I broke out my indie/punk Christmas collection the other day (and brought it up to date with the help of AP.net's 2006 Christmas List. I thought I'd share a few of my favorites here:
The Lights and Buzz is an original tune by Andrew McMahon (lead singer/pianist of Something Corporate and Jack's Mannequin). He released this song last year (on iTunes), and it became an instant favorite of mine. Growing up on the East Coast, the line "It's Christmas in California, and it's hard to ignore that it feels like summer all the time", strikes a particular chord with me. And I find Andrew singing out the simple chorus, "It's good to be alive", very uplifting, as this was Andrew's first song released after battling acute lymphatic leukemia.
This is another (mostly) original song, this time by Jason Gleason (former lead singer of Further Seems Forever). This isn't exactly an uplifting Christmas tune, but I've always liked Jason's vocals, and this song is no exception. I also dig the old timey/lounge feel the song has.
Apparently a couple years ago the cast of Scrubs dubbed over A Charlie Brown Christmas! How cool is that? You can see (and download a copy of) the outcome here. Even if you don't watch Scrubs, you'll enjoy this. And if you do watch Scrubs, you'll agree that casted everyone perfectly.
I found today's xkcd comic, rather amusing (be sure to hover over the comic and read the tooltip). I will certainly keep that in mind when discussing all future UI design. :-D
I got my first taste of the Nintendo Wii on Friday night, when Ricci brought home one that he purchased via Craig's List. Needless to say we spent a good chunk of the rest of the night playing. And it was fun. Really, really fun. I was definitely skeptical of the control scheme when it was first announced. However, after seeing some of the promo videos and reading posts from various people the last couple weeks, my expectations were definitely much higher. And I have to say that so far it has definitely lived up to them.
I've really only spent time playing Wii Sports. We started off with bowling, where I ended up with a 108, which is right around what I get in normal life. We then proceeded to play baseball and boxing, both of which were quite entertaining (and a bit of a workout). We also did the fitness test which involved a home run derby, returning 40 tennis balls, and picking up spares. Quite fun indeed. We only have one controller so far, so we haven't done any simultaneous two-player battles, but I'm definitely looking forward to that.
Photos from Friday are up on flickr, and I'm sure I'll be adding to that set as time goes on.
I used some of my time off this week to take a short little road-trip down the California coast with my friend Andrew. The drive down California 1 was absolutely beautiful. Once we were south of Carmel, we were pulling over every few minutes to look at the view and take pictures. We also stopped at Pfeiffer Big Sur state park to do some hiking. We stopped a few more times along the way to get some pictures of the sun setting over the Pacific Ocean. At some point I want to go back and eat at Nepenthe; watching the sunset from there would surely be amazing.
After arriving in San Simeon, we got some dinner at the Bar and Grill next to our hotel (and caught the Monday Night Football game).
Tuesday morning we went down to the beach to take some more pictures before heading up to Hearst Castle. We took the "Experience Tour", which went through one floor of Casa Del Sol, several rooms of Casa Grande, some of the gardens, and both pools. It was a truly impressive place to visit. I definitely could have spent a whole lot more time there, just taking in all the intricate details of the place. For instance, many of the elaborately carved ceilings were brought over from Europe, but they didn't necessarily fit the rooms, so workers had to duplicate these intricate carvings.
We also watched the National Geographic Film, Hearst Castle - Building the Dream. It was actually quite good. The film spent a lot of time describing the trip to Europe that William Hurst took with mother when he was just a boy, and it was clear he kept a lot of the images from that trip with him.
It was great to take a little excursion out of the Bay Area and to explore the Central Coast. I easily could have spent several more days just going on hikes and walking along the beaches. And I'd like to go back and take some of the other tours of Hearst Castle. If you live in California, this is definitely a road-trip you should make.
Photos of the trip have been posted to Flickr here and here.
"Take a long drive with me on California 1" - California 1 / Youth and Beauty Brigade by The Decemberists
Paul Graham has posted yet another fantastic essay (derived from a talk given to students at MIT) about startups. Reading one of PG's essays always brings out that startup itch in me, and the topic being explored in this particular essay obviously struck home with me:
"If I had to pick the sweet spot for startup founders, based on who we're most excited to see applications from, I'd say it's probably the mid-twenties. Why? What advantages does someone in their mid-twenties have over someone who's 21? And why isn't it older? What can 25 year olds do that 32 year olds can't? Those turn out to be questions worth examining."
I have some concrete goals for myself at my current job for the next year or two, but I want to keep/put myself in the best position possible ("stamina, poverty, rootlessness, colleagues, and ignorance") to make the jump to the startup world after that.
