h a r s h k a r m a

Walking in LA the great walkabout episode 1

2011-12-11T14:15:00.000-08:00

As most of my friends know, I LOVE to walk around in cities. I feel like you don't really get to know a place driving it as much as you do walking around ducking in wherever you feel like. With a likeminded buddy I recently did a 10 mile walk from Santa Monica to west hollywood. The route wasn't ideal, but it was a good first go. I decided to put together a google map to document it.

View LA Walkabout 1 in a larger map

We were hustling a bit too much to completely enjoy it, but it was still a ton of fun and a good trial run for next time.

After the walk we were picked up by a friend and whisked off to oinkster for pastrami before the Avey Tare show in Eagle Rock.

The 6 big Social Media Lessons I Learned from my Frat

2011-10-28T02:32:00.000-07:00

The nice thing about socialnetworking is that the basics aren't rocket science, and you can get a lot donewith a little common sense. When you think about it, a frat on anycollege campus is a brand in a highly competitive social marketplace. So itturns out everything I learned about throwing good parties and BBQs finally hassome real life value.

Here’s my list of the 6 SocialMedia Lessons I learned from being a part of a fraternity.

1.) Getting noticed is the first step, but it's not enough. You'vegot a house, and you want to get cool people to come to your house and party.Why? Because you want them to tell their friends it's cool and raise theprofile of the frat. Sound familiar? It's just like trying to make a facebookpage popular or create an online community about a brand by finding andnurturing relationships with key influencers. But that is just the firststep. You need to attract people, but then you need a reason for them to comeback. This means you need to put on a string of events that know peoplewill keep returning. Similarly in social, there must be enough content andengagement for them to return. (Otherwise, there’s always another place to tryout, often right next door.)

2.) You have to please the people who show up every week, and really wowthe people who only show up a couple times a year. At a frat, thereare always the non-members of “friends of the house” who are there all thetime. Every week when you do drinks, they'll be there, and then there arethe people who show up just for the giant theme parties. In yourcommunity you'll have the regulars and contributors who become part of yourcommunity, and then there are the masses who show up every once in a while fora big event or guest post or that mention on digg. If you alienate your corecommunity you risk losing your biggest supporters, but if you only cater to theregulars you’ll never grow.

3.) Popularity comes more from die hard friends of the house than themembers. The people who really make a frat popular are the people whoshow up every week, not the people who live there. Of course your team is theheart of your brand, but it's the core followers, fanboys and early adopterswho will really grow your presence and recognition. They are the ones whotalk to their friends and get the message out with more authenticity than anactual member of the brand team could ever have. They are also the people who liked you beforeyou were cool

4.) Picking and supporting the right "friends of the house"is extremely important. The core friends of the house areeffectively brand ambassadors. If they aren't cool they will drop thepopularity of the house. Can we say Ed Hardy douchebags? If they are coolthey make you look better

5.) Popularity of Brothers in activities outside the house helps drivepopularity of the frat. This one seems obvious but it's so oftenforgotten. A frat brother who's a star on the football team or in a coolband makes the house more popular. Likewise if your brand's team haspeople with notoriety outside the brand context. Your founder gettingfeatured on apartment therapy, your chef competing on chopped, anythingpositive that happens to someone associated with your brand has a halo effect. The reverse is also true so keep an eye on your team.

6.) You don't have to be the biggest and most popular house to have anawesome time, pick your niche. There's a lot to be said in being themost popular house with a certain segment on campus - you have the various sports frats, the ethnicfrats, the theme houses, the house with the best BBQs, etc. Picking aniche for your brand and owning it is one of the best ways to grow and preserveyour popularity and get the most vocal supporters who feel a closer connectionwith the brand.

Rome

2011-06-07T00:44:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while I get on a music kick caused by a specific album, and Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi's "Rome" is a perfect way to slide into a nice work background score. Add a couple great 60's and 70's atmospheric instrumental movie soundtracks by guys like Ennio Morricone, and Roy Budd and suddenly the most mundane tasks like accepting an email hace this cinematic quality of walking through joshua trees for a sunset gunfight, or racing through the streets with an unsheathed katana.

Of course the first thing the wife said when she heard it was "Interesting, they did this one backwards. I'm curious to see what movie they're going to make for this soundtrack" Personally I think it's got a tarantino ramen western, or jim jarmusch dead man kinda feel to it.

Interesting hobbies....

2011-05-31T09:38:00.000-07:00

So I had a realization today whilst talking to a friend online. In the pursuit of lofty corporate goals I have basically lost all of my hobbies other than snark.

The friend in question seems to have nought but hobbies.

Seasonally she's a grunion greeter
She's an avid baker
Occasional horticulturist
She's spun a few scarves, and welded some jewelry
She took up surfing, and dare I say it ...even blogging
Amateur Mycologist and Bee keeper
And then... she has a tendancy to go on a trip and pick up a few more

As I spoke to her, I began to realize that I really had none outside drinking and eating (at which I excel)

I used to ride a bike, go hiking, play squash, play dungeons and dragons, kickball etc.

So every once in a while I make a plan. This year I'm not just gonna get some hobbies, I'm going to upgrade. Harsh 3.0 from Harsh 2.0 which came in college when I started working out again, started wearing better clothes, and realized I was gonna get a good job and go the corporate route.

In order to attain the next "point-oh" I'm looking at an overhaul of lifestyle completely. Superficial and internal. In no particular order

Get a couple cool bags to finally carry all my stuff for travel and walking around
Get a bunch of stuff to simpfy my life, and manage my junk
Manage my to dos
Learn a language
Write regularly. Articles, position papers for work, whatever just something to keep the mind busy and capture my occasianal flame of brilliance
Stay on top of the tech I like
Listen to music. I'm gonna find out new stuff I like and start buyng it on amazon
Hit the Gym. I'm about 5 lbs overweight now and slow as hell. Time to go back to the gym, play squash, take up running
Learn about wine
Improve business skills: Managment, Accounting, business models, etc

I figure I'll get about 50% of it done if I give it the old college try.

