Click play to start!

Filed under: san francisco, video | 1 Comment
Tagged: robots

Filed under: all talk, no code, san francisco | 0 Comments
Tagged: robots

A few weeks ago, we hosted wine tasting at our house.
50 bottles of wine were consumed.
This is the only picture I took:

Filed under: food, san francisco | 1 Comment
Tagged: bernal , BernalingMan , wine

We are on the second day of our KenFlix subscription, and loving it! I was wondering if KenFlix was limited to just one movie per day, or if you could get a movie, watch it, and then immediately walk back to Four Star Video and get a new one. I told the folks at 4star we were going to have a KenFlix weekend where we would see how many movies we could watch in two days, and all three people working behind the counter said that was a perfectly great idea. Ridiculous!

So anyway:
(11 hours open per day) * (30 days per month) / (2 hours per movie) = 165 movies a month!

Filed under: all talk, san francisco, video | 0 Comments
Tagged: 4star , bernal , kenflix

Four Star Video has launched a subscription plan called KenFlix, and it appears NetFlix is about to lose the important Bernal Heights demographic.

The deal: $20/month for unlimited rentals, one out at a time.
Advantages of KenFlix: No waiting for DVDs to arrive in the mail. Video nerds can get 30 rentals a month if they go to 4star every day..
Disadvantages of KenFlix: 4star DVDs usually play in my player, unlike Netflix discs, which usually start to skip about half way through. This means whenever we pick a bad movie, we’ll actually have to watch the whole thing.

Filed under: san francisco, video | 5 Comments
Tagged: 4star , bernal , kenflix

The Silver Crest is so sketchy. It’s like Sketch Central. I’ve lived next to it for six years and had never been inside. But look at all that great neon! Their sign proclaims: “We Never Close”. We decide we have to go.

Friday night Sam was driving us back from the spaz party at the Li Po Lounge, and we pass the Silver Crest. We’re full of Mai Tais and thumpy beats, but Bob and I have the same thought. We have to go.

We walk in and transported fifty years into the past. There is a bar in the back with a crowded pool table, but it’s 2am and the bar is just closing. We grab a booth in the front. These jukebox things on every table:

It doesn’t work and and eats Bob’s quarter. That probably for the best, since the jukebox is full of with Greek waltzes.

The menu is written on the wall. The food isn’t cheap, but we hope it’s good. The coffee is a ridiculous $2.75. Even for diner coffee, it tastes like crap.

They have these old pinball machines, which mang decides to check out while we wait for the food. There is a sign saying you have to be over 21 to play. We ask the server why, and she says they don’t want to encourage the kids to gamble. Whatever. The kids are all at Li Po, anyway, playing dice for drinks.

The food comes out. I’m surprised by how bad it is, but I don’t know why. I guess I expect shitty diners to have great food. That is not the case tonight. My hotcakes arrive with an entire stick of “butter” on top, which promptly slides off onto the table as soon as the server sets them down.

I’m disgusted but Bob thinks we need to come back. The Silver Crest has donuts, and they might actually be good. Maybe we’ll bring our own coffee next time.

Filed under: excursions, food, san francisco, why are we here? | 3 Comments
Tagged: diner , silver crest

Go Brewster and Ralf!!

The Internet Archive, a San Francisco-based organization dedicated to preserving a record of the Internet and to increasing access to the Internet, today began offering free Internet service to public housing projects at speeds far greater than any other city resident can receive.

Valencia Gardens Housing, with 240 units, is the first area to be connected in a pilot project that expects to wire more than 2,500 units in the city in the next eight months, according to Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle.

What makes the project unique is that the apartments will be connected to the Internet, and to the educational resources at the Internet Archive, at 100 megabits per second (Mbits/second). That speed contrasts sharply with the normal Internet service offered by telephone companies, which is usually less than 6 Mbits/second.

The residents can instantly view DVD-quality videos of the thousands of lectures and other educational information from the Internet Archive’s collections, as well as traditional Internet access.

