One day I’m hanging out with a pal eating dinner nearby when into the restaurant comes this guy with a young kid and a stylish vintage hat. I reach for a french fry and watch my pal get uptight while he turns his mouth down, says “hey, that’s Sonny, wow, yeah that’s him…” and won’t look at his food anymore because he’s staring off into the corner trying to figure out something serious.

“Hang on” he says, gets up and walks across the diner to introduce himself to Sonny, which I guess was the big idea that had been happening moments earlier.

“It’s the same old story in fact it’s kind of boring”

- Sonny Smith in the song “Curtis on the Corner” from the 2006 album Fruitvale.

I’d never met or heard of Sonny Smith before and I was told very clearly that Sonny was doing something important and that his song writing is well beyond what you typically get from the singer-songwriter scene. Honestly, I had my doubts.

Ran into Sonny a few nights ago and couldn’t quite remember who he was until later but then I then did remember and last night I called a friend and we walked over to Cafe Du Nord and watched him play. We both agreed that it was a very nice show.

The mix was dry up front and the levels were good, although in the back of the house there was a beautiful reverb hanging around the whole sound (it was a three piece) and it made a fine scene for talking almost like an old record was playing, the one we’d heard a hundred times before, and loved more each time, though in reality this was the first listen.

It’s easy to buy Sonny Smith’s music and I strongly recommend that you do.

Sometimes I take a lot of shots of something nice and otherwise mundane and the results wind up dull. In such a case I like to stack the images as semi transparent layers and see if anything less dull appears. In the case above it’s only slightly less dull, but I’ve got something important to say, so enough with the self-involved picture talk…

City of San Francisco did something great when they invested in the Garfield Park playfield improvements. That field has brought a lot of life to the area and it’s fun to watch.

In the past I’ve always rejected artificial turf surfaces. This one makes perfect sense. It’s not in constant use, but pretty close.

If rents weren’t already out of control, I’d probably brag about my neighborhood now.

Instead I’ll remind you that San Francisco is incredibly expensive! Really. And now there’s actually graffiti on my neighbor’s wall. Graffiti! You know what that means, right?? It means - as much as I love you and it hurts me most to say it - it means don’t move here.

Thanks!

Times Select was a failed experiment (via Kottke). At least they gave it an honest effort.

I mean that sarcastically AND sincerely.

How long until the Financial Times follows? Two weeks wouldn’t shock me…

Either would be better than the standard captcha. All require the user to respond to randomly generated visual data. The most important difference is that popping 5 consecutive bubbles or moles (or who cares) would be a subtle way to say “hey, sorry for the inconvenience, we don’t mean to assume that you’re a spambot, in fact we’re not gonna force you to parse gibberish characters, we sorta like you, we kinda want you to continue investing your attention here, so play this mildly entertaining game, it’s good for everyone…”

There are thousands of old school video games that provide a model for some kind of simple random generated action. Why not pick one that matches your brand? Obviously it’s got to be lightweight enough for dialup users… Pong would work.

How much mental energy do you spend filling out captchas?

Someday, friends, maybe a fraction of that energy can be accumulated and redirected toward something more entertaining.

Update to a post from last month regarding RIAA’s legal actions. Two sites to be aware of:

* Electronic Frontier Foundation’s “EFF v. People”

* Ty Rogers and Ray Beckerman’s blawg “Recording Industry vs. The People”

Both sites offer a lot of information and many more helpful links.

January 2007, NPR’s All Things Considered discusses a National Academy of Sciences report on how budget cuts are affecting our nation’s ability to monitor climate changes.

It appears that the NPR story can be traced back to a confidential December 2006 document that National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA delivered to the White House. That same document was leaked to the AP in June 2007 and the story was picked up by CBS, MSNBC, and other major outlets.

September 2007, Financial Times (sub. req’d) published an editorial on the topic, reporting from the perspective of Frank Nutter and the Reinsurance Association of America. It’s a strongly worded piece. Nutter:

“A cross-agency authority should be designated to promote a more cohesive vision for monitoring the earth, one that incorporates the needs of private-sector users.”

It’s good to see the professional risk management community taking a stand in support of better climate science.

[tags]Reinsurance Association of America, Frank Nutter, FT[/tags]

Business planning can be not interesting. I’ve never tried to peddle the day to day stories of my thrilling economic activities. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy them. Of course I do. The stories just don’t make great reading (or writing) material.

I started including photos in the blog a long time back. I’ve had a lot of traffic via google image searches from all around the world. Swell. Makes me happy to help google sell ads. That’s a lie. It makes me indifferent.

Does the internet really need more heavily photoshopped pictures of inane subjects? Apparently so. And I don’t mind. It’s not a server load. The pictures are colorful.

Previously on the new improved blog I’d make an effort to combine the pics with some sort of quasi relevant news item or other piece of business oriented content. That’s been an okay formula and I won’t abandon it completely. I will stop making an effort to reduce the number of times that I use the word “I” in my posts. Things may become more bloglike (without the annoying comments). I don’t have a cat. I may share stories about my plants.

Above is a classic composition. I call it “bee with flower”. Tell you all about it some other time.

[tags]bee with flower[/tags]

2001. The bird survived. Left an imprint on the glass (dust? dirt? bird oil?). I took a picture. Recently found the picture on a hard drive.

I’ve linked to Detroitblog before and I’ll do so again in the future. Go read Detroitblog. Now is the right time to do it. Thank you.

[tags]Detroitblog[/tags]