January 2012
2 posts
1 tag
Meal and reel
After black coffee for me and black tea for her, Ankita assembled our year’s first meal: black-eyed peas with tempeh bacon, swiss chard with onions and vinegar, and rice with saffron (this time without turmeric, as we’d forgotten to get some to add to it). It never gets old, sitting together food that looks like both of us, and that draws on who we are and what we choose to be and...
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Hallways and stairs
I ended the year the same way about a dozen feet from where it started: standing next to Ankita at a house party in South Berkeley with a plastic flute of Champagne in one hand. This time, instead of standing in the middle of a crowded room, we stood in the hallway of the house.
We’d spent most of the evening there, as it was roomy and mostly unobstructed, and it turned out to be a great...
December 2011
30 posts
1 tag
The lab
Every place looks more and more like some kind of user-experience setup offering lessons in how people use social media and mobile devices and location-based platforms.
It feels like the world keeps elbowing me in the ribs and saying “Hey, did you see that? That’s a pretty big stack of unfolded and piled-up newspaper pages. No, not that one, the other one — the one over by the...
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'We're gonna shop to one song, one song only'
Berkeley Bowl shoppers / it’s as if they have no manners/ I’ve got my fair trade organics / and they’re going bananas #bowlsohard
â George Kelly (@allaboutgeorge) December 27, 2011
So I Bowl so hard shoppers wanna fine me, but first shoppers gotta find me
What’s 50 items to a shopper like me? Can you please remind me?
Bowl so hard - these lines crazy, y’all...
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Everything while we have it
This cyclist caught my eye while he was weaving south along 4th Street. I wanted to stop and tell him there was nothing wrong with his haircut that a bike helmet wouldn’t have improved. It feels like I see people all over without them on, and I feel concerned for their safety, like I wish I could carry around a trailer full of helmets in bunches of sizes and hand them out. I don’t...
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2011 in music
So, yeah, Adele, pretty much overall.
Amy Winehouse’s “Lioness: Hidden Treasures” sounds more like her and better than I expected, sadly. Destroyer’s “Kaputt” wound up neck-and-neck with The Roots’ “Undun” and The Weeknd’s output for album of the year (because, good G-d amighty, it’s not like Dan Bejar released three free...
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Frozen treat fail
One nice thing about a slow day at work is that there’s just enough time to explore upcoming Android builds. So far, Ice Cream Sandwich hasn’t melted me yet. It’s just left me cold and wet and sticky and frustrated.
I keep looking around for builds to try. I’ve tried the Galnet MIUI version and the OneCosmic build release candidate versions of the ICS Galaxy S...
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Simply having a wonderful Christmastime
OAKLAND — A local man’s reflections over the course of a simple, quiet Christmas morning breakfast led him to experience a minor epiphany about how year-end holiday celebrations don’t have to suck.
The local man, as yet unidentified by authorities who continue to investigate the developing situation, appeared to arrive at the breakfast, consume foodstuffs, drink several kinds...
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Still and moving pictures
I’d had a good time last year hanging out with Amy and Tom at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and I hadn’t yet set foot inside the Oakland Museum of California since their renovation (not counting an hour or so in their courtyard on a Friday night earlier this year or late last year watching a turfing exhibition). Getting to combine hanging out and exploring the building with...
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You drive like you dream
You drive like you dream:Â Out of control all over these places
Better get out of your way before we see you staring us dead in our faces
You drive like you dream:Â Switching lanes just like you swerve
Never learning the meaning of the word curb and giving these drivers just what they deserve
You drive like you dream:Â Headlights off but you still see where you’re going
Take the...
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New glasses
I needed these. I’ve been skating by on replacement frames and good luck, ever since my last set basically came apart in my hands this summer. I had my eye on another set of Ray-Bans, but Ankita warned me away from them and toward these. They feel really sturdy against my face so far — I don’t guess you want much give in your daily vision, heh.
Next to get settled, early next...
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The Heavythin at the Hotel Utah
Whatever it looked and sounded like tonight, I’ve decided I need more of it in my life.
On the surface, it looked like just another show by The Heavythin, the first of a three-band lineup at San Francisco’s Hotel Utah. But this was subtly different from the last time I’d seen them over in Oakland. For one, I felt like I could hear them much more clearly. Maybe the soundman...
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Oil, peppers and bay leaves
Here is the gift I took home from yesterday’s Hanukah party.
