Röyksopp! It’s even fun to say. Left work early on Monday for this concert — met up with Dan and home and we took the Muni up to a Thai restaurant less than two blocks from the theater. John Shen beat us to dinner and brought a car up from the South Bay, including Hendrick (a classmate of John’s at Stanford) and Nathan, who is the team lead of Stanford’s Solar Car project (John did Solar Car too). Joey and Christoph arrived with Dustin soon after, then John’s friend Veronica, and finally Mike and Karla. John met us at the theater. Not a bad sized group for a Monday night show!
Photo by DoNotLick
The show was at the Regency Ballroom up on Van Ness, first time I’ve seen a show here. Röyksopp puts on quite a show in contrast to some of the small up and coming bands that I’ve seen more recently. The lights were trippy and I wasn’t expecting the costumes either — the guitarists started off with burlap sacks on their heads, at one point one of the lead singers puts this giant robot eye helmet on, and the female vocalist had something different on all the time. Everytime a new one would appear, I’d turn around to Joey (who saw them last time in SF) and he’d nod knowingly.
Photo by John Shen
Girl & the Robot, video by sushisac
The duo did a nice job at talking to the crowd with their Norwegian accents They came back out for three encores, with the last one actually being a remixed version of a Kings of Leon song. I had no idea what song it was (I don’t listen to Kings of Leon), but it sounded decent. But really, what we really wanted was to hear Röyksopp Forever!
After dropping Tim and John off after the Cataract Falls hike, Patrick and I raced back home and got ready — it was time for Radiolab! A few weeks back I got back from a meeting and spotted an email from them, announcing a live show in San Francisco and early access to tickets for having donated money. My eyes went large and I jumped to it. Radiolab had been planning a special live performance of an upcoming episode in three cities – New York, Seattle, and LA. It was killing me that they weren’t coming to San Francisco, but oh glorious day! They were coming! I spotted Mary on IM and pinged her; did she want to come? Of course she did! I introduced the show to Patrick a month ago, and he promptly started to download all available episodes and listening to them. That’s the effect Radiolab has on people! That’s what happened to me.
I picked up four tickets and within the next half hour all the tickets were gone. So glad that I check email as frequently as I do.
Mary and Matt swung by the house and we walked down for a quick dinner on 24th before catching the bus over to the Brava Theater Center in the Mission. On the stage there was a desk with two microphones; off to the side was Zoe Keating’s cello and music setup. Amongst NPR geeks (guilty), there is talk about how program hosts sound versus how they look. Jad Abumrad looks pretty much like I expected him too, and though Robert Krulwich is different, seeing him banter with Jad on the stage totally changes that. He’s like the college professor we all wished we had. The show was on the subject of Symmetry, and it was incredible to see how Jad and Robert translated their intricately produced podcast to a live setting.
Jad had a sound board in front of him with dozens of keys that he had pre-programmed with music, sound effects, and interview clips. As he and Robert would talk, Jad would trigger the appropriate sound on cue. Zoe Keating also provided live accompaniment to the show, loosely conducted by Jad. The end result was striking — if you closed your eyes it was like a real Radiolab broadcast. The witty yet probing banter between Jad and Robert, the chopped up interviews with imaginative explanations sprinkled throughout, the musical pauses that let your mind process what’s being said. The video projector behind them would also be used to show animations, art, pictures, and videos too. Twice, Zoe Keating took command of the stage and played two original compositions of hers. If you aren’t familiar with her work, Keating uses loop pedals to layer sound after sound from her cello, enabling her to create densely layered and intricate melodies all by herself.
After the show, we headed down to the stage and I got to shake Robert’s hand, thanking him for coming. We also briefly chatted about the powerful (and unfinished) story he recently wrote on Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komorov who died during re-entry on a mission he knew was botched, but chose to fly anyway to spare the life of his friend, Yuri Gagarin.
What a truly memorable night getting to see one of my favorite shows performed live. Coupled with the Cataract Falls hike we did earlier, I’d say that makes for quite a memorable day too.
