Yearly Archives: 2007

Zokarrific

Posted on by

I came down to Zoka this afternoon, ostensibly to drop off a cd to one of the baristas (who apparently isn’t here today), and instead discovered all sorts of folks from the coffee shop in Bellevue I used to go to… apparently they’ve all migrated over here, following the close. Had some pleasant conversations with them, and then turned around and noticed Wil Shipley sitting next to me at one of the communal tables. Managed to strike up a conversation with him about Delicious Monster and Delicious Library, which is high on my list of apps I’d still like to review for AppleGeeks. I managed to line up an interview at some point in the near future, which is awesome, so I’ll be not only reviewing the software, but interviewing the developer for my next column (probably). Seems like a nice guy, and really passionate about what he does, so I’m definitely looking forward to that. (It occurs to me that I should also ask if there’s any way I can help, seeing as I’m, y’know, unemployed and job hunting.)

I spent the morning asleep (sleep schedule still out of whack), but the early afternoon assembling Ikea shelves, which didn’t arrive until 9-9:30pm last night, which I decided was too late to be hammering in deference to my neighbors. I should probably head home now and start filling the shelves, but I’m kind of liking sitting here at the moment. I’m not sure where I should be going with all this.

There are things on my to-do list, definitely:
» download and review Delicious Library, then come up with some interview questions for Wil
» update Be My Patron, and start shilling it with all my might.
» finish my resume update. The honest truth is that I’ve been royally avoidant of this, and only really applying for jobs that I feel like my current resume would be acceptable for. It NEEDS a major revision, though. (This has already caused me to miss out on a chance at a really awesome job over at KEXP, though I’m still going to apply to the company. The other positions aren’t as perfect a fit, but I think I could still do at least some of them.)
» finish unpacking my apartment
» tackle the great data-organization project
» organize my life, start using iCal religiously
» pay some bills that have caught up to me (I’ve been good about the monthlies, but the one-shots like a parking ticket, or a speeding ticket, or a lab bill, I’ve completely spaced on). I don’t REALLY have the money, but I also can’t afford to NOT pay them.

Let’s get crackin’!

Happy Naw Ruz

Posted on by
Nabil in March

Today is the first day of spring, which means it’s also Naw Ruz, the Baha’i New Year. Despite sleeping in (my sleep schedule is still completely out of whack and I haven’t tracked down why yet), I’ve been fairly productive today, taking a trip to Ikea just south of Seattle, to pick up some relatively inexpensive household necessities (cookware mostly… two pots, a pan, some kitchen knives, some utensils, and a plate and bowl set. Also, two more bookshelves which should be arriving this evening). It was still arguably more than I really can justify, but at the same time, being able to eat is bloody important! The bookshelves are the basic Billy shelf, which I’ve had before and was happy with, so they should do fine. It also means I’ll be able to unpack more boxes, since I currently have stacks of boxes full of books with nowhere to put them. I thankfully got a shelf from Mickey through ironic timing (which incidentally had originally been one of mine from Windsor), which let me unload at least some boxes, but that shelf is now fairly full (leaving only enough room for books I know I have but haven’t unpacked yet that go with the topics on the shelf).

Things are progressing nicely. I resisted a strong temptation to head to Chop Suey which is a notable music venue here in Seattle. A band I heard on the radio is playing tonight that I’d really love to go see, and the tickets are only $10, but there are other things I should really be doing. Next time around, maybe, when I’m more sure I’ll be able to go instead of waiting for bookshelves to arrive and then unpacking some more. I realize that I’ve been in here for a while now, so you’d think I’d be unpacked by now… in my defense, a) I was sick for a while, and b) the place is small, so unpacking involves a lot of juggling boxes around the apartment to make room.

It seems like there’s a ton of new music I’d like to pick up. The new Modest Mouse is sounding awesome, Decemberists have several new albums out since I was last able to collect them, there’s this new band Under Byen that I’d love to pick up, there’s the new Joanna Newsom, Bright Eyes have a new album coming out, the list just keeps on going… in the interim, though, KEXP continues to be a mainstay for me. I listen to it mostly in the car, but I also pull up the stream on iTunes occasionally as well. They have a nice mix of old and new, and always ecclectic, covering a ton of different genres (though there does tend to be an indie/alt influence, which I’m totally fine with).

Just to note, I tossed a pic into this post. I’m not planning on making it a regular habit, but I figured what the heck, Photo Booth is easy, and that way folks who want to see what I’m looking like nowadays can. (A lot like I did before, eh?)

