Violet Blue and Boing Boing Debacle
Filed Under Geek, Internet, News, Pranks, SF Bay Area, Websites |
For those that don’t know, Violet Blue is a well-known sex educator and Boing Boing is one of the most(?) popular blogs on the internet. If you haven’t heard about Violet Blue’s posts getting pulled from BoingBoing, there’s more than enough press out there about it. Even the LA Times picked up the story. I don’t want to get into a long post about my thoughts on the matter, but I did want to share something I thought worth sharing.
I setup VioletBlueVioletBlue.net to house all of the Boing Boing posts that had been “unpublished”. These posts are all taken directly from archive.org where the old versions of the posts are kept. Boing Boing publishes their stuff under Creative Commons, so I am redistributing their work with attribution. I wanted this content to remain around and in a form that is easily locatable, i.e. not buried in archive.org’s wayback machine. If you have a blog post that previously linked to the post on Boing Boing, then feel free to link to its equivalent on VB
If I missed anything or made any mistakes on the site, please let me know. I make no claims to being perfect by any means.
AT-AT T-Shirts
Filed Under Art, Funny, SF Bay Area |
mooflyfoof pointed me to these incredibly awesome shirts (of course after she got one for herself so now I can get one or else we’ll match *fist shaking*). Not only is the design available on t-shirts, but also hoodies, and infant t-shirts. To clue in those not from the Bay Area:
According to George Lucas, the AT-ATs were based on the tripod fighting machines from The War of the Worlds. He also took inspiration from elephants and loading cranes in West Oakland–hence the nickname “elephant walker.”
via answers.com
Buy your own from the girl and rhino. If you’re curious about the West Oakland AT-ATs, may we suggest a flickr search?
San Francisco Pie Fight!
Filed Under SF Bay Area, sf0 |
Today Market St saw quite the mess at the Powell Cable Car turnaround. A Pie Fight erupted amidst the throngs of tourists. Mike Morris was able to get some good pics while dodging the pies.
5.6 Earthquake in the Bay
Filed Under SF Bay Area |
Last night was an interesting evening. After meeting up with Rubin, Jake, and Audrey we headed to get sushi, only to find that BART was closed due to a suicide. Then during sushi at Miyabi, we thought we heard someone drop something in the kitchen. The sound was questioned, and we stopped eating to notice that the ground was kind of swaying. I looked up and saw the lights swinging from side to side. The other diners paused for a minute and you could see everyone waiting to see if things were going to subside or get worse. This was the first quake that I’ve been able to ask “Is this an earthquake?” instead of “Was that an earthquake?”. Being in the moment and realizing what was going on felt slightly more comforting. I even had a chance to flip open my Sidekick and send a Twitter message during the actual earthquake. Unfortunately for my “geek cred” Dan beat my to it by 4 seconds (I blame the Sidekick’s slow SMS sending).
Of course afterwards, we were all looking up info on the magnitude, watching the after shocks register, checking on friends, and deleting Twitters and IMs from just about everyone in the Bay Area. But everything is fine, very little to no damage around and as we waited for BART I noticed that the signs in the station said that there was an “earth tremor” and that trains were slightly delayed as tracks were being checked.
My favorite photo of the damage (as pointed out by s4xton) was this one:
Immediately after the 5.6 rumble, there were a number of after-shocks. These have continued through the night and today ranging in magnitude from 0.7 to 2.8. There are also forecasts of a 30% chance of an aftershock of 5 or greater. Hang on everyone!
image source: USGS by way of SFist
Google turns out the lights
Filed Under Internet, News, SF Bay Area, Websites |
On Saturday, October 20, 2007, San Francisco will go black for one hour (8pm-9pm PST) as it participates in “Lights Out San Francisco”. In addition, the citizens of SF are encouraged to install at least one compact fluorexcent light bulb to help reduce their energy consumption. In a show of their support, Google has changed the background of their page to black. This page is targeted at San Francisco users, since this is a local thing, so chances are you are seeing the normal Google page if you aren’t using an internet connection that traces back to San Francisco. This isn’t to say that you can’t join in and turn out your lights from 8pm-9pm. For more info, check out Google’s page and check out the official Lights Out San Francisco page.
