flyingzumwalt

Moved to flyingzumwalt.com

2011-09-01T09:30:00.000-07:00

I have moved my blog to http://flyingzumwalt.com. This site should redirect you automatically.

Kronos Quartet at the Walker 04 February 2011

2011-02-04T21:35:00.000-08:00

Kronos quartet was top notch in their performance tonight at the Walker. They opened with some strong pieces by composers from Iraq, Azerbaijan, Iran and Palestine. All of them were thoroughly engaging, though some left me wanting more of a resolution at the end. The crowning piece of the night was Aleksandra Vrebalov's evocative and masterfully crafted "...hold me, neighbor, in this storm...". I'm adding it to my list of favorite contemporary compositions. Also noteworthy was the encore piece, "Tusen Tankar", by the Swedish Folk Ensemble Triakel. The pensive clarity of it reminded me of Shaker music in all the best ways.

Fruity Oaty Bar Commercial from Serenity

2010-10-10T20:07:00.001-07:00

Found it!

Whenever I watch Serenity, I resolve to find a copy of the commercial that makes River go crazy in a bar and beat up a bunch of people. Clearly somebody made a complete commercial for use in the movie, so it must be floating around somewhere on the web. Right? Right.

The search proved more challenging than I expected. Wasn't until I noticed one of the characters refer to "the oaty bar" that I managed to find it.

[reviewing security footage of the bar]
Mal: Go back further.
Mr Universe: No... [typing]
Mal: Uh...please?
Mr. Universe: Oh Mal. You're very smart. Someone is talking to her. [focuses in on the commercial]
Wash: The Oaty Bar?
Mal: Subliminal... It's a subliminal message broadwaved to trigger her.

A quick search for "oaty bar serentity" turned it up. I love it even more than I expected. Gotta get this in my iTunes.

Cymothoa exigua on my mind

2010-04-22T21:21:00.000-07:00

Today I've been particularly fascinated with Cymothoa exigua, the tongue-eating parasite. I first heard about it in an episode of This American Life a couple weeks back where scientist Carl Zimmer mentions an isopod that eats and then takes the place of a fish's tongue. A fleeting moment of googling turned up many images of giant deep sea isopods, which gave me the heebie jeebies. I didn't think of them again until this morning when I my uncle, who works for the Texas Marine Fisheries as a marine biologist, sent this photo of a giant isopod that had hopped a ride on an oil rig's deep sea ROV.

When I passed the image on to a friend who I was chatting with on skype, I mentioned the tongue eating isopods. He ran a quick search for "tongue eating isopod" and all intelligible conversation ended for a good five minutes. He just couldn't get over the idea. Some of the lolcats photos are pretty funny too [1][2].

Eventually I succumbed to reading the wikipedia page and found a link to a video of a live Cymothoa exigua. Watch through to the final minute. It gets creepier, with a complete dearth of explanation.

The humor and curiosity hit a brick wall, however, when in my louse-inspired meanderings I stumbled across this crushing image labeled simply "fighting dog". Fun's over, stop in your tracks. It's amazing how perspective can come crashing down in unexpected ways. Given where I found it, this photo has probably circled the web a few thousand times. It should keep circling until people start doing more to prevent such cruelty.

Apologies for the odd tangent at the end here.

Debunking the Myth of Social Media Fundraising (SXSW Panel)

2010-03-13T12:02:00.001-08:00

This is my first rocky attempt at liveblogging. From a panel at SXSW interactive on Debunking the Myth of Social Media Fundraising

Debunking the Myth of Social Media Fundraising (SXSW)

Daybreak of the Mind - Netflix on hold, thinking about Mud and Happiness

2009-08-26T08:47:00.000-07:00

I cancelled my Netflix subscription yesterday. It was possibly one of the best favors I've done for myself all year. Don't get me wrong; I love Netflix and I definitely love films, but I'm an addict and I needed to learn to say no. We live in a spectacularly diverse and engaging information-rich world. I couldn't justify spending any more time or energy on passive consumption.

In recent months I've been pondering a definite pattern in my life -- that I just don't pay attention to the news. This is not to say that I am ignorant of current events; rather, I simply seek my information elsewhere and I relate to it in a peculiar way. If I want to know more about the debate on health care reform, I seek out something like the recent episode of EconTalk: Brady on Health Care Reform, Public Opinion, and Party Politics. I don't read the latest articles about the current state of the machinations around it. If anything, I consistently ignore them.

I feel particular familiarity with this quote from Pico Iyer:

... and when I return to the United States every three months or so and pick up a newspaper, I find I haven’t missed much at all.

This quote, which comes from a wonderful, refreshing post about The Joy of Less on the NY Times Happy Days blog, was tacked onto the tail end of an unrelated post by Garrick Van Buren. To my delight, Garrick has been boldly predicting that the Dow will hit 10k by Labor Day, but my favorite one of his current projects is Kernest, a repository of free and commercial web-embeddable font faces. He writes about that development effort on the Kernest blog.

Pico Iyer's post led me to the poignant Living with Less project on the NY Times website, which in turn proffered a tweet about a Cob House Built For Less Than $3,000 which was featured on treehugger. Ah, mud.

Once, while on pilgrimage in Bodhgaya, India, I was pulled aside by one of the local kids who wanted to show me his home. It was clear that he was working; his intention was to evoke pity and walk away with a couple Rupies. Instead of pity I felt a twinge of admiration upon seeing his family's simple mud hut, whose air was cool despite a hot day outside. The interior looked extremely similar to the cob house in the treehugger article, even down to the fire pit that also functions as a bench. I was fully aware of the fact that this kid had a really tough life -- intermittent access to clean water, his mother stretching to feed her four children, and I'm sure a mud hut is no fun during a monsoon. Despite this, for a moment the aesthete in me managed to fix its tunnel vision on the minutiae of organic forms, functional design, and perceived simplicity. I was jealous. The self-cherishing mind is a quizzical and depressingly short-sighted thing.

Witnessing the begging industry in India taught me new things about economics. After showing me his house, the boy asked me to buy some schoolbooks for himself and some of his friends. I did so, happily. The boys seemed genuinely glad to have the books. Later that day, a fellow traveller told me that the kids will sell the books back to the bookshops for a tenth of what I paid. It's like Trickle Down Economics somehow applies itself irregardless of the starting point, as if wealth had a magnetic quality that sucks money and resources out of the hands of the poor and into the hands of the affluent. Some might point an accusatory finger at the institution of capitalism; I point the finger at selfish existence in general, which in turn implicates my own self-cherishing materialism.

As I understand it, there are three primary components to news -- the facts, the interpretation, and (possibly most important) the emotional human element. At Thubten Choling, the Buddhist monastery and retreat center where I lived for 3 years, I experienced the human element of news from a perspective that fundamentally altered my outlook.

Every Saturday morning at Thubten Choling is dominated by the weekly tong chö (tibetan: སྟོང་ཆུ), which most of the monastery residents participate in along with a chorus of visitors from the near and far. After filling 1,000 bowls with saffron water, lighting 1,000 butterlamps, and setting up 300 bowls of rice, flowers and incense, everyone gathers in the shrine room to chant a beautiful set of prayers which they call the Monlam Choga (tibetan: སྨོན་ལམ་ཆོ་ག). Before beginning the 2 hours of chanting, which includes a traditional tea service, the chant leader reads aloud all of the prayers of everyone who has sponsored butterlamps. Now you have to understand that a lot of people sponsor the tong chö and the monastery takes this very seriously. It easily takes 15 or 20 minutes, sometimes longer to get through all of the prayers. For much of my time at the monastery, these prayers were my main conduit for news about the world.

People pray for all sorts of things -- Please pray that my house will sell; Please pray that my Father's pain will subside so he can die in peace; Please pray that my patients' ailments and suffering will be decreased; Please pray that my horse will win the Kentucky Derby -- and you get used to taking it all in, meeting each wish with love, compassion, and openness. After a few weeks I found myself waiting for updates while I sat there in the shrine room -- Did her surgery go well?; Is his father still in pain? -- compassion is a contagious thing. It's in this mindset that we would be hit by things like pray for the victims of the SARS virus and their families; pray for everyone affected by Hurricane Katrina; pray for XXX celebrity who died this week; pray for everyone affected by XXX divorce. I can attest to the fact that this information hits the brain in a completely different way when your mind is settled into a mode of compassion and loving kindness. It's irresistible - your heart goes out without qualifications or stipulations.

After growing accustomed to this way of encountering world events, I saw conventional news in a different light. Tabloids in the grocery store became tragic, almost painful, because of the alienation they invoke in all directions, but even the best news sources often fell short. I wandered further and further away from the traditional channels. After returning to the regular world, I found new ways of plugging in and slurping information from the world around me. I never fully went back, and to this day I'm especially perplexed by the sense of urgency that our culture has about news. Even in the technology industry, things actually happen pretty slowly but we choose to be frantic. When there is news, we scamper as if afraid to actually let it sink in, and when there isn't news, we create it.

Dwarfed Punk

2009-03-18T06:14:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Etienne for tweeting this. We'll see how long it takes for Disney to tear it down.

Night of the Italian Road of Pedestrian Death Hazard

2009-03-11T15:54:00.000-07:00

I have just survived one of the stupidest acts I have ever committed in a foreign country. This is precisely the sort of thing that my mother is trying to avoid ever hearing about when she says "With Matt, no news is good news."

Dinner ran late. I was in Rome in the Travestere neighborhood. I could have rushed back across the river and over to the Colosseum Metro stop, but worried that I'd miss the last train. Having spent the day walking around the city, I had a pretty good sense of my map's scale and it looked like walking back to the hotel wouldn't be too far. I just had to take this big, wide, main road that happens to have park land on both sides. Possibly a sparsely populated, but there would be lots of cars and it would surely be well lit. No problem. Off I went. The early parts of those parks turned out to be pretty cool. I saw a couple lesser monuments and a big fountain.

I hit a snag when I reached the main stretch of that big, wide main road. You see, it sorta dropped into a groove in the ground with 20 foot walls on either side, with no shoulder on the road. At first, I thought it would only last through the next curve, so I barreled along. After 50 meters, I thought twice and doubled back to ask the opinion of two Carabinieri standing guard in front of some gates. They were charming and friendly. We fumbled through their limited English and my wacky Italio-spanish. They looked at my maps, I looked at my maps. One of them put on his glasses to read my map, which makes one think twice about the fact that he was wielding a loaded machine gun without his glasses on.

After some discussion, the Carabinieri concluded that the path I had chosen was my only way. I still had my doubts, but when two handsome guys with machine guns tell you 'go for it', it's hard to turn back.

