Whobar

I launched a new web site this weekend. It's called whobar.net. I felt the need to learn about using Google's mapping API. The tools they have made available for free public use are so powerful, I feel I would be a fool not to take advantage. However, these things always require a bit of a learning curve.

I generally like to marry my learning experiences to something at least potentially useful to other people. I thought about what kind of maps I could build that would be new and different.

I decided to collect reports from individuals about the cell phone signal strength they are experiencing at any given address around the (Google-enabled) globe. Then I could plot color coded points on a map showing visually how strong the signal was from different mobile carriers.

"Can you hear me now?"

It won't be too useful to anyone until there are a lot of points plotted on the map, which means thousands of people will have to be kind enough to report their signal strength without getting anything meaningful in return.

Who knows if this will happen, but at least now the world has the opportunity to make it happen.

Whobar!

Celebrity

Last night I had a celebrity close encounter.

I got word that Bjork was in town with her boyfriend Matthew Barney who had an exhibit opening at SFMOMA. Rumor was, she was planning to DJ at Stud Bar later that night. I said "Sure, sure she is." A group of friends planned to camp out down there that evening just in case it was true.

I was out with a buddy when Monica called and said the rumor appeared to be gaining wide acceptance and the place was filling up... and that I should come down if for no other reason than it was a fun crowd. I had never been to the Stud Bar, since I always thought of it as a gay bar and thought I might feel out of place. My friend felt the same way and was somewhat reluctant to attend for that reason. But due to my policy of "lean yes" when on the fence about something potentially fun, I decided to check it out.

As we walked down the street toward the bar, I could hear the sound of a brass band coming from that very direction... then heard their sound muffle as if they went indoors. This was a good sign. I thought it might be the Extra Action Marching Band who often seem to be surrounded by cool goings on. I was right. They had gone into the crowded bar just ahead of us, and we were treated to a loud and already surreal display.

This bar was clearly not prepared for the onslaught of rumor-believers they had already received. There was one poor bartender drowning in drink requests, where on a busy night, the size of the place would call for at least three or four of them plus bar back help. I waited patiently for a drink. And while I was waiting, a parade of folks, hand in hand in a long single file chain, scurried along behind the bar toward the DJ booth. And sure enough, a colorfully-caped Bjork was mid-chain.

The entourage happened to settle right where my friends were parked. When I made my way that direction, they all looked like deer in the headlights, not really sure what to do or say in the presence of a celebrity. But what can you say that wouldn't sound dumb?

Quickly, the normally jaded artsy San Francisco crowd degraded into a sea of star struck paparazzi. Camera phones were shoved in her face from every direction and people pushed to get as close to her as possible. I was kind of stuck between her and the crowd and decided to help create a casual barrier rather than steer clear. She didn't seem super appreciative, but I was impressed that she toughed it out and didn't seem too phased by it all.

I stayed just long enough to hear what music she played. It was kind of hard to tell who was DJ'ing at any given moment, but after awhile it seemed more like a crowd full of people trying to catch a glimpse rather than a dance club with a great guest DJ.

So I went home, somewhat more appreciative of my anonymity. I'm glad I can go out and have fun without the mob scene her and others have to deal with regularly.

Fast

I fasted this past weekend for the first time ever.

Monica had a book called The Idiot's Guide to Fasting. When I saw the title, I couldn't contain my laughter. Why on earth would I need a whole book to tell me how to not put food in my mouth!

She assured me that there was more to it than I thought. So I read through some of the book and was intrigued by the process and the benefits the book claimed fasting could have.

Previously I always assumed that fasting was mainly done for spiritual, weight loss, or body cleansing reasons.

My "Eureka" moment while reading was the book's explanation of how much energy one's body uses in the digestion of food. Besides the above benefits, while fasting, your body can use the energy not used for digestion and focus it on other aspects of existence, such as mental clarity and healing itself of chronic ailments.

I thought about the Thanksgiving food coma we all know and dread. That is an easy example of how much energy is used up just digesting food. It made sense that there could indeed be real benefits to it. It occurred to me that in over 13,000 days on Earth, my body has never experienced even one day without eating solid food.

So I resolved to try it. Just one or two days to start. And then maybe with some regularity if it worked out.

