dennis yang dot com

weezer rocked!

wahoo.. weezer tonight at the warfield… this weekend is the wildflower triathlon, and i’m not really supposed to be going out, but.. apparently it didn’t stop me last year either.. so.. oh well… my goal this year is to try and beat my incredible time of 03:48:04… yah, i know, it’s not that fast.. i was 224 out of like 250 people in my class… but considering the winner finished last year in 02:04:30 — I’ve got to be able to close the gap a bit…. maybe i can hit 3:30 this year….

all i can say is.. last year, I was the only one I saw with a tortoise squeeky horn on their bike.

Man… first the Alameda Journal, and now.. the San Francisco Chronicle… It’s been like a parade of press lately for me..

Yes.. that’s the back of my head (it even says so in the caption).. Man, I never really realized how much of a mullet I had last week. I got a haircut since then, but I mean, honestly how many times do you really get a good look at the back of your own head like that.

You know how after a haircut is done, they give you the mirror so that you can look at the back of your head? I always feel so silly looking at the back of my own head. I mean, you can’t really get that good of a look back there anyway, yah? I mean, as long as the mullet isn’t starting to curl back up, I suppose its fine. Hmm.. maybe rat tails are on their way back in.. wouldn’t that be lovely..

Anyway, I digress.. I’m in the paper! Oh right.. I suppose I should actually link to the article about Techdirt and all.. Things at Techdirt are going really well so far.. It’s been greating working with all of the Mikes, and I’m trying to minimize the impact that working at home has on my personal hygiene.

read-y (rEED-EE) links for your perusing pleasure… these are a few articles i’ve found enriching and interesting this week.

• 25 years of post-it notes - post-its are greeeeat!
• guide to flirting - in case you needed some help
• things people do instead of sleep - who likes sleeping anyway?

enjoy. happy thursday!

hey… do you have $2 million dollars lying around? If so, I have the perfect place for you… Albion Castle, in the hunter’s point neighborhood in San Francisco.. is for sale… Yah, so it’s in between a bunch of projects and a radioactive decommissioned naval shipyard.. but, it’s a castle!! with a spring!! So cool!!

Sounds really, really cool.. I think I’ll go and check it out.. it’s just here in San Francisco, after all..

Andy got to hang out in the armory in the mission this weekend, so I want to also tour a crazy San Francisco landmark..

Last year before the Summer Olympics started, John Roberts and I came up with an idea for some sort of “Internet Olympics” — yes, I know… super nerdy.. But, events included “google archery”: given a certain web page, participants were to submit a keyword to such that the web page would show up in the results.. If the target page showed up as the top result, that’d be a bullseye.. there was also some sort of search engine scavenger hunt.. anyway… I forget some of the other events that we thought of…

In any case, this guess the google game would be a perfect addition to the olympics… it’s actually kind of fun…

Licorice & Piglets.. Two great tastes, together at last! Ok, so they probably don’t taste like pig, but I think I’m just going to have to get myself a tin of these.

[found at coolhunting]

David Best, who is reknowned in San Francisco for building a series of “temples” at burning man, is looking to build a temporary structure in Hayes Green — the new park being created by the Octavia Street Boulevard project. He’s looking for $25,000 to be donated for the project. The city balked at the pricetag for the project, which some are callinf the “Gates of The West”. So, now he’s looking for private donations. Christo and Jean-Claude self-funded the $20M for “The Gates” — and made a tidy profit for themselves by selling the original prints and sketches associated with the project. Does San Francisco not have the same patron base to support a project 1/800 the size (monetarily, at least)? I’ve seen “The Gates” and Best’s work at Burningman — both were equally inspiring to me, so I would hope that we San Franciscans are not put to shame by those New Yorkers…

So.. go donate if you can.

I joined a softball team in Alameda.. we play every tuesday. it’s fun…

I was mentioned in today’s Alameda Journal.. So far, no scouts have called, but I’m waiting…

Yes, it mentions I got three hits.. which is nice.. What’s also nice is that they fail to mention that our team lost 20-11, and I didn’t exactly do a bangup job fielding third base (but — the sun was right in my eyes the whole game, i swear).. or that all my hits were singles…

But.. I did make it into the paper.. my mom must be so proud.

update ok, mcc says that singles are good. so i’m happy.

ok.. i think this is a real product, and that someone actually wrote all of this marketing text…

SUMACKE!

