Ian MacBean

Before we get to the cool stuff I’ve seen around lately, some blatant cross-promotion. Brittney, my girlfriend, is the likely reason for nearly all the non-familial traffic around here, but if you aren’t checking out her sites, you’re missing some cool stuff. CBS5’s Eye on Blogs is where she writes professionally, sharing the best of the Bay Area bloggers as well as her own pieces, and despite it maybe not being everything she had hoped (I blame the lack of vitriolic hatemongers in this stupid, tolerant place) I think it’s a great site and a harbinger of our future relationship with local news. And last night before bed I read this summary of June on her personal page. Being an experienced traveler and a guy who’d already lived in four different states by the time I was 19, it’s sometimes hard to remember that all of this - this being California, or anywhere but Tennessee - is so new to her, and I think she does a great job of bringing perspective to the differences. I remember the days when I marveled at the weather and the ocean and the every day and didn’t take this place for granted, and it’s been invigorating to be next to that enthusiasm once again. It’s also always nice to see myself complimented in print. So make sure you check her out too; she’s way better than she cops to.

• OK, enough of the mushiness and more of the things I like. First up: An interview with Liz Phair about the reissue of Exile in Guyville:

I have no idea what a new listener would think of it. I couldn’t even imagine. Probably like, “she can’t even sing.” After “American Idol”, they’re probably like, “I don’t get it.” I have no idea, but it can’t be that different for a fan as for me. It can’t be that dissimilar. I think there’s something great about resurrecting your past. Each listener will have associations with it if they really cared about the record– that was the summer they were dating this guy or driving cross-country with their friends or whatever. It was far enough away that I hope it has that feeling and doesn’t threaten you. Good ol’ nostalgia.

For me, this record was all about my first year at Trinity University in Texas. I listened to a decent amount of female artists back then - Ani, Tori Amos, I even owned a couple Indigo Girls cds - and Phair was the middle ground, a closing argument when someone tried to tell me women didn’t rock. Here’s an excerpt from the reissue DVD and here’s the song Flower, which was about the boldest thing I’d ever heard a woman sing in 1996.  [via]

• Infoporn: Noise pollution in San Francisco [via]. Also, you might want to check out EveryBlock if it’s available in your metropolis. If it can be tied to your area code, it can be RSS’ed to you, including Craigslistings, Yelp reviews, Flickr photos, and many, many reports of arrests for rock cocaine possession.
• Anil Dash - the Jay-Z of blogging - wrote a very interesting piece on Bill Gates and his philanthropic work:

Bill Gates has pulled off one of the greatest hacks in technology and business history, by turning Microsoft’s success into a force for social responsibility. Imagine imposing a tax on every corporation in the developed world, collecting $100 per white-collar worker per year, and then directing one third of the proceeds to curing AIDS and malaria. That, effectively, is what Bill Gates has done.

• I met Nick Douglas very briefly last Friday, and the funniest thing I’ve seen on his blog thus far is The Friends with Benefits Benefit Summary Prospectus. That said, it’s cool to be able to find the best Lifehacker posts quickly and easily, but I was dismayed by the saturation of [this is good]. As funny as Nick is and as much as I like Deadspin I’m kinda grossed out by the Gawker empire these days.
• I’d rather never see the Twitter failwhale again, but this was kinda neat. [via]
• If you have the time to read Foreign Policy articles and the budget to afford them, I’d love to know what’s behind the walls of 12 things the next president must do.
• Finally, nearly every year I go to the hill country outside Austin, Texas, and spend a weekend with two families worth of friends that I’ll have known for 15 years next month. There’s a couple that’s part of this platoon that hasn’t been able to make in the past couple times I’ve been, in part because my friend Jana has been battling Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. I’ll understand if you don’t want to read about it; I’m not sure why I’m linking to it. But Dr. and Mr. Reynolds, I’m thinking of you guys and I know you will pull through.

Enjoy the 4th, everyone. I’ll be trying to enjoy the great outdoors without a sense of entitlement or assumptions, with some really good friends, and fixing to find some new revenue streams.

