Hailing a ride in Russia
To an American it seems nuts, but when you think about it it makes perfect sense. In St. Petersburg to get a ride you step into the street and wave at any damn car that comes by. Taxi or not, some cars will stop, you negotiate the cost, and on you go.
My first thought about this, years ago, was: that’s freaking nuts. Who knows who will pick you up. Urban hitchhiking. Cabs for Communists.
But it really is convenient. All a matter of density, really. Think of automobiles moving about the city not as individually-owned but simply as transport from A to B. Chances are good that someone is going somewhere near where you need to be. You’re not hailing a ride to the sticks, most likely. And if the person is not going exactly where you are they (or you) either decline or you get closer to your destination. Let me tell you, for 80% of the year in St. Petersburg this is preferable to slogging through the Arctic bluster.
It’s the ultimate Zipcar, Asimov’s sidewalks on Trantor, and France’s failed Aramis transport all in one. And relatively green too. Perhaps the only environmentally-friendly thing in St. P.
I like.
Honesty in application design
We’re a few months into the painstakingly slow process of home video conversion and upload. Many tools have come into play, but the most useful has been VisualHub. It’s batch operation, Xgrid support, and variety of device destination presets make the fact that it is free that much more amazing.
Last night I gave it a whopper of a batch list to get crunching on. When I went to bed it had some ridiculous estimate of time to complete, several thousand hours, constantly recalculating up and down.
But when I woke, this.
I love it. Is it a lie or is it honesty? I’d much rather have an app say, “You know what, I can’t do this. I have no freaking idea how long this is going to take” than flop around trying to calculate the incalculable.
Left on my desk with a note from wife: “This should make you proud”
Yes, my love, it certainly does.
By Nathan, Age 6.
This might be just the thing I need to launch my career as a parenting coach.
UPDATE: After extensive, scholarly analysis of the artwork it has been determined that the speech balloon does not saw “Eww” but rather “Flower”. An interesting development as it suggests that the whole thing was either (a) a depiction of frolicking in the garden or (b) my son thinks his socks smell like flora.
UPDATE 2: reCAPTCHA lookout. This just gave me a great idea. Is it human or is it a six-year-old?
Retweeting is just advancing in a different direction
Some housekeeping over here at Ascent Stage mission control. Site-dwellers may have noticed that the micropost area is no more. I staved it off as long as possible, but the little area for one-liners was up against a ticking clock.
You may remember that a while back I switched from a manually-updated area (pain) to one powered by the unstoppable Twitter. Thing is, in the interim with the advent of @reply functionality, Twitter became a two-way communication medium. Suddenly my carefully-crafted bon mots and trenchant insights (yes!) were subject to contamination by my irrepressible urge to respond to people. I knew I had to switch it over.
So what we have now is a running excerpt of everything that happens in my Twitterverse, including responses to people without the original context. Like listening to one half of a phone call. It is remarkably freeing, not having to care about what’s there, just letting it flow. And, as Joi says, it really does kinda threaten blogging as we know it. Microposting is the new posting.
So if you’re on Twitter, you can get it all sans-ramblings of the main blog at twitter.com/johntolva. The Tweetstream is not, as yet, spliced into the main feed. (Feedburner, arghhh!)
Some links for you:
Follow Tweets old school thread style at quotably.com.
Fantastic Mac desktop client (kinda made it all click for me): Twitterific.
Twitter inspires all kinds of creative uses such as the ioubeer service and this fun mashup by pal Bryce.
Happy tweeting!
Two things that make me smile, two that make me frown
You decide which makes me what.
Photo by mrlerone
I finally threw away my Stadium Pal. Now over six years old, used once, never washed, I figured it was time to let go. Friends, at a certain point it is time to say goodbye to the beer-drinking catheter.
******
June 24. That’s the day that my China project — which I do believe I’ve been working on for 17 years or so — launches. The lovelywife will be attending the launch event in Beijing and traveling with me afterwards. First time we’ve gone international together since before The Coming of the Children and we’re ecstatic. (She’s lined up a cavalcade of friends and family too smitten with our kids to understand that watching them for two weeks will be only slightly less unhealthy than juggling spent uranium rods.) So we’ve been talking about the trip a lot.
Recently our almost two-year-old girl overheard us and kept pinching her nose. Couldn’t figure out why. No one had “tooted” (four-year-old parlance, there). So we resumed talking … about Hong Kong. Pinch. Hong Kong. Pinch. Then it hit us. She thinks we’re saying “honk honk” which we used to say when squeezing her nose. Cracked us up. And further terrified us at the memory/pattern matching of the midgets in our house. Kids, lifecasting Tivo units for random playback.
******
Yesterday, at the Cubs home opener just as the good guys were about to stage an improbable 9th inning comeback (only to blow it), the umpire waved the Brewers’ Eric Gagne off the mound. Why? Because he looked like a fucking slob. His jersey was completely untucked. Hirsute and in deep shit he looked more like a dumpster diver than a reliever. The ump made him tuck the shirt back in. Then play continued. Mind the signage, buddy!