It wasn't all that easy. I am certainly not accustomed to depriving myself that way. During moments when I had something to focus my attention on like cleaning the house or shopping, it wasn't too bad as long as I kept on drinking water or juice. No big crashes or suffering. It was true that after the first day, food seemed less urgent. I definitely looked forward to my first meal on Sunday, but didn't act like a crazy starving person while eating, and ate very light the rest of the day.

Today, I do seem to have more energy and clarity than usual, especially considering my regular Sunday night activities at The Buccaneer pub.

All in all, I'd say it's worth making an attempt at incorporating some form of this practice into my regular routine, even it's a big less self-deprived. It clearly seems to be a good idea from a self discipline and re-charging standpoint.

Mosh

It's not every day that you get to experience something for the first time.

Saturday night I went to a show at the Elbo Room to see a friend of a friend's band. I didn't know anything about it but heard that "sometimes things can get a bit crazy." I didn't really bother to ponder what that could mean, but went mainly to see my friends.

Once I got there, it didn't take long to surmise that I was attending a punk rock show. Normally when I come to that realization, I leave. The rage and negativity of punk rock has never really appealed to me, not to mention the noise. But this was a friend's band, so I stuck it out. As far as the noise and rage on stage, I wasn't disappointed. Three of the band members shrieked into their microphones just as someone might do if they were dipped into molten lava. No words, just screams. I stood there looking around at people's faces to see who was into it and who might be laughing. Most seemed interested and focused.

After awhile, some audience members started to become animated and physical, and it wasn't long before some people were throwing their bodies into other audience members in an attempt to get things a little rowdier. The crowd didn't seem to mind the bumps and elbows. If someone banged into them, they'd simply push them toward someone else and get back to watching the display.

I was interested neither in being pushed nor in pushing back. In fact, I was a little bit nervous for my own safety, so little by little I inched my way backward, away from the stage. I even considered leaving the area altogether and waiting the show out.

After the band finished and a short intermission passed, the headliner, Flipper, came on. Their music was a bit easier to listen to, and soon the crowd got physical again.

By this time, however, I had the pleasure of a couple more cocktails and was feeling a bit rambunctious myself. For some reason (alcohol), this time, rather than being intimidated by the crowd, it looked a bit like fun. I casually handed Monica my drink and said, "I'm going in."

In front of the stage, there was a seven foot circle of clear floor where bodies bounced back and forth pushing each other around like pinballs. I ran straight in and pushed the first person I saw. The rest was a blur. I threw shoulders into people who promptly pushed me across the room toward someone else, who generally did the same.

Never did I ever feel like anyone was angry or violent about it. I was in Rome acting like a Roman. After a few minutes of that, I emerged from the pit grinning from ear to ear. It truly felt like a life experience that hadn't been checked off the list for far too long.

I can't say that I'll be seeking out punk shows and looking for mosh pits any time soon. But I was super glad I jumped in.

Woo hoo!

Epic

Yesterday was an epic day.

This winter season has been disappointing up until this past two weeks. Although there has been snowfall, the temperatures have been far above normal. I wonder if it's related to the same reasons we had so many hurricanes last year. For whatever reasons, the snow quality has been relatively weak for us snowboarders and skiers.

I have managed to have some very good days this season, but only by watching weather and getting to the snow as soon as it falls. Invariably within a day or two, the weather would warm up to the 40's or even higher and the snow would begin to melt away.

I was beginning to think the whole season would be that way. Then March came and, so far, things have been looking up. The past two weeks have seen four to five feet of new snow and cold weather. Three of those feet fell yesterday and the day before.

We knew the storm was coming and planned a trip to Kirkwood, which requires planning because it is not near our cabin and we had to bring our equipment back home last week in order to make the trip. Over the course of the week, the weather reports showed good potential, but conflicted about exactly when and how much even up to our departure time.

We decided to drive into the beast, not really knowing how bad the weather would be. We got to Jackson at the foothills of the mountain at about 7 am, and it was already snowing heavily in this little town that clearly wasn't used to getting any snow. This would be about a 90 minute drive up the mountain with clear roads, but these roads weren't clear. As we took the final turn out of Jackson to head up the highway, a CHP officer was only 3 cars ahead of us. He turned on his roof lights and slowed down. I thought to myself, "Oh no, please don't." But he did. Just then he pulled his car across the lanes, blocking the traffic. He got out and shook his head at us and pointed us to turn around. I asked if he was closing the highway and his words were, "we're losing too many cars up there." Wow.

