| This Last Week |
Thursday, May 29, 2008 4:01 am (link - comment) |
Hmmm let's see. What was the most important thing that happened to me during this last week? Was it that I saw a quasi-celebrity at San Francisco's Carnaval festival?
Doubtful. Probably it's that I received a master's degree in demography on Saturday. Woohoo!
| Plants Blooming |
Sunday, April 6, 2008 12:53 am (link - comment) |
I was walking around the San Francisco Botanical Garden today and spotted some interesting flowers. I like that the plants were in different stages of bloom, which allowed me to get some neat before-and-after pictures:
| Popeyes |
Monday, March 31, 2008 1:27 pm (link - comment) |
Sad news awaited me when I returned to Berkeley from a spring break trip. Last Sunday (March 23), Al Copeland, the found of Popeyes Chicken & Biscuits died. I'll link to my Popeyes poetry as a tribute.
| Only at Berkeley... |
Friday, March 14, 2008 10:43 am (link - comment) |
Only at Berkeley would a friend send me an email saying:
hello everyone, i wanted to let you know that there may be a very grave ocurrance Friday at noon. Apparently a group of fraternity boys set up a hate crime facebook page, advocating the forceful removal of Fresh from the tree. They have asked people to come at noon Friday, to storm the barricades and remove him themselves. We doubt that the group will actually try to pull this off, but there is grave concern nonetheless. We are asking everyone who is able or willing to come to the tree at 11:30 tomorrow with as peacefull a mindset as possible, to sit at the base of the tree, surround the barricade as a show of solidarity and peacefulness, hoping that the best will come out of the situation. People are encouraged to bring guitars and play music, because that may have a calming affect as well. If it goes over well, I'll order pizza for everyone and we can celebrate a small victory. Fresh is now in a dire situation, and we have opened up communication with administration and the student senate to work on a resolution to it. There is a solution to this, and it does not include violence.
| Golden Gate Pictures |
Monday, March 3, 2008 2:20 am (link - comment) |
I still love the Bay Bridge the most (especially at night, and probably because I drive on it a decent amount), but the Golden Gate Bridge still is very special. So here are two pictures from different vantage points, both of which I took on Saturday:
| Great Band Discoveries |
Sunday, February 10, 2008 11:17 pm (link - comment) |
I went to two shows at the Starry Plough Pub in Berkeley this past week. I didn't know any of the bands going in, and there were two bands, both from San Francisco, that were beyond excellent. Thursday night introduced me to the Famous. Saturday night introduced me to Or, The Whale. Check them out!
| Birds Are Pretty |
Wednesday, February 6, 2008 10:53 am (link - comment) |
I do love blue birds. Here's one (a woodpecker?) I spotted in November on the campus of the University of California, Davis:
And as a bonus picture from that same day, check out this ridiculous and awesome balloon creation:
Haha, taking a picture of that kid wasn't creepy at all!
Um, if you know how to pronounce "pho" even half correctly, this is probably not the best name for a restaurant (which I ate at in Seaside, near Monterey).
Well, it might be selling out, but bands have long authorized songs to be used in commercials. Theoretically this is supposed to help the band sell records, when people see the commercial and think, "Oh that song was great." This famously happened with Sting and a Jaguar ad. Well it worked for me with Dell's Superbowl ad. I had to do a bit of research but I eventually found out that the song was Mick Jagger's "Charmed Life." It's definitely a great song that I never would have heard of if not for the commercial.
| Gas Hands |
Monday, February 4, 2008 7:41 pm (link - comment) |
Brilliant! For so long I've hated getting gas because my hands would smell awful after the procedure and then I would have to take time and wash them in sometimes dirty gas station bathrooms (or drive home with the hand I didn't use to get gas). Croatia had a good solution for this, but the Dutch are on to something even better:
Dutch inventors unveiled on Monday a 75,000 euro ($111,100) car-fuelling robot they say is the first of its kind, working by registering the car on arrival at the filling station and matching it to a database of fuel cap designs and fuel types.
A robotic arm fitted with multiple sensors extends from a regular gas pump, carefully opens the car's flap, unscrews the cap, picks up the fuel nozzle and directs it towards the tank opening, much as a human arm would, and as efficiently.
"I was on a farm and I saw a robotic arm milking a cow. If a robot can do that then why can't it fill a car tank, I thought," said developer and petrol station operator Nico van Staveren. "Drivers needn't get dirty hands or smell of petrol again."
He hopes to introduce the "Tankpitstop" robot in a handful of Dutch stations by the end of the year. It works for any car whose tank can be opened without a key, and whose contours and dimensions have been recorded to avoid scratching.
Asked whether he would trust his car to a robotic garage attendant, Jelger De Kroon, filling his black Alfa Romeo at a nearby gas station, said: "Why not? I guess I could keep my hands free and clean, but I'd hope they have good insurance."
Thank you, Nico van Staveren, for allowing us to keep our hands clean.
In honor of tomorrow, Super Tuesday, I want to post a sign that last semester was omnipresent on the University of California, Berkeley campus. (Though this picture was actually taken in Davis.)
The Ron Paul phenomenon seems to have been the silent story in this year's campaign. The large money drops earned some media attention, but probably not as much as they should have. But ultimately it was always curious to know if the supporters of Ron Paul were financially well-off Internet obsesses, or if he could tap a larger base of support. Apparently it was mostly the former. In any case, it was amusing to see all the chalkups on campus issued by oh-so-cool-libertarian college students.
Okay, this sign makes no sense:
I saw this sign in the recreation building on the University of California, Davis campus. Probably the special warning is present because of some previous incident, but really, when has a female locker room not been for only women? This sign seems a bit redundant.
| San Francisco Sourdough |
Sunday, February 3, 2008 4:44 pm (link - comment) |
This post is way late, but this picture was sitting on my computer desktop waiting for two months for me to post it. My mom and I were walking around Fisherman's Wharf at the start of the Christmas season and we saw these sourdough bread creations at Boudin:
Super cute!
In honor of the Chinese New Year in four days, I present the drawing of Mao Zedong that I made in May 2007 at the painting class that I took while at Tianjin University of Technology. I think we were drawing a landscape scene that day and I was terrible at drawing parts of the scene, so I took out some money and sketched the Mao that appears on most of the currency notes. For my painting ability, I'm pleased with the results. Haha.
| Blackout |
Thursday, January 24, 2008 2:15 am (link - comment) |
I don't know why I waited so long to listen to Britney Spears' "Blackout." Granted I'm only three songs in, but "Gimme More," "Piece Of Me," and "Radar" are all excellent. Too bad her personal life can't match the excellence of these songs.
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