I have to throw in one story about rural Minnesota vs. my life downtown. The night before the wedding everyone was invited to get pizza after the rehearsal. The wedding, and therefore the rehearsal, was in LeRoy, MN. The pizza place was in Spring Valley, a thriving metropolis of a couple thousand people about 15 miles away. My cousin and his wife live in New York, and on the way there she was talking about how crazy it is to her to have to drive 15-20 miles for pizza. I agreed, thinking about the variety of pizza places in a four block radius of my apartment.

Today I needed to get a cell phone charger for Kathy, to replace one she left in the hotel room in MN. I thought after going to the nearest Cingular store, which is maybe a mile away. I didn't want to go that far, though, so instead I walked to the corner of Spring & 6th, looked around and decided which of the three electronics stores I could see from there to try. I walked in and a minute later walked out with a $15 charger. Total distance from my building front door to the store... maybe 500 feet.

That's why I love civilization.

Several long days of silence there... Thursday, very early in the morning, Kathy and I flew out of LAX and made our way to Minneapolis. There we met up with my grandparents and headed south, bound for a wedding in LeRoy, MN. I didn't have Internet access for a few days, which really wasn't that big of a deal, but I did have several things that I was going to mention here and now can't seem to remember once I have the opportunity.

Travelling afforded me the opportunity to get started on volume 2 of Neil Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, The Confusion. I'm actually about 600 pages in at this point. I felt like Quicksilver bogged down in the middle, but I haven't really felt that about The Confusion. The reading's been pretty quick and easy to follow (well, as easy to follow as you can be in a 2700 page series).

Yesterday Minneapolis airport conned me into getting excited by WIFI signs, but then it turned out to be a for-pay system. $6.95 got you a day's access, but that wasn't worth it to me since I was only going to be there and using it for a little over an hour. DNS lookups worked without ever signing up and authenticating, though, so if you could hide your data somewhere in there you could eek out a bit of a loophole.

Driving through Minneapolis yesterday we noticed a light rail line from town to (almost) the airport that seemed to be unusually full and well-staffed. I guessed that it had to be an opening weekend. A newspaper front-page in the airport confirmed that this was the opening weekend for the Hiawatha Line. The stations and cars looked really nice, and with the line eventually connecting the airport and the Mall of America, I think it should be able to carve out at least a tourist nich for itself. I don't know enough of Minneapolis to be able to say how it will do for commuters. They're using a fare policy similar to LA's, with no fare boxes but random inspections to ensure compliance. The Bombadier cars they're using seem a little shorter than the Siemens P2000 cars LA uses on the Gold and Green lines, but I can't seem to find length or seat information for either right off.

Lots more I could say about how rural that part of MN is, but I'll refrain for now. Many towns with populations under 1000. 20 miles to go get pizza, etc.

It's good to be back.

I was just cleaning up my desk some and found a nice glossy bookmark-shaped "Metro Rail Bike Hours" card that Metro employees were handing out on Bike to Work day. When they handed me the card I didn't even look at it, since I'd read their Metro Bikes page online and ridden with my bike plenty of times before. Running across it just now, though, I took a look and found it very confusing.

First, the back of the card includes a "Bike Location Diagram" to help you understand where on the car you can ride with your bicycle. That's good. The first couple times I rode it took a bit to get the hang of where it was I needed to be going, especially on the Gold Line, where the open space is directly next to the driver doors. But look at the diagram. What is that? Are they trying to tell me that bike positioning is the same of the Red and Gold lines? Those cars are very different. On the Red Line a car might look like (excuse my poor ascii art):

[|||   ||||||||||   |||]
[|||   ||||||||||   |||]

A couple rows of seats, open space, more seats, open space, and a final few rows. A Gold Line car on the other hand looks like:

[-   |||||||  -^^-  |||||||   -]
[-   |||||||  -vv-  |||||||   -]

The area in the middle is pretty narrow where the car articulates. The proper place to have a bike is to sit in one of the end seats with the bike across the driver door. Obviously that rules out the front of the front car, but since they run generally two car trains on the Gold Line that leaves you with the back of the front car, and both front and back of the back car.