Let me tell you, there was no shoulder. At all. The road was really curvy too, so I was constantly on the invisible side of a bend in the road. Had this been a Saturday night, I certainly would be dead by now, splattered on the road by some drunken dude in a Fiat.

Worse, not only was there no shoulder, there was nothing along that road for hundreds of meters. Talk about a walking target. Over a hundred cars must have passed me. After thinking "what kind of idiot walks on this road? At night no less?", any one of them could have then thought "huh, he's got nothing but 20 foot walls on either side of him for hundreds of meters, and I've got a car/vespa. I could easily take advantage of him." Well, actually, they probably thought something like "Ho potuto facilmente approfittare di lui." (thanks google translate).

Eventually, I emerged on the other side of the Italian Road of Pedestrian Death Hazard. If you still don't see why I have dubbed this one of the stupidest things I have ever done in a foreign country, let's add a couple of facts to the list:

It was drizzling. I failed to think about the road implications of that.
I was wearing a dark sweater, dark shirt, and dark jeans (though I did consider taking my shirts off for sake of visibility.)
I had just arrived in Rome for the first time ever merely 24 hours prior
Did I mention that I was walking alone down a dimly lit, unpopulated roadway in Rome at midnight?

On the other hand, there was an old Roman aqueduct running along one side of the road. That was pretty cool.

Mangio Solo

2009-03-08T16:09:00.000-07:00

07 March 2009
Catania, Sicily, Italy
Grand Hotel Baia Verde

Day two of traveling alone in Italy. Mainly I only notice that I'm alone at mealtime. Today I went to the Hotel's centro benessere (Wellness Center) for a massage and a facial. I felt alone there too, soaking in the sea salt therapeutic pool and exploring the row of "emotional showers" that take turns changing colors, intensities, temperature, and scent according to a programmed succession. (Think of a cross between night clubbing, Twister, and musical chairs, add water and aromatherapy.) I wanted someone to giggle in amusement with.

Has it been only two days? I've been traveling solo since November. At every stop I've had some mix of old friends to visit, new friends to dig into, and family to catch up with. I didn't think of myself as being alone all those weeks. Roughly 100 nights and I rarely dined alone. I would be challenged to list all of the wonderful companions with whom I've shared bread in these travels. None of it has served to dispel the solitude.

In Sacred Path of the Warrior, Chogyam Trungpa describes the Bodhisattva path as being deeply lonely. I feel as if I have achieved the loneliness while completely neglecting the spiritual point.

I've been avoiding restaurants in order to dodge that moment when I tell the host tavolo per uno (table for one), and he inevitably says "solo." (alone.) in a declarative yet questioning way, as if he hopes I've spoken wrong.

Paradoxically, a powerful part of me seeks even more solitude. There's so much writing, reading, contemplation, and མ་སེམས་ (ma sem, non-thought) that I yearn to immerse myself in. I would love to go on a month-long silent retreat right now. Nothing sounds more appealing than slow yoga under a tree somewhere - rain, sunshine, or otherwise - and a plain mat to sleep on.

Yet here I am in Sicily in a four-star hotel. Tomorrow I will move on to Rome, a capital of civilization for thousands of years. I've been flung here by circumstance over which I have little control, though I do choose to engage and I did dictate the terms of engagement.

I could have passed this one by. Could have skipped the conference, or simply flown home after the conference ended. Round trip to Sicily for three days of networking and then straight home .. it just sounds too stupid. My whole life, I've intended to come here but never found the right time. Thus, here I am. I eat the tasty food, I drink the vino della casa (house wine). I stumble through the national tongue, learn the local mass transit, and wander their streets gradually constructing that visceral mental map of each city - the one I absorb through my feet, bound to my eyes and annotated by my other senses.

Funky stop-motion from Oren Lavie

2009-02-11T17:59:00.000-08:00

Can't resist re-posting this nifty video I saw on snarkmarket. Gracias Señor Thompson.

Oren Lavie - Her Morning Elegance
by IgnitionVM

Acquiring great street food in London

2009-02-06T18:40:00.001-08:00

The most fundamental rule when acquiring street food anywhere: get it when it's fresh. Minimize bacterial growth by minimizing the time
between the fryer and your gullet.

How to apply this rule in London or anywhere in the UK:

Go out drinking in a place where there are lots of young people partying. Drink at a destination that is 1) busy and 2) at least six
blocks from your nearest mass transit depot. Get pissed with your friends and head towards the mass transit depot at traditional closing time (12:00 am in London), not at club closing time (about 3:00 am in London). Walk to your destination via the most populace route possible. Along the way, you are nearly guaranteed to encounter multiple "chip shops" or "kebab shops". They are very likely to be selling doner. Choose the shop with either a) the biggest crowd, b) the most people working behind the counter, or c) the least meat remaining on the doner spit. Give preference to places that sell "chips" over places that sell "french fries".

You know you've hit the jackpot if the fryer is in constant use and the people running the counter are so efficient that you feel like you are on a conveyor belt rather while the food is being prepared with practiced skill.

As always, you should see all of your food prepared in front of you.

In London, it seems customary to eat street food on buses but not on the tube . Never leave garbage on mass transit here. Take it with you and drop it in one of the trash bins on the street.

I personally enjoy a small chicken doner with chips. I ask for everything (all of the "salad") on the doner with no hot sauce. Vinegar, salt and ketchup are essential on chips.

I Love Street Anatomy

2009-02-05T04:49:00.000-08:00

My sister, who is an Anatomist, turned me on to Street Anatomy over a year ago. It's so great to be able to dip into this blog's feed every couple months. Right now, I want an Anatomical UV Tattoo.

Something cute to satisfy you

2009-02-03T16:54:00.001-08:00

I haven't posted on here in a while, but my voice does crop up in a plethora of locations. If you're too busy to look elsewhere, here's something cute to make you feel sated.

"I think I Inhaled Her"

2008-12-29T17:47:00.000-08:00

http://del.icio.us/flyingzumwalt/i_think_i_inhaled_her

Pay attention around 1:25.

Sandwiches alla morebounce-oz

2008-12-16T21:36:00.000-08:00

"So make your thighs like butter, easy to spread, and we can make sandwiches ... out here on the danceflo'.

Yeah baby we can do it. Yeah we can make sandwiches.

I know you wanna do it. You know I wanna do it too. You can be the bun and I can be the burger, girl. Out here on the danceflo'. Come on we can do it. Yeah we can make sandwiches."

- Detroit Grand Poobahs

Listen: http://morebounce-oz.com/audio/Sandwiches.mp3

from >bounce/oz, a podcast that I forgot In the heap called my NetNewsWire account.

[Note: Looks like the morebounce feed's not working right now. It might have been abandoned. The audio files are still up there though...]

Plato: Hot or Not?

2008-12-10T14:58:00.000-08:00

If I were to travel back in time to ancient Greece, would I think that Plato was hot? Would I want to bang him? Guess I'll never know.

Inauguration Day: I won't be in the UK

2008-12-08T21:39:00.000-08:00

I had planned to attend the UK & Ireland Fedora Users Meeting next month, but the meeting will be on the same day as Barack Obama's inauguration as President of the United States. I can't bring myself to leave.

In recent years, I've been out of the country a lot. January 20 2009 is one day that I truly can't justify being anywhere but home in the US to witness and celebrate a wonderful moment in history. I was in Scotland when Bush declared war on Iraq and it was infuriating. I want to be in the states to witness what I hope is, at last, the beginning of that war's end.

For those who have not already seen it, I think this video sums up a few of the feelings I have about Obama's poignant victory.

For a listing of the lyrics and guest appearances (with time tags), check out the YouTube page.

Mind the Beauty (Standard): A Gay Man's Contemplation on Mindfulness and Beauty

2008-11-29T02:24:00.001-08:00

I've found that the actual experience of beauty in my life has only minimal coincidence with the explicit beauty standards that I've got floating around in my psyche. This truth is often clouded by the fact that I tend to confuse moments of beauty with moments of pride, desire or jealousy.

I think it's good to be mindful of the times when you actually feel beautiful. You don't even have to ask "Why do I feel beautiful right now?","Where is this feeling coming from?", "What is this feeling?", or even "Do I really feel beautiful?". Instead, simply acknowledge it, and observe it. This way it ends up being a form of mindfulness practice.

EconTalk on GM and the Chevy Volt

2008-09-03T12:24:00.000-07:00

Just finished listening to this week's EconTalk, Rauch on the Volt, Risk, and Corporate Culture.

Those who have seen Who Killed the Electric Car? will appreciate the 10 year update about what happened to the EV1 and what GM is doing with that technology.

It will be interesting to see whether GM manages to turn around its public image with the Volt. I hadn't really given it much thought until now. Could GM ever convince consumers to think they're committed to going green? Stranger marketing feats have been achieved. At the very least, it's nice seeing another bohemoth testing the waters of corporate transparency.

Thanks to Garrick Van Buren for tipping me off about the existence of EconTalk. I like it.

I recommend the BBC interview with John Maeda

2008-08-31T19:57:00.000-07:00

I've just finished listening to the latest installment on the BBC interview podcast, which is an Interview with John Maeda, who has left MIT to teach at RISD.

From the BBC website:

John Maeda is a computer scientist who is also good at art and much of his work has been directed at making computers more human. He tells Owen Bennett-Jones that he doesn't like the way computing trends are going -- he thinks technology has run its course and that no one knows what to do with it. So he's just left the world of computing to become president of the fine art establishment RISD, the Rhode Island School of Design, in the United States.

It was funny listening to Owen Bennett-Jones (the interviewer) try to lead Maeda to make potent statements about the burgeoning role of designers. I have a sneaking suspicion that the Charlie Rose interview with Paola Antonelli about Design and the Elastic Mind was fresh in Bennet-Jones' mind when he came up with the questions for this one. To my delight, Maeda rolled right past all those lead-ins. He's either a really difficult guy to interview, or was consciously avoiding the topic. Probably a bit of both...

NB: If you want to listen to the interview, do it soon. I get the sense that the BBC isn't letting you listen to old audio from the podcast archives. They only expose "this week's" content. Blech.

You've got to listen to the interview to know why this is funny but ironically, I listened to this while eating tofu that was reminiscent of the stuff from my favorite Seattle tofu factory.

Paris Hilton for President

2008-08-06T11:14:00.000-07:00

Fresh off The Register...

See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die

Arriving in Washington DC, sick as a dog.

