February 28, 2009
1990s faves
This excellent flower curtain by Jim Hodges -- imitated in a popular design piece of tyvek -- is one of my favorite things ever. I first saw it at PS1 about 5 years ago. Hello!
The Rocky Pose
Wait 5 minutes and you see someone do this pose, here in Philly
Robin
What would be a sign of Spring is rather a testimony to a, the robin's camo and b, the crappy Nokia camera
February 25, 2009
Geithner did well with Lehrer
Check out his interview. I think he did way better than he looked giving that big speech a few days ago.
Arrest the mortgage crisis, get credit flowing, create jobs, cut health care costs, reduce dependence on foreign oil and contain energy costs...full plate!
The return of depression economics
Just finished Krugman's excellent updated edition of this moderately gloomy book. The good news is the problem is clear; the US situation is a variation of one we have seen not only in the 1930s but in Japan in the 90s, in Korea, Mexico, Thailand, Argentina and Russia at other times in the last 15 years. And it's fixable. Spend. That's the solution. Spend away!
February 23, 2009
May you live...
May you live in interesting times
And watch out for these:
* May you come to the attention of those in authority
* May you find what you are looking for
February 22, 2009
Developing for Peek
We are kicking off our Peek-Xtify competition tomorrow -- at GeekyPeek. Be part of it and get famous. Make an app for the Peek!
Morrissey album!
New Morrissey album is out. Just listening to it now for the first time. Somehow, I was a little late to the party -- but between the upcoming tour, the NPR segment, and the review in The Week...well, it hit all my media buttons.
February 17, 2009
Eat yourself
I think it is a brilliant move. Cannibalize yourself. Take that, McDonald's.
Is Instant Coffee the Answer for Starbucks? - Executive Suite Blog - NYTimes.com
The question, of course, is whether Starbucks customers, who all now have espresso machines in their kitchens, are going to warm to the idea of instant Starbucks.
February 16, 2009
Economic geography, post-crash
How the Crash Will Reshape America - The Atlantic (March 2009)
As homeownership rates have risen, our society has become less nimble: in the 1950s and 1960s, Americans were nearly twice as likely to move in a given year as they are today. Last year fewer Americans moved, as a percentage of the population, than in any year since the Census Bureau started tracking address changes, in the late 1940s. This sort of creeping rigidity in the labor market is a bad sign for the economy, particularly in a time when businesses, industries, and regions are rising and falling quickly.
February 14, 2009
The best mexican
After careful analysis, we concluded that Monte Alban would be the #1 mexican restaurant in LA. Pretty great so far!
February 13, 2009
Little french
Real fake french accents at Little Next Door in West Hollywood et environs
February 12, 2009
The spam and whiskey aisle
In the K-town megamart in LA. AKA the US GI circa Macarthur Aisle.
February 11, 2009
Watch me on Amazon
Yep, that's me on Amazon's Peek page! Check out the video.
February 10, 2009
Ohhhh boy. It was worse than you thought.
Zero Hedge: How The World Almost Came To An End At 2PM On September 18
On Thursday (Sept 18), at 11am the Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous draw-down of money market accounts in the U.S., to the tune of $550 billion was being drawn out in the matter of an hour or two. The Treasury opened up its window to help and pumped a $105 billion in the system and quickly realized that they could not stem the tide. We were having an electronic run on the banks. They decided to close the operation, close down the money accounts and announce a guarantee of $250,000 per account so there wouldn't be further panic out there.
If they had not done that, their estimation is that by 2pm that afternoon, $5.5 trillion would have been drawn out of the money market system of the U.S., would have collapsed the entire economy of the U.S., and within 24 hours the world economy would have collapsed. It would have been the end of our economic system and our political system as we know it.
We are no better off today than we were 3 months ago because we have a decrease in the equity positions of banks because other assets are going sour by the moment.
Leadership: it's no fun
From my frenemy David Brooks:
Op-Ed Columnist - Showing Some Discipline - NYTimes.com
It’s no fun being a leader in a financial crisis. You’ve got to be bold but reassuring, free-spending but disciplined. You must decisively crush the short-term problem without freaking everybody out and leaving a long-term mess.
The future of print
Op-Ed Contributor - You Can’t Sell News by the Slice - NYTimes.com
Kindle 2
Get Over It, Geeks: The Kindle Is Not Your iPhone (AMZN, AAPL)
Read all about it
February 9, 2009
Nokia e71
This should be a lovely pic. Why does this camera on the Nokia suck so bad??
