Photo
11 April 2012
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A big garlicky bowl of duck tongues.  (At dinner tonight in Beijing.) The texture is a bit odd in the mouth. (Bite a piece of Silly Putty to get an idea of the experience.) They yield to the tooth at first and then pop into two equal halves. Then there’s the little bone/cartilage thing you pick out of your mouth with the chopsticks and lay to the side of your plate. Every day in China is a culinary adventure.

A big garlicky bowl of duck tongues.  (At dinner tonight in Beijing.)


The texture is a bit odd in the mouth. (Bite a piece of Silly Putty to get an idea of the experience.) They yield to the tooth at first and then pop into two equal halves. Then there’s the little bone/cartilage thing you pick out of your mouth with the chopsticks and lay to the side of your plate.


Every day in China is a culinary adventure.

Photo
09 April 2012
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“4. Choose way and flee for your life decidedly.” Advice with a timeless quality and everyday applications. (Fire hood with smoke filter in my Beijing hotel room.)

“4. Choose way and flee for your life decidedly.”

Advice with a timeless quality and everyday applications. (Fire hood with smoke filter in my Beijing hotel room.)

Link
05 March 2012
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Bullets over Babylon

Oh, this article in the New York Times is an endless gift.

There’s a shooting range in Las Vegas featuring exotic machine guns for rent by the hour, with exotic hostesses who must qualify for the job by being both ex-military and former go-go dancers. There is conversation that is lifted straight out of Beavis and Butthead (“I shoot a lot at home,” he said. “But this is something I’ll never get a chance to do anywhere else: full auto.” “Yeah,” said Brian, a limousine driver in Las Vegas. “That is pretty great — full auto.”)

There is a patron ogling the Uzi-toting ex-stripper/ex-commandos in skintight black “uniforms” at the end of the article whose name you’ll just have to read for yourself. And the general manager of this improbably actual enterprise? Genghis Cohen. Genghis Cohen.

Dear God, please let this be real and not just a joke hacked into the New York Times website by a roomful of comedy writers. Amen.

Notes
21 February 2012
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Icky Consultant-Speak Of The Day - February 2012

The first words out of his mouth at today’s meeting:

“When we hiatused the project three weeks ago, there was some decisioning around next steps.”

Hiatused? Decisioning?

I’m not sure why speaking clearly is so difficult for consultants. I believe they must be bred for the unfortunate trait.

Notes
19 January 2012
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Icky Consultant-Speak Of The Day - Day Two

“Think about how you are going to use this and architect a human interface solution that doesn’t leave you clouded with data that is contextually irrelevant.”

This guy’s mouth is where clarity and meaning go to die.

Notes
18 January 2012
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Icky Consultant-Speak Of The Day

During a meeting today, a consultant we’ve hired actually said, “Without jumping into solutioning, here are the things you need to think about…”

“Solutioning”?  I’m losing my patience.  I’d pay the guy his exorbitant daily rate just to STFU.

Link
12 December 2011
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SLAC-ers

On 12 December 1991, exactly 20 years ago today, the first US website went up. It was a simple site built by the team at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center just up the road from my office that showed a brief on what SLAC was, a list of contacts, and a database search tool.

Look at how far we’ve come.

Photo
11 December 2011
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Yeah, I got your boombox right here, pal. (Yes, that’s an iPhone sitting way up there on the tippy top.) Weighing in at 700 pounds and measuring 8 feet wide and 4 feet tall, the iNuke Boom will set you back 30 grand. And with 10,000 watts of power, you can probably both see it and hear it from the orbiting International Space Station. Half your neighbors will hate you; the other half will worship you.

Yeah, I got your boombox right here, pal. (Yes, that’s an iPhone sitting way up there on the tippy top.) Weighing in at 700 pounds and measuring 8 feet wide and 4 feet tall, the iNuke Boom will set you back 30 grand. And with 10,000 watts of power, you can probably both see it and hear it from the orbiting International Space Station. Half your neighbors will hate you; the other half will worship you.

Link
08 November 2011
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Shorty Roberts and Blackie the Wonder Horse, 1938

A slice of San Francisco history. The city has always been a strange and wonderful place.

Link
03 November 2011
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Everything about your life is exciting. To everyone.

Brilliant.