WombatNation

broadcast user that they automatically friended to all existing user accounts. The broadcast user currently has “154830 fans”. Of course, some people may have already unfriended this account and, like with any free service, many users may have abandoned their accounts. Still, it is at least a pretty good estimate of total user accounts.

As of January 10, Twitter Facts estimated 750,000 public users, 850,000 total users, and 300,000 active users. I couldn’t find similar estimates for Jaiku. At least none with any data to back them up. I did keep finding links to a post on Ars Technica suggesting that many Jaiku users are moving to Twitter due to Google’s neglect of the service after buying it.

I’m puzzled by why Google keeps buying companies like Dodgeball and Jaiku, only to quickly neglect upkeep and enhancements on the services and watch users leave in droves. Maybe they just wanted the engineers for other projects and found buying the company to be the easiest way to get an entire engineering team? Even if that were true, they apparently aren’t doing well enough on retention, as I’ve read about many of the lead engineers at the acquired companies leaving soon after the acquisition. I’m sure they don’t enjoy seeing something they worked on long hours every day for many months dumped on the side of the road.

A fantastic new bar has opened in the Old Oakland section of downtown Oakland. The Trappist has an absolutely amazing selection of Belgian beers. I went there last Friday and again tonight. Friday I had a Gouden Carolus Carolus D’Or Grand Cru and a Christoffel Bokbier, both on tap. Tonight I had a Rochefort 8 from a bottle. Not quite as amazing as the Rochefort 10 I had in Bruges (and of which I brought back a bottle from that trip), but still deeply, deeply satisfying.

The interior of the Trappist is almost perfect, though it would be nice if it were a little larger on crowded nights. The old brickwork walls, Belgian and Dutch posters, wood paneling and all the bottles definitely remind me of the better Belgian pubs we visited. The atmosphere is great and the people working there are knowledgeable and friendly.

On top of having a great selection of Belgian and Dutch beers on tap, The Trappist also has several US brewed Belgian-style beers. Then, of course, there’s the huge selection of bottled Belgian, Dutch, and US brewed Belgian-style ales, lambics, and geuezes that are listed in a nicely bound book with plenty of detail on each beer. Of course, they also have an extensive selection of glassware (chalices, tulips, goblets, etc.) for serving each beer in the glass best suited to enhancing its aroma, appearance and flavor.

I recently got an invite for Pownce, which lets you send brief messages to selected groups of friends, similarly to, but arguably better than, Jaiku and Twitter, but also makes it easy to send files and events. Another big positive for me is that it is written in Python using Django. Which is probably a stupid reason for liking something that I almost certainly won’t be hacking on. But then I’ve preferred other things in the past for far more specious reasons. Like blue M&Ms. It’s not like the coating tastes any different just because it reflects radiation with wavelengths primarily at the blue end of the visual spectrum.

When I last updated WordPress I added a plug-in to display my pownces, though they’re also accessible at my Pownce page. I’ve got about 15 Pownce invites left, so let me know if you want one. The only thing I ask is that you periodically post messages like “Wow, that Robert is just so dreamy. And humble. And he can beat up Chuck Norris.”

I needed to go to Geyserville today to pick up a case of wine futures at Murphy-Goode and visit with some of my wife’s relatives, so I decided to fit a bike ride into our trip. Their house is close to Geysers Road, so I biked down that way from their house and started the climb. As the road started to pitch up past Red Winery Road, I kept up a pretty fast pace. I began to regret sprinting out of the saddle as the road really began to get steep. Before starting the ride, I had no idea how steep and long this climb would be. Mistake.

Not too far into the climb, the whole right side of the road had eroded away from below and dropped about eight feet from the level of the left side of the road. Farther up there were two stretches of about 100 feet of mud and gravel, but otherwise the road was in pretty good shape. There were a couple of cattle grates, but they were in good shape and were mainly a concern on the descent.

Finally, after about 4.5 continuous miles of climbing I got to a flat spot where a road went off to three ranches. Looking at the Geysers Road elevation profile on the Santa Rosa Cycling club website, I think I had done about 1900 feet of climbing at that point. That’s an 8% average gradient. Next time we go up there and I do this ride, I’m going to pace myself more sensibly so I can do the full road out and back. I’m looking forward to Pine Flat Road, too. The last two miles of that climb average just under 10.5%.

