Ideas for free (continued)

I mentioned last Friday that I have library cards for six systems in the Silicon Valley, and that I got them simply by presenting myself to the various entities and showing photo ID.

I thought I’d just give you empiric proof of that claim:

America, gonif!

Changing guard at WaPo

Well—big news in the, uh, news business: The Washington Post Company announced yesterday that it’s sold its flagship property, The Washington Post, to Amazon founder/CEO Jeff Bezos, for $250M.

Some interesting things about this sale:

WaPo senior management kept the fact that the paper was on the block secret from everyone, including its own employees. Reaction all over the place was stunned disbelief. I don’t know what that says about their newsroom’s investigative abilities.

Bezos, 49, has bought the paper as a private individual. It’s not Amazon making the purchase. But there have been some wags on Twitter capitalizing on the connection between the man and his company:

Apparently $250M is chump change to Bezos, who has a personal worth of $25.2B, according to Forbes.

I don’t know what to say about this—I loved WaPo. It was one of the best things about living in the D.C. area, having a first-class newspaper to read every morning.

When I moved to the UK, I was appalled by what passed for journalism there, the conflating of news and editorial commentary, the massive delta between the quality of national/international and local coverage, the lack of comics and coupons. I was accustomed to having a local paper what was also national, staffed by professionals (with one or two exceptions, like Janet Cooke) who were great news people and fabulous writers. I used to check WaPo regularly online to get my reportage.

Back in Virginia at the end of 2001, and without a job, I still had the consolation of a first-class newspaper to curl up with everyday.

But, of course, you don’t step into the same river twice, and the news industry has been struggling with the changes wrought by the Internet for at least a decade. A lot of great newspapers have come as near as dammit to folding; WaPo itself has had several rounds of lay-offs/early retirement offers that have changed the nature of its coverage.

After Ken Ringle left, to tell the truth, it just wasn’t the same for me.

Even now, as I went to their site to get the Bezos sale story from the horse’s mouth, I was greeted by a popup telling me I’ve used one of my 20 free story views for the month. Sigh.

Bezos issued a six-paragraph letter to WaPo employees. In it he assures them to the extent possible that the transition will be smooth, he’s not going to be involved in day-to-day management, etc. But there will be change. (Or death, but of course he didn’t say that.)

Here’s one graf that gives me some hope that the paper won’t turn into a three-times-a-week publication, or a scandal-rag:

“Journalism plays a critical role in a free society, and The Washington Post – as the hometown paper of the capital city of the United States – is especially important. I would highlight two kinds of courage the Grahams have shown as owners that I hope to channel. The first is the courage to say wait, be sure, slow down, get another source. Real people and their reputations, livelihoods and families are at stake. The second is the courage to say follow the story, no matter the cost. While I hope no one ever threatens to put one of my body parts through a wringer, if they do, thanks to Mrs. Graham’s example, I’ll be ready.”

Well—he certainly understands the purpose and the past of this paper. I hope to God he equips it for the future. I’d like to move back there and have it to read everyday again.

Gratitude Monday: Paris by way of Seoul

There’s a bakery/café in Santa Clara, a couple of miles from my place. It’s called Paris Baguette, but it’s actually a Korean-owned chain with outlets on both coasts. Since Santa Clara is the Northern California equivalent of Koreatown in LA, it makes sense that you’d find this where it is.

  

There are other PB stores in Palo Alto and Cupertino; both of them are more upscale and attitudinal than the one in Santa Clara, which is in a somewhat downmarket shopping center that also has a cheesy furniture store, a Korean market, a shoe repair shop, a hair salon and the like. The shoe guy is how I happened on the center in the first place.

The café part is a little run-down looking, but they’ve got good wi-fi, and power outlets to plug your laptop into. And their croissant-based pastries are lovely—flakey and tasty; you can’t eat them without making a complete mess with all the little crumbs.

Plus—they make the best latte of any place in the Silicon Valley. It’s my treat for the days I hit the gym; it’s silky, luscious and it sometimes comes with latte art:

The pastry offerings fascinate me. I tried the “Strewed Pea” twist a couple of times. For the life of me I cannot discern what “Strewed Pea” might be, but it’s kind of good. I’ve not tried the Tuna Pastry, but it seems pretty popular with the other customers.

