Even for an honor society, you’ve got to admit that is a lot of honor.

It’ll make you want to get genital herpes.

I’ll be there with some flame effects.

There will be a discussion panel with some cool artists. The subject, “Creation”

And there’s always some fun, unexpected stuff going on. At memorable one, an artist friend smashed a beautiful piece of his own art on stage. It was sublime. See a photo about that one here. It’s the third photo down .

Panel Discussion participants

Facilitator
Leslie Pritchett brings to her public art and community art program consulting more than 20 years experience in corporate marketing, small business and start-up business management. She spent several years as managing partner of Digital Pond, a high-end digital imaging company serving clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies, such as Nike and Hewlett-Packard, to leading museums and fine art print purveyors, including the Ansel Adams Gallery. She entered the nonprofit arena as executive director of the Black Rock Arts Foundation, where over the course of three years she produced or supported more than 28 public art projects, including eight major and award-winning temporary public installations within the City of San Francisco. She secured the organization’s first major grants from the James Irvine Foundation, the San Francisco Foundation, SF Grants for the Arts, San Francisco Department of the Environment, and several private foundations. The program for temporary art exhibition that she helped establish now serves as a model for municipalities around the country. Through public art consulting and production of major public art exhibitions, Leslie is able to integrate her business experience with her love of fostering community-building art programs. Leslie holds a Masters in Business Administration from Columbia University and a degree in French Literature from Dartmouth College.

Panelist
Hopi Breton is a Bay Area-based artist and Professor or Art at Diablo Valley College. She received her MFA with a concentration in sculpture from Montana State University, in Bozeman, Montana in 2001, and her BA from Loyola University in New Orleans in 1996. In addition to her academic background in Art, hopi grew up surrounded by artists. A weaver mother and musician father (who often fixed instruments) significantly formed her early fascination with the processes of making, materials, and craft. Hopi’s studio practice focuses on Conceptual Craft-oriented sculpture with a heavy concentration on form, abstracted common objects, and material. Her technical background is in metal working, specifically in Foundry work and in cast iron. She has organized and worked with students and peers to create cast iron art performances nationally, including the International Cast Iron Art Conference at Sloss Furnaces in Birmingham, Al, The Western Cast Iron Art Conference, in Denver, CO, and the Fire Arts Festival at the Crucible in Oakland, CA. Her performance foundry work explores stages of the process while using molten metal as an ingredient, rather than a means to an end. Many of these performances imitate leisure daily activities such as baking and bowling. She is motivated by any opportunity to gather, organize, and collaborate with artists. She has also curated several shows, including “Metaliform, All Things Metal”, “Between Places; Photography and Sculpture”, and “Turf; Ecological Activism and Art” at Diablo Valley College’s Art Gallery.

Panelist
Exploratorium Director of Public Programs Melissa Alexander and oversees all temporal programming for the casual museum visitor. Since 1989 Alexander has developed and produced numerous public programs and exhibition projects for the Exploratorium, both on site and online, including the online resources “Evidence: How do we know what we know?” Doctor Atomic: Commentary on an Opera, and Live@Exploratorium: Origins and the award winning exhibition Revealing Bodies an experimental exhibition addressing the social, cultural and political impact of scientific, anatomical and biomedical representations of the human body.

Panelist
Dale Dougherty is the founder, President & CEO of Maker Media, Inc. in Sebastopol, CA. Maker Media produces Make Magazine, which launched in 2005, and Maker Faire, which was held first in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2006. MAKE has been the catalyst for a worldwide Maker Movement that is transforming innovation in industry, hands-on learning in education and the personal lives of makers of all ages. MAKE invites everyone to become a maker, and integrate creative goals with technical skills. Dougherty was a co-founder of O’Reilly Media, where he was the first editor of their computing trade books, and developed GNN in 1993, the first commercial website. He coined Web 2.0 in 1993. MAKE started at O’Reilly Media and spun out as its own company in January 2013. He grew up in Louisville, KY.

Panelist
Beckey Kaye I was born in Los Angeles in 1976 and reared under the love of a hard-working single mom and older sister. As a child, I studied ballet, befriended stray cats and climbed more than my share of trees. I attended Los Angeles County High School for the Arts with a focus on modern dance and site-specific choreography. In 1994, I moved to Seattle with a full scholarship to Cornish College of the Arts Dance Department. However, a bite from the wanderlust bug and a strong inclination towards puppetry caused me to seek education elsewhere. In 1996, I joined a transient street punk performance group called Circus Dischordia and performed as a fire dancer and puppeteer. In 1998, I founded a nomadic puppet performance troupe called Mimicry Libre Puppet Theatre and performed at various protests and activist events. Trying to save money for overseas travel, I worked migrant agricultural jobs around the States. By 2000, I was on a plane to Indonesia to study mask carving with the Dell Arte Study Abroad program. My newfound love for Indonesian woodcarving directed an opportunity to become a Darmasiswa Scholar and study Set Construction and Wayang Golek at Sekolah Tinngi Seni Indonesia, Bandung. I also collaborated and stayed with the Javanese artist community, Taring Padi in Yogyakarta. In 2004, I enrolled in California College of the Arts with a major in Sculpture and graduated with distinction in 2007. After graduation I worked as a wheelchair mechanic at National Seating and Mobility and as the Sculpture Shop Technician at UC Berkeley. I attended Machine and Welding Technology programs at Laney College before getting accepted into SFSU MFA program in 2010. I currently live in South Berkeley with my dog, Kerosene. I work as a welding instructor and studio manager at The Crucible.

