Promoting secondary units (in-law apartments)

With streamlined regulations, in-law units could boost East Bay affordable housing stock and economy, study finds

Adding secondary units like this is an extremely cost-effective way of providing affordable housing; the main reason it doesn't happen more is zoning regulations. The main zoning issue is parking, but street parking is not generally difficult to find in these areas. Adding units either in existing units' back yards or carved out of the existing homes should be promoted by the cities.

Oakland's Station B, 31 August 2011

The Station B Post Office, at 1446 Franklin St, Oakland, CA 94612, closed today. I wanted to take some pictures of it before it did.

To be honest, given where the USPS is financially and that there is another post office less than half a mile away, I really can't blame them for closing Station B. There are much more important and impressive post offices being closed in other parts of the country. Still, I'll miss the convenience of it, and more importantly, I love the walls and woodwork inside.

I wish I could think of some business that could use the space intact, but I can't -- I can only hope it gets to a reuse center rather than being junked. Thanks, Station B. I'll miss you.

If you don't like the oh-so-cool slideshow, here's a link to the Picasa album itself.

Oakland's Station B, 31 August 2011

Secret revealed -- Sue Grafton's 27th book cover!

Seen here for the first time.

Brilliant use of space

This brilliant architect used moving walls to create 24 "rooms" in his tiny apartment (see Youtube video):

I love it.

Throwing shoes at Bush

They should throw the book at him in The Hague, not shoes at him at a press conference.

I love Harriet

This blog's been abandonded for a long time, but finally I have something to say. This is my wedding day and I love Harriet Patterson very, very much.

Powerpuffs

Back in 2002, I read this review by San Francisco Chronicle TV critic Tim Goodman of The Powerpuff Girls Movie. Who ever heard of a four-star review for a kids' cartoon? It sounded like just the thing to share with my niece, then nine years old. So I asked her if she wanted to go. She said, no, she'd never heard of the Powerpuff Girls.

I was shocked. They were the big thing, I said. They were the hip cartoon of 1998-2002. If I knew about them — through a coworker who was interested in hip cutesy cartoons — surely every nine-year-old girl had heard of them? This was the same girl, after all, who couldn't spend enough money in the Hello Kitty section of the Sanrio store.

Lupita said no, she didn't want to see it, but that if I were too embarassed to go alone, she would be willing to see it with me.

Having a nine-year-old tolerantly condescend to me is something I didn't expect to live to see.

The reason I bring this up now is that, while having a cold, I finally got around to watching The Powerpuff Girls Movie, which I had set my TiVo to record. And I have now firmly come to a conclusion which I should have realized from the outset and which I have suspected for some time:

Tim Goodman is a moron.

Thank you, Lupita, for saving me from spending $8 on this garbage. At least this way I saw it when I was so zonked out on medication that I wouldn't have been able to appreciate something better.

Xiao peng you zao

I don't know how long this article will be up on the San Francisco Chronicle's web site. It's about the new Mandarin immersion class in San Francisco's Starr King Elementary School.

My nephew is in this class. As he is is already bilingual in English and Spanish, the third language will open up many new doors for him.

I always figured someday I would take him on a vacation trip somewhere and have him translate for me. I just never thought it would be China!

Seriously, I am so proud. And jealous. Oh, so jealous.

Pictures from Empire Builder, Southwest Chief trip

I took a long train trip this past week, from Portland to Chicago (on the Empire Builder) and thence to Gallup, New Mexico (on the Southwest Chief), where I stayed for a few days (visiting Canyon de Chelly and Shiprock) before continuing to Los Angeles (again on the Southwest Chief). I took a bunch of pictures, mostly on the Empire Builder and of Canyon de Chelly. I am a terrible photographer, sadly. Still, I put them up on my home page so people can see them. It's always good to give people something to cluck over. At some point I will probably go through it and give all the pictures titles, but I have not done so yet. You'll just have to guess on a lot of them. Sorry.