After a lazy Saturday (Troy and I parked ourselves at the Valley Tavern for some March Madness action), I headed up with a group of friends to Cataract Falls, near Mt. Tamalpais by Muir Woods north of the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin. Suggested by John, the falls would be roaring with the weeks of rain we’ve been getting lately. Our merry caravan included Patrick, Tim, and John Stanley in my car; Kito, David, Will, and Nirav in John Shen’s car, and Rong. Good mix of new and old faces for me. I’d been enjoying Kito’s shares and comments in our Google Reader community, but this was first time meeting him in meatspace.
Trailhead details were pretty hazy for this hike, and my car got up to Fairfax before Rong signaled that the road to our intended trailhead was closed. Uh oh. The caravan gathered at a cafe downtown and decided to backtrack and make for the 2nd trailhead. We passed the turn offs to Stinson Beach and Muir Woods before getting to a small parking lot. Here, our road was closed too. Ruh roh. I struck up a conversation with a gentleman by the parked car next to ours, who said that Cataract Falls is great and that we could just hike in from a small trailhead from the end of the parking lot. What good fortune! Many thanks, kind sir.
The forest was lush, energized by the very recent rains and the greens nearly glowed despite the cloudy skies. We made way our past a meadow before entering the forest proper, quickly joining Cataract Creek and following it deeper inside. The trip would be fairly well documented — Shen rented a 10-16mm wide angle lens, Tim was packing a tripod for the waterfalls, and Nirav and I were both sporting Rebels. This was also the first trip that I got to really use my new 24-105mm f/4L lens.
The trail runs along Cataract Creek as the creek makes it way from the mountains to the Bay. The steep valley makes for a series of cascades and waterfalls that were roaring on Sunday. We finally approached our first one as it tumbled down a sharp drop. Kito, I discovered, is training to be a volunteer search-and-rescue (SAR) team volunteer and has taken classes ranging from search tactics, high angle rescues, survival skills, rope work, etc. Not a bad person to have on a hike! He got out 150ft of rope and started anchoring it to a tree, seeking to rappel down the side of the waterfall.
We spent a good 15 minutes at the first falls, and there were many more to come. Along the way we saw these trees that had small leaves growing all the way around their trunks, almost like a coat of feathers. Very cool.
I took this next shot handheld, 0.8″ shutter speed. Image stabilization for the win!
Another series of cascades ends in a shimmering pool.
Here you go Mom, a photo of me! Thanks Patrick, nice shot.
The forest looking ominous…like Mirkwood?
By around 2:30pm, we saw the trailhead diverging away from the creek and decided to head back out. Five minutes later, the rain started up and didn’t let up. Grrrrr. This hike was actually postponed due to the reported “100% chance of rain” for Saturday and projection that the storm would break on Saturday night. Mind you, this was a projection from Friday afternoon. Instead, it didn’t rain on Saturday and rained on Sunday. I talked about Kito’s SAR stuff on the way back. He got into it because he’s been hiking and backpacking since he was little, and wanted to find an activity that combined that and community service. What a great fit. Some general advice I learned too if you’re lost: don’t move, try to stay warm and dry, use a whistle because its sound carries farther and you don’t wear yourself out shouting; signal mirrors are a lot easier to spot and don’t run out of batteries; and flashing headlamps are very useful too.
We dried off as best we could back at the car, bid adieu to our comrades and headed back to the City. We stopped by a nice cafe in the Marina-ish area for a warmup, which was amusing if you know the typical Marina crowd and then picture us (largely wet from hiking in the woods) yakking it up in their cozy cafe.
Altogether, I’d call this a success — now I’ve got a nice rainy-season hike close to the City in my backpocket.
The story of Abigail Washburn is a fascinating gem. I first learned about her last week, when Joseph had me listen to her latest album, City of Refuge.
She grew up moving around quite a bit — born in Evanston, IL, childhood in D.C., high school in Minnesota, and college in Colorado. While in undergrad, she started learning Mandarin and spent half a year living in China. She decided she wanted to become a lawyer, and completed exams to begin law school at Beijing University. Before Washburnl left, she wanted to take something distinctively American with her. Inspired by a recording from a bluegrass legend, she decided to pick up the banjo and embarked on a months long road trip to learn the instrument and songs. Her journey took her through West Virginia, North Carolina, and finally to Kentucky where she went to an international bluegrass festival. She found a group of women in a hallway, sat down and started playing the few songs she knew.
And was offered a record deal right then.
