Something That Happened.

I look at places where they're opening new Apple Stores and I've never even heard of these places. Corte Madera? It's somewhere in my home state, California, and a quick search on Mapquest shows me it's somewhere near Marin County, just past San Francisco. Yet I'm still at a loss. It astounds me how little I know of the geography of my own state. Sure, my state is several times larger than many countries but you'd think I'd know California pretty well by now after watching so many episodes of Huell Howser.

I'm reminded of the Apple Store which is supposed to open in San Francisco sometime soon, a sketch of which was displayed during Steve Job's keynote at the Worldwide Developers Conference this week -- details of which were inadvertedly released early, again -- and I'm wondering if this is the same location.

Probably not; perhaps Corte Madera isn't as close to San Francisco as I'm thinking, but certainly there will be yet another Apple Store in or near the bay area. I envision a future in which Apple Computer will dominate Silicon Valley, as it once did, transforming into a a purely Northern California thing in which all the company's stores and buyers will be congregrated in one central (or Central Valley) location, a giant and amazing (Jobs speak) commune of Mac users.

Labels: Apple Inc, Apple Stores, California, geekery, geography, Huell Howser, Mac

Saturday, September 19, 2009: Reading some of these old posts are excruciating. In the past day or so I've deleted a few of the really short and idiotic ones but some of the lengthier ones, like this one, are difficult to let go of. So I'm keeping it posted but I've amended its outdated links (excepting the final one: the final link doesn't make sense anymore but I'm keeping it anyway):

Yesterday I spent the day watching NASCAR racing.

Actually, I was flipping between NASCAR and CART racing since both started simultaneously. Now, I'm not your typical auto racing fan. I rarely watch the sport, but when I do I really get into it.

Yesterday, for example, I couldn't seem to get enough of the battle to the finish line between the Gordon brothers (they are brothers, aren't they?). To be honest, it wasn't really a battle -- Robbie Gordon clearly had the advantage -- but Jeff was keeping Robbie's pedal to the metal.

I lost interest in the CART race sometime after the first half of the race and switched to the NASCAR race permanently; NASCAR was more fun and maybe that's because NASCAR seems a bit more human than CART racing. NASCAR's got the family histories: the Dales, the Pettys, the Gordons, and probably several more I'm not aware of. CART has the Andrettis, I think, but I'm not sure who else.

The cars themselves in NASCAR are more human: the CART cars are machines, with hardly a container for a person; it's somewhat like a miniaturized version of a plane's fusilage, but fitted for only one person, designed purely for utility. The NASCAR vehicles, on the other hand, are real cars -- or at least, they look like them -- and although they're slower than the CARTs they remind us of our own vehicles.

For other reasons I haven't yet analyzed, NASCAR is also more exciting to watch on T.V. (In person the CARTs are much more exciting than on T.V.; I've seen the CARTs in person and once your senses are assaulted with that experience, it's difficult to forget; the CARTs are loud and certainly quicken your pulse.)

So that's my take on auto racing, for now. If you want more on auto racing you've got to read a racing blog or sumpin'. I'm going to get busy finding out when the next race is so I can sneak away like Secret Agent Josephine did that day she was supposed to be at work. (Okay, that was dumb. That last link had no reason to be referenced, other than the fact that person, or blogger, or whatever, had mentioned skipping work to go to the Toyota Grand Prix one day. But that just demonstrates the lengths to which those mad racing fans will go to watch those wheels roll in person--to smell the burning asphalt, to hearing the thundering bees.)

Labels: auto racing, CART racing, NASCAR

Saturday, September 19, 2009: Removed the link to the DotMac.info website because the site longer exists.

I constantly find really fun and creative sites at DotMac.info, like this collection of Quicktime 360-degree panoramic images from the Panorama Backpacker, or this infrared photography by Steve Wilson. Perhaps more of these website owners have more time to create their art because they don't spend that time coding their websites.

Labels: DotMacDotInfo, obsolete websites, photography, short post

Saturday, September 19, 2009: Had to alter a couple of dead links. A link to the Metababy website no longer worked -- and besides, it's been taken over by spammers. Read about Metababy in this Wikipedia article.

As a result of my removal of the link, the post no longer makes sense:

Rest? Hell, we'll sleep when we're dead. (Link found on The Presurfer)

Labels: Metababy, The Presurfer, wikis

So Steinbeck's East of Eden was chosen as the first selection in the return of Oprah's Book Club. I always knew Oprah had good taste. I tried to get mom to read East of Eden a few months ago, but she showed no interest and didn't get very far in the novel. As soon as Oprah recommended it, though...let's just say I'm not going to hear the end of it until I find her another copy. The last one came from the library -- the only copy the city of Los Angeles Public Library has -- and it looks like someone else has it now. So it's off to Half.com to see if I can get a copy.

Labels: books, John Steinbeck, libraries, short post

Saturday, September 19, 2009: As with the post immediately preceding this one, I've made some alterations. A couple of links were removed: my links blog SLABTO is no longer being actively published (though I'm pretty sure an archive of it still exists in Blogger, and though it's doubtful, I may end up publishing it again one day) and my blog Making Contact was eventually transmogrified into VoyagerRadio's blog; for an historical approximation of what it once was, check out the Internet Archive's record of the blog.

Some minor grammatical improvements were also made.

I'm currently listening to Alice in Chains on my Pandora Radio station. When I was younger people always told me I looked like lead singer Layne Staley.

Original post follows:

I'm tired of the look of this blog. It was cool for awhile (Wow, look at that template! What bold color choices. What sheer simplistic fun!), but I've been too busy to change the look, what with all the other web projects I've got going on. Okay, so I don't have that much going on, but I do have that VoyagerRadio thing. And SLABTO. And Making Contact. And -- oh, hell, you get the idea.

I've already made some subtle changes to the template; maybe I should tweak the colors. That's what I've been intending to do, and you may be thrown off the next time you visit. Well, there's really not that many of you visiting, so you may not really be thrown off that much, and after all, this is a space for experimentation. I envision constant changes, a hodgepodge of activity. No conformity to the rules of blogging.

Labels: blogging, blogs, music, project updates, VoyagerRadio

Saturday, September 19, 2009: This post is now ancient, as far as blogs go. The post that originally followed these italicized paragraphs no longer applies since the store mentioned in the post no longer exists on my Internet radio website (though it still exists on the CafePress website). In fact, I just now removed the link that had occupied the term store .

Aside from that minor alteration, the labels I have added, and these italicized paragraphs, the post remains essentially the same.

As I'm typing this, I'm listening to my Soundgarden Radio station on Pandora Radio. The station just finished playing "Vasoline" by Stone Temple Pilots, and is now beginning to play "Yellow Ledbetter" by Pearl Jam. I'm thinking I'm going to change the station soon, but until then I'm forwarding to the next song, which turns out to be another Soundgarden song, "Somewhere". Followed by a Nirvana song, one of my favorites: "Dumb". Now it's playing an Audioslave song. Boy, I'm taking a long time to complete this message.

Original message follows:

Alot has been happening lately, but for now, let me tell you what I've been doing today:

Been updating the VoyagerRadio site most of the day, including the store, which now includes more pictures of items for sale via CafePress. (Books and other items had been listed there for months even though I had stopped selling them some time ago.)

Labels: CafePress, music, Pandora Radio, project updates, short post, VoyagerRadio

My apologies for not updating this blog more often lately. A situation has developed at home which I need to focus on, so although I will be updating this blog as often as possible, I need to attend to this more pressing matter.

Stay tuned!

Labels: distractions, family, short post