Ed note: the first real blogging effort I ever made was a website called worldwideeyed.com, chronicling my travels in SE Asia from late 2004 through early 2005. More public journal than traditional blog, I wrote near stream of consciousness essays every few days and posted them, with pictures when I could. The site wasn’t worth maintaining but I do like some of the stuff I wrote quite a bit, and so I’ve decided to publish some of the best stuff here. The following entry was written January 1, 2005, and is published without editing, for better or for worse.

I arrived in Hanoi Tuesday night, back on my own after a week in Laos. I was both psyched to be back by myself — Laos was amazing and I was with a great group of people, but at times felt crazy for some solitude — and concerned, because in the few weeks I travelled mostly by myself in late November, I found myself actually craving more company than I had.

The plane landed after dark, not an ideal situation for me — I try to arrive places early in the morning, as it is easier to negotiate and secure lodging and one is generally safer and more comfortable. After switching my money — it only takes about $60 in USD to be a millionaire in Vietnamese Dong, so now I’m a multimillionaire — I found the $2 bus into town. I was the only white guy on it, which felt great, a small win for the traveler.

There was a girl, I think she said her name was Ho An, seven years old or so with perfect command of English. We talked a very little bit, and she was extremely polite and well spoken. When I think of reasons the US might be hitting the downslope in global positioning it seems to be in, it’s things like this I think of — children here seem so much more versatile in terms of things like language. I realize that in North America one only needs two languages to excel and one to get by, whereas there are so many more in Europe or SE Asia, and that’s probably a main reason. But the world is becoming more global, and even though everyone wants to learn English everywhere I’ve been, I think the (lack of) ability to speak multiple languages will be a major thing. I’m glad I speak Spanish, but I feel a need to learn more if I want to be a part of a global community going forward.

Anyway, one of the most beautiful moments of my travels so far was riding from the airport into the city, listening to Ho An sing “This old man” in her soprano English. I was I had the ability to record it at the time, it was truly amazing.

Ha Noi, or at least the old quarter, is a charming little place. One of the things I’ve liked most both in Luang Prabang and here is the architecture — the upside of colonialism, I say to myself. The old quarter is filled with narrow little blocks and alleys, and in the past each street was the market for a different thing — one block for shoes, for example, another for silver wares and one for textiles. I am staying on the street for mortuary needs.

Traffic here is insane. I remember writing in Costa Rica that the traffic reminded me of a school of fish — everything moving in a group, not really restricted to lanes, filled with jerky movement but amazingly enough never colliding. The roads in Bangkok are stifling and slow. But here, ninety percent or more of the traffic is motorbikes, which are more agile and their drivers more fidgety and prone to sudden movements. Lanes are present but meaningless; people fill whatever available space in whatever direction they can, constantly honking as bumping into each other. The increased maneuverability means that things can get really jammed, to the extent that as a pedestrian, I actually got caught in a jam from which I couldn’t move for literally minutes the other day. Crossing streets can be a nightmare.

I am reminded of one of the lessons I read during a brief experiment in the martial arts last summer — move swiftly and with decisiveness of purpose. This is exactly how to navigate traffic in places like this. Look both ways, sure, but once you start crossing, keep moving. Do not hesitate. People will adjust to you, usually, but if you show fear and hesitate, their adjusted trajectory goes through the spot you were supposed to vacate. It works in Bangkok, but here, there are so many bikes that it’s almost impossible not to balk at one of them. It’s taken me minutes to get off a curb here. I’ll post pictures of some of the crazier intersections.

Anyway, I’ve sort of hit a writing roadblock, so rather than bumble lamely through a recap of what I’ve done here (Uncle Ho’s grave, the Hanoi Hilton, etc), I’ll save it for another session. It just hit midnight on the East Coast, so happy new year everyone — be safe and sound. I’m headed down to Hue on a train tonight and will be going a little further south to Hoi An in a day or two, then need to decide if I’m going all the way to Ho Chi Minh City or back up to some of the islands north of here. It’s so damned cold here I don’t see how islands can be that fun, but they’re rumored to be amazing, and I’ll make it there sooner or later regardless.

Ed note: check out this time-lapse video of Hanoi traffic. If this is where I think it is, it’s only a corner or two away from where I was talking about.

That’s my documented spending for June. That’s nearly everything - rent, utilities, phone, groceries, dining out, beers, everything I could remember for the month, minus the first couple days before I kept my budget. That’s the good news - I think that’s a pretty small number, given that I live in San Francisco, one of the pricier places on earth. The bad news is the relationship that number has with my income, which I’ll spare you the details of.