Not a Shut-In

Posted on by

Or at least, I’m trying not to be. I noticed myself tending to hide out in my apartment the past week, ostensibly because I wasn’t feeling well and needed to unpack, but when faced with the reality, I didn’t really get much unpacking done during that time, and didn’t make good use of my time even hiding out in the apartment. I also noticed myself sleeping too much (12 hours last night… I’m usually happily functional on 7 hours), which is something I tend to do when I’m letting things pile up rather than acting on them. Doing is also key to keeping the depression demons at bay.

So, today I packed up the laptop and took my first trip to the coffee house in about a week. Early in the week is the best time to be here, anyway, as it gets hard to find seats later in the week. I ran into one of the folks from Coccinella (sadly now defunct) when I came in, which is awesome. I gave him my card, we’ll see if he gets in touch. (He’s in much the same boat as me at the moment, job hunting… he wandered off to work on his grad degree in philosophy, and is back now.)

Wil Shipley is sitting a few tables over, but it looks like he’s working, so I’ve opted not to bother him. I keep on meaning to go over and say hi when I see him in here (this IS one of his regular haunts after all… this is the same coffee shop they wrote Delicious Library in), but it’s hard to step up and break the ice. “Hi, I read your blog, I like your software, let’s chat?” Heh.

For those who are keeping track, I did, in fact, get Gentoo running on my G5, except for one very small, minor, deal breaking problem: the display I’m currently using (my television) apparently doesn’t play nice with the bootloader, meaning I get a blank screen and no way of knowing what I’m selecting (like, say, whether to load Gentoo or OS X) until it’s already loading. So, I’m going to chalk it up to a learning experience (namely, I now know more than I care to about configuring a kernel), and get back to thinking about data, and how I want it organized.

It’s a daunting task to take several years of files across multiple computers and drives, and get it all collected and sorted and not duplicated, and then prep it for clean backups and archiving. I think that once I DO get it all organized, Slingshot and LifeBoat are going to come in exceptionally handy, and I’ll be a lot happier (and ostensibly more productive, but I’m not holding my breath).

All quiet on the romantic front. I’d have to, y’know, be social for it to be anything else. I’ve been giving a LOT of thought to finally putting together my thoughts and observations on love into a full essay, and have slowly started gathering notes and quotes and such towards that end. Those who’ve known me for a long time can attest to the fact that love, and the idea of love, have been perennial topics for me for most of my life. I can remember sitting and thinking about it when I was 5 and 6, trying to figure out the butterflies in my stomach when certain girls were nearby, and the topic has never really fully left my thoughts since. The difference between arousal, infatuation, crushing, and love, different types of love, the abstraction and the concrete behind it. I think it’ll be rewarding (if only for myself) to sit down and put it all into words, and hopefully it will make it more clear for those around me as well. It’s still a ways off, though, as I really want to do the topic justice, and there are other things that are more pressing that I need to do (like get a job).

Beware the Ides of March

Posted on by

Actually, not much to beware at the moment, things are doing pretty well. I made a quick trip to Fry’s Electronics, something of a Mecca for computer geekery, in order to pick up a DVI cable to plug my G5 into my television, which works smashingly. I wouldn’t think that it would take Fry’s to get a DVI cable, but apparently they’re just hard to find right now. The Apple Store didn’t have any, Radio Shack not only didn’t have any, but were rude about it (and tried to tell me that DVI was being replaced by HDMI, which is bullshit: HDMI serves multimedia consumer electronics, DVI serves the computer industry. While there’s some overlap what with the proliferation of media pcs, HDMI is NOT a replacement for DVI. That would be UDI, which isn’t even out yet). Office Depot had one DVI-D cable, but for $70, which seemed a bit exorbitant. So, Fry’s it is… for $30 (and I could have gone cheaper). For those not aware, Fry’s is a honeytrap for geeks… it is incredibly likely that if you go in for one item, you’ll leave with that item PLUS several other things you didn’t realize you needed.

So now the G5 is hooked up to a nice big 32″ LCD TV, fresh up on software updates, and currently downloading the Gentoo PPC64 Linux Distribution. You might be wondering why: well, I have two very nice computers serve as my primaries (a 24″ iMac Core 2 Duo, and a 15″ MacBook Pro Core Duo), so using the G5 to explore another operating system and set it up as a server becomes remarkably appealing. I looked around at different systems I could put on it, notably Darwin, which is the BSD variant that underpins OS X, and Ubuntu, which is a popular, easy to use distro. Darwin simply didn’t have the user support, what with OpenDarwin closing down, among other things. As for Ubuntu, while they MAY have better PPC64 support in their next 6 month seed (ie, this April), they currently don’t really support 64 bit PPC chips fully yet, and I’d prefer to make a full leap if I’m going to. This didn’t leave many options, but of the major distros, Gentoo supports… well, pretty much every architecture you can think of, including PPC32, and TWO variants for PPC64 (one using a 32bit user space, the other using a 64 bit user space). I’ve heard good things about Portage, which is their package handling system, so Gentoo it is!