The Internet Archive is able to achieve this high speed by connecting the San Francisco municipal fiber optic network, which runs through the public housing developments, to an Archive switching center, which connects to the Internet.

“We are pleased to be the first non-profit organization to bring public housing online,” Kahle said.

He added: “We are excited to see much faster access to the Internet as a way to experiment with advanced applications, and are pleased that the underserved get first access to advanced technology.”

See also: NYTimes Bits Blog, The Reg, Cnet article by Greeter Dan.

Filed under: archive, san francisco | 1 Comment
Tagged: sflan

Last year a small crew showed up at Vermont St. after the official races ended, and we had an absolute blast. This year, the official races were on Vermont St., and it was awesome:

(click play to start) (link to other sizes)

Filed under: san francisco, transportation | 0 Comments
Tagged: byobw

We went to see modeselektor last night at Mighty! It was super-packed.. a huge crowd for a Wednesday:

The Camo Bus was rockin outside… I love the fact that no one complains that there is an absolutely thunderous soundsystem set up on the street :)

Here is a short video of modeselektor being introduced. The Mighty soundsystem absolutely crushes the little microphone in my camera, so this video is kind of pointless but still fun. What you can’t hear in the video is an insane amount of soul-destroying bass:

(click play to start video)

Filed under: beats, san francisco, video | 0 Comments
Tagged: mighty , modeselektor

This year’s Burnal Equinox event (called Whispered Dream) is going to be held at the Whisper Ultralounge, which sounds like one of the worst venues in SF for a burning man event.

Their webpage lists the “upscale dress code” as follows:

NO; Athletic/Sports Attire of any kind including expensive designer court shoes, Timberland and/or similar style Boots, Excessively Baggy Jeans, Dark Sunglasses, T-shirts, Athletic Apparel, and Most Hats (Fedora style top hats are acceptable). You’ll have to step it up if you wana step in.

Bwahahahaha… BM keeps getting less and less interesting to me.

Filed under: san francisco, sucky companies, upcoming | 0 Comments

Background
Our water has gunk in it (possibly due to this construction). This gunk gets caught in our kitchen faucet’s aerator, and if we don’t clean it out, the water flow will stop completely. Here is what the gunk looks like:

So we decided it was time to install a water filter. The easiest way to filter drinking water is to use a Britta and Pur pitcher, but these don’t work for me. I use them for a bit, and then get tired of changing the expensive replacement filters every month.

The water filter industry has a standard size for under-sink adsorption filters: 9 3/4″. These filters are similar to but much larger than the standard Britta pitcher-style filter, and they only need to be changed every 4-12 months (depending on filter type). You can buy 9 3/4″ filters from several different manufacturers, which helps keep the prices down.

Choosing a Filter

Deciding what kind of filter you need should be easy. In theory, you can call your water utility (or check their website), find out what contaminants are in your water, and then check which filters are certified by the NSF to filter out those contaminants.

I did a bunch of research and found that SF tap water is generally safe to drink. It is disinfected with Chloramine and contains trace amounts of parasites, copper, and lead. The SF PUC monitors Cryptosporidium and Giardia levels every two weeks, and their 2006 Water Quality Report (published 6/07 PDF) shows that all measurable contaminants are below maximum contaminant levels.

Even after finding that SF water is safe for us to drink, I decided to get an activated carbon filter in addition to a sediment filter, because I’m worried that chemicals might enter into the water main during construction, just as visible sediment enters into the water main. Also, I decided that activated carbon was really cool (one gram has a surface area of 500 m² - 1500 m²)!

Choosing a 9 3/4″ Filter Housing

My first thought was to get an OmniFilter OT32 for $140. This unit has a double housing that can fit 2 9 3/4″ filters, and it comes with a string-wound sediment filter and an NSF-certified 0.5-micron enhanced carbon block filter.