Having realized that I need to keep a much warier eye on my spending, I started keeping a budget using a spreadsheet I got from PearBudget* a while back. Now, in 2004, I kept track of every dollar I spent using Quicken - seriously, to within less than $150 accounted for by the end of the year. That was a valuable exercise in that it helped me identify where my money was going and how it could be better spent, but it was also extremely tedious in that every penny had to be accounted for somewhere. So I had categories for my different savings, checking, and credit accounts, but I also had to account for cash and the change tub. Going to the ATM required balancing two accounts and putting away my pennies at the end of the night had to be documented, and I grew tired of it. This system is much more simple for me as I can basically just track numbers. Plus, since I host my budget on Google Docs, I don’t have to have my laptop in front of me to keep up to date - I can do it from any computer and even my phone. If this doesn’t strike your fancy, there’s another pretty good spreadsheet at Get Rich Slowly.

(Sidenote - While we’re on Google Docs, here’s a pretty good primer from Leonard Lin on using it to track portfolios yourself. Google Finance is now to the minute instead of the usual 15-minute delay, and you can pull content directly from them in the formulas for your assets. [via])

Anyway, since I’m paying more detailed attention to my finances at present, I’ve also done a lot of reading and looking for sites to help me get right with my money. Some of the best I’ve found are the aforementioned Get Rich Slowly and I Will Teach You to Be Rich, both of which present money saving tips and discussions on spending and wealth management, but mostly provide inspiration. I’ve also been checking out My Open Wallet, and  I really enjoyed this post from The Simple Dollar, which explains how to use ING Direct’s account features to help figure and maintain a budget, and recently added the site to my reader. I have an ING account, but never realized you could set up subaccounts to help budget for specific goals. That’s a neat hack by them and one I shall look into, as until recently I had just been dumping a tiny amount from my checking account into the ING savings. Finally, I’ve been looking at BlipBlap, particulary this post of 38 thoughts on wealth and prosperity, even though I violated #2 when I stopped the automatic ING deposits. As soon as I’ve got my head all the way above water, those are back on.

But back to the lecture at hand. Money is going to be tight for a while, there’s no two ways about it. Looking at my budget, it’s not like I overspent on much. I spent $50 on taxis, which I can reduce some.  I spent about $480 on food (thanks to the subsidized work kitchen!), which also isn’t bad but can be cut back - half of that was in dining out, and even those $5 lunches can be curtailed. I bought new clothes this month for a total of about $190, but that’s the first expenditure of that sort in a while, and in fact I’ve even been endeavoring to extend the life span of some of what I already have.  $144 in entertainment? That’s less than a beer a day. I also paid some irregular expenses this month, so we’ll have to wait for a few months to get more accurate numbers. But the point is that I’m doing it, and looking more closely at what I have and have not. My #1 priority at this point is to get out of debt as soon as possible and start building towards the future.

*Pear Budget is now a webapp, but I still have a blank Excel spreadsheet version. Email if interested.

I spend a lot of time on Yelp, a website providing local insight on businesses and organizations large and small, from my favorite barber to the place I stayed that one time to one of my favorite semi-secret locations in the city. Plus lots of restaurants! This is not only because of the fascinating shift in business that has occurred because of networked consumers accelerating word of mouth and public opinion at Yelp and elsewhere online, but also because I work there.

Anyway, both to increase viewership of my online network and for another reason, I’ve decided to add a new feature here: This Week in Yelp. Even made a category for it. I’ll link to some of the spots I’ve reviewed there and some of the best stuff I see out there.

The best local find for me this week is Ayola, a lunch joint that serves my favorite drink, but my favorite spot and best review goes to Beard Papa:

My first encounter with Beard Papa was someone using it as an icon online and my second was in a subway terminal in China - both places where the delicious flavor of these creme puffs is largely unavailable to me on a day to day basis. However, I have discovered the Jolly Yellow Man mere blocks from my office, which means one thing: Boy, am I in trouble.