2008-07-24T11:33:00.000-07:00

Besides a quiet dinner with friends on Tuesday evening and a morning flight from Minneapolis to DC, I spent a straight 48 hours in bed. Fever, delirium, chills, the works ... all because of a sore throat.

This morning I managed to get out of my hotel and wander around Dupont Circle. It's interesting to see how people present themselves on the street here. The best way I can make sense of it is to remember that this city is all about power. Money is a form of power, as are influence, affiliations, titles and such. Creativity, on the other hand, is a power that this city seems to see as a secondary. People's clothes aren't very colorful here, and their hairstyles are relatively tame. This is not to say that people here don't flaunt what they've got. It's just that what they choose to flaunt is somewhat different.

Teaism in DC

2008-07-24T09:59:00.000-07:00

For some reason, I always expect Tea Shops to be either snobby like Kuan Yin in Seattle or quiet and formal like La Societe du The in Minneapolis. I certainly assume that they don't serve food beyond the occasional scone. Gladly, when I walked past Teaism near Dupont Circle in DC, I was just looking for plain, cold, unsweetened iced tea to soothe my throat. I ordered the iced French Vervene Tisane (Lemon Verbena) but also noted that they had some yummy looking lunch foods on the menu.

I sat down to catch up on my emails. (I don't know if they have wifi, I was using my phone.) About an hour passed and the lunch rush had started to arrive. The food they ordered smelled delicious, so I gave the menu another glance. My eye immediately honed in on Ochazuke "Japanese Rice & Tea soup", available with either Salmon or Plum. I ordered the plum version. What arrived on the counter was even cooler than I had imagined. A bowl of rice, covered with shredded veggies, cilantro, and some dried flavorful stuff like seaweed and toasted rice. Perched atop this were two ume plums. Beside it on the tray were a teapot and a tea cup. I was perplexed for a moment until I put 2 and 2 together, pouring the tea over the bowl of rice and veggies. The soup was incredibly flavorful and surprisingly filling. I did discover, however, that I don't like fresh ume plums. They're the only thing I left in the bowl.

The greatest delight was filling that teacup with the spare green tea and sipping at it. The flavor was unnervingly familiar. I'm tempted to claim that it tasted like comfort in tea form. It reminded me of salt water, toasted grains, and soup broth.

After finishing my meal I grabbed a free refill of my iced tea, this time iced assam, and went back out into the DC heat.

Next stop: Mr Yogata frozen yogurt with a friend.

Iranian Missiles & Photoshop Disasters

2008-07-10T10:09:00.000-07:00

After reading about the snafu with a doctored photo of Iranian missiles, I popped over to Photoshop Disasters to see what they had to say about it. To be honest, a few months back I dropped Photoshop Disasters from my RSS reader because the content was always nitpicky and a bit lame. Turns out that they have stepped up their game since then. Their comments on the Iranian missile photo [Iranian Govt: Persian Pixels Pwned] are cute, and there are a few genuinely funny posts from the past few weeks as well [Mexx: This Mexx Me Sick][Amazon: Sex In The City Not So Much][Glamour: She's A Witch].

I've been catching up on my american television...

2008-07-08T21:28:00.001-07:00

I caught up on the rest of Lost and Battlestar Gallactica the other week. Now I'm catching up on SNL clips. My favorite so far is Natalie Portman Rapping. I heard about it while I was in Berlin, but didn't get around to watching it until now.

"It's just a jump to the left..."

2008-05-15T12:19:00.000-07:00

I feel myself shifting further to the left lately. Funny thing: my opinions haven't changed at all. I'm just noticing different things around me.

'been Reading

From Russia with Hate [ref: snarkmarket]
The Archipelago of Arrogance [ref: phaedras & friends]

'been Listening

Giant Pool of Money - This American Life
Former JAG weighs in on the torture question - MPR Midmorning
A giant step toward manmade life - MPR Midmorning

Buh-rilliant Coke Commercial

2008-05-13T11:45:00.000-07:00

I just came across this on Street Anatomy. It's so wonderfully twisted.

Street Art Saturation

2008-05-11T21:11:00.000-07:00

The more thoroughly I watch the street art world, the more fascinated I become. I've always enjoyed graffiti, but I must say that the art form has definitely matured in the past few years. It's inspiring to be reminded how far one can go in the quest to re-imagine and re-purpose the urban landscape.

My favorite street art feeds: Wooster Collective and Streetsy (Jake Dobkin's flickr photostream). Wooster Collective has been particularly good lately. Today's posting of a wall animation by blu is absolutely stellar. Here's the video:

Online worlds collide: Wooster Collective and EveryBlock

2008-05-09T13:49:00.000-07:00

I want to figure out where these photos were taken so I can see if the works show up as graffiti incidents on everyblock.

[Re-Post from Wooster Collective]:

Nick Walker Hits New York

Ran into Nick Walker the other day here in Manhattan. Good to see that he's bringing a bit of life back to the streets of New York (which as of late have been pretty dormant of new work.) He tells us that there's lots more to come...

On mom's balcony, reflecting.

2008-05-06T21:41:00.000-07:00

There's nothing quite like being cooped up in your mom's place after 5 months of solo travel. I returned to Minneapolis on the 10th of April. It didn't make sense to get an apartment of my own until June, so I've been staying with my mother in her downtown condo. Between old habits and the cable TV, I've been completely out of sorts. I don't feel like myself here. The late spring hasn't helped either.

During my first week back in the USA, I spent half my time freaking about business development logistics and spent the other half of my time figuring out how to leave Minneapolis.

My second week back, the biz dev logistics freakout got the best of me, I celebrated my birthday, reconnected with some friends and discovered (again) why I love this city.

On week three I was bowled over by the JA-SIG conference, which happened to be in St Paul this year. I gave presentations on three days out of four. The info was good and the conversations were great, but my presentations could have been better.

It's now week four and I've finally started meditating again. I think this is my first moment of reflection since leaving London. As I sit here and look at the midnight skyline, I'm trying to call up a bit of perspective. These past month's travels are like a dream. This moment is like a dream. Why do I always forget to pay attention?

Wartime Homecoming

2008-04-09T21:29:00.000-07:00

Hmm. I've only been in the country for a matter of hours and the first two people I've had conversations with were an aspiring Navy SEAL on his way to boot camp and the owner of Minnesota Defense, a company that manufactures electronics for the defense and national security markets.

"matt zumwalt" gay

2008-04-09T03:26:00.000-07:00

According to google analytics, a recent visitor found this blog by searching for "matt zumwalt" gay. Does anyone else find that amusing? Were they trying to say "I'm looking for matt zumwalt, the gay one." or were they asking "Is matt zumwalt gay?" Possibly I will never know.

By the way, almost all of my regular traffic goes to a single post from 2006 about the handkerchief code.

TIBET ACTIVISTS SCALE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE TO PROTEST CHINA’S TORCH RELAY

2008-04-08T02:41:00.000-07:00

Ah, memories...

TIBET ACTIVISTS SCALE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE
TO PROTEST CHINA’S TORCH RELAY

High Profile Action Demands ‘No Torch in Tibet’

San Francisco – Seven Tibet independence activists were detained this afternoon after three of them scaled the Golden Gate Bridge and unfurled a large protest banner reading “One World, One Dream, Free Tibet 08.” The three climbers remained on the bridge for about 2 hours before coming down voluntarily. Upon their descent they were met and arrested by officers of the California Highway Patrol. The daring action comes two days before China’s torch relay is expected to be greeted by thousands of Tibet protesters from across North America when it arrives in San Francisco.

[This is from a press release by Students for a Free Tibet]

Lean, Healthy Southern Pride Beef.

2008-04-05T15:49:00.001-07:00

I was looking for this fabled music sharing site that's really really hard to get into but has a really high quality archive. I thought the name was oink.com. Guess it's not. Ended up finding this instead...

England: Conferences, Twitter, Blogs and a bit of romance

2008-04-03T15:56:00.000-07:00

I haven't been blogging since I flew from Berlin to London. It all started with a little romantic tryst that's now been manually fizzled by my counterpart. Then I shot down to Southampton for this conference, which was kinda disappointing until today.

Been reading a huge amount of blogs lately, many recommended by the tasty Mr. Ducker: swissmiss, NOTCOT, MoCo Loco, streetsy, wooster collective, the TSA blog ... been so busy consuming other people's content I haven't had time to produce any of my own.

I've been twittering pretty regularly though. It's nice having a really small list of followers on there. I can say whatever I want!

Thankfully, this isn't available outside the US

2008-03-18T15:57:00.000-07:00

Hulu has just (quitely) become publicly accessible. Alas, I can't watch any of their quality content until I return to the US.

It's probably a good thing that I can't watch from here. When I get home, I might have to hire someone to install parental controls on my computer that I can't hack around. Otherwise my social life and then my company will slowly die from neglect while I attempt to absorb every scrap of watchable television anywhere on the interweb.

DOTHETEST

2008-03-17T18:33:00.000-07:00

I've got to give it to Robin over at Snarkmarket. He certainly does dig up some good ones.

Free Music: Zizek Tour Sampler

2008-03-15T05:51:00.000-07:00

Some of you might have heard today's WNYC article Argentinian Club Music Hits New York. It's about Zizek, the Buenos Aires club party that's touring the US right now. The music is all based around taking traditional cumbia sounds and mixing them with modern genres like hip-hop, electro, glitch, trance, and whatever else they can cook up. The sound is pretty nice, and you can download a free tour sampler of mp3s (zipped) from the Whats Up Buenos Aires website.

Thanks to Fat Planet for posting the links.

What Famous Leader am I?

2008-03-14T08:37:00.000-07:00

My sister sent me a link to this quiz that figures out what type of leader you are. Turns out I'm a people loving Macedonian dwarf.

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

Building Fires and Building Companies

2008-03-05T15:41:00.000-08:00

"Starting this company is like starting a fire, and each little success is like a spark on the kindling we've gathered. We have to nurture and encourage these tender little flames. Be careful not to smother them."

The metaphor came to me naturally. It gave me new appreciation for all the time spent struggling with campfires as a teenager. This memory of a concrete experience allowed me to shed helpful new light on a tough, abstract scenario.

I found myself wondering about the inverse though. Starting a fire is like starting a company because fire building is a fundamental metaphor for creation. Which of the two, fire building and company building, is the more powerful act? To what extent is a simple life, stripped down to the essential metaphors of experience, the most powerful state of existence? I think Trungpa Rinpoche touched on this in Transcending Madness when he talked about an approach to life where water is Wet and fire is Hot. All phenomena are experienced as their underlying symbols. (I might be remembering this wrong. Don't have the book with me on this trip.)

