I haven’t yet made the perfect lemondrop, but now that I have a tree full of lemons and the recipe for perfect lemonade, maybe I can concoct a perfect lemondrop recipe :)

Filed under: tikibar | 1 Comment

Okay TR crew, given that this year’s themes for the LS party are “tropical, tiki, jungle, safari, pirate, and nautical,” we’d be totally remiss if we didn’t make an appearance in our finest grass skirts.

Filed under: tiki lifestyle, tikibar, upcoming | 4 Comments

We went for drinkies at the Presidio Social Club, a 40s-esque art deco bar that opened six months ago. The Presidio is a poor excuse for a national park, but hey, if you are going to sell out your national treasures, you might as well sell out in style!

Created with Paul’s flickrSLiDR.

Filed under: san francisco, tikibar | 0 Comments

At the Can’t Fail Cafe in Emeryville there’s a super yummy milkshake made with guinness stout, chocolate ice cream, and espresso. I think they gave it the perfect name.

Filed under: bay area, food, tikibar | 0 Comments
Tagged: coffee

What’s summer without a summer read and a little armchair travel. Apparently, this book has it all. Via Drawn…

James Teitelbaum and Santa Monica Press are pleased to announce the June, 2007 release of Tiki Road Trip 2, the follow-up to James Teitelbaum’s hugely successful book, Tiki Road Trip (Santa Monica Press, 2003).

Tiki Road Trip is your best - and only - comprehensive travel guide for those seeking a south seas adventure in the big city, an island escape from the urban jungle, or the location of the nearest metropolitan luau. At 360 pages (compared to 280 in the old edition) and packed with new images, this edition of Tiki Road Trip is a huge leap forward from the previous edition, and is absolutely mandatory summer reading.

Filed under: books, tiki lifestyle, tikibar | 1 Comment

Dodger came over yesterday with a Vex Robotics kit and we prototyped a Shaker Robot! It’s the first step in making a a fully-robotic tiki bar. We got the robot shaker to kind of shake up a drink, so we declared it sucessful and went to celebrate at Jasmine Tea House with mang and about 20 other people. Yay! Here are some notes for going forward:

• The current design calls for dressing up the shaker in a hula skirt and a coconut bra. For this to work well, we need to move the pivot point to the center.
• I was thinking about carving a wooden cam for some janky rotation-to-linear translation, but I think using a solenoid might make more sense, because then we can sync the shaker to music!
• We need to write some tiki music that our robot can play while shaking up a drink.
• We could also make a hula dancer robot that holds the shaker in her hands, but I think for now we should continue with the current plan: dressing up the shaker in a coconut bra.
• We got a lot done with our pair-hacking setup. Dodger does all the work, and I take all the credit :)

Filed under: tikibar, tronix | 3 Comments

I gave a short and silly opendork presentation at about TikiGraffiti last night. Here is a photo that Scott Beale of Laughing Squid took of me in front of Jonathan Moore’s and David Fine’s External Combustion Engine, an awesome machine made for monochrom’s Roböxotica festival.

Last night was awesome.. Dorkbot, monocrom, SRL, Electrum, Tamale Lady, Mooninites, Laughing Squid, robots that make music and robots that make tiki drinks…. Sometimes I love San Francisco!

Karen has a bunch of pictures, including a bunch from my opendork. Thanks to Karen Marcelo and Michael Shiloh for organizing, and thanks to all the awesome presenters :)

Filed under: all talk, no code, photos, san francisco, tikibar | 3 Comments

On our way to India we had a layover in London and decided to go out and explore the city. We had lunch near Paddington Station and our bartender poured pints of Guinness with clover leafs drawn in the bubbles!

The 2:1 exchange rate made our short adventure pretty expensive (2 fish & chips and 2 pints of Guinness were 25 pounds.. 50 bucks!). I think we managed to spend as much in London in 10 hours as we did in Delhi in 10 days! On the way back, we decided to not leave the airport.

Filed under: excursions, photos, tikibar | 2 Comments

We had sherpa soup with peliom a couple days ago.. followed by lemondrops for dessert! Lemondrops always remind me of Christmas..

Easy recipe for making mass quantities of lemondrops:

• One part vodka
• One part Odwalla lemonade
• Squeeze of lemon to counteract the excessive sweetness of the Odwalla
• Splash of orange liqueur or triple sec to taste.

We made a pitcher yesterday to take over for our weekly neighborhood dinner/doggie date. If you use the lemonade trick, you can prepare an entire pitcher in the amount of time that it usually takes to make one drink!

Filed under: tikibar | 2 Comments

peliom’s party last night was a doozy! We made hundreds of drinks at the bar, but in the process of making some mai tais, I destroyed the lime squeezer! Squeezing enough lemons and limes for a hundered drinks without a squeezer is *hard*. Here at TikiRobot, when the situation gets hard, we build robots.

Well, there’s no McMaster Barr (yet), but imagine how many drinks we can make with the RoboSqueeze3000, coming soon to a TikiBar near you!

Filed under: tikibar | 6 Comments

Did you know there is a conference on drinky-making robots taking place in Vienna on December 5??? Well, there is, and once again, our invite was “lost in the mail”. We’re not going to give up hope, however. We’ll be waiting by the phone.. waiting for their call.. it’s going to ring any minute now.. i just know it……… (via)

Filed under: tikibar, tronix, upcoming | 2 Comments

If you like voting by reading the endorsements, here is a rundown of how 20 different groups think you should vote.

That said, this year False Profit, LLC has released a voter guide. Although I know the LLC has my best interests at heart, I do not feel comfortable voting without knowing who the Space Cowboys are endorsing. Where’s my Unimog Voter Guide??

And what about the rAnCH v0tER GuiDE?? How can I v0tE without it?

Is Brass Tax not looking out for my interests? Are they too busy planning the next renegade to tell us which laws we need to vote for?

How will the hippy house headz vote without Pacific Soundsystem leaving instructions on their voicemail???

How will I find which Bernal garage to vote in without a mappoint? There is one polling place per block! I need deets!

Everyone who comes over tonight after voting gets a free tiki drink!

Better Living Through Voting!

Filed under: tikibar, why are we here? | 2 Comments

I passed by this place on my ride home from the train station the other day…I think it was on Folsolm and 12th. I have a feeling it won’t be around for long since it looked rather sad and empty inside. I read a review that said it was “weird in a bad way.” But I took a pic just to add to our collection of SF tiki ephemera. :)

Filed under: tikibar | 4 Comments

Yesterday I found that if you squeeze the oranges, lemons, and limes and pre-mix the citrus stuff with the pineapple juice before people come over, you can cut the time it takes to make a Mai Tai down to one minute.. Everyone gets drunky faster :)

Anyway, check out bottleopener ring.. perfect for drunkies!

Filed under: tikibar | 1 Comment

Every time you hear a Higher Intelligence Agency track on groove salad, you have to drink a Pomegranate Martini.

yeah, we’re *always* drunk!

Filed under: beats, tikibar | 1 Comment