For $2.25 you can have one, in a variety of flavors, assembled fresh before your eyes. I couldn’t even bear to acknowledge that you can get more than 1 at a time because there’s no way I should really have one let alone many, but I assume there is some sort of price break. They are delicious and quick eating and if health and well-being weren’t an issue it’s the sort of treat I might have every day.

One thing I notice immediately in doing this is that I review almost exclusively restaurants, when one of my favorite things to do is scout the site for non-business things like other cool secret spots in the city.

That’s it! I will try to keep a balance between my own content and that of others, because there are people way better at this sort of thing than I am. See something you want broadcast to up to 63 or more people* in a given day? Send it my way.

* “or more” not yet guaranteed, but I have some nice graphs.

So about a week ago I made a post to Twitter about how now that I had gotten into the habit of blogging, I had to improve the content. I was doing pretty much all linkdumps, which lead to cool stuff but say little about me. Of course, here I am ten days later without an update of any sort (although I have a couple in draft). Anyway, it’s been a good week for a number of reasons that affect some of those drafts, and it’s been unbelievably nice around the Bay Area of late, so I’ll get to those posts soon enough. For now, more of the cool things I’ve seen online lately. LIke this - right in the middle of my Twitter streams comes perhaps the scientific discovery of all time.

Radiohead used a “pay what you think its worth” approach to releasing IN_RAINBOWS last year, now Girl Talk is using it for the newest release, Feed the Animals. The difference being that I’m almost certain Girl Talk has no clearance for samples, although that’s just conjecture. Haven’t listened yet but Night Ripper is an album I come back to all the time. Speaking of Radiohead, they are using their fame and name to leverage the use of green materials on their new tour and may give free tickets to people who ride their bikes to the show in August. And some one-offs:

• Horrible, horrible idea. I don’t understand how this could make it past anyone in charge. 
• An interview with Chuck Palahniuk, one of my favorite authors. 
• Since timing is at least one of the several areas in which I am not yet expert at cooking, I found this recipe site for project managers pretty cool. Davebug told me about it. While we’re at it, common home cooking mistakes. 
• A positive public transit story: “The only thing that would have made it nicer is if the driver had pulled over while she was doing all of this.” Muni Diaries, shared by B, even though these days I think bay area transit gets a pretty bad rap compared to $5 a gallon alternatives. 
• I’m scared to know, actually - how much time do you waste on your computer? And is Google making us stupid?
• I noted textgasm a while back, now check out SecretTweet - like textgasm, but within the twitter user base.
• And finally, a gallery of phone sex operators. 

 I’ll be at the A’s game tonight and celebrating a roommate’s birthday over the weekend, and hopefully enjoying continually great weather. Enjoy your weekend whereever you are, and I’ll be back soon.    

• What newspapers don’t get about the web: for a half-assed blogger and more of a web spectator than participant, I get into a lot of conversations about the Internet, blogs and their validity, and what’s what on the web. This doesn’t cover all of that but is a pretty good case study of some of the differences between blogging and traditional media, and gets no [via] since I’ve seen it in the links or readers of at least a half-dozen people whose knowledge of these matters is more complete than mine. 
• The top tourist spots Americans can’t go: For me, the coolest spot along the lines of this list was my visit to Tiananmen Square in Beijing. It was impossible not to stand there and remember what had happened there and how I knew of it - I felt so far away in time and space from myself growing up. Of course, you can go to China and Tiananmen Square, and you can’t go to the places listed here. Yet, at least, I think we’ll be able to go to Cuba within five years or so. [via]
• “I wanted to ask for survival tips in case I am unexpectedly transported to a random location in Europe (say for instance current France/Benelux/Germany) in the year 1000 AD (plus or minus 200 years). I assume that such transportation would leave me with what I am wearing, what I know, and nothing else. Any advice would help.” (again, via Kottke; while we’re here, Six Things He Learned Last Week (previously))
• Lies My Professional Sports League Told Me: Commentary on the inherent conflict of the NFL trumpeting the name of Pat Tillman, American Hero (which he is, no doubt) with the NFL not doing anything to shed light on the facts of his demise (which were under far less heroic circumstances than we were all lead to believe). [via]
• An examination of US gas prices versus Europe’s: 

In the US, the arrival of the automobile in the early 20th century coincided with an era of great expansion. US cities are designed around cars. The streets are wide and multi-lane, parking spaces are large, the highways and freeways in large urban areas are plentiful, cities are sprawling, and a driver’s license is the most common form of ID…

In Europe, the history has been radically different. By the time the automobile became a factor, there were already many multi-million cities. In early 20th century, there were already fairly well developed public transport systems in large European cities - trains, trams, buses. By the end of the 19th century, most of Europe also had a very good rail network.