In this alternate experience, lighting a fire is all creative acts and all destructive acts at once. It is Shiva dancing, with the Ganga flowing from his matted hair. There is no need for contrivance because the story of the universe (vast, infinite, expansive) is unfolding completely with every moment.

The interesting twist is that this shift in perspective does not actually necessitate any shift in activities. True simplicity lies in our relationships with phenomenal experience, and has very little to do with the content (the perceived 'other') of that experience.

Have I answered my own question? I think that neither company building nor fire building is a more powerful act than the other. A simple life, stripped down to the essential metaphors of experience, is indeed a powerful state. However, this says very little about what we do and instead places emphasis on how we do it.

This is one of the reasons why I meditate.

The Great Global Warming Swindle

2008-03-03T04:38:00.000-08:00

Have you ever suspected that you're not getting the whole story about global warming? Do you hear lots of talk about climatologists, but very little talk from climatologists? If you're concerned about climate change and like to hear dissenting opinions on a complex topic, you've got to watch The Great Global Warming Swindle.

I think the video speaks for itself, but I'll share just one observation: there are a whole lot more voices, expert voices, in this video than there are in An Inconvenient Truth.

I haven't come to my own conclusions on this one. I do, however, believe that the current discourse on climate change has become sensationalist and politically motivated. Neither of these things lends itself to sound decision making, hence the painful and dangerous rush to produce ethanol fuel.

To download the full version visit vuze.com

Thinking Outside the Box

2008-03-01T20:33:00.000-08:00

"I've reluctantly discarded the notion of continuing to manage [Berkshire Hathaway] after my death - abandoning my hope to give new meaning to the term 'thinking outside the box,'"
- Warren Buffett, cnn.com. March 1 2008: 12:45 PM EST

Tropische Jonglierconvention

2008-02-26T10:52:00.001-08:00

I've been invited to accompany a troupe (gaggle? flock? Convention?) of jugglers to a place called Tropical Island. I believe it's somewhere southwest of Berlin. We leave tomorrow, sleeping bags in hand, and will return on Friday.

I neglected to tell them that I've got a mild, irrational fear of jugglers (Tachydaktylourgosophobiaophobia) and think water slides are questionably unsanitary.

Online video deluge.

2008-02-26T10:38:00.001-08:00

Oh dear. I feel an addiction coming on. I've figured out some of the hidden stuff of the Vuze UI (like how to specify a URL for a torrent). I started poking around and came across this little teaser for Wall-E, the upcoming film from Pixar.

To download the full version visit vuze.com

That lead to a parody titled Halflife: Physics like no other.

To download the full version visit vuze.com

... which reminded me that recently I discovered some of my friends have never seen the original "Color like no other" ad:

Oscars big-money dealings lead me directly to low budget internet only sci-fi.

2008-02-25T17:49:00.000-08:00

This morning I really wanted to watch the Oscars. Don't ask why. I just did. It was an impulse. I went to see if I could watch the Oscars online and quickly discovered that you cannot. Apparently the network execs dropped the ball on this one and defaulted back to the theory that if you ignore the web it will go away. As it turns out, if you ignore the web its the viewers that go away. Here's how it happened for me.

Somebody on metafilter mentioned grabbing the torrent of the Oscars. I liked that idea, but first I had to dowload a copy of the the ol' torrent client Azureus. As it turns out, Azureus is pushing a new rendition of their app called Vuze. I downloaded and installed it, but then I couldn't figure out how to grab torrents from a URL with the new UI. I'm too lazy to put up with crap like that, and it didn't really matter because I usually cancel torrent downloads before they're finished anyway. They're too goddamn slow.

Needless to say, I dropped the whole Oscar idea.

Instead, I started poking around the slick video offerings within Vuze. First, I watched a Jiu Jitsu video where they show you how to pin someone to the ground with your jaw. [I'm certainly not the first gay man to consider taking up Jiu Jitsu for purely carnal motivations...] After my little martial arts moment, I stumbled upon an episode of Sanctuary. Sanctuary is a Sci Fi series made specifically for the web, with a proper, full-on budget, production team, cast and crew. I had never heard of it, but it seems pretty well known. The whole concept is to build a show around active audience involvement online. Kinda crazy. Well I'm a sucker for any Sci Fi, from the totally campy stuff through full on Blockbuster insanity, so I'm already on episode 4.

Now here I am, my entertainment-thirst has been sated and I haven't seen a scrap of Oscar footage. Nyah nyah.

Finding the Gay in Berlin

2008-02-24T16:39:00.000-08:00

I'm finally tuning into the gay groove here. It's surprising that I took this long. After all, I'm living in, like, the original gayborhood.

I love this website: http://www.poopsyclub.com/

Pooping chickens. Gays have no decency.

Saturday Afternoon in Berlin: A snapshot of my brain at the moment

2008-02-23T06:08:00.000-08:00

The uber cool Ruby Users Group in Minnesota has an increasingly large faction that really digs functional programming. A few months back, an offshoot group formed who aspired to tackle the eponymous Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) with the help of MIT's OpenCourseWare. Though I've never finished even half of SICP, I have set out to read it on my own a number of times. Each time I come back, the supporting materials online have increased. Though my current travels prevented me from participating in the group, I subscribed to their list out of curiosity.

After a few months of stop-and-start, an email cropped up on the list pointing to another SICP study group with a similar schedule. The link referenced the inkdroid blog, which I recognized but couldn't place. I assumed that it was one of the numerous Ruby/Rails bloggers out there, but as it turns out inkdroid is actually part of the code4lib galaxy. He also has a lot of Buddhist books on his bookshelf. Small world.

Sadly, I will be missing the code4lib conference in Portland, Oregon next week. I love the Pacific Northwest and want to hear the latest buzz from the lib-coder backrooms, but it is too far and too complicated to get there from Berlin. In the meantime, I've been tending to MediaShelf, launching the MediaShelf blog, discovering Berlin, meditating more, poking around on Gay Romeo (disappointing), and reading Gravity's Rainbow.

Here's a wonderful video from inkdroid's feed:

Allah, what will I be...

2008-02-20T08:55:00.000-08:00

"Allah, what will I be at 50, if I am already bitter at 25?"
- Zulfikar Ali Bhutto

Ever After

2007-09-27T23:41:00.000-07:00

I can't imagine spending the rest of my life with someone who I don't love, and I can't imagine truly loving someone who could settle for spending a whole lifetime "together".

I'm a creature who thrives only in the embrace of unmitigated change. A part of me believes that I might find someone to share that embrace with. Another part of me grieves the unlikelihood of that meeting. The rest of me is busy reveling at the brilliance of life, mind and discovery.

Quotes from a Friend's Email Signature

2007-07-10T20:31:00.000-07:00

“Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it.”
- James Langston Hughes

“We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.”
- Maya Angelou

Highway to Heaven "Parental Discretion Advised"

2007-07-06T21:36:00.000-07:00

It's amazing what you can casually come across on YouTube these days.

Ridiculously Cool...

2007-06-18T17:55:00.000-07:00

My sister sent me this video from http://www.dampowls.net/2007/06/06/ridiculously-cool-technology/

http://view.break.com/306982 - Watch more free videos

Reading up on Climate Change

2007-05-23T15:50:00.000-07:00

I just tagged a site in del.icio.us with "climate change" for the first time. Can't figure out why I haven't been researching the topic until now. For some reason, I seem to have assumed that I already knew "enough" about the topic. Didn't realize how foolish I was being until I started to mention in an email to my uncle that there is a lot of buzz in Minnesota about climate change and its impact on farmers. I thought to point him to some reading material and realized that I didn't know of a single primary source on the topic. I've just been swallowing whatever Al Gore, Wired Magazine, or NPR chose to spoon feed me. I've got some reading to do...

Here is an excerpt from the page I tagged, Global Climate Change and its Impact on Minnesota, which was produced by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency:

In Minnesota, agriculture is about a $7 billion annual industry, 50% of which comes from crops. The principal crops are corn, soybeans, and wheat.

If climate warms, corn yields could remain unchanged or could decrease by up to 34%. Wheat yields could increase by 6-10%, and projected soybean yields are mixed: they could increase by up to 28% or decrease by 12%.

While crop yields could increase, the number of acres farmed could fall by 12-18%, and farm income could decrease by 10-25%.

About 2% of the state's farm acres are currently irrigated. Irrigated acreage could increase. This could further stress water supplies, which could be lower in the summer, and water quality could be degraded further.

Everything tastes better with MSG

2007-04-20T12:54:00.000-07:00

My roommate picked up some chili sauce at a local Asian market. The label pretty much consists of the photo of some stern looking Chinese lady, a bunch of Chinese characters, and the words "Hot & Spicy Sauce". It's always a grab bag with these things. This jar turned out to be particularly good. I started putting it in and on everything. Italian food, Mexican, Thai, they all tasted better with this stuff on it. Out of curiosity, I checked for a list of English ingredients and discovered that my roommate had done something I never do. He had bough a jar of condiment that must be at least 50% MSG. I was delighted.

Now I know for sure that MSG is the reason why I like divey Chinese food, and I know that I am capable of using it effectively at home. A whole new world has opened to me.

You've been warned.

Spider

2007-03-05T08:40:00.000-08:00

Spider is currently my favorite Google Homepage gadget. When I looked into posting it here, I discovered that you can change the color of its legs and body. SVG is the future...

Yet again, posting something that floated up on digg.

2007-03-03T21:08:00.000-08:00

Blue Ball Machine: Gotta see it to believe it. It's the internet equivalent of Where's Waldo.

A Different Perspective on Iran

2007-02-22T17:42:00.001-08:00

George Takei is one of the coolest gays alive right now.

2007-02-22T17:28:00.000-08:00

I'm just sayin'.

A Girl Like Me

2007-02-20T13:44:00.000-08:00

This morning my sister sent out a link to this video by Kiri Davis. I think it speaks for itself, so I won't clutter the page with idle comments. For some background info, take a look at the news piece about it on KOMORadio.com.

Yet another way for electronics to stand between us and the people (geographically) close to us.

2007-02-15T08:22:00.000-08:00

This floated up on Digg this morning: Switched On: Radar Love. It's cute, but there's an aspect of it that makes me sad. Culturally, we seem to be barreling down this avenue of considering communication via devices to be a suitable analog to real person-to-person connection. This is not a new development. It's not a new topic. However, for the first time, I find myself standing on the pessimistic side of the discussion.