(It’s interesting that they put it out next to the cream cheese pastry. You’d think the latter would pick up some of the taste of the former. But maybe not.)

Recently they’ve added a Tiramisu pastry, just at the weekend—a kind of croissant rolled around mascarpone filling & dowsed in cocoa powder. It’s completely decadent. I have to tap off a couple of tablespoonsful of cocoa and powdered sugar before I can eat it. Even so, I’m sure I walk around with cocoa smears on my face for half the day.

I enjoy spending a couple of hours at PB of a morning, writing, checking target companies and so on. I could do that at a couple hundred cafés in the valley; but the added attraction of PB is that I’m often the only Meeguk saram there. I love watching the Korean housewives who get together there for a nibble and some gossip. It reminds me of my time living in Seoul, although I never experienced anything like this when I was there.

(I can’t pick up much of the discussions any more, which is what comes of learning a language in a “conversation” class, not a proper language class. But there you are.)

It may be partly because I’m decidedly not Korean, and therefore stand out, but I’ve achieved “regular” status by virtue of me being there once a week. If counter people are free, the moment they clock me walking through the door someone starts making a latte. I was there a couple of weeks ago—the last time I had to take my car in to get the antenna replaced—and mentioned it to the blonde at the counter. This past Saturday she inquired after the car. I’ve definitely arrived.

So for Gratitude Monday today, I’m grateful that I have Paris Baguette, where I can savor a latte, get croissant flakes all over me and my keyboard, sit with a friend for a couple of hours talking, and people-watch to my heart’s content. I hope you’re lucky enough to have a similar place to get away from it all.

Ideas for free, just for free

My first ever “paycheck” job was with the Pasadena Public Library, shelving books when I was in high school.

(You know—a paycheck job, where you got paid with an actual check, not cash from mowing lawns or babysitting. It had taxes taken out, and stuff. It was real.)

Even before that, I was a big user of PPL—I mean, you had access to all these books on all sorts of different subjects…for free. What’s not to love?

And wherever I’ve lived, I’ve always been proud to get a library card of whatever system was on offer—university, city, county, whatever.

Libraries are part of the foundation of a democracy—you need an informed electorate to make informed choices about who should enact the will of the people. Education is a cornerstone of this principle, and that’s why we have public schools open to all children in this country. (Yeah—I’m not going to go into the quality of the education here.)

But free access to ideas is also crucial, and that’s why we have all kinds of library systems in our country. They’re rethinking how they carry out their mandate in these days of e-books, videogames and DVDs, but they still are absolute wonderlands as far as I’m concerned.

(How easy or difficult a civic entity makes getting a library card says a lot about the society. In both Maidenhead and Putney (England), I had to show proof that I paid (actually extortionate) council (property) taxes in those specific jurisdictions before they’d grudgingly hand over a card. Here in Santa Clara County, all I needed was a photo ID—not even showing a local address. I got cards to six different library systems off the back of my Washington state driver’s license and me saying I lived here.)

So, I was interested to come across this compilation of libraries that changed the world. (The title claims 25, but I only count 22 listed. Um.)

What’s sad is that many of them have been destroyed—an awful lot of political and religious leaders seem to be afraid of collections of books and the ideas they represent.

What’s heartening is that four of the 22 shown are in the US, starting with the Library of Congress. When the invading British troops burned the initial library along with much of Washington, D.C., in 1812, Thomas Jefferson sold his entire collection of nearly 6500 volumes to begin the rebuilding of the national treasure.

I also love that Room to Read is taking the glorious opportunities of literacy and access to books to children in Asia and Africa.

Wear & tare

I love walking around ethnic markets, and there are a lot of them in the Silicon Valley. Various Latino countries, India, Korea, Japan, China—they’re all represented in large numbers around here.

(Europe and Africa would appear to not exist if you went by the types of grocery stores. Because I’m not counting Safeway for anything.)

For one thing—there are all sorts of foods I’ve never seen. And then there are various products that not only have I never seen before, I very often am completely clueless about what they might do.

