Sometime in the last week or two, I started getting huge amounts of backscatter spam to my google apps domain. Looking through the settings, I found that a nickname "*@mydomain.com" had been added to my account, and the accompanying "remove" link didn't work. As you might guess, this really isn't a good thing.
Here's how to fix it:
Dashboard -> Service Settings -> Email
There's a setting for "Catch-all address". You can create a catch-all address if you want, but I chose to discard email unless it's to a valid user.
It looks like the recent back-end work at google changed the default behavior.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Monday, September 6, 2010
[vox] mp3eme VOX: Your 1st Time
I'm really glad I went to something cool for my first concert. Back in 1985-86, I spent a year living in Finland. I attended "Munki Vouren Ala-asten Peruskoulu" for 6th grade, and lived in a suburb of Helsinki (Munki Vouri - I think that translates to monk mountain or some such).
I've always been a little against the grain, so in the sea of die-hard Kiss fans that were the boys of the class, I decided that my favorite band was going to be Dire Straits. This was right around the time that Brothers in Arms, came out - also the time that the CD was first starting to come up as a format. I think they hooked my attention when I saw the crude computer generated video for Money for Nothing.
At any rate, some friends of the family managed to snag us some scalped tickets for the "Live in '85" tour (being held at the Helsinki Ice Hockey rink - sponsord by Philips, the CD kings). Our seats were close to the stage, but sadly behind a stack of amps. Still, I probably could have hit the bass player if I had thrown something at him. The sound was shit, but hey - it was a hockey rink.
When I was looking through my mp3 collection I found that the only Dire Straits album I still have is Alchemy, which was recorded onthe previous tour. Oh well, still a good album. I think the bassline for Once Upon a Time in the West may have paved the way for my later appreciation of reggae.
I've always been a little against the grain, so in the sea of die-hard Kiss fans that were the boys of the class, I decided that my favorite band was going to be Dire Straits. This was right around the time that Brothers in Arms, came out - also the time that the CD was first starting to come up as a format. I think they hooked my attention when I saw the crude computer generated video for Money for Nothing.
At any rate, some friends of the family managed to snag us some scalped tickets for the "Live in '85" tour (being held at the Helsinki Ice Hockey rink - sponsord by Philips, the CD kings). Our seats were close to the stage, but sadly behind a stack of amps. Still, I probably could have hit the bass player if I had thrown something at him. The sound was shit, but hey - it was a hockey rink.
When I was looking through my mp3 collection I found that the only Dire Straits album I still have is Alchemy, which was recorded onthe previous tour. Oh well, still a good album. I think the bassline for Once Upon a Time in the West may have paved the way for my later appreciation of reggae.
[vox] Review: Restaurant Kaikodo (Orig: May 21, 2007)
(Update: Hilo is still a small town, and Kaikodo has folded. I liked the writing for this, so I rescued it from the burning carcass of Vox before I deleted my account)
Hilo is a small town with limited culinary options. As such, I was extremely excited a few years ago by the news that an "upscale" restaurant, run by people who had successfully survived the blood-sport that is the New York food scene, were going to try their hand at operating here, in the middle of the Pacific. Grand plans were proposed: they purchased a decommissioned Masonic temple in the heart of the downtown area, and were planning on renovating the second floor to be a gallery space. The ground floor was to house their restaurant.
It's several years later now, and their grand designs have failed to materialize. After a successful opening, business tapered off as their novelty waned. The art gallery (which would have required enormous amounts of capital) never opened. Casting about, seeming at random, the management decided to open a sushi restaurant in a small annex next to the main dining room. Although the food was good (Fantastic, actually - this would be a very different review had they kept it), the space was also used as their event room. Unsurprisingly, the unpredictable hours and random event closures drove away even the most devout local diners.
Every few years, I revisit Restaurant Kaikodo to see if anything has changed. On Saturday, Miss Scotch and I decided the time had come for our biennial festival of disappointment.
I made reservations for us, as Scotch had found out that the second floor (remember the proposed art gallery space I mentioned?) was being used that night for a high school prom. We assumed that this meant that the dining room would be packed. We were wrong. Perhaps the first bad sign was that on a Saturday night, in the height of graduation season, the place was at roughly 10% capacity. The dining room itself is cavernous, and appointed with faux-Chihuly light fixtures reminiscent of psychedelic squid. I suspect the mix of occidental and oriental fixtures and furnishings is meant to provide a pacific fusion feel, but instead it highlights the lack of focus that was to be the theme of our dining experience.
At this point, I'd like to say that we didn't have a horrible dinner. Our morally ambiguous foie gras starters were nice (although the portions were quite small), as was the salad of local greens that we shared. The real problem was the main course.
Now, I understand that duck confit is meant to be somewhat salty. After all, the dish grew out of a preservative method where the target meat is cured in salt, and the poached slowly in fat. This was perhaps the saltiest meal that I have ever been served.
As I understand it, there are two main reasons why restaurants put specials on the menu. Either they have run across a nice supply of an ingredient that they don't normally have access to (ideal), or they are trying to clean up their kitchen before the ingredients they have go off (to be avoided). Sadly, our dinners fit into this latter category.
Had the duck been served with appropriate accompaniment, it would have been fine. Instead, we received: a rather dodgy looking cooked asian slaw with "well done" chunks of ahi, and fried potatoes with pancetta. I'd like to take a moment to note that regardless of how good your ahi was to start out with, if you cook it all the way through, it's just tuna. From the size and cut of the chunks, this was clearly ahi that had originally been intended for a poke.
Oh dear. Salt on salt with a side of salt. I'm still not clear on what they were trying to accomplish with the chunks of Italian bacon. This combination also did not lend itself to a good presentation. Brown and white. Even something as simple as braised bok choi in a hoisin sauce would have added some color, and a much needed sweetness (as an aside, I used the leftover duck confit in an omelet the next morning with some shitake and hoisin sauce - sadly much nicer than what we were served). The cost for this saline monstrosity? $30 a head.
Luckily for Restaurant Kaikodo, the owners are loaded, and don't seem to mind running a mediocre kitchen. It's interesting to note that they have flipped head chefs twice in the last year, and yet the menu has not changed since the day they opened. I suspect that the chef is treated as little more than a line cook by the management. If it weren't for the owners' tremendous financial reserves, I'm convinced they would have had to close the place years ago. Pretentious, overpriced food. Little local interest. A complete lack of focus.
Someone call Gordon Ramsay.
Hilo is a small town with limited culinary options. As such, I was extremely excited a few years ago by the news that an "upscale" restaurant, run by people who had successfully survived the blood-sport that is the New York food scene, were going to try their hand at operating here, in the middle of the Pacific. Grand plans were proposed: they purchased a decommissioned Masonic temple in the heart of the downtown area, and were planning on renovating the second floor to be a gallery space. The ground floor was to house their restaurant.
It's several years later now, and their grand designs have failed to materialize. After a successful opening, business tapered off as their novelty waned. The art gallery (which would have required enormous amounts of capital) never opened. Casting about, seeming at random, the management decided to open a sushi restaurant in a small annex next to the main dining room. Although the food was good (Fantastic, actually - this would be a very different review had they kept it), the space was also used as their event room. Unsurprisingly, the unpredictable hours and random event closures drove away even the most devout local diners.
