Mischa's Journal

Finally took my faithful mechanical companion to the dentist...

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 03:16:34 GMT

The good reviews of Art's Automotive aren't wrong, these guys are great! Apart from some new tires back when I first got it, my 1995 Integra hadn't had even a check-up for these three years (and 13,000 miles) I've owned it, aside from routine oil changes (and, perhaps foolishly, I never even had it inspected because I trusted the comprehensive maintenance report provided to me by the former owner, performed 4,000 miles before my purchase). In that time, it's made it up to Tahoe and back at least four times, all up and down the Bay and Marin, survived being stolen from my street and doused in pennies and french fries and rudely abandoned in Hercules, lost its (not legally required) right side mirror, made it through a smog check that also miraculously repaired the jammed ignition, all the while without leaking oil or losing its air conditioning or its nice tight handling. But, lately, some road noise from the wheels in back told me it was time to see the doctor... not to mention I had always wondered if it would be easy to get the splash shield below the front bumper to stop hanging down like that, and whether it would be easy to fix the inoperable lowest two settings of the dashboard fan. The right rear window also gets stuck when being raised by its motor, but at least it's easy to get it back in place by simply reaching back and guiding it up with some hand pressure. All this time I never really bothered to check what the best general maintenance shops were, having gotten my tires at Big-O and my oil at (*shudder*) the local Berkeley Jiffy Lube (the Yelp reviews are accurate, these guys always did a terribly half-assed job for me, though they always did fill my car with oil and put the cap back on, unlike my friend Christian who, like some reviewers, drove away and smelled burning oil and opened his hood to find the cap had never been put back on and half his oil was smoking all over his engine block!). Anyway, imagine my surprise and pleasure to find that Art's, widely respected all over the entire Bay Area, is just a 15 minute walk from my house!

So I bit the bullet and took the little guy in for the 1-hour, $98 bumper to bumper inspection along with my list of noted issues, hoping that the total repairs would come out to around $500 or so but knowing that realistically it might be more like $1,000. With a trusted repair shop, I actually find this sort of thing fascinating and enjoyable, what with all the learning about all the various bits of my car, their condition, their likely lifespan, and so on. Sure enough, I dropped $961 today, which is no chump change but still really quite good after three years of use on an excellent car which is now just shy of 200,000 miles, and which only cost me $2,650 to begin with.

Here's what we did yesterday and today:

$98.00 — Full vehicle inspection (1 hour labor)

$36.49 — Standard oil change (0.25 hours labor plus $22.35 parts minus $10.36 "courtesy discount")

$181.03 — Investigated why my dashboard fan maddeningly only works at settings "3" and "4", something I've lived with this entire time but which is rather distracting because the high settings are just too strong and I have to switch the thing on and off repeatedly. Found and replaced a bad blower resistor, problem solved! (1.5 hours labor plus $34.03 parts)

$346.54 — The hum/rumble coming from the rear wheel(s), which has slowly been getting worse, was the main reason I scheduled the appointment. Some light internet reading suggested it might be a bad bearing, and I was correct. Replaced left rear wheel bearing/hub assembly, problem solved. (1.75 hours labor plus $175.04 parts)

$0 — Installed missing clips to secure the dangling splash shield, excellent!

$0 — RR window needs more than just lube... would require door panel removal, possibly a new regulator, likely a ~$500 repair, d'oh! No thanks.

$178.73 — The inspection found some oil leaks or something (?) in the valves, as well as a cracked distributor O-ring, and these were relatively inexpensive to deal with and also described to me as higher priority among the various things the inspection found. Put in new valve cover gasket, seven valve cover sealing washers, four spark tube seals, and a new distributor O-ring, and cleaned all the gunk off. (1.25 hours labor plus $56.23 parts)

$37.15 — Found dirty air filter and replaced it (no labor charge).

$49.97 — It had been 17,000 miles since changing the automatic transmission fluid, so it was time. (0.25 hours labor plus $25.47 parts)

$33.14 — (sales tax)

Total: $961.05

Other stuff the inspection found but which I'm ignoring, since most of it could very well last another 15,000 miles without actually going bad: Drive belts are (slightly) cracked, Brake fluid is a little dirty, spark plug wires are original, spark plugs are fair, Left outer CV boot is torn (I replaced the other one when it was torn when I got the car, but "torn" doesn't always mean bad and it can last a long time; waiting until the axle is actually clicking and then replacing that along with the CV boot is more cost-effective), oil pan is dented (irrelevant), trailing arm bushings are ripped (but shocks overall are fine), coolant hoses are original, a little coolant crust found at IACV hose, a little peeling paint on "brake booster" (whatever that is) apparently indicating that master cylinder might be starting to leak, so we'll keep an eye on that. Brake pads are at 6mm (recheck in 7k-8k miles). With this stuff all in their database and their keen eye for detail, they can easily take a peek at things, at the appropriate times, when I go in for oil changes.

So car is now happy and healthy and rarin' for me to get out of grad school and drive around to studios again! (Grocery store runs are boooooooring, sheesh)

You're part of the problem, dipshit

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 17:56:18 GMT

Yes, yes, another compelling story about an infant/toddler denied health insurance because of being in the wrong percentile:
Underweight Girl Denied Insurance Coverage

But what really pisses me off about this story is the father's statement:

"We would definitely like to see insurance reform," Rob Bates said. "We are not proponents of universal health care by any means, but what we want to see is that insurance companies have legitimate reasons for denying coverage."

Alright genius, if insurance companies are still allowed to deny coverage and operate for-profit, what would be a legitimate reason, if not a perfectly grounded statistical cost-benefit analysis that your daughter, like many other applicants, is likely to cost the company more money than she would generate for it? You want insurance companies to come up with "legitimate reasons" for denying coverage, well, this is what you get.