Tough life

2010-12-31T01:12:00.000-08:00

Vacation in so cal

My new work setup- thank you apple

2010-11-15T21:37:00.000-08:00

So, I've finally got a work layout that fits all the stuff I want open. In front of me is my macbook air which is a mix of personal and auxiliary work computer. to the left is my work thinkpad, and to the right is my ipad acting as a second monitor with airdisplay showing my calendar. and of course for hilarity on the mac is a picture of the exact same setup.

I waited a long time to get a mac because A) work wouldn't pay for one, and B I didn't really think I needed yet another computer ( I've already got an imac, a work laptop, an old personal laptop, a netbook, and an old work laptop floating around). But I decided it's time to just buy the super cool thin computer I've always wanted. The set up seems a little ridiculous, but it works and overall takes up less bag space and weight than a 17" high perf HP laptop. Seriously, all 3 machines, kinda crazy no? I think I may have to get rid of the work laptop eventually, but for now this is a kickass setup. When I do kill the work machine I'm actually in pretty good stead using a combination of VPN, davmail, and vmware images to support all of my corporate IT compliance needs

kartOO is dead, and I didn't even notice till today :(

2010-06-02T01:38:00.000-07:00

One of the best search ideas I'd seen in a long time was a visual search engine called kartoo.(link goes to wikipedia). The basic idea was that your search terms were visually linked to related search terms to help you navigate to the right results based on context. Kartoo was a meta search engine, meaning that they didn't have their own indicies, but would leverage other search operator APIs. I was really happy to see them around because in 2001 when the semantic web was young, kartoo was a view into the future of browsing the web, but alas they seem to have bitten the dust. The shot above is of their post 2004 interface, but I think I liked their original graph style node and arc interface the best. Not sure when they died, but RIP kartoo

Holy Crap, Indonesian toddler smokes like a chimney

2010-05-26T19:28:00.000-07:00

So in my experience out here in Asia, I've noticed that overall, there's a lot more smoking than everywhere else I've been. Obviously more than the states, but also a ton more than western Europe, France and Italy included. Of the Asian groups I've met, the Indonesians definitely take the cake. So over the course of the last couple weeks some of the guys have been working in Jakarta and joking that people start smoking as kids out there. Sure enough the international news media has found a baby that smokes 2 packs a day (Video on The Age). Seriously. Not only does this kid smoke that many cigs, but he's got his own style to it from watching others. He's chubby and too unfit to play with other kids, but his folks still buy him the cigarettes. In my opinion another reason why he doesn't play with other kids is he's seen as a bad influence. After all, would you let your 2 year old play with the fat kid who smokes .

Starting from scratch

2010-05-23T22:36:00.000-07:00

So once again gentle reader, I find myself in a new location. I have moved to Singapore for a minimum term of 3 years. And with any great relocation comes the usual process of building a new life. Like everything else, I do it systematically:

Exploring- I gotta get the lay of the land, and while that usually means walking great distances without a map, here that becomes a little tricky thanks to the sweaty sweaty weather, so I'm going neighborhood by neighborhood.
Lodging- finding a place that fits once the relo runs out. It's gotta be reasonably priced, a short commute to the office, near cool stuff, and have space for an extra bed/futon for guests
Networking- meeting and building relationships with my professional contacts. A lot of my contacts here are from a different generation, so the lunches are a bit more advisory in nature, but this has been really helpful in my job so far.
Makin friends (can't actually be systematic here, but it's important to do if I'm gonna live here for a while)- I had a couple friends out here already, but during those first few weeks you get invited around a lot and you actually have a pretty short period to make friends to get the regular invites and start the transition from the FOAF to acquaintance to friend. The last step often takes at least a year, but can be accelerated with other expats because they're in the same boat socially.
Logistics and routine- So there are the basics of dry cleaner, grocery store, barber etc., but when you move to a different country your habits have to change too. Okay, in SG there are enough westerners that they don't really have to change, but they should a little if you really want to get the full experience. Also it'll be a nice change to head back to an urban environment. I love where I was in LA, but it's nice to be in a higher density place again since I don't have kids.

I'm still in the temp housing with a limited kitchen, so most of the time I feel like I'm on an extended business trip. Aside from starting to make new friends the rest of the stuff here hasn't really come into full effect.

Sanchez no hitter against the padres

2009-07-11T11:29:00.000-07:00

View from last night of vacation

2009-07-11T02:23:00.001-07:00

Wine tasting at Salisbury

2009-07-09T11:25:00.000-07:00

Break on the beach in SB

2009-07-07T18:12:00.000-07:00

Sparkling Seattle day

2009-05-30T11:24:00.001-07:00

As luck would have it, our trip to seattle has been blessed with amazing weather, an abundance of delicious copper river salmon, and plenty of friends in town. Another nice coincidence was chancing upon the waterfront festival at pike place market. Can't wait to see what gems today holds.

My new super comfy ridiculous shoes

2009-05-25T14:44:00.000-07:00

About a year or so ago I saw a dude in the airport with shoes with separate toes. I didn't get a chance to find out where he got them, and I wasn't successful in finding them on the internet. Two days ago a good buddy of mine (who misses his mommy) mentioned he got some new amazing shoes called vibram fivefingers. I looked em up and sho 'nuff they were the same shoes I'd seen a year ago.

These things look absurd, but they are amazingly comfortable and give you the barefoot hippie experience without the callouses and cuts. I think I'm gonna make these my default summer shoes.

Yay deep fried twinkie!

2009-05-24T23:36:00.000-07:00

So it's been a year and a half and I'd used all but two of the wedding registry appliances we received. The last two to see action were the deep fryer ( for health reasons) and the soymilk maker because it just hasn't come up yet. Last night we went to a barbecue and brought oreos, batter, and our little cuisineart deep fryer. The batter was pancake mix + a couple eggs and milk instead of water.