So uncertain whether he had just saved our skins or ruined our day, we pulled out the map. The only other way to Kirkwood was to get to Highway 50 (somehow) and go through South Lake Tahoe, a several hour detour. It was a crushing blow.

Determined, we decided to take Highway 49, an unfamiliar road, to try and make the detour. Mind you, the road was essentially empty and covered in snow. Unfortunately, the road also made many turns and changed street names along the way. Even more unfortunately, the signs were often illegible because of the snow cover.

After driving through a most beautiful winter scene for maybe an hour, it became clear that a) we were supposed to have met our other highway by that distance and b) the road we were on didn't have any tire tracks on it besides ours. We flagged down a passer by (the opposite direction did have some tracks) and I asked him how to get to Highway 50. He said, "You should take Highway 49". Which gave way to my very own favorite quote of the day. "This isn't Highway 49?".

Luckily we weren't too far off course and did manage to get to Highway 50 which Caltrans' hotline was reporting as "escorted by Highway Patrol only." Things seemed bleak, but we thought as long as we were there, we should keep trying.

We met Highway 50 in Placerville. In the first two miles, we saw four cars that had bit the dust off the side of the Highway, some of them flipped over. I noted importantly, that many were even four wheel drive vehicles, like mine.

We inched our way up the mountain, often as slow as 10 miles per hour.

As we made our way to the top, we considered stopping at the Sierra ski resort since we knew we'd get more time on the mountain that way. But the prospect of the much superior terrain at Kirkwood kept us moving forward even not knowing the further delays we might find. We were enduring this all to have the epic day. Not the consolation day.

We made it to Kirkwood around noon and the weather settled down a bit.

We got our epic day in the three new feet of snow; the day those safe at sea level could only dream of.

After getting to the summit and bombing down some of the most amazing terrain ever, we really felt like we had given mother nature a run for her money.

Despite the delays and challenges, we felt like we had succeeded in our mission.

Epic.

Art

Holy crap. Yesterday evening was so jam packed with art I can hardly believe it.

After work was the monthly First Thursday art event in the city where many galleries are open to the public after hours to come see their exhibits for free, without appointment. And the public generally does - in droves. It's quite a scene. Lots of young artistic types, mixed with schmoozy money types go to pretend they know what they're looking at and run into people they know or pick up on someone new. Always a good investment in claustrophobia.

After that, we had some tickets to see Loop!Station at The Independent. The venue regularly has one or more opening acts of varying interestingness, and the headliner rarely comes on before 10. Very often I skip the opener and save my legs for the main event. But sometimes the openers are worth seeing.

Monica said she wanted to check out the first opener, Tim Bluhm, who sang with a group she used to like called the Mother Hips... so we got there early. They had set up jazz club-type tables on the floor that night, and we got one right up front.

Tim Bluhm came out and sat down in a chair with his guitar and set down an extremely engaging set of melodic, patient, deliberate songs that made a new fan out of me instantly. It was one of those rare times when it doesn't feel like a performance, but like sharing. He seemed very appreciative to be there playing songs for us. It made me curious about his past since he seemed like a person who had recently gained some kind of profound perspective. Or maybe he's just like that.

After Tim, some avant guarde film was shown with various random artsy images which I thought was somehow linked to the music set the guest DJ was playing between sets. But then the next band, Broun Fillinis, came out and stood on stage in front of the projection screen. We thought maybe they were annoyed that the film was still playing while they were on stage, but then they started their set, and it became clear that film was part of the show.

These guys' music was the exact opposite of Tim Bluhm. The patient melodies gave way to a new groove. One with greater tempo, and determined ambition in its complexity. The sax player mainly played straight ahead bop freak-out solos while the bass and drummer played hard-driving funk-rock grooves behind him. The interesting thing was that the songs seemed to boil down to a surf rock genre in my mind, which was reinforced by the lighting and projected art film going on during the show. All three musicians were impressively outfitted with chops and onstage effects equipment. I enjoyed the vibe they generated.

