On Fry's - Day 81

When I first moved to Austin, almost 20 years ago now, I happened to buy a house that was located on the opposite corner from this strange new store. Not just new to me, but brand new to Austin. Rumors had been floating around about this awesome but slightly bizarre electronics supermegamart that was arriving from California. They were supposedly known for having eccentric private owners, odd decor, and absurdly low prices on merchandise that looked like perhaps it had just fallen off a truck. It was called Fry’s, and it was incredibly good timing, at least as far as Adam Hunter’s life goes. My ex-wife hated it because I always wanted to go there and I spent way too much money. There was something entrancing about the place. First of all, it was incredibly weird. They had a full piano coming out of the top of it, to celebrate Austin being the Live Music Capital. They sold computers, printer paper, perfume and toys. Half the merchandise looked like it came fresh off the As Seen On TV catalog. It was an odd mix of SkyMall and your local nerd’s electronics store. For me, it was a godsend. I bought my first soldering iron there. I fixed my car’s dashboard clock with parts I bought there. I remember once seeing an ad - in the newspaper, if you can believe that - that they were selling complete desktop PCs for $99 each. I bought 4, and started an improptu LAN party in the spare room in our garage. Fry’s was part of my life.

Today, in the process of working on a personal project at home, I discovered I had two parts that, despite claiming to work together, did not. So I needed something new; specifically, a device that lets you record video off an HDMI stream on a computer. Normally, I would head to my neighborhood Best Buy, but last week I had a run-in with Best Buy that left me feeling really taken advantage of, so I thought “well, I’ll check Fry’s”. Their website - as clunky as it is - said that they had a part I could use. It was a weird Chinese knock-off, but it was less than half the price, and the internet said it worked pretty well, so I figured hey, what the heck. This is what I remembered Fry’s for, after all: bizarrely low prices on knock off stuff. So I drove the 25 minutes out to Concord, CA. I’d been to this Fry’s many times over the years, but not since I’d been back, so probably not for 3 or 4 years.

It was, in short, depressing. Let’s just say the Fry’s has gone downhill. In fact, downhill is being kind. Fry’s was always strange. My friends and I always wondered how they made any money; the store looks like it was organized by Milton from Office Space, with weirdly empty shelves next to places crammed with merchandise, as if their corporate Buyer was a 13-year-old boy and a login to Ali Express. But now, all those traits had been magnified tenfold. Whole swaths of the store were practically empty. Products were arranged seemingly at random. Inflatable toy rafts sat next to hydroponic grow lights, which were next to a whole aisle containing only 10 copies of the same Samsung TV. It was one step up from a garage sale. 2 or 3 lonely employees circled around the store on god knows what errand. One lady stood up at the cash registers, processing an online return; I had to wait for her to finish to check me out. That part was particularly telling; Fry’s was always known for the speed of their checkout staff, and I can recall the one in Austin having upwards of 20-25 employees all on checkout duty at one time. I saw maybe 3 or 4 other customers in my whole time in the store, and none of them were checking out. The cafe door - yes, Fry’s had restaurants inside, and yes, the food was weird - was open, but nobody seemed to be running the store, so to speak.

Stores come and go. That’s a thing that happens. It’s the way of things. And, to be fair, I have in recent memory been to other Fry’s stores such as the one in Fremont, and they are not nearly as bad as this one (though it, too, has gone downhill). And Fry’s always was weird and kind of poorly managed. Rumors have always flown around that the super-secretive Fry’s family - which privately owns and runs the stores - has been up to no good, and that working there basically sucked. Their prices were low, but their return policy was crappy, their staff was extremely unevenly trained and, well, yeah. You could argue that it won’t be any great loss when they inevitably shut their doors.

Except for one thing: where do we go instead? I ended up at Fry’s because I was mad at Best Buy. So, fair enough; maybe I should go back. But what if I didn’t want to? Well, OK, time to talk about the nine hundred pound elephant in the room: there’s always Amazon. The “Fry’s of the future”: all the weird stuff and low prices, but without having to walk down aisles of perfume to get there. And I guess that’s a good thing.

So, OK, Best Buy and Amazon.

Hmm.