Let me count the ways…

Their website don’t say what is in the product because there is nothing useful in it.

All of the claims on the site are specious:

• The site says “FDA Registered Company” which means nothing.
• “As advertised on MSN, CNN.com…” Taking an ad out doesn’t legitimize a product.
• They mention their “Homeopathic Oral Nail Fungus Relief Spray”, in case you were wondering, homeopathy isn’t medicine
• Their return policy is absolute crap. You pay return shipping and  ”…Refund Processing and Restocking Fee: $6 Per item e.g. 1 bottle return = $6…” They usually sell you 4 bottles at a time, do the math.
• They don’t even say how much their product costs on the website

I think the most revealing point is that Claripro is mentioned on several Zetaclear websites as being a recommended product. The Zetaclear people are bad people.

I could go on for a long time about their site. Read my blog (and the many comments) and don’t give these jerks any money.

I went to an eye doctor who said, “Yup, you’ve got a floater.” It hovers in my right eye, usually below and to the right of the focus of my vision, but it floats… it lags behind the movement of my eye like the answer-die in a Magic 8 Ball settling in to tell you “Concentrate and ask again.” Megan and I named it “Oliver” because he is all-over my vision. It bothers me because there is nothing to be done about it and there is a good chance it will never go away, an annoyance and obstruction to my vision for the rest of my life. If I’m lucky, some day it will catch on something inside my eye and stay in the same spot; then I’ll hardly ever notice it. But for the last six months, and right now as I write this, it hovers in front of every blank surface I look at: computer screens, blank walls, blue skies.

Blah.

Went over to Andrea’s apartment last night, potlucked, chatted about the state of teledildonics, and watched Star Wars III with Rifftrax. My sides hurt.

————————————————–

Black Rock City, September 4th, 2004:
I was having a fine time on Saturday night, the night the Man was to be burned.

I had brought my art over to near where I was going to fly it. I was having some technical problems with it so I got out my soldering iron and I was fixing it on top of a giant box labeled “Glass Ball” in the New Day’s Eve camp. Some guy was trying to help me but was just distracting me with his constant questions; he couldn’t hold the light steady so I rode back to my camp and fetched my head-lamp. When he said that he was going to find some punani to put his meat kilbasi into (yes, he really said that), I knew I didn’t need his help and sent him away. Maybe he was on speed, doesn’t matter.

I got the plane to light up. I recall the happy neon glow on the box and the annoying guy. I was close. But then I had 2 problems. The playa was completely filled with people wandering toward the Man; I couldn’t be assured of a safe landing spot. And I couldn’t fit all of the electronics inside the fuselage. Argh! It was just too tight. If I had just 1 more day to put it together back home… When I realized it was going to be more of a pain than it was worth, and potentially a danger to bystanders, I decided to forget it. I was standing on the Esplanade and could see the Man. He was going to raise his arms any second and the anticipation was too much. My friends were waiting for me on the playa. So I stashed the plane in the Asylum container and went looking for Marah.

The plan was for Marah and I to meet at the Temple and watch the Man burn from there… A nice secluded spot (and Marah isn’t much for ambling crowds). But as I rode out, past the Man, past the solar system, I realized that the Temple was way too far out. Finally making it out there and looking back, the Man was just a dot on the horizon.

I looked about for Marah but wasn’t having any luck. Then I heard her calling me; She was walking out, alone, to meet me. I found her about 80 yards away in the dark playa. She said that, yes, the Temple was too far out. We were going to meet up with friends at an art installation.

On the way back… And while I was riding out, I got to look at the sky. The huge, gigantic, tremendous sky. I recall standing out there, looking back at our homage to “The Vault of Heaven”. So many people had put forth a tremendous effort to gather and praise the heavens and, from my vantage point just 1/2 a mile away, it appeared as nothing but a thin strip of lights on the horizon. And then I looked up. Just a 1 degree above our party, stretching for a billion billion miles in every direction, the heavens hung. My eye followed the bright swath of the Milky Way galaxy across the sky. I felt, as one does the first time they see our moon through a telescope, “Ah! It isn’t a cardboard cut-out, it’s real! It’s not just a picture, it’s a place. I could go there if I had the means. Maybe people already do live there and I just can’t see them!” I recalled how Galileo Galilei must have felt, being possibly the first person on this little marble to look up and see that the objects in the heavens were in fact real objects and not perfect celestial bodies and pinholes in the black velvet of the night’s sky.