From my childhood through my teenage years, I was always afraid of the telephone. In particular, I was afraid to call anyone but close friends and family on the phone. Receiving calls was no problem, it was just the outgoing ones that scared me. Even the simplest call would inspire me to feel a little bit of terror. This is despite the fact that I was not at all a shy individual. After all, I'm a redhead. We learn to love attention at a young age. I can only assume that it was the tentative quality of the exchanges that disturbed me. There is no no way for body language or eye contact to inform the situation, only tone of voice, inflection, and overall pace of speech. I couldn't get used to it. Whenever I had to make a call to an institution or a vague acquaintance, I would procrastinate as long as I could, or try to get other people to make the call for me.

At some point I adjusted and got over my phobia, but I definitely remember that feeling of fear and to a great extent I still empathize with it.

Ironically, while I silently grappled with my fear of the phone, I actively embraced Prodigy, AOL and online chat rooms. I scoffed at people who would kvetch about these new channels of communication signaling a decay in our cultural fiber. Those people just didn't get it. They couldn't catch up with new technology and they therefore feared it. It was that simple.

By the time I finished high school, I was over my fear of the phone, but I had also stopped visiting online chat rooms. My life was full of real people in the flesh. I had long tired of the faceless, voiceless conversations between my keyboard, the monitor, and the hypothetical strangers on the other end of the line.

Now it's 2006. I'm 25 years old and a huge part of my life is on the web. Interestingly enough, I never returned to the habit of instant messaging. At one point a former boss wanted me to install Instant Messenger on my work computer. I did it, had one conversation with him, and then turned it off for good. When google launched gTalk, I had a few conversations with friends and then instituted a firm policy of avoidance. I simply don't like it. The only exception is Skype. It is extremely useful to be able to send text and links to someone as an augmentation to an audio or video conversation, and email just doesn't provide the immediacy that's necessary for information to flow naturally.

It's cold here in Minnesota, so everyone is hiding out in their homes right now. Rather than braving the elements to go out to a bar or a party, it's easier to hop on the computer and meet people online. As a result, in recent weeks I've taken to exploring Gay.com. If you imagine a cross between Friendster, instant messenger, and a gay bar, you've probably got a good guess at what Gay.com is. For the first time in years I find myself socially exchanging instant messages and emails with total strangers. To be completely honest, I don't really like it. It all feels so tentative. So much human expressiveness has been stripped from the exchange that all communication is driven into this tiny channel of social expectations that invariably hasten to the lowest common denominator.

I can't help but feel sad about this. For so long I've imagined that I lived in an exciting world where new opportunities for communication abound thanks to technology. Now I'm forced to wonder what communication is really happening. Thanks to email, VoIP, etc. I am able to stay in touch with dear friends all over the world, and in my work I am able to collaborate with people spread across eight time zones. This is wonderful, and it makes my life richer. I foolishly assumed that this enrichment reached equally across all new channels of communication. How wrong I was.

Now the new generations of music players have added a social networking element to their feature sets. We envision cute exchanges like the one Ross Rubin depicts in Switched On: Radar Love. We imagine that meaningful human communication will occur through these new channels. I beg to inject a bit of pragmatism into that flight of fancy. The quality of communication that occurs through these new channels will always be proportional to the expectations that we uphold. In modern civilization's righteous crusade for freedom of information, we seem to have forgotten the importance of that factor.

We are so hung up on the idea of the internet as the bazaar that we we have neglected to develop meaningful notions of ethics in the online sphere beyond the most basic constraints. This neglect has not gained us anything. Meanwhile, we've lost almost all formalism to our interactions in person. Yes, the formalism that was in place was based on messed up notions of class and gender. This doesn't mean that formalism in and of itself is worthless.

We've all got to start sticking our necks out a little bit further and talking in real ways about what we want civilization to look like in 10, 50, or 100 years because nobody understands the prospects better than us. It's an extremely vague horizon, but to some extent that's our fault. Morality has become a dirty word amongst those 'in the know'. The only people who seem to give voice to demands for human dignity in our everyday networked world are social conservatives and technophobes. We are lost in an ocean of free information and this is a dangerous thing.

Mumbles To Meself

2007-01-30T20:06:00.000-08:00

I was just reading a page on the OLPCWiki and came across a comment voiced in the first person:

"With the sucess of projects like the macHeist bundle, 100,000 units doesn't seem like much with a proper internet campaign. I would love to buy 2 give 1 free."

I am pretty sure that this is my first time ever encountering a first person statement in a wiki. It was unexpectedly jarring. I was forced to wonder why I found it to be so strange. My conclusion was that a wiki allows us to take a community of voices and condense them into a singular voice. This voice almost invariably speaks in the third person, like an encyclopedia. I'm not sure anyone has ever explicitly dictated this; it simply makes sense.

The faux pas of writing in a conversational first person on wikis is certain to become more common as the general internet population starts to figure out what a wiki is. To be honest, I'm surprised that it's not already much more common, but I guess that's a testament to the power of self-policing communities.

The thought of a wiki speaking in the first person is almost unnerving. In scifi films about artificial intelligence gone wrong, one of the standard tricks is to give the computer a voice that is actually a composite of many voices. It sounds spooky and aethereal. Wikis speaking in the first person are basically the written equivalent of that. It's creepy.

There is also the pragmatic aspect. The statement I came across in the OLPCWiki is clearly meant to be taken as the statement of an individual. However, since a wiki is not modeled around conversations, the individual making this comment been lost and only the statement remained. This is in contrast to a forum thread or a mailing list, which explicitly tracks the core elements of a conversation: who made which statements, when they made them, and what they were responding to.

This left me with one of those fuzzy feelings in the corner of my brain. (I guess we call them ideas.) I began to wonder what happens if you make a wiki that is entirely voiced in the first person? What if you encourage contributors to have conversations with each other, but solely through the wiki, and solely speaking in the voice of the wiki? It sounds like a glorious mess. Possibly I will call it mumblestoitself.com, or wemumblestomyself.com.

Does this already exist? Is anyone interested in participating?

Getting all misty in transit

2007-01-30T19:53:00.000-08:00

I've been reading The Time Traveler's Wife while flying between Minneapolis and San Antonio. It's been a long time since a book has captured my emotions in this way. Every few chapters I come across a passage that makes my stomach drop and my eyes well up with salty droplets. I feel so silly sitting there, crying briefly in the airline terminal, in my seat on the plane, on a bench waiting for the hotel shuttle. It's wonderful.

Desert Shrimps

2007-01-16T09:50:00.000-08:00

Check out this great photo essay on the BBC News Website.

In pictures: Desert Shrimps

A great new development with the 100 Dollar Laptop

2007-01-10T11:04:00.000-08:00

For the past few years, MIT and a number of partners have been working together through the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Project to manufacture laptops for $100 USD. It is a fascinating project. The central premise is that they want to manufacture inexpensive laptops for use by schoolchildren in the developing world.

I have a gigantic crush on the people who started OLPC, and the crush grows every time I read more about their efforts.

Until now, OLPC made it clear that these neat little laptops will only be available for purchase on massive scale by educational systems in developing countries. Recently, that changed. Now they plan to allow the public to buy the laptops, but with a wonderful hitch: you have to pay for two. One laptop goes to you, the other goes to a student in the developing world. How awesome is that?

Learn more from BBC News: Public can purchase $100 laptop

Part of my excitement stems from the fact that there will be so much opportunity to participate in the education of all the children who receive these laptops. I want to buy one for myself so that I can start putting together tools to help kids build music software on their laptops and then share both the software and the resulting music.

I get so excited about this stuff.

Gorgeous and Completely Hidden in Plain Sight

2006-11-29T22:41:00.000-08:00

Here is something to try some time when you're getting ready for bed. Go through your ordinary ritual for finishing the day: Brush your teeth, floss, put on your under eye treatment; whatever you do, run through the standard ablutions. Put on your nightgown, turn down your sheets, and then when it's time to climb into your bed, I dare you to dive in head first. Plunge your head down under the sheets and burrow all the way down into there, so that your head is where your feet would normally be and your feet stick out where your head usually is. Watch what your mind does during that process, and then lie there and observe until the air under there gets stuffy or until you get bored.

Habitual patterns are fascinating, even gorgeous things, but they are so hard to view clearly until or unless they are broken.

The "New" Alchemy

2006-11-27T13:29:00.000-08:00

A wise man once told me that the true magic is to look directly at your emotions and thus transform them into wisdom (aka. prajna).

Current project No. 4:

2006-11-14T20:34:00.000-08:00

From http://minneapolis.craigslist.org/wan/235031045.html

I need your unwanted usb keyboard.
Reply to: sale-235031045@craigslist.org
Date: 2006-11-14, 10:17PM CST

I need to dismantle a usb keyboard for an art project. The guts of the keyboard must be in working order, but missing keys, damaged case, etc are no problem. Must be USB, Not the old-style PS/2 cables. If you can't confirm whether the keyboard works and want to give it away for free, I might be able to use it.

From http://minneapolis.craigslist.org/wan/235032288.html

I need a busted old manual typewriter
Reply to: sale-235032288@craigslist.org
Date: 2006-11-14, 10:20PM CST

I need a busted old manual typewriter for an art project. Must be manual, not electric. I will be dismantling the typewriter, so I don't want something that's still serviceable. Save those for the collectors.

... It also involves scrap metal, spray paint, a foot pedal, and a computer running iTunes. You can fill in the gaps.

"Foolish Schemes"

2006-11-09T14:35:00.000-08:00

"There is no one on earth who will not die.
Even now, one after another they pass away.
I also will die very soon,
And yet like and idiot, I prepare to live for a long time.
Guru, think of me; look upon me quickly with compassion.
Grant your blessings so that I curtail my worthless schemes."

-Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Thaye
Crying to the Gurus from Afar, stanza 31

The Buddhist outlook can seem so bleak sometimes. Depending on how you choose to read it, one can easily find a distastefully heavy emphasis on the inescapable crappiness of life. In truth, this heavy-handedness is presented in conjunction with an deeper, overriding, positive point. It is meant as a precursor to the observation that all suffering is caused by mental clinging, and that without clinging there is no ground for suffering to arise. Though initially confusing, this observation is predominantly considered to be very good news. Nonetheless, there are always those moments when only the bleak precursor comes across.

-----

I've started thinking about calculus again. I'd love to do a proper computer science degree sometime, with all the linear geometry and lambda functions I can take. That would be fun. Think of the code I could turn out then!

I want to go to Spain again to exercise my linguistic skills. After that, possibly I'll hide out in Paris until I can speak enough French to read The Possessed without missing all of those bon mots Stepan Trofimovitch breaks out. Then there's Mandarin and Hindi, both incredibly useful. Not to mention beefing up on my Tibetan ... It all just takes time and resources.