This is all part of a general process that I’ve been working on, and want to explain a little bit: 1) self-improvement. I’ve been doing a lot of job searching lately (imagine that), and it seems like I’m MOSTLY qualified for a lot of things, but am missing a few key fields which would make this process a lot easier… so if I can fill in the gaps while finding something I CAN do in the meantime (and who knows, maybe something even better… there are a few positions I’m applying for that would kick some serious serious ass, and are things I feel like I could really settle into and not feel like I’m “tiding over”), awesome. And besides, Linux is free, so all it’s taking up is my time. 2) Organization. I’ve been thinking a LOT about how I use my computers, and reorganizing my data to make everything a bit more efficient and accessible. I realize that this is something of a holy grail, considering the daily use of computers is a prime example of entropy, but you’ve gotta try, y’know? If nothing else, it’ll put me in prime position for when OS X 10.5 comes out, for a clean upgrade.

Unpacking continues through this all… after all, it takes a while for CD ISOs to download, burn, and install, so might as well make good use of my time, no? Of course, I say that, but then I took the time to write this, so…

Innocuous Posting

Posted on by

You may have noticed a few little update-y things I’ve done on the blog, mostly behind the scenes, so perhaps not: I’ve re-added the MyBlogLog widget to the sidebar, re-activated my Google Sitemaps plugin, and added a Print plugin — I figure I write longwinded rambling posts, the least I could do is offer a way for folks to read them in another manner that might appeal to them more. And if I ever get off my ass and start posting articles and reviews, it’ll be doubly handy!

This is going to be something of a linkdump, just so you’re aware. There’s a number of things I want to mention that have come up in the recent past that I think are worth your attention. First up, for those of us who use Twitter, I really must point out the sexy and fabulous Twitterrific for all your OS X Tweeting needs. I know I’m late to the bus on this one, but it’s still worth pointing out. The interface is sleek and refined, and can be incredibly subdued and non-invasive if you want it to be. For one, it has no dock icon to clutter up your dock, though it does add a small “t” icon to your menubar for calling it up when you want (or you can set a hotkey to do that, which is what I did). I have the window set to appear when a new twitter occurs, and then after 30 seconds quietly disappears again. No noise, no clutter, and I don’t have to pay attention to it if I don’t want to. I like that philosophy for an application. I wonder if I could convince them to put together a similar system for RSS reading?

Which takes me to the next topic: RSS readers. I played with standalone RSS readers when RSS first became a “thing”, but was unimpressed with the offerings. It’s not to say they were bad — NetNewsWire for instance is an excellent and robust application, but the information metaphor they all seemed to run with just didn’t click for me. I still saw the invaluable nature of feeds, though, so I was quite happy when Apple put together RSS support built into Safari, and have been using their integrated solution ever since. It’s still not ideal, but it does dump the information in front of me handily, and I don’t have to think about opening another app or going somewhere specific: I just have a Feeds menu on my bookmarks bar, and it tells me when there’s a new feed, and I go click on it. Done. But, well, feeds have continued to evolve. Feed based technology drives all the various -casts going on out there (music casts, podcasts, photocasts, etc), using RSS Enclosures, mostly, which aren’t really all that supported in Safari. So, I decided to see what’s going on out there in Readerland, and took a stroll through a few. Results? I’m STILL not happy with any of the RSS readers out there. NewsFire seems pretty nice, though, and I like their a la cart licensing system ($18 for the basic license… for an extra $9, you can add a household license, and/or also for $9, you can add a “license for life”, which guarantees all future versions will be a free upgrade, no matter what). Overall, it has a clean interface, which seems to be a blending of Spotlight and Aqua Unified aesthetics, and its keyboard control is mostly intuitive and what I’d expect (not always, though). I’m still debating whether I’d actually use it if I spent the money on the license — I’m usually all for supporting independent developers, but a) I’m not entirely happy with it, and b) I need to watch my budget until I have a steady income. If either of those issues were alone, I’d spend the money (I bought Scrivener, after all, and I’m in the same budget minding now as I was then).

While I was exploring NewsFire’s developer site, and came across another of his applications that is just crazy cool, though. Safari, like most browsers, has a search bar in the navigation control. What Inquisitor does is cause that search bar to work like a Spotlight search: dynamic, real time results as you type, in a drop down window that you can click from. The interface is clean, and again, it just works, adding functionality to the browser in a very real way.