Image: Stiched panorama of The Vault of Heaven Horizon from The Temple, Burning Man 2004

(to be continued)

————————————————–

I know you’ve worked hard to make the new Chase site look and feel good. It’s pretty good but the new Payment Activity page is lacking.

When I go to this page, I am doing accounting and want to see all of my recent bill paying activity. Unfortunately, I only get to see some of it. For some reason, you have separated it into two thumbnails, “My Bill Pay Payees” and “My Chase Credit Cards”. As it stands, I see everything except my Chase accounts, which is rather frustrating. I can click on the “My Chase Credit Cards” page to see the rest of my information, but why should I have to? the types of information on the two pages is the same; please make the two pages into one.

The upshot is that on the Chase Bill Payment website, the hardest to manage bills are from Chase. I’m sure you didn’t intend that. Please work on it.

Your new version of the Chase site has made it impossible for me to search the page with my browser (for example: ctrl-f). It is important for me to be able to search the page because it is so full of tables that are very easy to search but hard to scan with my eye.

When I try to do a search with my browser on “Pending and Past Payment Activity”, I can’t find text that spans a line. For example, The payee is likely to read something like this because of the tight columns:

Blue Cros
s acct 1234

If I search for “Blue Cross” the search comes up empty. I can tell you why this is the case. Looking at the HTML, it reads:

Blue Cros <br/>s acct 1234

That br tag is messing things up! If not for it, my browser would be able to search across the lines and find the text. Please use CSS instead of hard tags.

Saw my family in Florida for Easter

Had Squash Flower Fritters (my grandmother’s recipe!) for the first time in 20 years.

And Fried Smelts and Brustenge and all manner of foodly delights

Went to a wonderful party at Cindy and Carlo’s

To be clear, advanced file sharing options for individuals with only light emailing and downloading needs are probably not worth looking into. For most basic files, and for the average individual workload online, basic email tends to suffice. But if you find yourself needing a bit more support for large or complex files, advanced file sharing might be a good idea.

I do a lot of work on the Internet, and my file sharing load was getting large enough that I was convinced to look into Share File. Here’s what I’ve found so far:

• I’m able to send large files with Share File fairly easily. My average email is not necessarily too large or complex for basic email, or for other popular services like YouSendIt or DropBox. But Share File works more quickly and easily.
• Implementation is pretty easy. I was a bit concerned about making the transition, just because it seemed like a potential hassle. But the program and services are fairly simple to integrate.
• The cloud is awesome. I looked into advanced file sharing options purely for the file sharing itself, but the cloud computing is worth the package. Being able to access my work from any device that can get online is a huge convenience boost.

It’s also worth mentioning that the services aren’t cheap. Share File specifically runs for $29.95/month for basic service, and $59.95 for the more capable professional package. But, free trials for these services are available, so if you think advanced file sharing and cloud computing could help you, a trial can’t hurt!

I’m lucky enough to be able to go and shake Nick Diphillipo’s hand, and Steven Young’s hand and say “thank you”.

I finally saw the last several episodes of The Sopranos. I had been dreading it because I heard that it ended very noncommittally. What were all those critics talking about?! There was blood (a lot of blood), tension, permanent change, temporary change, forshadowing, and certainly a sense of completion for the writers. Heck, in the second to last episode there was a TV show playing in the background talking all about writing for television; the authors didn’t let that play in the background for so long for nothin’! I found the last episodes quite fulfilling. Thank you.

Slings and Arrows. I’ve been swept off my feet with this show. I’m about 1/2 way through the 3 season run. I’m afraid to see it end because I’m such in love with it. (And I still haven’t gotten Megan hooked on it… I want her to catch up and have us watch it together)

Dr Who from 2008 has some very enjoyable episodes, and some sappy ones.

The IT Crowd. I watched every episode and loved it! A nerdy treasure!

The Dick Van Dyke Show. Yes, the show from 1961 with Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore. Darn good shows. Entertaining and fun, and not nearly as dated as it could be.

House of Cards. Netflix’s entrance into television production. Watching the show is a fascinatingly sadistic experience.

30 Rock. I’ve watched my fare share. I like it. It’s just crazy enough for me.

Eureka is pretty fun.

Modern Family is pretty good television

Burn Notice. I watched a bunch of episodes. It feels like spy edu-tainment :-)

Breaking Bad. Intense. Intense. Intense.

Honorable mentions

How It’s Made. They show  how the coolest stuff in the world is made with awesome factory processes with narration that makes me want to put an ice pick through my ears. Maybe I should just turn the volume down and enjoy.

The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret is a fun one trick pony.

Mad Men. I don’t know, it just doesn’t interest me

I am not watching It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Don’t like it. It’s honestly mean spirited.

The Youtube needs to sneak it’s way onto this list at some point. Epic Rap Battles of History, Cracked.com, Imgur.com Gallery, BestofYoutube.com, 5SecondFilms.com, The Daily Show, Scam School, SMBC Theater, Instructables.com, etc etc etc etc etc!!!

You see, about 2 years ago, new consumer protection laws went into effect, making it so that credit card companies were required to inform customers very clearly as to what fees they would be charged. This is the first I’ve seen of credit cards trying to chip away at that law.