Americans and their goddamn individualistic "not my problem!" hoarding, and they can't even see it when it directly endangers their own family.

Oh this is just too amazing

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 19:17:45 GMT

"One letter is missing" -- what a fantastic hook! Now wait for the punchline :-)

And don't even bother trying to make sense of the nonsense he's thrown together to make the "word". Yes this is the Glenn Beck whose job is secure because of his phenomenal, and I fear, 100% non-ironic ratings. I've seen colleagues of my Alaskan sister comment on her FB status updates, with drooling back-and-forth high-fives rejecting healthcare reform and all things Obama and devolving into mutual "we love Glenn Beck" chirrups (evidently a useful group-call for determining friendly status amid a forest of potentially rational people).

via gmonkey42

August movies

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 20:19:08 GMT

This was a weird summer for film. Maybe the year in general too? The last couple weeks though, things have really exploded in the "worth watching" department. I've been getting up every day and just banging out pages of my chapters as fast as I can, but now and then I've taken a quick break:

- District 9: Really enjoyed it. And Hollywood seems to have finally figured out how to do special effects without ruining "gritty realism", successfully blending with filmed elements. I'm sure no-one will mourn the end of the era of strangely shiny, obvious CGI inserts.

- The Hurt Locker: Not only the best film about Iraq I've seen (this isn't really saying much, I suppose), but just a fantastically tense, unpredictable, well-balanced, well acted film by any measure. I think I must be late to the party in realizing that Kathryn Bigelow is someone special. Besides all the skillful action/suspense direction, I don't think I've ever seen such an incisive, authentic-feeling portrayal of just... "men", especially of the soldiery sort. She did an amazing job of capturing all the smoldering, bottled-up emotion and physicality that most directors like to bleach away in favor of stable, level-headed paragons or wild caricatures. Perhaps there's is a real sweet spot, budget-wise, for a fantastic film: allow a really talented director around 10 million dollars to do whatever the hell they want, with top-notch actors who are not major stars. Less money, and you might have to really skimp on locations or cameras or actors or quality post production. More money, and studios refuse to take risks and will instead stick their fingers in everything.

- Ponyo: Kind of a return to Totoro-like sensibilities. I probably could've waited for a Japanese-language release on home video though... (even though the voices are fine, there's still a fair amount of cultural dissonance with just how clearly Japanese the film is).

- Inglourious Basterds: haven't seen it yet! Going to!

- World's Greatest Dad: Pretty skillful black comedy. Still follows a typical comedy pattern (situations will be awkward and amusing! But this is a black comedy so they will also be horrifying and ironic!), but if you accept that, the film retains a lot of originality and remains unpredictable throughout. And it's always good to see Robin Williams taking on a non-absurd role these days, because his schtick has been over and done for years and years. SPOILERS: I also like the film's cynicism regarding the "douchebag" of a son he has, and his unbleached sailor-mouth. The kid was just a dumb, hurtful prick, and though he might have changed eventually, it doesn't happen in this film. Not a bully with a heart of gold -- none of that nonsense. The interplay between him and his super-scrawny, nerdy and ever-tolerant friend is also very authentic-seeming. Nice performances by young actors. Some of my friends also commented on the accidental timeliness of this film's major plot arc with some of the similar things we saw in the coverage of Michael Jackson's death....

- The Fast and the Furious (1955): the Pacific Film Archive played this the other night in a free outdoor screen projected against a big cement wall in the Berkeley Art Museum sculpture garden (not a great "screen", but it served well enough I guess). Pure B-movie comedy gold! (This is a Roger Corman film, after all). There was also free popcorn and lemonade. (Spoilers ahead). The people in this film, like in many Roger Corman storylines, seemed to be living in a world where our brains had been corrupted by a virus to make us strangely forgetful and irrational. Right at the start, a guy gets knocked unconscious, and the person who finds him immediately calls the police "to report a murder!" (she doesn't check him, of course). The police arrive and are casually going over the scene and chatting, when one of them finally bothers to take a close look at the guy on the floor and says, matter-of-factly "hmmmm, he's still alive. We better call an ambulance", which they proceed to do in the same unhurried, deadpan manner. Later on, the heroine gets locked in a wooden cottage with no windows, and she has the brilliant idea of escaping by setting it on fire from the inside, so that the smoke alerts a passerby in the Coachella wilderness who then can come by and open the door (which is also clearly a barely-latched prop!). And many many more. And it was preceded by an awesome seatbelt-safety short hosted by Dick Van Dyke (I think it was called "Before It's Too Late", but I can't find any trace of it online), which actually had some really great high-speed photography of what happens to a crash test dummy family in a 40 mile per hour side collision. The camera keeps dwelling on each of the mangled forms, the toddler missing a leg or two, the father thrown from the car and doing the splits on the pavement, the children being torpedoed around the car and bouncing off the sides in slow motion..... just to drive home the point that THIS IS YOUR FAMILY. Amusing, then, that this was before they realized we should use more than just lap belts!

Cheeseboard tonight involves grilled peaches

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 02:22:47 GMT

and arugula and Dutch bleu cheese and mozzarella and lemon vinaigrette. Just sayin'.

You now have 38 minutes to take advantage of this.

via jholomorphic

Flipnote "hambaaga!"

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 08:54:52 GMT

In case you've been feeling safe from Ronald McDonald lately, this should make all those serene feelings go away :D

It's an example of what you can do with the amazing *free* animation utility on the Nintendo DSi. "I'm lovin' it!"

