This guy apparently made a PBX application to trap telemarketers and posted an audio file that he claimed was an Indian telemarketer interacting with his system. The thing is, the person playing the telemarketer has a horrible Apu-style accent that is quite obviously fake. Maybe it only sounds fake to a macaca, because it’s being linked to as real by Boing Boing, Waxy, Daring Fireball, Coudal Partners, and it’s got 2800 diggs. Can’t blame ‘em though, all those injuns look sound alike!

Addendum: the original post has been updated to clairfy that the audio clip isn’t real. I was surprised how many people couldn’t tell. The story now has 3000+ diggs, with comments from diggers like “All you people who say it sounds like a fake accent have obviously never spoken to Dell customer support. I’ve talked to guys that sound just like that.” Meh.. Let’s go to brunch!

Filed under: all talk | 1 Comment
Tagged: bigotry

I signed up tikirobot.net for “Google Apps for Your Domain” to see what all the fuss is about. It’s pretty cool! You get mail from Gmail, calendaring from Google Calendar, and Google Talk, and Google Page Creator, if you want that. The signup process is pretty painless, given what they’re providing.

This is my third try at Google Calendar and it’s finally growing on me. A few months back, support for Safari was shaky and I couldn’t get the “Quick Add” feature to work. Now Safari works pretty well, but the only way I could a create a new calendar was to use Firefox. Also, the Quick Add defaults are not very geek friendly at this point. The only dates I ever need to remember are my sister’s birthday, my mom’s birthday, the raj+jess aniversary and … well, I guess that’s the only three I could think of at the moment. Anyway, in Quick Add speak that would be something like “raj+jess anniversary August 7 yearly”. And it does create an event with that title on that day. But the default reminder is just 30 minutes!!! That’s not much time for an anniversary! :-) So you have to go to the event and change the reminder, and confirm that yes, you want to be reminded a week ahead of time for all future instances, etc, etc. I think it ends up being more work than just adding the event normally. So being able to specify reminder stuff in Quick Add would be nice. I expect I’m not the only one that would like Google Calendar to make it look like I’m remember birthdays, so they might as well be special cased in Quick Add. It’s all about the CLI.

Anyway, you get all the Google productivity stuff but it looks like it’s coming from your domain. That’s pretty sweet for a small business or even a whole school. Let me know if you want test drive a TikiRobot Google Apps account …

Link to Google Apps.

Filed under: all talk, lifehacking | 6 Comments

Filed under: tronix | 1 Comment

Bay Area AC Transit buses will start testing free wifi on a fleet of 79 buses and are hoping to fully rollout the service in mid-fall according to this Engadget post. Although I’m pretty psyched about wifi on Caltrain, I’m a little skeptical about this one since most buses aren’t set up for someone to comfortably do work on a laptop. but who knows…maybe it’ll work.

Filed under: bay area, transportation | 1 Comment

Filed under: beats, video | 3 Comments

• Saturday, Sept 2nd: N Judah - Documentary filmmaker Sam Green’s meditation on the N Judah line, showing at the Bernal Heights Outdoor Cinema
• SF Railway Museum to open Labor Day Weekend. They have video of Market St. from 1905!
• The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition “has completely free rein at City Hall. No one challenges them”
• 15 pedestrians and 1 bicyclist killed in SF auto accidents this year, and it’s only August :(
• How to improve MUNI? Make it free? Or privatize? Did I really just post three Chron links in a row?

Filed under: transportation, upcoming | 5 Comments

Here is a video of the first test drive of the Neverwas Haul, a three-story, steam-powered Victorian mansion on wheels. Check out these photos, and look for it on the playa!

Filed under: transportation | 1 Comment

The Autobots (warning: myspace linky) invaded Mighty Breaks on Friday. We showed up dressed as Decepticons and stormed the stage! Pics! More pics!