How you're supposed to infer any of that from the diagram they give you, I have no idea.

Secondly, on the front of the card is a chart of the hours you can't take a bike on rail. Basically it's during rush hours in the commute direction, and you can see the chart at the aforementioned Metro Bikes page. Unlike the bikes page, though, the card puts the bi-drectional arrows on Gold Line as well, making it appear that no bikes can go on the Gold Line between 6:30 - 8:30 and 4:30 - 6:30. That's simply incorrect, and has to be a graphical mistake on their part.

In summary, the card was a good thought gone wrong.

I just went to download a new kernel and was in shock over how fast it went, so I had to go and download it again. Check this out (wget output shortened because I feel like it):

[JPL (eric@gonzo)-([Tue June 22  3:38pm])]
~: wget ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/linux-2.6.7.tar.gz
--15:39:01--  
Resolving ftp.kernel.org... 204.152.189.116
Connecting to ftp.kernel.org[204.152.189.116]:21... connected.
Logging in as anonymous ... Logged in!
==> SYST ... done.    ==> PWD ... done.
==> TYPE I ... done.  ==> CWD /pub/linux/kernel/v2.6 ... done.
==> PASV ... done.    ==> RETR linux-2.6.7.tar.gz ... done.
Length: 44,006,970 (unauthoritative)

100%[====================================>] 44,006,970     4.62M/s    ETA 00:00

15:39:11 (4.53 MB/s) - `linux-2.6.7.tar.gz.1' saved [44006970]

Ten seconds to download a 40+MB kernel. At that speed it's going at over 1/3 the top speed of my ethernet card. Wow.

Yesterday on the way back from Union Station I made my way over to the LAPL Central Library. I intended to go check out a book, but it wasn't there so I wandered around the DVDs a bit, looking for something to watch. I'm pretty sure there is no unifying principle behind what DVDs they do or do not have. The selection is very random, and all of a sudden they'll have 6 or 8 copies of a movie you've never even heard of.

But anyway, I ran across a copy of In Like Flint. I had seen bits before, but never the whole movie, so I picked it up and watched it last night. Good times. Fully worth the bike ride over. Since rentals are free I'm hoping to start taking chances on their more random selections and go for quantity, if not necessarily quality.

Pulling out of Union Station on the Gold Line you pass a small rail yard full of classic passenger cars. Today, however, the yard was empty.

Curious, I did a little research.

I'm pretty sure the Rail Excursions car is one I normally see there. Their special itineraries page lists a June 22-23 trip from LA to Seattle, so perhaps it's off getting readied for that.

Another candidate is the Overland Trail, a car which normally runs LA to San Diego, but which Thursday will be leaving on a trip to Portland. I would imagine this trip would include a few other cars as well, so that may be an explanation.

Magilla and I just got back from the Ralphs over on the corner of 3rd and Vermont. It's a little ways from downtown, but it's pretty much the closest thing we've got. The trip back from there is cool because coming into downtown the eastbound lanes split off to become 4th street, which then proceeds both above and below the normal cross streets, not intersecting one until Olive.

But anyway, this post isn't about 4th street, although it does take place there.

So we're on the way back, on 4th, approaching Spring. The light's green, which means we're starting to slow to wait for pedestrians to clear. Crossing toward us on one of those three wheeled mobility scooters is a big black lady, probably in her 60s. We're slowing as we approach the intersection, but she sees us and starts jokingly waving an arm and a leg like "oh no, jump, i'm going to get hit!" As she passed she was having a good-natured laugh, and turning the corner Magilla and I just looked at each other in confusion. And then we both laughed.

That kind of thing needs to happen randomly more often.

An article on ESPN.com about the Expos and White Sox talks about the two home runs hit by Expos outfielder Juan Rivera -- both in the 2nd inning. I saw that and thought "Wow, that must never happen." Well, I was wrong. Apparently it's not all the uncommon of a thing for a player to hit two home runs in the same inning. To quote the article:

Rivera became the first major league player to hit two homers in one inning since Pittsburgh's Reggie Sanders on Aug. 20.