We were the hit of the party with fried oreos and fried twinkies. Unfortunately the snickers weren't cold enough so we ended up with snicker bits rather than nicely batter fried snickers, but overall it was a resounding success

Lake shrine temple- new age relaxin

2009-05-17T13:17:00.000-07:00

Sunday morning at the Getty villa

2009-05-17T12:10:00.000-07:00

Nice weather cometh- time to start doing stuff

2009-05-06T23:29:00.001-07:00

So I'm coming off of the flu and after being in the apt for 3 straight days I'm getting antsy. Since the weather is turning to that beautiful time of year packed with cheap activities it's time I started planning. That means things like... hikes, bikerides, guerilla movie screenings, grunion runs, bee keeping, learning to play tennis, etc. My goal is to try and spend weekends doing as many different random fun activities for as little money as possible. I figure LA is one of the best places to do it thanks to the weather and options. Some of em require gear which will be initial cash layouts for bikes, raquets, projectors, and the like, but plenty of em are free and great ways to spend an afternoon.

My new custom kicks

2009-02-14T17:13:00.001-08:00

Rise and Fall of the Doucheoisie:Part 1

2009-01-29T12:00:00.000-08:00

Well it's beginning to happen, after a sharp rise the doucheoisie are beginning to fall from their places of self importance as their disposable incomes plummet and their lifestyles become untenable. This isn't to say they're gone for good, or disappearing from their bastions like the marina, it's just that their footprint is shrinking with their opportunities

To understand and enjoy the decline of one of the most irritating social groups in america it's probably good to start at the beginning. The next installment Part 2 will chronicle the rapid rise of the douche , Part 3 will focus on the apex of the douche culture, Part 4 will focus on the beginning of the decline, and Part 5 will be a discourse on the future role of the douche in society

If I were still in school, I could probably get a soc, or cultural anthropology thesis out of this, but instead I'll have to just enjoy the pseudo-intellectual wanking of putting it in print.

Mojave! a stupid campaign

2008-12-02T11:49:00.001-08:00

Is it just me or does the mojave campaign just brag about a bunch of apps that come bundled with the OS, and not the OS itself. The most recent ad is ridiculous, talking about how a bundled photo app stiches images together. I mean that's cool and all, but it's got nothing to do with me trying to get a netbook on a network quickly

But the whole campaign is ridiculous overall. Of course vista demos well, no one said it was ugly. The problem is that it's a bloated unstable beast rife with bugs. I can only hope for microsoft that they come out with windows 7 soon, no one wants a copy of Windows ME 2008.

Mumbai Attacks

2008-11-30T21:43:00.000-08:00

Lately I've read a lot of blogs and heard a lot of people talk about this as precision attack, and I'm dumbfounded. The terrorists did a crappy job and I'm glad, but thanks to airheaded media they were successful. Kill foreigners to get it on CNN and the BBC, and suddenly india is one of the most dangerous places in the world, congratulations assholes with guns, terror achieved.

This wasn't a crack team acting with surgical precision, it was a bunch of yahoos with weapons that'd make your average nutjob survivalist chuckle. The violence was little better than random otherwise many more than 200 would have died. The fact that only 200 died suggests that the security response was actually pretty damn effective. I'm just sad that stuff like this makes people comfortable with giving up civil liberties for cleverly named "safety measures" like the patriot act.

Beautiful afternoon on ucla campus

2008-10-26T17:38:00.000-07:00

Know what's in the bailout

2008-09-29T00:46:00.000-07:00

Given that there's probably a lot of confusion around the bailout, here's a link to a super useful site for bill transparency: www.publicmarkup.org where you can review and post comments to pending legislation. It's a great idea for more transparency of government, but when are we gonna have the time to review pending bills.

Social Websites revisited

2008-09-28T23:19:00.000-07:00

As I try to sort out/streamline my digital life, which seems to be inversely related in activity to my analog life, I've chanced upon a couple sites I signed up for ages ago but never really started using till just now.

OpenID, and the rep building site attached to it called jyte, of course now that google and yahoo are on the boat too I have several openID's to rationalize
Twine, which for me has now completely replaced del.icio.us because I like the way it's configured, and the idea of colaborative link accumulation around topics appeals to me
ThisNext which is basically a site where you post links to stuff you find cool to show people how ahead of the curve you are, but it's also a great place to find links to awesome stuff.

Of course these days I'm a member of soooooo many "social networking" sites that it's beginning to make my head spin

At the giant Looahvill Slugger

2008-08-14T05:58:00.001-07:00

Louisville Airport does outlets right

2008-08-14T05:44:00.000-07:00

In the terminal they have outlets under some seats with USB power.
Smart

Homemade baguette!

2008-08-10T14:24:00.001-07:00

Product of the breadmaking class
>

Internet meme timeline

2008-08-07T14:43:00.001-07:00

Whilst digging I found this sweet timeline of some of the biggest internet memes. Well worth the jump so you can remember where you where at when the hamsters were first dancing, or when Mr T first ate my balls

New blog, 6thing.com

2008-07-24T11:10:00.001-07:00

After playing with blogger and twitter and facebook and all the rest I decided to try a short format blog and have created with some friends 6thing.com It's a simple blog that posts arbitrary lists of 6 things. The lists come in via submissions over email, or from the recesses of my mind. Take a look

Forgotten Memes: Ate my balls

2008-07-11T09:16:00.001-07:00

So whilst over at nina's museum blog ( check the blogroll), I noticed that egads! She's a member of a webring, they still exist. Like finding a bakalite felix the cat at a garage sale I was suddenly excited. Wow, I remember these from when the web was young.

One of my favorite web rings for inane humor in the late 90's was the "ate my balls" webring. Of the same level of class as "Fat chicks with party hats," the ate my balls sites featured entire sites devoted to comic strip like speech bubbles over images of people where they'd talk about various ways of eating balls. These days something like this would just end up on something awful.

According to wikipedia, nehal patel's "Bob Ross ate my balls" was the first, but his 1998 Mr T ate my balls was the site that drove this fad to it's highest popularity.