I was in a Japanese store the other day, and did my usual, “Well, GAWWW-LEE!” wandering around.

I saw signs for “Kitchen Wear”, which intrigued me. 

There was so much “Kitchen Wear” that it was found in two aisles.

I was expecting things like aprons, and maybe checked trousers and clogs, but no. It was pans and storage containers and cooking utensils and the like.

(I was disappointed in the "drink", too.)

America, gonif!

Correcting on auto

It’s interesting to me—as a product manager & a, you know, human—how software “features” are often not actually “benefits”.

Take autocorrect for example. I’ve shared my bemusement with that feature before, especially since it’s incorporated into MS Word’s spell checker.

(Think on that for a mo—software engineers determining what people who write for a living should have by way of a dictionary.)

You know—the helpful little electronic toerag that claims you’ve entered something non-existent (like Aeneid), or else it just quietly changes what you’ve written to something else without asking your permission.

So of course you find memes like this popping up around the interwebs:

Autocorrect shows up in SMS software, too. The other morning it changed “Saturday” to “A Stuttgart” in a text I was sending.

I have no mother-forklift idea why.

Pas de Maru, Pt. 4

Voilà, le chat existentielle.

Yes—Henri le chatnoir is back, one of the major memes of this decade. (Well, Henri and Maru. If these two ever join up, humans are toast.)

Henri’s hawking his new book, in the way that only he can do:

You want to know how I found out about this? On Twitter, of course.

Gratitude Monday: Heart of the city

Gratitude Monday & I’m feeling thankful that I live close to San Francisco, one of the loopiest cities on the planet.

Well, when I say loopy city, of course I mean its residents. A friend & I drove through a chunk of the town on our way to a couple of Design Week events down at The Cannery, & the shift between neighborhoods is just fantastic.

As are the folks who live there.

(The tourons are pretty universal—they’re the same ones you’ll see at any tourist destination. But, damn, those San Franciscans are something.)

Look, I know that no city is really like any other city. But San Francisco? It’s definitely sui generis.

Bless its heart.

"You're drunk; & you missed the bowl"

For my Friday frivolity today, I offer you the latest in Singapore’s comprehensive, erm, comprehensiveness: the Pee Analyzer.

In an attempt to stem the tide of drunk driving, a posh nightclub has installed devices in the men’s room urinals that detect the alcohol level in a user’s pee. The devices are keyed to RFID cards that patrons get when they valet park their car, and the level is recorded on the card. If it’s over the legal limit, a sign lights up advising him he should consider alternative transport home.

(Not, you’ll notice, that he should stop drinking. It is in a bar, after all.)

The RFID card gets swiped again at the parking valet station, and the patron gets another chance to decide not to get behind the wheel.

This video ‘splains it all, although you have to wade through a lot of annoying music to get to it.

They claim that in a two-week period the pee analyzers ratted out 573 sloshed patrons, of whom 342 used the drive-home service or called a cab. I find those numbers not massively impressive—fewer than 40 per night? Although I suppose a lot of men’s room users could have been walk-in patrons.

As for women—they have to determine their level of consumption the old-fashioned way: waking up with a massive hangover, possibly in a bed not their own.

Google 1, National Geographic 0

Google’s doodle for today honors Rosalind Franklin, the Cambridge-trained scientist and photographer whose photos of DNA strands enabled other researchers to nail down the structure of the basic building block of genetics.

If you click on the doodle, it takes you to a search result page that includes this story from National Geographic. I couldn’t believe that publication refers to Franklin as a “Legendary Female Scientist”.

What the hell? She was a meticulous and dedicated researcher, who died much too young and was subsequently denied Nobel recognition that other DNA explorers (notably Watson and Crick)—who actually used her photos to advance their studies without her knowledge—were granted.

(The Nobel committee doesn’t award prizes posthumously, and Franklin died in 1958, four years before Crick and Watson received theirs.)

I find it nothing short of bizarre that National G would qualify their commentary on Google’s honor by designating her a “female scientist”.

You’d have expected that in the 1950s; not in 2013. Grow the hell up, National Geographic.