By the time Loop!Station came on, it was about midnight and we were pretty tired, but they were worth the wait. I had seen the singer, Robin Coomer, twice before in other groups, and she told me about Loop!Station after one of those performances while I was, no doubt, gushing to her about her singing. This group is difficult to describe. It's one of those things you definitely have to witness in person. But basically, it's her and a great cellist named Sam Bass who have written songs specifically to have their parts digitally sampled while performed live on stage and then played back as background parts later during the same song. So the cello will, at times, have several parts playing at once, maybe some plucked, some bowed, some with distortion effects, etc. The singer will also sample parts and then sing along with them in beautiful, haunting harmony. Combine all of this with the fact they are both easy on the eyes, she has a great stage presence, a great atmosphere and audience, and the film guys from the other group continuing their spooky lighting and images... and it made for a spectacular evening of art.

I really felt that these two were really pushing the boundaries of music right before our eyes. I wondered if we would see more music like this in the future... if all great musicians in the future will be expected to master technology this way in order to gain respect.

Just another day when I felt so happy to be where I was, when I was there.

Scales

With my new found mistrust for big business, and my ever present thirst for a new computer project to work on, I have been working on a new idea.

I am concerned that it may be too ambitious, but it also feels like something that should exist. Whenever I feel that way, normally I mull it over so long, that I watch someone else launch it and get famous.. but at least I am satisfied that I thought of it first :)

The idea was born from the website I reported awhile back that gives out free research information on personal care products like toothpaste and deodorant. It tells you every questionable ingredient and what it might do to you. Unfortunately, the website doesn't make it super easy to get to the information, and doesn't provide any easy way to save a personal list of products to refer back to later.

Also, my reading lately has touched on many other areas where the products we buy may be causing various types of strife in the world (environmental, working conditions, etc).

I thought, wouldn't it be so useful if people could set their own preferences for what types of variables were of relative importance to them (e.g. price, safety, environmental impact), and then could rate all of the products in a given category based on their own values. Wow. That could have such an impact.

One thing I have come to believe is that big companies are only beholden to one boss - their customers. It is mainly customers and their demands that cause business to change their behavior. Government regulation and the outcries of activists seem to have had little impact due to the greater impact of political lobbying and giant marketing budgets.

As it is now, customers in a super market have only price and brand awareness to compare products on the shelf. What if they had 5 other ratings marked on the shelves? What if those ratings were automatically averaged out to fit the values of the customer?

I think that both the information and the technology exist to make this possible, and it's only the will to build it and the will to use it that remain to be seen.

Modest

It seems like many of the books I have been reading lately have dedicated substantial discussion to the global trend of corporations gaining power and influence in politics and culture. As someone who has always paid attention to business, I really thought I was more in tune with how it fits into our society. I have often found myself defending business interests in conversations with those whose politics lays to the left of my own. Now, I increasingly see corporations, especially large public corporations, as a societal disease. Now, I see that the rights corporations have gained for themselves, and the imbalance of resources they posess, give them the power to shape law and public opinion according to their own profit motives. I don't entirely fault the people who run them and work in them since they are more or less interchangable parts within the larger machine. It is the non-human paper entity itself that has a hunger for profit, and a momentum difficult to slow down as things stand in the world today. Kind of like the way a computer virus spreads itself; it's not personal, it's just programming.

My own views toward my place in the business world have shifted little by little over time. At first, I was somewhat ambitious. In my work, I took business needs to heart and gave everything I could muster to The Company. I was on call 24x7. I didn't take vacation. I let business problems become my problems. Then Shelly, a good friend, and professional mentor, took his own life in response to business problems he had, himself, taken to heart too closely. After that, I was able to see business and work for what it is - something much less important than the people who work in it.

This month, I was offered a promotion - an opportunity to take on more responsibility, have more control, travel frequently around the US, and probably make substantially more money. It was the natural path for someone doing well in a big company. Not only that, it's the path we are programmed to go after. How could you ever turn down the opportunity to "grow" professionally?

Well I turned it down. I didn't want to travel for work. I like it here at home. I didn't want more responsibility. I have enough. Who doesn't want more money? But I really have enough of that too. All I was able to see ahead was a degraded quality of life. And, as pessimistic as that sounds, I felt I made the right choice. And I was so pleased this week when I came across this passage by Paul Hawken in the The Ecology of Commerce.