Went to Lucky Ju Ju Pinball in Alameda Monday night with the sales team at work. Lucky Ju Ju has a fantastic collection of vintage pinball machines, plus a few choice recent machines, including two of my all time favorites The Addams Family and Twilight Zone. Growing up I spent a lot of quarters on Xenon, which Lucky Ju Ju also had. The only machine they didn’t have that I had played a lot before was Eight Ball Deluxe.

They had a really freaky pinball machine called Orbitor 1. The play field is three dimensional with large hills and valleys. It’s very difficult to predict the path of the ball, especially because of the spinning magnetic bumpers in the middle. Without a doubt, Orbitor 1 is the strangest pinball machine I’ve ever played.

Another unusual machine they have is Flipper Football. It’s intended for two teams of 1-3 players, with each team getting to play for one half of the game. Each team also gets to choose which country they will be representing. You score a goal for each ball you put through the gap at the top after knocking down enough drop targets for the ball to slip through. The other team scores a goal for every ball you drain during your team’s half.

If you plan to see Control, the biopic of Ian Curtis from Joy Division, read no further if you don’t want any spoilers, other than to know that I highly recommend the movie.

After writing and recording a few incredible albums, Curtis hanged himself at the age of 23 in 1980. Years later when I read brief news articles about his death, I learned little more than that he was a depressed musician. Control (which was co-produced by his wife Debbie Curtis) clears up a lot of the mystery. Afflicted with epilepsy, Curtis was also trapped in a love triangle with a wife that he married while quite young and with an employee at the Belgian Embassy who wants to interview bands. He loved his wife and child too much to completely walk away from them, but he also loved Annik too much to leave her, even though he knew that the relationship was destroying his marriage.

Of course, one hopes Curtis’s wife didn’t just take the opportunity to rewrite history to make herself look better. In general, she did come across pretty well in the movie, although her husband’s mistress was also portrayed as a decent person who was scared of falling in love with Ian.

Some people have criticized Control because it didn’t focus enough on the band. Control isn’t the Joy Division movie, though. It’s a movie about the life of Ian Curtis.

I recommend also watching 24 Hour Party People for another perspective on Ian Curtis and Joy Division, although Curtis is portrayed more as an abrasive jerk in that movie.

One amusing bit of trivia mentioned at IMDB is that the actor who played Curtis also played the lead singer for The Fall in 24 Hour Party People. This is amusing, because in Control, Joy Division’s manager tells Curtis that things could be worse, he could be the lead singer for The Fall.

My sister-in-law and her husband hosted a great pre-Christmas party with an excellent twist on the gift exchange game. The basic rules were the same, i.e. you can open a new package or steal something already opened, but on the third steal it’s yours to keep. In their version, though, everyone had to bring two gifts. One gift was supposed to be the best thing you could buy for $1 and one was supposed to be the tackiest or kitschiest gift you could buy for $1. We did a round with the “good” gifts first and then a round with the “bad” gifts.

The timing worked out perfectly and I was able to make the third steal of a stunning gift contributed by Craig’s daughter. This is the kind of diorama I wish I had built in grade school. I’ve enhanced it slightly with Binky, the three-eyed fish, and a little clay figure from China, but it was already amazing by itself. This beautiful seashore scene now occupies a prime spot in my office at work.

The red light district style illumination is courtesy of a Christmas tree bulb circa 1954 that is more or less stapled down to the base behind the clam shell. The wiring for the bulb is fairly terrifying. The wires on the plug end are completely exposed, making each act of plugging and unplugging it a game of Russian roulette shock therapy. So far I’ve managed to keep myself out of the circuit.

The Beach Jesus diorama was generally considered to be the best of the bad. Craig’s contribution of a cigarette burned Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus dancing on a plastic base that was wrapped with a tattered red-and-white checked cloth taped together with transparent plastic tape was a close second.

Given the recent report from George Mitchell alleging widespread use of steroids in baseball, the logos on these produce boxes at Farmer Joe’s near my house struck me as a bit out of place.