Further Reading (both derived from talks at the Startup School)
For the first time in quite a few months, I got my DDR pads out of the closet on Saturday and played some DDR Max 2. Even though I hadn't played in a while, I pretty well remembered all the songs in my usual rotation. I was planning to start playing DDR regularly again for the exercise, but decided I ought to pick up a new version of the game just to give myself a bit more variety.
So, today I picked up the new DDR: SuperNOVA and played for a solid hour and a half after I got home. So far I really like the songs in this version. First, I have to say there's just something really strange about seeing Fall Out Boy in a DDR game, but the song (Dance, Dance) does work and is one of the faster songs I've played so far. Other fun songs include Battle Without Honor or Humanity (which you'd recognize from Kill Bill), Video Killed The Radio Star, Since U Been Gone, and No. 13 (by Taka respect for J.S.B).
In general, it seems like the scoring in this game is a lot more lax than in DDR Max 2. I got an A or B on pretty much every song I did on the "Difficult" setting (that's one below the hardest difficulty), and some of the songs I was really close to failing. Next time I play I'll definitely be trying most of the songs on "Heavy".
I also spent some time playing in 2-pad mode. I stuck to the easier songs, but it was pretty fun, so I may have to do that mode a bit more often for a change of pace.
Yesterday I went up to San Francisco with Calista and her friend Jade. Jade had never been across the Golden Gate bridge, so our main goal for the day was to walk all the way across it. I had only driven aross the bridge once, and that was just a couple months ago when I went to Muir Woods with Dana and Chris, so I was looking forward to walking across the bridge and getting a chance to take some pictures. The other goal for the day was for Calista to get some good photos for a school project.
We started off by walking around Golden Gate Park. I had been there once before, when my high school friend Dan was visiting, but that time we mainly just hit up the Japanese Tea Garden. There are some great views to be had in the park.
After a couple hours at the park, we decided to get some food before heading to the Golden Gate Bridge. As we started heading toward the bridge, Calista called her friend Tom in New York City for a restaurant recommendation (he used to live in SF). He came through with a stellar recommendation of Gordo Taqueria, which ended up being just a few blocks away from us. I had a carnitas burrito, and it was quite tasty. Gordo is definitely up there as one of my favorite burrito joints now.
After warming up in Gordo's, we made our way to the bridge. And despite the signs telling us "Parking Lots Full", we found a spot in a free lot right next to the bridge. Huzzah! The walk across the bridge was really fun (if a bit chilly). By the time we were headed back to the SF side of the bridge, the sun had started to set and provided a beautiful backdrop.
And after walking aross the bridge, I'm really interested in reading/learning about the history and construction of the bridge. I've added the History Channel Modern Marvels show about the bridge as well as a PBS documentary to my NetFlix queue. If anyone has any book reccomendations, I'd love to hear about them.
Full set of photos from the trip have been posted to my flickr page. Pictures from Calista's digial camera are here. She also got to borrow this awesome film camera from school, which I'm sure will result in quite a few more fine black and white photos.
The Eagles kicked off their 2006 pre-season with the Hall of Fame Game against the Oakland Raiders in Canton, Ohio this evening. I was happy with what I saw on the opening drive of each team. The Raiders got the ball, and ran it three times. The Eagles stopped them for a loss all three times. After a Raiders' punt, the Eagles got the ball at their own 40 yard line. McNabb and Westbrook carried the load and marched the Eagles straight down the field for a touchdown. It was great to see McNabb and Westbrook clicking again, after they were both plagued by injuries throughout last season. Rookie wide out Hank Baskett also caught a pass on this drive. In the second quarter, David Akers kicked a 55 yard field goal for the Eagles, so he's clearly back in form after suffering a groin injury last season.
Now of course, you can't put too much stock in pre-season games, especially when the starters only played one series. That said, after all the disappointment of last season seeing such a flawless opening drive has me really excited for the real season to start. Go Eagles!
My friend Sarah gets credit for turning me on to this catchy gem. I picked up a package from her this morning and it contained 5(!) mix cds. Of course I immediately popped the first CD into my car on the way to work, and Shadow by The Southland was the opening track. Super catchy song, and the perfect opener for a CD. Gotta love the chorus:
This is how I am
and you are
and it's real life
In the little notebook accompanying the CD, Sarah wrote "props to Zach Braff for this one". And sure enough, this song was used in an episode of Scrubs this past season. Not sure how I didn't pick up on the awesomeness of this song when I saw the episode, but thankfully my oversight of this song has been corrected.
