pigeons.

Then we went to a baseball stadium and watched the opera.

Filed under Life, San Francisco | Comments Off on I’ll bet you can’t guess how this one ends.

Spry. Or Perhaps The Faun.

June 4, 2009

Today I bid farewell to the Frankenbike, as my friend put the finishing touches on a more proper bike that he’s been building for me to use for my mighty summer. I talked to Kate, and she said the going price for a used bike in Walla Walla was about thirty bucks. I paid a bit more than that, but I shudder to think what a $30 bike transaction in this town would look like. It would definitely involve a stolen bike sold by a dangerous tweaker covered in scabs, who would demand that I meet him in the Tenderloin.

No. This bike is good and proper. Swift and nimble, it is a third the weight of the Frankenbike with a playfulness all its own. Small frame, large wheels, road tires, one speed, and one speed only. It has a lovely green finish and an aggressive racing posture, but most importantly it has brakes and it can stop.

I need to take this new bike for a good long spin before I can truly give it a fitting name, but that hasn’t stopped me from rolling a few around inside my head. You know, to see how they feel.

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Won’t you be my neighbor?

June 3, 2009

I’m proud to say that this all went down less than six blocks from my flat. Talk about busted.

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Tactile

June 3, 2009

This morning I learned that I might need to start dosing myself with caffeine before starting my daily bicycle commute. While traveling in a pack of bike commuters I realized I was pretty zoned out, which isn’t exactly the safest thing when biking in traffic. Things can turn gnarly in an instant, and it’s imperative that I stay in tune with my surroundings.

Nevertheless, I have learned a few things. While the working-class Mission hipsters like myself typically commute to downtown on Harrison, the hipster-class Mission hipsters commute on Valencia. Truly, the flow of bicyclists represent two totally different demographics depending on what street you take.

Tonight Chris and I grabbed some falafel goodness at Ali Baba’s Cave, and took in a late showing of Pixar’s Up, which was surreal, touching and absolutely beautiful. The story was heartfelt and lovely, and I couldn’t stop geeking out over the texture of everything. From paper to glass to fabrics to embroidery, everything had this complex richness to it that made it believably tactile. Incredible.

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If you want the scoop on where I live…

June 2, 2009

…YOU SHOULD GO HERE.

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