It was the fifth time a Montreal player hit two homers in the same inning, and first since Mike Lansing did it in the sixth inning of a 19-3 win in San Francisco on May 7, 1997.

[Andre] Dawson accomplished the feat twice for the Expos. His record of six RBI in an innings was set Sept. 24, 1985, in the fifth inning at Wrigley Field against the Cubs.

Crazy. The pitcher who gave up all the runs was making his first major league start. After the game he was sent back down to the minors.

This week's Downtown News has a cool article on Caryn Coleman, who with husband Sean Bonner owns the gallery sixspace and runs art.blogging.la. The article's part of Downtown News' series "Generation Next."

The article should make Sean happy... To quote from a recent post of his:

Since this is continually mistaken in articles written about us, we've felt the need to spell it out a little more clearly. The name of our art gallery is "sixspace" - that's all one word and lowercase. It's an aesthetic choice yes, but one that we'd appreciate you respecting. For some reason writers in the past have felt the need to write it as "SixSpace" or "Six-Space" or as two words and this is painfully incorrect.

The Downtown News correctly writes:

the gallery named sixspace (lower case intentional)

I'm not much of one for going somewhere and working out. I'm lazy, and somehow those two don't quite work out well together. What I will do, though, and what I have done twice in the last two days, is play some ping-pong. We have a table in the gym area on our roof and Wednesday I finally bought a pair of paddles and a six-pack of balls.

Last night Kathy and I played, and she put me to shame. I'm not one to try and make excuses, but I did hit about 75% unforced errors, so I think I beat myself just as much as she beat me.

Today, though, playing Magilla I was a little bit more acurate. The shot's starting to come back and the range finding is getting better. I think a few more days of training and I'll be right back into game shape.

I find it oddly comforting that at the moment I am number one on google for random boring stuff. googlefun also says I'm number one for crossdressing stereotypes assumptions, for which it points people to my gender and the internet essay.

I first mentioned Coupling here about a year ago, when the first clips from the NBC version started to show up. I first saw the show well before that, though, and in the days before New Years 2003 VHS copies of a BBC America marathon through seasons one and two eased me through the removal of my wisdom teeth.

Now, it's season four. I'm not going to talk plot, 'cause I really want everyone to do whatever they must to obtain the show and watch it. But the plot's really not important to why I'm writing.

Tonight I finished season four. At the start, I had my doubts. Seasons one through three were without question the funniest sitcom I've watched. But season four started off on the wrong foot, coming back without Jeff. Not anyone's fault, but a bad mark just the same. Oliver was the new guy. They played him for the cheap laugh. He comes in to some physical comedy. Not really that funny.

But hold on... Stephan Moffet has a plan. He knows where he's going with this, even if you don't. You see, this is British television, not American. In America a season would have 22 episodes written by 8 different writers. A season on the BBC may only have six episodes, but each one of them is written by the same mind. And so the characters can evolve. The tone can change. All of a sudden you realize that even though this is still the funniest thing you're apt to see on tv, now it's also a show with a heart.

We'll see if Coupling returns for a season five. Every time it gets harder and harder to bring the original cast back together. I hope they find a way to make it happen, even if it would most likely be a couple years down the line. I don't get hooked on tv shows very often, but this one's got me.

Yesterday I picked up a new old toy from someone who got tired of having it collect dust in his basement. It's an SGI IRIS Indigo (more commonly referred to without the IRIS... just Indigo). It's another of those machines that were $30,000 to $40,000 new, but these days they'll go on ebay for next to nothing. I'm starting to build up a collection of old SGIs: two Indys, the Personal IRIS, an Origin 200, and now the Indigo.