Is anybody reading this old enough to remember electronics in the 90s? I remember Circuit City. And MicroCenter. I remember Radio Shack, and independent TV/VCR stores. I remember shopping around and comparing ads, CompUSA vs Fry’s versus the guy around the corner. All of them: gone.

Seems…suspicious. I mean, what if you just kinda don’t like Best Buy? And what if you want to look at something before you buy it? What if you don’t feel like paying for Amazon Prime? Or, what if Amazon just refuses to sell whatever it is you want, for whatever private reason? Rumors are always flying around, too, that Best Buy is in trouble. What happens when they go under? (Granted, they always look super busy, but you never know). What if you’re a supplier of some new electronics gadget and Amazon doesn’t feel like stocking it and you can’t get Best Buy’s attention?

Competition is good, and call me a fuddy duddy but I don’t really want to have to buy stuff online. Sure, sometimes it’s incredibly convenient, and the selection sure is good, but what if I want it right now? Or what if I have to see it fits? What if I just wanted to see what’s out there and sorta look the product right in the eye? Besides, what if Amazon starts raising their prices? What if it starts to kinda sorta suck, and products don’t get shipped correctly, or they reduce the return policy, and suddenly it’s not such a great deal?

We might regret closing all the Fry’s.

On The Posey Street Tube - Day 80

There’s a lot of unfortunate things happening in the world these days, and a lot of them feel a bit outside our control. But small injustices need to be repaired as well. Yesterday, I went jogging and was reminded of one of our little local problems; I decided to jog over to Alameda, the island city that’s only about 2 miles from my house. The only reasonable way to get there without circling way around is to go through an underground tube called the Posey Street Tube. It’s notable that - for an area with mostly excellent public transit - there’s really no easy way to get to Alameda. There is a private free shuttle that services a shopping center over there, but the vast majority of folks just drive.

Presumably because there’s no other way to get there, they do begrudgingly allow pedestrian and bicycle traffic through the tube. However, it is clearly an afterthought. You are squeezed into one direction of the tube, and one side of the tube inside that one direction. The entire space can’t be more than about 3 feet wide; barely enough for two cyclists to pass each other if they both slow to a crawl and carefully maneouver around each other. The tunnel is very poorly lit, with yellow halide lamps that cast eerie shadows. Cars are required to put their headlights on because it’s really very dark. The surface you ride on is pretty subpar as well, with transitions from concrete to metal and ridges that can throw you. And, pedestrians and cyclists have to share. When I jog through there, I’m terrified of cyclists, and when I bike, I’m worried I’ll hit somebody. To make it worse, the tunnel makes a curve near one end, creating a completely blind turn.

It’s a bad situation, and it’s particularly notable for this area which generally does such a great job with bike paths and sidewalks. And it’s especially egregious because, like I mentioned, there’s really no easy alternative.

Producing a whole bike path is probably unrealistic; there’s just no room. But it seems like it would be pretty easy to open up both sides of the tunnel for pedestrian/bike traffic, and for using both sides of each direction of the tunnel, a la the Golden Gate Bridge. In fact it looks like it was originally designed to work that way; I’m honestly not sure why it’s closed. That wouldn’t fix the problem but it would help a ton.

Here’s a more professional version of what I just said, along with some good pictures that highlight the issue:

https://i2.wp.com/sf.streetsblog.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2016/11/Lonecyclistintunnel.jpg?w=580&crop=0%2C0px%2C100%2C329px&ssl=1

On Interrupting - Day 79

This post is not about football, but football is the backdrop to it. Don’t worry, though: even if you’re not into sportsball it will be interesting. This weekend, randomly, a new American Football league started, trying to compete with the NFL. In an effort to be interesting, one of the changes that they made was radically opening up the field to the reporters and the on-site commentators. There have always been brief halftime interviews of the head coach on the way to the locker room, but this is way more extreme. A few times, a guy would make a great play - or a terrible one - and immediately some commentator would be talking to him on the sideline about what just happened. Sometimes the poor guy would be panting still. Most of the time the players tried to be cool about it. They are, after all, paid performers to some extent. And I’m not saying there’s anything ethically or morally wrong with this. But I could tell it really annoyed the players and coaches and, honestly, I felt for them. Few of us have been professional football players I would imagine, but we’ve all tried to do our job while somebody stood there and, well, made themselves a pest. I remember many years ago working at a large video game company and having the CEO call me directly and ask me how things were going. The temptation to say “they’d be going better if you stopped calling me” was nearly overwhelming.