After some digging, I found I get a cheaper 2-filter housing from Pentek Filtration. I bought a BFS-201 housing (PDF) from FiltersFast for $57. It’s seems well-built and looks like this:

Installing the Filter Housing

The recommended way of using under-sink filters is to install a second, low-flow-rate faucet to get the maximum effect from your filter. I didn’t want to do this, because I didn’t want to drill a new hole through our granite countertop, so I investigated splicing the filter into our cold water line.

If we only wanted to filter sediment, we could easily add the filter to cold water line, because sediment filters can handle 10 gallons per minute, and our faucet only had a 2gpm flow rate.

Unfortunately, activated carbon filters only work at reduced flow rates. If you only want to filter for what the NSF calls “Aesthetic Effects” (Standard 42), then you can buy a carbon filter that works at 2gpm. But if you want to filter for things like lead, mercury, VOCs, asbestos, MTBEs, Cryptosporidium, and Giardia (what the NSF calls “Health Effects”, or Standard 53), then you have to reduce to the flow rate to 0.5-0.6 gpm.

We decided that it was OK to reduce the flow rate of the cold water at the faucet, since we will still have the full hot water flow rate for washing, and the dishwasher cold supply is already split off. This means we don’t need to drill for a new faucet.

The Pentek filter housing has two 3/8″ female NPT water connections. Our cold water line has a 1/2″ IP straight thread on the faucet side and a 3/8″ compression fitting on the other. To splice the housing into the cold water line, we need to add two 3/8″ NPT to 3/8″ compression adapters to the filter housing, using teflon tape to ensure a good seal:

Choosing a Sediment Filter
Now comes the fun part! We get to choose some filters. Since these are a standard size, we can choose from a bunch of brands, and mix-and-match. Sediment filters are very inexpensive. They are usually made of wound string, last for 10-15,000 gallons, and cost under five bucks. I got the Pentek CW-MF from FiltersFast for $3.30. Looking at the spec sheet, I should have gotten the WP-5 for $5.60, since it has a 5 micron rating instead of a 30 micron rating. It might not matter, since the water will be flowing through a carbon filter anyway. This filter is mostly to lengthen the life of the carbon filter.

Choosing an Activated Carbon Filter
The OmniFilter CB3 seems pretty good. It costs $36 dollars and has NSF Standard 42 and Standard 53 ratings to reduce Asbestos, Atrazine, Cyst, Lead, Lindane, Mercury, and VOCs, as well as Chloramine and Chlorine.

I found Pentek CBR2-10R, which is basically the same thing as the OmniFilter CB3, but it lacks the NSF Standard 53 rating. However, it costs only $17 at FiltersFast, and I decided it was good enough for me. It also has a built-in 0.6gpm flow restrictor, which makes sure you get the full effect of the filter.

After installing everything, this is how it looks:

The water definitely tastes different; it has a slightly-metallic aftertaste, similar to distilled water. I’m interested to see how much stuff the sediment filter catches after 3 months.

Costs
This is my bill from FiltersFast:

Filter Housing BFS0-201 $56.99
Carbon Filter CBR2-10R $16.95
Sediment Filter CW-MF $3.30
Filter wrench SW-1a $2.70
Shipping $1.99
retailmenot.com coupon -$5.00
Total $76.93

I also had to buy two 3/8″ compression to 3/8″ MPT adapaters for $4.79 and a couple hoses from Cole Hardware, bringing the total up to a hundred bucks.

Filed under: food, san francisco | 0 Comments
Tagged: activated carbon , howto , water filter

SF has a public transit problem. Muni has great coverage, but travel times across the city are unbearably long. BART and CalTrain are OK for getting to the burbs, but what if you want to go to the beach? Taxis are only for the incredibly wealthy, and they won’t come to my neighborhood on weekend evenings.

That’s why I created the San Francisco Subway. Completely underground, the SF Subway never gets held up in traffic. I can get from my house to the gym in one stop, or to the datacenter in two. Dogs are allowed, and Fort Funston is only a 12 minute ride from Bernal. Instead of traveling at Muni speeds (5.3 mph!), the SF Subway reaches speeds of 75mph between stops!