Brief dental update

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 22:20:18 GMT

Well, I had pretty much given up on this ridiculous "SafeGuard" insurance of mine. Sure, $8 a month is a steal, but not if every single dentist in the Bay Area that takes their insurance is some kind of freakshow that will ruin your face! I even drafted my cancelation letter today and have it ready to mail, but I called my old dentist only to learn that even with their discount for the uninsured, a simple exam + cleaning + a couple of X-rays (not even a full set) will run about $200. Their receptionist helpfully suggested the UCSF School of Dentistry student clinics, where you can apparently get decent care at about half of normal cost, as long as you're willing to have very long appointments while the student's work is monitored and evaluated by their faculty supervisor. Still, if I have to go all the way into the City, I figured, might as well check some of their SafeGuard dentists. I got the usual horrifying set (think overtones of Russian Mafia, and plenty more stories of dishonest diagnoses and unnecessary work), but I think I may actually try this guy, Edward Zhao, who is seriously the *only* dentist I was able to select under my plan, who does not have absolutely horrifying reviews written by multiple people who registered for Yelp specifically to share their bad experience and save other people from misery.

Amusingly, the first review is by another Berkeley resident who states right in her review that he's the only dentist in the Bay Area that both accepted her insurance and didn't have terrifyingly bad reviews, so I guess I've arrived at the same destination!

Thinkin' about canceling this "SafeGuard" dental insurance...

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 21:46:23 GMT

Well, it was quite useful in getting me a cheap eye exam and 20% off on my glasses with Dr. Kiyomoto, a perfectly fine optometrist over at San Pablo and University.

But I still haven't been to a dentist. I haven't been able to find a single dentist with great reviews that accepts their insurance. Instead, looking through their provider network, I keep running into results like this guy, who sounds like a real-life Dr. Nick (an analogy requiring no exaggeration at all, apparently).

The one I'm officially assigned is University Dental, but I'm afraid their yelp page kind of spectacularly fails the smell test. Another possibility is Guolin Yu up on Telegraph but I haven't been able to find a single review anywhere online. So far Madelyn Ballard seems like the best bet, with lots of satisfied customers, but the one person who mentions fillings also makes it very clear that she doesn't really know how to do resin fillings. I've got resin composites in the couple of cavities I've had, and though I don't really think I have any cavities right now, it would suck if I had to head to a different dentist just because I don't want silver fillings (I worry about the look as well as the possibility of temperature sensitivity).
She's not actually in my provider network anyway. Stupid badly designed website giving me false results.

Is it worth $8 a month for cheaper cleanings even with a chance of needing to go back to my old (beloved!) dentist Dr. Assael, and have him do a filling without insurance? Perhaps, perhaps....

It may be worth mentioning that I generally have extremely healthy teeth and gums (it's a family thing... my mother and brother have had no cavities at all, in their entire lives, and they aren't exactly superheroes when it comes to proper brushing and flossing). I think I've had 3 cavities total, which were discovered in places where my (possibly ill-advised?) childhood sealants had partially broken off (leaving little traps), upon my return from a summer in China... during which I used locally purchased "Colgate" toothpaste that may have been made with melamine instead of fluoride.

~~I might try Lavorini Dental Care. Downside is, though the reviews are reassuring, the fact they do well on Yelp (and are a "sponsored result") means they are completely swamped with patients.~~
Why would you come up in my provider search results provided by my own insurance, if "this provider does not accept patients for this plan"?

More ~~humorously~~ ALARMINGLY bad ideas in my provider network. In fact, this is my entire provider network!
- Gentle Dental: "When all was said and done, my back teeth had been mysteriously sharpened and now there are so many weird gaps between my teeth I need a toothpick every time I eat so much as a bowl of ice cream."
- Western Dental: "My teeth are ruined and i will probably have to have them pulled."
- Oakland Dental: "I hate this dump with all my heart. People, you don't have to suffer through this."
- Ronald Bullard: "The office is disgusting and smells worse than a truck stop men's room."
- Andrew Cheung: "He told me I had 17 cavities... he then put some blue stain on my teeth, saying that would show me where the cavities were. Then he said if he could scrape the blue stain off, it was only plaque that needed cleaning, not a cavity. He started scraping, and it all started to come off. When he noticed that, he stopped and started pointing instead of scraping, saying it was all cavities."

The only slight possibility seems to be Franklin Dental. But at this point I'm starting to seriously think I should just bail. The SafeGuard dental network appears to be the Dr. Nick Network in disguise.

How is Bloo-ray formed?????

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 06:20:54 GMT

how factory get pragnent?

Well, here it is. This gallery is basically pornography. Did you know that the polycarbonate disc material is first sent through the factory in granule form, through a series of tubes?

Music recommendations?

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 03:24:55 GMT

Just for fun, I scanned through all the albums on my computer to see which (non-classical) ones I seem to be drawn to again and again. When people ask me "what kind of music do you like?", I never have any quick way of answering, but maybe that's because I have an underdeveloped palate or spent too many years immersed in classical stuff.

So, after taking a look here, how would you describe me? Any recommendations based on what I seem to like? Or, you could treat this as a meme if you want, and post a similar accounting of your own tastes.

