Flickr quirk

This has happened to me several times. 

Today was the AIDS Walk 2010 in Golden Gate Park. As has happened for at least ten years if not fifteen, the band played at Checkpoint 1 (the first stop for walkers to get water, food and bathroom breaks).  Our director refers to it as a reverse parade -- we sit on the sidelines and play music while people walk past us.

I took a handful of photos, which I uploaded to Flickr this evening.

Before all 12 photos were finished uploading, one photo had been viewed twice, and another had been viewed once by someone who commented, "Nice image."

This has happened several times, as I said.  When I uploaded some camera toss photos, someone viewed and commented "Cool" on one of the photos before I had a chance to view the photo myself.  And a couple of weeks ago when I was uploading photos from New York, someone from Brasil viewed and favorited two of the photos before all the photos had uploaded.

I know how this happens.  People hang out on the Flickr page that shows the most recent uploads and on the page that shows recent uploads by their Creative Commons licensing, looking for something that looks interesting to them.

But it still kind of weirds me out when someone from Brasil gets to my Flickr photos faster than I can reach them when I've just uploaded them a few seconds before.

Life's (and the Interweb's) little mysteries.....

About two months ago, I posted about my top ten favorite new CDs by new artists of 2009.  Considering that I had only bought around ten new CDs by new artists,[1] it was not so much a question of "selection" as it was "what order should I put them in."

Little Boots came in at number 4, and La Roux tied for first (with folk artist Lisa Hannigan, who is, in some ways, the Anti-Electropop).  I stated that as a rule, dance music and electropop were things that I haven't really had a great love for since the 1980s, but these two at least seemed to have some legitimate credit and legitimate talent.[2]  I even stated that this kind of music was stuff that I would ordinarily expect to be making fun of rather than listening to.  At no time did I say that "the year 2009 was a breakthrough for electro pop".  Susan Boyle was on the list, fer cryin' out loud, as well as Megan Lynch's album of songs from Warner Brothers cartoons.

So imagine my surprise this afternoon when I checked my blog stats to find that someone arrived on this blog from Wikipedia.  Following the link, I found a sparse, three-sentence entry headed "2009 in electro pop music."  The first of the three sentences is "The year 2009 was a breakthrough for electropop," with a footnote reference attributing this blog as the source of the statement.

I suppose that writing any kind of blog will inevitably lead one to being cited on Wikipedia at some point or another.  It just hadn't occurred to me.  And, frankly, I would probably prefer to be cited as an authority on some kind of music other than electropop.

Whatever.

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[1] Yes, I really do mean "CDs" and not "blasted low-quality under-sampled artifact-ridden Internet downloaded mp3s/m4as."  Call me a dinosaur, but I prefer quality to convenience.

[2] After writing that posting, I did actually break down and purchase Lady Gaga's "The Fame Monster," considering it to be kind of inevitable.   I did not deem it necessary to edit the blog entry in order to add Lady Gaga to the list.

Mystery recycling

From the LA Times:

"About a month ago, Gloria Sohacki goes out to roll her big blue recycling bin to the curb for pickup, but it's so heavy she can barely budge it. Two neighborhood boys see her struggling and come by to help, and Sohacki says, 'What is in here, a dead body?'

"She pops the lid, peeks inside and finds hundreds of copies of a soft-core magazine called Cybersocket, a monthly promo for a triple-X Web magazine by the same name. On the cover is a shirtless, come-hither youth who is pulling his pants down. The headlines include, 'THE FUTURE OF THE PORN INDUSTRY,' 'THE BOYS OF BEL AMI,' and 'WHY WE LOVE STR8 BOYS.'

"Sohacki quickly shuts the lid and tells the boys thanks, but she'll be fine without their help. 'I didn't want them to see that stuff,' she says, which is understandable. She works as an administrative assistant at a neighborhood youth center, where she doubles as the dispatcher for the anti-graffiti patrol. It might have been difficult to explain why she had a trash can full of bare butts and stories about gay sex.

"Sohacki then manages to wrestle the bin down to the street for pickup, but when she returns home from work, the truck has come and gone and the magazines are still there. So she bulls the bin back onto the sidewalk until a week later, when she opens the lid and finds that the sex magazines have multiplied like rabbits.

"Again, she pushes the bin to the curb.

"Again, the truck blows right past it.

" 'I am not nuts, you can ask Hilda,' Sohacki said in her e-mail to me. 'I secretly think someone is targeting me in the hopes I will answer the ads in the magazines -- after all, I am a gorgeous-looking 62-year-old redhead -- just kidding.'

"Sohacki moonlights as a hostess at Taix restaurant, where she told her story to customer and friend Jesus Sanchez, who posted her predicament on his Eastsider blog.