Added some yelp to the blog

2008-07-11T09:05:00.000-07:00

I figured since I keep posting food pictures anyway I may as well add the yelp "bling" to the blog. I still use yelp a fair amount, even when my blog postings are infrequent, cause hey... you still gotta eat. Overall yelp is very useful when you don't know where to go in any given area, but for a newcomer to the site, unless you know the tastes of the reviewers, it super easy to get burned by reviews from people who think themselves experts. By and large quality of reviews is allover the place, but when a place has been reviewed 20 or more times you can usually get a good bead on it.

Wall of cukoo clocks at Auslander in Fredeicksburg,TX

2008-07-09T22:07:00.001-07:00

One day only in the big easy

2008-07-01T11:05:00.000-07:00

Just came back from a 30 hr trip to New Orleans, and boy was it fun. Met up with Jack (the pirate) and crashed at the W in the Quarter. We managed to make our way from the quarter down to frenchman stopping at bars and gorging ourselves on fried food such as the delicious sandwich pictured above. Highlights of the evening were talking to locals in little random dive bars, an awesome frozen irish coffee, fried green tomatoes and shrimp in a spicy sauce at a hookah bar, and getting out of the torrential downpours that peppered the evening

Meal on the road thanks to Trader Joe's

2008-06-17T17:30:00.000-07:00

beats a crappy club sandwich

if a tree falls...

2008-06-13T07:46:00.000-07:00

I've started playing around with twitter because I like the idea of jotting down little notes to stir up discussion points in bite size pieces ( each of which is actually 140 byte sized pieces, but I digress). That and I'm too lazy to update my blog much with interesting stuff

The problem is I don't have many friends reading my tweets ( though I prefer to call them twits since it's more fitting to the caliber of my posts), so my grand view of spurring the debate, or just publishing my status to groups of friends isn't working. In fact the way most people were getting my twits was through my facebook status updates which no longer functions thanks to twitter im being broken.

What I'd really like is for something like dodgeball to work, and while I'm wishing it'd be nice if it was seamlessly integrated withgoogle talk, my google contacts, google maps, and an rss feed I could embed ( or not) in my blog.

Also with all that metadata I'd love to have one giant database of posts which could be queried and displayed by ranges across maps, tag, timestamps, friend groups, etc. And if you could google earth animate it with little popup bubbles that'd be extra sweet. Imagine a trip journal like that. All you'd really need to carry in terms of data model would be

Header

timestamp
geocode
recipient list including predefined groups

Body

text content
multimedia attachment ( picture, audio, video)

So just a simple app on top of the existing mms infrastructure could carry all of this. You could also create an easy restful interface, and im bots for jabber, aim, and yahoo. Google has all the pieces to make it happen, but I bet it's a product management nightmare, especially since I haven't seen any new development on dodgeball in a while.

Mets @ Braves

2008-05-22T17:13:00.001-07:00

Jottin and reqall

2008-05-20T11:55:00.000-07:00

So I've recently started using a couple services to facilitate my mobile lifestyle. "Jott" and "Reqall" The basic premise of both is that you call in to a special number, apply some voice commands, and then you get speech to text conversion with some additional functionality to produce emails, blog posts, calendar updates, todo lists etc. As I understand it reqall's been around longer, but I find as I start using twitter more, the extensible nature of jott will probably win me over. After all, the command can be used to interact with nearly any simple RESTful service. I'll post back with how well they've worked out for me.

The train cometh

2008-05-14T22:10:00.000-07:00

I am soooo freakin happy that this could go forward. The commuter's dream of fast train from SF to LA might just actually happen read the gas2.org article for more.

Sweetwater festival atl

2008-04-19T15:14:00.000-07:00

Bonsai sandals-most comfortable flipflops evar

2008-04-14T15:02:00.000-07:00

Friend Network Pr0n

2008-04-10T11:02:00.000-07:00

So if you're a regular reader of this blog you'll know I love infoporn, especially when it's network maps. Facebook now has a couple applications that will traverse your sets of friends and see how they're interconnected, or produce Venn diagrams of them based o various attributes.
As you can imagine, I love this and would like to see linked-in offer this kind of functionality because raw multivariate data analysis is interesting, but well supported by big data analysis tools (like TIBCO Spotfire). Community network analysis tools that import from social networks are hard to come by. I'd also like to see the ability to generate some better graphs of my friend network ( like the facebook friend wheel, only in a 3d space where I could rotate it and move nodes to see how people are interrelated as well as add wighting for the quality of the connection like orkut used to allow. Then you could start to do some really interesting personal network re-engineering/planning.
Another interesting thought that came out of this, and discussions with my friend Nina, was a discussion of how facilitate connections between sparsely connected groups of friends, or attempt to prevent Worlds from Colliding! (said in exasperated jason alexander voice). These will have to be explored later and with more subtlety

De-Tox

2008-03-27T13:00:00.000-07:00

I've been hearing a lot of people talk about all kinds of detox diets with all kinds of crazy stuff in them ranging from nothing but maple syrup to some olive oil lemon juice concoction. Whenever I come off a long stint of travel or a weekend of junkfood excess I do my own super reliable detox diet which I've decided to share cause it actually works and really isn't that tough to do. If you can keep on it for a couple weeks your colon and skin will love you, but the key is making your own food, and making it taste good otherwise you'll be off the diet in a flash