Long form:
I’ve been using the excellent Tomato firmware on my Linksys WRT54GL v1.1 router since 2009. It was easy to install and has worked flawlessly. My router now provides service for about 30 devices, many are not under my direct control. I wanted to get IP bandwidth stats so I could tell, on those infrequent occasions when the internet was running slow, who was sucking up all the bandwidth.

I looked around a lot, comparing the open source router firmware: DD-WRT, OpenWRT, TomatoUSB, EasyTomato, Shibby, Toastman, pfsense,

I bought a new router, a TP-Link TL-WR1043ND v 1.10. I installed OpenWRT (version: Attitude Adjustment 12.09-beta2). I had a little trouble with it. I tried installing the bandwidthd mod and I had a little trouble with the wifi on the router locking up every few minutes.

How I installed OpenWRT

After spending an hour reading the manuals, installation was way simple
* fetch the firmware mentioned in the hardware-specific documentation
* install the firmware by “upgrading” the router from Tomato. 3 clicks total
* tada, the router mostly “just works”
* enable wifi (the documentation clearly mentions that wifi is turned off by default), 3 clicks “enable wifi on the LAN, on the WAN, Submit!)
* tada, the router is totally working

To install Bandwidthd
* I tried using the web interface something wasn’t working right. I tried to jump-start Bandwidthd from within the ssh interfce but nuthun doin. So I uninstalled it from the web interface and the couple commands mentioned at the top of the Bandwidthd documentation from the ssh interface
* I then went to http://192.168.1.1/bandwidthd and darn if stats weren’t magically showing up!
* I noticed there was trouble with my wifi dying unexpectedly. I uninstalled bandwidthd and the wifi seemed more stable. I got bored trying to fiddle with it and switched to trying to install another router firmware. I’m glad I now had a backup router in the TP-Link, just in case.

Having given up on OpenWRT, I looked to mods of the Tomato firmware. Here’s what I found:
* Tomato hasn’t been updated since around 2009
* TomatoUSB hasn’t been updated since around 2011. And it doesn’t have the bandwidth monitoring I wanted anyway
* pfsense is far too complex to install and run
* Toastman Tomato looked good so I gave it a go

Having Temporarily Given Up On OpenWRT, I Tried Toastman Tomato

Toastman Tomato has the built in IP bandwidth stats I was looking for. It was confusing trying to find the right firmware to download. But I found Toastman answering my exact question online, “I have a WRT54GL v1.1, what version do I want to install?” His answer, “You have a Linksys WRT54GL which does not have a USB port. It is a MIPSR1 router. You should load 1.28.7626.1 BETA. Use the std build. 7628.1 is also good, but has a more complex interface for setting up VLAN’s, which you probably don’t need.” I took that and went to Toastman’s 4shared.com site and downloaded tomato-WRT54G_WRT54GL-1.28.7634Toastman-IPT-ND-Std.bin. I upgraded my router with that firmware and BAM!! It all just worked! It even imported all my old Tomato settings!

Click here to vote on State Farm’s Facebook App. (You’ll have to give the application permissions, but only the first time.) After that, all you have to do is click “vote” to lend your support for Bikes for West Oakland, and it’s super easy to click 10 times in a row.

The Crucible’s Bike Program serves our West Oakland community with Bike Fix-a-Thons, Earn-a-Bike, Art Bike, and a drop-in repair times. This year six Bike Fix-a-Thons will enable at least 300 of our neighbors to access free repairs. 20 students in Earn-a-Bike will learn how to weld and explore other industrial arts in order to fabricate two bicycles and keep one – bikes are donated to community organizations and toy drives or sold to support the program. And Art Bike participants conceive and create unique artworks from frame to finished project.

The Crucible’s Bike Program was one of 200 causes (from over 3,000 entries) selected, which is a huge honor, and we only get funded if we reach the top 40. So please take a second to vote (or 10 seconds to vote 10 times), share with your friends, and check out The Crucible’s Bike Program in person soon – there’s something here for everybody.

Thanks!

A little bit about the sessions:
Run by Roxanna Shohadaee, doing Vinyasa Yoga, there is music and the room is lightly heated. I’ve been twice and quite enjoyed it.

Let me show you:

Festa del Fuoco di Stromboli Facebook page

Me being a fire and machine nerd, I liked watching the clock (it really works!) in the background starting at 2:20. And the flaming stars work nicely!

More pix on their website

——————

The face of spam keeps changing. It used to be email, then blog comments, now it’s comment stuffing (as in “ballot stuffing”). Look at this screenshot and tell me what you think looks fishy:

Let me give you a hint, the exact same comment was repeated word-for-word by over 40 different people in the review section of this Chrome Extension.

I know it’s a near impossible task, but you should always be on the lookout for fake people (AKA Sockpuppets) recommending products. I reported this incident to Google but it’s happened a lot before and it will happen a lot in the future.

CELLspace, community arts center, closed its doors at the end of 2012.