A part of me has always wanted to raise trees. They take so long to grow. It forces you to operate on a different, slower timeline; a refreshing prospect in the speedy context of my current life.

Then there are the things I'm actually getting done: living in a single city long enough to truly savor all of its creative ferment, starting a company, finally getting around to dating more guys, taking up weight lifting purely out of curiosity, making more art, tasting more wine, dancing all night at least once a month, eating all the tasty food I can find.

When viewing life from this perspective, all that Buddhist advice I've become so familiar with seems completely foreign. I want to live a full life, and I think I'm doing a pretty good job of it, but inevitably I come back to a conflict of role models.

All of the people who I truly admire consistently seem to have found happiness as a result of sacrifice. More to the point, they have all sustained their hapiness through simplicity. I really believe this. I admire it, and (I think) I aspire to it. So why is it that rather than embracing a simple life I drive towards further elaboration?

I get some mileage out of the observation that simplicity, as it pertains to achieving and sustaining happiness, is a mental state rather than a physical or social condition. Buddhist practice would be pretty worthless if it only worked for people hiding on mountain tops. Nonetheless, I seriously doubt whether I am truly making an effort.

Frankly, it disturbs me to know the depth of my potential for laziness and frivolous distraction. I tried to hide from that by living at a monastery, riding on the shirttails (or robetails) of people who were more determined than me. It didn't take long to see what a disastrous failure that promised to be. Even then, I continued to cling to it for all of the standard reasons why we cling to unnecessary crutches.

Now I've broken loose yet again, hoping that the increased contrast will bring some newfound focus.

"'Man fears death because he loves life. That's how I understand it,' I observed, 'and that's determined by nature.'

'That's abject; and thats where the deception comes in.' His eyes flashed. 'Life is pain, life is terror, and man is unhappy. Now all is pain and terror. Now man loves life, because he loves pain and terror, and so they have done according. Life is given now for pain and terror, and that's the deception. Now man is not yet what he will be. There will be a new man, happy and proud. For whom it will be the same to live or not to live, he will be the new man. He who will conquer pain and terror will himself be a god. And this God will not be.'"

-Fyodor Dostoyesky
The Posessed, Chapter III, Scene VIII

Tibetan Devotional Karaoke

2006-10-13T10:09:00.000-07:00

A devotional song about His Holiness the Gyalwang Karmapa, with Tibetan sing-along subtitles! All together now: Ngo Tsar Che... Kar Ma Pa...

Television Spies, Digital Signal Processing, and a Midnight Snack

2006-09-28T00:06:00.000-07:00

Though I didn't plan it, I've ended up staying awake late tonight watching a marathon of Alias episodes on TNT and reviewing the documentation about use of Fast Fourier Transforms (FFT) in Max/MSP. Made tortellini and brussel sprouts at 12:30. Enjoying a breeze from the balcony at 2AM.

Handkerchief Code

2006-09-27T17:02:00.000-07:00

This evening I was dressing for a "Project Runway" viewing party. I looked in the mirror and felt like my outfit was missing something. As I walked through the bathroom, I noticed two red handkerchiefs that I never use. Ah! The Hankie Code! Perfect! It's always nice to bring a bit of cultural heritage into a look.

For those who are not familiar with the Hanky Code, it is a remnant from the golden days of gay male culture. In order to streamline the ancient process of cruising bars for hot sex, the venerable fathers of gay culture invented a color-coded system. A hankerchief of a given color, placed in either the right or left back pocket of your trousers, was all a man needed to tell the world what he was looking for that night. This code, though known to the gays of modern day, lingers on the edge of becoming a dead language. Most tend to blame this on the AIDS epidemic.

Before heading off to a party with a red sinal blaring from my pocket, I thought it prudent to find out what signal I was sending. After all, there might be other hankie-coders out tonight. As it turns out, according to the code, I am into fisting. By standard practice, Left Pocket means Active/Top and Right Pocket means Passive/Bottom. To avoid completely fibbing, I switched the hankie to the right.

Tables breaking down the many permutations of the Hankie Code can be found on these sites:

Some of my favorites:

Those that know will me will be delighted to know that wearing a rosary means that you're into Ritual Scenes.

Excerpt from "The Compleat Handkerchief Code"
Active/Top Worn On Left	Color, Pattern, Fabric, or Item	Passive/Bottom Worn On Right
Wants Oral Sex	Blue (Light)	Expert At Oral Sex
Cop	Blue (Medium)	CopSucker
Two Looking For One	Gold	One Looking For Two
Fights To Be Top	Rebel Flag	Fights To Be Bottom
Group Sex	Red Lace	Group Sex Bottom
Fister	Red	Fistee
Sixty-Niner	Robin's Egg Blue	Sixty-Niner
Cowboy	Rust	Horse
Pirate	Skull And Crossbones	Treasure Chest
My Lover's Out; My Place Okay	Toothbrush	Your Place Only
Catheterizer	Turquoise	Catheterizee
Likes Novices Or Masturbate Me	White	Novice Or Will Masturbate Both
Water Sports Top	Yellow	Water Sports Bottom
Has Drugs	Ziplok Bag	Wants Drugs

Samson

2006-09-26T15:27:00.000-07:00

I'm determined to get a gay man to cover this song:

I have ants in my bedroom: A Recently Discovered Journal Entry

2006-07-03T15:40:00.000-07:00

I scribbled this entry into a pocket-sized notebook during a period when I was living in a partially-converted barn. The closest indoor plumbing was 40 yards away, across a gravel parking lot, but I had a space heater and a fast DSL connection. I liked that room.

I have ants in my bedroom.

My sister and I had a good laugh over the phone when I noticed a troupe of ants attempting to take over my desk. I worried that I might accidentally crush them. She mused that most people would just smoosh them and have it over with.

Now it's been two weeks since the troupe arrived. Their numbers have neither increased nor decreased. There are about 12 of them. Somehow, they continue to discover trace amounts of sugar in unexpected places. Earlier this week I started hearing a periodic popping noise off in the corner of my desk. I assumed that the ants were just walking noisily. Yesterday I discovered the source of the noise. My new tenants had found an abandoned package of Pop Rocks beneath a pile of papers.

When I take away their treats, all but one of the ants scatter. The biggest ant remains and gnashes its pincers at me. When I blow in its face, it gets pissed off and runs at me as if to attack.

Today they took over my teacup. They were sucking sweet milky drops from the spent teabag. I picked up the cup and dumped it outside. The big one bit me.

The ants are all afraid of the screen on my laptop. I can actually chase them with it, when nothing else seems to phase them. I wonder if I should be frightened too.

tags: ants living pincers poprocks

I Love Skype. Give me Videoconferencing.

2006-07-02T13:06:00.000-07:00

The other day, I was thinking about the idea of a "videophone" and I had to laugh. Back in the day, we would watch movies like BladeRunner and think "Yeah. Won't that be cool when we have video phones." It never occurred to us that a video "call" would be made through any sort of device other than a special phone.

Twice a week, I log into a conference call with participants in Seattle, Minneapolis, New York, Boston, and London. We regularly talk for over an hour while also exhanging text messages and files over an encrypted connection. The brilliant bit is that these sessions don't cost us anything. That's right. It's completely free because we all log in through Skype. In addition to being free, it's also completely portable as long as we can get to a laptop with a broadband internet connection. Once, I dialed in from a coffee shop. Rather than disturbing my fellow coffee drinkers, I wrote my comments into an IM session while listening to everyone else via headphones.

We don't even have to worry about OS interoperability. Half of us use Macs, half are running Windows XP. It's never caused a problem, even when we pass files back and forth through the Skype session.

Even when I need to get ahold of someone who's offline, I get to do it for cheap using SkypeOut. I just spent 31 minutes on a call to a land line in London. It cost me €0.544. That's €0.017 per minute. In January, it cost me less than €3.00 to talk for an hour with my friend Raj in his hotel room in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Our team of collaborators started using Skype to communicate across the Atlantic about a year ago. At that point, it was terribly unstable. SkypeOut was useless because it introduced a painful lag. It made me feel like the person on the other end was mad at me (because there were lots of awkward pauses after I said anything). At the time, Skype also didn't support conference calling on Macs. I was cautiously skeptical of the tool, waiting for it to be proven before singing any praises. Since then, they have really gotten their stuff together. The fact that now you can call any US phone for free makes it indispensable.

That's all well and nice, but I want (group) video chat. Now.
In true American form, I can't be satisfied with a wonderful thing. Instead, I turn my head and look for more. I don't want to just have a file-sharing audio conference every Wednesday. I want to see the people I'm talking to, and I want to do it for free. This is where the technology just hasn't caught up with us, but it's close. If we were all on Macs running OS X, we could use iChat AV to have videoconferences with up to 10 people, passing the info over the Jabber Protocol. Sadly, to date nobody has released a Jabber client on Windows that can handle group video chat sessions. The solution is a-brewing though.

My only question is who will get it done first.

tags: skype jabber ichat videoconference

Sahana Disaster Management System

2006-07-01T11:26:00.000-07:00

http://www.sahana.lk/

"Sahana is a Free and Open Source Disaster Management system. It is a web based collaboration tool that addresses the common coordination problems during a disaster from finding missing people, managing aid, managing volunteers, tracking camps effectively between Government groups, the civil society (NGOs) and the victims themselves."

SourceForge Project of the Month for June 2006: http://sourceforge.net/potm/potm-2006-06.php

Just a thought, brought on by some trees, a wind chime, and the breeze

2006-06-30T18:21:00.001-07:00

The existence of external phenomena and the existence of a creator God are equally impossible to prove or disprove. The only difference is that the difficulty of establishing the latter is more noticeable.

External Phenomena: (1) Phenomena which are perceived to be external to the mind. (2) Events and objects that are ultimately material in nature and thus inherently existent beyond the realm of the mind, mental activity, and mental experience.

tags: buddhist philosophy mind mindandlife theology deism religion

Photo of Me

2006-06-30T17:37:00.000-07:00

I wanted to put a photo of myself in my profile (seemed prudent), but in order to do that I had to post it in a blog entry first. There you have it.

Baby Riley - a Phenomenon Brews

2006-06-30T17:16:00.000-07:00

Get a load of this epic saga of Medical Ethics brewing in Seattle.

