Carnaval 2006

At about 7:30 AM Sunday morning the Samba started thumping. The Carnaval parade starts about a half a block from my house and all the groups assemble along both side of Bryant. For a change the weather was absolutely gorgeous. I went up to the roof to see what I could see, but there were too many trees in the way. Guess I could have checked that before I invited a bunch of people over ;) So we down to street level and watched some of the parade. Then after a while more people showed up and we went back to the apartment to hang out. It was really good to have people over. I should do it again soon.

My pics
Lars' awesome shots
Julian's excellent photos

web box

I found this pretty cool web-based file sharing tool today. Back in the day, there was xDrive and all that, but you had to download a clunky client piece. Box.net is entirely web-bases with lots of web 2.0 functionality(Tagging, RSS feeds, etc.) To try it out, click the link below

Ground Rio

This weekend is Carnaval in the Lower Mission. Last year, I was just getting back from New Zealand, so I was jet lagged and overwhelmed. But this year I plan to be up on my roof on 24th Street watching the Parade. I'm right on the first few blocks of the parade and lots of groups will be setting up, so expect to be up early Sunday morning with the sounds of samba booming.

My out of control "To Read" stack

My out of control "To Read" stack
Originally uploaded by leef_smith.

I have to say my reading stack is getting more then a little out of control. I'm realiy trying to get through some books, but then there's the magazines...

Ah, will it ever shrink?

Six Feet Over

I'm totally behind the curve on this but just this weekend I finally watched season five of Six Feet Under. Wow! This show pulls on my heart-strings on so many levels, but never feels manipulative or cheesy. I think one of the reasons I identify with it so match are the parallels to my own family, two older brothers and a significantly younger sister, with a more distant, needy mother. When bad things happened to any of the any of the siblings, can't help but imagine the same things happening to my own brother or sister. Whenever the repression and alienation between the Fisher's comes to the forefront, I connect to those same issues in my own family. It's sad to think that the series is really over, but I know it's something I'll want to watch over and over throughout my lifetime and see different things in it. There's definitely that sense of richness there. I'm going to miss the idea of new episodes to watch though.

FLICKR SMASH!

So yesterday Flickr quietly announced they where joinng the gamma irradiated crowd, and going from beta to gamma with a brand new site navigation and some enhanced functionality. Now I have even more reason to love Flickr, especially with the much improved, faster and larger Organizr. Funny, just the other day I had posted a request for a full-screen Organizr, but I'm surethey had heard that before.

Yahoo Mail beta vs. Gmail

Aggh! Everyday it seems like Google and Yahoo are battling it out for all my "Wow, that's really cool!" For Yahoo's cool AJAX livesearch.alltheweb.com, Google strikes back with something amazing like sketchup.com. Then you have similar products like del.icio.us and google.com/notebook. But the heart of the battle for me has been web email. For years I've been a loyal users of Yahoo mail and stood by it as other systems dropped by the wayside. But a few months back, I decide to really give Gmail a try and I was hooked. I loved to idea of threaded email, plus all the pretty colors! Then Yahoo released the beta of their new Yahoo mail and was drawn back. It's certainly the most Windows-like, AJAXy web client that I've ever seen with all sorts of cool functionality, like dragging emails into folder, tabbed browsing and Right-Click options. But this week I decided to go back to Gmail, primarily because it's just simpler and quicker to work with, but also it's just easier to keep a clean Inbox with Gmail. A really basic need but it's just where I want to be right now. It's great to have the competition bringing some great Web 2.0 applications, but the decisions over which to chose are killing me!

Small town tragedies and pointless deaths

This story on Morning Edition, Small Indiana Town Remembers Fallen Marine, got to me this morning. It just breaks my heart hearing about very normal, ordinary people caught up in the carnage of Iraq. Of course, they made their choices, but still no expects it to happen to them. I mean this guy was making plans for his future and expected to make it out of Iraq and live a full adult life. But not to be... And that strikes me as very tragic, that sacrifice of life with hardly a purpose at all.

Korea: Intact Culture

Anne Hilty writes some great articles on life in Korea for Seoul Selection and this week her topic was Korea's "Intact Culture" and what that means for foreigners visiting or living in Korea. It's a very well written and compassionate explanation for what can often be an uneasy relationship between Koreans and foreigners. I was talking at a party this weekend about what living in Korea was like and struggling a bit. It's hard to really convey to people who really know very little about Korea.

A Very Special Celebration of Phil

Phil & the ladies - Pamela, Cindy, Shanna, Phil, Gretchen & Pamela
Originally uploaded by leef_smith.

Thursday was my friend Phil's birthday and a big ol' crew of us got together for dinner at the Last Super Club to celebrate. It was absolutely flippin' AirWolf!