I'm a lasagna boy!

A rubaiyat you could be proud of

Began reading Amin Maalouf's Samarkand,
which chronicles the adventures of a young Omar Khayyam.

The novel, originally in French, mixes a fantastic modern-day tale of the manuscript's redisovery with an account of its creation, just as the Seljuks were advancing across Persia.

Marsh Arabs

This picture appeared on the front page of today's New York Times.

A few months ago, the Week in Review section had a heartbreaking series of photographs on a similar theme.

Slave to the turntables

Who thinks these are candidates for worst album covers ever?

I need to find and scan the beautiful cover of Las Limonadas Verdes, the polyester-suited crooners from south of the border.

The ring came off my pudding can.

The grand, bright metropolis of Las Vegas sports a shiny new monorail, thanks to the privately-funded non-profit Las Vegas Monorail Co.

This represents a sensible investment for the hotels and businesses who will ease congestion on the Strip, which holds 14 of the country's 15 largest hotels¹, hosts many vast conventions, and of course has the slot machines.
The state hopes to appropriate $20 million in federal funds (highway funds?) to to build monorail extensions to downtown and the airport.

¹and a developer is building a new, $2.4 billion hotel. B is for billion. Billyun.

In praise of the peanut.

The New York Times has an encomium of the TiVo remote,
including commentary by Jakob Nielsen, Mr Usabiility himself (who uses ReplayTV, apparently).

Aside from the distinctive shape (although the vertical symmetry can be disorientating), the remote has beautiful audio feedback: when scanning a program, or navigating the hierachical menus, clear, euphonic sounds provide useful indicators of progress (I can *almost* program the recorder without using the tv monitor!).

And, unlike any other remote in the A/V armada¹, I've used every single button ²

¹Pioneer DVD player, DirecTv TiVo, Sony A/V Receiver, Sony TV

²The DirecTv model has a whopping 36! TiVo's standard has 30 or 32.

De-congestant.

London's Congestion Charge celebrates one year, with mixed success.

Meanwhile, on the Continent, the Toll Collect consortium received a decision from Germany's transportation minister: scrap the entire toll collection plan. After significant implementation delays, the consortium, consisting of Deutsche Telekom, Cofiroute, and DaimlerChrysler, were told to abandon their project.

Transport Minister Manfred Stolpe said the debacle was damaging to Germany's image and a blow to innovation.

I had hoped, in my dreams of becoming Ye President, that this country might develop a similar system in conjunction with our beloved interstate highway system.

Don't you know how time zones work?

If only this Flash applet took an argument. So many puerile jokes ensue ...

Re-developing Jefferson St.

The Port and the Bay Conservation and Development Commision have chosen plan D to improve pedestrian and bicycle access along Jefferson St.:

The detail drawings provide a finer view of the interaction of parking spaces, bicycle lanes, and MUNI right-of-way; you'll need your imagination to fill in throngs of wandering tourists at the intersection of Jefferson and Taylor intersection and at the Jefferson and Powell intersection.

The SFBC had endorsed a plan that " ... features (from north to south) a dedicated transit lane for the F-line, westbound bike lane, eastbound travel lane, eastbound bike lane, and parking. This would be the most high profile contra-flow bike lane in the city .... It is very important that we get a large turnout at the meetings because of the importance of a continuous bikeway along SF's waterfront."

Bicycle paths, especially ones used less by commuting cyclists and more by casual riders, such as in the tourist-heavy Fisherman's Wharf area, cause me concern when they need to cross turn lanes. In this case, the MUNI F Line crosses the bicycle lane at Jones. Compounding the difficulty of this stretch of bicycle path is the occasionally-cobbled surface of the street, and the MUNI tracks themselves, a trap for the unawares cyclist.
I biked this road almost every single day that I worked near the Embarcadero: one or two of my co-workers and I would hop on our bicycles and zoom down the Embarcadero bike lane, itself well-planned and -executed, and zip all the way along the waterfront to the base of the Golden Gate Bridge. A quick rest there, and then a sprint back through Crissy Field and a return to our desks within the alloted lunch-hour. Splendid.

Ground-breaking.

Construction has begun in earnest at the Bank of America branch at Fell and Baker.

This project, several years in the making, will develop the half-block between Divisadero and Baker and Fell and Oak into a mixed-use area: some underground parking (much needed in the neighbourhood!), ground-floor commerical, and three or four stories of residential, mixed-income units.

Anchor tenants discussed early on in the project included Falleti's, late of Fulton St. (and now replaced by a similar project, involving Albertson's and the City of San Francisco).