Basically, doctors tried to force Tina Marie Carlsen to allow them to put implants into her baby, Riley, so that he could undergo dialysis. Carlsen refused, insisting that she wanted to seek non-surgical alternatives or alternatives that don't involve dialysis (the details are unclear in the current news articles). The state responded by taking custody of Riley and moving to perform the surgery without Carlsen's consent. To prevent the surgery, Carlsen abducted Riley from the hospital. This resulted in her being declared a Kidnapper, hunted down by the State, and thrown in jail for five days without being allowed access to her baby. Meanwhile, the doctors are again planning to do the surgery without Carlsen's consent.

Carlsen was hunted down by the State because they believed that the baby was in imminent danger if he didn't receive immediate treatment. Now, after the fact, the Hospital is admitting that Riley was not actually in imminent danger at all. Now the State is trying to wash their hands of the situation, implying that they were misled. More imporantly, possibly Carlsen has/had time to seek out alternative treatment for her baby?

What were Carlsen's medical alternatives? Why doesn't she want her baby on dialysis? Nobody seems to be giving a clear answer to these questions.

I can't wait for Anderson Cooper or Nightline to sniff this one. I want info.

It's been hard to find an article that gives a good breakdown of the situation, but here are two pretty good ones:

Mother, doctors fight over care: Kansas City Star, MO, June 29, 2006
Off track over baby's welfare: Seattle Times, June 29, 2006

People have set up a website in support of Carlsen and her baby: http://www.helpbabyriley.com/

Wild stuff man.

tags: medicine dialysis baby riley seattle surgery ethics kidnapping

Getting my butt kicked by the Spring Framework

2006-04-19T19:26:00.000-07:00

I've recently embarked on a web services adventure. Some work that I have been doing for a Buddhist Monastery gave me ideas for a great company. I dialed up a couple talented friends and after a prolonged transcontinental huddle (alla Skype and British Airways) we're rolling along. The first stumbling block was deciding whether to implement the service in PHP or to do it in Java. I did a bunch of reading and picked some brains. I considered Python, and even admired RubyOnRails for a few days. After digging up some compelling arguments in favor of using PHP and being directed to read an interesting case study by Sun, I concluded that Java was the way to go. In many ways, this meant that I had to start off at square one, due to the fact that the vast majority of my programming experience is with PHP. While I have long been familiar with the theory of Java, JSP and Patterns-driven Object Oriented Programming, I never came around to actually getting my hands dirty.

Thus it began. I fired up a trial version of myEclipse IDE and started beefing up on the latest trends of Java Dev. It quickly became clear that I needed a wholistic context to use as a reference point while trying to grok the relationships between all the myriad frameworks floating around in Java land. I poked around a bit and settled on Spring Framework due to the fact that it forces you to use relatively sophisticated design patterns while ensuring that your code remains easy to test. A late night trip to Borders left me $44 poorer with a copy of Spring in Action in hand.

Thence followed four days of exasperation. It only took me about a day to absorb the necessary concepts, but actually implementing them was another issue altogether. I took a serious butt kicking trying to deploy and run even a simple web app. Every time I thought I was making a bit of headway, I would meet a new wall of error messages. Even the examples from the book wouldn't run.

Refusing to be deterred, I kept at it. In areas where the book glossed over a topic, I supplemented by reading through more detailed tutorials I found online. When I couldn't figure out an error message, I turned to Google or just took a break and read a few chapters of Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. This evening, my efforts were rewarded. A bunch of interlocking confusions all cleared up at once and after a bit of tweaking, I had gotten a relatively elaborate web app to deploy and run on JBoss without any errors. Huzzah.

In my experience, whenever I try to learn a new programming language, or start using a complicated technology, there's always an introductory period where nothing makes sense and nothing works right. After a bit of tinkering, the haze clears a bit and then it starts to click; my head adjusts to the paradigm and then everything flows along much more smoothly. While I didn't expect it to take quite this much effort to click into the Java paradigm, I think I've broken through now. It feels good.

Keep an eye out for the first deployments of my new project.

tags: java, spring, eclipse, php, huzzah

A Tasty Potato Dish

2006-03-30T08:03:00.000-08:00

This is a dish I might not have ever dreamed up on my own, but the ingredients were in the larder and nobody was going to use them, so a new recipe was born.

Potatos - thin discs
Onions - julienne
Fresh Fennel Leaves - minced
Dill (dry or fresh) - minced
Olive Oil
Pepper
Sea Salt or Kosher Salt

Preheat oven: 350 degrees Farenheit

Peel and cut the potatos. Put them into a big bowl and set aside.

Sautee Onions in enough oil to coat the potatos. Add fennel after a few moments. Add salt, pepper, and dill. Simmer over medium heat until the onions soften. Pour all of this over the potatos and toss so that the potatos are evenly coated.

Spread the oiled potatos one disc deep in an oven-proof dish. Bake for about 45 minutes.

Paprika is a good garnish on this.

"Oh, so joyful."

2006-03-30T07:54:00.000-08:00

Externally, this age of conflict's chaos erupts;
Internally, exhaustion engulfs body and mind;
Secretly, vivid thoughts flood the conscious mind.
The practitioner who transcends these three
Keeps a happy mind and is oh, so joyful.

- H.H. Dudjom Rinpoche (1904-1987)

Lamb (or Gimme Lean) and Eggplant in a Mustard Sauce

2006-03-28T18:34:00.000-08:00

Serves 4

I came up with this on an evening when I was pressed for time and decided to make the most of it. The recipe definitely needs work. If anybody has ideas for how to improve it, please post a comment.

Main Ingredients
1 med Onion - Julienned
1/2 lb. Lamb or GimmeLean - Cut into 1" chunks
1 med Eggplant - Sliced into Strips 1/2" by 3"
2 Tbsp Olive Oil
1 1/2 Tbsp Thyme
3 Tbsp Paprika
1 or 2 Bay Leaves

Sauce
5 Tbsp Mustard (from a jar)
1 1/2 Tbsp Oil
2 Tbsp Corn Starch
... Mix well and then add...
1 1/2 c. Water, Broth or Wine

Warm olive oil in a heavy pan and Brown the Lamb or GimmeLean. Set aside the meat. Then, in the same pan, saute the onions for a few moments and add the Thyme, Paprika, and Bay Leaves. Add eggplant strips, cook until eggplant softens (stir constantly).

When the eggplant has softened, add the cooked meat to the onions and eggplant. Sautee for a few minutes and then add sauce and toss or fold together. Simmer. If you are using GimmeLean, simmer for only 5 to 10 minutes and then serve. If you are using Lamb, simmer for 20 minutes, or put the pan in the oven for 30 to 40 minutes. Make sure there is enough liquid to have some sauce remaining after cooking.

Tags lamb recipe mustard experiment gimme lean vegetarian

Newfound Love for Homestarrunner

2006-03-27T20:37:00.000-08:00

Homestarrunner has always been hit or miss, but Teen Girl Squad is a definite hit with me. It's all about the Secret Decemberween Gift Exchange.

On the other side of the coin, what's up with the live action shorts they've started posting? I'm not feeling it.

I'm tempted to rebuild my entire mySpace profile based on the contents of a piece of spam.

2006-01-16T12:26:00.000-08:00

There are few perks to being a webmaster. One of them is the fact that all the spam that goes terribly wrong on our server ends up passing through my mailbox. Usually I just read the headers in order to figure out what's going wrong in the mail system, but the contents of this one caught my eye.

Ever Vigilant,
Mana'olana

The SPAM:

From: Gideon
Sent: Saturday, December 24, 2005 7:27 PM
To: Mana'olana
Subject:

How's it going,

[... stupid crap ...]

I can't wait until you take a glance at their outlet

[... more stupid crap ...]

Day and night Tarzan of the Apes raced through drink the primeval forest
toward the party ruined city in which he potato was and Tarzan sat beside
him prosperous and bathed his head and hands and distinguish orthodontist
washed his wounds.
Day and night Tarzan of the Apes raced through know the primeval forest
toward the invitation ruined city in which he show was

See you at the gym later,

Phillips

Recipes: Chai

2006-01-03T12:25:00.000-08:00

This is a work in progress.

Demistifying Chai

First, let's get one thing clear. Chai is tea. Tea is chai. The word chai is from an Indian source and the word tea, or more precisely ti, is from a Chinese source. In the end, they both refer to the same plant. In Europe and the Americas, different cultural associations have built up around the two words, but in most respects they are interchangeable.

Indians tend to prepare their chai by heating it in a pot with milk and water. When spices are available, they will often also throw those in the pot.

There is also the coffeeshop product called Chai. This is usually made from a very sweet, flavorful condensed syrup. I assume that it is imitating the flavor of spiced chai. Personally, I think of it as it's own thing, separate from traditional chai that's brewed in a pot.

General Advice When Making Chai

Know your ingredients. Find out the proper steep time for whatever teas you use. When you are using a new type of tea, make yourself a plain cup in order to get an idea of how much you want to use and how long you want to steep it. Do the same thing with your spices as well. Make an infusion with your chai spices and taste it before adding any tea or milk. This will give you an idea of what's working and what's not.

The boiling point is important. Some people would advise against ever using water that is at the boiling point when you are brewing tea. They prefer instead to use water that is closer to 80 degrees celsius. In my experience, this is more important with teas than with spices, and it depends on what you are doing with the tea. I prefer tea that has been boiled ever so briefly with milk already in it. When done right, this gives it a rich, creamy flavor. In any case, watching the boiling point is essential. If you overcook chai, it quickly becomes bitter and flavorless.

Experiment for yourself. Try toasting your spices before adding them to an infusion. Change around the timing to see how your results change. Try cooking the tea with a hearty amount of milk, letting the milk foam up a bit before you take it off the heat. (At chai stands in India, they often pick up the milk chai with a mug or ladel, pouring it back into the pot over and over. This keeps the chai at the boiling point without boiling over.) Have fun.

Basic Non-Spiced Chai: Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche's Milk Tea

Wherever Khenpo Tsultrim Rinpoche visits, the cooks always have this simple tea on hand for every meal. I've grown quite fond of it myself. The amounts listed here make enough tea for 2 or 3 people. It works to scale the recipe as long as you maintain the same 3:3:1 ratio.

3 cups Water (Filtered or Spring)
3 bags Twining's English Breakfast Tea*
1 cup Organic Whole Milk

Pre-Warm your teapot and set it aside. If necessary, wrap it in a towel to keep it warm.

Put the water and the teabags in a pot. I tie the teabags together so that they are easy to remove later. Put the pot on a high heat and have the milk ready to add. As soon as the pot starts to boil, add the milk. When it comes to a boil the second time, take it off the heat and remove the teabags. Transfer the tea into your pre-warmed teapot and serve promptly.

As with any tea, it is important to serve this tea fresh; It should not sit around for more than 30 minutes.