I drew the map in Gliffy, so let me know if you want to add a stop or a line, and I’ll send you the edit link.

Filed under: cartography, san francisco, transportation | 1 Comment
Tagged: map , subway

May, Jess, and I went to hear Alice Waters speak at Red Hill Books. It was packed! Here is the view from the very back:

Here is a strange thing with feathers, in a window display next door to Red Hill:

It was cold night! Even Zara needed a scarf!

Filed under: books, san francisco, zara | 0 Comments
Tagged: AliceWaters , bernal , RedHillBooks

May, Shag, and I went to the Creative Commons 5-Year Birthday Party and got to hear Lawrence Lessig announce a new CC License, CC Zero. Licensing a work under CC0 is similar to placing it in the Public Domain, but CC0 is meant to work better internationally. Did you know Germany (and maybe other EU countries) don’t allow authors to dedicate their own works into the public domain? I’m glad smart people are working on this problem!

The CC 5-Year party was cool, but the sound system was turned down so low that it was hard to hear Lessig and Gilberto Gil. Fortunately, DJ Spooky turned up the sound for his set, but that caused others to complain that they could no longer talk over the music.

Here’s the press release and wiki page for CC0 (where I got the CC0 image above). The tool to generate the CC0 machine-readable license should be available on Jan 15.

Lawrence Lessig’s blog has a list of the amazing number of announcements at the CC 5-Year party.

Filed under: archive, san francisco | 0 Comments
Tagged: CC0 , CCZero , CreativeCommons , lessig

In a bid to bring the Bay Area up-to-date with last century’s technology, Muni, Bart, and CalTrain will start accepting TransLink in the spring. The TransLink readers have already been installed on Muni lines for testing, and interestingly, they are installed on all doors, not just in the front. This should help loading times for crowded buses. Here is a pic of a TransLink reader in the back of the 9 San Bruno:

I’m glad I don’t have to commute on CalTrain anymore, but CalTrain riders will probably appreciate TransLink the most. CalTrain currently uses ancient technology to timestamp 10-ride tickets, similar to old-school time cards found in 1950’s office buildings. The timestamp machines are frequently broken, and the CalTrain conductors are assholes. Hopefully with TransLink, caltrain riders will never have to talk to a conductor again.

Filed under: bay area, san francisco, transportation | 2 Comments
Tagged: bart , CalTrain , muni , TransLink

After we went to The Missing Peace opening party, we went to see Daft Punk’s Electroma at the Clay Theater. Nate, Mario, Shag, Richard, Sonya met us there, but somehow we missed Aryana.

The DJ set before the movie was awesome. All movies need DJs, robots, and lasers.

Filed under: beats, photos, san francisco | 0 Comments
Tagged: DaftPunk , Electroma , film

May, Peliom, Barbara, Sasha, Mang, Greta, Furry, Lisa, Mr. Foo, Dodger, Herve, Jess, and I went to opening party for The Missing Peace: Artists Consider the Dalai Lama at YBCA. Paba Phree and Catweasel worked on this 32-channel sound/video installation:

The installation was wonderful, but it was too loud to fully hear the soundscape. We’ll have to go back when it’s less crowded. The other pieces were great as well!

Here are a few more pics I took before a security guard came and told me there was absolutely no photography allowed at YBCA.

Filed under: photos, san francisco, tronix | 1 Comment
Tagged: Catweasel , DalaiLama , PabaPhree , soundart , TheMissingPeace , videoart , YBCA

SoCha is a cozy cafe in Bernal that just opened up 2 weeks ago. The food and coffee seem to be standard cafe fare but some nice things about this place are:

1. live music almost every night! Here’s the schedule. I’m sitting in the cafe right now and a couple guys are playing the cello and piano.
2. free wifi…and magazines to peruse
3. a large back room with cozy bench seats.
4. a small beer and wine list.
5. movie night on wednesdays
6. unlike Ritual further up the street, it’s not totally packed. There are lots of tables!

