Monthly Archives: March 2005

Presidential Mullet

By | March 24, 2005

The top Presidential mullet of all time has to be the thing that appears to be attacking the back of James K. Polk’s neck. Clearly a trendsetter, Polk made the move for the mullet about 150 years before it became the hot style of the 1970’s. Polk’s many other amazing feats included, …, uh, being… Read More »

Speech Standards

By | March 23, 2005

Like most technical specialties, the speech applications industry has a large number of official standards. Fortunately, many of these standards are widely implemented. The implementations aren’t perfectly consistent, of course, but they’re close enough that at Voxify we’ve been able to get our speech applications platform to run on different VoiceXML browsers and ASR and… Read More »

Schoolhouse Physics Rock

By | March 23, 2005

It’s not exactly Schoolhouse Rock, okay, it’s not remotely as snappy as Conjunction Junction, but there’s something you gotta like about the Singing Physics Professor. Listen to his off key, falsetto, baritone voice accompanied by baritone ukele in an interview on NPR.org. Many more songs are available at his website. I don’t know about you,… Read More »

Crown Wok, Pacific Coast Brewing, and Soizic

By | March 20, 2005

Downtown Oakland is really turning into a vibrant area with great restaurants and bars. It’s always had a couple good restaurants and bars, as well as the Paramount Theater, but lately it seems like a new, great place has opened everytime I go down there. Last night, we discovered the Crown Wok Restaurant. It recently… Read More »

RIP: Judith Scott, Sculptor

By | March 15, 2005

[via Boing Boing RIP: Judy Scott, amazing sculptor with Downs’ Syndrome. Sadly, Judith Scott has apparently passed away recently. She was a very talented sculptor who worked on her art at the Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland. Judith wrapped yarn and fabric around ordinary objects to create large, mysteriously shaped creations. Like many of… Read More »

Mice Engine Denouement

By | March 9, 2005

After nine weeks at the Audi dealership, my TT has finally come home. On January 5, I dropped off my car at the dealership because the check engine light was staying on, the car was running rough, and at the very end, the engine wouldn’t start at all. The diagnosis – mice had eaten through… Read More »

Barrel Tasting

By | March 7, 2005

Mmmm, toasted French oak barrels. A little bit woody on the finish and a tad fibrous, but still … No, we didn’t taste the barrels at the Russian River Wine Road Barrel Tasting, but we did taste an exceedingly large number of delicious wines that were still in the barrels. At David Coffaro’s winery, the… Read More »

Curling Frenzy

By | March 3, 2005

Thanks to my brother, who always has his finger on the pulse of amusing things drifting across the internet, I’m able to share a link to a video of possibly the greatest moment in curling history. Or maybe not. Hell, I don’t know. I’m an American. All I know is that it’s pretty funny listening… Read More »

Oakland Taco Trucks

By | March 3, 2005

I’m a relatively recent convert to taco truck cuisine. Now that I dine at least twice a month on tasty meals obtained from taco trucks, I wish I had started eating at them long ago. A story appeared today in the Oakland Tribune hailing some of my new, favorite dining spots. Two, in particular are… Read More »