If you are using loose leaf tea, it is best to experiment a bit to figure out how much you want to use. As a rule of thumb, you could try using a tablespoon of Assam or Ceylon.

*Note: If you are making this for Khenpo Tsultrim Rinpoche, you should make every effort to use Twining's English Breakfast tea. Other blends and other brands just aren't a hit with him.

Basic Spiced Chai

[Coming Soon]

Common Chai Spices
Cinnamon
Cardamom
Coriander Seeds
Black Peppercorns
Whole Cloves
Dried Orange Peel
Dried Ginger
Fresh Ginger
Garam Masala (spice blend including some of the above)

Less Common Chai Spices
Chipotle Chilis
Sage
Nutmeg
Blueberries
Pomegranate Seeds
Anise
Licorice Root
Lemongrass
Lemon Verbena

Chai in a French Press

At World Merchants Spice Shop in Seattle, they stock a variety of black, green and white teas along with a selection of pre-mixed blends of chai spices. If you order tea to drink there, they will prepare it in a French Press (a.k.a Cafetiere). They are very careful about timing, aiming to brew a perfectly blended cup of chai. The fundamental idea is that each type of tea has its own ideal steeping time, usually between 3-5 minutes for black teas and between 1-3 minutes for green teas. After this point, the tea will become increasingly bitter and astringent, obscuring the more subtle pleasant tastes. Meanwhile, the spices we mix into chai can infuse for much longer, adding to the flavor of your chai without making it bitter.

Select your spice blend and the tea that you will be brewing into the chai.

For 2 cups of water, measure out about 3 tablespoons of spices. Break up the spices by pulsing them in a spice grinder or using a mortar and pestle. Pour them into the bottom of the French Press and pour the hot water over them*. Allow the spices to infuse alone for 4 to 6 minutes and then add the tea. Allow the tea to steep along with the spices for that particular tea's steep time. When the time is up, push down the plunger and serve the chai. Add warm milk and sweetener to taste.

*Note: As noted before, some would advise against ever using water that is at the boiling point, preferring instead to use water that is closer to 80 degrees celsius.

Blueberry Chai

When digging in a friend's cabinet, I found a canister of "Wild Blueberry" tea bags from The Republic of Tea. The description read: "Fine Black Tea with Sweet Blueberries". I was intrigued, so I threw one of those into my morning chai instead of plain black tea. The results were quite pleasing. I would have looked to buy a canister for myself, but the label on the lid indicated that this was a Limited Edition tea. "When It's Gone, It's Gone." Luckily, there was a jar of dried blueberries in the cabinet, picked off of the wild bushes in the back yard. After tinkering with the amounts a bit, I settled on my own recipe:

For 3 cups of water, grind 2 to 4 teaspoons of dried Blueberries. Adjust the amount depending on your preference and the pungence of the berries. (The wild berries I was using were pretty dull in flavor.) Follow the instructions for Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche's Milk Tea, adding the ground berries to your tea as early as possible in the brewing process.

I've found that I like this chai without any other spices to muck it up. I tried adding Cardamon, but it just seemed to deaden the flavor of the Blueberries.

Tags: chai, tea, spices, cooking, recipes

Recipe: Sauteed Tofu, Mushrooms, & Greens Over Tagliatelle

2005-12-31T12:22:00.000-08:00

I came up with this recipe on the spot last night. I love having pasta with wilted dark, leafy greens. It's a nice change from the standard marinara and ragu sauces.

1lb Tofu
1 1/2 c Red Chard
1 1/2 c Spinach - shredded
1 c Mushrooms - sliced
1med. Onion - julienne
1/2 lb Tagliatelle
1/2 c Soup Stock or White Wine (or mix both)
2-3 cloves Garlic - chopped
2 Tbsp Parsley (fresh or dry)
1 Tbsp Basil (fresh or dry)
2 tsp Hungarian Paprika
1-2 tsp Red Pepper Flakes
1 tsp Coriander Seed - ground
1/4 lb Fresh Parmesean Cheese - grated
Olive Oil, Black Pepper, Salt

Cook the pasta according to your own tastes.

Blanch the tofu. Save the water for cooking the pasta in. If you don't spread out the tofu while it cools, the pieces will meld together into big lumps. It's not the end of the world, but best to avoid it.

Heat a medium frying pan. Add 3 Tbsp olive oil. When oil is hot, add the onions, garlic, coriander, pepper flakes, and paprika along with a bit of salt. Stir frequently.

When the onions are clear, add the mushrooms. Stir to coat the mushrooms. Once the mushrooms have started to cook, add the soup stock. If you are using dry parsley or basil, add it now. Simmer while stirring occasionally. If you want more of a sauce at the end, add more liquid and maybe some butter or olive oil.

Add the tofu and stir it in so that it gets coated with sauce. Simmer for a while.

About 3 or 4 minutes before you want to plate the food, add the greens and fold them in with everything else in the pan so that they wilt. If you are using fresh basil or parsley, add them now. When the greens have wilted, add parmesean, salt and pepper to taste.

Plate the pasta and top it with the Tofu & Greens. Alternately, toss all the ingredients together and then plate.

Serve with Parmesean, Salt, and Fresh Ground Pepper.

When I made this for myself, I had lowfat vanilla yogurt with diced bananas for dessert.

Serves 2

Two Finds in Seattle: Panama Hotel Tea & Coffee, Seattle Deli

2005-12-14T12:13:00.000-08:00

This is a re-post from my blog on mySpace.

I lived in Seattle from 1999-2001. Since then, I've spent a fair amount of my time in New York City. In that period, I've found that while Manhattan and Brooklyn are full of neat places to discover, Seattle is the city I think of when it comes to uncovering real show-stoppers. The dives here are real dives (Hurricane, Hana Teriyaki, Sonya's), the hidden treats are almost magically hidden (ZigZag, ReBar, The Hideout, Mai Phim), and the jewels are worth recommending over and over (Tenzing Momo & World Merchants in Pike Place Market, Tanh Bros. on Broadway, Mesob on Cherry, Thai Tom on University Ave).

What sweetens this pot even more is the fact that these gems are paired with the perfect setting: Lake Washington and the Cascade Mountains to the East, Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains to the West, Mount Ranier to the South. As atmospheric conditions fluctuate, the views from Seattle's hilltops fade from brilliant panorama to blank, misty grey slate. Some days, you won't even think to look beyond the vibrant green moss on the sidewalks and walls. Other days, the mountains will stun you into forgetting about everything but the sun glinting off of their snowy caps.

Since moving away from Seattle, I've come to rely on my friends to sniff out the latest treasures in the Emerald City. Each of my annual visits is augmented by a rolling tour through the fresh newbies and the old standards. Today, thanks to the Very Lovely Kay Morrison, I've got two additions for my list of favorites: (1)Panama Hotel Tea & Coffee, and (2)Seattle Deli.

Panama Hotel Tea & Coffee: A New Hidden Treat

In the International District on Main Street, just east of 6th Ave
This year I confirmed that Seattle's reputation for great coffee is more than just cliche. Last week I was falling asleep at a seminar and was forced to resort to pulling a cup of joe from the urn in the back of the room. Much to my surprise, it turned out to be the best cup of coffee I've tasted in months. Yes, it's true: Forgotten urns at seminars in Seattle dispense better coffee than most coffee shops in Manhattan. Hands down. With Seattle's coffee market thus inundated with quality java, what is left for the enterprising business to do? The answer is tea. There are very few places to purchase qualtiy tea in Seattle and there are even fewer good places to consume it. Gladly, there is one new establishment that is looking to fill that void.

The Panama Hotel is hidden in a part of the International District that was, until recently, all apartment buildings and empty store fronts. In our search for this place, my companion Kay and I spent some time wandering around the flat part of 6th and 7th Avenues down by Uwajimaya. Finally, we gave up on that and crossed Jackson in order to trekk up the hill on the downtown side. I was surprised to find a number of restaurants up there on that hill, many of which seemed quite nice. (To be honest, I think I remember hearing a rumor about an amazing Japanese restaurant in this area, but I digress...) We reached main street, turned right, and there it was: a faded neon sign from the mid-20th century with "Panama Hotel" painted on it in white on baby blue. A newer sign on the sidewalk confirmed that we were in the right place. In we went.

The interior of the shop has fresh paint on the walls and shows the signs of a talented decorator with a passion for local history. Touches of exposed brick are pared with dark hardwood moldings, sturdy wooden and wicker furniture, refinished hardwood floors (old, original wood), and plaster walls painted in a rich cream color. The walls are lined with Black & White photos chronicling the history of the International District. Many of the photos are labeled with post-it notes naming buildings and shopkeepers (mostly Japanese-American). Others have notes written directly on the pictures and the glass framing.

The furniture is sparse, giving a sense of space that is lacking in most coffee shops. We will see if the number of tables increases when patronage starts to rise. Thanks to free Wi-fi, most of the tables had at least one laptop user quietly tapping away. About 50 percent of the people in the room were speaking either Japanese or Chinese. The music was sedated and tasteful, set at a volume level where you could hear it if you listened but could just as easily ignore it altogether.

The tea menu is not extensive, but the selection is sure to satisfy any palate. We ordered a pot of "Bombay Market", a black tea blend whose perfume is like passion fruit with soft hints of spices. The tea was brewed to perfection and brought to our table in a glass pot along with sandblasted glass teacups on bamboo coasters. Everything was exemplary. We polished off the tea while Kay pored over spreadsheets and I wrote this review.

I'm a sucker for well-crafted experiences and overall that is what Panama Hotel provides. This place is sure to become a Seattle Favorite, though I worry that it might lose its real beauty when the crowds start to arrive.

Seattle Deli: Let Vietnam Spoil You

12th Ave, just north of Jackson
I can't believe I never ate here before. The Seattle Deli is a little nondescript storefront on the west side of 12th Avenue. The jumble of food piled up in this place is absolutely delectable. From Vietnamese Tofu Sandwiches to rice and goodies steamed in banana leaves, the options are so numerous that I froze up when I arrived.

The counter is piled with spring rolls and rice noodle salads wrapped in plastic on styrofoam platters. Each plate disctinct from the next and all of them ready to eat. No microwave required. For those who require something hot, there is a steam table offering mouthwatering tofu, sides of spicy chicken, whole fried fish, and more obscure dishes like whole shrimp stir-fried in a spicy sauce along with giant cubes of bacon. There's something for everyone amidst the piles. I could eat there every day for a week without getting bored. It wouldn't put much of a dent in my wallet either. A light lunch for two cost less than $5 and a 3-course feast for three could easily top off at $12.