I don’t spend a lot of time looking at my desk. My eyes are usually glued to whatever’s on my MacBook Pro’s screen. And yet I found myself taking time today to stop and look at the bottle and its contents.
I wasn’t picking it up and holding it up to the light or shaking it down snow-globe style, but it...
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Keepin' it kosher
I remember latkes. As many as I ate, I ought to! I remember chopped liver, the real kind and a veggie version, composed mostly of mashed potatoes and garlic, which Ankita described as very hummus-y.
I remember more snacks, beverages, dreidels, jokes and a gift exchange that went fractal very quickly in some way involving the rules about gift-givers and options to poach others’ gifts that...
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Now I've found a real love, you'll never fool me...
Today may have been the month’s busiest day so far. I started out with brunch with Amy before heading over to Mama Buzz Cafe to meet up with the choir. I was shocked to find it closed. Other people who kept showing up and peering through the door at the darkness on the other side seemed less sad about it. I’d figured it would be open in advance of its final concerts.
With not...
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Festival of desserts
I’m grateful for the tools that let me capture moments like James Knox sharing a metric heart-load of holiday community, as well as the warmth of even the smallest part of his wide and far-flung social network touching down just off Piedmont Avenue.
And then, of course, there was the food — the results of his yearly holiday labors. Tables groaned with baked goods, sugared and...
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Feast and fam (ii)
We gathered upstairs, a few dozen of us, to hear what Steve Buttry and Jim Brady had to say about our futures, our jobs and how they thought we ought to approach both of them. We listened, but we also asked a fair number of questions — perhaps fewer than got asked the day before in San Jose, by at least one or two accounts. Whether that was a function of more practical and immediate...
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Feast and fam (i)
coworker: 9:20 AM
are you going to the trib xmas party at 12:30
me: I promised to bring cookies but I don’t know that I’ll stay long.
But of course, I stayed.
After all, those snickerdoodles and chocolate-chip cookies I saw and purchased from Merritt Bakery weren’t going to go to any good homes, so I figured an impromptu Take Your Cookies to Work Day was a good idea.
...
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Where I rarely sit
On a day I get to work from home, I don’t sit in our kitchen very often. It’s nothing to do with the chill that seems to linger there this time of year outside the window, or the lack of view.
The most exciting thing you might see if you strained toward the building next door might be someone’s hands washing dishes in a sink or rushing to remove a whistling teapot from a...
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Uptown serendipity
I didn’t plan to run into Zennie Abraham tonight, but it couldn’t be helped. :) Ankita wanted to grab something to eat, and there was Rudy’s Can’t Fail Cafe, so we wound up meeting there. Suddenly, I looked over in a far booth and there he was.
Uptown Oakland works best for me when it just seems to make things like that happen. I still smile about running into Juba...
1 tag
Something borrowed, something new
I had a good time at a friend of Ankita’s house party in the Mission District, but one of the evening’s highlights for me was running into this painting on a Mission Boulevard door.
If it hadn’t been so chilly out, I would have stopped to see what information about the artist was available online. It’s exactly the kind of thing Layar or other augmented-reality services...
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Warm heart, warm house
Today was one of those pillar-to-post gallops, but I felt really good about making it over to the Cigar Factory Lofts in West Oakland to see a bunch of local artists and merchants share their work for holiday shoppers.
I figured I’d gotten unlucky and missed out on seeing James Knox, but I turned around a few minutes after arriving and found him in a doorway.
After heading home, I...
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Community engagement with Dave Newhouse
I wasn’t expecting to be back at it again so soon after yesterday, but as soon as the news seemed to break about the Coliseum City proposal and the resurgent rumors about the Oakland Athletics’ interest in moving south to San Jose, I set it up.
Dave Newhouse’s presence made it very interesting. He’s a quick study, and a fast-enough typist that he was able to keep up with...
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Community engagement with Kristin Bender
I’m starting to wonder what’s going to become of all these live chats we’ve been doing lately. They’re useful, yes. And folks like Martin and Kristin seem game. As long as they keep happening regularly and cover subjects that people might want to talk about in real time, they’re a net plus on the community engagement front.
I hope there’ll be more chances to...
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Uninstalling Congress (and other neat tricks)
I’ve not spent much time running down the different apps on my phone.
I ought to get on that there, not least because I’ve got the space and I’m paying for it, but there may be other apps I should be using or ways to better use the ones I’ve downloaded.