Here are some of my most favorite traditional albums (kind of in order, though they're rather hard to compare!):

Nine Inch Nails - With Teeth (2004)
Lamb - Best Kept Secrets (1996-2004)
Radiohead - OK Computer (1997), The Bends (1995), and In Rainbows (2007)
Imogen Heap - Speak for Yourself (2005) and (as Frou Frou) Details (2002)
The Beatles - Revolver (1966), Magical Mystery Tour (1967), and Rubber Soul (1965)
Metric - Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? (2003)
Björk - Post (1995)
Peter Gabriel - Passion: Music for The Last Temptation of Christ (1989)
Shpongle - Are You Shpongled? (1999)
The Decemberists - The Crane Wife (2006)
Snow Patrol's compilation choices for: - The Trip. Snow Patrol. (2004) [Disc 2 only]

As well as these fantastic soundtrack albums:

A.R. Rahman, M.I.A. (et al) - Slumdog Millionaire (2008) (movie soundtrack album)
Sondheim (et al) - Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) (movie soundtrack album)
Geinoh Yamashirogumi - Akira "Symphonic Suite" (1990) (movie soundtrack album)
Alex Wurman - March of the Penguins (2005) (movie soundtrack album)
Gustavo Santaolalla - Babel (2006) (movie soundtrack album)
Yasunori Mitsuda & Millennial Fair - Creid (1998) (acoustic arrangement of "Xenogears" video game soundtrack)

And some "honorable mentions" in no particular order:

M.R. Shajarian and Kayhan Kalhor - Night Silence Desert (2000)
Seal - (1994 album)
Coldplay - X&Y (2005)
The Magnetic Fields - i (2004)
Infected Mushroom - The Gathering (1999), IM the supervisor (2004)
Juno Reactor - Labyrinth (2004) and Shango (2000)
Paul Oakenfold - GU007: New York (1998) and Tranceport (1998)
Talvin Singh - OK (1998)
Cat Stevens - Footsteps in the Dark (1984)
Miles Davis & Gil Evans - Sketches of Spain (1960)
Björk - Vespertine (2001) and Homogenic (1997)
Sinéad O'Connor - The Lion and the Cobra (1987)
Alanis Morissette - Jagged Little Pill (1995)
Garbage - Version 2.0 (1998) and beautifulgarbage (2001)

Drunken sailors tie poor knots

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 10:34:48 GMT

See, gmonkey42 posted a link to the Drunken Sailor song.... man, they do all kinds of horrible things to that poor sailor, many of them multiple times with only slight variations. But more importantly, some of the more obscure lyrics sent me off on a rather enlightening (but mercifully short-lived) wikipedia clickety-fit, in which I not only refreshed my memory for yardarms, daughters of captains and gunners, and running bowlines, but also learned that all this time I didn't realize there was a difference between a square knot and the much less reliable granny knot and, what's worse, I discovered I've been tying my shoes with a granny knot bow all this time! So I practiced a bit on a piece of headphone cable (damned if I'm getting out of bed to go find my shoes!) and I think I've figured it all out now.

That's right, folks: it's taken me 30 years to learn how to tie my shoes....

Safari 4: so far, so good!

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 19:12:30 GMT

I've been trying to crash it since yesterday, and so far I haven't succeeded! That's awesome, because Safari on intel machines running Leopard has, until now, been an absolute joke of a browser, crashing immediately on any site with even a speck of javascript or tricky advertising sidebars. And the worst part: unlike Firefox it never remembered what you were trying to look at when the crash happened, not even in the browser history.

Thing is, I don't like using Firefox! And here's why. It's really quite simple, and it's not about the application taking slightly longer to load. In a word, Firefox is fugly. Text in input boxes, fugly. Scrolling, jerky (too few steps) and fugly! Fonts in general, strangely rendered and fugly. Buttons and pull-downs, fugly! [Update: and forcing you to download PDFs instead of just opening them!] Nobody else is bothered by this? I love love love the two finger scrolling on the Mac's trackpad (in fact I stopped using my mouse entirely, months ago). I'd say it's one of the single most incredible developments in computer interface technology in the last couple years. And I want my browser text to move smoothly when I scroll, end of story. (Don't give me any guff about Firefox's wonky "smooth scrolling", it's still fugly!). One thing remaining though: I do wish Safari would allow for dynamically side-scrolling to extra tabs instead of putting overflow into a pulldown menu.

So, anyone excited about yesterday's new Mac developments? I didn't follow it closely, but:
- Makes sense that the unibody 13" MacBook is getting a "Pro" and a firewire port. It's gimped predecessor never should've existed in the first place and will be quite an odd duck going forward. I still wish they would put both a 400 and an 800 on all their machines, though, like mine has now.
- 32 GB iPhones, yes! This was kind of the threshold before I figured I'd want one. Not that I'll be able to afford it any time soon, at all. Also rumors of "science sensors" and even better tricorder-like functionality. Though sadly it's become clear that the smartphone advancement cycle is so fast these days that buyer's remorse is almost inevitable, with an unbelievably faster/better product released at half the price within months. I haven't noticed this with laptops lately: after 15 months the only thing I have to complain about is that my hard drive could've been twice as big.

housemate wanted

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 01:34:02 GMT

I'm searching for a new housemate, for a July 1 lease (or possibly August 1 or mid-August start, if necessary). It's a great 2-bedroom/1-bath cottage with a great price (currently $683 per person before utilities) and in a great place (set back from a quiet street, at Browning St and Channing Way in Berkeley), fully furnished except for the available bedroom, which is reached via a charming short flight of stairs from the living room. We have our own free laundry machines in the built-in garage. We pay for water, gas/electricity, and DSL (currently no landline), averaging out to around $50-60 per person per month for all utilities. Lovely garden between the cottage and the landlords' house in front, with fruit from Meyer lemon, lime, fig, pear, and persimmon trees. Access to campus is an easy 10 minute bike ride (or 30 minute walk). We are also a 6 minute walk to the 51 bus which goes straight to campus and is useful on rainy days. 15-minute walk to N. Berkely BART. 10-minute walk to Andronico's grocery (or a 15 minute walk to the brand new Berkeley Bowl West that is opening tomorrow!). 5-minute walk to Caffe Trieste (an excellent coffee shop; great for studying and live music many evenings). Street parking is also very easy here and uncrowded (unlike the situation right next to campus), a major perk if you own a car.

