If I had a dollar for every time someone asked us if we own a compound miter saw, I'd well... well, I'd have a couple dollars. That's not enough to buy any power tool. But I do have the power of the Internet and guess what I found out? There are such things as Tool Lending Libraries. San Francisco, Berkeley, and Oakland's public library systems lend out tools to residents. Here's the San Francisco list, here's Berkeley's info page, and here's the Oakland list. Pacific Gas & Electric has a Tool Lending Library for designers and builders to take energy usage readings.
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It's always sad when you don't hear about something neat until it gets publicity for closing down. Kasuri Dyeworks specializes in selling traditional kimono fabrics from Japan. Shop owner Koji Wada has spent years cultivating relationships with the master craftsmen who spin, dye and weave the labor intensive fabrics. But the craftsmen are becoming extinct and supplies are low. Demand remains high for Wada's wares, but he's packing up the store's emptying shelves. While demand for sections of the beautiful fabrics may bring him satisfactory business in the U.S., demand for kimonos in Japan has shrunk considerably. They are no longer a mandatory part of a wedding dowry, nor are they considered practical for most situations. An exceedingly formal ceremony may call for a kimono, but in those cases they are rented. The entertainment workers who used to patronize the kimono makers are suffering from the economy crash which slowed their business. So there are few customers left for the fabric makers, and no incentive for newcomers to learn the trade. Bonus link: Professional quilter, Pamela Hill, a long time customer of Kasuri Dyeworks.
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Thursday, January 30, 2003

Well, that could explain the sloppy bow arm. Itzhak Perlman will be undergoing surgery to repair a tear in his right rotator cuff. It is scheduled for early February and his recovery period will last from six weeks to three months. Unfortunately, not only can he not play violin during that time, he also can't conduct.
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I ran across a mention of this interesting book in the NY Times food section: Tea at the Blue Lantern Inn by Jan Whitaker. In the early 1900s women were opening tea rooms and driving themselves there to partake of lunch and teatime without, horror of horrors, any male escorts. The tea room craze's role in society is chronicled in this book.
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I can't recall my first introduction to potato gnocchi, but it likely occured at an Il Fornaio restaurant. Maurizio Mazzon, executive chef of the west coast restaurant chain, demonstrated two gnocchi recipes for a SF Chronicle food writer. I've never considered making them knowing that my attempts would very likely sink like a pile of 50 caliber bullets. And from the descriptions in this article, it seems my pessimism is not far-fetched. "The reality of making gnocchi is the reality of baking bread. You can't really write a recipe for it." There are ten detailed tips for creating the desired light and fluffy pillow results. But I think it may take me as many tries to get there.
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Wednesday, January 29, 2003

A fascinating Astronomy Picture of the Day: "Lake Vida, buried under Antarctic ice for over 2,500 years, is liquid only because of its high salt content." Frozen microbes have been found, and if living ones exist it may be possible to find life under sheets of ice on Mars and Europa.
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Home Despot. Most of the links don't go anywhere, but that's how it always is with despots.
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A little photo tour of the Tillamook Cheese factory from pb. When I don't supervise the cheddar buying, this ends up in our fridge. It's not bad.
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History of hockey goalie masks from the site of a custom mask painter. Goaltenders were considered cowards to even think of wearing one, but Plante would often say "If you jump from an airplane without a parachute, is that considered an act of bravery?" (via LarkFarm)
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Tuesday, January 28, 2003

Some colleges are building residence halls with an emphasis on private, single rooms. Students unaccustomed to sharing their bedrooms will pay a little more to not have a roommate or two. The college administration would like to keep upperclassmen on campus to be a part of student life instead of moving into apartments. On the other side of the coin, some colleges are emphasizing shared living, trying to counteract students turning to more solitary pursuits on their computers.
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Martha speaks! Jeffrey Toobin paid a visit to Martha Stewart at her Westport home for The New Yorker. Toobin is a New Yorker staff writer, legal analyst for ABC News, a Harvard Law School graduate, and author of books covering the scandals of Clinton and O.J. Simpson. One can imagine that if Stewart is dragged into further legal troubles with her unfortunately timely sale of ImClone stock, another Toobin book could be forthcoming. For now, though, the article is enough, with descriptions of his friendly tour of Turkey Hill and a multi-course Chinese meal served with silver chopsticks, interspersed between the background facts and events of the stock sale. Stewart's publicity advisers, hoping to counteract the negative stories, allowed Toobin to interview her regarding her feelings about the investigation. For those familiar with the Martha persona, there isn't much new here. Her detailed oriented personality blazes through, as does her pride for her accomplishments and surroundings. Her determination, which brought her riches, will see her through what lies ahead.
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Monday, January 27, 2003