Filed under: beats | 3 Comments

Mike explored an abandoned warehouse full of beautiful graffiti and took lots of pictures:

Filed under: doodles, excursions | 2 Comments
Tagged: mike

This is a painting that I bought from Jesse Reno, an artist I discovered on myspace a while back and it finally arrived this week! I love all of his beautifully strange and scribbly paintings, but this one in particular made me want to laugh and cry at the same time (for very personal reasons), so I had to get it. In addition to the paintings, you’ll also find his work on skate decks, toys, tshirts, large scale urban murals and in a new Fantagraphics book coming out this fall called Beasts.

oh and be sure to check out his music too. he’s got some enigmatically moody tracks to match his paintings over here. i like the one called may :-)

Filed under: beats, doodles, inspiration | 4 Comments

Miss Tookie is a “69 yr old woman” who sends voice messages through SayNow to T-Wil, a 17 year old kid on MySpace. I left him a comment and asked if Miss Tookie could send me a message too and this is what she said to him.

I even offered her a year’s supply of preparation-H, but no go (cause i’m too old for her or something)

btw, we’ve recently added some new features that you can try if you’d like. You can now…

(more…)

Filed under: all talk | 5 Comments

Filed under: code code | 3 Comments

Did you know that Mr. Foo has a summer house on the moon? And did you know he was fireproof? And made of lutefisk?

Learn all this, and much more, at Mr. Foo Facts! Be sure to add your own little-known fact about Mr. Foo!

(See also Chuck Norris Facts and Bruce Schneier Facts)

Filed under: all talk | 2 Comments

Just got back from a short but very sweet camping trip in the mokelumne wilderness (just south of tahoe)! we camped by lake winnemucca, a pristine alpine lake that’s only a 3 mile hike from the parking area by woods lake. It’s supposedly crowded on weekends but we arrived on Sun so it was quiet and peaceful. There were still patches of snow on the ground and wildflowers were in bloom everywhere. And even though we camped by the water’s edge, the air was crisp and dry (and bug free!) so we got to sleep outside my tent at night and stare up at the sky before falling asleep. I loooooove not having to sleep in a tent. It was beautiful.

Filed under: bay area, excursions | 7 Comments

Check out Mike Estee’s pretty pictures of the Ranch art opening!

Filed under: inspiration | 5 Comments
Tagged: rAnCH

Man, I need to start taking a camera with me when I go out…

Kurtis Blow, “The Original Ladies Man,” was at Club Mighty tonight. Imagine Frank Sinatra coming out for a revival except black, representing Harlem, and rapping. The “Ladies Man” did a medly of some Old School hip hop classics and then did some of his own hits (1979!!!). Kurtis highlighted the virtues of positive hip hop and brought on some old school breakers on stage to show how the B-Boys get down.

Huh, huh, huh, huh.. yes y'all

If I ruled the world, was king on the throne
I'd make peace in every culture, build the homeless a home
I'm not runnin, for Congress or the President
I'm just here, to tell the world, how my story went
You see - first it was a dream, I was livin in Rome
And then I moved to London, bought a brand new home
And everywhere I went, I drew lots of attention
Like a stretch limousine, one of those new inventions

To the Beat ya’ll …. keep it rockin’ to the beat

Filed under: beats | 1 Comment

SRL San Jose 2006 Setup (Thursday)

Originally uploaded by Laughing Squid.

Scott Beale has setup photos of the SRL show online. I can’t wait!

Someone please bring a video camera! I think we’re going to need the video to show our kids, and our kids’ kids.

“Look children! Back on Earth there was this really boring place called San Jose. Then one day the machines came…… That’s why live here now, forever orbiting the smoldering hunk of our ex-planet :(”

Filed under: tronix, upcoming, why are we here? | 1 Comment

So, I have to admit that the zeroOne exhibit in San Jose was slightly depressing today…and not depressing in a compelling sort of way, which was too bad. (the projects at the ranch were a lot more interesting!) BUT! There was a really mesmerizing exhibit of projections by Jennifer Steinkamp at the sj museum of art which was unexpected (and totally worth seeing in person as the pics don’t do it justice).

Filed under: no code | 1 Comment

It’s made out of tubes for a reason, people! Please refrain from using the internet for non-porn purposes. Thankee. (via Jim)

Filed under: video | 2 Comments

ZeroOne is an international art & technology festival that’s happening in San Jose this week so my office is taking the day off tomorrow to check it out! Since I was enlisted to organize the day out, I thought I’d post some of the things I culled over here too (these are sort of biased towards location based, sound, and telephony projects, cause well, that’s what we do at work. But there are lots of other neat projects to check out!)

