What I hear you saying is...

Reuters ran this photo of Tony Blair today for an article on Topix. It's a complete catastrophe -- there are so many things wrong with it, I can't possibly understand why they published it:

1. WTF is he looking at? Never crop the side that the subject is gazing into -- it leads the viewers' eyes off-frame.

2. What does the gi-normous portrait in the background have to do with the story? (hint: nothing!)

3. Could there be less contrast in the art work behind him? Were the editors too lazy to Ctrl-Shift-L ?

Ok, it's a crop from some older, unrelated story -- was this the best they could find?

Jesus, I had to photoshop it just so I could sleep tonight:

Ahh.. that's better. But not very World News worthy, it it?

Oh look - Vladimir "Pooty" Putin has joined the party! Getting warmer...

Arrrrrrrrr! Blair and Pooty mixing it up at the Web 2.0 Pirate Convention -- Arrrrrrrr!

God I love Photoshop

Just another reason to love living in the Bay Area. Where else outside of the islands can you learn Hawaiian Slack Key guitar? I had a lesson on Saturday in Sunnyvale with Patrick Landeza and learned more in 2 hours than I have in the last 2 years. What a great teacher -- If you ever have an inkling to try it out, he's your man!

He taught us how to play a tune called "Kahuku" that got me thinking about Kahuku shrimp. Mmmmm...shrimp on the North Shore of Oahu. My favorite is Macky's which is closer to Turtle Bay than Giovanni's or Romy's. Less famous, but their coconut shrimp is pretty incredible. I'll have to do a full write-up the next time I'm over -- Maybe Spring?

How do you know when your company is heading south?

Maybe your team has been outsourced to Bangalore? Or your entire executive staff is arrested for insider trading? Or 60 Minutes starts investigating an 'incident' involving your product? Or perhaps its more subtle:

Perhaps management has killed the free donuts.

You think I'm joking, but the decision to kill the Monday morning donuts is one of the most consistent harbingers of a company's demise that I've seen in the valley. When management decides to kill the bagels, it means they are circling the wagons. Since they can't get away with creating new profit streams at the expense of employees (say, charging you for monthly parking), they start looking for any conceivable way to cut costs and secure their fiscal fortress.

They spin an excellent web of guilt for the folks on the front-line, too:

If you add up all those bagels and cream cheese over the year, the total cost is equal to one employee.

Pshaw! The implication, of course, is that when the layoffs come, they'll be able to spare you or one of your co-worker plebes from the unemployment line because everyone went without... So, you wouldn't be able to enjoy that poppy-seed number with a clean conscience, anyway, would you?

It's easy to rationalize cutting these trivial expenses, but if you step back and think about it, it turns out this isn't rational at all: First, the employees are going to be upset because they've had something taken away that was perceived as a birth right, not a privilege. Second, they're not going to stop eating donuts just because they aren't convenient. They're going to take a slow walk down the street and get their muffins and coffee at Starbucks. So now you have de-moralized employees that aren't even in the office while they're out plotting management's demise. You can pretty much guarantee this drain far exceeds the cost of a few dozen double-glazed.

So as soon as you notice a cash box next to the Krispy Kremes in the break room, start thinking about your next career move. Because when the donuts are gone, all that's left are the holes.

60 degrees and overcast. Perfect conditions for a rant:

Yesterday, TechCrunch pointed to the complete catastrophe on Walmart's video beta launch. What was wrong? In a nutshell, it was utterly hosed in Firefox/Mozilla, as you can see in the screenshot...

Oh wait -- I forgot -- you don't need the screenshot. You can just visit it yourself because -- more than 24 hours later -- it is still a complete mess.

WTF?

Walmart is a top 50 website. They get reams of traffic. One can only assume they have a vast army of web developers and although their prime demographic is probably not the Slashdot army, I'm sure that a vocal Firefox contingency makes up at least 5% or more of their traffic.

And its a beta. Who else is more likely to plug personal account info into a beta than a Firefox user? They need these users.

So walk, don't run, to your nearest Firefox browser and load 'er up so you can witness the carnage. Oh, but if you need to stop first for coffee, or take a nap, or read the Old Testament, that's fine.

I'm pretty sure it will still be broken when you get there.

