Hey hey hey

crappy phone pic, sorry

It's Bad Albert's! *

The place is nice and relaxed, in traditional Ballard style. No nüBallard pretension here. Which is fantastic.

The food is good. But it was generally agreed upon by my group of starving web devs that the $9.50 they were asking for the sammiches was high. By about two dollars.

I'm told the fries where not stunning. My side salad was very nice though; it was $1 extra.

It really is very clean. (lower numbers are better, 20 is pretty good)

Conclusion: I'd go again, but not very often.

* They made me sign a waver saying that I wouldn't make Fat Albert jokes if I blogged about it. But they didn't say it in Ubbi Dubbi so it doesn't count. That's 100% truth.

amalgam

Not much going on in leff town today. Which makes it a perfect time to clear out the junk drawer, otherwise known as the SD card in my phone.

Junk like the intersection of NW 57 and 58 streets in Ballard. I found it while walking around at lunch one day. It seems strange to me to design streets on a grid just to have two of the parallel ones meet.

Seattle does have numbered streets running n, s, e and w. It's common to talk about the intersection of 15th and 85th, for instance. And they serve tartar sauce with french fries. Maybe I just shouldn't try to understand.

Also found recently, a crazy construction activity, with random commentary from grover for some reason. Seriously, why is grover there? I dunno.


After much whining about how my bike was so crappy and kept breaking, I found the part I needed for $17 + shipping. I rode it to work today (the bike, not the part). Hooray for exercise! But that meant night riding. I don't trust cars. So I put some lights on. Ya think I have enough?

That's my backpack on the ground. Those christmas lights are woven into the straps.

the great soap opera in the sky

dumb-dumb and stinky-pants

Battlestar Galactica is about to start (east coasters have already seen it).

[Spoiler Alert] I know at least one of you is waiting for the season 3 dvds to come out. Read this post again once you're about half way through. But stop reading now.

It's the second episode of season 3.5, in which, according to the previews, we will see if Starbuck and Apollo get together, or if they'll keep their spouses.

You could fit my interest in this situation into the period at the end of this sentence.

What really irks me about it is not that they'll devote 75% of the episode to dumb-dumb and stinky-pants, but that I know this and I'll watch it anyway. They have just enough interesting plot threads left that I can't give up yet.

But they peaked in season two. Most of the 'many threaded' dramas seem to do this. All the ones I've watched have.

the octopus and the mammals (aquarium 3)

Ok, this will be the last aquarium post. I promise. At least until I go again.

But it would be negligent to not include some mammals up in here, since half the facility is devoted to them.




And of course there's the octopus', who are really cool folks. I wish I'd had more time to get to know them.

gubb

I know deo and soap aren't food. but you get them at the same store.

I'm not sure what's up with the name, other than the old 'all the good urls are taken', but gubb.net is still pretty cool. It's the first (potentially) useful web based todo list that I've seen.

This is because you can interact with it mobile style. Add to a list, and retrieve the list from email or your phone (which is actually just email, more on that int the geek section). So when you walk in to the grocery store and realize you've forgotten the list, again, you can just fire off a blank message to your grocery list and it'll send itself back to you.

You have multiple lists and you can interact with them individually. Each list has a unique email address, like leff-food@gubb.net. I can give you that real example because you white list the email addresses that have access.

Geek Section
On a geeky level, what's interesting to me, as one who works with text messaging on web sites, is the fact that they're doing it garage band style. They don't actually have text messaging per se; it's just email. You can tell right off because they ask for your phone number and your provider. With both those things they can construct an email address for your phone. They know that T-mobile phones are phone-number@tmomail.com, for instance.

It's what we used to do at Treemo before we got what's called an aggregator and a short code. The aggregator is a third party that handles the text messages. The short code is a 4-8 digit number, like 873366, that you can text to.

Both of these things are expensive. I can totally forgive Gubb for not springing for them. On a niche site like that it makes sense to not invest the money until you know you've got traction.

[via lifehacker] [gubb.net]

the jellies (the aquarium part 2)

Are you bored of the aquarium yet? I'm not. I know I told you that it'd be the octopus next, but I'm going to do the jellies instead.

Why?

Because the Seattle Aquarium has the coolest jellyfish tank I've ever seen. It's a big circle; you can walk through it. The water flows around the circle, and the jellies go with it. It's lit from behind, and the lights change colors.