Here are the basic pieces

Hydrate, you have to drink a ton of water, minimum 3 liters a day ideally 4-5. You don't realize it but you get a lot of sodium in your diet regardless of how well you eat, especially when eating packaged foods. Drinking lots of water takes some strain off of your kidneys and liver since everything's more diluted
Get some exercise. A lot of detox can be assisted with good cardio health because your body works it's way through everything faster. It also helps your body regulate stress which can make the whole process easier
Manage your blood sugar. This means a lot of little things but the basics are don't eat refined sugars and starches because they cause your blood sugar to spike which is rough on your system. If you're going to have starchy or sugary things make sure you get some nuts or seeds or olive oil with them to slow down the sugar processing. Also eat many smaller meals over the course of the day instead of 3 bigs meals
Be nice to your kidneys and liver- avoid alcohol, caffeine, tylenol, kava, etc.
Eat fresh foods- most prepackaged food has been designed for taste and shelf life, not nutrition. Whenever possible go for raw fruit and veggie snacks over packaged ones and stay way way away from processed meats. Cooking your veggies is okay, but you're gonna want to lightly steam them if possible just to make sure you still get most of the vitamins
Eat clean proteins- chicken, fish, eggwhites, soy, are all excellent sources of protein.
get your fiber- leafy vegetables, fruit, bran cereal, undercooked oatmeal, etc.
Eat some bulk starch but stay away from the refined stuff. White rice and pasta are bad, and small boiled potatoes are borderline ( lots of skin, high water content), so brown rice, cracked wheat (tabouleh), quinoa, and whole wheat cous cous are the way to go
Misc extras: don't drink too much water with meals ( do it before or a couple hours after), avoid dairy and fried foods. Make sure to adequately season your food!!! lemon, salt, pepper, onions, garlic, ginger, cumin, chicken broth, fish stock, etc. All of these add a whole lotta flavor without making things bad for you, but remember with more salt you need to drink a lot of water

Example menus

breakfast:

all bran with soy milk and apple slices
eggwhites with spinach, onions, and mushrooms

midmorning snack:

1-2 pieces of fruit
home roasted almonds ( just toss em on a cookie sheet with no oil)
preservative free dried fruit

lunch:

Salad with oil and vinegar dressing with grilled chicken or fish and fruit
brown rice sushi (sad, I know but sushi homma has made a name doing it)
Chicken Wrap on whole wheat tortilla/chapati

Afternoon snack:

Carrot/celery sticks, fruit, homemade jerky

Dinner:

Steamed black cod w/ ginger
wilted peasprouts with garlic
brown rice
sashimi
raw tofu with ginger (go easy on the bonito flakes)
cucumber sunomono
Grilled chicken w/ a little rosemary and olive oil
lightly steamed french green beans ( with salt pepper and a squeeze of lemon)
boiled potatoes w salt a little fresh garlic and just a little olive oil

You get the idea. It's tricky to follow when going out with friends, but you can usually do okay by sticking to a salad with grilled chicken or fish. Eating at home gives you the option of customizing the meal to make it a little more interesting.

Internet stalking tools

2008-03-27T11:34:00.001-07:00

I know this roundup has been done before, but I was amazed today how much things have moved past the usual goog, myspace, facebook, linked in search.

So hop on your browsers and check out spok, wink, pipl, zoominfo, wikiyou, and peek you. See all the content there is about you on the internet, and systematically destroy it. Now that my life has changed a little, I personally am considering reviving the MHP to protect my privacy and my identity.

Gadget bag revisited

2008-03-27T10:40:00.000-07:00

So I may be back to posting occasionally rather than just dumping a photo on from my phone. I figured the best way to kick this off was dusting off what's in my gadget bag, since it's changed enough that I thought I might as well drop it on you again. There are some gems for the road warrior, that you might not have thought of.

The laptop- still rockin the Thinkpad line, but the office saw fit to upgrade me to the t60 a while ago. I still haven't seen a laptop that's as good for the road warrior as the thinkpads are
Biz phone- still with blackberry only now it's the 8310 GPS is a nice tough, but the trackball interface is not quite there
Personal phone- I caved and bought an iphone, I still hate many things about it, but the N95 it's nearest competitor is too heavy and has worse battery life :(. I wasn't going to jail break it because I figured the SDk would drop faster, but I need to get me some mms, a bluetooth keyboard, and some copy and paste so I might be forced to
3G Internet- I went with the Sprint U727 usb modem cause the terms of service allow for rebroadcast ( cluch), it stores the drivers in the device, it can hold microSD cards, and it can be used by the next gadget in the list
Cradlepoint PHS 300 -This thing is awesome, it's a battery powered wifi hotspot that can be used with my usb modem for dsl like speeds across my computer and iphone at once. The battery lasts for 2 hours of hard usage which is enough for most times
APC usb battery pack- everything else on this list but the hotspot charges/runs off usb, so this thing is a no brainer easy to charge, easy to use. Better than the macally one because it has an LED indicator, major con is that to use it you have to hit a button every 15 mins to wake it up
Sony Ebook reader- I bought it two days after it came out and it's still with me every trip. I've got a lot of free books loaded on the thing and when I'm caught somewhere it lets me catch up on some classics
Creative portable speakers- still great when you wanna play some music or watch a movie on the laptop

You may have noticed I lost the camera from this list. I realized I don't really care about image quality and both my personal and work phones have acceptable cameras for capturing fun moments

My new cell

2008-03-13T15:23:00.001-07:00

Check it out on sparkfun.com

Pork chops with lime-mead pan sauce

2008-03-05T17:48:00.001-08:00

Today I was extra cool and decided to make something fancy so I hit the grocery store to try and decide on a pork chop menu (the wife loves em). Whilst I wandered I remembered I had a half finished bottle of mead whcih would go really well with some lime and chilli for a marinade and pan sauce so the meal was born. I got lazy with the sides and just steamed some broccoli, and sliced red peppers. But for desert we had a pretty good fresh mango, and a ton of sweet hawaiian rolls dipped in the remaining sauce that had all the chili and sliced garlic left in it

"training"

2008-02-27T12:46:00.001-08:00

Great kushiyaki at Taisho

2008-02-17T18:29:00.001-08:00

Every time I make it into NYC I go to Yakotori Taisho, aka Oh! Taisho ( fer realz, just read the menu). This place is an amazing for a snack or full meal, but Irecommend going with a big group so you can enjoy everything the menu has to offer. My yelp review here.