At the San Jose Museum of Art as part of the Edge Conditions exhibition

• Listening Post
  is an “art installation that culls text fragments in real time from thousands of unrestricted Internet chat rooms, bulletin boards and other public forums. The texts are read (or sung) by a voice synthesizer, and simultaneously displayed across a suspended grid of more than two hundred small electronic screens.” Sort of like We Feel Fine but amplified!

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Filed under: cartography, design, science, tronix, upcoming | 6 Comments

not yet, but very likely in two months according to this article!! They tried it out last week and apparently it went well. “The train reached 79 mph while testers…watched streaming video, composed e-mail and completed a large file download at broadband speeds.” Caltrain says it won’t charge extra for the service. Now if only they’d add extra bike cars so we’d all fit on the express train in the morning, it would be perfect!!

Filed under: bay area, transportation | 7 Comments

According to this SPUR report, the 38 Geary travels an average of 5.3mph through downtown during peak times. Ouch!

I take the 24-Divisadero a lot since it runs by my house, so I decided to calculate its average speed. I used the awesome Gmaps Pedometer and to calculate route length: the 24-Divis travels 6.7 miles from Bayview to Pac Heights. The bus that leaves 3rd and Palou at 12:02 arrives at Jackson and Webster 12:49, which means the 24-Divis goes 8.5mph. Well, it’s faster than walking!

Somewhat related to Gmaps Pedometer, bikely is a site that uses Gmaps for sharing cool bike routes. There aren’t a lot of SF routes posted there. Someone should post the butter lap!

Filed under: transportation | 3 Comments
Tagged: muni

HTML Canvas gives JavaScript apps a 2D graphics API, and it works great in Firefox, Safari, Opera, and OmniWeb, but not IE. Unfortunately that means Canvas doesn’t work in most people’s browers.

ExplorerCanvas is a great Google Code project that enables Canvas in IE! The only code change necessary is to add the folowing line to your html:
<!--[if IE]><script type=”text/javascript” src=”excanvas.js”></script><![endif]–>

(that [if IE] stuff is an IE-only preprocessor command..)

Filed under: code code | 1 Comment

Filed under: archive, books, inspiration, tronix | 5 Comments

Two Fabulous Nites! Two Fabulous Floors of cATacLySmIc Creation!

Come to the Cataclysmic Megashear Ranch to meet the Ranch Hands and view their Art.

CMR, nestled in the heart of scenic Bayview, has long been home to shady characters and dubious activities. This is your chance to see the latest crop of manufactured handiwork from the artists currently in residence.

Opening Day:
Sunday, August 6th, 3p - 9p

Closing Night:
Thursday, August 10th, 6pm - Midnight
Live Bands: SF Cattle Company and Babyshakers

NEWLY ADDED/AMENDED:
Dave Cherry - Comic Art
Kiki Pettit Jewell - Neon and plasma sculptures
Scott Bartlett Jewell - Turbo jet engine: Turbo from a car, metal, and ingenuity
Paba Free - Interactive Sound Installation
Dominique Hatt - “Floating dream light device” 2000-2006
Elizabeth Dougherty - birdbath, candlestick, fountain and copper framed photo.

PREVIOUSLY LISTED:
Carl Copek - “CMRetrospective - sights n’ sounds 1995-2006″
Nick Thompson - “You are Here” Installation
Mike McCabe - Time Lapse Animation of Atmospheric Strata
Max Carlson - Time Lapse Animation of Kingdom Plantae
John Doe - “Video Feedback - Realtime interactive video kaleidoscope surprises and briefly entrances most hipsters”.
Barbobot - “Creature” An installation of lightbulbs and feedback sensors which create an intimate environment for the viewer.
Furry - “Garden Tub and Environs” Glowy lights, silk plants and clawfoot.
Michael Ang - “Interactive video installation and/or a blinky light thing”
Hillary Seidner - “LED chandelier”
Nurse Saz - Stories and microbial organisms from the Congo
Uncle Kruddy - Mixed Media
Kathryn Arnold - Collection of Paintings
Lisa Pimental - Mixed Media
Pernilla Persson - Mixed Media Photos
Mauricia Gandara - Mixed Media
Mr. Foo - I don’t know what he’s showing but I bet it is very Bright and goes crackle or boom

Filed under: upcoming | 5 Comments