pizza slow (high quality)

posts from 2024 / 02

  1. just learned that I’m supposed to have an ascending-horn-punctuated introduction of my achievements and a. k. a.s, fml https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3hnm4Shybg

  2. it’s still fun to be surprised my own browser word replacement filters. I’ve got half a dozen going right now, loving it.

  3. hiked Bayview hill yesterday, today was very much a “I want to go down there” result

    photograph, view south from the top of bayview hill to oyster point and SFO Airport

    photograph of the parking lot for the now demolished Candlestick Park stadium from the Bayview Hill Trail

    Photograph of San Francisco from the initial climb of the Bayview Hill trail

    Photograph of Bayview Hill, reversing the second in the series, above from the parking lot of Candlestick Park. Most the actual lot and “Hunter’s Point Expressway” around the hill at this point are just a fenced off lake and are inaccessible.

  4. another nice day to try SFMTA recommended bike routes ( https://www.sfmta.com/sites/default/files/pdf_map/2021/06/sfmta_recommendedbikeroutes_0.pdf), so this time I went southeast: Chavez to Illinois to Cargo, side-quest out Heron’s Head Park and Hunter’s Point, back on the route to Mendel, Palou, Keith, Carrol, out to Candlestick Point, reverse back to Jenning, Paul, Bayshore, and Chavez home.

    Lovely!

    picture of the SFMTA pdf of recommended routes of the southeast corner of San Francisco

  5. sixth book of 2024: “How Infrastructure Works: Inside the systems that shape our world.”, by Deb Chachra ( https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/612711/how-infrastructure-works-by-deb-chachra/).

    I feel like more than a few people I follow posted about this over the past year so I eventually followed suit. More memoir (again!) than I’m normally into but just enough history, novelty, and new-to-me theory to be pretty good after all.

    The hardback cover of “How Infrastructure Works: Inside the systems that shape our world.”, by Deb Chachra, as I read it. White Helvetica-lookin’ title, subtitle, and author name in equal large sizes and weights over black asphalt spray painted with circles and arrows in orange, pink, and yellow. That infrastructure / utility workers paint the ground in specific colors in the U.S. is actually detailed in the book, so this is one of those rare cases where the cover artist read the book and wasn’t overruled by the publisher to do some other stupid thing instead. Huzzah!

  6. this is a qt of https://social.lol/@spotlightonpod/111952783201740255

    so after reading this I thought of a monthly “new artists” CD mailer subscription I had in the late 90s that I coulda swore had a Marley track one month, which is weird, right?

    so I checked my Plex for Marley, picked Catch a Fire, saw “Midnight Ravers”, which was the chorus I was thinking of, but not it.

    ddg for a remix and found it: Bill Laswell’s “Dreams Of Freedom (Ambient Translations Of Bob Marley In Dub)”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8sDYYwu2t8

    neato.

  7. Learning from 500songs.com ( https://500songs.com/podcast/episode-116-where-did-our-love-go-by-the-supremes/ ) that the Supremes were called “the no hit supremes” within Motown and made to do stuff like “The Rock and Roll Banjo Band” until Holland, Dozier, and Holland had a say in matters, smdh https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJer8U5WtWk

  8. 🏁 what I’m considering the inner mission, bound by 101, Cesar Chaves, and Valencia

    A San Francisco street map centering the area bound by 101, Ceasar Chavez, and Valencia, on which every street has a meandering purple GPS path I’ve logged on it. (I tried to walk Erie St a few times but it’s been under construction each time.)

  9. fifth book of 2024: “A Wizard of Earthsea”, by Ursula K. Le Guin ( https://www.ursulakleguin.com/a-wizard-of-earthsea).

    After enjoying every single story in the “Hainish Novels and Stories ( https://www.ursulakleguin.com/hainish-novels-and-stories), I figured I can’t go wrong tackling Earthsea for the first time by just reading all of them in the similar “The Books of Earthsea" ( https://www.ursulakleguin.com/the-books-of-earthsea).

  10. 🚶🏽‍♂️ 🚶🏽‍♂️ 🚶🏽‍♂️ 🚶🏽‍♂️ 🚶🏽‍♂️ 🚶🏽‍♂️ 🚶🏽‍♂️ 🚶🏽‍♂️ 🚶🏽‍♂️ 🚶🏽‍♂️

  11. one tell that this is good is that I immediately shazam’d it off of NTS’s “Expansions” mix ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmpgnzoFwNQ, which I now assume is named after the track (or suite) of the same name after this one on record), paused the mix and listened to it again, and then the everloving wife stormed over and asked when my music changed from good to bad and shut my door.