Tattoos

While passing a tattoo parlor on the street, it occurred to me that I should get a tattoo that just says "This body intentionally left blank."

I Would Take Something For My Journey Now

No reasonable offer refused.

One City, One Book

Today I attended a discussion of The Mistress of Spices, the book taken up as the first in Oakland's "One City, One Book" program. This was one of ten book discussions being held all over Oakland.

This was one was held at the Piedmont Avenue Branch Library, a tiny little building on 41st St., two doors down from the apartment building in which I lived from 1997 to 2003. I was afraid that this library was so small that it would be overwhelmed with people. I needn't have worried. All of six people showed up, other than the moderator (a Main Library reference librarian). I was the youngest person present by a decade, I suspect, and the only male.

Literary criticism is not one of my great strengths, so I was quite prepared to be quiet and not say anything. I didn't get that opportunity. Not only were there only six other people there, but four of them hadn't read the book. What's the point of going to a book discussion if you haven't read the book? I can only imagine that the enjoyment of the book would have been lessened by giving away plot points.

Anyway, although I tried not to talk too much, with only two other people there who knew the book I couldn't really be quiet and let those with a clue speak. Oh well.

Even though the turnout was disappointing, I'm glad I read the book and showed up. Magical-realist novels aren't something I normally pick up for myself. I did read One Hundred Years of Solitude (doesn't its Spanish title, Cien años de soledad, have much better rhythm?) in college, eighteen years ago, and later The Octopus, which although written before the term was coined, does seem to have some elements of magic realism to it.

Yet it's good, once in a while, to expand one's boundaries, and the idea of reading the same book as others in your community has a lot of appeal. And, given that the book is set in Oakland and explores themes of cultural assimilation, it's certainly a good choice for the program, even if I don't regret not attending some of the cultural events ("The Art of the Sari: Indian clothing demystified at this hands-on workshop for families and kids"). Let's see what book they pick next year. I wonder if I can get them to read The Death and Life of Great American Cities?

Pennies from Hell

Someone posted a rant on Craigslist, the gist of which is that we ought to get rid of pennies. He or she is right. Pennies have so little value with today's inflated dollar that it makes a great deal of sense to round prices off to the nearest nickel, as is done in Australia.

There used to be an organization called the Coin Coalition promoting the replacement of dollar bills with dollar coins and the elimination of the penny. Unfortunately the organization does not appear to exist anymore.

Jewish law

It turns out that roller skating is in accord with Jewish law, but that naming your daughter Danielle is not.

I don't know what this means but I think it's interesting.

Goodbye, summer

Today is October 17. Ever since my house got knocked down in the Loma Prieta earthquake, I know summer is going to be over in the next few days when the anniversary rolls around. That week in 1989 I remember everybody slept outside during the very warm next few days -- Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday -- and then on Friday the 20th it got cold, and we all went inside.

The weather report says that today will be the last warm day in Oakland for a while, and I assume, until 2006. After my dental appointment ended early today I decided I had to do something in the warm air while it is here. (I had wanted to go to Angel Island but it was too late in the day.) I went up to Lake Temescal and walked around it. There were some people there but it wasn't very crowded and it was nice to just be in the open, warm air, looking at the lake. Of course, it was especially appropriate since Lake Temescal is in the middle of a rift valley and there are signs all over about the fault that runs through the middle of it.

If I were someone with lots of money and no responsibilities I'd be making plans to go to Australia until April. Oh well. Bye, summer. I will look forward to 2006.

When the rain falls...

You know the smell of the first rain after a dry spell? It has a name. It's called petrichor.

Peace, order and good government

Just a thought, really.

What Happened to Chrysopylae.Com?

I am phasing out my old domain, chrysopylae.com, in favor of my new one, priven.sf.ca.us. This is a belated recognition that

1. Nobody can spell Chrysopylae;
2. Even if they could spell it, they wouldn't know what it meant;
3. Even if they knew what it meant, it doesn't immmediately tie in with me, and this is my personal domain; and
4. It doesn't cost anything to have a .sf.ca.us domain.