There’s something grating about having somebody in your face when you’re trying to get something done. It’s like the opposite of a flow state; an “anti-flow” state, if you will. The more we get interrupted, the more annoying it gets until, at some point, we just lose our cool.

I, for one, don’t want sideline reporters interviewing the guy at the circus who just got off the trapeeze or the lady who just finished singing an aria.

On "Why Don't You Just" - Day 78

OK, stop me if you’ve heard this one before. You set out to do something - something adult. Something relatively small. Maybe it’s to change banks for your checking account. Maybe you need to renew your driver’s license. Or hire a plumber. Or get blinds installed.

For me, recently, it was trying to get a car stereo installed in my car.

Whatever. But, for some reason, it just goes super sideways. You try and try, but the universe just says you’re not adulting that day. You fail once, you fail again and then, much to your incredulous dismay, you fail a third time. And then, in the midst of despair, a voice chimes in. Maybe it’s a mental voice (for me it’s usually my mom). Perhaps it’s an actual friend in real life. And they always start with “Why Don’t You Just”. Why don’t you just go to this specific bank? Why don’t you just do it online? Why don’t you try Amazon? Why don’t you just let me take care of it? Why don’t you just admit that you’re fooling us all and actually you sometimes go to the grocery store at 2am and buy an entire pint of ice cream and eat it all while sitting in your car in the parking lot?

You know what I mean.

Anyway. I’ve decided that I’m going to stop saying “why don’t you just”. Because, the thing is, as a wise person once said, everyone we meet is fighting their own battles. We never know what’s going on with people. And, as another wise person once said, everything is easy once you know how. We all struggle with different things.

On $19.73 - Day 77

Yesterday, I found myself in downtown San Francisco, near the Metreon, and I needed lunch and wanted a cheeseburger, so I stopped into the first place I saw called Split. It looked OK, kind of one step up from an In N Out. I asked if they had combos and they didn’t, so I just ordered the burger, fries, and a diet coke. They asked if I wanted them “Split fries” and I said how much was that and they said a dollar so I said sure.

The total? $19.73. I actually had to ask to make sure they had gotten the order right. They had.

Now, my goal here is not to throw Split - whoever they are - under the bus. There are lots of restaurants in downtown SF, and they are all overpriced. But holy cow.

Not to be Captain Obvious or flaunt my white privilege, but I feel like there are a lot of problems with a $20 hamburger. Here are a few that come to my mind (this is by no means all of them):

Some people can’t afford it at all. Let’s start with the most obvious one: many folks just won’t be able to afford it. Anybody who works a normal job and gets a normal salary is going to have a tough time living anywhere where the burgers cost $20, much less, say, the folks who work in the place where the burgers cost $20. And SF loses out on all those folks; their energy, their intelligence and artistry and viewpoint. All gone. Some refer to this as the “whitewashing” of the city, for obvious reasons, and the analogy is apt because it makes you think of coral reefs, turning white under the heat of the economy.

It leaves less money for other stuff. If you’re spending $20 on lunch - assuming you can afford it - you’re not going to buy extra clothes, souvenirs, furniture. You’re going to make do on what you have. You’ll save leftovers and eat them, you’ll live in a place that’s really too small. You won’t buy other things, and that hurts the economy.

It’s just kind of a bummer. Even for those who can afford it, it has a chilling effect on your enjoyment of the city. I bought the burger, for example, but I didn’t like it. Spiritually, morally and ethically it feels bankrupt, triggering feelings of privilege, guilt, and shame. Are you an idiot for spending that much on lunch? Are you perpetuating a broken system? Could the hamburger possibly be anywhere near that good? (Spoiler alert: it really wasn’t).

It’s really bad press. Imagine coming into town for a convention for work. Maybe you’re even on expense account, so it’s not your $20. You’re still going to notice, and go home and tell your friends how incredibly overpriced the city is. And you’re probably going to think twice before planning a vacation there.