    Rahsaan Roland Kirk, “Black Mystery Has Been Revealed”, from “left & right”, 1968 ( https://www.allmusic.com/album/left-right-mw0000661555)

  12. good morning

    photograph from the corner of 25th Street at San Bruno Street looking northwest at San Bruno, a rainbow rises from the far right in an arc that, if complete, would end on Sutro Tower on the far left, but is only brightly visible for a few degrees of arcI’ve been jacking the saturation on my city shots lately to max it out because it feels more accurate at a glance to what it’s like to look at this stuff irl and also to pop the rainbow. I’m sure this is just a phase I’ll regret like when I used to add vigent to every photo I retouched. Whatever!

  13. fourth book of 2024: “Mismatch” ( https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262539487/mismatch/ ) subtitled “How Inclusion Shapes Design” by Kat Holmes ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39644200-mismatch).

    I grabbed this one after landing on a Don Norman piece ( https://www.fastcompany.com/90338379/i-wrote-the-book-on-user-friendly-design-what-i-see-today-horrifies-me). I enjoyed “The Design of Everyday Things" so I followed Norman’s suggestion to read Mismatch.

    Pretty quick read, and full of things so obviously correct that I got impatient with the author’s patience? Good stuff.

    The paperback cover of Mismatch as I read it. Black helvitca on white title, subtitle, author, foreward author, left-aligned-on-center, top third. a design that reads like the 70s/80s trend of “generic” stuff, The bottom half is a black swirl stroke broken into 8 textures: blot, spikes, dots, bands, checkerboard, circles, stripes, and brush.

  14. complimented on this “clean ass jacket” within five minutes of wearing it out for the first time, while waiting for a train to berkeley

    selfie in an elevator mirror wearing a new rock band jacket, black with white sleeves, green striped cuffs, collar, waist, and pockets, with a green two headed snake running up the sleeveI was on the way to see a doctor about a thing that cleared up the day before and two hours after I confirmed the $75-cancellation-fee appointment that I'd made three weeks prior

    selfie in an elevator mirror wearing a new rock band jacket, black with white sleeves, green striped cuffs, collar, waist, and pockets, with a green two headed snake running up the sleeve, "Queens" stitched along the rear shoulder

  15. jiggled!

  16. Speaking of the continually amazing 500songs, episode 76: “Stagger Lee” by Lloyd Price ( https://500songs.com/podcast/episode-76-stagger-lee-by-lloyd-price/) is absolutely fascinating and one of the best.

    “Ah you mean the Nick Cave song? Isn’t that a ‘traditional’ tune?" There’s so, so much more to it.

    Supplemental music should you choose to read the transcript rather than listen, or just want to hear even more: https://www.mixcloud.com/AndrewHickey/500-songs-supplemental-stagger-lee/

  17. third book of 2024: “Particle Theory", a collection of stories by Edward Bryant ( https://reanimus.com/store/index.cgi?author=Edward%20Bryant).

    I started this a while ago after reading an interview with Ted Chiang (maybe this one? https://www.sfsite.com/09b/tc136.htm).

    I really, really like Ted Chiang’s stories. Ted really, really likes Bryant’s stories. Some of these were quite good, some just OK. I stalled on it a few times.

    ”giANTS”, the one about ants, is one of the good ones ( https://nebulas.sfwa.org/nominees/edward-bryant/).

    (🐜 🐜 🐜 https://mastodon.social/@gravely/110209784638054304)

    the paperback cover of the currently available I-assume-reissue from reAnimus press, with a font that might as well be called “space ship” in gray over black top and bottom and a washed out early 90s 3D rendering of some chemical over a washed out face. It’s so great that 50 year old collections can get picked back up and run by groups like reAnimus, and I look forward to the software getting more sophisticated, because the printing was pretty simple (top of page author on the left, top of page book name on the right, rather than story name, for instance), if better looking overall than lots of presses like this.

  18. Second book of 2024: Glyn Johns, "Sound Man” ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20949444-sound-man)

    Two memoirs to start the year. Weird, I never read memoirs.

    This one was quoted in some video I watched chasing Chris Scruggs stuff ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeR2yZ2pWCw what a great band! that steel player?!) that I probably landed on looking up a https://500songs.com (which I’m 90 episodes into) citation, so I found myself reading it.

    The paperback cover of Glyn Johns “Sound Man” as I read it, subtitled: A Life Recording Hits With The Rolling Stones, The Who, Led Zeppelin, The Eagles, Eric Clapton, The Faces…” (whispering: of that entire list of bands, I only really enjoy Led Zeppelin’s entire catalog, and barely a few individual songs from the rest. I don’t get the stones or the who, and I agree with The Dude re: the Eagles?)Anyway, it's fast, and fun if you ever went through a late 60s / early 70s rock phase before the 00s when it absolutely saturated american culture (let's not kid, it still does).