In the long run, this change will pay for itself, and I have commemorated this event with a new verse for a well-known spiritual:

No more InterNIC money from me,
No more, no more,
No more InterNIC money from me.
Fifty dollars gone.

Chrysopylae.com has now been deleted.

And yes, I live in Oakland now, but actually I lived in San Jose when I first got priven.sf.ca.us. It doesn't matter -- the document describing the .us domain clearly states that the domain for the central city of a region can be used for surrounding cities. The WELL, located in Sausalito, was well.sf.ca.us for years before deciding to get a .com domain. Anyway, it was a big pain changing from chrysopylae.com to priven.sf.ca.us and I'm not going to do it again.

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New as of February 2000: With competition in the registry business, prices have gone down significantly. So I went ahead and reregistered chrysopylae.com and decided I'd get priven.com too while I was at it. Now www.priven.com and www.chrysopylae.com both point to this site. Eventually I will probably phase out priven.sf.ca.us in favor of priven.com, although they will all work.

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New as of May 2001: I am now phasing out www.priven.sf.ca.us, so it points to priven.com instead of the other way around.

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Chrysopylae means "Golden Gate" in Greek. John C. Frémont, who first named the Golden Gate (before that it was called "La Boca," or "The Mouth" of the bay) originally referred to it as "Chrysopylae." He was making a reference to the Chrysoceros, the Golden Horn, a waterway in Constantinople. San Francisco, like Constantinople, was supposed to be a gateway to the Orient.

I thought an obscure bit of California history would be a good name for my domain, but in practice it just meant that I had to spell it a lot.

Some of my interests

(This was written in 1995 or so, except for the last section on things I enjoy, and some minor editing. It's still more or less accurate, although a lot of computer-based communication seems pretty mundane to me these days. It certainly has progressed past Neat Programming Tricks. Now it's gone too far in the other direction, into Neat Marketing Tricks.)

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I am one of those people who, it seems, has trouble specializing I have several long-standing areas of interest that I have followed through my life. I could imagine working very hard in any one of these areas.

The structure, geography, and social processes of cities.

I have been interested in cities and their geography I think since I was a very young boy; as a four year old I studied maps and drew street maps of imaginary places. (I still doodle street maps.) And I recall being fascinated with a book on city structure when I was nine, one of few books I specifically recall reading at that age. But it wasn't until I was nineteen that I took a class at U.C. Santa Cruz called "The Quality of Urban Life" and there read Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities. The vision of a diverse pedestrian urbanity resonated with me and I have held on to it. This has led me to read today's "new urbanists": Peter Calthorpe, Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Peter Katz. I wrote my senior thesis on this topic. However, I still know far too little about all this.

Public transportation and transit.

My interest in transit stemmed out of my interest in maps and cities, as I started by collecting timetables and was always most interested in the maps in the timetables. But my interest continues as the fruit of my own experiences. I lived in San Francisco from the ages of ten to fourteen; at that age I returned to the suburbs. This gave me a very different take on our automobile-centered culture than most of my peers. I didn't, and don't, see the car as an instrument of freedom. In San Francisco, a block north of a major streetcar line and east of a crosstown bus line, I had freedom in the transit system. Going back to San Mateo, where transit was infrequent and often nonexistent, made it clear that the car was not necessary. It took me years to understand that it was the patterns of building that made decent bus service possible in San Francisco.

Bay Area history, geography, and ecology

Since I was born and have lived almost all my life in the Bay Area, I have a special interest in its history and geography. I've lived in five different Bay Area counties, and I see the area very much as a single region that needs to work together to solve its transportation and planning problems. I am concerned about the area's ecology as well, although I find myself with the human impact on it -- sprawl, pollution -- than I am in the specifics of how the ecosystems work.