I realize that nobody needs to eat out. You can go to a grocery store; I could have gone to one even for lunch. Of course, the grocery stores are just as hyperinflated.

On Hyde St. Studios - Day 76

Today, courtesy of my friend Rachel, I got to hang out at Hyde St. Studios in San Francisco for the morning. For those who don’t know, Hyde St. is a famous music recording studio where some amazing folks have been through and done their thing. We’re talking Digital Underground, Kanye West, Grateful Dead, Cake, Train, etc., etc. Heavy hitters. The real deal. Rachel and a bunch of her friends had gotten together and pooled their money to buy one of their friends a birthday present. That friend plays guitar, sings and writes his own music and they wanted to get him some real recordings, and I was lucky enough to tag along. It was really inspiring and kind of awesome. In fact, very awesome. The place drips with music history, from the gold and platinum records along the walls to the baby grand piano which apparently was sold to them by Frank Sinatra’s mistress when she was moving out. It taught me once again how people who know what they are doing can make something really complex look incredibly simple. The friend - Kevin - turned out to be amazingly good, with what the technician (named Sam) rightly called a Cat Stevens-style sound. In 3 hours they had recorded 3 tracks of him, and done some preliminary - but still pretty damn good - mixing and mastering. I can tell you from experience trying to set up sound recording that what they pulled off represented 3 hours of their time and about 40 years of experience. I thoroughly enjoyed watching him sing and play guitar and watching the engineer work his magic. I know enough about sound production - mostly from watching and listening to my brother - to have an idea how hard it is, and so it was fun to watch. The console is incredibly - it looks like it could launch and guide the Space Shuttle. Something about the environment felt very inspiring, too, from the comfy couches to the array of old mikes and the million switches labeled cryptic things like “Max Out” or “Engineer’s Cut”.

It was also a reminder of why, despite all the expense and trouble, I continue to live in and near San Francisco. On days like today it feels worth it.

On Biking the Richmond Bridge - Day 75

Today I had the privilege of biking over the new Richmond Bridge bike path with a group. There were a lot of little fun side stories along the way, but what you really want to know is how it is to bike the new path, and the short version is: awesome. It’s about 5 miles give or take, and you get amazing views of the various bay islands and inlets including Angel Island. The track is basically the old cement road and it feels very wide and safe. We had a blast. On the Richmond end is Point Richmond, a very cute little neighborhood not that far from the Richmond BART (maybe 2 miles). It would be an easy morning ride adventure. The weather was great and I was reminded of how fun it is to go on rides with a group, as well as hoe handy the BART is for Bay Area cyclists.

On Art Tastings - Day 74

Tonight, courtesy of Jason and Starla and their friend Jacqui, I was invited to attend an art show slash dinner event, called An Art Tasting. I had to leave a bit early because I’m not feeling super great this week, but in the time I was able to stay I had a great time. I especially loved it because it felt very inspiring (which I think was one of the main points). It was a bit of an “amateur artist” night, by which I do not mean to impugn the artists, who were all excellent, just to say that it was definitely a night for people to shine without having to first be as amazingly polished. I would like to get back into producing art and it’s important to remember not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. There are things that I think I can give back and this was an important reminder to just get out there and get it done. The food in particular was amazing and very fresh; full of delicious vegetables.

And - it was right up the street from me here in Oakland! Win-win!

On Bike Kitchen - Day 73

This evening I went by Bike Kitchen. Bike Kitchen, for those who don’t know, is a community bike repair space in San Franciso, near Potrero Hill. It’s been there forever and I used to go and volunteer there. In fact the computer still had the record of my last volunteer shift. 8 years ago. :0 So yeah, a lot of water under that bridge. It was great to be there; I hung out there with my friend Rachel for about an hour or so and just chatted with people about their bikes and helped some folks work on either new bikes or a repair. I don’t know if I actually helped anyone, but I had a great time. It really hasn’t changed at all, which is a testament to how well run it is. The place is so clean and well organized and obviously stable if it really hasn’t changed at all in 8 years. That’s uncommon for any business much less a non profit.

