Time is short, so here’s a list… for the future (maybe).
Hard to be ambivalent about the Los Angeles Lakers. They won today. Series is tied 2-2. I still want them to lose.
‘New Media’: Ready for the Dustbin of History? is an article in today’s NYTimes Week in Review.
Mr. Diller and others have come to realize that two things succeed commercially on the World Wide Web: searching (like Google and Yahoo) and shopping (like Amazon.com and eBay).
Is that what the digital revolution has come to? Back in the mid-1990’s, it was going to cause a media revolution.
Steve Lohr, the author, then goes on to write off the efforts of AOL Time Warner, Vivendi Universal, and the media-focused efforts of Microsoft… all because commerce is the be-all and end-all. When you write a perspective article, and you refer back all of 6-10 years, I think it’s a bit early. Yes, journalism may be the first draft of history, but maybe the jury is still out? Of course, I’m biased. I work at a media company founded for the internet… in retrospect, at least. We’ll see. I’d like to think we’re still making history — though we can’t tell whether we’re going to like the story yet.
We’ve had a beautiful day here in the city, and all three of us spent some time down in the back yard. Part of our backyard has a beautiful, deep green, luscious lawn (the rest is concrete, porch foundation, etc.). Of course, that luscious lawn is fake. It’s FieldTurf, and it was one of the best decisions we made when redoing the back porch and our small yard. The motto my wife always throws out is “No mow, no grow, no H2O.” Given the San Francisco climate and my lack of interest in yardwork, FieldTurf has been quite the answer for us — and we only have a tiny back yard. After reading “Fields of Dreams?” from the NYTimes, I feel even more ahead of the curve. The article, which will disappear behind the premium wall eventually, isn’t about artificial replacements for the American lawn. Rather, it chronicles the increasing competition for fields, not only in cities, but even in suburbia. Of course, the examples are in Westchester, north of New York City, but I expect they represent other urban areas and their surrounds, too. The (proper) growth of girls’ sports and burgeoning leagues for adult recreation, competing against the price of urban land, means that the limiting factor for recreation is often the field.
The demand for more sports fields came as open space was diminishing and land prices were rising, and it has all added up to a shortage of athletic fields writ large.
As Ben outgrows kicking the ball in the house (any week now), and then outgrows the backyard (still a year or so away… I think), I’ll start to see this affect us more dramatically. Most of my sporting activities are more about endurance, but team sports are fun and integral to making friends… and they require space, whether fields or gyms. I’ll have to start paying more attention to how San Francisco handles this… it’s a long-term issue, so if I want to have a voice, I need to be informed now. I hope FieldTurf comes down in price, either through competition or other market forces.
I ran around the track at Kezar today. The track is open for public use. The field is not… has to be reserved.
Here in San Francisco, they are tearing down another highway. After the 1989 earthquake, apparently, two damaged highways were pulled down instead of rebuilt. I never visited San Francisco before those disappeared, but I certainly appreciate the openness of the Embarcadero now. Now, after several votes back and forth over several years (at least the entire 6+ years we’ve been here), the Fell off ramp (aka, the Central Freeway) is coming down. The San Francisco Chronicle, of course, has followed the progress, and lack thereof, all along. A mid-April editorial, Life after freeways, wonders if we’ll have similarly positive results with the current highway.
“NO CITY hates cars like San Francisco. After the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, city leaders tore down two heavily-used freeways while other towns battled to replace theirs.”
We won’t know whether to celebrate the outcome or not until 2006, when it’s all scheduled to be done. Follow the project yourself.
On a more personal note, it sure was fun, for all of us, to watch some of the demolition. In the morning, we stopped by the Oak/Laguna intersection to watch the workers prep everything (laying dirt down, perhaps to protect the road surface?). Ben was, predictably, fascinated — but Brooke and I found it interesting, too. Later in the afternoon, we went back and watched the controlled chaos. Three excavators with ‘breaker’ attachments (I know these things now, thanks to Ben), a skid steer, a loader, and various trucks to cart away the rubble… all of them focused on tearing down an overpass. Amazing how much concrete and steel are in a highway section. I had a headache from all the noise eventually, but an entertaining hour-plus on a sunny afternoon.
Most mornings, about this time, I get on my bicycle or put on my running shoes and head to work. It’s three short miles across San Francisco, mostly downhill or flat on the way to work. It’s a tiny bit of exercise and a faster commute than the bus, most of the time. But this morning B is going to drive me to work… feels decadent, but I get a few more minutes here and she gets to sleep in a bit longer. Never hurts on a Friday.
“Our lives are frittered away by detail. Simplify. Simplify.”
Thoreau, channelled by Vin. Worth remembering, especially because ‘frittered’ is so fun to say.
I always want to listen to This American Life on NPR, but I never do. Maybe something like this is the answer? $150.00 for the basic model, via pre-ordering. Have to see if there is a service fee, too. [via E-Media Tidbits, Steve Outing]
Oooh! Oooh! I’ve been waiting for this: A portable device that does for radio what TiVo does for television. PoGo! Products has introduced the Radio YourWay (http://www.mobilemag.com/content/100/337/C1666/) portable digital AM/FM radio recorder. With it, you can record radio programming (manually, or by setting a timer) for later playback — and the ability to fast-forward past commercials or obnoxious disc-jockey chatter.
Yesterday afternoon, Ben took his nap in his bed instead of his crib. First time for everything. Later that evening, he started the night in his bed… but for the second night, after about an hour, he asked to be put in his crib. We’re not going to push too hard, but interesting to watch this transition. This morning, after breakfast, he climbed into the crib on his own, just to play, while I was in the other room. I didn’t know he could do that.
Getting a company’s name right shouldn’t be that hard, but my employer, CNET Networks, seems to have some extra challenges there. The logo of CNET (one of the brands, not the company) is a lower-case c|net embedded in a bright red ball. Early on (1995 or so), CNET would write out the company name in the same manner: c|net: The Computer Network (that’s what CNET stood for, originally). Somewhere around 1998, everyone realized the external confusion putting a pipe in the name (not to mention the lower-case) was inflicting, so there was a brief change to CNet, followed in rapid order by the more useful move to CNET. However, in many cases, the damage had been done. I still see c|net linger on in several places, probably because the logo was never changed — which is a good thing, I think. Maybe in another 10 years it will be clearer to those outside the company. In a small way, the confusion is a legacy, too, of the company’s high-flyer status in the late 1990s. Many people’s first introduction to the brand probably coincided with the typographical indecision. Live and learn.