How not to win my vote
Filed Under SF Bay Area |
If you’re running for public office, don’t call/email/send me unsolicited campaign drivel. It just lets me know who NOT to vote for. On top of that, at least put my email address in the To field, so I know which one to unsubscribe without having to pull up the email headers. Email received (with my reply) below:
On 10/3/07, Harold
> It is time for the voters to unplug the political machine that controls this
> city and place the responsibility for government squarely on the shoulders
> of someone who will make every decision based on what is best for the
> citizenry.
>
> My name is Harold Hoogasian. I am a third generation San Franciscan. My
> business, Hoogasian Flowers, was established by my grandfather. The
> philosophy taught to me by my family is that whenever possible, one should
> use local, San Francisco based businesses to provide goods and services, in
> order to keep the dollars in our own San Francisco economy.
>
> I call on the voters of this Great City of San Francisco to rise up, UNPLUG
> THE MACHINE of party politics and CONSENT to a BETTER WAY OF GOVERNMENT. If
> you will elect me to the Office of Mayor of San Francisco, I pledge to bring
> excellence to every area of endeavor and to seek the highest level of
> success in resolving homelessness, improving transportation and addressing
> the other issues that confront us.
>
> To meet this challenge I ask your help:
> 1) Please contribute money to our campaign
> 2) Call and volunteer to work on the campaign
> 3) Call or e-mail us and volunteer to place a campaign sign your window of
> your car or home
>
> Together we can build a future of which we all will be proud.
>
> Harold M. Hoogasian,
> Candidate for Mayor
> 415-229-2710
> If you would rather not receive information about this contested mayoral
> election,
>
> Reply with “unsubscribe” in the subject line: campaign@unplugthemachine.org
Please add this to your basic issues for your platform and I might reconsider:
6. A stand against unsolicited email – Spam is out of control. We cannot tolerate the level of email we receive in our inbox every day. As Mayor, I will do nothing about this annoying intrusion as I have an established track record of sending unsolicited email to undisclosed-recipients. This issue should have my full attention as people are unable to unsubscribe from these emails when they don’t know which email address they were sent to.
Remote Control Bus Stop Rave Flash Mob
Filed Under Fun, Funny, Interesting, Pranks, SF Bay Area, Video, sf0 |
Oh sf0, you are responsible for so many great things (not to mention me moving to San Francisco). What’s the next best thing? Oh, a sequel to the great Remote Control Bus Stop Rave Flash Mob? You’ve got to be kidding me! I’ll be there!
No idea what I’m talking about? Here’s the video from the last one:
And here’s the task that was posted on sf0.
And here’s info for the one this Friday:
Greetings fellow humans!
This Friday, September 21, starting at 9PM, there will be a remote control bus stop rave flash mob. Someone set up a music rig (hidden in the eaves of the bus stop) that goes off when someone sits in the bus stop or walks in front of it. Join the mob, it will be fun. Watch this youtube video of a previous bus stop rave: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ktm-LxCoe_I
WHERE:
- Bus stop at the corner of Haight and Fillmore in SF (headed west)
- CLICK HERE to see a mapWHEN:
- Friday, September 21, 9:00 PMWHAT TO DO:
- When the music and lights start, go to the bus stop and dance.
- When the music stops, vacate the bus shelter,
- Be friendly to passer-bys and locals. Encourage them to dance.
. Eventually, as the night goes on and we all become more intoxicated, this will evolve from a flash mob into a more of a bus stop rave.Bring your friends. It really is a lot of fun to party in bus stop that has its own sound system.
I give it 15 minutes, but dammit, those will be 15 good minutes of fun.