About me: I'm a 30-year-old male grad student in the linguistics department at Berkeley, currently working on finishing my dissertation. I'm generally cheerful, reliable, personable, and I value good communication. I'm a big fan of movies and home theater, and the living room is equipped with a very high-end TV and sound system. In the evenings I often like to watch a film from my collection or from Netflix, or perhaps play a video game (PS3/PS2/Wii, etc). I'm also into geeky things like fantasy and science fiction. I'm more of a night owl than a morning person (ideally hoping to live with someone who would enjoy watching, or wouldn't be bothered by, a loud movie running as late as midnight some nights of the week). I like to keep the kitchen and living room pretty clean, and am pretty conscientious about not leaving a big pile of dishes (and hope for the same in a roommate). I don't smoke. I tend to have overnight guests no more than 1 night a week or so, and occasionally I host movie night gatherings with friends. The cottage is better quipped for small or medium dinner gatherings rather than large wild parties. These days I spend most days away from home, working on my dissertation at local cafes. Occasionally I also do sound editing for films, which I usually do at home.

If any of this piques your interest, please drop me a note!

Maker Faire

Sat, 30 May 2009 03:00:33 GMT

It's going to be awesome, guys! [Maker Faire homepage]

cityofgates, cryptoquip, haaaychiq, linkling and I (and some of you??) are heading there tomorrow. There's a good chance I'll meet up with haaaychiq in Dolores Park at 8:30 for the the critically massive, unrestrainedly goofy 19 mile bike event that will head down the peninsula, on "party bikes" cruising with "great music" (I will be on my ordinary bike, however).

The Bowl's big sister is almost here

Wed, 27 May 2009 18:51:25 GMT

Oh, I had no idea this was coming so soon! Berkeley Bowl West is opening June 4!

It's a larger store, with twice the parking spaces, is twice as close to my house as the current store, and actually has a larger produce section (which is really saying something, since the other store's produce section is the largest I've seen in any grocery store anywhere in the world).

As the article notes (and as pretty much any Berkeley resident can attest), the current store's "parking lot is a gridlocked swamp of road rage, a demolition derby of Priuses and rusty old Volvos vying for parking spots." It's such a headache that the store lost virtually all its utility for people who live too far to walk. When driving you actually have to visit in pairs, so one can do the shopping while the other circles around the lot where they will likely never find a spot! The other issue I have with the current store is that its location, far south from downtown along Shattuck/Adeline, is along a vector I seldom have reason to travel... a veritable dead zone for me (including the Ashby BART station), which is just too far from my house to make quick trips convenient. I do sometimes drive up that part of Ashby to get much farther East, but usually I only have reason to go straight east to downtown by bicycle, or by car north and south along San Pablo (also linking to waterfront freeway entrances at University and at Ashby). This new store is quite close to San Pablo and Ashby, right on the way to the freeway when heading south towards Oakland or San Jose or the Bay Bridge. I do feel bad for the traffic problems this will cause the most local of residents, but at least the store is slightly removed from the main conduit. I'm equally excited about the new Trader Joe's opening up at MLK and University, but I don't see how that one's going to avoid causing terrible traffic for anyone in Berkeley driving on University or on MLK, and I bet the parking lot will be complete madness, worse than the current Berkeley Bowl! Still, it'll be great to have both these stores less than a mile from my house, when all this time I've only had Andronico's that close, whose 75% markup on even the most mundane items causes me to grind my teeth.

Jesse Ventura tells it like it is

Tue, 19 May 2009 17:34:09 GMT

This is a pretty awesome clip. He utterly destroys Hasselbeck, who's used to spouting her constant spurious nonsense without such a stark reality check. The Body should've probably stuck to politics on TV all along, with his verbal cage match skills. (Instead of finding out the hard way that actually being governor is a whole lot more complicated.)

In the mood to watch Dirty Harry again....

Sun, 17 May 2009 06:48:00 GMT

When I head 3 or 4 blocks from my house to study at Caffe Trieste, I get used to very frequent instances of police and ambulances and fire trucks zooming by with sirens blaring, because it sits right at the major intersection of Dwight and San Pablo.

But today's siren-related events were much nastier than usual. Right as I was biking the couple of blocks southwest to get to my destination, someone was getting shot to death a couple blocks away at 10th and Allston. The ambulance I waited for before crossing the street was probably carrying a dead man. A short time later the murderers realized the police had a bead on them and took off in their Cadillac, for all I know passing me by as I serenely ordered my espresso, followed soon after by police barreling down San Pablo in hot pursuit. It all ended very badly, when the bastards crashed into an unlucky motorist in North Oakland near MLK and 57th, throwing the car against the corner of a building and killing both the driver and a pedestrian. Two of the four suspects were arrested, while the others managed to take off through people's backyards and are still at large. The developing story as told by the Chron. And a minor update.

Another update: names released and the driver killed in his car was a 27 year old film editor. Bastards!

Star Trek movie thoughts behind the cut

Sun, 10 May 2009 08:14:02 GMT

Got up and saw it today at 11:30 at Bay Street. Movies always taste better when they cost just $6!

Fun set of trailers before the show, what with G.I. Joe (looks better than you'd think!) and the next Transformers flick (at least worth a watch, even though I know they'll never write a part for my beloved triple-changer Astrotrain...)