******
Tomorrow the city has announced it will clean the street where MySweetRide lies comatose. It may be the official death knell for the problem-plagued automobile. The reason is that it means we — and by we I mean my pal Chris whose street it is on — must attempt to move it. If it starts, she’s fighting to live. If not, I’m taking suggestions on what to do with her. Upside: tires so firmly mounted on hubs that that’ll never be stolen, a few extra diapers in the trunk. Downside: sounds like freight train (because of this?), missing stereo. I’ll start bidding at €50.
Rave to the grave
So last night, mid-Zombiefest, my brother got a text message from a bar that he DJ’s at saying that the replacement DJ was awful: “He’s playing ‘let’s talk about sex, baby’ get over here now”. The bar manager needed an emergency DJ, stat.
We deliberated. Neither of us had anything set up for such a thing, we were in the midst of chronicling the undead, and had been drinking since 3pm. Oh, we were also wearing zombie masks. We didn’t deliberate long.
The DJ at the bar was none too pleased to be getting the hook. That’s what you get for playing George Michael to a bar full of twenty-somethings, buddy.
In our rush out of the house we forgot headphones. Let me suggest that this is a rather vital omission when attempting to play music. Cueing was, you know, impossible. It was all completely impromptu without a matched beat to be heard. But it was damn fun. Just back and forth musical one-upsmanship, echoes of Christmas Party.
In many ways a bar full of drunken patrons is not all that different from an assault of the living dead. Single-minded of purpose, responding only to the crudest instincts, lurching from prey to prey.* Yep, a Friday night bar scene.
The bar manager begged us not to put the zombie masks on. Inexplicably, we did not play Thriller.
The crowd was odd. The manager said they wanted 80’s and 90’s stuff. OK, can do. But every request that came in (none written on cocktail napkins, alas) was for hip hop, perhaps the most under-represented genre in my library. I mean, I have a good bit, but that’s not the point. I probably didn’t win the bar repeat customers by being a complete ass about music I didn’t want to play. Thankfully we had our pal Chris with us and after a while I just pointed to him as the designated request-taker when someone would approach. Shoulda been wearing this.
The bar wants us back tonight. The undead filmfest has resumed and we’re properly organizing tunes for the eve. I’m taking requests online only, so get yours in now.
* This is, in fact, the actual premise of Return of the Living Dead 5: Rave to the Grave, the inability to distinguish drug-addled revelers from brain-craving corpses. Tom Petty knows.
Zombiefest
The Weekend of the Living Dead has begun over here at Ascent Stage HQ.
My kid brother Joey and I are long-time horror film fans. There isn’t a sub-genre that doesn’t delight: vampire flicks, Japanese stuff, Italian stuff, classic slashers, supernatural, psychological, torture porn, you name it.
But there’s a special place in every horror buff’s heart for George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead from 1968. It is the granddaddy of the hundreds, possibly thousands, of zombie flicks that have eaten our brains ever since.
Recently I came across a crude “genealogy” of the films spawned by Night of the Living Dead. Got me thinking about doing an undead marathon. Did a little research, added a few films and … here we are, a birthday present for the Leap Day Kid. 17 films, 25 hours, some beer ok a mini-keg of beer, rum, vodka, and scotch, and two little boys watching scary movies while the family is out of town.
It’s wrong to call all these movies a franchise as you’d do with Friday the 13th or Halloween given the divergent creative visions of the two original writers George Romero and John Russo. They each took the series down very different paths. With remakes, unauthorized sequels, and special editions thrown in you get, well, you get a lot of the living dead.
Romero
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Day of the Dead (1985)
Land of the Dead (2005)
Diary of the Dead (2008)
Remakes
Night of the Living Dead (1990, Savini)
Dawn of the Dead (2004, Snyder)
Day of the Dead (2007, Miner)
Russo
Return of the Living Dead (1986)
Return of the Living Dead 2 (1988)
Return of the Living Dead 3 (1993)
Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis (2005)
Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave (2005)
Night of the Living Dead: 30th Anniversary Edition (1998)
Children of the Living Dead (2001)
Unofficial
Day of the Dead 2: Contagium (2005)
Night of the Living Dead 3D (2006)
Netflix provided most of the movies. I’d get three at a time, rip them to the Apple TV and back they’d go. But a few — the Savini remake, 30th anniversary edition, and Children of the Living Dead — proved very difficult to find. (Facets and Specialty Video & DVD in Chicago are great places to find the most bizarre of your cinema needs.) At least one had not even made it to video yet. (Thank you, torrenters.) The very last in the list chronologically, Diary of the Dead, just left theaters and is represented here as a trailer only. Boo.
So we’ve just begun. Joey recommended a strictly chronological progression through the lot, regardless of series coherence. He thinks it’ll be interesting to map the evolution against social/historical climate and larger trends in horror. There are of course other ways to slice it, as this chart shows.
We’ll no doubt be posting the findings of our research as the weekend proceeds.
If you’re interested in trying this out yourself, might I recommend a survival manual?