During the late 90s and early aughts, there was no better place to see the Mission District’s artistic, multicultural vibe than CELLspace. San Francisco prankster Chicken John was known to decorate the 10,000 square foot warehouse as a Las Vegas casino; the Flaming Lotus Girls created their first large scale fire installations in the CELLspace Metal Shop, and during Carnaval, the space would burst at the seams from the ritual drumming, colorful rattling costumes and sheer number of teenagers involved in groups like Loco Bloco and Danza Azteca.

Michael Sturtz was so impressed by CELLspace that he named his industrial arts school, The Crucible, after their art gallery.

“The name was inspired by the Crucible Steel Gallery, which was the CELLspace gallery at the time,” he said.

Burning Man’s Arts Advocate and Community Events Producer Steven Raspa held his first interactive art exhibit in that gallery. “Cell has played a vital and significant role in the underground creative community in the Bay Area for many years,” he said, adding that he could recall, “numerous mad capped happenings that defied explanation.”

Most people who went there, went to those mad capped happenings: all-night dance parties that began with a yoga lesson and ended with the Extra Action Marching Band, literary events with David Byrne, beats from Bassnectar when he was DJ Lorin, breakdancing competitions, mechanical bull riding, hip hop theater, live chainsaw massacres, puppet circus suppers, blindfolded transcendental meditation workshops, and youth hip hop nights where gang members from the Nortenos, Surenos, Westmob and Big Block all danced together.

And it all began, with a window in the bathroom.

Jonathan Youtt, Justin Bondi and Tryntje Rapalje were living in a dusty, illegal unit attached to a warehouse screen printing business, in what was then called the North East Mission Industrial Zone. It was a lively apartment, with live music, puppet shows and independent film nights. In the quieter moments, they would gaze out the bathroom window and watch the T-shirts dry. They would imagine a better world. A world with art. A world with community.

It was 1996 in San Francisco. A time when you could still find a room in the Mission for $300, and the dotcom boom hadn’t turned empty warehouses into prime real estate. When the screen printing business moved out, the dreamers moved in. The papers were signed on the Spring Equinox.

The early years at Cell were marked by chaos and construction. Dave X was known to test his flamethrowers behind the building on Florida st., Jojo La Plume created an open craft loft in the homemade mezzanine, and the Sisterz of the Underground offered free breakdancing lessons for aspiring b-girls on the main space floor. On some days, you might have caught all three happening at the same time.

This writer first walked through the doors in the fall of 2000, looking for a place to practice juggling. Tamara Li, one of only three employees — in a space open from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. — said, “for something like that, you could just pick a couple of chores off the chore board.”

Jonathan Youtt pointed out that CELLspace was was never just about Burners. When some local youth were discovered painting graffiti on the outside of the building, they were encouraged. Those walls later hosted many great street artists, like Swoon, Spie, and Joel Bergner. Joel Bergner painted his first outdoor mural, “De Frontera a Frontera,” on 2050 Bryant, for which he won Best Public Mural from Precita Eyes in 2004.

“We were the only community space for a while that would even touch youth [programming], and youth hip hop shows,” Youtt said. “We provided a place for the Third Eye Movement, United Playaz, and other groups to organize against Prop 21,” a 2000 ballot initiative that made it easier to try juveniles as adults.

But it wasn’t all playa dust and b-boys.

The caretaker system — where members traded “20 hours” of work in exchange for cheap rent upstairs — led to burnout, and monetary theft. The space was run by collective consensus, which involved painfully long meetings. One irate member could freeze decision making, and some meetings ended in screaming matches and tears.

And there were constant problems with the City. The building at 2050 Bryant St. was never meant to be a public space, and bringing it up to code proved to be a nightmare. CELLspace was temporarily closed by the police or fire departments so many times that some members lost count.

During these shutdowns, CELLspace had to look outside of its doors to bring in money, and that led to an expansion. Jonathan Youtt convinced the owner of an empty warehouse and parking lot out back to let Cell have fundraisers there. A group of members envisioned a flea market for the Mission, run with the CELLspace ethos in mind. This writer insisted it would never work.

But work it did. The Mission Village Market grew to be Cell’s biggest moneymaker, and rivaled the Alemany Flea Market as a destination for vendors. Mission Urban Arts — a Cell-founded after school program — used the extra building to teach breakdancing, DJing and other skills to Mission youth, and S.F. bike education group The Bike Kitchen taught their first free workshops at the Mission Village Market.

With two buildings, in-house youth programming, official 501c3 non-profit status, and an eventual Place of Entertainment permit in 2005, the once kooky warehouse space had grown up. But as CELLspace became more established, the culture changed. The space relied less on volunteers, artists and live-in caretakers, and more on paid staff. Collective consensus gave way to weekly staff meetings, and monthly board meetings, as nonprofit status required by law.

During this transition, most of the original members left.

“In the 90s it was, live there for nothing, work your ass off,” said Russell Howze, a longtime CELLspace member. But by the time Howze quit volunteering in 2005 he said, “the culture of making art for participation’s sake was pretty much gone.”