So much for becoming a lawyer in China. Washburn spent years touring as part of an ensemble and playing festivals, settling down in Nashville and, believe it or not, catching Béla Fleck’s fancy (they’re married now). Fleck, as some of you might know, is considered one of the most prolific and greatest banjo players in the world (he has been Grammy nominated in more categories than any other musician). Washburn has been able to keep her ties close to China too — she lead the Sparrow Quartet which melded Americana folk with heavy Chinese influences. They toured China and played at the World Expo in Shanghai.
City of Refuge is her latest album, released this past January. I don’t typically listen to bluegrass or folk — my exposure to that has been through some of Sufjan’s material — but this album is wonderful, so warm.
Please, please, listen to these two songs. Get our your pair of headphones, close your eyes, let the sound fill your ears. Let your mind focus on that voice, while the gentle banjo plucking and lush accompaniment fills the space between your ears. Hear the marvelous violin flourishes, the earthy substance of the upright bass, the lightness of the piano.
Abigail Washburn – Bring Me My Queen
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Abigail Washburn – Corner Girl
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Such beautiful music….
Raleigh folks, she’s playing at the Lincoln Theater on May 2. Get tickets before it’s too late!
San Francisco folks, catch her tomorrow at Yoshi’s! I wish I could go.
Last Sunday I finally resurrected the Sunday night dinner tradition and planned on making the most of the dismal weather we were having to make some of Bittman’s soup recipes. Sunday turned out to be a pretty nice day. I spent the morning watching more basketball, catching up on blog posts (have you noticed), and went for a short run.
The goal of the dinner was to brainstorm ideas for an upcoming Iron Chef night. Mia, one of Wendy’s friends, was charmed by the idea when they dropped by for a visit a few months back. Tonight, my guests included Mia and Wendy (who brought monster asparagus stalks), Mary and Matt made the trek from Menlo Park (along with delicious phyllo fig tarts), and Joey brought some homebrew imperial extra stout.
I made two of Bittman’s recipes — a hearty mushroom minestrone and a creamy curried cauliflower soup. The mushroom one needed more salt, but otherwise I’m glad how they turned out. I also made some butternut squash macaroni and cheese, then with Mia, Mary, and Wendy’s help got a large batch of popovers in the oven too.
The brainstorming went really well — in directions I never imagined it’d go. The way I’ve seen Iron Chef done before is that at the beginning of the week an ingredient or flavor (like sesame, or lime) is announced. People then gather that weekend potluck style, with dishes that incorporate the ingredient/flavor. In the end, I think we have a really cool idea – one that is challenging and a little out of the box. But should be fun — I won’t reveal it yet though!
Last Saturday the wind and the rain descended upon the City for the whole day. It’s funny how a few years out here really spoils you. But anyway, I started the day off with college basketball (what else during March Madness?) and in the early afternoon Ben (Park c/o 2002) came over. He and I were going to participate remotely to a Park Engineering Alumni Mixer event organized and hosted back in North Carolina by Mark Voelker (fellow c/o 2002). This was an event that would help current Parks meet alumni who were in engineering careers and pick their brains about the industry, grad school, preparing for jobs, and general advice.
Mark setup a Webex video stream and students cycled through, asking a wide array of questions from the culture out in Silicon Valley, big company vs startup experience, grad school, interviewing, etc. I should point out that Ben is very well suited for many of these questions — he joined Google right out of school in the early days, worked there for 7 years before leaving to join some friends at Friendfeed, but that was acquired by Facebook two weeks after he joined. He left Facebook (just another mothership) for the seven person startup Brizzly, but that was acquired by AOL after nine months. So he left AOL pretty quickly, and just recently joined Dropbox (a certain super angel named Ron took a personally active role in suggesting startups to Ben). So yeah — he’s kind of a big deal. I handled some questions about graduate school and of engineering on the hardware versus software side of things. It was rather interesting — the alumni presence was dominated by electrical/computer engineering and computer science grads, but these majors were the minority in the students who attended. These majors have seen a decline amongst the Park students since when I was in school. Oh yeah — a huge plus of the event was seeing my close friends Greg, Jordan, and Win there too!
