I have been concerned that as Yahoo decays, that Flickr may at some point no longer remain a good place to host my photos. I do wish someone would create a competing service which supported the API. Some kid made Zooomr a few years ago, which was to sport a feature-complete Flickr API, but as best I can tell the kid moved to Japan and lost interest in Zoomr, which remains an abandoned stepchild.
Picasa? The desktop client is kind of neat but I don’t much like the web interface. It feels like another one of those one-offs Google bought but then had no idea what to do with it. Anyway, it’s just not my thing.
So, I took a look at SmugMug, who have been trying to lure Flickr refugees, but the consensus seems to be that if you like Flickr, SmugMug can not approximate Flickr. (The biggest concern for me is the loss of the “title” attribute. I’ve got 7,500 images online acquired over a decade . . .)
This is disappointing, because I like SmugMug’s promise of customization, and I have never been afraid to roll my arms up to hack on templates, HTML, and CSS to achieve my desires. Perhaps in the next few years SmugMug will become a little more flexible such that it can easily achieve what I want:
Individual pages for my photos
Support for a “title” attribute
An ability to browse title/descriptions (Flickr “detail” view)
Every so often I have this idea that the WordPress Gallery feature should take some steroids and create a friendly, Flickr-API-compatible hosting environment, which you could then customize just as much as you can customize a self-hosted WordPress blog . . . but that is very far beyond my code abilities and free time.
Yesterday, at the cash register of my local supermarket, I was asked by the cashier if I would purchase only one of the two packs of noodles I had intended to purchase. The unspoken implication was, in that way, someone else could have noodles too. Now, from the point-of-view of the supermarket’s profit, it makes no difference whether those two packs were sold to me as an individual, or sold separately. Yen is yen. But as an example of a society sharing its burden (even in this small way), it spoke volumes. I had my hand gently slapped, and was humbled.
I recall a story I heard on the radio, from I think it was Denmark, where a lady needed a medical procedure and was informed that there would be a two-month wait for the service. She explained this to her son, a Doctor, who offered to pull some strings to get her in sooner, and she shamed him because the right thing to do is follow the rules like everyone else: fairness before favoritism.
This sort of thinking in anathema in much of the world, but it is a way of thinking that I really like. I guess its because as a child I was indoctrinated with Socialist ideology at the water fountain, where we were taught to queue and each take an equal share.
Taken from the roof of a friend's fancy condo at a party in June, 2010.
At the party we explained that we would soon be moving back to California, but could end up back on the East Coast in a few years. The host said he’d put us down as “Bi-Coastal Curious.”
The southern terminus of the Steven's Creek Trail.
I visited a friend at El Camino Hospital before heading to work. From the hospital, I took Sleeper Ave to the Steven’s Creek Trail, which actually ends at Sleeper. They’ll be extending the trail over the next few years with a bridge over 85.
In the past few weeks I have been pimping out my cubicle.
The newest feature is I moved the bookshelf from shoulder height at the back of the cube to waist height on the outside of the cube, which I can do, since I sit at the end of a row. The new low shelf space is where I share coffee and where snacks can be distributed. This also increases my “visibility” and opens up opportunities to chat with coworkers. Sort of the opposite of when I worked remote last year.
Center, you can see the back of my work laptop, a Lenovo W510 with an SSD drive. (I love SSD drives.) Some low-light flowers, a tall desk chair I nicked from an abandoned cubicle, and to the right, my Lego Cisco logo, which I had disassembled for repairs and which I think I’ll keep in San Jose for now.
Near the end of the bicycle version of my commute I ride along a creek. I could tell from Stephen’s Creek that the water was high, so when I rode the ramp down to this underpass I wasn’t surprised. I took my bicycle around this water, through especially sticky mud that threatened to suck off my shoes, and which globbed on to my bicycle, smeared on my pants.
These potato chips did not succumb to my magic ass.
I was tipped off that a bag of potato chips was hanging loose in the vending machine. I wasn’t desiring potato chips, but I felt obliged anyway to whap my butt against the side of the vending machine to see if I might dislodge them and therefor acquire one of my favorite cuisines: free food! Many a time in college I procured errant candy bars from the vending machines in the Digital Computing Laboratory building by wielding what I refer to as my magic ass.
Alas, my magic ass did not succeed this time. “Dude, just put in 75 cents, you’ll get two,” suggested a coworker.
“But I don’t want BBQ potato chips. I’m only interested in dislodging free food!”
I did buy a Snickers bar, just because, but it is still in my backpack, uneaten. I’ll wash it down with a coffee at some point.
A bloated plate burrito, al pastor on the inside, parmesan cheese atop, at Taqueria San Bruno.
I have fallen off the bandwagon of late, but now that I have freed up some time I’m fixing to retroactively post photos. I make up my own rules.
I visited my team in the San Bruno office on Thursday. We grabbed Taqueria San Bruno, and it was good. The food came out slow so my coworker and I downed two bottles of Mexican Coke each. What is Mexican Coke? Coke from Mexico, made with cane sugar. The other coke we get from Mexico I think mostly originates in Columbia, and that is not my preferred formulation.
A countdown clock at the Bergen St station, Brooklyn.
During my year-in-New-York, one thing the MTA began doing in earnest was to install countdown clocks, which are a really nice feature to let passengers know what trains are on their way and how long before they arrive. But Bergen St also has a little more sentimental value for me because I believe it may be the first New York subway station I ever entered, back in July, 2001 when I visited relatives in Park Slope. My first day in Brooklyn, I got layed off via mobile phone. That same week I trekked up to the World Trade Center towers and figured I’d save my $25 and visit the top next time. New York is always changing, and these countodown clocks help give folks a better glimpse of what may be ahead.
A 6 train pulls through the loop at the abandoned City Hall subway station.
Back in May I joined a New York Transit Museum tour of the abandoned City Hall station. This was the original Southern terminus of the Lexington Ave line, built on the loop underneath City Hall where trains would turn around and head back North. It was abandoned before long for several reasons, including the proximity of the Express station built at nearby Chambers St when the system was expanded, and also because when the trains moved to having middle doors, the gap on the curved platform became all the more dangerous. Lastly, it is impossible to lengthen this curving station to accommodate the longer trains run on the contemporary New York subway.
There was a plan to move the New York Transit Museum here, but folks became skittish of opening a subway museum beneath City Hall after 9/11.
You can get a quick glimpse of the station by hopping on a southbound Lexington local train at Chambers St. Our tour began at Chambers St, where we boarded the front car of a train ready to enter the loop and were dropped off by MTA staff at the station to take pictures. It was a bit dark for my camera, it is more compelling as a legend than it is in person.
New York City is full of hustlers. Some prey on tourists. Here, a tree-dwelling Manhattanite offers two backpacker girls some novel photographs and an adorable memory, in exchange for cookies. Of course, a shrewd Brooklynite like myself is not above taking quick advantage of the situation for his own cute photograph, but then the squirrels and I have an understanding.
Maggie runs the house. She declares when it is breakfast time, time to go outside, and time to eat dinner.
I named her Maggie for the Simpsons character who is small and doesn’t speak. Usually she has an adorable silent meow. But when she is excited to receive her meal, she does an impressive monkey imitation.