It sounds kind of silly, but the effect is very nice.

collectable claes

As you know I was at the Olympic Sculpture Park this weekend. And there I learned that Claes Oldenburg has copyrighted his typewriter dealie and forbidden the public to take pictures of it.

Obviously he needs money.

So I was thinking, what he should do is market miniatures of his works...

Just take this, stain it


and you've got a miniature of this (photo creative commonsed by thomwatson).


He'll make Millions!

the aquarium

After we hit the Olympic Sculpture Park, Rakka and I went to the Seattle Aquarium for the first time (she mentioned it here).

Something you might not know: I love aquariums (as long as they don't have echo locators, but that's another post). I grew up going to the baltimore aquarium, which is huge (but I don't go there anymore (see previous parenthetical aside)). Seattle's is relatively small, but it's full of nice stuff. Local stuff.

I saw thousands of these guys (left) at haystack rock in Oregon. The environment at the aquarium is just about exactly the same; they even have a tide simulator. That goes for these other starfish too (right).

There are great displays everywhere. Like this circular tank where the coral competes with the fish for the 'most beautiful' title.



There's crabs, sea anemones (outside and with tide generators too).


As a scuba diver myself it was pretty fun seeing the cleaners. (I'm afraid that in switching modes around I accidentally blinded this diver with my flash, which normally I would never do. If you're that diver, I'm sorry.)


I'm not sure how I feel about the salmon spinner though. I mean, I know they have to swim, but maybe they'd like some scenery? Or a sense of movement? The water spins just fast enough so they are swimming in place. Poor guys.


And that concludes the tour for today. The tour will continue tomorrow with the octopus. The jellies and the mammals will come after.

some work going on over at j-san.net

Nothing special. Had a bit of a security breach, so I thought I should upgrade to Drupal 5. It's been more of a hassle than I wanted it to be. It doesn't help that stupid comcast broke my internet right in the middle.

Anyway, I hope it doesn't inconvenience anybody.

Update
And... we're back.
But man that was annoying. It's things like this that make me like blogger. I mean, it's nice to be able to have total control. But with that comes responsibility. I'm too busy to worry about this crap.

Mr D's Greek Delicacies

I know it seems all touristy to go down to the Market for lunch. But unlike tourist food in most places, the nosh at Pike Place is usually really good.

Mr D's is a good example. Not only is the food really good but it's fast and cheap. It doesn't challenge your palette or redefine Greek street food. But that would be asking a lot of a 5 dollar falafel.

It's enough for me that it's super tasty.

Olympic Sculpture Park Opens

The SAM Olympic Sculpture Park opened yesterday, and today R and I ambled on down for a quick scout round. We had been by before, but we couldn't go in. I was impressed. But it's not quite done yet, so sorry about the fences and muddy patches cluttering up the photos.

There was lots going on. Ice Sculpture.


A guy in a grass suit.


Here we have a panorama (which is hard to get right when you don't have a tripod).


There are lots of other pictures of the eagle (by Calder). Somewhat appropriate, since the whole museum came in to being as a place to put it.


Claes Oldenburg is an ass. His stuff is fun, but copyrighting a public sculpture? Come on. Anybody want to buy a picture of his sculpture? heh heh.


A Serra, a Pepper and an And.


It's quite a place.


Full of Camels.


Really, I can't wait until it's finished all the way. And the crowds have died down a bit.

on video games, cats, and west seattle

It's been (same old)*2 around here lately. I don't do anything for weeks, then all in one day it's like whoa. I'm not going in to detail though; you get the sample platter.

Final Fantasy III for the DS is fun, if you're bored to start. I mean, it's kinda fun, but whatevah. An interesting side note for Final Fantasy fans. FFIII is the first FF I've ever played. I know, hard to believe right? But it's 100% truth!


In other news, J got hisself a new roommate this week. Rakka and I tootled over there to meet Stardust. She is cool.


J took us by alki beach (no, not that kind of alki! it's named after some guy). Maybe not the best time of year for it, is January. But I could almost see my house from there.



We also hit up easy street cafe for some rock and roll eats. I gots me some New Wav Os Rancheros, which were teh yum.



It's a good place. The ambiance is a bit hectic. You're surrounded by shoppers and some of the tables are on the stage. Thankfully it's free of bands at the time, but the indie rock doth blare. Actually, I guess that's pretty standard for restaurants that are inside music shops. What was really odd was the juice and bike shop around the corner.

After lunch J schooled me in Dig Dug. He only got about 10000 points (267%) more than me.


And that is all. (ok, I'm totally boring you, I know. sorry)