Despite changing the guard, the space appeared to be thriving.

Cell’s 10th birthday party in 2006 was attended by a who’s who of Mission nonprofit workers, and politicians like Tom Ammiano and Chris Daly. But later that year, CELLspace lost its second building to make way for a housing development, and was forced to close the Mission Village Market. Cell had to move all of it’s programs into one building, and the needs of the competing programs clashed. Tension grew between the Events Department and the staff who ran the youth program, leading to subtle accusations of racism on both sides.

Grants helped to cover the loss of income from the Market, but a lot of the money was wasted. After one of the larger grants was received, the staff were given cell phones (no pun intended) for conducting CELLspace business. Within one year, they would have no business to conduct.

“Essentially, large amounts of money were mismanaged, one grant in particular from DCYF (Department of Children Youth and Families). Money was spent on things it shouldn’t have been, there were gang dynamics in place — it became a high risk situation in some of the decisions that were made, programmatically and financially,” said one former employee who preferred to remain anonymous.

In early 2007, employees who argued about the direction the space was going were let go, beginning with this writer. Later that year, paychecks for employees of Def-Ed, the Adult Art Education Program and Mission Urban Arts started bouncing. After months of assurances, waiting and mystery from the admin, everyone was laid off. Classes were cancelled, events business fell off, and a locked door at 2050 Bryant St. became the norm.

Helen McGrath, the former Programs Director, was heartbroken to tell the 200 kids in Mission Urban Arts that the program would end, and didn’t want to let CELLspace close. McGrath, Lizbett Calleros, and former Board President Dorian Johnson reached out to older members and formed a small coalition of volunteers to save CELLspace.

“Dave X and Dorian Johnson really gave it a go,” said Howze, who also came back to volunteer after the crash. But in 2009, the fire department told CELLspace that even though they had a Place of Entertainment permit, they would now need a separate Place of Assembly permit. That meant construction, and Cell didn’t have the money, or the volunteer base to get it done.

The space limped along for years, but by the end of 2012, the landlord was fed up with Cell’s inability to pay the rent on time. 2050 Bryant St. was given to new management and officially became Inner Mission on January 1st 2013. Inner Mission is the first ever B corp entertainment business. A B corp is a new type of corporation that places a higher emphasis on sustainability, ethical sourcing and equitable treatment of employees, but still operates on a profit model.

Russell Howze and Jonathan Youtt saw the transfer of CELLspace from a non-profit community center to a for profit entertainment business, as another symbol of the Mission district’s gentrification, and the decline of the arts culture in San Francisco.

“In the long run, the spirit had moved to Oakland,” Youtt said.

Dave X was less forgiving. He felt that the space could, and would have survived, if more people had pulled together to finish the final construction project for the POA — an enclosed exit in the back.

“In the end it went down not because it was getting shut down by the cops or whatever, but it closed because of our own incompetence,” he said.

CELLspace is survived by a warehouse arts culture that moved to Oakland, and a crew of former volunteers and employees, who, despite being spit on, shot at, bankrupted and worked until they couldn’t see straight, will miss it dearly.

CELLspace will be remembered with a private memorial service on March 21st — which would have been Cell’s 17th birthday — at Inner Mission, 2050 Bryant St. 7 p.m. until whenever.

Post your corrections, remembrances, rants, raves, diatribes and essays in the comments.

Thanks for reading,
–JDH

Visit CheeseWeaselDay.com to read the whole story!

I’m honored to see that the esteemed committee discovered Molly’s poetic talents from my own blog!

1. I installed NoSpamNX
2. I set NoSpamNX to Match Substrings “http://” and “https://”
3. I put a note in my comment file telling users “Do not write “http://” in your comment, it will be blocked.”

Done!

Real users figure out that they can write things like “lee.org” instead of “http://lee.org”. When comments come in, I go in and manually edit valid links. I’m fine with that because I want to review any links anyway before allowing it on my site.

Now we’re looking for engagement and wedding jewelry! It’s quite appropriate for us to either make it ourselves or have it made custom by a local jeweler. If you or someone you know can help with either of these ventures, we’d love to hear from you!

That said, feel free to add your own comments. Do not ask a question like the following, those issues have already been covered many times. Read the post!

I got a speeding ticket in xxx. I was going xx in a xx zone. I shouldn’t have gotten the ticket because xxx and xxx and xxx. How do I get out of the ticket? What should I do?

If this information saves you $500 or more, I would appreciate a $5 donation. Don’t send me anything until AFTER you have been to the courthouse and saved money! Here is a Paypal donation link:

I was browsing the GE LED lighting website and they were talking all about how when you buy GE lighting, you are buying into the GE Six Sigma  methodology and trust and confidence and people in labcoats and testing and history and blah di blah di blah… And then I saw this video (via) and got just a little pissed off. Starting at 1:15, compared compared an old street lamp system to a shiny new GE Evolve LED Roadway Lighting system with photos.

Can you see what’s wrong with this comparison?

