A View From the Beach

For several months I have been hearing about the new photography gallery called The Annenberg Space for Photography. I’d also heard that the...

A few weeks ago the announcements of quarterly (and some annual) quants came out for public companies, including the major software and PC c...

When I finally restarted swim workout in earnest (every Tuesday and Thursday 7:30-8:30) it meant I had to give up some evenings. I’ve been w...

I was walking back from the beach (morning surfcheck) and nearly got run over by the annual Festival of Chariots , or as we local residents ...

Last Saturday (18 July 2009) I went up to Art Center in Pasadena for the annual Car Classic (2009). The theme this year was “Land, Sea, Air“...

Just a few days after GS announces the biggest-ever bonuses to their staff, they get the following... Matt Taibbi attacks in inimitable Taib...

"Big Brother is watching." Today (8 June 2009) marks sixty years since Nineteen Eighty Four was published. Thanks Mr. Orwell for...

I went to this WGAw inspirational seminar today. It was useful in that it helped inspire me again and a bit, and was entertaining to watch a...

In honor of this morning’s NPR stories on cybersecurity , a monster software company spending huge money on a third rate search site nobody ...

I have to admit this is my first day in the water since coming back from Costa Rica - nearly three months ago. Of course the January-Februar...

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross wrote a thesis that humans deal with death and dying in five stages - the fourth being depression and the last being ...

I’ve been meaning to winnow the blogroll list - short though it may be - and finally got around to it. Currently I am of a mind to link to p...

I went to the weblog to do* a little clean up and organization, particularly of the blogroll. There are a few I’ve decided to remove, and I ...

I’ve been living in or near LA now for 20 years. This is a great city for entertainment, especially for music - but I always forget to check...

I got back from surf camp in Tamarindo, Costa Rica , exactly one week ago, and finally have my photos edited and tagged. The pictures are up...

Last night just after sunset we had an uncommon celestial event - the moon was just past new, Venus was just above it, Neptune was just belo...

I have wanted to go to Costa Rica (and other places in Central America) for more than 30 years. I want to see the places, but I also want to...

It’s a serious question. When a made-up word for the English-speaking market sounds Greek or Latin, how does one pluralize it? Okay, it’s no...

We went to see Quantum of Solace yesterday afternoon. I don’t check reviews - either written or podcast - but do watch the headlines of sam...

I've been working on reorganizing and reducing distractions so I can start writing again, both here and items as yet unpublished. Consid...

I've been thinking lately about how these latest government bailouts of private industry compare to some in recent history. Fortunately ...

Yesterday work had a guest speaker at the Haskins Lecture - Ralph Cicerone . Dr. Cicerone is the president of the National Academy of Scienc...

Quote of the day ( from Kevin Drum ): "Look, I owe the American people an apology. If I had beaten the old man you'd of never heard...

It has seemed to me that this has been a particularly cool summer, and I’m pretty sure we’re in a La Niña year. Here in the Santa Monica Bay...

In walking around Santa Monica this summer - up and down the 3rd St. Promenade, the streets around that, and the streets up to and around th...

I’ve been wanting to start surfing point breaks again for at least, well, since I moved here over five years ago. But it’s so convenient to ...

A small south swell came through today and I got waves. I hadn’t been out in weeks - maybe two months - so I went out on the boogie board. T...

I saw the first Chris Nolan interpretation of Batman when it came out on the big screen, and again some later on DVD video. It was a fanta...

I went to a showing of a new documentary movie “ Up the Yangtze ” about the effects of the creation of China's Three Gorges Dam. The mov...

It’s 6:30 AM and I’ve been up for an hour or more. I almost always wake at least :30 minutes before first light, and have done so for decade...

I got a new computer at work, finally*. Now I have to transfer my account on the current machine to the new machine. However, the account on...

A friend of mine in Silicon Valley has a cousin who has a boat. ("It's better to have a friend who has a boat than to have a boat....

The weather has turned warm, unseasonably warm even, and the water has warmed up. The air temps yesterday and today here, 600 meters from th...

Bruce Sterling has a post at his blog on Wired about an upcoming Long Now event " Mechanicrawl " celebrating “steampunk”. Now, I’...

A long-time friend invited me to go to the Pasadena Convention Center for the Pacific Coast Fencing Championships. This was a "super-re...

Some people at work sponsored a workshop (or conference) that brought together artists and media people from the Middle East to get them to ...

One of the local art house theaters ( The Aero , part of American Cinematheque ) is running 5 days of " heist films ", starting wi...

Very infrequently I read The Onion as a source of humor and comedic insight about current events, but I actually remember reading this artic...

I found that a concert movie of U2 on their Vertigo tour was playing. Even better was that it was in 3D. Even better still, it was at the I...

I was scheduled to start a class at UCLA Extension this evening in Vulnerability Assessment and Auditing , but it was cancelled (only three ...

Trying to wean myself from the constant scanning of political blogs and newssites, and focus on the science and tech. Am also going to try t...

I've been trying to get to the tropics for more than three decades, but now it looks like the tropics are coming to me. It turns out tha...