Every few years, I revisit Restaurant Kaikodo to see if anything has changed. On Saturday, Miss Scotch and I decided the time had come for our biennial festival of disappointment.
I made reservations for us, as Scotch had found out that the second floor (remember the proposed art gallery space I mentioned?) was being used that night for a high school prom. We assumed that this meant that the dining room would be packed. We were wrong. Perhaps the first bad sign was that on a Saturday night, in the height of graduation season, the place was at roughly 10% capacity. The dining room itself is cavernous, and appointed with faux-Chihuly light fixtures reminiscent of psychedelic squid. I suspect the mix of occidental and oriental fixtures and furnishings is meant to provide a pacific fusion feel, but instead it highlights the lack of focus that was to be the theme of our dining experience.
At this point, I'd like to say that we didn't have a horrible dinner. Our morally ambiguous foie gras starters were nice (although the portions were quite small), as was the salad of local greens that we shared. The real problem was the main course.
Now, I understand that duck confit is meant to be somewhat salty. After all, the dish grew out of a preservative method where the target meat is cured in salt, and the poached slowly in fat. This was perhaps the saltiest meal that I have ever been served.
As I understand it, there are two main reasons why restaurants put specials on the menu. Either they have run across a nice supply of an ingredient that they don't normally have access to (ideal), or they are trying to clean up their kitchen before the ingredients they have go off (to be avoided). Sadly, our dinners fit into this latter category.
Had the duck been served with appropriate accompaniment, it would have been fine. Instead, we received: a rather dodgy looking cooked asian slaw with "well done" chunks of ahi, and fried potatoes with pancetta. I'd like to take a moment to note that regardless of how good your ahi was to start out with, if you cook it all the way through, it's just tuna. From the size and cut of the chunks, this was clearly ahi that had originally been intended for a poke.
Oh dear. Salt on salt with a side of salt. I'm still not clear on what they were trying to accomplish with the chunks of Italian bacon. This combination also did not lend itself to a good presentation. Brown and white. Even something as simple as braised bok choi in a hoisin sauce would have added some color, and a much needed sweetness (as an aside, I used the leftover duck confit in an omelet the next morning with some shitake and hoisin sauce - sadly much nicer than what we were served). The cost for this saline monstrosity? $30 a head.
Luckily for Restaurant Kaikodo, the owners are loaded, and don't seem to mind running a mediocre kitchen. It's interesting to note that they have flipped head chefs twice in the last year, and yet the menu has not changed since the day they opened. I suspect that the chef is treated as little more than a line cook by the management. If it weren't for the owners' tremendous financial reserves, I'm convinced they would have had to close the place years ago. Pretentious, overpriced food. Little local interest. A complete lack of focus.
Someone call Gordon Ramsay.
[vox] Ah, SF. (Orig June 27, 2007)
So I'm back in Hawaii after a last minute training trip to SF. About a month ago my boss informed me that I needed to help burn the office training budget, so I opted for an interesting sounding class: "Solaris 10 New Features for Experienced System Administrators". Ok, It sounded interesting to me - I'm sure most people would rather gouge their eyes out rather than sit through a week of that.
I decided to head out a day or two before the class started so I'd have some time to fuck around in the city. I also opted to stay a couple of days afterward. I loathe flying, so if I have to travel I like to make sure it's worth the trouble. I did not, however, realize that the last couple of days that I had scheduled there were the kick off of Pride Week. Also, perhaps coincidentally, a large number of SF native friends decided to vacate the city for the weekend.
I left Hilo on Friday night, and stopped for an evening in Honolulu. A good friend of mine had just broken up with her boyfriend earlier in the week, and required a session of commiseration drinks at our favorite bar: the Hideaway. Another good friend, and member of my legal defense team, joined us for a few cocktails as well (He also kindly gave me a lift to the airport the next morning).
Hideaway Ms. PacMan
At this point I'd like to mention that was terrible about taking photos on this trip. At any rate, Anderson dropped me at the united terminal the next morning. Although work paid for my tickets (Incidentally, tickets to SF that cost almost $1k - seriously people, WTF?) I used a bunch of my miles to bump myself up to first class, so the trip over was pretty enjoyable. I sat next to a dude who was just returning from a few months in the Marshall Islands. He was working on building a resort there, as a hobby project (!!). Nice, dude.
Having arrived in SF full of gin and tonic, my next task was to get to my hotel. I'd gone through a list of places on the training center's web site, and ended up picking the Hotel Diva. It was...interesting. It's part of a series of "personality" hotels, each with it's own theme. After the sterile box I stayed in when I went on my last work trip to Japan, I thought I'd stay somewhere with character. Also, it had free wireless. My "welcome pack" contained things like a Harlequin Romance novel sampler book, a women's razor, and a sample of some kind of K-Y product (but strangely no condoms - go figure).
After I checked in, I called around to see what people were up to. I ended up going for a quick cocktail with a couple of friends of mine, Kathy and Bianca. I consider both of them to be Hawaii people, although Bianca has moved permanently to SF. Kathy is up in the city organizing and promoting her project Girlfest, and now seems to be seriously contemplating a permanent move. We went to a bar called Molotov's in lower Haight that I've been curious about for some time. Turns out it's a pretty cool punk rock bar - for Hawaii people it's like a cross between Anna's and the Hideaway.
The next morning, I hooked up with another Hawaii-expat, my good friend Chad. We went on an amusing mission to go and find him a guitar, as he has been wanting to learn to play for a while. Our plan is to do guitar lessons over iChatAV over the next few months/years/whatever - more on that as we see how well that turns out. He ended up picking up a rather serviceable Epiphone Dot from guitar center. Thankfully, I managed to talk him into getting a right handed model. I managed to walk out with minimal financial damage - I only picked up a pair of Sony MDR-7506 headphones. Afterwards, he took me back to his "hood" in the inner Richmond district where I finally met his girlfriend of six or so years, Sarah. We had a nice dimsum lunch, followed by a trek into the Mission district to meet up with some other friends at Zeitgeist, something of a second home for a number of my Mission-dwelling friends (Lamont, Cook, I'm looking at you).
So Monday rolls around, and it's time to head off to class. I ended up cabbing it the first couple of days (Monday, I had not planned my route around the giant SF hills, Tuesday I overslept a bit), but I walked it for the most part. The class was held by a third party training firm, located in the financial district. I won't bore you with the details, but I think about 3/5 of the days may actually prove useful to me. The instructor was pretty cool, and the location of the training center gave me lots of lunch options. I managed to catch lunch a couple of times with Ben, another member of my legal defense team, as well as having a groovy lunch with Miss Bianca. I also got to visit the SF branch of Taylor's Automatic Refresher (in the Ferry Building), possibly the best burger joint in the known universe. Here's a couple of photos from the walk:
Ben in his native habitat
Let's see. Monday night I think I went out with Kathy and Bianca again - we headed to a fairly unremarkable bar somewhere near the inner Richmond district (2010 edit: It was the Rocket Room), and I got my ass handed to me playing pool. Tuesday night, I decided to have a bit of a rest, so I grabbed some Indian takeaway from a nearby Pakwan, and hid in my hotel room watching movies all night. Wednesday, I had some of the best food I have ever encountered at Burma Superstar! We had a rather large party (seven people), so it took us a geologic age to get a table. The place is fantastic, but they don't take reservations, and it's roughly the size of a large walk-in closet. Still the wait was completely worth it.