I highly recommend them if you need bike advice or a part; of course everything is used but they’ve got a ton of stuff and it’s really well lit and organized and you can use all their tools! I don’t know how they do it but they got a great thing going.

On Knives Out - Day 72

Every now and then, you get the pleasure of reliving some part of your past that you thought might be gone to you forever. I felt that way a couple of weeks ago when I got to attend a lecture during SF Sketchfest by, among other people, the man who helped write Clue (the Movie), and we watched it on the big screen at the Castro theater. I love Clue, and they really don’t make movies like it much anymore. Or, possibly, they never really did. When I was a kid, of course, I liked the TV shows such as Murder She Wrote, but I knew that to see the big screen equivalent was rare.

Tonight, my friend Leah talked me into seeing Knives Out and oh, Lord, am I glad she did. Spoiler alert: it’s good. But even better: it’s genuine. It’s a movie made by someone who both understands and is in love with the old whodunit, without being overly slavish. It’s not a movie for everyone. There are things about it that are silly, to be sure. But if you like Clue, you will love this movie. And I love Clue. So yeah.

All the standards are there: the mansion, the old man, the impossible crime, etc. But there are some things that stand out: first, and most importantly, the main character - who is not Daniel Craig, despite what the trailers would have you believe. Instead, it’s the caregiver, a young Cuban actress whose name I never did catch but I just looked it up (Ana de Carmas). Her role is tricky and had to be believable to pull the movie off, and she knocked it out of the park. Daniel Craig is, of course, great, as is Chris Evans. This is a character study, so of course the characters have to work and they do. Unlike Clue, this movie occasionally lets its characters out of the house, and those are some of the most interesting scenes; filled with tension, as if the movie keeps drawing everyone back to the murder. Nobody is allowed - quite literally - to be away from it for long, and it rides over the whole movie. If you’re like me, there’s a central tension to the film, a sort of epic fight between good and evil. I turned to Leah after it was over and said “My God, if that movie had a bad ending I was going to be so, so angry.”

Spoiler alert: it does not have a bad ending.

Go see it.

On Processing - Day 71

I’ve been looking around for a way to do some simple motion graphics. I had a vision of mind of a simple animation of the bike rides that the charity I work with does during the summer. You can see the result at the bottom. I struggled with a bunch of other products. Adobe After Effects is the clear professional answer, but it has a bunch of flaws, the most relevant of which is that it’s a subscription-based piece of software, which I’m just fundamentally not a fan of. It’s also really expensive. And complicated. I wanted something simple; I didn’t mind paying for it, but not a subscription.

Luckily, I found exactly what I wanted, finally. It’s called Processing, and it’s basically a sandbox for doing motion graphics with programming. It’s not for everyone; it’s all done using scripting, there is no UI and no ability to drag stuff around. But for somebody like me who knew exactly what he wanted and knows how to code, it was a godsend: easy to install, easy to use, filled with documentation and examples. I immediately took to it, and the example below only took me about 2 hours to put together, including installing and learning how to use the thing. I love all the samples available in the community. It’s not going to be the perfect tool forever; for things that need hand animation or elaborate tweening, for example, it’s not the best fit. For that I will probably turn to Wick Editor; but Wick has a lot of limitations and issues; it’s so simple that it’s probably too simple.

http://www.processing.org

On The Arduboy - Day 70

A couple of years ago a friend introduced me to a cool little device. I had been interested in playing around with Arduinos and, of course, because I love video games, I was particularly interested in writing video games or video-game-like software for them. For those who don’t know, Arduino is a name for a set of different embedded systems; basically tiny open source computers that can do specific tiny tasks, like water a plant or measure temperature or control a motor. I was interested in using them to play retro video games, which it turns out is quite a cottage industry. The Arduboy is particularly cool because it’s very polished; it came out of a project a man did on his own to create a video game business card; essentially a version of tetris that was small enough and cheap enough that he could hand it out to potential business contacts, like at a conference. He then developed that idea commercially into a sort of thin and light Game Boy-esque device which is simultaneously very old school and has some modern touches, like a micro USB charging port. Most importantly, it’s programmable. I’ve spent the last year or so occasionally working on a game project which has been a fun way to exercise my creative muscles; I imagine I’m about 3-6 months away from being done with it.

