I like this shot despite the various crooked lines.

My brother is organizing what will hopefully become a regular web-centric Python meeting. The first meeting is planned for 18:00 Tue 23 Jun 2009 at the SF Public Library. I think a couple of speakers are lined up already, although I don’t have details on the talks. I’ll be there, and if you’re a Python developer with web interests, or a web developer into or curious about Python, you should attend too!

On Saturday Seth and his mother and I did some sightseeing. We’ve been having absolutely gorgeous weather recently, and we started off at Lafayette Park.
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This isn’t about something that happened to me, just something I happened to witness. It centered on a BMW driver, but contrary to stereotype, he wasn’t at fault in any of it. It wasn’t too serious, either, but struck me as quite ridiculous.
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Even though I don’t live in Manhattan, I’m still disturbed by this graph:

I love San Francisco and have no desire to leave; moreover, if I did leave, New York City would be one of the places I’d consider going to! I’ve been a city person my entire life, and somehow even the difference betwewen Berkeley and San Francisco is something I feel on an emotional level. Worse, I’m picky about cities, and moving to Houston isn’t looking too likely right now.

I’d love to see Dublin (probably quite high) and Berlin (possibly a lot lower) on this graph, but I’m not sure where I could find that data.

The graph is from page 12 of “Reviving the City of Aspiration”, a report by Center for an Urban Future, and I found it via this post on the Queens Crap blog.

I’m rather fond of this photo I took earlier tonight. But I’ll stay silent for the moment on where I took it.
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I voted today, although I have to admit that I did it without much enthusiasm. The major races don’t interest me that much, because it seems such a foregone conclusion that one of the front-runners will win, and I don’t support any of the front-runners. Indeed, Hillary Clinton took California, despite what seemed like a late push for Obama. Somehow I don’t see her (or Obama) representing my views too well…
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No, not that, but this
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I was on the top floor of the Chevron Building at 575 Market today, and took some photos.
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This is one of the most insane local government ideas I’ve ever seen: San Francisco’s Planning Commissioners are considering ordering North Beach pizzerias to close at 02:00—to combat drunkenness.
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This is what my neighborhood looked like last Tuesday morning:
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San Francisco held city elections on Tuesday. The important issues were the competing Propositions A and H, concerning public transport and parking. There was also a mayoral election, although its result was a foregone conclusion.
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The Red Door closed last weekend. I was there for the (sniff!) last time on Saturday, and had typically excellent food. Including the legendary French Toast, which was fantastic. But that’s it, no more Red Door.
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I came out of it almost without injury and am fine, but yesterday I had my first collision with a car while riding my bike in San Francisco—a span of more than seven years of near-daily cycling.
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This is all anecdotal, and hence statistically useless, but I’ve noticed far more bad driving correlated with cellphone use recently. Some of it was in Dublin, where I think cellphone use is still higher per capita, but I’ve seen a lot of it around San Francisco also. I think every case of notably bad driving that I’ve encountered in the last month turned out to involve a driver using a cellphone.
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I went by Modern Thai yesterday, and it turns out that they’re not closing after all.
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My favorite local place to eat dinner, Modern Thai, has apparently closed. I say “apparently” because there’s renovation work going on in it, so there’s a small chance it’ll return… but there are no signs on the door to explain anything to patrons, which makes me suspect that it’s gone for good.
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San Francisco Airport recently added a “Cell phone waiting lot”, which provides an alternative to endlessly circling the arrivals area. It’s not that easy to find, and the signs for it aren’t that prominent. To find it, you follow the signs for “Long-Term Parking” until you see a sign that has a cell phone on it.
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My favorite local place to eat, the Red Door Café, is closing. I’m pretty sad about this, since the food there is just so good.
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I’ve been thinking more about biking recently, perhaps as a result of going mountain biking for the first time, perhaps because of some of the anti-cyclist vitriol I’ve seen online. I’ve never been particularly political about my cycling, it’s just an efficient, non-polluting, mostly-enjoyable, convenient and cheap way to get from A to B. Another reason I haven’t been political about it is because I haven’t had particularly bad experiences, and my employers have always been bike-friendly.
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Road signs. This is something that irritates me as a pedestrian, and a cyclist, and a driver. But it’s worst when driving. By “road signs” here I specifically mean the signs that let you know what the name of a street is. It’s truly amazing how much better the San Francisco infrastructure is for that than the Irish equivalent.
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While walking around San Francisco this evening, I considered how the city’s topography gives it a distinct identity—specifically, how that might influence its assimilation (or lack thereof) into a profoundly brand-driven modern capitalist homogeneity.
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I’m a big fan of Google Maps, but haven’t played around with it too much until recently. As far as I know it’s still prohibitively difficult to use waypoints for driving directions, but the the “My Maps” function lets you draw lines and set “placemarks”, which are useful for illustrative purposes. So I decided to map out the driving I did last night.
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