** Update** 2.08.2007
Now they've changed the page to read

Unsupported Browser

We're sorry ...
Our website requires the browser Internet Explorer version 6 or higher. It appears that you are using Firefox, Safari, or another browser that Wal-Mart Video Downloads doesn't currently support. Click here to get Internet Explorer for free from Microsoft. Thank You "

I repeat. WTF?

Interesting news about Powerset getting of exclusive rights to use a Natural Lanaguage processing technology from PARC.

Powerset, a San Francisco search engine company, will announce Friday it has won exclusive rights to significant search engine technology it says may help propel it past Google. The deal is significant because practical use of linguistic technology has eluded Google. The giant search engine has said it wants to implement language-understanding technology one day. However, tests of linguistic approaches haven't made any difference in Google's results so far, it says. (from VentureBeat)

But I'm sadly skeptical for 3 reasons:

1) How much better can Powerset be?
Google's search is not perfect, but it's pretty damn good. It's so reliable for most of my daily needs that I put it on par with trash pick-up or local anethesia: you don't really notice it until it's not working (and that's rare). It's a practically a utility like my water, electricity or phone. I'm comfortable with it and (unlike my utilities) it's free. So getting me to transition would take a radically better product.

2) Me no English
Jeeves tried Natural Language years back (with a presumably less robust application) and had to abandon ship. "Who is buried in Grant's Tomb?" may be natural language, but it is an awkwardly long query when entered on a keyboard. "What is the capital of Moldova?" may return "Chisinau", but so does "Moldova capital" in Google. It's shorter and easier, so it wins. I'm not sure I want to (or even can) re-train myself to think in natural language query when sitting at the keyboard. I already have too many years invested in reverse-translating my desired results into strings that will help Google return them. And it works.

3) I'm not going to tell my mom.
When Google arrived, it was a godsend to geeks everywhere -- They could pass it along to their less-technical family and friends as the go-to site for finding what they needed on the web. But they did this because they were using it constantly themselves. Even if Powerset is superior, it's going be hard for the potential first-adopters to transition -- which means the critical viral component of passing the news on to the masses will be cut-off at the roots.

Come to think of it, this whole thing kinda reminds me of the Dvorak keyboard:

Remember the Dvorak keyboard? It was designed to address the inefficient anachronisms of the QWERTY layout. The QWERTY layout was created in part to decrease the probability of metal typewriter keys from jamming. Not really a concern in this day and age, right? You'd think something better would come along... and something did: The Dvorak layout was invented to streamline the inefficiencies and arrange the keys in a manner that allowed dominant fingers to match with high frequency keys.

It's brilliant -- the way a keyboard layout should have been designed.

So why aren't you using a Dvorak keyboard today? Probably a lot of reasons, but one of them is that it was just too difficult to introduce. Yes, it was better than QWERTY but not enough to change people's minds or motivate them to re-learn a process that they'd invested signficant time in becoming proficient. Just like when the US government tried to introduce the metric system in the 1970s to grade school kids. No workie. Resistance.

For better or worse, I am a slave to the QWERTY keyboard, just like I'm a slave to my shorthand for finding results in Google. It's hard to say what kind of product Powerset will release -- there could be some very cool applications for voice, for example, where the required interface (i.e. you, talking) meshes quite nicely with Natural Language. But until they actually release something, I'll keep placing my bets on those crazy kids in Mt View.

I have a strange fetish for exotic foods. Not to eat them -- although that is sometimes involved -- but just to know that they exist. It's a Ripley's-Believe-it-or-Not type fascination to know that there are culinary cultures out there that are so alien to what I grew up with.

The Bay area is loaded with hunting grounds for such treasure -- from the well-known (Ranch 99) to the more obscure (Hai Thanh Market) to the downright freaky (WinMart). So we're always on the lookout for something new and different.

Which is how we stumbled upon the New Wing Yuan Market after finishing some dim sum next door.

At first, it appears to be a Ranch 99 knock-off, minus the seething hordes of people. But the more we perused the aisles, the stranger stuff we began to see. It's definitely got a pan-Asian inventory going that I haven't seen before, even at larger places like Ranch 99.

