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So, 7×7 magazine just posted their annual “Eat & Drink” awards for San Francisco.. Hayes Valley restaurants scooped up 5 out of 20 of the awards:

best dessert: Citizen Cake
best pre-theater: Jardiniere
best for a large group: Sauce (woohoo! congrats you guys!)
best CA cuisine: Zuni Cafe
best restaurant cocktails: Absinthe

Woohoo.. go Hayes Valley. My hood rocks. Well, it’s definitely “up and coming” at least… And, it’s getting better — we’re getting at least two more new restaurants in this year, so that’s exciting. As Michelle excitedly reported last week, Miette Patisserie opened up here, which should give Citizen Cake a run for its money. I actually am not a huge fan of Citizen Cake — their desserts are WAY too sweet for my taste.

That said, I’m still a little disappointed with the eating choices we have here. It seems like we have either expensive fancy places, or disturbingly mediocre ones. Grr. I just want places that are cheap and super good… Like Hotei, Weird Fish, Citrus Club, and Hard Knox. Mmmmmm.

Oh yah.. this reminds me, but if you’re in San Diego and are looking for a good place to eat, check out sandiego.eats.it. Doug just launched it, and it’s looking pretty good. I’m waiting for him to launch sanfrancisco.eats.it — I’m all over that.

Andy and Mer got me the Nike+iPod integration stuff for christmas, and it’s pretty damn cool.. They also got me a gift cert to get the Nike shoes that are designed for the sensor, but, thanks to the Marware Sportsuit Sensor (Thanks Carlo), I could just attach the sensor to my existing shoes, which is cool cuz I really like my shoes right now (and now I can get some other Nike gear that I need too)..

The accuracy is so-so, it seems to work mainly on a “step-meter” type methodology, so when I switch into “chi running” mode, it definitely thinks I’m going a lot faster than I actually am.. I’ll try and calibrate it some at the track, but I suspect that no matter what, it won’t ever be super-duper accurate.

That said, it’s pretty damn cool to have my runs logged on the iPod — my run data is only available to me if I log in (or if I screencap it here), so it doesn’t seem very “2.0″.. Although, there were some privacy concerns about being able to track people using their nike+ sensors..

Anyway — if any of you out there are also using the Nike+ system, let me know… I’ve challenged Carlo to a 100 mile race starting 2/1, so if you want to join in, I’ll add you for sure…

A bunch of us went up to hog island yesterday to stuff ourselves full of the delicious oysters and bbq.. Man, I love that place. The cold snap has finally broken, so it was a beautiful day up there (even though most of us were still bundled up. We were up there to celebrate the engagement of Matt & Melody and Clint & Renais. Congrats guys!

Clint really, really wanted me to take a picture of these horses on the horizon.. so good thing I had my 70-300 on me, cuz they were far, far away. So, here you go Clint.

Ok.. this is frikkin cool. I saw Jeff Han’s TED Presentation about touchscreens last week, but this is an even better demo of the capabilities. Ooo. [Thanks James]

Wait, so now I like touchscreens? Yes, I know I’ve been going around trash talking the iPhone for its lack of tactile feedback.. But, maybe I’m warming up to the idea. *If* the UI can provide sufficient visual feedback, then perhaps it will work… That said, the awesomest visual feedback will do me no good if i’m trying to use my phone without looking at the screen. Walt Mossberg’s initial impression of the iPhone was favorable, so.. who knows.. we’ll see.

Anyone remember the Atari 800 & Atari 400? The 800 had a real keyboard, and the 400 had this goofy membrane keyboard thing that was just awful. Yah, touchscreen is very different, but I’m just sayin..

Man.. Atari 800. Rock on.

Hmm.. So, 20 copies of this book just arrived at my house today..

Carlo astutely pointed out that the book isn’t even out yet… Hmm.. So, a little more detective work leads me to find that the author is having a book signing tomorrow at the bookstore around the corner.

Hmmm.. Interesting…

Update:

Aha.. so it turns out that Amazon thinks I suck. I ordered this radiator last week to deal with the latest cold snap we’ve been having here in San Francisco.. And instead of sending me the radiator, Amazon sends me 20 copies of this “You Suck” book.