If you’re interested, there’s a whole community and website around the Arduboy at, of course, www.arduboy.com. Check it out!

On Fleuret's - Day 69

I finally realized, a few months after moving in here, that I was paying about $1 for a beer, and $3 for the man standing there selling it to me.

Let me back up. I live in Oakland, in a part of the city that is desperately trying to gentrify, while other parts of the city desperately try to un-gentrify it. My apartment building is very nice and very deluxe, while less than a mile away is some pretty desperately poor areas. When I first moved into this apartment building, almost 2 years ago, one of the first things I started looking for was my local convenience store; the place I could go at 11pm to just get a beer or a loaf of bread. I quickly discovered that there was only one: Fleuret’s Market & Spirits, at the corner of San Pablo and William. At first, it annoyed me. First, the lack of choice. Second, the prices were crazy high; $3.79 for a can of chili, $5.99 for a pack of tortillas, etc. And it wasn’t even that great of a store. The two things it had going for it were the location, and the fact that the guy stayed open until midnight, every night.

I started going there, begrudgingly. Probably once or twice a week, usually because I either wanted beer or wine, or I just wanted a snack. Occasionally the guy inside would chat me up. I noticed that he was always there; and I mean always. I’ve been there on Christmas Eve; he was there. All day, every day. I started responding to his little comments; we’d talk about the weather, or the area. It was tough because he talked really fast and had a crazy thick accent so honestly I didn’t understand 90% of what he said. One day he came out from behind the counter to open the door for me and I realized he was incredibly short; he can’t be more than 5 feet tall, he just stands on a shelf behind the counter.

Oh yeah: the door is locked. Sometime, after about 8 or 9pm, you can count on the door being locked. You ring a bell, or more likely he sees you from inside the store, and he checks to make sure you’re somebody he recognizes, and then he opens it. I’m not sure what happens if he doesn’t recognize you. I’m guessing he doesn’t open the door.

I slowly began to realize: the reason this man runs the only convenience store near me is because he’s the only one crazy enough to do it. People get shot sometimes in my neighborhood, and sticking up the small Arab guy who runs the convenience store…well, let’s just say he seems like an easy target. I realized I was paying about $1 for that can of chili and $2.79 for him to stand there, selling it to me. $1 for his time, $0.79 for being brave enough to have a business at all, and then an extra $1 that we’ll call hazard pay.

I started trying to actually talk to him. He told me his name, but as God is my witness, despite him saying it 3 or 4 times, all I got was a sort of Akhmed, but that seems way too stereotypical to be true. Did he have a family? (Yes). How long had he been there? (A long time, although he used to be around the corner). Does he make any money? (He does OK, although the rent is incredibly high). Could he stock Hostess cupcakes? (He said he’d try but he’s at the mercy of the distributors willing to work with him). I told him one time he should have tortillas and then next time there were tortillas. He told me a story - which I’m sure is true - about getting illegally scammed out of his old lease because he got a new landlord and the guy just basically didn’t like Arabs.

It’s not that I love Fleuret’s. I don’t. The prices are still way too high and the selection is bad. When I move - as I will someday - I won’t dream of going there again. But I do love the man who runs Fleuret’s. And I love what Fleuret’s represents. To me, it tells the story of my neighborhood, way better than I ever could.

On Fonts To Impeach By - Day 68

First: this is not a political post. Just to be clear. If you’re triggered, this is a safe space. We’re not going to solve any big political questions here. The impetus for this post was me jogging on a treadmill at the gym while NBC talked about the impeachment hearings (for those living under a rock or outside the US, the United States legislature has impeached and is now preparing to try the president. It likely won’t go anywhere but is excellent political theater). At one point, they put up a portion of the document that’s currently being debated about how to proceed to conduct the trial in the Senate. The fact that they even need to debate this is a giant eye roll, but that’s besides the point. What I noticed, because I’m a dork, is the font that the document used. It was, in a word, terrible. As a graphic designer, I would never use that font for broadcast TV. The lines were so thin in parts that the crappy LCD TV at the gym just lost them completely, and the old school serifs were thick and blocky. However, it did have this sort of historical gravitas about it. It felt out of place and out of time, as if it came from a different era - and that’s likely because it did!