Scary desert

2008-01-14T22:17:00.001-08:00

Multimedia message

2007-12-26T14:53:00.001-08:00

Halloween

2007-10-31T11:56:00.001-07:00

@

2007-10-26T10:33:00.001-07:00

FW: the saddest manhattan ever

2007-10-26T10:27:00.001-07:00

from the oakland grilled cheese invitational

Preparing to jump from a plane

2007-10-13T11:27:00.001-07:00

This weekend for my bachelor party my buddies decided to take me skydiving. It was absolutely amazing, but it would have been good to know the night before so I could have drunk just a little less.
For those of you who haven't been, I highly recommend it. I've never done anything remotely like it, and after the first couple terrifying seconds it might be one of the coolest things I've ever done. Oh and statistically it's way safer than driving a motorcycle.

Flying

2007-09-28T18:25:00.001-07:00

Okay, so I wasn't actually flying the plane, I was sitting in the backseat. But I do look pretty slick with the headset on. It seems that a ton of people I know are getting into flying. After going up with aaron, I'm beginning to understand why, between the amazing views and sense of freedom it's easy to see why you'd want to do this all the time. it's just a shame it's so expensive and time intensive to learn

view from the typewriter

2007-09-28T16:31:00.000-07:00

Atop the Vittorio Emanuele II monument ( AKA the "typewriter") , in addition to a great bar, they've added an elevator so that you can now go all the way up to the top for one of the best views in all of rome. The only competing views are the cupola of San Pietro, and the Gianicolo, but really, this view is tough to beat

Barbarous atop the typewriter

2007-09-22T17:00:00.000-07:00

Rock the bells

2007-09-06T08:55:00.001-07:00

Rage

2007-09-06T08:54:00.001-07:00

Steph's beach wedding

2007-08-25T16:46:00.000-07:00

Steph's wedding

2007-08-25T16:33:00.000-07:00

Multimedia message

2007-08-17T20:57:00.001-07:00

Bootie, my new favorite club

2007-08-12T00:19:00.001-07:00

Barrel tasting

2007-07-23T23:23:00.001-07:00

Garbage plate

2007-07-14T16:37:00.000-07:00

Ahh the glory that is the Nick Tahou's garbage plate. Now renamed by one of his offspring since his passing, the place still offers atery clogging goodness one styrofoam container at a time. I usually go for the hamburger plate and add a whitehot on the side, but it's basically tough to go wrong with anything off the menu here.

Bloggin by phone!

2007-06-04T18:08:00.000-07:00

So you may have noticed that these days all my blog psots are pictures from my phone. Basically, I've gotten super lazy, and also realized that I don't have that much interesting stuf to share outside of pictures :) So, I will continue to blog by phone and leave the occasional textual tidbit when I get around to it.

The flyer

2007-06-01T21:27:00.001-07:00

Activism and Pho

2007-06-01T21:26:00.001-07:00

Activists eating pho doin their part

IEOR friends

2007-05-31T21:26:00.001-07:00

ASCII GRAPHITI

2007-05-30T11:34:00.001-07:00

found this sweet ASCII art spray painted near a ucla dorm

Mountains in monterrey

2007-05-14T10:02:00.001-07:00

Poolside drinks @ new trader vics

2007-05-08T14:50:00.001-07:00

A little la decadence

A Dirty Dinner in D-troit

2007-04-17T20:02:00.001-07:00

So as you can see I did something dirty tonight. I ate me a ton of White Castle.

My plane landed at 22:30 EDT in beautiful Detroit, and I hadn't eaten since lunch so I was famished, luckily my cab driver was hungry too, so at my brilliant suggestion we hit the white castle drive through. My Detroit evening spent eating White Castle drinking room service beer and watching American gladiators on ESPN classic. God Bless America.

Lobster shack

2007-04-14T23:08:00.001-07:00

a decadent lunch of lobster rolls, cheese fries,fried shrimp and beer

Whose barn, what barn, my barn

2007-04-14T22:58:00.000-07:00

Mexico city is not without it's pitfalls. There's traveler's stomach, kidnappings, and as I now know from the 13th morning, earthquakes. For the first time in my life I regreted getting upgraded to a high floor with a view. All in all thursday night/Friday morning's earthquake 'shook me up' a little. Despite being a california resident for a number of years, I've managed to dodge any serious tremors and at most just gotten a little annoyed from the shaking. However, at about 01.30 on the mroning of friday the 13th I got me a little bit of a scare. I woke with the feeling of being shaken and found, no it wasn't my lady love waking me up for snoring, but the entire building shaking at jerry lee lewis proportions (get the title yet?). Wasn't a serious quake, but let me tell you when you're on one of the top floors of a building on rollers or hydraulics you get enough movin to shake up the minibar and knock the water from the desk on to the floor ( damn those glass voss bottles, and damn the stone tile floors!). This was the first time I was actually scared enough to jump into a doorway in case of ceiling collapse, and I woke up for every aftershock. Despite the shakin, I still had to be bright eyed and bushy tailed at the office at 8am, btw that means I woke up at 5am regular (PDT) time. Suffice to say next time I'll take the room without the view.

Musings on Mexico City

2007-04-03T11:44:00.000-07:00

I've been going back and forth to Mexico city for about a month or so now and a few things have really jumped out at me. First off, I can't handle the water, period. I've gotten sick 2 out of the four weeks I was there. Once from drinking horchata with ice (I know, super dumb) and once from either a green salad, or a fish taco that turned out to be a ceviche taco. So thanks to my culinary escapades, and Moctezuma's brutal revenge, I have bought cipro there twice and let me tell ya it's expensive there. The pharmacies don't take my insurance, and it's been between $18-$30 depending on where I wet to get it and if I bought a 7 day or an 8 day course.

The second big thing that I've noticed is that in Mexico city the media images of beauty are completely different from how the average person looks. This isn't a difference in degree, this is a difference in ethnicity. Most of the people you see have the more indigenous look, and are a little shorter with darker skin and darker hair. All of the women in ads are tall, fair skinned, and much more European looking. I was really surprised about this, and I guess that this isn't a new thing for Mexico, but it must be tough being told that the standard of beauty is unattainable because of your ethnicity.