The machine's an R4k, which most likely means it runs at 100mhz. I don't have all I need to boot it up, so I don't know that for sure or how much RAM it has (the SIMMs don't say and I can't tell). It does have the Elan graphics package, with 4 geometry engines. I've put up pictures showing the card's size compared against a PCI card, some rewired traces, and the card without z-buffer (here you can really see the 4 geometry engine chips that dominate the main card). I also put up a picture of the Galileo video daughtercard, which snaps into the Elan. I don't have either of the breakout boxes for the Galileo, though, so it's not going to do me much good at the moment. I do have an extra IndyCam that'll connect to the Digital I/O, but that's it.

Like I said, though, I can't yet boot it up. The only SGI monitor I have out here in California is the one on the PI, and its input is composite RGB. I have a couple of SGI branded GDM20D11 monitors in Michigan, but getting them out here is the issue. Hopefully, though, I'll be able to get a friend to carry them along when he drives out in a few weeks. Then we'll be in business.

Like I said the other day, Kathy and I took off for a little mid-week trip up to the Bay Area. We got back this afternoon/evening after a return trip that lasted a lot longer than the drive there. We got on the road about when I wanted and traffic was moving just fine until all of a sudden we hit a stretch of road construction on the 5 where it took us an hour and a half to travel 20 miles. It was ridiculous. Most of the time a brisk walk would have more than kept pace with us. Not only did that lengthen the drive, it also put us back into LA during rush hour, which meant more fun on the 405 and the 10. A little over 6 hours to get there, but about 7 and a half to get back.

Kathy and I are up in the bay area right now, on a quick trip to catch up with Alan before he flies off to Hawaii. We drove up yesterday, are hanging out here until Thursday morning, and then we'll turn around and make our way back down the 5 to LA.

The friends we're staying with have wireless, but my ever-helpful laptop has decided not to cooperate with it. It sends out DHCP discovers, and the DHCP server sends back an offer, but the laptop refuses to carry through and get to the request and ACK stage. Watching the network I can see all the appropriate packets going where they should, but then my machine decides to just pretend it's deaf. I love when it does that.

I didn't really mean to take the weekend off... It was just one of those things that happens sometimes.

Continue Reading...

Yesterday I managed to travel every rail line in the Metro rail system in a single trip. I first needed to get to Pasadena City College, where I thought I would be taking a summer class, so I biked over to Union Station and hopped on the Gold Line. Sure it takes a little longer, but I had a book to read (I've been reading Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam) so I enjoyed my time, as I always do.

Errand done at PCC I decided that my bike was really driving me crazy and that I needed to take it back down to the REI in Manhattan Beach. To get there it was Gold Line to Union Station, Red Line to 7th/Metro Center, Blue Line to Imperial/Wilmington, and then Green Line to Douglas. I think total trip time was right around an hour, with a good half of that on the Gold Line. It was my first trip south of Washington/Grand on the Blue Line and my first trip of any kind on the Green Line. All in all I can't say it was a bad experience, though people like to deride the Blue Line as 'Ghetto Blue' and the Green as the line that goes from nowhere to nowhere. Well, for me it went right where I needed to go and that worked out just fine.

I left my bike in the very capable hands of REI's bike service people, who are going to be installing a new rear cassette, a new chain, and new brake levers. Hopefully this will clear things up for a while. Doing a little math with the guy working on the bike, I realized that if I ride my commute 3-4 times a week (which I intend to do once the bike's behaving properly), plus through in a couple miles extra here and there, I'm looking at up to 50 miles a week. Over the course of a year that's 2k - 2.5k miles.

I've not been the best at keeping things up to date over the past few days. Can't say that was intentional.

Wednesday night Kathy and I walked the three blocks or so down to the Orpheum to see Sunrise. The Orpheum has undergone extensive restoration and renovation since it stopped being a first-run movie house several years ago, and it shows. Everything looks amazing, almost to the point of not really looking old anymore. It still is old, though, and it's very cool to see what the end result for other theatres could be. Unlike the Los Angeles, the Orpheum has modern seating, which I don't know if I'm sold on or not. I think that was in large part what made it not feel old.

But who really cares what the seats are. THe place is old and grand and looks great.

Though Sunrise is a silent film, it was released with a Movietone recording of the musical score. That recording is the only music that exists for it today, or was until composer Robert Israel went through the entire film transcribing notes and finding the pieces used. On Wednesday he and a 18 piece orchestra performed a slightly rearranged version of the score during the film.