Power outage takes out major sites
Filed Under Internet, News, SF Bay Area, Second Life |
A series of power outages in San Francisco has taken a couple of pretty large sites out of commission. Those affected include:
craigslist
some SecondLife servers
NetFlix
LiveJournal, Vox, TypePad (and the rest of SixApart)
Yelp
Technorati
AdBrite
Some CurrentTV servers
Some ZDNet blogs
and the NSFW kink.com is also down…
All of these sites are hosted by 365 Main and I’m sure there are several other sites that are down because of this. Don’t these people have reliable backup generators? sheesh.. where am I going to get my Internet fix from today? The best part is this press release went up shortly before the sites started going down.
SecondLife is also experiencing trouble due to the power outages and has disabled logins until it is back up fully.
And for us locals, it looks like the afternoon commute might be a bit crazy if this isn’t resolved soon.
- Laughing Squid reports as well.
- ValleyWag has an interesting “drunk employee” rumor on 365 Main.
- SixApart’s Twitter has up to the minute updates.
- O’Reilly Radar has reports as well
- ValleyWag says customers are lining up at the entrance to 365 Main
UPDATE from SFGate:
At least 30,000 Pacific Gas and Electric Co. customers in San Francisco and the northern Peninsula lost power this afternoon after an explosion under a manhole cover on Mission Street, the utility said.
…
Witnesses said they heard an explosion at about 1:50 p.m., then saw flames coming from the manhole.
Actor Torino Von Jones, 32, said he was filming a Fruit of the Loom commercial down the block at the time.
“We were standing over there waiting for the camera cue when we heard a big explosion,” he said. “Flames came up taller than I am, and I’m 6-foot-2.”
“Naturally, when you hear an explosion, you think the worst,” said Von Jones, who nevertheless hurried back to work. “We’re Fruit of the Loom — we’ve got to make this commercial.”
Bay Area Maker Faire 2007: Divining Pod, NifNaks, and SRL
Filed Under Education, Fire, Fun, News, SF Bay Area, Video |
Wow, what an event. I only made it down for about half of one day and was astounded by the number of people as well as things that were there to see and do. Everyone and their brother who was within driving distance seems to have already reported on the event, but there were a few things I wanted to personally touch on that I found most interesting.
monochrom’s Divining Pod
The Monochrom crew was back in the states on their International Year of Polytheism tour this past weekend. Large balloons, a supply of helium, and small children contributed to an attempt at sending one lucky person to the heavens. To quote Johannes, it was a “semi-total success”. There are tons of videos and photos floating around, and monochrom has a good wrap-up here
NifNaks
Our friend Nifer has been in hiding, working hard on starting her own business, NifNaks, for several months. While we had a chance awhile back to peek at what she’s been up to, it wasn’t until the Maker Faire that she fully unveiled everything. She had her very own booth for the business that’s sure to take off. Of interest to most geeks out there, one of her more popular items was the Flying Spaghetti Monster pin. Her site, NifNaks.com, is up and live so those of you that didn’t make it to her booth can order your own felt creations.
The SRL Show
While there were a large number of things at the Maker Faire that were kind of dangerous (Tesla coils, fire sculptures, power tool drag races, and more) I don’t think many of them truly compared to the unannounced SRL show. They had several amazing machines to show off this weekend, including Hovercraft, Running Machine, Dual Mule and Mr. Satan Head. Destruction, noise, and fire were all the results of this show. Part of it included Mr Satan Head setting fire to a large ball that appeared to be made of cardboard, which burned ever so nicely. However, the wind started to kick up, fueling the fire and blowing smoke and ash directly into the audience. The bleachers evacuated, and people were forced to move away from the fence. This picture kind of gives you an idea of the level of smoke when they began to put it out.
Of course sirens were heard in the distance and the fire department showed up shortly after. It turns out that the event organizers impounded Mr. Satan Head and billed SRL for $6600 in cleanup to the damaged parking lot. Ouch. In addition, one woman suffered minor burns, however SRL covered both her medical expenses and “pain and suffering”. Laughing Squid has some great photos in their post about the show. We’ve got a few more shots on Flickr and Rick Washburn posted the follow video of the event:
Golden Gate Bridge collapses
Filed Under Funny, SF Bay Area |
Wikipedia just told me that the Golden Gate Bridge has collapsed. Hope nobody has to head north from the peninsula tonight!
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