Getting the hang of apps like Titanium Backup, since I’ve been flashing and wiping my phone more often, means I...
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Bridge and tunnel
Today was one of those days I remember having a bicycle and deciding I’d better use it. It turned out to be much more fun than I expected, and having a solid Twitter client like Seesmic for Android meant I could retweet others’ items while on the BART train out from Lake Merritt to Pleasant Hill. I remembered riding over this footbridge with a pack of folks for Bay Area Bike to Work...
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Lucky line
I shouldn’t have found it so amusing. Normally, I wouldn’t have noticed it at all, much less been there to begin with.
But there I was, waiting in line for I-can’t-even-remember what at the neighborhood grocery store, standing next to one of those hanging shelves. And there they were, shot glasses and playing cards.
I had to laugh. One object has to feed on the other, and if...
1 tag
Bite by bite
It’s a pretty easy spot to get to from where we stay: a straight shot now up and over Interstate 580, a side street skated along and then one big hill’s worth of Mandana Street. And there we are, at Lynne & Lu’s Escapade Cafe.
We never have to wait long for a seat inside or out back, no matter what the weather, and we’re usually able to adjust to whatever they have...
1 tag
This masquerade
Karaoke birthday parties are the best ones. The cookout setup in the backyard is nice, the friendly and even-some-familiar faces hanging out on the back stairs and in the kitchen are a bonus, and goodness knows the beverage options make everything better. But the songs and the chance to sing them reign supreme.
Gwen marked another trip around the sun with an invite to a friend’s house in...
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When the lights go down in the city
I haven’t spent as much time in the galleries around 24th and 25th streets between Telegraph Avenue and Broadway as in other parts of countries. I remember swinging through at one point earlier in the year, and feeling pleased with the energy and vibrancy of the crowds taking in the work and enjoying each other’s company.
The Oakland Soft Rock Choir folks fit in quite well tonight....
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Winds will blow
There have been bad months before, but few that left me feeling like there was so little recourse, room for repair and recovery. If all of this wind we’re having could be channeled and focused, let inside buildings instead of only surging around and over it, maybe it would all be different somehow. But that’s the thing about the wind. Not everyone accounts or builds for it. Those...
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Meeting Isabelle
Lives, with luck, begin like this. Swaddled in blankets, studied and ogled and cared for, expected and planned out, cushioned and provisioned, passed from hand to hand and back to the crooks of arms and against bosoms.
With more luck, parents can keep putting one foot in front of the other to continue caring until the weight lightens, the load lessens, and children become more and more...
November 2011
28 posts
1 tag
Atmospheric conditions
I don’t know how things are going to come together. I’m only going to see bits and pieces revealed on someone else’s timetable. I’m not happy about this. It’s not much consolation that the people in charge don’t seem to know much more about the process themselves, and they seem pretty insistent on seeing and talking about processes in certain ways, not least...
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Braced for the chill
I love autumn. Don’t you? I’d rather see leaves turning colors, light slipping out of the skies earlier and earlier each evening than any other sign of any season you have to offer. I want more clouds, more fog, more drizzle, more darkness. Lengthen the shadows, lower the temperatures, let the birds head south in flocks and packs. Cover the tree trunks with moss, fill the creeks with...
1 tag
A cup of contemplation
A good day starts with coffee, black and hot and sweet, in the largest mug within reasonable reach, and a quiet warm comfortable space where it may be sipped and savored.
After a meal and a walk and whatever tasks require attention, a good day continues with beer, either at the Parkway Lounge or Rooz Cafe, or maybe Baggy’s-by-the-Lake or (if I can get it together to make it when...
1 tag
All over the place
First there were open eyes, and feet planted on carpet. Then came coffee, clothes and car keys. After that, a new city with more coffee, and plans for errands: medicine at the local HMO for starters, and stamps at the post office to send packages. Then came an amusing conversation to eavesdrop on while waiting in line (the woman who believes the United States has grown even more socialist than...
1 tag
Shelves and shelves
My bookshelves accuse me. Every day, I pass them by and continue not to re-read books I’ve read once or twice.
I don’t carry as many as I used to in my bike messenger bag, or pass them out to friends or leave them at cafes. It’s as if they don’t exist. And it’s not as if I don’t read anything. I’m just more about what’s online and linkable and...
1 tag
Ever since I was little it looked like fun
Thanksgiving means a holiday here and more holidays ahead, right? Since moving out to California and working shifts at newspapers, holidays were for civilians. One thing that makes them better than bearable: the chance to sit down & see people I don’t meet as often as I’d like.