This is something I’m probably going to clean up and expand upon for a post over on Applegeeks, but one of the things about modern software development is that there really is room for small, specialized applications that are innocuous and efficient. The goal, as I see it, is to make an application do its job so well that it becomes invisible to the user. Every time a user of your application stops and says “Shit, that was easy,” then you did your job. Also, as is shown by applications like Twitterrific, there is room for applications that run separately that can still offer the same seamless functionality as if it was integrated into another application, without trying to shoehorn it INTO another app. I truly hope we see more and more of this sort of approach (I think any sort of push based information could feasibly work with it… RSS feeds and email immediately come to mind. Some IM already does, but I think there’s definitely room for improvement).

It’s the Little Things

Posted on by

16 boxes just arrived at my door from Vermont. While the computers and TV and boxes (and boxes and boxes…) of books are certainly great, what I’m really happy about is the toaster and teapot. The ability to make toast and tea in one’s own home truly is the height of civilization.

Tomorrow, the storage unit arrives (it’s a portable one). That holds my bed (futon), my desk, and a wide panoply of things that I’ve not seen for coming up on two years. Time flies! This’ll be the first time I’ll have all my stuff in one spot since the divorce. Feeling pretty good about that. It’s going to take some serious thought on how to organize everything to fit in this space, but I think I’ll manage. (It’s a studio apartment, remember, and I’m something of a packrat. Hector the Collector ain’t got nothing on me!) Once I’ve figured out the space and what furniture I have, I think my priority will be to a) find a small couch if there’s room, and b) arrange for bookshelves. I’d say that easy 70% of all the things I own at the moment are things meant to go on shelves.

Finally starting to get over this cold. Still congested, but otherwise feeling fairly human. It’s been in the 50-60 range, and the trees are blossoming, and the bushes outside my apartment are flowering nicely. I’m definitely glad to be here, even if I have been under the weather the past few days.

Drip, Twitch

Posted on by

So, getting the car fixed didn’t cost as much as I’d feared, which is good… came out to $150ish, which is pretty nice since they had to replace a pulley and a belt, plus labor. They even gave me a loaner car for the day while they worked on it, which is pretty damn swell. I wandered back up to the coffee shop and downed two pots of herbal tea trying to battle the allergies that suddenly cropped up the other night… I’ve been congested all damn day. Finally picked up some Claritin (the good stuff, with the decongestant plus antihistamine, that you have to sign a release with the pharmacist for since it contains psuedoephedrin), and that’s helped a bit, but I’m still a bit congested and sneezy. Nothing I can do now but keep hydrated and hope my body acclimates soon. I’m usually really good about allergies and things blooming and such, but I think the stress and moving and sleeping on the floor and everything else is just messing with my system a little too much to adapt as quickly as it usually does.

In other news, hilarity ensues over at Wil Shipley’s blog, as he blogs his trip to the TED conference. It’s definitely worth the read.

Other than that, it’s been a pretty non-day. I did swing over to the Omni offices and delivered a message for R Stevens to the effect of “Your browser is his favorite, and he says keep up the good work.” but watching the grin on their faces was well worth the time and vaguely awkward feeling, since, y’know, I’m not R Stevens, and only know him peripherally (we know some of the same people, and I read his comic and LJ). Still, message passed. :)

From My Apartment, No Less

Posted on by

I don’t really have anything specific to say at the moment, but I did want to make use of my newly installed broadband in all its homebody-y goodness. Well, other than the crick in my neck and back from sitting in odd positions on the floor, since my desk and chair don’t arrive until next week. I’ve already done system updates and application updates and all that jazz, and probably tomorrow I’m going to sit down and see about synching up files between systems and such.

In the process of upgrading iTunes, I browsed through the iTunes Music Store, where I discovered first that the two free songs I still had squirreled away from last year have sadly expired (I knew they were going to in March, but I couldn’t remember whether the beginning of March or the end of it… alas), and just as I’d recalled two classic songs that I wanted to add to my collection. Ah well. I also discovered that there’s now gobs of stuff in their television section that I’d really love to get… BSG (mini-series on up), Dresden Files, some classic cartoons, Electric Company, et cetera. The relative low cost is remarkably appealing, but being broke continues to be a sufficient deterrent.

Especially when you suddenly get saddled with unexpected car repairs. That noise I referenced before that was probably a belt? Yeah, driving home last night, the battery light and the e-brake light both turned on, and about a block later, my power steering died. Not leaking anything, and the belt is still there… but is apparently now worn/loose enough that it’s no longer doing what it’s supposed to. So tomorrow morning, I’m driving it down to the repair shop and praying it’s not too expensive to get her back in ship-shape condition. Would have done it today, but I had to spend most of the day waiting for the cable guy (they gave me a 4 hour window to expect him… he showed up 30 minutes AFTER that).