Hugh Hefner was the night's sponsor, and he and his dates sat seven or so rows in front of us. This week's Downtown News has a good article on Hef and his love of cinema. The article also mentions the censorship course he's endowed at the USC Film School. I'm enrolled in that class for the fall; though I signed up because it was Casper teaching more than anything else.

Last night my roomate and I headed over to the Bonaventure Brewing Co to watch game 2. Those of you keeping score at home may remember that this was where Kathy and I watched game 4 of the San Antonio series. This time, though, it was an early game and happy hour pricing was in effect for the first hour. I got fish and chips, which were $5.95 and not the $4.95 suggested online. They weren't spectacular, but they weren't bad, so all in all I can't really complain. I imagine they'd be better from the McCormick & Schmidt's happy hour menu but having not been there before I didn't know whether they'd have the game on.

Downtown happy hour prices are something I will definitely be exploring over the upcoming months. I'm all about cheap food.

My prediction is still Lakers in 6, though it could well go 7. I think they win game 3, lose 4, win 5, and come back to close it out in game 6. We'll see, though. I could also see the Lakers winning 3 & 4, and then losing 5 because in their hearts they really want to win the championship in LA.

I'm sitting in the apartment this morning waiting for the cable guy to come. I hate Comcast, and I hate how much cable costs, but it will be nice to get more channels than just ABC, KCAL9, FOX, UPN, and PBS. But whatever, you don't care about me getting cable...

The important thing is that I think I just had a one-minute long dream this morning. I'm pretty sure that I looked up at my clock at 8:56. Then I proceeded to dream about getting up, finding the cable guy at the door, and trying to get my teeth brushed while he went down the hall to grab his bag. And then I woke up, looked at the clock, and it was 8:58. As it all too often happens I had managed to wake up within 5 minutes of the time my alarm was set to go off for, but I'm just amazed that I could -- in the course of two minutes -- fall back to sleep, have a dream, and wake up.

I don't like to bore you with lists of the random fun queries people use to make it to my site. Enough people do that; I think you get the point. This time, though, I'll make an exception. I am currently #8 at google if you do a search for intercourse positions for overweight individuals. That's good stuff.

If you ever are bored enough to really want to see what searches bring people to my site, check out googlefun.

I just realized that I had 13 files open in one vim session. I think maybe at that point you're supposed to realize that, hey, there's a world outside of this terminal window. At least I'm not using emacs, though. Then I'd probably just boot straight into it and never leave.

I was looking through the eThreads code tonight, as part of my rewrite. I found stuff in the core that I didn't even know was there, which is kind of crazy when you consider that I wrote it all. That's what happens, though, when you write something over the course of 6 years. According to this history I did in 2002, the last ground up rewrite before these last few weeks was in 1999. Granted, a lot of the code has changed since then, particularly with the work I did in late 2001 / early 2002, but the major pieces were put in place in '99.

And yet, with all this revision, I still beat myself up with things like:

my @f = $content =~
    m!\G
        (?:
            {(/?)(\w[\w\.]*\w)(?:\s+(?:"([^"]+)"|([^}]+)\s+))?\s*(/?)}
            | (.*?)(?:(?={[\w/])|$)
        )
    !gisx;

Mmmm... Regular expression fun.

I recently made mention of Joseph Arthur, and so to check the link I went to his site and noticed a free song linked off the main page. I had sort of forgotten about him after getting out to Largo to see him in Oct. 2002, so I eagerly downloaded the track.

At first, I didn't know if I liked it, but I'm lazy so it stayed up in my mp3 player. I listened to it a few more times, and all of a sudden realized, hmmm, I do like this. So I'm mentioning here. After all, it's free music. I'm hoping that when the new album gets out Joseph gets back out to LA. It's been a while.

