fnt (fascinating new thing)

Courtesy of Dan, I now have an Atom feed!

[Sat Mar 29 13:15:32 2008] p

A Tale of Two Sisters (Resorts)

"Families who drive a hybrid vehicle to Sierra Resort will be able to park in Preferred Parking for free!" (This offer is valid every day of this season. Preferred Parking is normally $15.)

"Guests driving hybrids get to park in preferred parking for FREE on Earth Day at Northstar Resort." (This offer is for one day, April 20. Preferred parking is normally $20 midweek, $30 weekends/holidays.)

[Fri Mar 28 06:13:24 2008] p

Outside Scams
As an attendee of Bumbershoot up in Seattle for several years, you'd think that I'd be excited about a local (well, San Francisco) music and arts festival that approximates the same kind of eclectic mix of acts. Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival does sound good on the surface. Headliners are Radiohead, Tom Petty, and Jack Johnson. Beck, Wilco, and Ben Harper are also slated to appear. For me, I'd love to see lesser-known acts like Lyrics Born, Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings (who blew the roof off at Bumbershoot), Rodrigo y Gabriela (also huge at Bumbershoot), Nelly McKay, Drive-By Truckers, and Grace Potter & the Nocturnals.

But aside from the rather pricey $225.50 3-Day Ticket price (with single day tickets *possibly* be released at a later date), there are some other problems:

No pricing for children older than 2. [Really -- you expect me to pay $225.50 for my 4-year old son?]
No ins and outs [Really -- we can't leave to eat or drink at any of the local restaurants, bars or coffeeshops that border the park? Even if we lugged in lunch in our soft-sided cooler and/or regular-sized backpack, we end up paying $7 for a hot dog and $3 for a bottled water for dinner. That's going to make the local neighborhoods really happy, especially with all the havoc that these crowds will cause tromping in and out of the show. Oh, and with this policy they'll all be entering and existing *at the same time*. Brilliant. I'll bet the entry/exit lines are really going to suck!]
No strollers [Wow, you must really hate people with children.]
No "pro" cameras [Admittedly, this is a bone-headed policy that nearly every festival has. However not every festival enforces it. Still, lots of amateurs have SLRs, and it's going to suck if they can't bring their gear in. Especially if they took your advice and took public tranportation. Also, it would suck to have your equipment stolen from your car.]
[References: Info Guide, Tickets]
Compare this to Bumbershoot ($95 for 3-days, $35 single day tickets):

Free for kids under 5. Kids 6-10 = $10 (maybe bumped to $15 this year)
Come and go as you please. Enjoy a nap at your nearby hotel (oh yeah, good luck out-of-towners coming to SF) in between the acts you want to see. Patronize a local restaurant, bar or coffee shop. Explore the neighborhoods around the Seattle Center.

Strollers are fine. (Last year there was a policy against them in the Memorial Stadium, but security let it slide, and there's no mention of it for this year.)
Yeah, same idiotic policy as every other festival, but at Bumbershoot there were tons of people with SLRs and camera bags w/o press credentials. They check bags at the main entrances, but cameras w/ detachable lenses weren't a problem except in the Memorial Stadium where the "big name" acts played. [Fergie didn't want any more high-resolution photos of her peeing on herself to get out.]

So... Bumbershoot = $95 x 2 + $0 for 2 kids under 5 = $190.
Outside Lands = $225.50 x 3 = $676.50.

Ok, so with flight and hotel, Seattle costs more, but you get to take a trip to Seattle, and walk to the Seattle Center. For Outside Lands we'd have to drive, deal with parking, or spend 1.5 hours each way taking CalTrain->MUNI. Ugh. And remember, no way to leave.

Discuss here

[Fri Mar 28 05:05:45 2008] p

Odd symbols I've seen around

What does this bathroom symbol mean? Please don't throw your drumsticks and Wii Controller into the trash? Sorry the photo is so lousy. I'll have to go back to Antojitos Salvadoreños with a better camera next time.

Lastly -- this symbol was printed on a bag that I believe covered a huge Dell flat-screen display that all the fancy-pants engineers at my company who used to work at Apple are demanding and getting.

I just think it's a little too cute.

[Tue Dec 4 03:49:04 2007] p

Tahoe Lift Ticket Update for 07-08 - an editorial by Darryl Lee
Just finished updating the prices for lift tickets in Tahoe for 2007-08. Congrats on finding this hidden link. Consider it an easter egg. Also, consider all opinions here mine, and not anyone else's.

It's bad news (but not all that surprising considering the low snow last season) for people that like to buy single tickets (because they don't like to commit to one resort with a season pass, or because they like variety).

Every resort raised their prices anywhere from $1 to $12. Although Alpine bumped $12/$6 to $58/$63 (normal/holiday), it's still a great value, relative to other resorts. It's just that back in 2003, they tried an experiment called "Vertical Revolution", rolling *back* prices from $56 to $39/$49. It seemed insane at the time, but now nearly every resort has dual pricing, where you get gouged if you ski during "peak periods" (generally between Christmas and New Years, MLK's Birthday, and Presidents Day). At any rate, their new management seems to be done with that silliness, and has raised to rates to be on par with other resorts of Alpine's stature. Heck, non-peak, Alpine is still $10 cheaper than kirkwood, $15 cheaper than Squaw, and $16 cheaper than Northstar.

