clockwork spitjack

via eating art #1 on the menu
Valentine’s Boobies. Bree & Jim will remember these from the Galapagos. Birdchick has been posting a series of mating rituals for the holiday; scroll down for more. (Note the use of Mah Na Mah Na as soundtrack…)
I have gotten to know Michael a bit (below if from eater pdx) and love his wine taste

BELMONT: An Eater operative reports that former Tabla sommelier Michael Garofola, who was the victim of a post-Ten-01 shutter shuffle, has landed alongside David Anderson and Daniel Mondok at Genoa. No word yet on his specific role/title

and menu changes too with a veggie menu added see comments

food for thought conference portland
5 months no caffeine minus a nibble or two of chocolate....

for sure feel better and w/ more energy overall, with the jolt in the mornings was almost always tired in the afternoon and needed a re-up....

overall I think I am sleeping better too
Obama has a new wireless broadband initiative. I don't know enough about it to know what to think. So I'll delay linking until I sort out what it means. Mainstream press coverage of technology usually sucks anyway.
Escalation in Sony v. Apple?
Patent attack launched on Google's open video codec -- The article points out how Google is working both sides of the street. Flash (with h.264) allows certain "features" (e.g ad insertion in youtube videos). WebM allows them to be open-sourcey.
Nokia + Microsoft. This makes a lot of sense, because Nokia is very strong in Europe, and Europeans fucking loves them some Microsoft.
Got a Verizon Moto Droid 2 on a work account. It's got GSM so I can use it in Europe. I've got the "mobile hotspot", so I can use wifi tethering for other devices. I watched a couple of episodes of Futurama from Netflix on my wifi iPad using the mobile hotspot. I felt very geeky.

The slide out keyboard on the first Moto Droid sucks ass. The Droid 2 has a good one. For long-form email (with paragraphs 'n shit), I prefer a keyboard. The touch screen is great for short stuff.

Counting personal and work related mobile devices, my current inventory is:

iPad (2 each)
2nd gen iPod Touch
4th gen iPod Touch
Xoom (for just a few days more)
Moto Droid
Moto Droid 2
Moto Atrix (coming soon)
Intel Atom/Ubuntu netbook

Super mobile geeky.
Frugal Jerry
Silver XOOM, WiFi-only Xoom
panasonic 42" plasma tv $480.00
"Aaron Barr believed he had penetrated Anonymous... But had he?"
chef'n citrus squeezer

"Dual gear-mechanism increases pressing power"
tablet comparo
timeouts 100 best british films
Marjorie Cameron: The Wormwood Star

via kembra fb
ah the good old days of no kids, no health concerns to stay alive for the kids, and when Lupa was on fire!!

TOP TEN MEALS OF 2002

#1 Da Guido (Piedmonte, Italy)

#2 Taubenkobel (Burgenland, Austria)

#3 Kai (NYC, NY)

#4 Zur Rose (Sud Tyrol, Italy)

#5 L'Astrance (Paris)

#6 Temple Club (Saigon)

#7 Jewel Bako (NYC, NY)

#8 Altwienerhof (Vienna)

#9 Locanda Dell Arco (Piedmonte, Italy)

#10 Lupa (NYC, NY)
Interesting Neal Stephenson article about the history of rockets and the strange lock-in we can encounter along paths of technical innovation.
To employ a commonly used metaphor, our current proficiency in rocket-building is the result of a hill-climbing approach; we started at one place on the technological landscape—which must be considered a random pick, given that it was chosen for dubious reasons by a maniac—and climbed the hill from there, looking for small steps that could be taken to increase the size and efficiency of the device. Sixty years and a couple of trillion dollars later, we have reached a place that is infinitesimally close to the top of that hill. Rockets are as close to perfect as they're ever going to get. For a few more billion dollars we might be able to achieve a microscopic improvement in efficiency or reliability, but to make any game-changing improvements is not merely expensive; it's a physical impossibility.

There is no shortage of proposals for radically innovative space launch schemes that, if they worked, would get us across the valley to other hilltops considerably higher than the one we are standing on now—high enough to bring the cost and risk of space launch down to the point where fundamentally new things could begin happening in outer space. But we are not making any serious effort as a society to cross those valleys. It is not clear why.
OMAP 5 - TI's 4 core processor for tablets
The Daily