That evening I headed over to Tim’s place for a dinner party. He had around three dozen oysters on ice because one of the friends he invited over loves oysters. But…the friend didn’t end up showing so there was a lot to go around! Tim also had fish for the main course, and for veggiesaurus like me had portabella mushroom caps that were perfectly marinated — better than I’ve ever done.
After dinner he and his girlfriend Cat melted some chocolate into fondue and served with a variety of fresh fruit. Mmmmm.
Jen, one of Cat’s childhood friends, reaches for some fondue.
John evaluates a variety of fruit / chocolate combinations.
It was also Sean’s birthday, and no celebration would be complete without a candle-lit cake.
Afterward we played two games, first up being Mafia. Then we played a game that Patrick (new friend! fellow NC State alum, works at Google) suggested to us called Celebrity. It was pretty fun — get lots of slips of paper and everyone write a couple of names of celebrities. Split into teams (A/B/A/B) and then each person has 30 seconds to describe the celebrities on the slips of paper they’ve drawn one-at-a-time from the hat while their team guesses who it is. The first round you can say anything to describe the person, the second round you’re limited to just one word, and in the final round it reverts to charades.
Last Friday we had an office shuffle at work. For some folks, it was the first time in over five years that they were moving offices. As with any move, there are good and bad aspects. One nice thing is that the whole team will now be on the same side of the building, the one with the hardware lab. Previously a bunch of us were on the opposite side. I also really like the small hallway wing my new office is in — it has three great layout engineers that we often work with, our lead component engineer, an EPM that works on our projects, and four of the five members of Joseph’s team (Rishabh didn’t have to move and is just down the hall). The bad part is that several key firmware, NAND guys, and EPMs are scattered across the second and third floors, so it’s harder to just go over and pop our heads in their offices if we have a question. I’m already scheming about setting up a monitor in our hallway with a persistent FaceTime connection to the other floors. :)
Moving was the priority on Friday, and to mark the end of the era we did a group trip to a go-karting track (of course, right?). We had been here before back at the end of my internship for the launch of the Nano and Touch from three years ago.
Feeling pretty beat from moving and go-karting, I postponed a long-due dinner catchup with my friend Mike and headed back up to the City. John invited me to a house party of a friend of his from SF Energy Discuss club, so I popped over to the Mission for a couple of hours. The pair of buildings that the party was situated in turned out to be where the popular Couchsurfing service began — ground zero. Pretty cool.
Last Thursday — St. Patrick’s Day! — I wore my green sweater and green belt and enjoyed some Guinness Chocolate Cheesecake courtesy of Chrissy (hat tip to Sapana for the recipe share). Just as I was leaving work, I got a text from Melih: a colleague of his is fronts an Irish rock band and was putting on a show that night at the Great American Music Hall. What a cool way to celebrate St. Paddy’s day! I got a quick bite to eat at home and Micky greeted me at my door as they picked me up. Her mother was in town too — last night — so I got to see her again (last time was at the wedding). They also posed another “hypothetical scenario” question in which I had to invariably picks sides between Melih and Micky (they love making me squirm with questions like this!). I think I successfully threaded this one down the middle though, lol.
Melih and I got to the GAMH as his colleague’s band, Culann’s Hounds, was setting up on stage. I got a Guinness of my own in my hand before their set started.
I’ve got a thing for Irish music — the melodious violin, the foot-stomping beats, the earnest guitar strumming. The band played a good mix of what sounded like traditional Irish songs, some originals, and instruments. It was a lot of fun!
Big thanks to Melih for a memorable way to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day this year.
A few months ago I wrote about Warpaint, the all-girl downtempo rock band that Jono (Dan’s brother) told me about during Thanksgiving. Last Wednesday I saw them live at the Independent with John, his friends David and Alex, and Alex’s roommate Timon. It turned out to be the leadoff show of their new tour. Before the show we got some pizza at the surprisingly excellent Little Star Pizza, less than two blocks up from the venue on Divisadero.
Timon actually works at Topspin, a company that develops web and marketing tools for artists, and so it was really interesting to hear more about the industry. He had seen Warpaint recently down in LA, where they are based, and raved about the new drummer they brought on board. He was right on — the drummer really shone through and was definitely the glue that kept things together as the band worked through the set. The vocal harmonies were also a nice touch.