So: what is this font? Where did it come from? When did we decide to use it, and why, and why do we still use it? I started Googling for answers.

My first pass at Googling revealed that there was no “one true font” for the US government. But that didn’t entirely match up with my experience. There’s a particular font that’s always seemingly used for official US Federal documents, such as those dealing with the Senate. The government actually has its own free font released as open source: Public Sans. It’s a nice font, but it’s clearly not the font we’re looking for; way too modern. There’s also the “font” used in “top secret” documents, sort of a modern typewriter looking thing (probably because originally many of them were typed), but that’s not it either.

I actually then went and googled the impeachment documents and found, to my surprise, that they are actually written in a fairly modern looking Serif font - possibly Times New Roman. Not what I was looking for, either.

It turns out that what I wanted was “Century Schoolbook”, and the reason I wanted it is because it’s used by the Supreme Court (though possibly not always). But it wasn’t easy to figure this out, and even once I did, it wasn’t easy to figure out why. It seems like it’s just a stylistic choice. It brings to mind solidity and tradition - and the reason it does so is because millions of people used it to learn to read. As the name implies, it was invented in order to help kids read schoolbooks. That’s why it’s a Serif font; it’s meant to be printed and read at medium-to-large font sizes, which I suppose makes sense for legal documents, but doesn’t work nearly as well on computer or TV screens (especially bad ones like I have at the gym). According to this page at Microsoft, it was invented around 1919 and perfected by 1924.

So there you have at. Century Schoolbook.

On Fun - Day 67

2020 is off to a great start for me. I’ve gotten to fullfill some longstanding personal goals - going to bicycle repair school being the big one. I’ve done well at work. I’ve made new friends. Everything is going well.

The one thing that’s been niggling at me a bit though is that I feel like it would be nice to have more fun. Maybe it’s the winter, maybe it’s the impending doom of global warming, maybe it’s just western civilization malaise, but it feels like everyone is a bit in the doldrums lately, myself included from time to time. There’s a time and a place for reasonableness and responsibility, but there’s also a time for letting your inner child out and just having a good time, and that’s been lacking in my life lately. I’m talking about minigolf, Disney World, laughing so hard it hurts, comedy shows, hiking with chatty friends - just fun. Parties, too; birthday parties, holiday parties, any old reason parties. Maybe the Super Bowl is a good chance to get started; anyone want to invite me to a Super Bowl party?

Anyway, my personal goal for the next few months of 2020 is to mix in more silly fun. So if anybody has any suggstions, send them my way!

On Opera - Day 66

Today I went over to my friend Rachel’s house at her request and watched the first half of an opera: The Progress of the Rake. It was an interesting story, and the singing was quite impressive, so it made me wonder, as I have before: why don’t I like opera much? I mean, I can tolerate it. I can appreciate the magnificence of their voices and the way they approach their subject. I never really crave opera, though. Which is a bit odd, because I enjoy so many of the things that are like opera. I love musicals; one of the best times of my life was the time I lived in New York City for a while and got to watch Broadway almost every week. And I love live performance in general: the symphony, plays, live music, etc. Usually one of my comments about life is that if someone is passionate about what they do and good at it, I’ll enjoy watching them. But opera just feels oddly disconnected from my experience. It’s not particularly abstruse any more than, say, classical symphony, and yet I don’t connect with it as well. I thought perhaps it was the language barrier, but I saw La Boheme in English and it still just didn’t quite work for me. Perhaps its the characterization and caricaturization of emotions? But of course they do that in musicals just as much if not more so.

Yeah, I really don’t know what it is! I guess you just can’t love everything.

On Eggs - Day 65

I really, really like eggs. Yes, I know this blog is random. This is not a controversial opinion; I’ve rarely met anyone who didn’t like eggs. But I really like ‘em. Since I’ve started cooking at home, they’ve become a staple of my morning. I actually try not to eat them other than at breakfast because I think if I let myself, I would eat them every meal and probably burn out on them super quickly. They go so well with everything: spinach, cheese and tortilla chips is my favorite (kind of a gringo migas), but I’ll eat them with sausage, ham, green onions, parmesan, poached, fried, scrambled - you name it. Usually I just crack them right into a pan with a bit of spray oil and let them sorta lightly pan fry, because it’s easiest and very tasty. But sometimes I mix it up with scrambling, or cooking them on top of rice, or letting them just meld in with a tortilla while they’re cooking. I don’t know why they’re so tasty; part of it is the protein and fat, which I love.