I think there’s also a brunch menu on the weekends so we should come here for brunch one day!

Filed under: san francisco | 3 Comments
Tagged: bernal , cafe

sometime last week this amazing bronze spider [Crouching Spider (2003), Louise Bourgeois (b. 1911)] crawled onto the Embarcadero near Pier 14 in San Francisco. it’s just sitting there, waiting. like a scene from The Host: it appeared, people gathered, and some didn’t make it back - particularly the small ones. i was lucky … more photos. 

Filed under: photos, san francisco | 2 Comments
Tagged: public art

After the Earthlink/Google deal fell apart, Mayor Newsom took the matter of free city-wide WiFi directly to the people with Proposition J. The Opponents of J bring up several great reasons why Prop J isn’t the best idea. From the voter guide:

• Why should San Francisco turn over its public infrastructure to private corporations for their profit at our expense?
• Proposition J does not restrict a vendor like Google from monitoring users’ web-surfing habits.
• San Francisco already has a fiber optic network – let’s use and extend that instead.
  

BEWARE— NOTHING COMES FOR FREE!

Your HEALTH is AT RISK.

Are San Franciscans to be guinea pigs in a “blanket”of radiation?

Independent scientific studies show that radiation at the levels proposed is associated with increases in these negative health effects:

• cancer
• headaches
• dizziness
• sleep disturbances / insomnia
• childhood leukemia
• nerve damage
  

The wireless industry funded its own studies saying not to worry, just like tobacco,oil and pesticide companies. Who are you going to trust?

Fiber optic broadband is safer and more reliable.

Vote NO to WiFi radiation.

David Tornheim

Someone should have paid to include this comic by Wellington Grey in the voter guide.

Creative Commons Attirbution-NonCommerical licensed comic, resized to fit.

Filed under: comix, san francisco | 0 Comments
Tagged: babies , politics , WellingtonGrey , wifi

and on this night
did “PJ” and I go forth:
enrobed, and buzzing:
what would we find?

this cancelled holiday,
some bloody recent past:
this new top-down sanitation:
would it fly?
or, might
a hundred thousand frustrated planners
bust forth,
strutting where they could not ride?

we learned. the streets:
tranquil.
a few of us presented
different faces to the night,
but, mostly,
empty spaces where we once were,
some tourists,
some journalists,
a few mobile “Chicken John Johns”,
lots of cops.

some tentative reaching out -
as if
anything at all could happen,
focused violence or
friendly greetings:
friend or foe, both hidden,
no one could see, fearful,
but, some defied this
creeping numbness:
and happily swept the shrine
for our most honored holiday.
Trick or Treat.

Filed under: photos, san francisco, why are we here? | 0 Comments
Tagged: chicken john , halloween , hsag , trick or treat , words words

I’ve been teaching Zara how to catch the Ultimate disc.. she’s getting really good, even though the disc is three times larger than her head! Here are some videos of Zara playing catch on top of Bernal hill:

(click play to start) (link to other sizes)

Here is an earlier video of Zara learning how to catch a floppy puppy disc.

Filed under: san francisco, video, zara | 1 Comment
Tagged: bernal , frisbee , kindred , ultimate

We went to LoveParade last weekend and had a blast! The Unimog should be at City Hall every weekend!

Linky to photoset

Filed under: beats, photos, san francisco | 0 Comments
Tagged: loveparade , spacecowboys , unimog

Jess and I went to the Samavor Tea Lounge at Yerba Buena Gardens a few weeks ago.. Here are some pictures!

Filed under: food, photos, san francisco | 1 Comment
Tagged: brunch , samovar , yerba buena

The Fray audio archives are up on the Internet Archive. These recordings from Fray Day 8 San Francisco are superb! This was the last Fray Day, held in November 2004.

Kevin Smokler’s story is very touching. Unfortunately, the recording doesn’t do Kid Beyond’s set justice.

Part 1:
Part 2:

Filed under: all talk, beats, san francisco | 0 Comments
Tagged: fray