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Check out Cool Hunting’s nice video of some of our favorite people and places in Oakland.

The Swedes are so appreciative of the little things I do…

OK, I’m in Parry Gripp jingle phase. Like, today I’m looking at razor blades at the drug store and couldn’t help but have Parry’s More Blades Better Shave play in my head.

Jingle Meister Parry Gripp is at it again with his latest video.

I love iMovie for making quick little videos from video clips I shoot with my digital cameras. After I attempted to edit some video I shot in Disneyland, I couldn’t get the video clips which are stored in iPhoto’s Library stored on my external hard drive to appear in iMovie without making iMovie crash. I tried all kinds of fixes like deleting preference files in my Library directory etc. Seems there are serious issues with the 8.0.5 update which came out a couple weeks ago. The fix came when I just deleted iMovie and reinstalled version 8.0 from the iLife install disk. Next, I upgraded with the iMovie 8.0.3 update (Apple seems to have removed the 8.0.4 update). My videos then appeared again in iPhoto Videos under the Event Library!

My new favorite café is SubRosa located near our neighborhood on Oakland’s 40th Ave between Telegraph and Broadway. This little vibrant spot also sports the excellent Manifesto Bicycles and indie-collectible record shop, 123 Records.

While getting my daily cup today, my bleary eyes noticed this interesting looking guy with spiky gray hair poking out of the bike shop with a folding bike. He looked like he was seeing if it was safe to go outside as he looked up and down the street. As I was thinking this guy looked familiar a woman walking down the sidewalk exclaimed, “are you who I think you are!”, it was then I realized it was David Byrne!

He told me he was waiting for a cab, and I explained  that they are pretty pokey here in Oakland. He ended up hanging out where I was sitting the sidewalk benches. He went in a got some coffee and the ladies inside were super happy. Mr. Byrne was gracious and let me take a couple of snapshots with the shop owner’s iPhone.

After running into David Byrne yesterday while getting my morning coffee, I was curious to see he was getting a folding bike from Manifesto Bicycles next door. Turns out, he’s an avid cyclist and loves to cycle around his native New York City as well as the cities he visits while he is on tour. He has turned his creative attention toward advocacy of urban cycling as well as urban design.

He’s been designing some urban bike racks as well!

After we heard on the radio that the Bay Bridge was re-opening this morning, Dru and I decided to use the excuse of a getting a cup of coffee in SF so we could drive the Smart Car over the new Bay Bridge Connector. We brought a camera and I recorded our little journey, you can see that there is a CHP escort in our group of cars.

It was a surprise that CalTrans opened the bridge early this morning as there were some “issues” that were going to delay the re-opening, like a big crack found in one of the support spans.

Some great time-lapse photography of the labor day weekend Bay Bridge repair.

Thought this was a funny dig at AT&T on last night’s episode of Weeds.

For most of the 90’s, my favorite radio show was Blue Velvet, Black Coffee on KAZU on Monday evenings. The show started with the Twin Peaks theme song and featured a DJ named Patrick, he spun mostly ethereal, gothy music. He frequently would record shop in Europe and bring back many recordings from labels like Prikosnovénie, Musica Maxima Magnetica, as well as larger labels like Hyperium and 4AD. Previously Patrick had a radio show called Left of Center.

Patrick no longer has a show on KAZU so I was wondering what ever happened to him? Does he still have show somewhere in radioland or on the Internets? Google searches don’t show up much. Once I found a image of one of his meticulously written playlists. He would write them out then have them scanned onto the stations website. Maybe someone out there knows where DJ Patrick is?

Out little Bella Kitty is now featured in her very first short, Rockband Birdie Cat! Dru plays Rockband a lot and now Bella plays along in between the songs.

It was a great time in the Black Rock Desert. Ken McGrath accompanied me on my return trip to the launch site on Saturday. Seeing this 12 foot beast blast off made the whole trip worthwhile!  It was also great to see so many other spectacular launches. I’ll post videos of them soon.

Compare this version of the video that I uploaded to YouTube. I might just post videos this way from now on as the quality is now higher with its HQ setting than exporting my flash movie files using WordTube. What do you think?

Oakland can be a great place to live – but it’s true,  jaywalkers are everywhere and are real, real slow.

I’m going to attempt the trek out to the Black Rock Desert in Nevada this weekend so I can watch Aeropac’s high power rocket launch. Aeropac has a launch waiver up to 100,000 ft. so there should be some exciting rocket flights!

As some of you know the playa is an interesting and challenging environment. This time of year there can be lakes, floods and lots of mud. Here is a recon video shot yesterday.

Improv Everywhere which brought us Underwear on the Subway and other flash mob participation events, now brings the Mp3 Experiment. Participants started on NYC’s Roosevelt Island, then started listening to  programmed set of steps from a Mp3 file on their iPods. The creepy voice and its series of events reminds me of Negativland’s A Big 10-8 Place.

As a lifelong fan of the Beatles and avid Rockband player, I was checking out the E3 introduction of the Beatles edition of Rockband. This is the impressive animated intro by Pete Candeland, known for his work with Gorillaz.

I went down to Santa Cruz  couple weeks ago and shot this little video of Jay working on his new mobile home.

Thrilling race through the streets of Monaco – a vain spectacle for sure!
I still have to figure out where you can catch it on TV. I’ll probably just find it on the Internets somewhere…