Some gems from the page:

Join us in shaping the look for the New Millennium

To see how it works, cup your hands around your eyes or eyeglasses, leave only a slot in the front to view your computer screen from. You can SEE the Difference!

SUMACKE® has a Fashionable Futuristic Ergonomic design with cool colors and a black opaque interior.

“GLARE IS HERE, GLARE IS THERE, GLARE IS EVERYWHERE!” But, with SUMACKE®, you sure can control Glare at the receiving end!

Man… so good.

[thanks james!]

Ever since the ipod first came out, it’s been crying out to be used in a DJ setup… the clickwheel itself could be used as the jog control, no? Anyway.. numark has come out with a similar setup — though it doesn’t use the clickwheel itself in the controls, it’s a step in the right direction… cool.

[thanks josh!]

Leave it up to the crazy kids at MIT to make cool stuff with LEDs and stuff… this dancefloor they made is pretty rad.. make sure and check out the video.. I wonder if these kids know the folks who made the MIT LED wall at burningman. That one is called the tensor and has 64,000 LEDs (as compared to their 1,536).. crazy…

google maps + craigslist.. so so cool.

[found at futurismic]

I tivo’d today’s final rounds of the Masters, so I could watch whenever I wanted…

So, I’m watching the match, which was awesome… DiMarco was doing a great job on keeping right on the heels of Tiger, despite great breaks like Tiger’s awesome birdie on 16… They get to hole 18 and.. “bu-boop!”

Tivo had stopped the recording before the Masters was over.

Man.. I was so pissed (after watching 4 and a half hours of the masters) to find that tivo had stopped recording the masters RIGHT before the 18th hole. Um. yah, so I didn’t get to see DiMarco tie Tiger, nor did I get to see the playoff. Grr.

Yah, yah.. I know that I should have told tivo to keep recording after the scheduled time, and blah blah blah blah.. But, it didn’t record, and I’m mad. Tivo should really figure out a way to figure out when to properly stop a recording. Hmm.. now that I think of it, maybe they have in the newer tivos — and since I have a series one tivo, this complaint is moot. Well.. in that case, they should let me transfer my lifetime series one supscription over to a new tivo.

Well, tivo was good for one thing..

it allowed me to replay tiger’s snot rocket. eew.

ooo.. the new Nokia 8800 looks nice… It kind of reminds me of that slidy nokia phone that was in the Matrix (that nobody ever could get)..

Neat, the “exquisite ringtones” included on the phone are composed by Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto…

“Why did you take so long to answer?”
“Oh, sorry, I was listening to my ringtone.”

John Battelle wrote about a flickr-googlemaps mashup today called “Memory Maps” today… The idea is to look at a satellite photo of where you grew up in google maps.. and then use flickr notes to annotate your memories about the map..

Since my family moved when I was 10, I had to do two… This sure was a fun project (click through to flickr to see the notes)…

Mayfield Heights, Ohio — age 0-10

Moreland Hills, Ohio — age 10-18

Yay. Ohio.

over at MeFi, they’re discussing this dude dennis who is running for pope. um, ok. whatever, but they DO realize that I’m the true sinned, ya?

[thanks mikeho!]

As many of you may or may not know, my friend Pius (aka, the jerk) has been travelling for the past few years all around the world… he’s molested pandas, entertained various “masseuses, hung out with yangs, and bathed in rivers..

Hersh, Jablow and Joe (aka, the jerks) just got back from visiting Pius in Thailand… Here are their their pictures. I think I could get used to this.. I wonder if I could work from there.. lack of electricity might be a problem…

Google continues to impress… Now they’ve integrated keyhole into google maps… Same AJAX interface, same google speed.

Ten points to the first person to identify what this is… (shouldn’t be that hard):

Go go google go.

Man, this is fun.. I grew up here. And went to school here. And live here. And… my family is originally from here…

I had a tasty dinner at Amy & Joe’s house on Sunday. They have a water cooler that they don’t use because it is too hard to use. It is designed so that you don’t have to remove the little plastic cap when you put a new bottle on the cooler — there is this little part that pierces the cap when you put the bottle on. But — the brilliant engineers didn’t make that part actually work. So, in order to use it you have to remove the cap and then maneuver the bottle on to the cooler with incredible precision in order to use it without dumping all of the water all over your kitchen floor. So, instead of actually using the water cooler as a water cooler, they use it as a water bottle STAND. That’s why the water bottle is on the water cooler upside down.

Ditto the super beagle looks on inquisitively.