Reader Marc sent in a link about an upcoming Food Network series called "Spy Chefs." No, not "spa chef", "spy chef." Penciled in for the 2003 season, the show features Seattle chefs Tom Douglas and Thierry Rautureau disguised in silly outfits (female impersonation seems to be a favorite), sneaking into top restaurants, and later recreating what they had to eat. Behind the silly hijinks is the concept of taste memory and discovering what needs to be done to prepare a dish in order to recreate something you mainly recall from taste and smell. If the pilot episode works for test audiences, "Spy Chefs" will join Alton Brown on the humorous side of the Food Network.
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Marc also sent along Scientific American's look at the USDA's Food Pyramid. The article goes into depth on each section of the pyramid, describing simplifications and fallacies. In creating a tool that is easy to use, the pyramid creators left much unsaid about real nutrition and unwittingly created corollaries like "starch is good" and "all fats are bad." Potato, mostly starch, is listed as a vegetable. Dairy products like milk are over-emphasized. The article's authors have created an enhanced pyramid which distinguishes between whole grains and processed starches, and different types of oil.
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Friday, January 24, 2003

The current space shuttle mission had been delayed for so long that I began to think they wouldn't get to go until the space station was a bustling community of colonists. Station assembly missions continued taking priority over research. But now that they're finally up, let's take a look at what they're up to. There are over 80 experiments on board, and 30 of those come from NASA's Office of Biological and Physical Research. Most of their projects, not surprisingly, involve living in space, especially effects on the human body, but there are also experiments that may improve earthquake safety and firefighting techniques. Accompanying the astronauts onboard are an ant colony from Syracuse, NY, spiders from Melbourne, Australia, carpenter bees from Liechtenstein, Medaka fish from Japan, and silkworms from China. Those are all student experiments, mostly studying the effects of weightlessness on the creatures. I doubt they have enough silkworms for this, but wouldn't it be neat to have a hanky spun in space?
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Yesterday's NY Times' Patents column concentrated on new cosmetic industry patents. Maybelline has patented their "lash building" mascara, which applies tiny fibers to eyelashes in order to plump them up. It contains "thousands of little tube-shaped rayon fibers about a half-millimeter in length" and is also supposed to lengthen lashes. In 2002, L'Oréal patented a skin lightening cream which is marketed to eliminate under-eye circles. The main ingredients are also used in laundry detergents to brighten colors, and in existing skin bleaching products for liver spots and scars. These two patented products have something more in common than being cosmetics. The mascara is being marketed to Asian women to specifically address our "short, stubby lashes." And the skin lightener is touted in the patent as being "particularly effective on Asian skin." They don't just mean under-eye circles, they mean the entire face. It's the westernization of Asian beauty as chronicled by the patent office.
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Thursday, January 23, 2003

Beyond the cats cradle string game, "World-Wide Webs: String Figures From Around the World." (via Yahoo's What's New)
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No, it's not a link to the Borg Collective, it's a showcase of wearable computing setups. (via Nooface)
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Wednesday, January 22, 2003

Piano maker Steinway is seeking its oldest existing piano. To see if yours is in the ballpark, check its serial number against their handy "How Old Is My Steinway?" chart.
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"Query by Humming" may be coming soon to a search engine near you. The Fraunhofer Institut in Germany created the MP3 audio format and now they have a solution to "name that tune." It matches pitch differences to a database of songs. Other companies are creating similar software. Wouldn't if have been neat to hum a tune into Napster and have it fetch matching mp3s for you? Composers could check to see if they are unintentionally plagiarizing.
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Matt Pfeffer has started a news digest called Today's News which is his version of what is newsworthy, without any extra fluff. Part of it is a fun category called Non-news which is perfectly named. Some of those items feature amusingly pointed headlines like "German man doesn't fly plane into building."
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Tuesday, January 21, 2003