And finally the driving in mexico city. I've seen some interesting traffic in my travels, from high speeds on the freeways in germany and the south of france, to the ridiculousness of naples, bombay, and now mexico city. Mexico driving is somewhere between naples and bombay. People pay little or no attention to lights, stop signs and lanes, but they're also not as agressive as the neapolitans. This isn't to say that the mexican drivers are without the latin machismo, it's just that they're more civil than their neapolitan counterparts. The indians in mumbai are nicer, but the roads are more chaotic with all the rickshaw cabs buses, and occasional overloaded tempo. Hopping in a cab there is definitely an experiance and there are all sorts of little things to get used to. There are the little things like, one way streets just dictate the direction your car should face, not the direction of travel. and on busy streets if someone misses a turn they have no compunction about reversing till they get back to where they wanted to be. All in all, I'm really glad I take cabs when I'm down there, cause a rental car would be pretty high up on the list of bad ideas.

Dream Living Spaces

2007-03-22T16:29:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about the kind of spaces I'd like to have in my home andall this living in hotels these past couple years has given me some strong opinions. I'm gonna eschew pictures and try and verbally craft the looks I'm shooting for. Granted this is beyond the realm of what I'll ever be able to afford, but hey a man's gotta dream. Not specified on a room by room basis, but of course the house would be completely wired for terminals, video, and sound

Formal livingroom- dark woods, rich persian carpets in burgandies , black leather and chrome (think Le Corbousier, Mies van der Rohe, Breuer) , rosewood accent pieces, and some traditional japanese woodcuts, chinese style landscapes, and indian miniatures, this is where the asian antiques, masks, and textile hangings would go (hmm, sounds a lot like my parents living room)
Daily lounge space - a lot more pop with light colored woods, primary colors, asymmetric, and amorphous seating like a noguchi sofa, softseating, etc. a few eams pieces of bent plywood would also be pretty cool. Ideally it'd be, multileveled, and the walls and floors would have to be very bright, but I'm not against exposed brick, and the space while very open could be divided with screens or hanging textile slats. The wall art could be decals or bright poppy art ala Lichtenstein, Mondrian, Warhol, and a hanging calder couldn't hurt, but I'd probably rotate the artwork every 6 months. This space would be a good open multipurpose area with (of course) a bar/breakfast counter with chimay on tap, a nice espresso machine, a pannino press, and a small sink
Kitchen's gotta have an island an a lot of burners, I'm a big fan of all stainless steel appliances, but hey if everything's functional and positioned well it doesn't make a difference. It'd also be nice to have a ton of accessible storage
Bedroom- just a place to sleep with a decent sized closet and a big comfy bed, nothin fancy
Master Bathroom- doesn't need a tub, but one of those big open style showers with multiple heads would be sweet, of course a seperate room for the can is a must, oh and behind the mirror should be a flatscreen where I can pull up my morning news
Garden/Patio/Terrace- think roman villa, cypress and or palms(maybe potted), but home to a mix of tropical and mediterranean plants, a large eating space, and of course a hammock and a jacuzzi
Office/work area- bright, lots of natural light, an aeron or equally comfortable chair, plenty of physical file storage, and a lot of workspace so at least a few people could work at once

Now I just need to find a place where the designs are actually within reach, or rob a few museum collections. Till then I'll just salivate over the stuff at DWR, 2Modern, Mocoloco, elsewares, and countless other cool pricey stores. I can't wait till target starts ripping this stuff off

View from the mexico city hotel

2007-03-22T16:22:00.001-07:00

Delayed pig year post

2007-03-22T16:21:00.001-07:00

On the road again

2007-03-19T13:37:00.000-07:00

Once more into the breech, yes I'm traveling for work again. This time it's a lot easier since it's on this continent I get to come back for weekends, but traveling to Mexico City is not without digestive pitfalls, and unfortunately cipro came into play as Moctezuma exacted his revenge. On the plus side I did have some amazing meals when I was down there. The biggest standouts were two different sets of duck tacos. At Izote ,a contemporary Mexican fusion restaurant in Polanco on the Mexico City equivalent of Rodeo Dr, I had these super rich duck mole tacos. The mole was sweet and heavy, and the duck was juicy and tender. The food was great, but the experience was fantastic since he restaurant had the kind of service you can only get in developing nations. Every 2 minutes or so the corn tortillas would be replaced with a new piping hot set whether I had eaten any or not. There was also someone basically just hovering outside of eyesight in case we should want anything.

The second great set of duck tacos were at a lunch place near the old tibco office in reforma area. They were duck carnitas with a healthy amount of chopped onion and cilantro. I was a little surprised with both since I don't consider duck to be traditionally Mexican food, but both meals were the kind of delicious where you can't help but thinking about it the day after.

Just dandy

2007-03-03T11:16:00.000-08:00

dandy warhols at mezzanine

Berman does Vegas

2007-02-23T17:15:00.001-08:00

Moblog to change

2007-02-23T17:09:00.000-08:00

Well it seems that my usage of textamerica's moblog service is about to come to an end, so those periodically changing pictures on the right hand side of the page will be going the way of the dinosaur and I'll have to look for a new host. If you can recommend a new service, please leave a comment.

Seeq Pod

2007-02-16T01:29:00.000-08:00

By no means new, but seeqpod is where I've been getting my internet music from lately, because it's also a good way to download some music the old fashioned way, by having someone else scour the internet for you to find a directory with no index file so you can just pick and choose the music. In short I now have a couple of those Ambulance Ltd, and Hot Chip songs I was looking for. Gotta love the Web, part deux.

Every day I wake to the same song

2007-02-16T01:22:00.000-08:00

So it's kinda sick, but lately when I wake up I've had the NIN song "Every day is exactly the same" running through my head. It's kinda funny because it doesn't relate to my life at all, but I guess that's kinda what drives me out of bed, the opportunity to keep my life as far away from the purgatory described in the song. It forces me to keep my master plan moving forward ( for autotheism to work I have to truly believe that I work in mysterious ways but it's all part of the master plan). I thought this would be a good way to start blogging again, since lately I've been spending a lot of time yelping . Despite all the comments about Yelp being a group of oversexed over rich dot-com kids engaging in pseudo intellectual cullinary masturbation, it's actually a great group of people and a good way of figuring out where to go for food. You just have to sift through the slurry for the gems.

