Towse: views from the hill

May 27, 2007

[BLOG] sfgirlbybay

Filed under: blog,design,San Francisco — Towse @ 7:30 pm

I don’t think I’ve mentioned Victoria Smith’s sfgirlbybay blog before.

Subtitled “bohemian modern style from a san francisco girl,” Smith’s blog covers a wide range of interesting design stuff and news.

I love to rummage around, looking at the pictures, clicking through to sites she mentions. She covers everything from concert posters to clothing, interior design to product design.

She’s got a mighty fine list of sites on her blogrolls too.

Hey, look at that! 7×7 profiled her on their site last week.

May 25, 2007

Sparkletack – the San Francisco History Podcast

Filed under: history,podcast,San Francisco — Towse @ 9:31 pm

Sparkletack – the San Francisco History Podcast

No kidding. How cool is that?

Started a little over two years ago (15 May 2005), Sparkletack now has an archive of sixty podcasts covering a wide range of San Francisciana.

Enjoy.

The Cupertino effect

Filed under: wordstuff — Towse @ 8:21 pm

Came across an interesting reference today on Language Log to “the Cupertino effect.”

What is the Cupertino effect? You’ve seen it in action. I know you have.

The Cupertino effect is when your spellchecker fixes the spelling of a word and gives the wrong word.

Why Cupertino? (a town, btw, that I lived next door to for almost thirty years)

Seems the EU folks named the error/effect because cooperation is frequently mistyped cooperatino and some spellcheckers offer up Cupertino as a substitute.

Language Log finds that tale of origin suspect because I find it difficult to believe that many custom dictionaries out there include Cupertino but not unhyphenated cooperation.

Turns out that error can be found in an old version of Outlook Express (custom dictionary copyrighted as “Houghton Mifflin Company © 1996 Inso Corporation”)

[reached the Language Log post that mentioned “the Cupertino effect” which led me to the post mentioned above from a click on Sour Grapes’ tumblr page]

May 24, 2007

Old pals, reunited

Filed under: books,bookstores,libraries,woowoo — Towse @ 11:52 pm

The younger younger guy is out visiting from Boston for ten days or so. Yesterday we drove over to Santa Cruz to meet up with the older younger guy and his partner, have lunch and visit the family matriarch.

The older younger guy’s partner went back to work after lunch and the three of us decided to kill the time between then and when the matriarch expected us by hanging out at LOGOS Books.

For the last week or two, since his nibs and I returned from a short four-day trip up-coast to visit with an old friend and explore, I’ve been making a stab at sorting through the tens of thousands of books on shelves and in boxes (lots and lots of boxes) to identify the duplicates and the not-wanted to donate to a library effort.

In the last couple weeks with a couple full days’ effort and some partial-day exercises, I’ve managed to shift all the crime fiction onto shelves (about eight bookcases worth, sorted by author and by title within the author) and to start getting the travel books organized. (roughly sorted by continent and country, natch).

The travel books include not only books we bought while traveling but also books we bought new and used in stores and a good number of older books that his nibs’ great-great aunt Burta purchased in her day.

I’ve sorted out five bookcases of travel books and have at least another two cases to go before even starting on the United States travel-related books.

Yes, as expected, I had multiple copies of Chandlers and Christies in the crime fiction collection, multiple copies of JD MacDonalds and Karin Slaughters. I found I was missing Q and R from my run of Graftons (said lack since remedied). What I had not expected were multiple copies of Lowell Thomas titles and multiple copies of “glimpses of Europe” sorts of titles in the travel collection. Along the way I discovered that some books had been masquerading as travel but were actually garden titles or history titles or geology titles.

Yesterday at the LOGOS bookstore. I was poking through the crime fiction, the children’s books, the “how to draw” art books, the gardening books. There in the gardening books was this old book that, when I pulled it from the shelf, looked very much like a book that I’d sorted out of the travel books late last week because it was more a garden book, not a travel book per se.

The book I’d come across last week, with illustrations painted by Beatrice Parsons, was titled something like Old-World Gardens and had pictures and descriptions of European gardens.

I looked at the LOGOS book in my hand. Interesting, I thought. How much?

I opened the cover and found this

… the tell-tale spore of Burta — her initials (MBB) handwritten in pencil on the front free-endpaper.

I probably wouldn’t have bought the book otherwise, but how could I resist? I will reunite it on a shelf with its old pal when I start sorting through the gardening titles.

                    ***

It took until I was driving back to San Francisco to realize just how one of MBB’s books had wound up in a used bookstore in Santa Cruz.

His nibs’ father’s twin brother had lived in Aptos, where the older younger guy currently lives. We hadn’t realized he’d had any, but Uncle Burt must have had at least this one of Burta’s old books. One of uncle Burt’s children must have sold the book or given it away to someone who sold the book to LOGOS.