Zoka Again

Posted on by

It’s Saturday, it’s noon, and I’m sitting in the University Village Zoka again. I don’t have a particular pressing need to be online, honestly, but it’s nice to have a destination to go to when it’s kind of rainy and grey out. Besides, there are worse things to do than to blog randomly. I don’t really have a set goal with this post, so we’ll see where it goes.

I drink a hell of a lot of chai — it’s my drink of choice in most coffee shops. I’ve noticed that a lot of the coffee shops in Seattle tend to have two kinds of chai: sweet and spicy. What this really means is “Oregon Chai” or “Morning Glory Chai“, two particular brands of chai. While having the options of different types is nice, there are other choices out there that I really wish they’d consider. In particular, there are a few brands that I think would go over really well in Seattle’s coffee-culture. There is a Mate based chai called Pixie Mate Chai that I’ve been really impressed by. It has the spices of a sweet chai, but none of it is so overwhelming that you can’t taste the tea beneath it, which is really important and often missed with Oregon Chai. As far as spicy chai goes, I may be bucking a trend, here, but I like a spicy chai to have a moderate bite, versus the strong bite of the Morning Glory. The best I’ve found along this line is a Portland local brand called Dragonfly Chai. If I could convince one of the local coffee shops to try it, I think they’d be well pleased with it.

It’s interesting to sit in a coffee shop near the counter, because you really notice the sort of pattern and flow of traffic. It seems to be a steady trickle of people until it abruptly floods in. I don’t know what else is going on in the area that would cause the momentary surges, but they’re definitely unmistakable. It’s all about the ebb and flow and cycles. (And being patient… it’s time to refill my chai, but I’m waiting until the current surge dies down).

I recently read a blog post that talked about how delightful it was to have a grapefruit, Photoshop, and an empty apartment to work in. While there are certainly days that sounds excellent, that’s not really my model. I like my solitude as much as the next introvert, but what exactly that entails differs between people, I think, and for me, it comes down to having solitude without being alone. This is why I’m so fond of coffee houses and cafes: I’m left to my own devices generally, but other people are around, satisfying my desire to people-watch when I want (watching the social dance between people is something of a pastime… I find it fascinating). That sort of “communal solitude” is my happy medium where I feel like I’m the most productive. I’d really love to sit down and get a discussion going between a number of creatives to talk about that… where our productive “sweet spot” is. I’m not sure this blog really has enough of a readership to get as broad a sampling as I’d like, but I’d still love to know folks’ thoughts on the matter nonetheless.

Snappy Dragon

Posted on by

Second post of the night, I know. I’m waiting for an immortal meeting to start, so I thought I’d write up my thoughts on dinner. I’d heard good things about the Snappy Dragon, a small chinese restaurant just up the hill from my apartment. It’s small, in what looks and feels like a converted house, which makes for a nice, cozy ambiance. Staff was young and pleasant, and I was seated pretty quickly (the benefit of eating early and alone… by the time I left, there was a pretty respectable line). The menu was respectable in length and reasonably descriptive in what each dish contained. I was initially a little disappointed to see a relatively small vegetarian list (while I’m not vegetarian, several friends are, so I’ve taken to keeping an eye out for places that would be reasonable to take them), until I noticed at the top of that section: “Please ask a server for our complete vegetarian menu.” Hah!

Since it was my first time at the restaurant, I figured I’d try one of the dishes that you find everywhere, so I’d have a basis for comparison. I opted for Moo Goo Gai Pan, and a cup of wonton soup. The soup first: it’s pretty normal to run into relatively bland wonton soup, with a soggy wonton in an inconsequential broth. This wonton soup was markedly better than that. While it still remained only wontons in broth, the wontons tasted pretty fresh, and the broth was a hearty and flavorful, based on either a pork or beef stock, and the whole thing was rounded out with a pinch of fresh scallions on top.

The Moo Goo Gai Pan came out and was a respectable portion. Their particular incarnation of this standard is comprised of chicken, snow peas, and three different types of mushrooms in a light sauce. I found the chicken to taste a little dry, but not unreasonably so, and the rest of the dish was excellent: none of the flavors were particularly overpowering, and the sauce served to augment, rather than replace the flavors of the mushrooms and snow peas.

The total meal was very reasonably priced for dinner prices, and I got out of there for $16 after a very respectable tip. I definitely plan on heading back there (especially since it’s so near my house!), and already have an eye on a chef’s special that I want to try: the asparagus in black bean sauce with chicken.