Wow, that’s amazing! Look how bright the LEDs are compared to the old lights! You’re so right! I couldn’t see the sign before beca… wait a second. In the “after” picture I can see the tree in the foreground.. and where is the light in the foreground splashing on the road coming from? Wait. They just fixed a light in the foreground and I can’t see the fixture!

And wait a minute more. In the upper right corner of each photo, there’s a light on someone’s property… and in the “before” photo, that light is much dimmer! Are telling me that GE tweaked the brightness and contrast in the photo to fake how their lighting compares?

Let’s see. I did my best at fixing the the brightness, contrast and color temperature of the “before” photo:

Yes, I am calling the people at GE Lighting Solutions who made this video liars.

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I should note that the yellow cast of the “before” image is probably due to high pressure sodium lamps. It is hard to believe that it actually is as yellow as was depicted in the image, nevertheless, it should still be said that LEDs have better color rendition than high pressure sodium lamps.

(update, I just checked the PG&E website and I see a lot of retailers are in the program, and some of the large chains (Lowes, OSH, Home Depot) have LED bulbs in the program too. Cool)

This got me thinking…

My initial thoughts are that it’s kind of OK that this program is winding down. Now everyone is familiar with CFL bulbs, the price of CFL bulbs has come down (they used to be $20+), and just as importantly, CFL bulbs now have real competition on store shelves from the new LED bulbs.

This got me thinking…

LED lighting has really taken off. Last month I noticed that Sausalito’s streetlamps are all LED (if you squint when looking at the fixtures, you can see that it’s like 50 tiny LED bulbs instead of one big sodium bulb. I saw that a good portion of the Westfield Mall in San Francisco is lit with LEDs. At the same time, the LED lighting industry is a bit like the wild west. For instance, when I was chatting with the guy at Cole Hardware, he walked me over to a cabinet that was lit in LEDs. They had all gotten very dim just two years after installation (update: I think it’s the power supply and not the LEDs, the LEDs wouldn’t have all dimmed so evenly together). Big companies like GE are touting their LED lighting systems.

It’s interesting to compare the lighting side-by-side

type          lumens per watt
Incandescent    14
Halogen         18
CFL             60
LED             70
Hi pres sodium  90
T5 fluorescent  100

CFL vs LED… that’s a surprisingly meh-worthy difference. And regular fluorescent tubes are more efficient than LEDs! LEDs are getting better… they have 200 lumen per watt LED bulbs in the laboratory.

But right now it’s kind of a wash.

Read the whole thing (and watch the video!) on TheVerge.com

We asked Pauline how he managed to get an invite, and he gave us the following response:

“Easy, my mother in law was in Congress for 20 years and I passed the background check due to my spotless record!”

(Previously)

This week, the water heater in Megan’s house burst after 12 years of service. This reminded me of something I had mentioned a few years ago: periodically changing the anode in the hot water heater.

This is an important, inexpensive, a DIY project (if you’re into small home projects) that can save you a thousand bucks by dramatically extending the life of your water heater, and any plumber that’s never heard of it is either dumb or has a hidden agenda (IE: making more money when your system fails).

A new anode costs about $30 so having someone come in and replace it should cost less than $150. It’s way cheaper than replacing the hot water tank… or worse, the giant mess a burst tank can cause.

Watch this video from This Old House where they inspect and change two different anodes. In one case, the anode was covered in calcium deposits from hard water (do you have hard water??). In the other, the anode was completely eaten away… and the tank had burst!

It’s a Lenovo T530, 15.6″ widescreen custom ordered from Lenovo.com. Here’s what I like:

Keyboard: feels great, solid, slightly clicky, backlit keys and a “thinklight” that shines on the keyboard. I like the backlit keys more than the thinklight but I’m sure they will both come in handy.

Responsiveness: frickin fast! 180 gig SSD drive, i5 processor, 4 gig RAM. All the Lenovo quick boot technologies seem to work great, for example: it takes only 4 seconds to go from sleep to the password prompt!! Internet powers up nearly instantly. Just 15 seconds to wake up from hibernate mode, but I might stop using it because the sleep mode uses so little juice.

Audio: sounds great, loud, stereo, crisp.

Screen: nice, bright, good color, good off-angle viewing. I’m thinking maybe just maybe I should have gotten the 1920xwhatever screen instead of the 1366×768, but that might have made the text a little tiny for my eyes.

Trackpad: They nailed it. Excellent feel, performance. It also has a trackpoint nipple thing that I might start using.

Extra Buttons: There’s a mute speaker, volume buttons and mute microphone in easy reach. They work great.

Battery control: There are Lenovo battery settings that allow me to specify that the battery should only charge so much and then stop (it’s said that leaving a lithium battery fully charged makes it die quicker)

5 hour battery life. Plenty of battery.

It’s a tiny bit heavy at 5 lbs 6oz, but I paid $880 all inclusive. A lighter one might cost twice as much and I’m a poor student! (and I’ve got a great backpack to carry it in). It took 2 weeks longer to arrive than they originally promised which was a bother, but that’s forgotten.