So, I certainly enjoyed it quite a bit. But:

Music
Considering it's already directed in a somewhat recognizable J.J. Abrams style, I really didn't like the music being from the same composer as Lost (Michael Giacchino). They even had the very Lost-y "music montages" (where all diagetic sound is removed and we just get the plaintive strings thing playing through the edits), especially during George Kirk's impending demise and various shots over the plains of Iowa. It's not supposed to be so obvious that it's by the same people as Lost, you guys! forchrissakes....
Related to this issue: I thought the main theme song was awful. Catchy, perhaps, but not in a good way. And it was used like a cudgel throughout many dramatic scenes, with an incredibly annoying and unsubtle choral accompaniment (sorry, singers).

Performances
Chris Pine's Kirk was okay. Really didn't channel a young Shatner though, which was too bad since most of the major actors were clearly trying to use the performances of their precursors as templates, occasionally with great results. I was very impressed and pleased with Karl Urban's McCoy. He nailed it in a way that basically no-one else managed to, and simultaneously disappeared into the character (meaning we were never reminded that he was Eomer, for example). Sylar-Spock was good, maybe not great (I'm not all gaga over that character the way a lot of folks seem to be, but his backstory did cover some nice material). John Cho's Sulu was quite good, except for one critical problem: his voice! It lacked even a tiny hint of Takei's incredibly distinctive and much loved basso. I liked Chekov as the adorably awkward geeky kid. Uhura... unfortunately, was forgettable and just... I don't know, bland? Simon Pegg's "Scottiness" was, I suppose, pretty good, but his Simon Pegg-ness still stuck out a bit more than I liked. Apparently the actors were given pretty free reign to channel as much or as little from their precursors as they wanted. I think Abrams would've done better to direct them towards a more unified style across the board.

There were certainly lots of great little homages, like the "updated" Halo-style jumpsuit for the obvious red-shirt. As soon as that guy appeared the audience started clapping and giggling, so eager were we to watch him die within a few short minutes :-)

Plot
Hoo boy. It was fun and interesting, and linked up well with Nimoy's last appearance in TNG, but do we always have to have time travel and alternate timelines, people!? It actually detracted from the experience for me, because I spent a good part of the movie being troubled that this new altered timeline, with its destroyed Vulcan and nearly extinct Vulcan race (not to mention a host of other fairly minor things that aren't so problematic for series continuity, like deaths of Kirk's dad and Spock's mom, two Spocks running around, etc.), is now going to be a new canon for any further work using these actors. I like my Star Treks to fit together, dammit! A mirror universe episode here and there is fine, mind you. But now we've got this whole direct precursor to TOS, and it can't possibly fit with TOS or any of the later series because of its totally fucked timeline. They were apparently inspired by "Yesterday's Enterprise".... too much! I guess I stop finding alternate timelines fun when they screw with our sense of which one is "the real one" vs. which is safely ensconced in a fringe, freaky alternate reality that's cool to check on now and then. Also: black holes are now time traveling devices instead of places where you and light and everything else goes and dies forever, WTF. It's totally because they thought nerdy sounding things like "temporal rift" were hokey and also scary to newcomers, but hey, everyone's heard of black holes! Lame.

Umm... everybody OK down there?

Fri, 08 May 2009 18:26:44 GMT

Hey Santa Barbara people, care to offer a report from the ground? Local excitement and/or stories? Any high tech maps and commentary? This totally scary looking map seems to show that Goleta is safe, at any rate...

Need moar El Cerrito friends

Tue, 05 May 2009 23:02:58 GMT

I abandoned the 4-hours of work per day some time ago... because I was not working on Saturdays and Sundays. Instead I've been managing to hit 6 hours or so, sometimes more, most weekdays. I cannot express to you how good it feels to come sit in this cafe, have a nice big cup of coffee, and get down to business. The "Ritual" coffee feels like it has more than coffee in it. All french pressed, cloudy, muddy even. Coffee you can chew on. Do not fear the little floaty bits... they're the best part ;-)

Bottom line, no matter how droopy I feel in the morning (which seems to be roughly constant regardless of whether I'm being a coffee drinker), I get here and have my cup of joe, and I feel like a million bucks. A MILLION FRACKIN' BUCKS! (*shakes you by the shoulders*)

I'm also clearly a "regular" by now. Everyone knows my name, and I know theirs. Can't you hear the theme to Cheers coming on? Gwuh... of course not!! Because as you may recall, this place is also a totally chill record shop, with tons and tons of classic LPs on display, and Dave provides us with a constant selection of high quality background music all day long, mostly stuff I've never heard before, from decades that produced the hand-me-down bell bottoms I was ridiculed for as a small child in the 80s. Lately I've taken to sitting in the sunny lounge area with its goofily mismatched selection of chairs and couches among the tall potted plants. For lunch my favorite is the arugula salad, because it comes with pine nuts, mandarin oranges, and the most amazing roasted beets I've ever tasted (something called "Chiogga beets"), plus bacon if I want it for another dollar or two, or chicken, or whatever. Meanwhile the spinach salad comes with an amazing goat cheese (something called "Laura Chenel"). And all salads feature the most impressive homemade vinaigrette I've ever encountered which, like the coffee, is solid enough to chew.

So where is everybody? Come on down and inhabit this place with me!