There's a lot of Filipino and Thai goods mixed in with the typical Chinese, Japanese, Korean stuff. For instance, there's an entire section just for halo-halo ingredients, which we'd never seen before.

Oh, and of course there were three (count 'em) different brands of jarred... "Pickled Mud Fish"

Ah, yeeeeeah -- my man Mud Fish -- bringing the POWER!

I'm definitely going to make it a point to visit this place again, if only to see what other types of madness I can uncover in the aisles.

New Wing Yuan Market
1139 N Lawrence Expy
Sunnyvale, CA
94089

Funny post from Mike about DRM in which "Vanilla Ice" is mentioned no less than thrice in the span of 120 words. Sweet.

So naturally this inspired me to do a little VH1 where-are-they-now-google-rific search to see what had happened to the 'Nilla.

He lives... Oh yes, the Ice Man tour-eth, and hell hath no fury like a washed-up white rapper with hair angles that would make the Prudential logo jealous. He's on a comeback.

And just check out these choice venues!

Feb. 19 - Juke Joint, Springfield, Mo.
Feb. 20 - Ranch Bowl, Omaha, Neb.
Feb. 21 - Granada Theatre, Lawrence, Kan.
Feb. 23 - Cowboy's, Calgary, Alberta
Feb. 24 - Cowboy's Country, Edmonton, Alberta
Feb. 27 - Dome, Montreal
Mar. 11 - Groovy Mule, Denton, Texas
Mar. 12 - Icon, Orlando, Fla.
Mar. 13 - Rubb, Ybor City, Fla.
Mar. 14 - TBA, Bradenton, Fla.
Mar. 19 - Charlie's, South Padre Island, Texas
Mar. 26 - In Cahoots, Wichita, Kan.
Mar. 27 - Mississippi Nights, St. Louis
Mar. 28 - Blue Note, Columbia, Mo.
Apr. 25 - Notre Dame University, South Bend, Ind.

But do these venues fill the requirements of the come-back tour?

Let's see...

- Requisite college spring break town?... South Padre Island...... check
- Comedy club turned "disco"?... "In Cahoots"...... check
- Hip spot for the young 'uns?... "Groovy Mule"...... check
- Erstwhile Elk's Club?... "Ranch Bowl"...... check
- Unpronounceable truckstop off interstate?... Ybor City...... check
- Dorm dance sponsored by freshmen?... Notre Dame (WTF?) ......check
- Canada? ......check

...Live... from Budokan!

As immortalized by Spinal Tap, the come-back tour must necessarily start in Japan, preferably live at Budokan. How could his Royal Ice not play the seething hordes of Tokyo? Is the cliche over-hyped?

Turns out it's not a cliche - Here are the bands that have recorded an album called "Live at Budokan":

Dylan (the first)
Ozzy (the bat head biting didn't seem to phase the crowd?)
CheapTrick (the classic)
Asia (kinda redundant)
Bryan Adams (lol)
Mr. Big (sure)
Bay City Rollers (wow, now that is a comeback)
Blur (I actually like this band)
Dream Theater (wha?)
Sheryl Crow (pre-Lance, so technically not a comeback)
Chic (freakin' awesome baby)

Why is it such an attraction? Just listen to the the intro of the live version of Cheap Trick's I want you... to want ME.. . Jesus, now THAT'S a crowd. HELLO CLEVELAND, HELLO!

So when the show winds down on April 25th in South Bend, don't be suprised to hear Vanilla shout out some props to Touchdown Jesus, and then announce his big Japan tour dates.

Word to yo mutha...

(ding ding ding dee dee ding ding...)

Remember the Susan B Anthony dollar coins that the US Treasury rolled out back in 1979? Nice idea having a woman from US history on our currency for the first time. Yep. But there was something very wrong with the design:

It was the same size as a quarter.

How many of these coins did I accidentally confuse with two-bits and drop into a coin-op of Ms. Pac-Man? Not many, cause these suckers were dispatched by public opinion poste haste. I've probably only ever seen them three or four times in my life. They were summarily rejected.

Then came the Sacajawea dollar in 2000. This was going to fix all the problems with the Susan B coin. It was gold... and had smooth edges instead of ridged. And it was a bit heavier than the Susan B, and...

... it was the same size as a quarter.