One of the things I always make it a point to do when in SF is to hit the SFMOMA. I decided to meet yet another Hawaii-expat friend of mine, Elizabeth, and take in their evening show on Thursday. The main exhibit was "Matisse: Painter as Sculptor", not really my bag - but they had a pretty groovy photo show going on as well. The top floor was still fucking closed, which really bummed me out. You'd think they would have had time to set something new up since September. After the museum visit, I got a quick tour of Elizabeth's office at the Greenbelt Alliance, where she's managed to move up to being the communications director. We finished out the evening with a schmancy dinner at Two.
On Friday, I hung out with Chad again. Although I'm unsure where I met this dude, we've know each other for at least a decade and a half. In all that time I had never met his little brother. I had even been developing the notion that Mark was some kind of a fictional character - he turned out to be really amusing. Much like a mini-chad, who had decided to become a financial planner.
Chad had some kind of technical meltdown at work, so I had some time to dick around. I ended up grabbing some drinks at the Grand Cafe while waiting for him:
Wall'o'booze
He eventually showed up with Mark and Sarah in tow. By this point, it was quite late, so we decided to grab dinner at Home. We followed this up with some cocktails a few doors down at Lucky 13's. Good stuff, but I think I may have done myself some permanent damage trying to keep up with Mark.
Which brings us to Saturday, my last full day in the city. I mentioned earlier that this was the kick off to pride weekend, which had the result of increasing the rate that I was paying at the hotel by 150%. Rather than spend the extra cash, I decided to take Elizabeth up on her offer and crash at her place in the Mission (see? mission people.). I managed to haul my hung-over ass and huge bag over to her place with little incident, although I must tell you - getting my bag up the three elevator-less floors up to her place was a little rough. Elizabeth was off hiking somewhere in the north, so I took off on foot with the intention of going to upper Haight for a bit of shopping. On the way I stopped for some groovy Peruvian food (I think I will be dreaming of the truffle mac and cheese for months), and picked up a trombone mouthpiece at what's apparently the last brass shop in SF.
I managed to get my fat ass up to the Haight eventually, but found that I really had no consumer impluse left. (I must be going through something.) I hooked up with Chad again, and we did a bit of walking around Union Square. It's interesting how much more fun that area is when you have someone to hang out with. We picked Elizabeth up that evening, and went out for Indian Pizza. Interesting way to get your vinaloo fix. After dinner, Chad was tired and I was freezing (I hadn't planned on being out that long, and had a thin-ass jacket) so he dropped us back to Elizabeth's place. We agreed that were were going to head out for "one drink" which ended up being us closing out the Makeout Room, a bar that was an almost exact twin of a bar that I had once been to in Hollywood. Wierd. Good music though - lots of ragga, hip hop, etc.
A phone call from Elizabeth's husband got us up terribly early the next morning, and so we ventured out in search of breakfast. We ended up at the strangely named "Weird Fish", for a nice breakfast and comically large mimosas. Elizabeth then suggested that we go for a walk, to which I agreed. At this point, you might subsitute the word walk for the term death march. Somehow our walk didn't end until we got to the top of Bernal Heights. I'm glad we did it, but man, I was tired by the time we got back to her place.
Elizabeth in her crib
Which pretty much brings me to end of my trip. Chad was kind enough to give me a lift to the airport, and I had a nice, uneventful first-class trek back to Hawaii-nei. I'm kind of bummed that I didn't get to see and hang out with more of my bay area people, but I guess that's life - I'm sure it won't be too long before I'm back there again.
Things I learned on this trip:
1. Record stores don't really hold much interest for me anymore.
2. SF has really, really, good food (I knew this already, but it's nice to be reminded)
3. Pride week is a pain in the ass.
4. Staying in Union Square sucks.
5. T-Mobile is the worst cell provider in SF (2010 Update: This title now belongs to AT&T)
6. Google maps of SF should have a topographical overlay. (2010 Update: Someone was listening!)
7. Lots of Solaris stuff.
8. I like Hawaii, a lot.
I decided to head out a day or two before the class started so I'd have some time to fuck around in the city. I also opted to stay a couple of days afterward. I loathe flying, so if I have to travel I like to make sure it's worth the trouble. I did not, however, realize that the last couple of days that I had scheduled there were the kick off of Pride Week. Also, perhaps coincidentally, a large number of SF native friends decided to vacate the city for the weekend.
I left Hilo on Friday night, and stopped for an evening in Honolulu. A good friend of mine had just broken up with her boyfriend earlier in the week, and required a session of commiseration drinks at our favorite bar: the Hideaway. Another good friend, and member of my legal defense team, joined us for a few cocktails as well (He also kindly gave me a lift to the airport the next morning).
Hideaway Ms. PacMan
At this point I'd like to mention that was terrible about taking photos on this trip. At any rate, Anderson dropped me at the united terminal the next morning. Although work paid for my tickets (Incidentally, tickets to SF that cost almost $1k - seriously people, WTF?) I used a bunch of my miles to bump myself up to first class, so the trip over was pretty enjoyable. I sat next to a dude who was just returning from a few months in the Marshall Islands. He was working on building a resort there, as a hobby project (!!). Nice, dude.
Having arrived in SF full of gin and tonic, my next task was to get to my hotel. I'd gone through a list of places on the training center's web site, and ended up picking the Hotel Diva. It was...interesting. It's part of a series of "personality" hotels, each with it's own theme. After the sterile box I stayed in when I went on my last work trip to Japan, I thought I'd stay somewhere with character. Also, it had free wireless. My "welcome pack" contained things like a Harlequin Romance novel sampler book, a women's razor, and a sample of some kind of K-Y product (but strangely no condoms - go figure).
After I checked in, I called around to see what people were up to. I ended up going for a quick cocktail with a couple of friends of mine, Kathy and Bianca. I consider both of them to be Hawaii people, although Bianca has moved permanently to SF. Kathy is up in the city organizing and promoting her project Girlfest, and now seems to be seriously contemplating a permanent move. We went to a bar called Molotov's in lower Haight that I've been curious about for some time. Turns out it's a pretty cool punk rock bar - for Hawaii people it's like a cross between Anna's and the Hideaway.
The next morning, I hooked up with another Hawaii-expat, my good friend Chad. We went on an amusing mission to go and find him a guitar, as he has been wanting to learn to play for a while. Our plan is to do guitar lessons over iChatAV over the next few months/years/whatever - more on that as we see how well that turns out. He ended up picking up a rather serviceable Epiphone Dot from guitar center. Thankfully, I managed to talk him into getting a right handed model. I managed to walk out with minimal financial damage - I only picked up a pair of Sony MDR-7506 headphones. Afterwards, he took me back to his "hood" in the inner Richmond district where I finally met his girlfriend of six or so years, Sarah. We had a nice dimsum lunch, followed by a trek into the Mission district to meet up with some other friends at Zeitgeist, something of a second home for a number of my Mission-dwelling friends (Lamont, Cook, I'm looking at you).