"I suspect many people who get involved with business have a modest self that resists being adrenalized and overworked by incessant growth. In most cases, we see this subdued side of ourselves as something to overcome, a limit, a reluctant and unassuming persona that needs motivation tapes and seminars to mold it into the obsessive, success-driven, capable person the late-night cable programs assure us is hiding within."

I'm happy to be moving toward my modest self rather than away from him.

Prices

I have always been somewhat risk averse. I'm not totally sure where it came from. I generally don't enjoy gambling, I have never bunjee jumped, and I always park legally (no tickets). This tendency is exaggerated when it comes to any kind of financial investing. I suppose I figure that, for all of the hours I spend in a dreary cubicle earning the almighty dollar, I would hate to have any of it spent for naught.

Investing in real estate in the Bay Area has been especially traumatic for me. The dollar amounts of any and every property here are staggering (to me anyway). I understand that I live in a fantasy destination where many people dream of having a home. This is bound to make property scarce and pricey. However, I also have a decent understanding about human nature, interest rates, and such, and sometimes have a hard time balancing my skeptical nature with the real world. I don't want to worry myself out of good investments.

Then I came upon this study today which fans the flames of all my investment worries. According to this study, real estate is overvalued in the Bay Area by somewhere in the neighborhood of 40%. I can't say that I am surprised by this. But I also wonder, for all the cheery, bullish articles, why am I more likely to trust this one?

Electric

My friend Sean sent this cute story in an email. I'd like to find out more about the author, Richard Brautigan.

---

Rural Electrification Project
by Richard Brautigan

I was trying to describe you to someone a few days ago. You don't look like any girl I've ever seen before.

I couldn't say "Well she looks just like Jane Fonda, except that she's got red hair, and her mouth is different and of course, she's not a movie star..."

I couldn't say that because you dont look like Jane Fonda at all.

I finally ended up describing you as a movie I saw when I was a child in Tacoma Washington. I guess I saw it in 1941 or 42, somewhere in there. I think I was seven, or eight, or six.

It was a movie about rural electrification, a perfect 1930's New Deal morality kind of movie to show kids. The movie was about farmers living in the country without electricity. They had to use lanterns to see by at night, for sewing and reading, and they didn't have any appliances like toasters or washing machines, and they couldn't listen to the radio. They built a dam with big electric generators and they put poles across the countryside and strung wire over fields and pastures.

There was an incredible heroic dimension that came from the simple putting up of poles for the wires to travel along. They looked ancient and modern at the same time.

Then the movie showed electricity like a young Greek god, coming to the farmer to take away forever the dark ways of his life. Suddenly, religiously, with the throwing of a switch, the farmer had electric lights to see by when he milked his cows in the early black winter mornings. The farmer's family got to listen to the radio and have a toaster and lots of bright lights to sew dresses and read the newspaper by.

It was really a fantastic movie and excited me like listening to the Star Spangled Banner, or seeing photographs of President Roosevelt, or hearing him on the radio "... the President of the United States... "

I wanted electricity to go everywhere in the world. I wanted all the farmers in the world to be able to listen to President Roosevelt on the radio....

And that's how you look to me.

Remix

I managed to get a copy of some music production software over the course of the past couple of weeks. After asking my favorite DJ (Shissla) what he uses for his remixes, and consulting with my friend Clay, I settled on two packages made by Propellerhead software, Reason and Recycle.

Reason is essentially a fancy sequencer with a nice set of sound processing tools (delays, reverbs, and other effects), synthesizer functionality, drum machine, etc. I bought a midi keyboard to use to build bass lines and maybe trigger drum and other sample sounds, but I wont' likely be playing any real music on it. The software will help to piece together various pieces into a full song track that I and interested others can play, burn to cd, etc.

Recycle is a super cool piece of software that helps you to take samples of existing music and tweak it to fit the tempo and pitch you want so that it can be combined with other clips of music and still sound good. I presume this is the type of software people use to create mashups, combinations of one or more songs to make a completely new song. This is my goal.

Since my composition skills are somewhere in the neighborhood of none, my plan is to find snips and clips of other music I like, build grooves out of them, and see what I come up with. I've recently found great moments in songs by Brooklyn Funk Essentials and Lady Sovereign, a new British dancehall rapper, that I'm dying to pick apart.

My main obstacle to this at the moment is free time. I think about working on this stuff all the time, but I can't do it while I'm working, out in the city, driving, snowboarding, etc. So I have to grab those moments when I can.