Journalism and media

My interest in journalism stems from the editing side, not the reporting side. Being the person to go out there and chase down sources and do all the supposedly high-glamour stuff that made Woodward and Bernstein famous never interested me much. My favorite character in Lou Grant was the bald copy editor (whose name I can't remember) -- that was what I wanted to do: stay in the office, polish the prose, and write opinion pieces, not be out on the street searching for stories.

In high school our journalism class was taught for two years by a ranking editor at the local newspaper. Most people learn little in high school journalism; I learned a lot. Not enough to make the regular column I wrote worth reading at this late date, but a lot nonetheless. (Thanks, Micki, if you're out there.) In college I worked on the business side of one of the college papers for a very short time, and I was one of many undergraduate section leaders for a media-criticism course. I also helped edit the Course Review Book, the student guide to classes at U.C. Santa Cruz.

Until March, 1998, I was Senior Editor for ClariNet Communications Corp., publishers of ClariNews, an "electronic newspaper" on the Internet. I was responsible for the classification of wire service copy into our hundreds of "clari." newsgroups. I also moderated the Usenet newsgroup alt.journalism.moderated for a time.

Computers and computer-based publishing and conversations

My interest in computers has almost always been an interest in using their potential for communication. (I've done a little programming, but my interest in this peaked when I was about 15.) My family's first IBM PC, in 1984, was followed quite quickly by our first modem. I used bulletin boards from November 1984, but my favorite BBS was the one where we discussed politics and government, not hardware and software. I started a FidoNet BBS in 1987 and subscribed to all the political echomail conferences and none of the technical ones. As an Internet user since 1988 I have always been more interested in using the Internet to follow my other interests (I have subscribed to ba.transportation for years) than about the Internet itself. ClariNet is the epitome of this for me: ClariNet is a very early use of the Internet to distribute news chiefly about the outside world, not about the Internet itself (although this is changing as the Internet becomes more important).

I strongly believe that the Internet is a tool for communication, and that it is the result of using this tool that is interesting, not the details of the tool itself. Too much of the material on the Internet, and on the WWW for that matter, consists of Neat Programming Tricks, and not of real uses that will matter to people. My favorite Internet site, because it symbolizes this as well as involving my other interests, is the Transit Information Page maintained by a couple of U.C. Berkeley students (in their spare time, yet). These pages are truly useful in a way that very few World Wide Web sites are. They bring information unavailable anywhere else and difficult to provide in earlier media, the entire schedules of most Bay Area transit systems, to thousands of people on the Internet. It's not perfect yet, mainly because of the lack of maps, but there's no reason now for anyone with Internet access to collect the paper schedules still handed out on Bay Area buses.

(This was written long enough ago that the link to the Transit Information Project was originally to the server.berkeley.edu site. How times change -- one of my professional responsibilities now is making sure AC Transit information gets to transitinfo.org)

Typefaces and graphic design

I learned how to read fairly early, and I learned to recognize type faces and styles from an early age. Since my father worked (and works) in the printing industry, he was able to indulge my interest by bringing home type catalogs. (I remember issues of U&lc from the very early eighties, when phototype was still king.)

But it was in 1985 that I really became interested in the subject. Mine was one of the first, if not the first, high school newspaper in the country to be desktop published; it was first produced in September, 1985. (We used Aldus PageMaker version 1, on 512K Macintoshes with 800K floppy disks, and a LaserWriter -- not a LaserWriter Plus.) I was Production Manager for 1986-87. Later I typeset two annual Course Review Books and numerous newsletters for UCSC school papers and assorted non-profit groups. I have only a little formal training in design, but I try to read about it as much as I can. I am to the point where I know what I don't know -- which is quite a lot!

Governmental systems, constitutions and constitutional law

When I was nine, I read Miracle at Philadelphia by Catherine Drinker Bowen, a history of the U.S. Constitutional Convention in 1787. I liked it. I liked it so much I reread it seven times before I was ten.