February 8, 2009
Pascale playing with Ultra
Pascale playing with Ultra - hide the treat from amol sarva on Vimeo.
Goodbye Gallery, I have hated you long
I really hate Gallery, the open source package for hosting images on your server. It's complicated -- installation, maintenance, upgrade, plugins, everything about it is complicated.
Every six months, I end up spending a weekend fixing something that went haywire on Gallery.
Storage...corrupt DB...not enough PHP memory allocation. I mean, come on!
The worst part is the uniformly smartass support people in their forums. They are a bunch of jerks in tone, even though they are doing us all a favor (never forget!) in providing any assistance at all.
And the fundamental design, I mean, that's what really pisses me off. They can't find a way to include or even link to all the needed binaries. They can't, for some reason, create an installer that goes and downloads the relevant binaries for your installation (GD...ImageMagick...whatever).
After all these years, their installer app is still just a MS Wizard a la Windows 95 -- fragile and easily thwarted.
And if getting it up and going once was good enough, I wouldn't be complaining right now. The problem is that it dies every once in a while. Look at this thread: blank screen, I did nothing.
"It worked hours ago". Well, that happened to me too.
Bizarrely, I am not simply moving to Picasa or Flickr etc etc.
Because I kind of LIKE certain aspects of complexity and control, I am actually trying out Zenphoto -- a much much simpler alternative to the Gallery experience, apparently.
We'll find out!
The new gallery will be at http://home.drownout.com:81/~amol/pics
The old one is at /~amol/g/
The one that died... is at /~amol/gallery2/ (that's right...I couldn't fix it. I just re-installed gallery in another folder and dragged my pics over).
The same thing happened recently on LICNYC.com, woe be unto it. I decided to migrate that situation to a hosted Gallery install on Dreamhost. Maybe that will keep the relevant background PHP/memory/etc current...
February 6, 2009
Do the same, but for less money
The rise of “good enough” computing
The “good enough” approach also works with software. Supplying “software as a service”, via the web, as done by Salesforce.com, NetSuite and Google, among others, usually means sacrificing the bells and whistles that are offered by conventional software. Google Docs lacks the fancy features of Microsoft Word, for example. But hardly anyone uses all those features anyway, and Google Docs is free. Once again, many users are happy to eschew higher performance in order to save money. Even Microsoft has cottoned on: the next version of Windows is intended to do the same as the last version, Vista, but to run faster and use fewer resources. If so, it will be the first version of Windows that makes computers run faster than the previous version. That could be bad news for computer-makers, since users will be less inclined to upgrade. But they are less inclined to do so already. Moore’s law has not been repealed, but more people are taking the dividend it provides in cash, rather than processor cycles.
Zenbe for business
Check out Zenbe for business. A better email experience for your company than Exchange.
February 5, 2009
February 4, 2009
Pascale preparing dinner, sort of
Pascale is playing nicely, with her wooden foods
Brooks Brothers on 5th Ave and 53rd?
Gone!
Sent on the go from my Peek
Posted from my Peek through email
February 3, 2009
At NY Tech Meetup!
Going to announce a few neat things. And....a contest!
Sent on the go from my Peek
Posted from my Peek through email
Piccies
-original message-
Subject: Piccies
From: amolsarva@yahoo.com
Date: 02/02/2009 9:43 PM
Posted from my Peek through email
February 1, 2009
Leadership
With the laments about the Bush Years and the awe at Obama, there has been lots of musing in the popular consciousness about great leaders.
For example, they are smart and not stupid.
They have vision.
They challenge their subordinates.
They get the details right.
They are practical and pragmatic.
They decide fast.
They don't have anything to prove to Daddy.
They don't make stupid jokes. They work hard and don't take vacations 1/3rd the year.
They espouse unpopular positions if necessary.
And so on.
Sent on the go from Wired's #1 Gadget of 2008. And Time's Gadget of the Year. Yee haw!
Posted from my Peek through email
White House Farmer
Looks like Margaret made it to #3! The list:
1. Claire Strader, Troy Community Farm, Madison, WI
2. Carrie Anne Little, Mother Earth Farm, Puyallup, WA
3. Margaret Lloyd, Home Farming, Davis, CA