Friday I did the whole bike back from work thing, took a shower, waited for Magilla to get back from work, and then finally we set out. First up was a little walk up the street to check out the studiowarming party for Artistsalon.com. They put on monthly arts events where anyone can come and just do whatever it is they do. Art for art's sake, they like to say. We spent a little time talking to Jason Waters -- the guy responsible for Artistsalon -- after he wandered into a conversation we were having about tap water competitions. I'm pretty sure he thinks we're weird now. He was school of theatre at USC, which is cool.

But anyway, I was writing about music... After spending a little time at the party I hopped in the car and headed over to Museum Row. Destination, Molly Malone's. I was originally just headed there to meet up with someone I needed to talk to, but looking at the bill earlier in the day it turned into a show I was excited about. Paper Sun (to be mentioned and linked in a second) were putting the night on, looking to bring together a bunch of acts they enjoy and are friends with.

First up was Dawn Thomas, who I'm mentioned before in the context of singing a song with Saucy Monky. I only caught the last couple songs, but I enjoy hearing her vocals.

Next up was... I can't remember his name and the Molly Malone's calendar won't load for me at the moment. Doh. It was good, though, and I apologize to whoever I'm getting to short-change here.

Third up was Paper Sun. I first saw them last October, when they played a show at Room 5. I've also mentioned that Sally has been playing with Saucy Monky. Paper Sun's got a really jazzy vibe going on, and I've really enjoyed them both times I've heard them. I especially like their song "Los Angeles", but I can't seem to find a clip of that online to point you to. I'd encourage checking out "Never Alone" (mp3 link). I think that's closest to the live sound of any of the stuff they have online.

Next up was Gabriel Mann, who I'd heard of but never heard. Really good, definitely worth checking out.

Now, these last three bands all shared one thing in common that I think deserves to be pointed out here. All three shared bass and drum combo Carson Cohen and Adam Marcello. Now, I'm no musician but knowing your stuff for three different bands in a row seems to me like it would be a bit tough. But they pull it off, and they do it well. These two are everywhere. It's crazy.

There was one last act, but again the calendar isn't working and I actually had to leave anyway so I wouldn't be able to do much commenting regardless. A fun night to be sure, and something that they're looking to put on more often.

Brady Westwater, who just joined the LA blogging scene, today pointed me to an event he's helping put on called L.A. Means Business. As you can see from the L.A./Downtown discrepancy between title and URL, it's focused on bringing business back to the central city. From the site:

So whether you want to create the latest hot night spot, a hip fusion restaurant, a new clothing line, an art gallery or a book store - or start a museum or a non-profit that funds micro-businesses or job training - or found a new magazine or publishing house, hold a film festival, bring Broadway and off-Broadway theater to LA’s Broadway theaters or manufacture the next big thing in furniture or electronic games - this is where you will need to be on June 19th.

I arrived in Los Angeles three years ago after having lived in a variety of towns that really didn't have much to say about urban planning. In Sumter I doubt the issue really ever came up. In New Jersey, well, I lived in the middle of a million acres of pine forests. Muskegon came the closest, with its constant discussion about how to revilalize an ailing downtown waterfront. Still, though, I can't call Muskegon urban. Talk about the downtown issues there lacks immediacy. It's interesting to read about, but really 90% of residents aren't too concerned about it. Or at least that's how I felt.

But then I moved to Los Angeles, first to the USC area and more recently to downtown. LA has more than its share of cool areas, but over time I've become a bit obsessed with downtown. Were I to start school over today I would give serious thought into going into Public Policy and Planning. Downtown right now just feels so like you're getting in at the ground floor. Instead of reading countless articles waxing theoretical, you can look outside and see change. You can see resturants opening and buildings under renovation. You can see the neon begin to relight.

And that's fascinating. So, yeah, I'll be checking out the event on the 19th.

99% of you are going to want to ignore this post. I need to write something out, and this is convenient, so I'm doing it here. It's technical, though, so if you're not in to that feel free to do something else. Maybe you want to read it to see how oddly my mind works, but I doubt it. That's why I'm hiding all the content after the jump. Click on if you really want to see it.

Continue Reading...