Anil Dash goes to town on one of my favorite topics (I've posted ~10 times about it), the diamond deception. Unfortunately, he publishes it on the day I discover a teeny tiny chip in the sapphire on my engagement ring. That's what I get for dragging my knuckles on a stone church floor (I wasn't praying; I was reattaching pews after a concert). Tears were shed.
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Thanks for all the Ninas Mr. Hirschfeld. The NY Times obituary is appropriately extensive.
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An large collection of telegraph keys with links to even more information about the telegraph. (via larkfarm)
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Monday, January 20, 2003

Plans for a Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial at the National Mall in Washington D.C. germinated more than 20 years ago. Congress passed a law authorizing a memorial in 1998. The project needs to raise the funds this year; the amount is in the "tens of millions" to complete the construction and it must be raised privately.
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Foodie TV meets Reality TV in an upcoming NBC series called "The Restaurant" (clever name, huh?). Chef Rocco DiSpirito will be in the TV fishbowl as cameras chronicle life in the kitchens and in the dining room. Diners make reservations just like any other restaurant, but aren't guaranteed a TV appearance. Will someone concoct a tableside drama to get themselves featured on the show?
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Cybill Sheperd has signed on to play Martha Stewart in an NBC movie based on the unauthorized (i.e. unflattering) Martha, Inc biography. I would've preferred Candice Bergen, but it's nice for Cybill to have a gig where she can wear comfy shoes. Cybill wore sneakers on the set of "Moonlighting" unless her feet were in the shot, and sometimes wore her tennies with evening wear.
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Friday, January 17, 2003

Money, money, money. It grows on trees, you know -- well, except for the ones printed on plastic.
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Tenfu Tea Museum is "an amusement park dedicated entirely to tea." Located in the region of China where Oolong is grown, the museum has an enormous teapot fountain next to its main building where the many steps in creating top-grade tea are exhibited. Employees in period costumes demonstrate ceremonial rituals for preparing and serving tea. Tea consumption is up in China, with new tea houses catering to young and old with tapioca bubble drinks and the traditional brews.
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Thursday, January 16, 2003

For educational purposes I did some MLS searches for any houses in my local area under $200,000. One of the two that turned up looked suspiciously like a houseboat. Slip #30 with a "bay view", "deck", and "cabin." I did a little digging and found the page on the Docktown Residents website which lists the houseboats currently for sale in Redwood City. A little more digging turned up a nice little virtual tour of the houseboats up north in Sausalito (these aren't for sale, but I wasn't looking to buy one anyway). Some of them have around 2000 square feet of living area, which make them less "cozy" than our house. One of them has been converted into a floating software development office.
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There's panda turnaround happening at the San Diego Zoo. Male panda, Shi Shi, has gone back to China and been replaced by Gao Gao who arrived yesterday. Hua Mei, who was born there in 1999, is also leaving soon for China. Her mother, Bai Yun, is staying to hopefully produce a replacement baby panda with Gao Gao's help.
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Wednesday, January 15, 2003