Complete catastrophe. Nobody used the Sac dollar. The post office tried to pawn these off on my every time I bought stamps from the automated machine, and I just couldn't wait to get rid of them. Why would I want to carry a chunk of ambiguous metal in my pocket when I could have a light crispy goodness of GW bill in my wallet?

So I can't tell you how excited I was to learn that about the brand-new 2007 dollar-coin design that rolled out this morning in New York. It's awesome - it's gold and they are going to rotate each of the presidents with each progressive minting. Oh, and the best part is that...

... it's the same size as a quarter.

WTF? Just look at GW's face on that coin -- he's pissed about this, too. He's just as sick as we are about the whole quarter-confusion thing. It's making the poor guy schizophrenic being on the dollar and the quarter.

So, I say bring back the old Eisenhower silver dollars.

Ike was cool. Ike dollars were heavy.

Ike dollars were the Hungry-Man's Dinner of coinage.

Ike dollars were real, ultimate power

He looks like Julius frickin' Caesar, minus the olive branch. Sweet. And you could really do some damage if you pegged someone from across the room with one.

Errrr....not that I'd know.

He was a bold man who first et an oyster. - Jonathan Swift

We're always up for a road trip, and we're always up for good food. Toss in mid-February temps in the low-70s and you have scored a trifecta. Mercury is in the house of Capricorn. The mojo is rising. Your bio-rythms are in synch with In-Synch....err yeah.

Anyhow, this weekend's glorious weather mandated a trip to the beach to soak up rays and to grab some seafood to feast on. And while winter in the Bay area means most famously means Dungeness Crab, not many folks know that it also hosts some of the finest Oyster farms around. Yes, Tomales Bay and the Point Reyes in Marin County are home to at least four oyster farms where you can buy your oysters literally right out of the ocean.

Here are some tips we've picked up over the years:

0. Don't like raw oysters? Stop reading and go find yourself a box of Gorton's fish sticks. I promise you'll love them.

1. It's not far...Point Reyes is not that far, as the crow flies, but since you'll want to take HWY 1 for the scenery, it takes at least an hour-and-a-half once you cross the Golden Gate bridge. Lots of curves and slow traffic.

2. Call ahead and reserve your oysters a day in advance. Small or X-Small are recommended for half-shell consumption. The mediums are challenging to get down raw, while the large are... well... heh.

3. Make it a full day by visiting the lighthouse at Point Reyes. You'll need to catch a shuttle bus at Drake's beach, which is a bit of a hassle, but worth it when you get to the end. It's a pretty steep set of stairs down once you get to the last bit.

4. Get Cheese at the Cowgirl Creamery in the town of Point Reyes Station. Red Hawk triple cream is killer, as is the Point Reyes Blue.

5. Have a picnic. The farms are pretty rustic, but most have picnic tables set up on the beach, some with BBQ set-ups. Be sure to bring pretty much everything except the oysters (lemon, wine, shucker).

6. Holy Shuck. You've never shucked an oyster before? Get some pointers from the folks at the farm. If not, you'll leave thinking it's easy and head home. Then you'll try prying one open with a dinner knife and spend the rest of the evening getting stitched-up in the ER. Oh, and some of the places sell shuckers, too - might as well pick one up while you're there.

7. Which farm? If you're going to go into the park, then your only option is Drake's (formerly Johnson's) which is inside the park. Otherwise, if you head up the east side of Tomales Bay, you have a few to choose from. We've always had good luck with Tomales Bay Oyster Co., while Hog Island also has a really good reputation.

My god, throw in a campfire and some friends and you've pretty much scripted your very own Old Milwaukee's ad. "It just doesn't get any better than this" :-)

Drake's Bay Oyster Company
17171 Sir Francis Drake Blvd
Inverness, California 94937
(415) 669-1149

In my house there's this light switch that doesn't do anything. Every so often I would flick it on and off just to check. Yesterday, I got a call from a woman in Madagascar. She said, "Cut it out." -- Steven Wright

Our lives are filled with small mysteries, such as a light-switch that seems to do nothing...only to invoke irate calls from overseas when we meddle with it too much.