Intriguing movies at the PFA

Sat, 02 May 2009 06:59:51 GMT

Check these out... they look fascinating and should make for a great day of documentary film tomorrow (i.e., in 12 hours). Maybe I'll see you there? The PFA website appears to be totally broken at the moment, so I'll have to just print these here for you:

Pacific Film Archive and Center for Japanese Studies at UC Berkeley present
Kazuo Hara in Person
May 2, 2009

Born in 1945, Japanese documentary filmmaker Kazuo Hara is unafraid to provoke. The director turned the camera towards his own life with Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974, which focuses on his ex-lover, an outspoken feminist activist. In addition to demonstrating the director’s commitment to cinema verité, the film shows Hara’s fondness for iconoclastic subjects and his willingness to allow these subjects to seize control of his films. This approach again came to the fore with Hara’s best-known work, The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On, which follows the whims of a particularly angry World War II veteran. Hara’s cinema has proven to be among the most inventive of Japan’s postwar era, pushing documentary filmmaking to its formal boundaries.

SATURDAY MAY 2
12:00 NOON Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974
Kazuo Hara (Japan, 1974, 98 mins)
Kazuo Hara in Person
Hosted by Miryam Sas
(Gokushiteki erosu: Renka 1974). Near the beginning of Kazuo Hara’s extremely personal documentary, the director admits he made the film to attempt to deal with his feelings for his ex-lover Miyuki, a bisexual feminist activist and the mother of his child. This confession suggests Hara felt haunted by Miyuki and that he needed to exorcise her. Yet his film proves otherwise: it portrays a unique woman who meets life head-on, unafraid of its complexity. The film doesn’t shy away from messiness; on the contrary, it revels in it. Miyuki grants Hara and his camera an astonishing level of access, stripping herself bare both literally and figuratively. The result is a rich, emotionally raw film that is as much about its director as it is about its ostensible subject. Hara correctly sees part of himself in Miyuki, who seems unconcerned with being portrayed sympathetically. Frequently directing her ire at Hara and the camera, Miyuki comes off as temperamental, angry, stubborn, unpredictable, beautiful, and very much alive.
Miryam Sas is an associate professor of comparative literature and film studies at UC Berkeley.

2:45 The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On
Kazuo Hara (Japan, 1987, 122 mins)
Kazuo Hara in Person
Hosted by Miryam Sas
(Yuki yukite shingun). With his long, slight frame, Kenzo Okuzaki doesn’t look like a man prone to violent rages—much less one who has been imprisoned for murder. Yet he believes that “violence is justified if the end result is good.” Okuzaki is a veteran of Japan’s 36th Regiment, which fought in New Guinea in World War II. One of the regiment’s few survivors, he feels indebted to his fallen brethren and sets out to “console their souls.” This consolation requires that he force former military officers to admit to illegal executions and other atrocities. Okuzaki’s bullying tactics mix polite inquiry with accusatory tirades and physical violence. Hara followed Okuzaki for several years when making this documentary, gaining extraordinary footage but keeping a marked distance from the proceedings. Despite Okuzaki’s frequently erratic and dangerous behavior, Hara never intervenes. Okuzaki seems quite conscious of Hara’s camera; to him it is just another weapon in his arsenal, a tool in his crusade for truth.

Followed by this awesome-sounding documentary at the same location, which is a brand new film and part of the San Francisco International Film Festival:

6:15 CRUDE - "This is a corrupt Texaco lawyer," declares attorney Steven Donziger, pointing dramatically at Chevron attorney Diego Larrea. Lawyers from both sides of the class action lawsuit Aguinda v. Chevron have descended upon the office of an Ecuadorian judge, resulting in a verbal battle that continues into the building's corridors as attorneys grandstand and news cameras roll. It's the closest the documentary Crude comes to being an all-out courtroom drama. Most of the legal arguments in this film take place in the Amazon jungle, where lead attorney for the plaintiffs Pablo Fajardo and Chevron lawyer Adolfo Callejas litigate at the very rainforest sites the plaintiffs—30,000 Ecuadoreans—maintain Chevron contaminated. Filmmaker Joe Berlinger spent three years documenting the unfolding court case, interviewing lawyers on both sides and following the story from Chevron stockholder meetings to the jungles of Ecuador. The result is a gripping David and Goliath story of activists pitted against a corporate giant, graphically illustrating the impact of our energy consumption on the indigenous people of the Amazon, who face rising cancer rates, birth defects, and other health problems as they struggle to survive in a poisoned landscape. It's also a portrait of two of the plaintiffs' attorneys—the bombastic, media-savvy Donziger and the more reserved Fajardo, who began his working life at fourteen in the oil fields of Texaco. Alternately inspiring, funny, disturbing, and infuriating, Crude offers a thoughtful and complex look at the issues surrounding political reality and corporate responsibility in Latin America.

Updates, "random" edition

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 01:02:17 GMT

Today is evidently a sort of "cleaning" day for me. I already spent two hours this morning cleaning absolutely everything in my pantry of the weird little weevils that had infested an old thing of breadcrumbs. Hundreds of them just emerged right through the walls of the container! And started trying to get into anything else in the cupboard with wheat in it. But most of them just died. And collected all over the bottom of the pantry, amongst the liquor. Gross. So as long as I'm cleaning things up, here are a few more tidbits I noted down a while ago and never got around to mentioning. Random!

Apricot kernels, as a snack, are one of the most vile things I have ever eaten. "Poor-man's almonds" indeed. Never again! The trial products section at Trader Joe's is a never-ending source of excitement, isn't it?

In the winter I picked up Brian Ganz's edition of Chopin's Preludes at a music store in Madison. It's a fantastic deal: $15 and comes with a CD containing pretty nice performances of the full set. The 'Raindrop' is so lovely, I just had to get the music. I can kinda sorta play it now, though I haven't tried in a few months...