And the best part is.. Amazon refused to send it out via a faster shipping method, so I have to wait another week! Thanks Amazon! You must really do think I suck!

Update 2:

Ok, after calling back to complain about what I thought was a poor resolution to their mistake (sending me another radiator via standard shipping — so it would take *another* week *brr* to get here), I got a much more helpful customer service associate.. They still couldn’t ship it via 2-day, but she gave me a refund on the original shipping cost, so I guess that’s something. The first Amazon dude didn’t really appreciate the humor of them sending me 20 copies of a book titled “You Suck”, but Michelle W. was certainly more friendly. Thanks Michelle W!

Just felt another quake! That one was more like a little wiggle. A wee lil’ 3.8.

That’s the 2nd one I’ve felt within a month! I guess better to have lots of little quakes, right?

Whoa.. this is so meta..

Oh, and the iPhone? Enh. I’m gonna wait and see how it turns out in real life first.. I’m skeptical about how the whole no-buttons approach is gonna work out. I didn’t get an iPod until the 3G-no-click-feedback model, and that interface wasn’t exactly the best. True, I love my nano now, so I’m thinking I’ll give Apple a few years to work out the kinks in the phone before I make the leap. That said, I’ve been a Nokia loyalist since 1997 (ok, with one slight motorola lapse, but only for a few months) so hopefully Nokia will get its act together and make a good phone again.

The latest meme going around is this Blog-Tag thing (you basically list five things that people don’t really know about you, and then “tag” five people to continue the chain). So, I guess it finally made it around to me — Thanks John.

Anyway, here are five things that you may not know about me.

1. Although most people that know me know about my Who Wants to be a Millionaire appearance a few years back, it wasn’t my first appearance on a television game show. In high school, I was on our local television quiz show, Academic Challenge. We came in third place (out of three teams). Ouch.
2. My senior year of college, I worked as a snowboard instructor at the local hill, Greek Peak. Lessons at the time were “free” (included with your lift ticket), and I was only tipped once during the whole season. But, I didn’t really care since I got a free season pass.
3. I got started in networked computing in 1986, when I signed up for an account at the Cleveland Freenet. My friend Ryan and I used to send email to each other and then call each other hours (or sometimes days) later to report when the email arrived. Good times.
4. I dj’ed one radio show with my friend Audris. Mike usually hosted “Ithaska” on WVBR Saturday nights, but he had to study for a prelim or something, so we hosted it instead. I had no idea what I was doing, and when someone called in requesting a “shout-out for Mark”, we obliged by literally shouting out.. “MARK!” on the air. I was never asked to host another show.
5. On February 18, 2000, my friend Korby and I circumnavigated the Bay Area on public transit. It was a non-trivial task to accomplish at the time — the trip took over 12 hours and spanned 10 different public transit systems. Kept abreast of our progress via Blackberry, Pius documented the day online. Six years later, I finally posted the pictures. Korby is also known for instigating the “hey, it looks like we can drive to Alaska” trip.

And.. that’s it.. Now it’s my turn to tag people.. Hmm… Mike, Cherry, Penelope, Jason, and Dana. You’re it!

Happy New Year, everyone.. got back today from my roadtrip to LA with the gang, and it was a blast.. pics & stories, tk.

I did this last year, so I thought it would be fun to do this again… here’s my list of cities that I’ve spent one a night in (*’s indicate multiple visits) in.. in rough chronological order:

New York, NY *
Hoboken, NJ
San Francisco, CA *
South Lake Tahoe, CA
Truckee, CA
Philadelphia, PA
Las Vegas, NV
Los Angeles, CA
Chicago, IL
Chelmsford, MA
Chatham, MA
San Diego, CA
Avon, CO
West Hollywood, CA

Hmm… not as many as I would have hoped.. This year’s travel was severely limited by my broken ankle, which basically meant that I really didn’t leave 94102 for like 5 months.. Perhaps 2007 will have travel in the cards…