Wish me luck.

Willie

I went to see Willie Nelson at the Fillmore last night. When I saw the tickets for sale, it seemed like a romantic idea to see such an American icon at an American landmark like the Fillmore. It's a great venue to see a great, intimate show. I was excited to see the rugged, wrinkled, grey haired, smooth, sexy man.. the one that had loved all those girls before. I was excited for his timeless songs, his charismatic stage presence honed over decades.

Unfortunately, reality set in once we got there. As it turns out, he is a geriatric little grandpa with a geriatric little grandpa band. He's a little bit hunched.. his black jeans are pulled way up around his tucked in tee shirt. It took him about 5 minutes to get on stage once he was announced.

As he started, he seemed to be sort of blurting weak breaths of old lyrics into the mic. His bandmates were mostly older guys too... some looking kind of like confused deer in the headlights. Certainly not the lively, hells angels ho down I was expecting.

Monica and I kept looking at each other with a shared recognition of the bait and switch that we had fallen for... but he was cute and still iconic so we did our best to enjoy the show. I even got a plastic cup of whiskey to try and get into the spirit of things.

Once he got warmed up, the songs flowed a little better and the guy does still have some bounce in him and he had no shortage of loyal excited fans. But ultimately, we got bored and left pretty early.

Sorry Willie. We tried.

Cabin

The Cabin

Kelly, Monica and I opened up our new ski cabin for this year in Truckee this weekend. The place is a little small considering we have 10 potential roommates on any given weekend. But it's cozy and warm, and close to plenty of snow and other interestingness. I look forward to getting snowed in there at least once this year.

Food

I finally finished reading Fast Food Nation.

I wrote previously that the book didn't contain many real surprises for me. I'd say that is still the case. The book has been accused of being merely anecdotal and spun heavily against the food industry, corporations in general, and Republicans. I came out with the same taste in my mouth. Although the book is painstakingly researched with 60 pages of bibliographical references, it does seem to me that the facts were carefully chosen to spin those forces in a negative light.

That said, the research and anecdotes seem undeniable, and I do feel affected by the content. The gory realities of feed lots and slaughterhouses; The questionable, albeit legal, manner in which livestock are fed and maintained; The effect of fierce price competition on all stakeholders including employees, franchisees, and consumers. It all definitely adds up to a bit of a sick feeling about the dark side of capitalism, democracy, and human behavior.

These are the points that stuck with me most:

- Livestock should not be fed the remains of other animals. It is a common practice in the US. It is not a natural feed and it opens the door for foodborne illness.
- The price of meat is determined largely by line speeds and safety practices at meat packing companies. Fast food companies often get better,safer meat than stores, because their brands depend on it. I may start buying higher priced meat as a result.
- More food than you think is flavored with chemicals that are not disclosed to you.
- Obesity costs far more to the economy than fast food companies earn.
- Advertising to children is powerful and probably should not be legal. It is already illegal in some countries.
- The US government doesn't have much power or inclination to protect the public from poor quality food. The large food chains are actually much more effective at creating positive change in the industry. And they answer mainly to their customers.

I have considered the possibility of becoming a vegetarian after reading the book. It probably will not happen, and it may not even be a good idea for me. But it's the first time the thought has ever crossed my mind. I fully expect, however, to eat better and think more about what I am eating all the time. Many people may believe that overthinking every aspect of life this way is a downer. I now see that attitude as a form of denial.

Open

I made my first contribution to the open source community today. I noticed a grammatical error on the George Pataki page of the Wikipedia. I knew that common folks were allowed to make changes to any page on the website and so I clicked edit, made my update, and bang, my change was made public without any sort of workflow approval process. Interesting.

I've also, coincidentally, just begun looking at SourceForge to see if there are any open source projects on which I might be interested in collaborating. It seems like a good way to use and improve my skills, and a good way to connect with the software developer community at large.

We'll see what I find.

Smart

I sometimes get the feeling, when pondering Google's inner workings, that the people there are so smart, their service sometimes seems like magic to us peasants.

They clearly seem to have the notion of "simple yet functional" down to a science. And functional is a tremendous understatement. They are the Ghooda.