I haven't actually gone to see my new doctor yet with Kaiser, but I'm already pleased with my $8 per month dental+vision insurance through Safeguard. I had my $20 eye exam with Dr. Kiyomoto (right near my house in Berkeley), and he was extremely attentive and willing to chat all through the exam about everything he was doing. He took me very seriously when I mentioned that previous optometrists have never managed to get the axis of my astigmatism correction quite right. I've now got new glasses (at 20% off the price of frames, lenses, and anti-reflective/UV/hardcoat), and they look good, and although my eyes haven't really changed, my left eye finally gets the right prescription after five years of not being right. I'm definitely seeing better than 20-20 again. If this is what healthcare outside of the university system is going to be like all the time, I'm very happy indeed.

Remember folks, this is a country where you have to prove to your potential insurer that your healthcare will likely be profitable to them. You are obviously not profitable, to anyone, when you need an operation and you'd like them to pay for it. I very nearly ended up in this category: while biking home on my first day without health insurance, I was attacked by three separate events of circumstance: a driver carelessly zooming out of a garage, a biker hoodlum zigzagging into my path, and a little kid dashing across the street right in front of me. That was pretty surreal that day, let me tell you.

There's a weird phenomenon that I don't entirely understand. For every person touting the happiness of high-definition, Blu-ray, and so on, there are at least 5 people yelling at the top of their lungs that it's all "pointless" because digital downloads will supposedly replace everything anyway, and Blu-ray is about to fail or something. First of all, even ignoring the sales figures and industry support making clear that this is not at all the case for the foreseeable future, I just don't understand the belief that increasing popularity of one kind of media consumption automatically means other kinds are completely obsolete and utterly pointless. Music downloads are extremely quick, sound awfully good, and entire music collections are easily transferrable between friends or online. This has been true for what, at least 10 years? And yet CDs and CD players are still widely available, and people are still buying them! Hell, you can even still easily get new equipment for SACDs and DVD-As, and these were never the least bit popular and I bet most of you have never even heard of them (only now will they perhaps fade out of use because of the advent of Blu-ray for music). Considering how much more improvement in bandwidth and storage capacity we still require for movie downloads to get anywhere near the level of convenience we have for music, why would anyone in their right mind think that physical media for movies is so obsolete so as to proclaim the technology's obsolescence right now let alone five or ten years from now? Take your hate and your fearmongering and get off of my internet, you fools!

My body decided to celebrate my being 30 years old, this past holiday season, by having it be the first year when my holiday eating habits resulted in my belly noticeably sticking out like a balloon. It is sad to be all growed up....

Like many of you, there was a day in December when I walked outside and thought, 'huh, the moon is freaking huge today'. Usually I figure it's just an optical illusion of some sort, but, in fact, the moon did look freaking huge that day, the hugest it had in 15 years. It's always nice when one's perceptions turn out to be grounded in reality. Not like the time my mom came home and told an amusing story of having driven on the freeway, completely confused by this enormous orange glowing orb in the sky, like some kind of invading spaceship, that no-one else seemed to be concerned about!

There was an Aptera driving around San Francisco today...

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 07:16:57 GMT

It does look sort of like a large hornet, doesn't it? But in a good way, if you ask me. An SFgate blogger reports the seats to be uncomfortable.... ah well, I'm sure they'll have worked out many kinks before I can afford to buy one.

In other news, let me join the rest of you Bay Area people in wondering why it is still 80 degrees in my apartment. Of course, this is way better than living on the top floor of a Chicago 6-flat, where it routinely reaches 100 degrees indoors during the much more humid summers. Not to mention that it only does this about 10 days a year here. In fact, I was out riding my bike enjoying the heat today. Rode up to 33 Rev and worked 'til they closed at 8:00. Then came back south on the entirety of the Ohlone Greenway and worked at Au Coquelet 'til 11:00. At home now keepin' me and the cat hydrated. Will settle for a raw red pepper for dinner.

Canada takes advantage of the new media

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 18:26:01 GMT

Although their outreach attempts do not quite reach the level of "gah-WTF" sublime that this amazing drugged-out bear with chicken feet achieves (whom, by the way, I had the distinct pleasure-pain of seeing recently in large format on the wall on the first floor of Sproul), the government of Canada is doing its very level best to compete with this YouTube sensation, Waking up Canadian, in which an apparent non-citizen counts down the days to April/Avril 17 on an inexplicably Canadian dual-language calendar and wakes up to find himself assaulted by several tons of red and white fabric, a moose, the Queen, and a hockey player (who must've been the one who changed him into those maple leaf pajamas while he slept...). He then opens the front door and is overcome with glee to find that the long arm of the law has finally caught up with him, and is both handsome and smartly dressed.

I am excited about Aptera

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 03:17:57 GMT

Aren't you? Come on now, not even just a teeny little bit excited? Sure you are. It's a space car. The electric version comes out this year, and the plugin hybrid next year (I want the latter); the hybrid will get around 130 miles per gallon if on a totally empty charge, but upwards of the equivalent of 300 if fully charged beforehand and driven a more typical day-to-day driving distance (e.g. 100 miles). Finally! I'm so tired of all these mediocre efforts which barely get better mileage than an all-gas car built back in the 80s. It turns out that putting math and physics above all other design considerations results in one pretty, pretty pony. It's not cheap, but not insanely more expensive than a Prius or other fancy shenanigans (probably about $30,000). And it's basically a spaceship on wheels both in terms of look and materials. It even keeps the cabin cool via solar powered climate control while parked (why not, right?). I envision taking one of these on an extended camping/road trip through all the parts of the U.S. I haven't seen, but it would obviously be great for a daily commute too. Lots of cargo room in the long skinny back. I bet you could even sleep in the trunk in a pinch, when you can no longer afford your apartment because you just had to buy an Aptera.

Aptera Motors