It’s kinda weird to say this but the Lenovo extras and the operating system seem to be configured very well. I’m used to battling crapware at every turn but I’m not with this computer.

I got PDAnet working on it (it was a snap!) so I have data wherever I have 3G service on my phone. And darn if I can’t surf just as fast on 3G as on wifi!! Really!

Full specs:
Processor: Intel Core i5-3210M Processor (3M Cache, up to 3.10 GHz)
Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium (64 bit)
Display Type: 15.6″ HD (1366 x 768) LED Backlit AntiGlare Display, Mobile Broadband Ready
System Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 4000
Total Memory: 4 GB DDR3 – 1600MHz (1 DIMM)
Keyboard: Keyboard Backlit – US English
Pointing Device: UltraNav without Fingerprint Reader
Camera: 720p HD Camera with Microphone
Hard Drive: 180GB Solid State Drive, SATA3
Optical Device: DVD Recordable
System Expansion Slots: Express Card Slot & 4-in-1 Card Reader & Bezel
Battery: 6 Cell Li-Ion TWL 70+
Power Cord: 90W AC Adapter – US (2pin)
Integrated WiFi Wireless LAN Adapters: ThinkPad 1×1 b/g/n

Let’s go see the Bay Lights Grand Opening tonight. I won’t make it til 8:30 or 9:30 depending on when my class gets out. I’ll be near the Ferry Building.

More info

The earth is perpetually rumbling in this place! There were some 1,300 tiny earthquakes in this area in the last 30 days, 9 that were greater than 2.5. If you’re laying quietly, you’d have no trouble feeling those bigger ones.

So I checked it out online…

Apparently there is a giant bulb of magma about 4 miles underground and maybe 8 miles across. It’s a huge geothermal field. People keep pouring water on it to turn it into steam and run electric plants.

The area called The Geysers in The Clear Lake Volcanic Field is the largest geothermal power producer in America. It provides more than 60% of the electricity between the Golden Gate Bridge and the Oregon state line!

Calpine is a company that runs many of the geothermal plants and has a website about the Geysers.

Steam levels started decreasing in the late 1980s because they weren’t putting water back into the ground. So now they pump 20 million gallons of treated waste water per day back into the ground from all the surrounding towns… notably Santa Rosa, more than 40 miles to the south. Yes, they pour huge quantities of grey water into the ground, to have it come out as superheated steam!

A good portion of the earthquake activity is because pouring water on magma.

If you’re really fascinated by this stuff, check out this Northern California Geological Society tour of the Clear Lake Volcanic area and the videos on Calpine’s Geysers website.

Once again, thank you so very much for teaching this class. I cannot tell you just how much it has opened up my artwork to new ideas and options. I was telling my wife that I got more creative input and inspiration over the duration of the two days that I spent in your class than I have in the entire 9 years that I have lived where I am currently living.

The quote speaks for itself.

I am overjoyed!

(the relationship references are from Joe Weston’s angle)
back row left to right:
Mary Anne Weston (grandma), Shelly Peters Sakulich, Eleanor Weston (aunt), Albert Weston (uncle), Ernest Ferranti (uncle), Ida Ferranti (aunt), Alice Weston Berettini (aunt), Ernest Weston (grandfather), Nona Rose Weston, Louis Weston (uncle), Anna Weston Lepri (aunt), Joe Lepri, Dinah Weston (aunt), Louise Weston Giombetti, Robert Weston, Rose Weston, Joseph Lepri.

seated left to right:
Ernie Weston, Marie Weston Paciotti, Joe Weston, Joseph Weston Sr, Ernestine McCarren, Jeanie Berrentini Peters, Marlene Ferranti Sonko, Dorothy Ferranti Howard, Frank Cavagnaro, Louise Weston Stasium (aunt), Charles Stasium (uncle), Gloria Lepri, Bernie Lepri, (the two children on the far right are the sons of Joe and Rose Lepri, grandsons of Uncle Joe and Aunt Annie Lepri)

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This wonderful art is by Mai Yamashita and Naoto Kobayashi

Run CSV2Mediawiki on Lee.org

Short form: MissingMoney.com is totally legit. Go there, type in your last name and your state and it’ll tell you if that state owes you any money

Long form: About 8 years ago my friend Jen told me she noticed the State of Massachusetts owed me $653.25 according to MissingMoney.com. I eventually figured out that when I went to UMass Boston, they apparently didn’t know what to do with one of the tuition checks my family had given them. I followed up on it but since I couldn’t prove that I lived at that particular address, the state wouldn’t give me my money back. Then 7 years ago Charlotte tried with vigor to find some legal documents for me in the Somerville courthouse so I could prove my address but she couldn’t find them. Last year I tried to get my transcript from UMass Boston for my application to grad school and the issue cropped up again. They wouldn’t give me my transcript because of what I “owed them”!

I paid the money owed but was determined to claim the money. Happily, the Registrar at UMass Boston was happy to work with me. After some back and forth, she sent a letter to me proving my address. And a mere 5 months later…

It’s my money back, with interest!

Now go to MissingMoney.com and get your money back!