I did some upgrades to my lyrics website last week, including 10,000 new song titles. Also, since my visitor volume has been up (about 150,000 page views in November), I decided to re-evaluate my advertising.

I looked at Google's AdSense optimization tips which suggested that my ad clickthrough rate might go up if I put my Google text ads across the top of my content (aka Leaderboard ad) rather than down the right side (aka Skyscraper ad). I figure they must have done plenty of research, so why not take their advice.

After a week using the new configuration, I noticed an unexpected trend. My clickthrough rate actually went down a tiny bit, but my earnings per impression went up by about 50%. What this means is that fewer people actually click through the ad links on the website. But the ads they click on tend to have a higher pay rate.

My conclusion from this is, although it is a bit early to conclude anything, is that Google actually rewards me for taking their placement advice by sending me more lucrative ad links. More likely is that they are ensuring they get the best possible clickthrough rates (due to placement) on the highest paying ad inventory, thus making more money for themselves.

Google tends to be very mysterious about their logic and policies on these matters, but at every turn, they always seem to be doing the smartest possible thing.

My advice: Always do what Google tells you to do.

Mosquito

Apparently someone has finally figured out a way to keep loitering teenagers away using a high frequency sound device, called The Mosquito, that only young people can hear. Genius.

Green

One cannot help becoming more environmentally conscious living in this city.

A few weeks ago, I went to The Green Festival, essentially a trade show for environmentally friendly products and services. I definitely got the impression that these were mainly entrepreneurs, certainly with a profit motive, that targeted well-meaning left-leaning individuals as their primary market.

As I see it, if you're going to be in business for profit, there is certainly nothing wrong with keeping environmental preservation as a top priority. However, it seemed to me a bit like they were using people's tendency to support this cause as a way of digging deeper into their pockets. I was somewhat disturbed by that. Sigh. Always a skeptic.

I did learn one thing there that I found interesting and valuable.

Shannon and Michael, who are buying a boat soon, wanted to know how they might use biodiesel fuel in their boat. I had heard that these fuels burn cleaner than fossil fuels and are mainly vegetable based. So I set off to the festival with the mission of finding out.

I have seen various diesel cars on the road, mostly old Mercedes, with biodiesel stickers on them and have always been a little curious. I imagined some process of taking your car down to the local university to have some hippy grad students fit your engine with some kind of vegimatic machine like the DeLorean in Back to the Future. A fun science project to impress all the dreadlocked girls around campus.

As it turns out, there are no modifications required to burn biodiesel fuel. All you need is a diesel engine in your car, and you can pour the fuel right in to your tank with any mixture of fossil fuel you choose. That's it.

Now biodiesel gas is a bit more expensive than regular gas, currently about $3.65 per gallon at the local biodiesel co-op. But compared with the new hybrid cars that come at a several thousand dollar premium over standard engines, this type of fuel is a great way for people to do what they can for a cleaner, less oil-dependent environment, one dollar at a time.

I feel a bit sad that I found this out after I leased my new Jeep Liberty, which now comes with a diesel option. Oh well. The next car.

Convergence

I checked out a cool website today that took a relatively small amount of effort but delivers a substantial value. Housingmaps.com appears to be a mere hobby project for a clever programmer.

It combines Craigslist apartment listings with Google maps to give a visual representation of apartments for rent in San Francisco and other cities.

Small wonders.

Threads

I was struck yesterday by a contrast.

This week I got to take a tour of the new St. Regis Hotel, specifically the luxury homes located high atop the hotel high rise. I have to say that, for all the money rich folks must spend to live there, it didn't seem much more livable than any other homes I have been in. The views were certainly impressive, although I did feel a little woozy way up there.

One thing that impressed me was the doormen's uniforms. Each door to the hotel was manned by a large, hyper-polite man wearing a beautiful full length coat. They seemed to be made of some soft luxurious fiber. I wondered how much the hotel paid for each coat.

The very next day, I was walking in the financial district among many nicely dressed individuals when I saw a group of paramedics. They were also in their uniforms, only theirs were dark blue cotton, and they were very worn and unimpressive.

I considered the relative importance of each of those men's jobs. One opens doors, the other saves lives.

I wondered if there was any significance to this.. if it makes any statement about our world. Clearly the five star hotel is selling a product that cannot be tattered, while paramedics are out on the asphalt every day.

But somehow it still struck me.