$2 billion worth of bagged salad was sold last year and a lot of it wasn't hardy iceberg. With slim margins and highly perishable product, the baggers of baby lettuce hold onto their washing, spinning, and packaging trade secrets, knowing competitors are innovating as fast as they are themselves. The NY Times' Amanda Hesser reports on the state of the art in bagged baby lettuce technology. How do they hold keep slimy leaves and browned edges at bay? It's a precise cleaning and bagging system, computer controlled at many places. But their secrets may pale in comparison to the next trend: freshly cut fruit. I can imagine patents coming out of developments to keep those edges fresh, because it's going to take more than a lemon juice bath. Maybe a low temperature and acid?
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Itzhak Perlman
"This concert has been sold out -- with a lengthy waiting list -- for more than six months, and even a last-minute date change for the performance did not deter classical fans."
The first time I tried to get tickets to an Itzhak Perlman recital it was 6 months beforehand. Sold out. This time I pointedly made a big deal out of it 12 months ahead of time and Valentine's Day arrived with main floor tickets. And then I had to wait eleven months, but the night finally came near -- and was postponed for a week. But it arrived again. On the program, 3 sonatas: J.S. Bach #6, Beethoven #7, Poulenc. Perlman's left hand is still solid; nothing out of tune. I found fault with his slow bowing in the Largo movement of the Bach. It seemed shaky at either end, or lazy perhaps. It was probably the easiest movement out of the twelve on the main program and I feel he could've taken better care of it. But that was a tiny portion of the evening. Everything else was well executed with his usual flair for making it look easy when you know it just isn't. He does so much with his fingers that if you tied his upper arms to his sides he could probably still play better than many violinists. I had not heard the Poulenc Sonata before; it's not a happy work, lyrical but tragic. Perlman and accompanist Rohan de Silva capped off the recital with six showpieces, three of them Fritz Kreisler arrangements. The final blast was Franz Ries' "Perpetual Motion" which left the crowd suitably impressed. Now I can set my sights on seeing Yo-Yo Ma.
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Tuesday, January 14, 2003

Taking a day off. Back tomorrow with a review of Itzhak Perlman at the Fox Theatre.
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Monday, January 13, 2003

For a jump back into Disney's past, take a look at a photo album of a trip to Disneyland in 1968. There's a photo of The Tomorrowland Skyway that I rode on in 1981 which has since closed. In fact, most of the rides pictured have been closed as Disney tries to keep up with our changing and always faulty impression of the future. (via Pop Culture Junkmail)
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FreeHand Systems exhibited their MusicPad at MacWorld last week. Computer display technology is reaching a size and price point where an electronic music stand can become reality. FreeHand has received a patent on its music annotation technology and also a "half-page turn" lookahead feature. The San Diego Symphony tested the MusicPad and its footpedal page-turner at performances of the "Nutcracker" in 2001. One day the glow from the orchestra pit isn't going to be from stand lights but back-lit LCDs. When networking gets integrated in as well, I can imagine conductors turning off any feature that shows where the current beat is. They'll want us to look up as the beat is only a smidge of what they're communicating. Either that or they'll use a networked annotation to draw eyeglasses on everyone's music at all the tempo changes. (Additional note, it appears that legal action was taken against FreeHand by another holder of electronic stand patents.)
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Friday, January 10, 2003

Our local paper now has online browsing of their print ads. It seems useless at first; why would I browse the ads when I am annoyed enough by pop-ups and flashy ads getting in the way of my online reading? But when I do browse through these online ads, I am in the shopping and bargain hunting mindset and open to their solicitations. The ads are organized into categories so if I want to see what Fry's is advertising this week, I just click a couple times instead of rummaging through stacks of newsprint looking for their ads. I can look for airfare specials and even find out where movies are playing. Not so useless after all.
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Costco, warehouse-bulk-no-frills-shopping-off-the-pallet king, plans to test out a gourmet store and a home furnishings store, both in Washington state. According to The Seattle Times, Costco Fresh will "focus almost exclusively on grocery and associated services, with special attention to fresh produce, meats, seafood, and baked goods." The home furnishings store, which opened in December displays merchandise in room settings, just like a regular furniture store. But unlike most furniture stores, you don't have to wait weeks to months for your purchase to arrive as they stock 3,000 items ready for you to load into your oversized SUV. There are some custom orders though, and I'm betting they don't have too many of the $40,000 Bosendorfer pianos sitting in the warehouse.
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Thursday, January 09, 2003

