Hey folks -

The last few months have been very draining both physically and emotionally - but the biggest upside of that time is out in the world, and I’m pretty proud of it. For many of you this will be a “oh, that sounds nice” but for a few of you who use iTunes or AppleTV a lot at your house & you have an iPhone or an iPod Touch - you’ll really love this. I do. It is one of my two proudest accomplishments at Apple*.

Introducing Remote…

.ps
And it is free.

.pps
No, I didn’t write the app that runs on the phone, I put in all the stuff in iTunes and parts of AppleTV to make it work.

.ppps
Ok - my second favorite app:
Jared!!!

.pppppps Ok one last cool Remote feature for those of you with AppleTV’s.

*And the other is iTunes’ music sharing feature.

IF YOU USE A MAC, I HOPE YOU READ THIS. For those of you on Windows, ummmm….. good luck with that.

Hey Mac-using folks -

I *really* *really* want you to buy a Time Capsule or start using Time Machine. No, Apple doesn’t need the money. No, I don’t get a cut or even work on the Time Capsule team.

I ask you to do this because I care about you. And specifically, because I know the horrors of data loss. Think of all the music in your iTunes library, or all the photos in your iPhoto library, or all those things you’ve written, or all those emails that you want to save. Some day your hard drive will die. Or you’ll drop your Mac. Or something else bad will happen. And on that day you will either say:

1. I’m glad ‘Deep made me buy a Time Capsule.
2. F$&^k, I wish I listened to ‘Deep and bought a Time Capsule.

So what am I talking about?

Click HERE for more…

or
“What I Was TRYING to Say to Al Gore When I Bumped Into Him…”

[Ed. Note. Hey folks - sorry my blog hasn’t been updated in a long time - it has been a CRAZY couple of months & my plate has been full. I’ll do better I swear!]

So I ran into Al Gore last week.

I was at work.

He is on our Board of Directors at Apple.

He was serenely strolling out of an elevator by himself.

I was headed to the next elevator.

I passed and then scurried back and told him he was my hero.

Then I realized how lame that must have sounded (for reasons I’ll describe below) so I tried to explain how it wasn’t lame. And then I added something to show my commitment to the environment. And I tried to say something that demonstrated my intelligence. And…

Well, you get the picture. Needless to say I’m sure neither of us was impressed.¹

Luckily, I know Al Gore reads my blog² so I figured I’d just explain to him what I was trying to say here in an attempt to save my respect for my own intellect. So Al - this is for you….
Click HERE for more…

[Update 11/13/07: this blog http://zunasurf.wordpress.com/ has more updates and info on cleanup efforts than the one I linked]

Lest you think that my life is all Disco Balls, FlashDances, local politics, and working at Apple, you miss the MOST fun thing I do. Clean up Oil Spills! Fun Fun!

[Ed Note: As amusing as this take on things is to me, decency demands I interrupt myself - I did 1.5 hours of volunteering today. That’s it. I’ve never cleaned an oil spill before - so to insinuate I do it frequently is lame. To insinuate that I did a lot today is even lamer. MANY MANY people have spent many hours this week volunteering for clean up. I showed up today on a whim & helped out a tiny amount. So anything I say I did is overstating my value to the project about 10000 fold.]

So… after I single handedly saved a few hundred sea birds, a dozen sea lions, and a grey whale….

(OK - Seriously - read on for details on the clean up & my TINY TINY contribution)

Click HERE for more…

[Ed Note: This post is about Halloween in the Castro, what went wrong, & how to fix it. If you are more interested in my Halloween pictures, or my costume or how I made it, scroll or click to the previous post. Also, if you are interested in the future of the event send email to info AT halloweeninthecastro DOT com & ask to get on the list.]

Halloween is my favorite holiday. This year was no exception. It was getting stale doing the big costume thing and the mega-fun thing. So this year San Francisco decided that Martial Law was the new way to party!

The massive police presence in the Castro on Halloween night was like a snuggly jackbooted baton-wielding blanket on a hot summer night. The biggest highlight? Maybe the formation of cops in full riot gear aggressively marching past me at Café Du Nord. Or maybe it was the cop who screamed at me to not step off the curb, or the cops who screamed at me turn down my small Disco Ball speakers. It’s a toss up really. Hmmmm actually more choices come to mind: Maybe it was when city officials bullied various merchants into joining other merchants who decided to close, or forced BART to shut down - bypassing the wishes of BART’s democratically elected leadership…. such a hard call….

Ugh. It sucked.

I’m left angry at the City, disappointed the idea that “nothing else could be done”, and hoping that everyone helps turn this thing around next year…

(Read on for my thoughts on what went wrong & how to fix it)

Click HERE for more…

[Ed. Note: what follows is me geeking out on making a Halloween costume if that is boring, just check out the pics or read the post about how Halloween went down in the Castro)]

Click here to jump straight to my Halloween 2007 PICTURES
or
Click here to jump straight to my “Making of Disco ball 4.0″ PICTURES

So earlier this year, I decided to pop on my Disco Ball 3.0 costume and roam the streets for a friend’s Birthday bash - very quickly I learned two things:

• Just popping on Disco Ball 3.0 and randomly roaming the street playing music is a BLAST!!! (here is a movie of 3.0 in action so you get the idea - sorry no movie of 4.0 :-()
• Disco Ball 3.0 was a bit of a pain to deal with!