So Monday rolls around, and it's time to head off to class. I ended up cabbing it the first couple of days (Monday, I had not planned my route around the giant SF hills, Tuesday I overslept a bit), but I walked it for the most part. The class was held by a third party training firm, located in the financial district. I won't bore you with the details, but I think about 3/5 of the days may actually prove useful to me. The instructor was pretty cool, and the location of the training center gave me lots of lunch options. I managed to catch lunch a couple of times with Ben, another member of my legal defense team, as well as having a groovy lunch with Miss Bianca. I also got to visit the SF branch of Taylor's Automatic Refresher (in the Ferry Building), possibly the best burger joint in the known universe. Here's a couple of photos from the walk:
Ben in his native habitat
Let's see. Monday night I think I went out with Kathy and Bianca again - we headed to a fairly unremarkable bar somewhere near the inner Richmond district (2010 edit: It was the Rocket Room), and I got my ass handed to me playing pool. Tuesday night, I decided to have a bit of a rest, so I grabbed some Indian takeaway from a nearby Pakwan, and hid in my hotel room watching movies all night. Wednesday, I had some of the best food I have ever encountered at Burma Superstar! We had a rather large party (seven people), so it took us a geologic age to get a table. The place is fantastic, but they don't take reservations, and it's roughly the size of a large walk-in closet. Still the wait was completely worth it.
One of the things I always make it a point to do when in SF is to hit the SFMOMA. I decided to meet yet another Hawaii-expat friend of mine, Elizabeth, and take in their evening show on Thursday. The main exhibit was "Matisse: Painter as Sculptor", not really my bag - but they had a pretty groovy photo show going on as well. The top floor was still fucking closed, which really bummed me out. You'd think they would have had time to set something new up since September. After the museum visit, I got a quick tour of Elizabeth's office at the Greenbelt Alliance, where she's managed to move up to being the communications director. We finished out the evening with a schmancy dinner at Two.
On Friday, I hung out with Chad again. Although I'm unsure where I met this dude, we've know each other for at least a decade and a half. In all that time I had never met his little brother. I had even been developing the notion that Mark was some kind of a fictional character - he turned out to be really amusing. Much like a mini-chad, who had decided to become a financial planner.
Chad had some kind of technical meltdown at work, so I had some time to dick around. I ended up grabbing some drinks at the Grand Cafe while waiting for him:
Wall'o'booze
He eventually showed up with Mark and Sarah in tow. By this point, it was quite late, so we decided to grab dinner at Home. We followed this up with some cocktails a few doors down at Lucky 13's. Good stuff, but I think I may have done myself some permanent damage trying to keep up with Mark.
Which brings us to Saturday, my last full day in the city. I mentioned earlier that this was the kick off to pride weekend, which had the result of increasing the rate that I was paying at the hotel by 150%. Rather than spend the extra cash, I decided to take Elizabeth up on her offer and crash at her place in the Mission (see? mission people.). I managed to haul my hung-over ass and huge bag over to her place with little incident, although I must tell you - getting my bag up the three elevator-less floors up to her place was a little rough. Elizabeth was off hiking somewhere in the north, so I took off on foot with the intention of going to upper Haight for a bit of shopping. On the way I stopped for some groovy Peruvian food (I think I will be dreaming of the truffle mac and cheese for months), and picked up a trombone mouthpiece at what's apparently the last brass shop in SF.
I managed to get my fat ass up to the Haight eventually, but found that I really had no consumer impluse left. (I must be going through something.) I hooked up with Chad again, and we did a bit of walking around Union Square. It's interesting how much more fun that area is when you have someone to hang out with. We picked Elizabeth up that evening, and went out for Indian Pizza. Interesting way to get your vinaloo fix. After dinner, Chad was tired and I was freezing (I hadn't planned on being out that long, and had a thin-ass jacket) so he dropped us back to Elizabeth's place. We agreed that were were going to head out for "one drink" which ended up being us closing out the Makeout Room, a bar that was an almost exact twin of a bar that I had once been to in Hollywood. Wierd. Good music though - lots of ragga, hip hop, etc.
A phone call from Elizabeth's husband got us up terribly early the next morning, and so we ventured out in search of breakfast. We ended up at the strangely named "Weird Fish", for a nice breakfast and comically large mimosas. Elizabeth then suggested that we go for a walk, to which I agreed. At this point, you might subsitute the word walk for the term death march. Somehow our walk didn't end until we got to the top of Bernal Heights. I'm glad we did it, but man, I was tired by the time we got back to her place.
Elizabeth in her crib
Which pretty much brings me to end of my trip. Chad was kind enough to give me a lift to the airport, and I had a nice, uneventful first-class trek back to Hawaii-nei. I'm kind of bummed that I didn't get to see and hang out with more of my bay area people, but I guess that's life - I'm sure it won't be too long before I'm back there again.
Things I learned on this trip:
1. Record stores don't really hold much interest for me anymore.
2. SF has really, really, good food (I knew this already, but it's nice to be reminded)
3. Pride week is a pain in the ass.
4. Staying in Union Square sucks.
5. T-Mobile is the worst cell provider in SF (2010 Update: This title now belongs to AT&T)
6. Google maps of SF should have a topographical overlay. (2010 Update: Someone was listening!)
7. Lots of Solaris stuff.
8. I like Hawaii, a lot.
[vox] Oh, shit.
It's funny how many of the places that I used to hang out at as a kid are gone now. My favorite high school coffee shop (Coffee Manoa) went down years ago. The pool hall that I used to love in the building with all of the Korean bars and cheap parking (Keaumoku Billiards) has been gone so long that even most of my friends don't remember it. My favorite record shop has moved and changed hands so many times I wouldn't even know where to find it anymore (not that I have much of an interest in physical music media anymore, but still - I used to, goddamnit). The first bar I ever drank at (CD Cafe), as well as all of the clubs that I used to go to have all shut down for one reason or another. Even the fucking Wave, Honolulu's longest running cheesy meat-market club (26 years!) is no more.
Today I found out that the art house theater that I spent so much time at in both high school and all though my college years shut down recently. I spent so many nights at the Varsity, I think I would be hard presed to remember a fifth of the movies that I saw there. Here's a few of the ones that I can remeber:
Dangerous Liasons
The Blade Runner Director's Cut
Zentropa
Farewell My Concubine
The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert
Kafka
Actually, working on this list is depressing me more. I think I'll go off and have a good cry instead. I'm glad I wasn't planning on having children. I wouldn't have much of my youth left to show them. Goodbye old friend, I'll miss you.
Today I found out that the art house theater that I spent so much time at in both high school and all though my college years shut down recently. I spent so many nights at the Varsity, I think I would be hard presed to remember a fifth of the movies that I saw there. Here's a few of the ones that I can remeber:
Dangerous Liasons
The Blade Runner Director's Cut
Zentropa
Farewell My Concubine
The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert
Kafka
Actually, working on this list is depressing me more. I think I'll go off and have a good cry instead. I'm glad I wasn't planning on having children. I wouldn't have much of my youth left to show them. Goodbye old friend, I'll miss you.
[vox] Vox Hunt: Life-Changing Albums
"Audio: Show us five CDs or albums that changed your life. "
Ok, here we go.