Want to cook like you're back in colonial times (or earlier)? William Rubel has written a book called "The Magic of Fire" which describes how to prepare meals on an open hearth. Rubel burns a fire down to embers and braises vegetables, simmers spelt, roasts fish, and even steams a chocolate cake, all at his fireplace. A founder of the children's magazine Stone Soup, Rubel will be at Chez Panisse for an open hearth dinner next week, and is also working with Deborah Madison, famous veggie cookbook author.
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The brouhaha over Intuit's TurboTax product activation (the Amazon customer reviews are scathing) reminded me of Lotus' little debacle with copy protection, circa 1989. As described on this page about cracking 1-2-3's copy protection, Lotus actually created a utility that would remove the copy protection from an installed version of 1-2-3 version 2.01. They shipped it in a "Value Pack" of helpful software. Unfortunately, users often ran into problems with the sometimes not-so-valuable Value Pack, rendering their spreadsheet software unloadable. Deluged with product support calls, Lotus hired a batch of college interns that summer to assist in taking calls from frantic users. That's where I came in. Thanks to Lotus' copy-protection scheme and faulty removal process, I got my foot in the computer industry door. Lesson learned: never skimp on quality assurance, even if you think you're doing customers a service.

A less common support call related to copy protection: a customer calling to say that they bought a copy of Lotus 1-2-3, in "original" shrinkwrap, but it had someone else's name already on the disk. That's when I learned that Egghead stores would shrinkwrap returned software and put it back on the shelf like it was new. Lesson learned: Fry's Electronic's restocking sticker (aka The White Sticker of Death) actually demonstrates some level of good customer service.
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Wednesday, January 08, 2003

Viewer Mail

Jennifer sent a cute article about a kitten who survived a six-story fall and was rescued by a radio reporter. The grateful owners repaid the vet expenses and sent the reporter flowers. The kitten is undergoing physical therapy.

Lynn sent a followup on the self-tuning piano I mentioned recently. This paper is written by the inventor of that piano and describes the problems and solutions from his quest.

Vote for the California State Quarter design. No no, not that one, pick that one! (thanks Lisa!)

And lastly, Tony wrote in to say that traffic roundabouts are not good for bicyclists. Here's what he had to say:

In the Nederlands far more people commuter by bicycle than go by car. So ALL roundabouts in the Nederlands, many thousands of them, were replaced by traffic signals about 15 or 20 years ago. Naturally, there is no right turn on red in the Nederlands---indeed many traffic signals there have a separate phase for bicyclists whose presence is detected by induction loops buried in the road.

I did some specific web searching on this topic and found a Florida report (in PDF) that states that although car and pedestrian accidents are reduced at roundabout intersections, bicycle accidents increase. Not good. I also found a U.S. DOT research paper on roundabout safety which does mention the issue of bicycle safety on this page. It reports that the Netherlands have been very successful in their roundabout use, but does mention the high accident rate of one of the designs used there. "Mini-roundabouts" have reduced bicycle injuries in the Netherlands, but not in Britain. Looking at the actual source material cited by the study would shed better light on this issue. But bicycle safety is definitely a concern for roundabout usage.

Thanks for the mail everyone!
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Tuesday, January 07, 2003

Back for another round of publicity: the SoloTrek XFV: Exoskeleton Flying Vehicle, prototype going on sale at eBay on Friday. But the winner must promise never to fly it. Shucks.
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MediaNews brings us "the difference between NPR and PRI," a conundrum which was certainly keeping me awake at stop lights. Peter Sagal sends in a small rebuttal in the Letters section.
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Martha Martha Martha...Stewart, of course. Her new food magazine got some news coverage on the same day that DaimlerChrysler announced they were not renewing their Martha Stewart ad dollars but putting them towards Celene Dion instead. Also yesterday, UMass Magazine ran an item on a PhD candidate in communications whose dissertation is all about the Martha phenomenon, specifically audience reactions. There's contact information if you'd like to participate.
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Monday, January 06, 2003

Look up historical foods galore in this searchable index of menus. The collection resides in the Rare Book Room at the Los Angeles Public Library. There are doorknob hangtags from not very long ago and banquet menus from very long ago. I found menus going back to the 1850s.
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The acoustical canopy hanging over the stage of San Francisco's Davies Symphony hall is made of 59 6-foot squares of Plexiglas. They replaced 19 "giant contact lenses" (oval reflecting dishes) ten years ago and are still noteworthy enough to warrant an Chronicle article (albeit during a slow news week). The computer-controlled panels are often fined-tuned for each piece, like the mixing board for an amplified rock band, creating the correct blend and reflection for the various orchestra instruments. Here's a 1992 Chronicle review of the acoustically flashy opening performance at the newly renovated Davies Hall.
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