It was an interesting show — really solid when the band were playing songs but surprisingly uneven in between songs. Maybe it was just first-show-of-the-tour jitters, or the fact that apparently one of their dad’s was in the audience, but the girls would make these really random comments or actions between the songs. Warpaint and Set Your Arms Down from their new album The Fool was good, as was was Elephants off their older EP. One surprise was 12+ minute jam on the last song of the encore — didn’t see that one coming but it was pretty cool to see them just cut loose and play. Though halfway through, the bassist and one of the guitarists sat down on the stage and remained down there until almost the very end. No one except for the first two rows could see them. Ok….but at least it sounded good.
Here’s something to get your foot tapping — Pretty Lights is electronic music with hip-hop beats, with a dashes of of glitchy dubstep, funk, and soul for good measure. Heard about them from Jess, and all their albums are available for free download off their website (one of the most vivid artist websites you’ll ever see, too).
Spin some of these albums up at your next house party. At least check out these two tracks:
Pretty Lights – Gold Coast Hustle
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Pretty Lights – Understand Me Now
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Raleigh folks — Pretty Lights is performing at the Raleigh Amphitheater on April 19th.
I typically don’t use this channel to complain about every day things, but this one irritates me so much that I can’t ignore it. While as a student and in my current job, I spend a lot of time using office productivity software. Excel for mathematical sketching and modeling, PowerPoint for slide decks, Word for long-form documents. In many ways, particularly with Excel, the Microsoft Office suite continues to be the best overall software for this. Now at Apple, I find myself using the iWork suite — Numbers and Keynote — almost exclusively now.
Having never owned a Mac before starting at Apple, I was taken aback by the difference in the Microsoft Office suite’s maturity between the Windows and OS X version. Office 2007 for the PC saw the introduction of the new ‘ribbon’ interface that, after a short time, proved largely superior to the old interface that originated over a decade ago. I used this version extensively at the end of undergraduate school and all through grad school. In the Mac OS X world, the Office 2008 for Mac did not include any of the interface changes that came out the previous year for PC. And due to several stability problems with Office 2008, many colleagues resorted to continued use of Office 2004 for Mac. What a shame too, because the Office 2007 for PC version has several great features they could have been using.
This past winter, Office 2011 for Mac was finally released and brought the ribbon-interface overhaul to Mac — something I was eagerly waiting for. Sadly though, two of my most favorite UI improvements failed to be incorporated. First is the Quick Access Toolbar. In Office 2007 for PC, you could right click on practically any option in the interface and add that function to a toolbar that would stay visible with the thick ribbon collapsed. I customized my toolbar with all my most used commands, extremely handy. This is nowhere to be found in Office 2011 for Mac.
Second, the quick zoom bar, which is the focus of this post. One of the best features in Office 2007 for PC was a zoom bar that provided smooth zooming in any document. You no longer had to select between 25%, 50%, 75%, 100%, 150%, etc. from a clumsy drop-down menu (or be locked into those zoom steps via keyboard shortcuts then fiddle with the window size). You could click on a slider and zoom in fine-grained steps to your desired level. Furthermore, this feature was implemented consistently into all three workhorse tools — Word, PowerPoint, and Excel (respectively, shown below).
Inexplicably, despite the 4 year gap between the PC and Mac products, the Office 2011 for Mac completely fails at implementing the zoom controls. Here is the same UI view, shown for Office 2011 for Mac:
First, the zoom bar is missing entirely from Excel (the software I use the most) — the only software in the suite which has in essence an ‘infinite’ page size. One would think that the ability of easily zooming is most critical when you could have a spreadsheet spanning dozens of rows and columns, rather a fairly standard page or slide size.
Second, the + and – buttons are missing from both Word and PowerPoint. If you wanted to easily step up or down the zoom, you can’t.
Third, the tick mark in Office 2007 for PC marking the 100% level is missing. Good luck easily resetting your zoom level to default.
Fourth, inconsistency in presentation. You can’t see this from a static screenshot, but in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac, the zoom bar remains visible even though the window is inactive. In Word 2011 for Mac, the zoom bar appears when it’s the active window, but strangely disappears when it’s inactive.
It drives me crazy that this utterly glaring user experience failure and inconsistency was ever allowed to ship to customers. I don’t believe for one minute that zooming is a relatively obscure action. In many work environments today, people move between small laptop screens, larger external monitors, and lower resolution projectors. Zooming is an essential action for both working with and presenting content.