Metallica - Master of Puppets
It seems like a strange choice, but this was the album that started me on the road to where I am today. Ever see "SLC Punk" ? There's a flashback scene at the end where the main characters are teenagers, playing D&D in the basement. That's pretty much where I was. I had an unnatural fondness for pen and paper roll playing games, and boy did I look like it. I got pretty into "Call of Cthulhu", and one of my fellow unlayable nerds let me know that there was a song called "The Thing That Should Not Be" on Metallica's Master of Puppets. Arguably, being a metalhead is a sideways social move from being an RPG nerd, but at least it got me out to shows and causing trouble instead of rolling up characters in my room.
Bad Religion - Suffer
After a few years of metal, I got kind of sick of the cartoonishness of the lyrics, and the wankery of the guitar players. Don't get me wrong, I'll still pop a Slayer disk in now and again, but I needed something that spoke a little more directly to me. Enter punk rock. Suffer still has the distinction of being the only punk album that has ever made me reach for a dictionary.
The Specials
So I had a prety good thing going on with the punk and all. One night, I was hanging out with an extremely knowlegable cool girl (that I coincidentally had a huge crush on). I thought I knew what was up. She asked me if I wanted to hear "what skinheads listen to". Personally, I was expecting some handcore Oi! or something. Instead I got the dulcet tones of Rico Rodriguez's Trombone on "A Message to You Rudy". I was owned, and to this day, I still listen to more ska than anything else.
Jane's Addiction XXX
I don't remeber who first turned me on to Jane's Addiction. Things from that period are a little...fuzzy. Whoever it was set the soundtrack for my life for the next few years though. I still listen to (XXX? Live at the Roxy? Jane's Addiction?) a few times a year. It's just so wonderfully raw and organic. Even though Navarro is kind of a sellout whore these days, he had more influence on my guitar playing than pretty much anyone else.
The Smiths
Ah the Smiths. I do know who is responsible for this one, but I don't blame them. This was "my band" for the last year of high school, as well as my first couple of years of college. Actually, I had a mix tape with the Jane's Addiciton XXX album on one side, and Rank on the other. I don't think it left my car's casset player for a full year. Morrissey's voice provided the soundtrack for many nights of pretentious conversation, independent film viewing missions, thai food, and more coffee and cigarettes than anyone should probably consume in a lifetime.
Ok, here we go.
Metallica - Master of Puppets
It seems like a strange choice, but this was the album that started me on the road to where I am today. Ever see "SLC Punk" ? There's a flashback scene at the end where the main characters are teenagers, playing D&D in the basement. That's pretty much where I was. I had an unnatural fondness for pen and paper roll playing games, and boy did I look like it. I got pretty into "Call of Cthulhu", and one of my fellow unlayable nerds let me know that there was a song called "The Thing That Should Not Be" on Metallica's Master of Puppets. Arguably, being a metalhead is a sideways social move from being an RPG nerd, but at least it got me out to shows and causing trouble instead of rolling up characters in my room.
Bad Religion - Suffer
After a few years of metal, I got kind of sick of the cartoonishness of the lyrics, and the wankery of the guitar players. Don't get me wrong, I'll still pop a Slayer disk in now and again, but I needed something that spoke a little more directly to me. Enter punk rock. Suffer still has the distinction of being the only punk album that has ever made me reach for a dictionary.
The Specials
So I had a prety good thing going on with the punk and all. One night, I was hanging out with an extremely knowlegable cool girl (that I coincidentally had a huge crush on). I thought I knew what was up. She asked me if I wanted to hear "what skinheads listen to". Personally, I was expecting some handcore Oi! or something. Instead I got the dulcet tones of Rico Rodriguez's Trombone on "A Message to You Rudy". I was owned, and to this day, I still listen to more ska than anything else.
Jane's Addiction XXX
I don't remeber who first turned me on to Jane's Addiction. Things from that period are a little...fuzzy. Whoever it was set the soundtrack for my life for the next few years though. I still listen to (XXX? Live at the Roxy? Jane's Addiction?) a few times a year. It's just so wonderfully raw and organic. Even though Navarro is kind of a sellout whore these days, he had more influence on my guitar playing than pretty much anyone else.
The Smiths
Ah the Smiths. I do know who is responsible for this one, but I don't blame them. This was "my band" for the last year of high school, as well as my first couple of years of college. Actually, I had a mix tape with the Jane's Addiciton XXX album on one side, and Rank on the other. I don't think it left my car's casset player for a full year. Morrissey's voice provided the soundtrack for many nights of pretentious conversation, independent film viewing missions, thai food, and more coffee and cigarettes than anyone should probably consume in a lifetime.
[vox] QotD: Thanks for the Memories
"What are the 10 most memorable music performances you've seen? (Remember, "memorable" may not be good.) "
10. Red Hot Chili Peppers
I had originally bought two tickets for the first night of this show. I'm sure I had meant to take a young lady with me or something, but as usual things didn't work out for me. I ended up trading my extra second night ticket to someone and going both nights. The first night, I got a little altered, and the second I went dead sober. An interesting experiment. I had a lot more fun sober.
9. Morrissey
The show started about two hours late. I found out afterwards that his royal Mozness had thrown a shit-fit regarding the sale of hot dogs at the venue. Still, once he started it was amazing. I remember seeing a bunch of people carrying calla lillies with blousy shirts and pomps milling around before the show. As soon as Morrissey hit the stage, they were bowled over by a couple of companies worth of military guys. (Who knew?) I also remember fighting my way to the front when he started playing Alsatian Cousin - I made my way to the front, and managed to lift myself above the crowd just as it was surging forward. I spent the entire song suspended in the air in a christ pose, with Morrissey leaning down and singing to me. Beautiful.
8. Nirvana (SUCKED)
I know a lot of people hold this band in high regard, but to be honest, I never cared for them. As far as I was concerned, they were johnny-come-latelys to the "alternative" music scene. I really only went becuse I was a bit of a show whore at the time. The promoters had vastly oversold the club, and it was next to impossible to move around. Unsurprisingly, they were shit live. Cobain also copped attitude to one of my friends who was working the show on his way down from the VIP room.
Friend: "Have a good show mr. Cobain!"
Cobain: "Fuck you."
Really classy. Fucker.
7. The Selecter
My girlfriend at the time was planning on leaving for a semester away in San Bernadino, and I had gotten us Selecter tickets as kind of a going-away thing. We didn't end up going the night before she left (alone time seemed more important), but I had gotten a ticket for the night that she left as well. After a tearful goodbye at the airport, I decided that I would go to the show to cheer myself up (It was the Selecter, for god's sake).
When I got to the venue, it was pissing down rain. After a few minutes inside, the power went out, and the club management decided they were going to kick us out onto the street ("fire code") to stand in the rain and wait for the power to come back on. About an hour later, only a quarter of the crowd was left. A bouncer popper his head out, and decided to finally show some compassion for the soaked mass of rudeboys and rudegirls who had been patiently waiting around. I remember very clearly he said "Wow, you guys are still here? You'd better come inside.").
Sortly after we had gotten back inside, I noticed that the band was sitting at the bar. Mustering up a bit of courage, I went over and talked to them. I think I told the keyboard player that I loved him ("Oi! Didja hear that? This guy loves me!"). I also managed to exchange a few words with Pauline Black. While I was talking to her, the power came back on, and the band headed for the stage. Fucking magic night.