I’ve always said I could be a vegetarian (in fact I was one time for about 6 months), but I could never go vegan. Cheese and eggs are just way, way too easy, versatile and delicious for me to give up. I’ve had meat substitutes that I really enjoyed, but I’ve never had an egg substitute that was anything other than a cooking tool or, well, gross.

I try to buy cage free eggs, free range and organic. I do feel bad for the chickens; it can’t be a lot of fun to just sit there and poop out eggs all day for humans. I would love for science to find us a replacement, but in the meantime, it seems like at least it’s better than meat (which I still eat anyways).

Eggs! They’re tasty!

On Confidence Words - Day 64

Lately I’ve been noticing something interesting about my writing that I’d like to see if I can correct, and I wanted to mention it because others of you might recognize it in your own writing. I had the opportunity in the last few weeks to write some documents which were edited by people who are much better writers than myself, and one thing I noticed was them tightening up my prose. In particular, I noticed that I used certain words; I would call these “confidence words”, or more accurately “lack of confidence words”. These are words like “basically” or “generally” or “largely”, or phrases like “for the most part”. They are words and phrases which I was subconsciously inserting into my prose that communicated a lack of confidence in my own ideas and which made the prose harder to read. (See, in that last sentence alone, I originally wrote “which I guess I was subconsciously”, another great confidence phrase). I’m going to make a concerted effort to take these words out of my writing; if I mess it up, catch me and let me know!

On Bart - Day 63

I am really grateful for BART. BART, as anyone from the Bay Area knows stands for Bay Area Rapid Transit. It’s our train. There are other trains that connect with BART and form an area network, most notably Caltrain and the MUNI Metro, but BART is the backbone of the Bay Area. It is definitely not perfect. Sometimes the trains are pretty dirty. Sometimes weird crap happens. But by and large, it’s a really efficient and effective way of getting around (as long as you want to go to places that are near BART). I used to live in NYC with its vaunted Subway system and I can tell you I prefer BART (though a better comparison is to the LIRR). I live right on top of a BART stop, the 19th St. Oakland stop, but oftentimes I bike over to the West Oakland stop, which is in a pretty rough part of town but has the advantage of being a choke point to go under the Bay, and thus has every train stop at it. I’ve ridden BART hundreds, maybe thousands of times, and with very rare exceptions, it gets me where I want to go, without a lot of fuss. There’s places to put your bikes, it’s not usually too crazy busy unless it’s rush hour, and it’s kinda expensive but honestly less expensive than any other way of getting around. The Clipper card system works, the seats are okayishly comfy; it’s pretty much the essence of a working man’s commuter train system. As a bonus, it’s a great way to go on a bike ride; just target a stop of the train for the end of the ride and you can get home easily.

A lot of folks complain about BART, but I think that either they are stuck commuting on it during rush hour (which definitely can suck) or they just haven’t used other systems and don’t know how good they have it.

(P.S. Yes, I know that Europe has awesome trains that are way better. This is true. But BART is the best I’ve used in the US).

On Spokeland - Day 62

Yesterday I went to a volunteer meeting for an organization here in Oakland called Spokeland which is sort of a nonprofit bike shop and educational area; somewhat similar to Bike Kitchen in San Francisco. It’s a community space where you can go and either buy a bike, have somebody fix your bike, or fix it yourself using their tools. It’s not designed to make money (which is good because it doesn’t), it’s just a bunch of folks who feel strongly that more people should know how to fix bikes. Not only do I think this is a great cause, it’s a win for me because I need practice fixing up bikes before I go on my next ride. So I think I’ll be spending some serious time there, both fixing bikes and putting together bikes out of my parts they already have; in fact I’m going over there today to do just that! If you live in the East Bay and need a bike, need to donate an old bike, or want to fix up your old bike in time for some better weather, then come on by!

www.spokeland.org, on 37th near MLK.