Concepts in the Paradox

Has anyone played with Amazon’s S3 and EC2 service? I’ve known about these for a while, but I hadn’t looked at it until now. Basically, it is a system to gain unlimited cpu time and disk storage/transfer. It’s metered, so I’m wondering how the metering compares to a $120/mo colo plan and server?

They use some sort of virtual machine technology that I’m not familiar with. You create an “AMI”, or Amazon Machine Image, which is an encrypted disk image, and upload it to their servers. My mind is scrambling to think what could possibly done with this scenario. Some of the search engine startups in the bay area outsource their real time number crunching here because the infrastructure costs of EC2/S3 is much lower than buying/hiring/managing a physical outlay for servers.

On another topic, I’m doing some research on my block specifically. My interest has sparked a discussion on socketsite. Apparently what is going in across the street is an 81 unit BMR complex, or in English, a 14 story condo building for middle class families. “Affordable housing”. That means I might be able to afford it. :)

January has been an active month, with dead time between events starting to go back to back with things to do.

At work, I’ve ended up diving head first into SAN virtualization. I didn’t want to go this route for a another few months, but we’re evaluating SAN technology, and the research needs to be done quickly. This stuff isn’t as hard as I thought it would be, and in fact it is pretty straight forward. LUNs here, WWNS there, sparse volumes and mirrors over there.

I finally heard back from David Snyder at SPUR, and he’s going to put me in touch with the transportation communications intern there. The idea is for me to do “online advocacy” for transit, something that I’m already knee deep in by nature. We’ll see where things go. SPUR’s membership fee was a whopping $65, but it is for a good cause. These folks seem to know what they are doing.

The car has been up for sale for almost 2 weeks now. I put it up on cars.com for $21750, but the only contacts I’ve gotten are other sales agencies wanting to list my auto for another $50. I hate to lower the price, it is already low compared to other cars for sale in the area, but every month it sits is another possible parking ticket or accident, plus deprecation and the insurance payments I have to make.

Speaking of parking tickets, the two citations I got from DPT came back after I wrote a very polite letter to the them. Their reply? Pay the $100 or find a cop to verify that the tags are current, have him sign off on the tickets, then submit $10 per ticket ($20) for “administrative fees” to have the citations written off. I about flipped my lid when I read that. The DPT brings in $40m a year, so I have little concept of why I must pay fees to have my fine waved. Such is the law, and such is yet another complaint letter for me to write. I’m getting good at writing them these days.

Finally, I went to the MacWorld expo this week. I ended up buying a keyboard cover, 2GB of RAM for my Mac Mini, and laid out the cash for an academic version of Adobe CS2 + Acrobat 8. It’s about time really, I’ve been suffering with The GIMP and I’d like to greatly improve the designs of my various blog sites. Now I have something more to learn, but it’s graphics, so it should be fun!

Valencia Gardens officially opened this week. I’d like to take a few moments to talk about why this is a bad thing for San Francisco’s ethnic Mission district.

It’s worth taking a look at a the Chron’s take on VG, as well as their photos. I’ll summarize their article with my own comments.

On Valencia/Gurrerro and 14th/15th street there used to be a block of projects built in 1943. They were torn down for many good reasons, namely poor design (central squares with no purpose), outdated plumbing, electrical, as well as rodent and gang infestation.

In 2005 the project was flattened, as all good government housing should be, and replaced with something only slightly better: suburban housing. $66m later, we have 230 units, complete with modern electrical, backyards, parking, and one way streets. The last two items making this a suburban sprawl in a 5-acre block of the Mission.

Suburb sprawl in the city? Read more »

If you live in the city, or even in the Bay Area, there is something you should go and see. Stop what you are doing, go ahead, just stop what you are doing and leave right now. Get on the J, and get off at 15th and Church. There is an amazing mural of the city from the Ferry Building to 8th street showing the Ferry Building as the past, and moving toward 8th street with time, with 8th being the fantastical future of San Francisco.