Kathy and I -- along with 2000 other people -- saw Some Like It Hot tonight at the Los Angeles Theater. Doors were set to open at 7, so Kathy was going to pick up Subway on the way and come over to my place at like 6:15. We'd eat and then walk around the corner to the theater. She was running a bit late and pulled in at 6:40. She told me there was already a big line. We walked over and ended up getting in line on the north side of 5th street. It seemed like a lot of people in front of us, but really it was only a couple hundred, and it's a big theater.

At 7 they opened the doors and the line quickly moved to get people inside. We sat just right of center, about 2/3's of the way back on the floor. The interior of the theater was a mix of the impressively ornate and the depressingly run-down. The architecture and artwork were amazing. This truely was the last of the great movie palaces, and most of that still shows. What also shows, though, is years of neglect. Kathy noted that downstairs the children's room looks decrepit. Everywhere you can see hints of how amazing the place might look if fully restored, but at the same time the reality is that the job is nowhere near done. Hopefully events like this one can help that cause.

The show began with a short from the late 20's of a man and his female band. It wasn't originally intended to be humorous, but it was. Then it was time for Tony Curtis. He told a few tales about the making of the movie, and then a cake was brought out (today -- 6/3 -- is his birthday) and the audience sang to him.

And then he motioned for the film to roll.

The Los Angeles is one of those theaters where the screen reaches all the way to the floor of the stage, and as the opening credits of the film rolled we were treated to a picture you don't see anywhere else. The curtain is pulling back, the names are beginning to appear -- Marilyn Monroe... Tony Curtis...

And as his name is there on the screen, there he is. He's the silhouette still standing in the lower left corner of your screen, watching as the film begins and the capacity crowd applauds.

It was a great night, a great film, and a great experience. I look forward to looking around more in four weeks when we're back at the Los Angeles for It Happened One Night. But first it's next week at the Orpheum for Sunrise.

And last, but not least, it's not only Tony Curtis's birthday today -- It's also my mom's. I'm sure she doesn't know they share that.

Two weeks ago I commented about riding the Gold Line and having the train stop for a minute over the Los Angeles River. At the time I guessed this might have been to let Chinatown station traffic clear.

Today the same thing happened, in the same spot. This time, though, I was in the back of the front car instead of the front of the back car (more on that in a second) so I was able to see what was actually going on. The train stopped, sat for a second, and then the front right door opened. A man in a Metro uniform stepped onto the train. The driver stepped out of his cab, the new man stepped in, and the driver stepped off the train. As we began to move again I noticed that there just happened to be a stairway right there, and it clicked... Not only were we over the river, we were also over the Gold Line maintenance yard. This was their driver change location.

What are the odds, though, of riding two trains in a row that happened to be due for driver changes?

On JPL's intranet news site, the library has a historical photo of the month (well, it's actually on the library's site, but the news page is where I see it). This month it's a picture from 1971, when JPL was developing a Personal Rapid Transit system that's still in use at Western Virginia University (oddly the PRT is also the featured image at WVU's site at the moment). I've always had an interest in transit systems, so I did a google search and found this site on the Morgantown PRT. It features a description of the system, links to some external resources, and a good collection of pictures.

I mentioned back at the beginning of last month that Kathy and I were going to be going to some of the Last Remaining Seats showings put on by the LA Conservancy. The first of those is tonight, when we see Some Like It Hot just around the corner at the Los Angeles Theater. This USC page has a good picture of the neon sign that I see out my bedroom window each night. Oddly I think the Payless in that picture is now directly across the street from where it's shown. Another site has a few more pictures (this time with the Payless gone).

Chances like this only come around every so often (well, really once a year). Definitely something not to miss.

Over the last two days two people told me that my RSS feed sucked. The truth is, it did. HTML was going into the description field unescaped, and that was throwing off some readers and validators. I've fixed that now, and in the process remembered that I had also put together an RSS2 feed that I never got around to putting anywhere.

I've also added the rss links to the right sidebar.

I just got bluetooth working well enough to upload the pictures I took hiking yesterday.

Click on any of the thumbnails to see the rest.