" 'My problem,' she told the Eastsider, 'is that if the delivery person makes another drop next week it will overflow onto the sidewalk . . . and then onto the street where the rain will probably cause it to float into the storm drain and go out to sea.'

"Sohacki said she called the office of Councilman Ed Reyes and was told to transfer some of the magazines to other recycling bins so the trash truck could handle the load. But diving down through all those magazines did not appeal to her.

"She guessed a distributor was dumping Cybersocket instead of delivering it to news racks, so she looked up the name of the owner in the index and fired off an e-mail.

" 'I apologize,' Cybersocket founder Morgan Sommer promptly responded. 'We are on the issue today.'

"But a week later, Sohacki's bin was still filled to the brim. There might have been as many as 1,000 magazines in there.

"On Friday morning, she scooped a copy of the latest issue out of the can.

" 'It says, "Virtual sex is now a reality," ' she told me.

" 'What does that mean?' I asked.

" 'I have no idea,' Sohacki said, flipping through the magazine. 'Looks to me like they've got more plugs than sockets in here.' "

Odd e-mail

A couple of months ago, I purchased the David Byrne/Brian Eno album, "Everything That Happens Will Happen Today" from the only place it is for sale -- the album's website.

This past Monday, November 3, I received this e-mail (Subject: I Can't, But You Can) from "music@ everythingthathappens.com" (identified as "David Byrne"):

"Pardon the bulk mailing. I Can't Vote. I am an immigrant with a Green Card and, therefore, I am not eligible to vote in a federal election. FYI - I can get drafted (luckily, Daniel Berrigan burned my draft board's records) and I pay taxes, yet I cannot vote for President. On Election Day, I see my neighbors heading to the nearby elementary school to cast their ballots. The voting booth joint is a great leveler; the whole neighborhood - rich, poor, old, young, decrepit and spunky - they all turn out in one day.

"But most of you can vote. What can I say? The Republicans have made us less safe than before 9/11, bankrupted this economy, started an illegal war they can't - and don't intend to - finish, removed what sympathy (after 9/11) and respect the world had for the US, and have robbed US citizens of many of their basic rights. Global warming? What's that? Science and education? Investment in our future? No, thanks - we'll stick with a good 'ole hockey mom. Ignorant, and fucking proud of it, as is always the case.

"Although it looks like a shoo-in, it ain't over 'til Florida. And there are plenty of racists in this country who will vote against their own best interests. So please, get to your local elementary school, post office, town hall, or whatever, and cast your vote and make this a country we can all be proud of. We can get out of this mess, and life can be better than it is.

"David Byrne, NYC"

What is weird about this message to me is that the content of this message is not weird enough to make me believe that David Byrne actually sent it. So who did send it? And why bother trying to make it look like it came from David Byrne, of all people?

For all I know, it might be as simple as a disgruntled former employee who stole their mailing list. I've checked the website a few times to see if some kind of message appears regarding this e-mail, but no such luck as yet.

Any ideas?

Robocall?

A few minutes before 6:00 this evening (I was in transit from work to home), we got a message on our answering machine. It sounds like it's possibly the end of a recorded message. The voice uses an upward inflection as if asking a question. The phrase is one of two possibilities, the best we can make out:

"...and the qualities of a maniac?"

or

"...have the qualities of a maniac?"

I'm guessing that it was a robocall, and probably one that I'm glad I didn't hear in its entirety.

Anyone else get any calls like this?

Tom Perkins's "The Maltese Falcon"

[Note: Only the first three minutes of the second video are pertinent to this post.]

Mystery solved. The mystery ship is "The Maltese Falcon," built by venture capitalist multi-billionaire Tom Perkins. It is the world's largest sailing yacht. It is 289 feet long and 42 feet wide, the masts are twenty stories (191 feet) tall, and it cost $130 million.

And it's attracting a lot of attention from tourists at Fisherman's Wharf today.

Just for perspective, the last photo below shows someone standing on the deck.

Docked at Pier 35

As I was arriving at work this morning, I noticed this ship docked at Pier 35.

I have no idea what its name is or where it comes from or why it's here or how long it will be here. It appears to be flying a Red Ensign at its stern, but I can't see enough of it to tell which one (click all pictures to see a larger version):

It could be from New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, the Hudson Bay Company or any of several places that use the Red Ensign. Because it's not windy out, the flag hangs in such a way that you cannot tell what emblem is on the flag that would identify its origin. If I find out any more information, I'll pass it along.

[UPDATE 10/16: I went down during lunch and got enough information from spectators to do Google searches and find out that it is "The Maltese Falcon," owned by venture capitalist Tom Perkins. See my later post for further details.]