Comprehensive study of Household Wealth

2006-12-06T14:00:00.000-08:00

Worth taking a look at to get an idea of how the bottom 98% need to start holding on to some wealth.
Launch of WIDER study on the World Distribution of Household Wealth

The muppet matrix

2006-09-26T20:00:00.000-07:00

Found this gem, The Muppet Matrix thanks to a yelp thread. Someone recreated the original matrix theatrical trailer using muppet characters. Teh quality isn't great, but it's still pretty freakin awesome

How to Dissuade Yourself from Becoming a Blogger - WikiHow

2006-09-13T13:44:00.000-07:00

How to Dissuade Yourself from Becoming a Blogger - WikiHow...the blogscape is filled with crap, and while I enjoy occasionally adding to the slurry, here's how I could have avoided this :) ( of course there are some good blogs ot there, just check my sidebar)

Someone help me out, is this satire?

2006-09-06T11:06:00.000-07:00

Stolen from fark:Facebook 'poke' leads to awkward one-nighter I honestly can't tell if this is satire or not, it all sounds too ridiculous. Eiter way it's hilarious, and a nice post to follow the "science is hard" post

Science is hard, cry more

2006-09-06T10:28:00.000-07:00

This article at MentorNet News suggests that the reason why kids don't go into science and engineering as much in america is because it's tougher to get good grades and the classes are impersonal. I only have one response CRY MORE, maybe someone who cares will give you a hug. At some point when the job market gets really bad and technical skills and backgrounds come into vogue again, people will suck it up and go into difficult majors. Till then, there will be a steady supply of indian, asian, and east european immigrants to take up the spaces in high quality science and engineering majors. Of course once the level of competition rises high enough in liberal arts programs, they will have to start creating weeder courses just like other disciplines. Unfortunately, grade inflation combats the correction, but at some point there has to be a backlash.

New tracks from DJ Hyjinx-- Wicked!!!

2006-09-05T11:43:00.000-07:00

One of my good LA friends is an accountant by day and a drum 'n' bass dj by night. In college he was dj cheshtang, but keeping with his philosophy of making dnb more fun and accessible he changed his name to hyjinx. You can find the new tracks at his beta records page, and you can also check him out on myspace.

Spark Fun Electronics-Rotary Phone

2006-08-28T18:16:00.000-07:00

If you follow the link to Spark Fun Electronics(lifted from uncrate), you'll see a sweet rotary phone that accepts a sim card, has 10hrs talk time and 4-5 day standby time. The reason why I love this so much is that when I was growing up we had a rotary phone until like 1990. Towards the end we kept it around because it was a great little curiosity. I was thinking of getting vonage service just so I could use one at home, but now I can just get one of these!

St Crispin's Day

2006-08-17T20:30:00.000-07:00

So for no apparent reason I've decided to post the St Crispin's day speech

Westmoreland: O that we now had here But one ten thousand of those men in England That do no work today!

King:
What's he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No my fair cousin.
If we are marked to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honor.

God's will! I pray thee wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous of gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It grieves me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires:
But if it be a sin to covet honor,
I am the most offending soul alive.

No, faith my cousin, wish not a man from England.
God's peace! I would not lose so great an honor
As one more man methinks would share from me
For the best hope I have. Do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.

This day is called the Feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a-tiptoe when this day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall see this day, and live old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors
And say, "Tomorrow is Saint Crispian."

Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say, "These wounds I had on Crispin's day."
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember, with added luster,
what feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.

This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so lowly,
This day shall enoble his rank.
And gentlemen in England, now abed,
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here;
And hold their manhoods cheap while any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Jet-Beetle, that's right, jet beetle

2006-08-17T17:14:00.000-07:00

On engadget today I saw a link to a jet scooter to be, boldly following that link took me to Ron Patrick's site, primarily focused on his:Jet Beetle. This thing is amazing. Everything is milled an painted with such precision and love that the car looks like it was designed to have a jet engine sticking out of it. All I can say is, I want one! Admittedly I probably wouldn't have picked a bug, but man does this thing rock. Really, the only way to have improved it would have been to build it as a batmobile

Apparently, quality dates quality

2006-08-15T12:29:00.000-07:00

I picked up this hilarious link off a yelp conversation: Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey: Dating tip: Quality dates quality. Let me tell you this is fantastic. This woman goes througha laundry list of her wonderful qualities to convince herself and the rest of the world that she's quality people. Now there's nothing wrong with some well placed confidence, but posting your hot-or-not score starts to smell a little desperate.
just to whet your appetite I've given a little snippet below:

"The above list explains why I typically receive 50-100 (sometimes more) responses whenever I post personal ads. This is in addition to getting hit on almost every time I go out alone (and all that those men know about me is that they like the way I look, they don’t even know about all the other qualities I have that make me more appealing than most other women)."

I think that sums it up. So gentlemen, if you're quality, have I got the gal for you!

Hot Skills, Cold Skills- rise of the "versatilists"

2006-08-08T15:15:00.000-07:00

The computer world articleHot Skills, Cold Skills talks about how hard IT skills are going to be less important than soft skills and non-IT tech skills like math and finance. What can I say but...jackpot! I knew that engineering would come in handy someday

Andy Warhol watches

2006-07-28T16:03:00.000-07:00

From 15minutesof.com,Warhol watches. I'm a big fan of the banana and the Campbell's ones

Another sweet japanese watch

2006-06-19T10:48:00.000-07:00

So one of my fascinations is watches with novel ways of displaying time. This one at tokyflash is a nice example:i-Pattern LCD grid time Latitude. A little odd, but no worse than the eleeno G I wear these days.