Platinum, Rhodium, and Palladium
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the most valuable piece of your automobile, at least according to car thieves nowadays.
Photo by dalesd
I have just learned that catalytic converter theft is on the rise in Chicago.
Last week I used a friend’s car while he was out of the country. Parked it on a fairly busy street by my house and then today went to move it back to his house. When I started the car it roared alive so loudly you would think I was at a Monster Truck show. Scared the shit out of me. My pal came back into town, took it to a service station and the attendants just laughed. Apparently they see this all the time.
The thieves just slide under the car with a saw or, in the case of our upscale burglars, an acetylene blowtorch, and remove it. Fast and easy. Why? Because the goop inside the converter contains precious metals that can be recycled for — wait for it — jewelry. Who knew?
I don’t have a good track record with this particular friend. A few years ago I almost burnt his back deck down with a hookah pipe. Now this.
And I’m now thinking that MySweetRide might have been de-catalyzed months ago and I just never noticed. It’s such a clanky bucket of bolts it’s hard to know what’s making which noise.
In to Africa
So, looks like my resolution not to travel as much in 2008 has officially been deferred to 2009.
Today I was notified that I have been accepted into a new program in IBM called the Corporate Service Corps that will place about 100 employees in “pre-emerging markets” around the world for month-long assignments.
It is a volunteer-oriented effort — not tied specifically to business goals per se — in places we have no real market footprint: Tanzania, Ghana, the Philippines, Turkey, Romania, and Vietnam.
The program pairs IBM teams with small businesses in these areas for one month to help modernize their business processes. Teams will be composed of a cross-section of technologists, industry experts, and business strategists. Peace Corps meets small business development.
The competition for the slots in the first waves of the program was pretty intense. Over 5,500 IBM’ers from more than 50 countries applied for about 100 slots. That probably says more about the unique opportunity than it does about general unhappiness with people’s dayjobs. Certainly does for me.
I don’t know exactly where I will be going, but I strongly suspect it will be Ghana, specifically the city of Kumasi, probably be this Fall. I’m thrilled.
This June I launch my project in China, the largest, most complex undertaking in my career. In August I mark ten years in IBM. To then do something as clearly different as working with a third-world business in a place like Africa is an opportunity for a change of perspective that I simply can’t pass up.
This quote from Paul Ingram at Columbia pretty much nails exactly why I applied:
The fact that you are an excellent programmer or salesman, or can lead a project in your own area and culture, doesn’t mean you can be a great leader outside of your technical or cultural expertise.
But it wasn’t an easy decision. The thought of leaving thelovelywife and midgets continually prompts a what-the-hell-have-I-done response. But they’ve been amazingly supportive. It is true that something feels very right about this. Maybe it is that I know it will have a significant impact on my career but in ways I can’t really foresee. I’m OK with that.
The other thing about Ghana, if that’s in fact where I’m headed, is that I have a built-in network of acquaintances there via our long-time (though former) nanny, Margaret Kumi. We haven’t told Margaret or any of the dozen other Ghanaian men and women we’ve befriended over the years, but my guess is that I’ll be shlepping a gross ton of gifts over to Africa. I am OK with that, too.
UPDATE: Confirmed, I’m going to Ghana in late September. Hooray!
Something tells me that this is going to rival last year’s Italian odyssey.
Some coverage from today:
Volunteering Abroad to Climb at IBM
IBM’s Corporate Service Corps Heading to Six Emerging Countries to Spark Socio-Economic Growth While Developing Global Leaders
More on this as I find out more. Yay new things!
Angioplastic diplomacy
Last week I hosted a small delegation from the Palace Museum in Chicago as we head into the final stretch before launching The Forbidden City: Beyond Space and Time project.
We planned a working lunch and had asked the Chinese team what they would be interested in eating. They emphatically requested traditional American fare, specifically Chicago grub. After a little hesitation, we went for it calling on the services of Portillo’s and Giordano’s.
And so, in a scene not so different from me inspecting foreign delicacies at the Night Market in Beijing the Palace Museum team cautiously approached the layout of Italian beef sandwiches, cheeseburgers, hot dogs, pizza and cheesecake.
I’m not sure the team enjoyed it, frankly. That much fast food heaped together was a bit nauseating to behold, even for me. Though the room-wide indigestion of the post-lunch meetings did have the salutary effect of not letting anyone drift off to sleep.
Transcultural and trans-fatty.
Mission Elapsed Time: 20:00:21:06:42:40
Recently this blog (and my Flickr account) turned 20 years old, forever in Internet years. I went back through it all, retracing digital footprints made on what feels like a different planet. Here are some highlights.
The Terror Tourist
A roughly monthly exploration of places in horror fiction — real or imagined, geographical or psychological — culled from The Heavy Leather Horror Show.
Subscribe to the podcast or the email newsletter or just read through the archives posted here.
The Ampcamper
How I hauled myself, two teens, an 80 lb dog, and a whole load of crap 4000+ miles across six states in twenty days using an electric vehicle. And survived to tell the tale.