6. the Specials
So the specials comeback album (Today's Specials) was pretty disapointing, but they rocked the house when they toured. I think I came pretty close to heart failure dancing the whole night. I remember them being pretty upset about the people who were "crowd surfing" (Thanks Pearl Jam). Even after ranting about it for a while, some ditzy girl decided she was going to do it anyway. They dedicated a song to her: Little Bitch. Awesome.
At the end of the show, they announced that they were having a party back at the hotel, and that we were all invited. My friend Shina decided they were serious, so she went up and asked the manager where it was. she had a way of pursuading me to do silly things, so we ended up going to the Ala Moana Hotel to look for them. I'll never forget the scene when we got there. The hotel sported a dodgy meat-market night club, and when we arrived, there was a big group of skinheads and rudies on one side of the lobby, a big group of steroid-pumped club-heads on the other, and a cop standing in the middle looking realy, really worried. We did end up going up to the room briefly, and I got to meet a couple of the guys. Awesome. Shina, on the other hand, being a cute girl got to hang out with them for a couple of days.
5. Mighty Mighty Bosstones
I'll never forget the first time I saw these guys. There was something magic about the plaid bulldog banner unfurling, accompanied by the swelling bagpipe music as the huge band took the stage. Dickie spent a couple of minutes leaning down and talking to the bouncers, assuring them that it was cool if people wanted to get up on stage with them and dance. They had a fantastic friendly energy that I'd never seen before or since. On the way back to the car, I ran across Dickie smoking a cigarette outside. He liked my tie.
4. Porno for Pyros
I've seen these guys a few times. On their first tour, their album hadn't been released yet, so it was cool to get a preview of what was to come. Sadly, I had mono, and was leaned up in the corner, trying not to pass out. Anyone that can get me to have a good time when that sick gets my seal of approval.
I also remember seeing them at an outdoor festival, the Big Mele. we used to have one every year out on the North shore of Oahu at Kualoa Ranch. the image of hot, Hot, HOT girls dressed as stripper devils spitting columns of fire is something that I will think about until I die.
3. Dead Can Dance
I caught these guys at the Greek Theater in Berkley, shortly before the band broke up. I remember the show clearly, as Perry seemed to be pretty irritated with Gerard (likely because her solo work was outstripping the band). There was a wierd tension in the air. I remember one bit where Gerard screwed up the timing on Rakim, stepping on Perry's part. The lok he shot her was pure venom. After the song was over, he threw down his tambourine, and stomped to the back of the stage in a huff. Still a good show, but a little uncomfortable. =P
2. Proto-Lilith Fair
You wouldn't know it by looking at me, but I used to be a huge Sarah McLachlan fan. When I saw an ad for a show with Paula Cole, Susanne Vega, and Sarah at the Greek Theater, I jumped at the chance to go. I also lucked out, and managed to score 6th row center tickets in the parking lot (with no markup, I might add).
I had never heard of Paula Cole. I think her main claim to fame at the time was taking over the Kate Bush parts on Peter Gabriel's tour. I was amazed that a solo girl with a piano could have that kind of stage presence. A good start.
Next up was Susanne Vega, who had kind of disapeared from the music scene for a few years after putting out 99.9 F. I was a little shocked. Instead of the waifish singer that I was expecting (from the videos that I had seen), she pretty much looked like someone's mom. She put on a hell of a show though - her main talent seemed to be the ability to have personal conversation with the audience. She was also very, very funny. It turns out that the reason she had dropped out of music was, in fact, to be a mom.
When Sarah popped her head out and came on to the stage, the audience was dead silent. The reason? We didn't recognize her. People who started listening to her around the time of Fumbling Towards Ecstacy might be unfamiliar with her earlier work and look. she used to have curly brown hair, and wear flowy black dresses. This woman had vinyl snakeskin pants, and blonde highlights. We sat there puzzed until she took a step out, and gave us a big smile and wave - at which point the crowd exploded. Her band was a little stripped down that night, but she was still pretty amazing. Little did I know what was to come out of her offhand comments about starting a "Lillith Fair" the next year...
1. Jane's Addiction's last show
I really can't describe how awesome this show was. Perry and Stephen got naked. It had the biggest pit I had ever seen (I colided with Mike Muir from Suicidal Tendencies on the way out) . The band was going balls out, as they knew it was going to be their last show together. Somone had broken Dave's acoustic guitar the night before, so instead of finishing with Jane Says, they mic'd up a bunch of flipped over coolers, and played Chip Away for the finale. To this day, it's still the best show I have ever been to.
10. Red Hot Chili Peppers
I had originally bought two tickets for the first night of this show. I'm sure I had meant to take a young lady with me or something, but as usual things didn't work out for me. I ended up trading my extra second night ticket to someone and going both nights. The first night, I got a little altered, and the second I went dead sober. An interesting experiment. I had a lot more fun sober.
9. Morrissey
The show started about two hours late. I found out afterwards that his royal Mozness had thrown a shit-fit regarding the sale of hot dogs at the venue. Still, once he started it was amazing. I remember seeing a bunch of people carrying calla lillies with blousy shirts and pomps milling around before the show. As soon as Morrissey hit the stage, they were bowled over by a couple of companies worth of military guys. (Who knew?) I also remember fighting my way to the front when he started playing Alsatian Cousin - I made my way to the front, and managed to lift myself above the crowd just as it was surging forward. I spent the entire song suspended in the air in a christ pose, with Morrissey leaning down and singing to me. Beautiful.
8. Nirvana (SUCKED)
I know a lot of people hold this band in high regard, but to be honest, I never cared for them. As far as I was concerned, they were johnny-come-latelys to the "alternative" music scene. I really only went becuse I was a bit of a show whore at the time. The promoters had vastly oversold the club, and it was next to impossible to move around. Unsurprisingly, they were shit live. Cobain also copped attitude to one of my friends who was working the show on his way down from the VIP room.
Friend: "Have a good show mr. Cobain!"
Cobain: "Fuck you."
Really classy. Fucker.
7. The Selecter
My girlfriend at the time was planning on leaving for a semester away in San Bernadino, and I had gotten us Selecter tickets as kind of a going-away thing. We didn't end up going the night before she left (alone time seemed more important), but I had gotten a ticket for the night that she left as well. After a tearful goodbye at the airport, I decided that I would go to the show to cheer myself up (It was the Selecter, for god's sake).
When I got to the venue, it was pissing down rain. After a few minutes inside, the power went out, and the club management decided they were going to kick us out onto the street ("fire code") to stand in the rain and wait for the power to come back on. About an hour later, only a quarter of the crowd was left. A bouncer popper his head out, and decided to finally show some compassion for the soaked mass of rudeboys and rudegirls who had been patiently waiting around. I remember very clearly he said "Wow, you guys are still here? You'd better come inside.").
Sortly after we had gotten back inside, I noticed that the band was sitting at the bar. Mustering up a bit of courage, I went over and talked to them. I think I told the keyboard player that I loved him ("Oi! Didja hear that? This guy loves me!"). I also managed to exchange a few words with Pauline Black. While I was talking to her, the power came back on, and the band headed for the stage. Fucking magic night.