In other news, Sugar Bowl non-peak is up $10, and yes, you did read that right, non-peak lift tickets at Northstar are now more expensive than Squaw. Think about that.

Let's see, what else. Oh... new management at Homewood (which is the same folks that now own Alpine) bumped that resort's rates up $8-12 bucks, depending on what day of the week you're riding and whether it's a holiday. I guess they've gotta pay for that new village somehow.

All in all it's a tough time to not be able to commit to a season pass -- $369 for Heavenly? Man, that's cheap, especially since it's so hard to figure out what Heavenly's daily lift ticket price is going to be on a given day (no really, go to their website and see if you can figure it out.)

But man, what a bummer. I've always felt that Tahoe's strength is its variety. Want hairy steeps and cliffs -- go rock out at Squallywood. Want to cruise "black diamonds" that make you feel like a hero? Hit the backside at Northstar. Want some sick trees after a storm? I hear the place to be is Homewood. And if it really dumped cold, a local at Diamond Peak told me that Solitude Canyon was the place to be. Natural halfpipes and super-fun gullies? Kirkwood. Oh, and you want some chutes? Have fun off of Lincoln at Sugar Bowl. Cheap steep? Alpine. And the list goes on. Heck, my 3-year-old son *looooved* the Planet Kids at Soda Springs. So yeah, hit that too. Donner Ski Ranch -- first (?) to allow snowboarding, and you can tell why, they're so laid-back. Get your jib on at Boreal if you must. Feel like you're going to ride into the lake at Homewood. Bomb Preacher's at Sierra if you dare, or cut into the trees. Try parking and staying on the Nevada side at Heavenly, just to see what it's like to not traverse. Ski and ride it all. Not just at one resort, because man, there are 15 resorts in Tahoe and why are you stuck "trying to get your money's worth" at just one?

Oh yeah, because daily lift tickets cost upwards of $50-60. So, like when I first started riding 10 years ago, let's find some ways to pay less and slide more.

[Sat Oct 13 14:52:03 2007] p

Wow, what a wildly inappropriate headline on the KCBS website:
CHP Still Piecing Together I-880 Killing
http://www.kcbs.com/CHP-Still-Piecing-Together-I-880-Killing/1079470
They've since changed to the headline to: CHP Still Investigating I-880 Killing but the link above still works. Unfortunately the link works with anything in the headline part of the URL, so you may think I'm making this up, and yeah, I should've taken a screenshot to prove it. Ah well. Trust me. It was there, and it was awful.

Ah, thank you Google Cache.

[Thu Sep 27 02:52:12 2007] p

Odd
Odd ads in the recent Nob Hill circular:

Oh no, Red!

Ready To Bake or Chub?

[Thu Sep 20 02:11:27 2007] p

Yeah, 0.00009%!

[Wed Sep 19 01:28:47 2007] p

Scrabble Baby Huh? What's up with this odd choice of clip art for the Scrabble dictionary lookup page?

[Thu Sep 13 16:52:33 2007] p
Honking Big Photo Sharing Sites Comparison
I've been shooting digital photographs for over 10 years now and have tried a ton of different photo sharing sites in that time. Have seen many of the "free" sites go under, consolidate, or get bought out.

Recently I was helping to evaluate sharing sites for our son's pre-school. They have some obvious concerns about privacy and security, but there's plenty of other requirements that most people would be interested in as well.

What started as an e-mail reply turned into this full-blown matrix: Honking Big Photo Sharing Sites Comparison. If you have any corrections or clarifications, or if you wanted to fill in some of the many blanks, just mail me.

Hrm, I realize I forgot to tell you I've been a relatively happy SmugMug user for the past three years. I say relatively because their support of video is stuck in the early 90s. MPEG-1 *only*, for uploads and viewing. Otherwise, they have pretty much any feature you could possibly need for sharing/selling/watermarking/viewing/tweaking your photos. Unfortunately with all these features comes a clunky web interface that's sometimes hard to navigate. They're working on this.

Because I've been shooting so many video clips (AVI from Canon cameras), I've really been using Phanfare more lately. Also, their desktop uploader for Mac/Windows is really excellent for fast culling/sorting/basic editing/captioning of photos, with the uploading happening in the background as you do all of that work. It's a really really nice workflow for amateur shooters.

Also, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that this table might prove valuable to any of the recent Yahoo Photos Refugees.

[Tue Aug 28 17:16:17 2007] p
Consolation Prize
Hey, thanks for all your votes. We didn't win the grand prize, or even one of the 3 first prizes. But we *did* get chosen as one of five Editor's Choices, which got us two free single-day tickets, which we'll probably be flipping at the gate, since we've already purchased 3-day tickets.

*[It's a Semisonic song, ya know? It's not like my life is fascinating. i just had to put something up there.]
>:P
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Yeah, sorry, this is it. i know, i know, all that hype for this?
Well, i still have the geek page, but i won't be updating it. Sorry.
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Oh yeah, your feedback, as always, is welcome.