Towse: views from the hill

January 27, 2009

New Giraffe Calf – a set on Flickr

Filed under: photographs,San Francisco — Towse @ 6:47 am

New Giraffe Calf

Baby giraffe born at SFZoo this morning. Here are photos of its first day.

Window seat

Filed under: art,photographs — Towse @ 12:15 am

We visited the open house at 1440 Kearny Street yesterday. Beautiful condo. *ONLY* $2.675 million. Nice chat with listing agent extraordinaire Louis Silcox, who lives near us and knows people we know.

Filbert, west of Telegraph Hill Blvd.

I see his name everywhere but we’d never met.

Views are toward downtown. No water views. No bridges. Still, the views are extraordinary.

Nice yard area with solid solid solid retaining walls.

Three levels. Three bedrooms. Private elevator so you don’t have to slog your groceries up stairs. TWO CAR PARKING! (Worth an extra $200K right there. …) Two fireplaces. Wonderful kitchen. Maple floors.

And loads of art and photos.

(Where is she going with this?)

One of the photo artworks was a large collage of images out plane windows with wing tips showing: clouds and sun and weather and blue. Each image had been shaped in an ovoid fashion and the images were piled 5 x 7 or so in a large frame.

Lovely. I would’ve taken it home in a flash.

(I can hear his nibs saying, “But where would you hang it, Sal?”)

I [heart] views out airplane windows.

 

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January 26, 2009

Paul Bradshaw – How Do You ‘Follow’ 2,500 People on Twitter?

Filed under: lifehacks,web2.0 — Tags: — Towse @ 8:20 pm

“Many Twitter users adopt a “quality not quantity” strategy by only following a certain number of Twitterers. But, by using certain tools and adopting a certain mindset, I think you can achieve both quality and quantity.

“Here’s how I follow 2,500 people on Twitter:

“It’s a stream, not a publication.”

[...]

“The more people you follow (your Twitter “friends”), the more chance you have of stumbling across something interesting. The more diverse your Twitter friends are, the more likely you’ll stumble across something useful from outside your immediate circles. For me, those are the most interesting Twitter experiences.

“So stop worrying about what you’re missing. Focus on what you do see.”

[...]

Paul Bradshaw – How Do You ‘Follow’ 2,500 People on Twitter?

[via a Poynter tweet]

Pandit or The Things You Learn Whilst Playing Scrabble

Filed under: factoid,wordstuff — Towse @ 8:07 pm

The things you learn whilst playing Scrabble.

Pandit

pundit from (1672) “learned Hindu.” Broader English usage first recorded 1816.

Thx, JMT!

January 25, 2009

Gold!

Filed under: California,history — Towse @ 12:12 am

On this date in 1848, James W. Marshall — constructing a mill on property belonging to Johann A. Sutter near Coloma, California — discovered gold.

My, how things changed.

Some of his nibs forebears came out here to set up shop in San Francisco, selling picks and shovels and pans to folks heading up to the hills to search for gold. Made a pretty penny in the hardware business, they did.

They were johnny-come-lately, but their offspring married into a family whose forebears arrived in 1776.

January 24, 2009

Daily Dish’s twitterfeed

Filed under: web2.0 — Tags: — Towse @ 9:26 pm

I find Daily Dish interesting and all. Decided I’d follow Sullivan’s tweets.

But after returning to my new DailyDish-enabled twitterstream, I realized Sullivan tweets for each and every post he makes on Daily Dish and was swamping all the other content I keep an eye on.

Fifteen seconds after adding a “follow,” I removed it.

Perhaps some sort of protocol for apps like tweets? Don’t post so much that the other folks you’re sharing virtual space with are overwhelmed? Not too many, not too few, just right?

Or am I just a fud and a dud and not a with-it happenin’ person?

Could be.

January 22, 2009

Don’t let the door hit you on the way out! Buh buh bye, George!

Filed under: election2008,video — Towse @ 1:18 am

You taught me the meaning of “preemptive strike.”

January 21, 2009

Home again, home again, riggety jig.

Filed under: photographs — Tags: , , — Towse @ 4:54 am

Four crab boats had finished off-loading at the wharf and came out of the small harbor and split in different directions. These two were headed off thataway soon to be home again, home again.

 

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January 20, 2009

US Presidents – George Washington to Barack Obama

Filed under: election2008,history,people,video — Towse @ 8:43 am

US Presidents – George Washington to Barack Obama

44 US Presidents from George Washington to Barack Obama morphed to the music Boléro by Ravel

Must admit that I don’t really know what each and every president looked like.

James K Polk was a surprise. He had a sly grin look about him. Reminded me of Baryshnikov somehow. Also reminded me of the They Might Be Giants song.

James Monroe I couldn’t’ve picked out of a crowd.

And then there were the “He’s on the $xxx bill” presidents.

John Tyler. Had I ever seen a picture of him that wasn’t in a heads-of-all-the-presidents poster?

Grover Cleveland looked like a well-fed beermeister.

Entertaining.

gekko talked about the smiling/not-smiling aspect of the morph. I was more fascinated by the facial hair. Chester Arthur. Whoa.

[hattip to gekko, who posted this link on Usenet but I’m using a link to her blog instead of a link to that post.]

January 19, 2009

Fishermen’s and Seamen’s Chapel

Filed under: photographs — Tags: , , — Towse @ 8:47 pm

The chapel is “a memorial to the fishermen and seamen who have braved cold waves, blinding fog and howling winds. It was built between 1978 and 1981 on the former site of an old Coast Guard building.”

More here.

(Picture taken from Jefferson Street, between Jones and Taylor.)

 

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