6. the Specials
So the specials comeback album (Today's Specials) was pretty disapointing, but they rocked the house when they toured. I think I came pretty close to heart failure dancing the whole night. I remember them being pretty upset about the people who were "crowd surfing" (Thanks Pearl Jam). Even after ranting about it for a while, some ditzy girl decided she was going to do it anyway. They dedicated a song to her: Little Bitch. Awesome.
At the end of the show, they announced that they were having a party back at the hotel, and that we were all invited. My friend Shina decided they were serious, so she went up and asked the manager where it was. she had a way of pursuading me to do silly things, so we ended up going to the Ala Moana Hotel to look for them. I'll never forget the scene when we got there. The hotel sported a dodgy meat-market night club, and when we arrived, there was a big group of skinheads and rudies on one side of the lobby, a big group of steroid-pumped club-heads on the other, and a cop standing in the middle looking realy, really worried. We did end up going up to the room briefly, and I got to meet a couple of the guys. Awesome. Shina, on the other hand, being a cute girl got to hang out with them for a couple of days.
5. Mighty Mighty Bosstones
I'll never forget the first time I saw these guys. There was something magic about the plaid bulldog banner unfurling, accompanied by the swelling bagpipe music as the huge band took the stage. Dickie spent a couple of minutes leaning down and talking to the bouncers, assuring them that it was cool if people wanted to get up on stage with them and dance. They had a fantastic friendly energy that I'd never seen before or since. On the way back to the car, I ran across Dickie smoking a cigarette outside. He liked my tie.
4. Porno for Pyros
I've seen these guys a few times. On their first tour, their album hadn't been released yet, so it was cool to get a preview of what was to come. Sadly, I had mono, and was leaned up in the corner, trying not to pass out. Anyone that can get me to have a good time when that sick gets my seal of approval.
I also remember seeing them at an outdoor festival, the Big Mele. we used to have one every year out on the North shore of Oahu at Kualoa Ranch. the image of hot, Hot, HOT girls dressed as stripper devils spitting columns of fire is something that I will think about until I die.
3. Dead Can Dance
I caught these guys at the Greek Theater in Berkley, shortly before the band broke up. I remember the show clearly, as Perry seemed to be pretty irritated with Gerard (likely because her solo work was outstripping the band). There was a wierd tension in the air. I remember one bit where Gerard screwed up the timing on Rakim, stepping on Perry's part. The lok he shot her was pure venom. After the song was over, he threw down his tambourine, and stomped to the back of the stage in a huff. Still a good show, but a little uncomfortable. =P
2. Proto-Lilith Fair
You wouldn't know it by looking at me, but I used to be a huge Sarah McLachlan fan. When I saw an ad for a show with Paula Cole, Susanne Vega, and Sarah at the Greek Theater, I jumped at the chance to go. I also lucked out, and managed to score 6th row center tickets in the parking lot (with no markup, I might add).
I had never heard of Paula Cole. I think her main claim to fame at the time was taking over the Kate Bush parts on Peter Gabriel's tour. I was amazed that a solo girl with a piano could have that kind of stage presence. A good start.
Next up was Susanne Vega, who had kind of disapeared from the music scene for a few years after putting out 99.9 F. I was a little shocked. Instead of the waifish singer that I was expecting (from the videos that I had seen), she pretty much looked like someone's mom. She put on a hell of a show though - her main talent seemed to be the ability to have personal conversation with the audience. She was also very, very funny. It turns out that the reason she had dropped out of music was, in fact, to be a mom.
When Sarah popped her head out and came on to the stage, the audience was dead silent. The reason? We didn't recognize her. People who started listening to her around the time of Fumbling Towards Ecstacy might be unfamiliar with her earlier work and look. she used to have curly brown hair, and wear flowy black dresses. This woman had vinyl snakeskin pants, and blonde highlights. We sat there puzzed until she took a step out, and gave us a big smile and wave - at which point the crowd exploded. Her band was a little stripped down that night, but she was still pretty amazing. Little did I know what was to come out of her offhand comments about starting a "Lillith Fair" the next year...
1. Jane's Addiction's last show
I really can't describe how awesome this show was. Perry and Stephen got naked. It had the biggest pit I had ever seen (I colided with Mike Muir from Suicidal Tendencies on the way out) . The band was going balls out, as they knew it was going to be their last show together. Somone had broken Dave's acoustic guitar the night before, so instead of finishing with Jane Says, they mic'd up a bunch of flipped over coolers, and played Chip Away for the finale. To this day, it's still the best show I have ever been to.
Transplants
I used to keep a blog on vox.com, and I think I did some good writing there. Due to some personal issues involving my ex-fiance and a vox employee, I shut the blog down and pretty much halted my online writing. Fast forward to 2010, and they are shutting down vox.com. I don't really want to take their option of transferring the blog to typepad, so I'm going to re-post some of the stuff I did there here. On thing I'll say about vox, they did image and mp3 hosting which didn't transfer in my cut-and-pasting. On the off chance you're actually reading this, sorry!
Monday, June 7, 2010
Chili update, and birdnet 2.0
I got these plants about a month ago, just wanted to update on how they were doing. They were getting so big, I had to redo the bird net cage. In the process, I decided to hack down some of the plants that were growing through the fence and do some general cleanup of the garden area.
The chili plants themselves are generating a lot of fruit, but they are taking forever to ripen.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Sunday, May 16, 2010
For SCIENCE!
Ok, so I had to try a Double Down. How could I not? It was actually a little smaller than I thought it would be. In all honesty, it wasn't that bad. The chicken was a little dry. No heart palpitations so far.
The real question: would I ever eat another one? Probably not. Maybe if it were part of some kind of ritual or something.
Friday, May 7, 2010
New Boots!
First try at ordering shoes from the internet. Luckily Fluevog has customer service like no other company I've ever encountered. Instead of processing from a central location, internet orders are handed off to the closest retail store. Amusingly, the woman who called me (and did everything to help me out including checking their old sales DB, busting out measuring tape to check width, etc.) had sold me a pair of shoes years ago.
Thanks Monika! They fit perfectly.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Hawaiian and Chipotle chilies
A couple of chili plants I picked up at the Pahoa market over the weekend, with makeshift bird protection. Despite the heat of the chilies, birds will pick these plants clean.
Something new
I'm going to try to take at least one photo a day, and post it here. Some will be good, some will be bad. It's really just to keep some kind of record of what I waste my time doing.
Monday, April 19, 2010
I have no idea what this means.
So, the annoyances of OSX are pretty infrequent. One thing that does drive me fucking batshit insane is that, logging into my Mac Pro and re-attaching a screen session, screen in its default configuration resizes my terminal windows. The other thing that drives me nuts? Adding stuff to configuration files when I don't know what the line means:
termcapinfo xterm 'is=\E[r\E[m\E[2J\E[H\E[?7h\E[?1;4;6l'
Adding this line to my .screenrc seems to have stopped the behavior that has been irritating me for months, but I have no clue how it works. I just can't win.
termcapinfo xterm 'is=\E[r\E[m\E[2J\E[H\E[?7h\E[?1;4;6l'
Adding this line to my .screenrc seems to have stopped the behavior that has been irritating me for months, but I have no clue how it works. I just can't win.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Mac Mini media center installation notes
So I decided to set up a mac mini as a media center last night, to replace an often dropped Macbook Pro that decided it didn't like me anymore. Everything went pretty smoothly, with a couple of exceptions.