Clearly, at some point I needed to revisit the costume & do it better! Basically, the problems were that it needed to be more durable (it got scuffed up easily), it could look better, & it was hard to get into and out of. There had to be a better way I thought & it was too much fun to leave behind.

Click HERE for more…

So I was just thinking: in the past few weeks I have:

• Looked up info on “The Shining” after we watched it.
• Looked up the history of the term “salad days“
• Looked up the history of the term “red tape” because it came up
• Looked up “Neil LaBute” because Jon Stewart mentioned him - referring to other candidates ganging up on Hilary at a debate
• Looked up the song “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” because Celeste was singing it
• Looked up “Pyrolysis” because PG&E was talking about converting cow manure into bio-fuel
• Was wondering who came up withe the original Apple logo & thus learned about Rob Janoff
• Was curious about the old BeOS
• Read about Jeff Lynne because I was in a major Electric Light Orchestra mood.
• Was curious about when “aesthete” came to mean “gay” - or was that just in my head since a Tom Stoppard play I saw a few years back (”The Invention of Love“) - turns out it may have just been in my head (& in that play)
• Heard somebody say that Phil Donahue was taken off the air for being critical of the government, so I checked it out
• Read about the assasination of Ngo Dinh Diem because I was bored & saw it on the front page of Wikipedia
• Looked up “Dirty Sanchez” because Jon Stewart mentioned it
• Wondered about Michael Jackson’s upcoming album & general info about the Jackson 5
• Fed my appetite for “Harry Potter” “writing of” info
• Looked up “Last Night a DJ Saved My Life” because I was wondering who sang it

Look through your browser history. Maybe you’ll find something similar…. So the Wikipedia folks are having a fundraiser right now. Seems like a good thing to donate to.

 
SAN FRANCISCO, April 20 - In a stunning victory for local dark-sock activists, the ‘Deep administration announced that it will begin phasing out wearing white socks with pants. “Here at ‘Deep, we take saving the planet very seriously and our White Sock Reduction Initiative is one of numerous efforts to meet our ambitious goals.” said ‘Deep, a spokesperson for the administration. The administration announced that it would begin purchasing more black socks, and reducing its wearing of white socks, unless it was wearing shorts, saying “Shorts and black socks just don’t work.” When asked about the remarkable reversal of its decades long policy, the ‘Deep administration spokesman said only “once the link between global warming, the current mass extinction event and our socks was made clear, we had to act.”

Local activists hailed the initiative and celebrated their victory while disagreeing on why they succeeded. “Our strategy of consistent nagging got the ‘Deep administration to look carefully at its sock choice” said Tom Radulovich, director of Nag For Progress. While Amy Laitnen of Better Straight Men Period, recounted asking a passing young lady about ‘Deep’s socks at a local breakfast eatery and said “I think it was our strategic use of attractive women combined with public shaming that really carried the day.” Added Wes Radulovich, “It has been a long road, but I think well worth it. The others can claim what they like, but personally I think the blunt force trauma was what did it.”

What follows is probably my most personal post to date, about culture, identity, discovering some stuff about myself, and an epiphany buying curtains. It means something to me, so I wrote it all down…its longish, but entertaining & interesting I hope…

By default, I was pretty Indian growing up, I mean, I wasn’t raised by wolves you know Then I stopped being Indian for a long time, mostly out of necessity, but somewhat out of choice. And now, that I’m like CRAZY old , I don’t think I’m very Indian, and probably never will be, but there were a few moments, culminating with a trip shopping for curtains, that really changed my life….

The first important moment was about 10 years ago when I heard some oddly familiar music while I was out at a club one night. It was Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan remixed by Massive Attack & it blew me away. It was crazy cool & really fun. Cool? Fun? Indian? What? These were 3 words I hadn’t associated before….

Click HERE for more…

Click here to skip my blathering & cut to the pix

Few things are sadder than a ‘Deep in September with no Halloween costume inspiration. I moped about, I tried to ignore it, I emailed my friends for suggestions. Nothing helped. Eventually I started poking through old photos from Halloweens past looking for ideas & then lightning struck - this photo, combined with the dragon I loved from Burning Man (and my subsequent dinosaur thoughts) re-ignited an old idea that I’ve pretty much ALWAYS wanted to do, but knew I couldn’t pull off: The Deepasaur! I mean I can’t sew - option 1. And I can’t weld - option 2. I’ve gotten pretty good at making spherical costumes but I don’t know of any spherasaurs.

But suddenly I had an inspiration: - packing foam. cross sections. velociraptors! (ok ok - velociraptors were actually chicken size - dromeosaurs! utahraptors!)

Click here for more pics & “making of” pics

Rowwwwr! I was off to the races.

Immediately, I set about looking for a small plastic model & then tried copying his head out of clay….

Click HERE for more…