I've been interested in constitutions and political systems since that time. When I was a sophomore in college I took a course on the British political system that really excited me about other constitutions. The British constitution was so very different, so interesting to me, that I wanted to spend time studying a foreign political system up close. I spent my third year in college at the University of British Columbia in Canada as an exchange student. Although English Canada's general culture isn't very different from the U.S., the political system is quite different. It was very interesting to study it up close, at least for a while. I did eventually get burned out on the intricacies of Canadian federalism and the party system. But I still am interested in Canadian politics.

Medieval history

I'm not really sure why I'm interested in medieval history. I think I am most interested in learning about the institutions of medieval history that have mutated into institutions still with us. English constitutional history fascinates me -- the slow mutation of feudal monarchy into constitutional monarchy and then to representative democracy, yet each new power source retaining almost all of the structure of what came before. I also find interesting the history of the university and the way it has changed so little in its structure while adapting that structure to very different goals imposed from outside. None of this explains why I named the bulletin board system I ran in high school "The Angevin Empire." I think I was just interested in the drama of it.

These are all things that are important to me, that I could imagine making a career in. There are, of course, other things that interest me -- diversions, entertainments. Here are some notable ones.

• Music, especially folk music. I have many albums by the Weavers; Pete Seeger; Joan Baez; Peter, Paul and Mary; Gordon Lightfoot; Arlo Guthrie; the Indigo Girls; and Dar Williams, among many others. I attend the Berkeley and San Francisco Free Folk Festivals every year. I also like other kinds of music, especially Dixieland and Big Band jazz, instrumental classical music, and brass ensemble music. I can usually get into anything if I hear it enough, although you can pretty much assume that if it's on MTV, I won't like it, and I haven't done a lot of musical exploration.
• Escapist novels. Except for Tony Hillerman mysteries, I read mostly science fiction. I know there's a lot of serious literature in science fiction these days, but I have to admit, that's not what I read -- normally, if I want to read something serious, I'll pick up something that's non-fiction. I call it "mind candy" -- sweet but empty. And much of the "mind candy" out there comes from...

• Star Trek and Star Wars. Sigh. I feel like such a nerd, writing about Star Trek on my web page. For what it's worth, for me it's a family thing -- my mom and my brother and I would watch reruns together when I was a kid. Ever since then I've liked the show. What can I say? I've never read a Star Trek fan magazine (although I read the newsgroup rec.arts.startrek for a few months, when Usenet was much smaller). I've never been to a Star Trek convention (although my mother has). I didn't skip school to see "Return of the Jedi" the day it opened (although my brother did -- and I did go with the rest of ClariNet's staff to see the Special Edition openings). I kill time reading junk novels and my VCR is set to record the two current Star Trek shows. (I don't keep them -- I record over the same tape every week.) If that makes me an irredeemable geek, so be it.

And, of course, there are a lot of other things I like, but which aren't coming to mind right now.

I Was Awarded a Medal by NASA

A picture of the medal I was awarded by NASA.

OK, I admit it. I was one of hundreds of high school students who participated in NASA's "put an experiment aboard the Space Shuttle" contest. Each of us got a cheap plastic medal, a certificate, a copy of the group photo and an all-expenses-paid trip to a regional NASA conference for ourselves and our science teacher. Most of us in the West went to NASA Ames Research Center (in Mountain View, California).

Since NASA Ames Research Center is about fifteen miles from the high school I attended, the free hotel room and the "mileage expenses" seemed kind of silly, but the people there from North Dakota seemed to appreciate it. It was a lot warmer in California.

My experiment came right out of a Carl Sagan book I had read: it was basically to take some aluminium and lead and try to heat them up and make alloy out of them. In fact, the whole thing was pretty silly. I was taking biology at the time, and I didn't like biology, so when I was given a choice -- to do some regular biology assignment or to do a Shuttle contest entry on any area of science -- well, I decided a shuttle contest entry on metallurgy was a lot less boring. It was, as it turned out.

So I went to Ames, got advice on redoing the project for the Next Level of Competition, resubmitted it, and was told I didn't make the next cut. Oh well. I got an A in biology that semester. And I get to tell people I was awarded a medal by NASA.