I myself have been perplexed recently with something that Netflix does with their DVD envelopes. If you're a customer (as we all are) go grab one of your disks and follow along at home. For those of you that are either Blockbuster or VHS users, here's a photo:

Fact 1: Each disk sleeve has a bar code on one side.

Fact 2: Each return envelope has a die-cut hole on one side

Fact 3: The die-cut hole *exactly* matches the positioning of the DVD's sleeve when inserted "correctly" into the return envelope.

Fact 4: There are no instructions or hints indicating a "correct" way to re-insert the sleeve when returning the DVD.

Fact 5: There are 8 possible ways of inserting the sleeve into the envelope: four turns at 90 degrees, plus front/back.

Musings:
Since there are no instructions for inserting the sleeve, we must assume that whatever information the bar code holds must only be important to Netflix about 1/8th of the time someone returns a DVD.

It's also worth noting that there are ample ways that Netflix could significantly raise the chances of the bar code displaying if they were to cut an identical hole at a 180 degree turn in the envelope and/or print the bar code on the back of the sleeve as well. Neither of these would interfere with the return address or other printed material on the envelope and sleeve.

So what data or data-driven event would be useful based off ~10% hit rate?

Conclusions:

1) The bar code is tied to your account, and when it is read through the die-cut hole *and* the DVD has been out for an extended period of time, it fires a "When did you return Porky's 3?" mail to your spam account. This of course helps them tune their shipping algos to make sure you're not getting your next movie too quickly.

*or*

2) It routes your DVD through the Madagascar processing center, via the junk drawer in your kitchen.

This morning I was working my way through TurboTax's 2006 California State return section -- numb from scanning the scores of interview questions that have absolutely no application whatsoever:

Did your total sustained losses on rootabaga crops exceed your 1996 AGI by 20%?

Did you install solar power for personal or business use, but not on a jacuzzi or hot tub exceeding 200 gallons or power consumption bi-weekly of 25,000 BTUs?

Did you receive any tip income from relatives that are subject to AMT but not living in in a state containing the letter "E" ?

No. No. No.

I was just about to collapse into a Rumplestiltskin coma (*not* a deductible medical expense, FYI) when my eye caught what is perhaps the greatest taxable income line item I have ever seen. I am not making this up.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you...

The "Ottoman Turkish Empire Settlement Payments"

WTF? As a California State resident, might I somehow owe taxes on unreported on Frankincense and Myrrh? Is this an excise tax on imported hookahs greater than four-feet in height? ('cause I think mine is just a tad under) While the folks at Intuit generally fall over themselves to provide help-links for every conceivable bit of content in their product, the *one* item that I actually want to know more about has no information at all.

But thanks to our fine friends at the Turkish-American News Portal the truth is revealed:

In 1999, a class action suit against New York Life Insurance company was filed by the descendents of those that survived the unfortunate events of 1915 under the rule of the Ottoman Empire during WWI. The company was sued specifically for not being forthcoming in paying up for policies of those killed in mutual massacres. The suit was settled in 2004 for $20 million, and payouts began to individuals and some Armenian charitable organizations.

Now with the deadline for filing 2005 taxes approaching fast, the earnings from these settlement payments are to be reported. One can only guess how confusing this one line will look to millions of taxpayers who may have never heard that there ever was a Turkish empire.

Heh - one no longer needs to guess - it's confirmed as "very" confusing.

(Peter O'Toole as Lawrence of Arabia - getting down to brass tacks with the Turks)

`Twas biznik, and the taggly toves
Did flickr and zillow in the wabe:
All meevee were the borogoves,
And the ning raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabbrflock, my son!
The jaws that digg, the goowy claws that catch!
Beware the pheedo bird, and shun
The del.icio.us bandersnatch!"

He took his rapleaf sword in hand:
Long time the frappr foe he sought --
So rested he by the meebo tree,
And stood edgeio in thought.

And, as in zooomr thought he stood,
The Jabbrflock, with eyes of flame,
Came ookles through the odeo wood,
And rollyo as it came!

Web 1.0! Web 2.0! And through and through
The bebo blade went snickr-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabbrflock?
Come to my arms, my cooqy boy!
O quimble day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.

`Twas biznik, and the taggly toves
Did flickr and zillow in the wabe:
All meevee were the borogoves,
And the ning raths outgrabe.