Thank goodness I thought of a reasonable explanation for how the book wound up seventy-five miles away from San Francisco in a town that Burta, who so far as we knew, had never visited. Very spooky it was to pick up a book in a used bookstore in Santa Cruz and see her scribbled initials.

NY to get shoe store so big it has own ZIP code

Filed under: shopshopshop — Towse @ 8:59 pm

Yo, PAULA!

Reuters. Dateline: NEW YORK

NY to get shoe store so big it has own ZIP code

[BLOG] author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

Filed under: blog,writing — Towse @ 3:45 pm

I told author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf a while back that at some point I’d get around to telling folks how much I like her “actually writing blog.”

LeBoeuf is an inspiration in her willingness to say “I’m screwing around and need to get back to work” and her “read this blog and got these hints” and her “I’m working on XYZ and it is not going well” and, of course, her other writerly-related posts. This blog consists only of writerly-related posts and I like that focus.

Sometimes she posts too little because she’s actually writing or off at Viable Paradise or busy doing something else, and then she’s back on a semi-regular basis and … life is good.

I like her snippets.

I like her focus.

I even like her whining.

[URL] passive-aggressive notes

Filed under: life,URL — Towse @ 3:25 pm

passive-aggressive notes from roommates, neighbors, coworkers and strangers

for the purposes of this project, we’re using a pretty broad (and to some extent, arbitrary) definition of “passive-aggressive” that roughly correlates with how the term is popularly used. (most people don’t go diving for the dsm IV when someone describes his or her roommate as “so passive-aggressive” — or “so antisocial” or “so sadistic” or “so schizo,” for that matter.)

some of the notes here are really more aggressive in tone, and some of them are more passive — polite, even — but they all share a common sense of frustration that”s been channeled into a written note rather than a direct confrontation. while it may be more accurate, “asshole-ish notes from roommates, neighbors, coworkers and strangers” (or “well-deserved notes from roommates…”) just doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as easily, you know?

Read ‘em. Send in your own.

A companion blog to wrongkmiller.

[Thanks, cygnoir!]

[URL] WRONGKMILLER.com

Filed under: life,URL — Towse @ 1:45 pm

Ah. The Web’s a Wonder.

“Towse” isn’t exactly the most common last name in the States (more like 77,020th most popular last name (surname) in the United States [ref: http://www.placesnamed.com/t/o/towse.asp]), so I don’t get too many wrong e-mails addressed to a different s.towse, but Miller is a different story.

kmiller claims that Miller is the seventh-most popular surname in the States. (which placesnamed.com confirms)

Nearly five out of ever 100 people is a miller.

[actually 0.424%: k.miller didn’t grok the difference between percentile (4.660) and percentage. ref: http://www.placesnamed.com/m/i/miller.asp]

the census doesn’t calculate how many of those millers have a first name starting with “k,” but i think it’s safe to go with “a lot.” maybe even, “a shitload.” i should know: i get their email.

So, k.miller started a blog called WRONGKMILLER.com: there are lots of k.millers in the world. i get their gmail.

Entertaining, but then I’m easily amuzed.

[via a link at passive-aggressive notes]

May 22, 2007

What Should I Read Next?

Filed under: app,books,URL — Towse @ 8:15 pm

What Should I Read Next?

Enter a book you like and the site will analyse our database of real readers’
favourite books (over 32,000 and growing) to suggest what you could read next.

e.g.

Enter title and/or author

Enter title: The End of Mr. Y
[click] What Should I Read Next?

App comes back
Did you mean:
The End of Mr. Y – Scarlett Thomas

Click the title above if correct, or amend the details below

[click] title above

results:

The Carpathians – Janet Frame See Amazon UK | US
My Life as Emperor – Su Tong See Amazon UK | US
Charades – Janette Turner Hospital See Amazon UK | US
The Pig Who Sang to the Moon – Jeffrey Masson See Amazon UK | US
The Gourmet Club: A Sextet – Jun’ichiro Tanizaki, Anthony Chambers, Paul McCarthy See Amazon UK | US
The Secret World of Og – Pierre Berton See Amazon UK | US
Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust – Charles Patterson See Amazon UK | US
Quicksand – Jun’ichiro Tanizaki See Amazon UK | US
Tales of Hoffmann – E. T. A Hoffmann See Amazon UK | US
The Collected Stories of Frank O’Connor – Frank O’Connor See Amazon UK | US

more results …

Interesting app. And, yes, Scarlett Thomas’ other books do not pop up in that first list of suggestions.

Register if you’d like to be part of this Web2.0 app. Site money stream seems to come from those Amazon click-throughs.

[caution: The response time can be a bit slow.]

[mentioned in a post from the Project Wombat list.]

May 21, 2007

RUNNING THE NUMBERS: An American Self-Portrait by Chris Jordan

Filed under: art,environmentalism,life,stats — Towse @ 7:56 pm

Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait

This new series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 426,000 cell phones retired every day. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs.

[...]

[Thank you, Auntie K!]

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