It’s worth a visit, really. Trust me. I was looking at it for a good 15 minutes.

While I was at it I walked around some more to find some artists filling dilapidated alleys with their art work. not tagging, not graf, but their creations on parts of the city that few people driving about would ever see.

Every day I come through Hallidie Plaza, often just known as the “Powell Bart” or “Powell Muni” station, on my way to my apartment in the Tenderloin. It isn’t the best part of my day, often I’m greeted by indigents begging for money, hordes of pigeons pecking away at trash, or someone, not even an indigents at times, urinating in the corner. On the way up and out of the plaza, I always see open air drug deals in broad day light, and if you come at 3am to the plaza… well, just don’t do it.

The Chronicle calls for the plaza to be filled in, citing it as another mistake of ’70s urban renewal. Years ago, the plaza was occupied by far more useful theaters, lost to the building of Bart and Muni Metro in the ’70s.

Coming out of Powell station was different today, however. Read more »

I joined City Car Share to see if is a feasible replacement for my dear Subaru, which I have to park all the way across town in Western Addition and pay $230/mo in insurance for[0]. The nearest CCS car is across the street from me, a Civic Hybrid. Pending my application approval, I’m going to check out a Tacoma next weekend and do an Ikea run. If anyone is interested, I’d like to split rental/milage fees.

Also, Sam, I put you as a reference. Expect driving credits!

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[0]Geico is $172/mo, so I may at least switch from RapeStateFarm.

If there is any point in the day I look forward to the most, it is sitting in Snow Park beside Lake Merritt. After being cooped up in my noisy and stuffy cube-city of an office, picking up a book and sitting out there for an hour gives me a chance to find a different head space.

My latest set of books are both by Dan Brown, which my older sister graciously sent me. The first is the famed Da Vinci Code, which I felt was at best luke warm. The character development is so so, and the plot is somewhat predictable. It is junk literature, but easy to pick up where I left off.

The next is Deception Point, which is much more to my liking. It has action, intrigue, mystery, and politics! It is still junk in my mind, but some times I run over my lunch break doing the whole “one more chapter!” scheme.

On the San Francisco side of the pond, I’ve found this great up and coming grocery delivery service called Planet Organics. The way it works if you go to their website and pick a weekly packet for delivery. I’m doing half veggies and half fruit, but I can have all fruit, all veggies, or some other sort of combo. In addition, I can have regular items added to my cart. They carry the same or similar product as Trader Joes, and have outstanding customer service.

Every Tuesday, I come home from work and shortly there after I get a phone call from my front door buzzer. I let the delivery person in, they come up to the 9th floor and drop off a reusable plastic and/or polystyrene bin, and my shopping for the week is done. As far as pricing, they require a minimum $32 order. They have sales, but everything is pretty much full retail. No delivery charge, but that is really just built into the price.

The quality of the fresh food is outstanding. I used to eat out most weeks, and with the exception of going over to the cable car turnaround for some of Blondie’s pizza now and then, I can make food at home and eat like a king. The veggies and fruit must be picked only a day before being dropped off, because they are more fresh than anything I’ve gotten at any store, including TJ’s. It all also goes bad come Tuesday, but then I just get restocked!

I’ve been on a Jane Jacobs kick lately. So far, I’ve made it about halfway through The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and I just switched to her newest book Dark Age Ahead. Both are excellent books on urbanism and the North American way of life (can’t forget Canada!). So far, both of these books expose what has gone wrong with American society in the last 70 years and why it is in a state of unstablity and decay. While her latest work is a tad ranty, it brings up some very good points as to why America will soon cease to exist as a culture. I don’t mean the American way of life will change, I mean it will simply no longer exist; much like Rome no longer exists, and we will venture into the dark age that followed the fall of Rome.

In this daily reading, I got really excited about all the ideas this woman was showing me. I was even hoping to make it to a book signing at some point. Alas, she died last night at the age of 90.

So a moment of silence for one of the few great minds on urbanism lost.