Productivity software aids thousands of businesses and is a vital part of millions of students and employees. This is an extraordinary amount of responsibility entrusted to a UX designer. It is incredibly sad and frustrating to see that responsibility shirked in the case of zoom controls.
Last week I learned of the first new song in nearly four years by Austin-based instrumental rock band Explosions in the Sky. How exciting! I’ve recommended the band to friends seeking music to listen to while studying or working that wouldn’t be distracting with words. Grounded in the rock music, their pieces are often long, orchestral, with sweeping flourishes and emotion. More accessible than Sigur Rós’s earlier albums, for instance. They also gained attention when they did the score for the film Friday Night Lights, and their musical influence continues on in the TV-series of the same name. Unconvinced? Just listen to their tracks such as First Breath After Coma, Catastrophe and the Cure, orYasmin the Light.
This new track is more taut — at three and a half minutes it’s their shortest song to date by far — but it is energetic and clearly retains the signature sound that is Explosions in the Sky. I wonder how much it telegraphs what’s to come next.
Their new album – Take Care, Take Care, Take Care – is due out in April and they are touring also — I’m finally going to see them live at the Fox Theater on May 1st! Can’t wait. I hear their live shows are just epic.
Explosions in the Sky – Trembling Hands
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Last Friday about a dozen colleagues and I went paintballing after work. It was my first time, and it was a lot of fun! The “map” wasn’t a forest or open field — the facility had different maps setup with varying scenarios. The first was long and narrow, setup like the one-block town of the Wild Wild West. The next two were wider, more open, with lots of obstacles and barricades for cover. Erturk came prepped in full combat fatigues (Turkish Special Forces!) and even had his own paintball gun.
The rest of us rented gear, which thankfully came with a facemask and neckguard. I got a pair of gloves too, because I heard getting shot in the fingers hurts. We ended up doing 10-12 people on a team, so the Apple team got to play as a unit much of the night. The matches would last between 8 and 12 minutes, and we had a chance of refilling our guns with paintballs and air between matches.
It’s definitely exhilarating, an adrenaline rush. One thing is that for 95% of the match, you don’t see the enemy. You’ll snag a glance of them in the beginning, and you’re sprinting towards a forward barricade to seize its position. You’ll sneak a glance of a head or an arm popping up over an obstacle, usually followed by the thud-thud-whiz of paintballs hitting around you and flying past. The ground was mostly hard packed dirt, with scattered pebbles and debris, splotches of mud and puddles. Once in the firefight though, none of that matters. You’re diving for cover, rolling around, constantly crouched and contorting your body to try to see the enemy without getting hit. All this resulted in me feeling unbelievable sore the following two days. It wasn’t the actual paintball hits that hurt, (I don’t even remember where I got hit now), but the whole body rough-and-tumble that I wasn’t expecting.
Some other highlights:
- how easy it was for all the battle jargon to come out that we’ve heard and used in countless hours of video games like Counter-Strike or Battlefield 1942. Throughout the match, teammates would yell “Contact right!” or “3 on the left flank!” Working in a three man squad with Nader and Shyam, I’d yell “Covering fire!!” twist around the corner and let us a barrage of paintballs while Nader dashed forward, diving for cover behind a barricade 10 yards up. Then he’d pop up, yell the same while I moved up to join him.
- during the last match of the night, we were all running low of paintballs. Instead of starting with the 100 or 120 in our hoppers, we were all down to maybe a dozen. I’m with Nevin at the center obstacle, with JLo on the left flank. Nevin gets hit, and empties the few paintballs he had into my hopper before he leaves the field. “Make’em count!”. JLo spots an enemy and starts firing, but the gun soon starts firing blanks — he’s out. I tell him I’ll give him some rounds but he waves me off. He takes a deep breath, then turns the corner and charges forward furiously firing blanks — sprinting nearly 30 yards totally exposed — but makes it to the enemy barricade and forces a surrender at point-blank. But alas, he’s shot soon after.
Nader came along for the ride too and took this snapshot of a video during the Castle map. He made a courageous charge that drew the enemy’s fire but allowed three of them to be picked off.