MJ’s often made space for holiday orphans and just people she knows to swing through, and...
1 tag
I want to be there in my city
Looping thoughts at the Berkeley farmers market on Derby Street:
Beating is for riot cops, not for news coverage. Sure, I believe in scoops and in competition. But I think we should at least explore collaboration with these guys, hear what they have to say.
Building a brand is something done with other people and other outlets, not without or against them. They’re in our community. Why...
1 tag
Outside the newsroom
I don’t get up as often as I should. I could, you know. Get up, I mean. The wifi signal in the photo department at the newsroom’s center extends out to the employee entrance and the picnic tables beyond where the smokers congregate.
On the other side is another picnic table and a bicycle rack that no one seems to use. Most bikers lock up somewhere inside. Days I bike in, I walk mine...
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Watching 19th and Telegraph
I snapped awake. I must’ve slept. I just didn’t feel as if I had. I rarely did these days, staying up late watching everything and watching for everything. An inventory check found all of me was in bed, and most of me under the blanket.
I looked over the side of my bed. There was my laptop, safe and sound. I hoisted it up to my lap, sent off some e-mails and chatted briefly with a...
1 tag
Photowalking and panel-watching
Biking over from home to Rudy’s Can’t Fail Cafe to meet Melissa (and then walking around bits of downtown Oakland nearby) made it clear that something was about to happen. It was hanging around in the chilly air, more so than in the signs on a fence or a wall. Not that signs weren’t clear themselves …
… they just sort of added to it, to a zeitgeist?...
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Commuter eye
I rarely get to stop on the way back and forth between Oakland and Walnut Creek. But traffic lights afford the occasional glimpse sideways onto a sidewalk, or ahead through a wet windshield into an intersection.
I almost never open my phone’s camera app these days. Usually I open Vignette, shoot and then (when I get around to it) uploaded to Flickr. I kicked the tires on the Flickr...
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Engaging the community
I got to The Trappist a little late, but still in time to greet Martin Reynolds and several folks: readers, a manager and at least one alumnus of last year’s Oakland Voices project.
I noticed the cardboard stand-ups on the tables where people were standing by and nibbling on snacks. Hauling out my phone, firing up the Barcode Scanner app and holding it over the QR code on one took me to...
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Visiting East Bay WORKS
Some places you go look nothing like they should. An address like this one, an employment development center full of people in between jobs, careers, lives, should be full of tables and chairs and fluorescent lights and PCs. It should blink on maps and glow from a distance at night.
I took a former co-worker here for a meeting. While we waited for it to start, I filled out some information...
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You keep me coming back for more
I came to Oakland Soft Rock Choir practice tonight and found a dozen bodies, after weeks of limping by with six or seven hardcore folks.
There’s just something about a gig like the one coming up at Bar 355 that lifts some folks out of sickbeds, pulls them away from distractions. Something I need myself, after another drag of a breaking-news day.
We even had two women show up to listen,...
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Post-panel thoughts
Maybe staying up all night to live-tweet Occupy Oakland’s eviction wasn’t the best advance work for driving down to San Jose to attend this panel. I’m glad it happened, but I wish I could have enjoyed it more.
Its intent was to show folks that social media isn’t an abstract concept or the latest management-driven fad, but something the woman in the next cube or the guy...
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Life is
Life is not just work. It’s shopping for food, or rather marching up and down grocery store aisles so you can pull all the food together, followed by queueing up  in order to pay for it.
After shopping, if one is lucky, there may be beverages while one waits for the washer and dryer across from the local drinking establishment to properly minister to one’s clothes. Undoubtedly...
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Punching Down podcast
eveb: […] podcasts are so 2004! I feel positively steampunk being involved in one
me: Hello, goggles. Hello, raygun. Greetings from Camp 2004, son.
This looks like fun. More to the point, it sounds like fun. It makes me miss rolling with Tony and Karim, just chopping it up in the photo studio. I hope we’re able to get it together and meet up and decide what we want to do, or what...
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Cake kibitz
Another less than salutary work-week, capped by another evening technically not really on call but still utterly unwilling to drop everything and walk away. But even as events unfold, there is no reason not to find friends and pay respects and hoist a glass and simply be as present as one can.
Sometimes, like tonight, there are hugs and introductions. Sometimes there is a small pug dog...