I’m a public transit guy by choice and necessity, and fortunately haven’t been too affected by rising prices. Much like cigarettes, the price was in the $2 range when I quit. [via]

• I haven’t read this because it’s about a million pages, but apparently a good and comprehensive take on whether or not Tony Soprano is dead. I really need to see this whole series over again sometime. 

Publishing these before I forget why I liked them or they are rendered obsolete by time. You can also check out some recently updated photos of mine at Flickr, most of which are uncategorized or tagged unfortunaltey.

Bitter - what are you clinging to? A twitter parody by Matthew Baldwin of Defective Yeti and The Morning News, the latter being one of my favorite websites for content and links.

Sunset on Mars, a pic from Laughing Squid. Also, you could have been following the Mars Phoenix on Twitter for a first-machine perspective on the whole mission.

Kokogiak introduces his awesome new picture blog, The Big Picture. Access to materials like this are why the guy has 75,000 votes, but I’m glad he’s now sharing them with the general public so I can share them without him getting fired. Awesome resource.

Read at Work allows you to read books in PPT form, if you’re really interested in reading classic literature in disguise while at work. Unfortunately, I am on a Mac and not much into classic literature these days. From the same source, World Without Oil, which I need to delve into more deeply but am linking you to out of faith. [via waxy]

Muni Haikus, via B. For my non-Bay Area folks, Muni is a part of our local public transit system. The rest is pretty self-explanatory.

A directory of web 2.0 services, via Peder. If that’s the sort of thing you think you might be into.

David Byrne has a new band. I once saw David Byrne at the Warfield in San Francisco with Molly, who sent me this article. It was so good, we decided to go back and see him the next night. He played the EXACT SAME SHOW - not just setlist, but even made the same jokes in between songs (including some about how long it had been since he’d played them!) This made me mad and truthfully did irreparable harm to my perception of him, which was pretty high prior to this. Since Molly doesn’t blog but does read alot, I’ll also send you to this article she sent me.

And finally, perhaps the stalest link of all, Joe Dumars as Hillary Clinton. Obamanos!

Brittney summarized the weekend so I don’t have to. Check out the Flickr slideshow for more visual evidence. 

A song my niece wrote called Valle Guadalupe, put to music by friends of hers: 

As the Bay Area is facing another water crunch, the SF Public Utilities Commission free faucet aerators to anyone who can pickup in person at 1155 Market St, as well as a host of other tips for water conservation. [via] 

Andrew Chinnici pledged to use his economic stimulus package to support local businesses and keep the money in the homeland. After some consideration, he bought $600 worth of whiskey. Pictures of the effort here.  Andrew and I drank a fraction of that amount of various Thai liquors and beers one night in Bangkok, many moons ago. 

The Dude was based on a real guy. I’m into the whole brevity thing, so I’ll leave it at that. [via]

Tevan has some notes on Textgasm and putting it together. Pretty good for a first project, if you ask me; makes me want to learn some coding.  

Photographs of bankrupt offices: everything was beautiful and nothing hurt. [via]

Apparently, random companies can add charges to your phone bill, a process known as cramming, and AT&T (and one would presume, other vendors) won’t do anything about it. 

Largeheartedboy shares some music links and free downloads. When I get an intern following music I like will be part of his job description, as I don’t have time for it. I suddenly feel like I think my brother felt when he was my age. 

Jumpcut: “Here’s a handy little app to install and then forgot about ’til the day comes when you’ve somehow overwritten your clipboard or possibly lost some work.” [via]

Wired’s founding editor reflects on the last fifteen years since the magazine started. 

Interesting street art on Jesus Chris.

“The same people who use phrases like ‘Think outside the box’ are the ones ordering all these cubicles.”

Yesterday was Manhattanhenge. 

And finally, via Bill Bradbury, the video of the day: Charles Barkley getting Burgundy’d.