My first hurdle was actually connecting the Mac Mini to my Samsung LCD tv. I had mistakenly assumed that the old Powerbook G4 12" shipped with a mini-DVI connecter similar to that on the new Mini (It has a mini-DVI, as well as a mini displayport). It turns out that the 12" actually shipped with a mini-VGA (analog). Damn. Luckily, I had a mini displayport to DVI adapter sitting around from a previous project. Although it had the extra pins that would indicate a DVI-I connecter, I discovered that after hooking up a DVI to HD15 VGA adapter that it wouldn't pass an analog signal. Damn.
Thus began my exciting journey into HDMI. I live in a small town, so parts are a little hard to come by. I managed to locate a DVI to HDMI cable at the local Radio Shack. It was stupid expensive, but it got the job done.
So the mini boots up, and I'm provided with a few possible display modes. Three TV-specific: 480p, 720p, 1080i - my TV doesn't support 1080p, so this is pretty much expected. Here begins the next issue. If I use the "overscan" setting, the desktop spills over the edges of the display to the point where I don't see the menu bar at the top. If I don't use the "overscan" I end up with a black border around the desktop. This is a real drag.
I hit the internet looking for a solution. Apparently, lots of people have run into this issue over the years. The most common solution via google is to use an app/pref pane that lets you set custom resolutions. The first hit is DisplayConfigX, which is a PPC-only app. Not so much help in Snow Leopard. I found another one that had universal binary support, but it was payware. Irritating.
A little more digging revealed the answer: A setting on the TV. Apparently, what was going on was that I was double overscanning the image. Setting the display to the somewhat un-intuitively named "Just Scan" gave me what I was looking for.
I'm pretty stoked on this new setup - everything is working great. A damn sight better than XBMC on an original Xbox, especially with the audio feeding into my Denon tuner directly over a TOSlink cable. Let the nerdy times roll.
My first hurdle was actually connecting the Mac Mini to my Samsung LCD tv. I had mistakenly assumed that the old Powerbook G4 12" shipped with a mini-DVI connecter similar to that on the new Mini (It has a mini-DVI, as well as a mini displayport). It turns out that the 12" actually shipped with a mini-VGA (analog). Damn. Luckily, I had a mini displayport to DVI adapter sitting around from a previous project. Although it had the extra pins that would indicate a DVI-I connecter, I discovered that after hooking up a DVI to HD15 VGA adapter that it wouldn't pass an analog signal. Damn.
Thus began my exciting journey into HDMI. I live in a small town, so parts are a little hard to come by. I managed to locate a DVI to HDMI cable at the local Radio Shack. It was stupid expensive, but it got the job done.
So the mini boots up, and I'm provided with a few possible display modes. Three TV-specific: 480p, 720p, 1080i - my TV doesn't support 1080p, so this is pretty much expected. Here begins the next issue. If I use the "overscan" setting, the desktop spills over the edges of the display to the point where I don't see the menu bar at the top. If I don't use the "overscan" I end up with a black border around the desktop. This is a real drag.
I hit the internet looking for a solution. Apparently, lots of people have run into this issue over the years. The most common solution via google is to use an app/pref pane that lets you set custom resolutions. The first hit is DisplayConfigX, which is a PPC-only app. Not so much help in Snow Leopard. I found another one that had universal binary support, but it was payware. Irritating.
A little more digging revealed the answer: A setting on the TV. Apparently, what was going on was that I was double overscanning the image. Setting the display to the somewhat un-intuitively named "Just Scan" gave me what I was looking for.
I'm pretty stoked on this new setup - everything is working great. A damn sight better than XBMC on an original Xbox, especially with the audio feeding into my Denon tuner directly over a TOSlink cable. Let the nerdy times roll.
A haiku for the end of Sun Microsystems
fueled by hubris
we put the "dot" in "dot com"
aeron chairs for sale
we put the "dot" in "dot com"
aeron chairs for sale
Thursday, January 7, 2010
launchctl for dummies
I really hate it when people start messing with the way that services are handled on proprietary unix systems. Sun's svcs framework, and Apple's use of launchctl. I got a quick lesson from a buddy of mine today regarding the latter. Starting and stopping services with launchd is not difficult, but some of the terminology is counter intuitive.
What I really wanted to do was to restart sshd to improve security, after a rather alarming look at my /var/log/security log. After making the changes to the sshd_config, I found myself baffled. Here's a quick launchd lesson:
To list services managed by launchd:
launchctl list
[root@gordon:etc]# launchctl list | grep ssh
15736 - 0x100601f70.anonymous.sshd
15831 - 0x10051e770.anonymous.sshd
15829 - 0x100401eb0.anonymous.sshd
15734 - 0x1006018d0.anonymous.sshd
10259 - 0x10051e4b0.anonymous.sshd
10241 - 0x100101ae0.anonymous.sshd
10235 - 0x100101820.anonymous.sshd
- 0 com.openssh.sshd
You'll need the launchd string for anything else you want to do. Incidentally, everything here with a hex number at the beginning is a child process, which you can pretty much ignore.
To restart a launchd-managed service:
launchctl stop [Label]
launchctl stop com.openssh.sshd
Note that "stop" actually means stop the running instance. Launchd will automatically restart the service.
To stop a launchd-managed service:
launchctl unload [Label]
launchctl unload com.openssh.sshd
"Unload" causes the service to be stopped, and not restarted by launchd. This change is not persistent, and the service will be started again on the next system reboot.
To stop a launchd-managed service, and prevent it from starting on the next system boot:
launchctl unload -w [Label]
launchctl unload -w com.openssh.sshd
I'm just using sshd as an example here - this would actually make you pretty unhappy if you did this remotely.
What I really wanted to do was to restart sshd to improve security, after a rather alarming look at my /var/log/security log. After making the changes to the sshd_config, I found myself baffled. Here's a quick launchd lesson:
To list services managed by launchd:
launchctl list
[root@gordon:etc]# launchctl list | grep ssh
15736 - 0x100601f70.anonymous.sshd
15831 - 0x10051e770.anonymous.sshd
15829 - 0x100401eb0.anonymous.sshd
15734 - 0x1006018d0.anonymous.sshd
10259 - 0x10051e4b0.anonymous.sshd
10241 - 0x100101ae0.anonymous.sshd
10235 - 0x100101820.anonymous.sshd
- 0 com.openssh.sshd
You'll need the launchd string for anything else you want to do. Incidentally, everything here with a hex number at the beginning is a child process, which you can pretty much ignore.
To restart a launchd-managed service:
launchctl stop [Label]
launchctl stop com.openssh.sshd
Note that "stop" actually means stop the running instance. Launchd will automatically restart the service.
To stop a launchd-managed service:
launchctl unload [Label]
launchctl unload com.openssh.sshd
"Unload" causes the service to be stopped, and not restarted by launchd. This change is not persistent, and the service will be started again on the next system reboot.
To stop a launchd-managed service, and prevent it from starting on the next system boot:
launchctl unload -w [Label]
launchctl unload -w com.openssh.sshd
I'm just using sshd as an example here - this would actually make you pretty unhappy if you did this remotely.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
