Thankful for strangers

The day before Thanksgiving, I was planning to spend the holiday relaxing at home. Maybe get a pre-cooked turkey from Safeway and watch some TV... nothing exciting. But I met a guy at a party the night before who insisted that I join him for a proper feast. How could I say no to that?

I met at his apartment near Ocean Beach in the morning, apple pie in hand. Over the next few hours, his various friends and coworkers appeared one or two at a time. It was a diverse crowd, culturally, professionally, and geographically. We had a few guys from India, a girl from Palo Alto, an Iranian fresh out of Canada, the surfer roommate, and a guy from Cyprus who swore he was really from Pluto and went into great detail about life on the planet without even consuming much wine first. An ex-cook was among us and led the operation in the kitchen, directing me to chop onions, olives, celery, and whatever else needed chopping.

A girl named Rachel and I headed off to the produce market to pick up some things. I made bad puns involving fruits and vegetables until I elicited a smile from her.

While the turkey was roasting, the whole group headed out of the house and walked up to nearby Fort Miley. It was a beautiful sunny day, surely one of the last of the fall.

When we got back, the feast was ready. We loaded our plates with turkey, mashed potatoes, yams, stuffing, green beans, and everything else. The wine and conversation flowed freely as the sun set over Ocean Beach just out the window. The food was amazing, and made even more so by the knowledge that I had helped make it.

After everybody had their fill, we went on a short walk under the cliffside streetlights to help the digestion. It was a chilly night, but the sky was still clear and the air was calm — the archetypal autumn evening.

Back to the apartment once more for the last leg of the eating: the dessert. In addition to the standard apple and pumpkin pies, our lead chef had prepared a special dish by boiling peeled pears in red wine and then stuffing them with a special kind of sweet Italian cheese. They were delicious.

The onslaught of food left us all curled up on the floor in a comatose state and moaning. The comedy of the situation went unnoticed, mostly because it would have hurt too much to laugh about it.

After recovering slightly, I gave the Canadian/ex-Iranian and Cyprusian/faux-Plutonian a ride back to their hotels downtown. But before I left, I managed to work up enough courage to ask Rachel for her phone number. I also impressed the guys with my musical knowledge, so they invited me for trivia night on Tuesday night at a local pub. Social life, welcome back!

The Mail.app two-step

(or, "How I Learned to Stop Filing and Love Smart Folders")

There was a time not so long ago when I filed each and every email in detailed virtual compartments based on subject, sender, content, and various other criteria. If an action needed to be taken the message stayed in the inbox as a reminder until the associated task was complete, and then I promptly filed the message deep within the hierarchy.

This wasn't just a habit; it was a ritual. I thrived on the busy work caused by having to carefully read each message and decide its fate, and I loved that I could simply click on a mailbox to see everything related in one glance.

When on multiple occasions I saw my inbox rise above 100 messages, however, it was time to step into the 21st century. Gmail had inspired me to shake things up, so a new organization system was due.

After a few months of testing, I've finally settled on a streamlined system that uses the best of Gmail and Mail.app, while avoiding all the carpal-tunnel-inducing dragging of messages to specific folders.

Necessities

- A Gmail address, or an email host which allows you to forward to one.
- Mac OS X 10.4 with Mail.app
- Some time to set up rules, smart folders, and other settings.

Preparation

Configure your primary email to forward to a dedicated Gmail address. Configure Gmail to enable POP. Back in Mail.app, set up a rule (below all other rules) that moves all messages received at your account into a common folder called Archive. Then set up a couple smart folders: one called Unread, and one called Flagged.

The Final Result

Now whenever I receive a message, it appears in my Unread smart folder. After reading it, I immediately flag it if there is any follow-up necessary. This sends the message off to the Flagged smart folder, where I usually have about a dozen emails hanging out waiting for me to accomplish various things. When I do those things that need doing, I unflag the message and it disappears into the Archive.

Rough Edges

- The Mail.app icon in the Dock no longer displays any unread message count, because they've already been moved to the Archive. I use MailUnreadMenu to work around this.

- Sent items in Gmail show up in your Unread messages. With a simple rule, that can be fixed.

- There's no way to transfer flag status in Mail.app to starred status in Gmail, or vice-versa. I'm still working on the best solution to this.

- Flagged messages can pile up pretty easily. To remind me to actually do the things associated with the flagged messages, I've been trying out MailTags, which integrates email with iCal very nicely.

- If you forget to flag a message after you read it, it's a pain to find it again. I've set up another smart folder called This Week which displays mail from the last 7 days. If anything slips through the cracks, this is the first place I check.

In Conclusion

There is no perfect mail organization system. Anybody who says otherwise is trying to sell you something.

But this one is working pretty well for me, at least for my work email where I receive dozens of messages per day. At home, I'm still on the tried and true read-then-file method, but the volume of mail is low enough to allow that.

If this entry interested you enough to read all the way to the bottom, check out Hawk Wings. That's where I first heard about a lot of the third party apps that make this process so smooth.

iCal loves NPR

My Saturday morning ritual includes Car Talk, but I frequently found myself forgetting to put it on. Using the miracle of modern technology, I devised a foolproof fix.

1. First, I downloaded the stream file for my local NPR affiliate and stuck it in my Documents folder.

2. Then, I wrote an AppleScript (see right) that presented a dialog box asking whether I wanted to listen. Clicking OK launches the station's audio stream.

3. To bring it all together, I created a repeating weekly event on Saturday morning in iCal which opens the script 1 minute before the show comes on.

Three cheers for automation!

On the art of being a local tourist

One of the many great things about living in such close proximity to a city like San Francisco is never needing to explain to friends why they should come visit. Especially if they're from the Midwest. It's California; of course they'll visit.

The next best thing is being a tourist when they visit while simultaneously pretending to be a local. There's a slight irony in filling an agenda full of attractions and sights that you yourself only discovered mere months ago. Like a seasoned lawyer, every hint of inexperience is surgically removed from conversation and covered up with in-the-know phrases and phony trivia. "Oh, that place is a must-see," means I've been there a couple times. "This restaurant has particularly good soup," means that's what I ordered last time I came. Et cetera.

But occasionally somebody visits whose genuine interest in the area allows you, the local, to drop your guard and enjoy your role as you, the tourist who happens to leave nearby. My high school pal Cameron stopped by for a couple days last weekend, and he proved to be one of those visitors.

He started his trip with a Bay Area ritual: taking BART from the airport to my place. (Everybody I've sent on BART has been invariably impressed by its speed, punctuality, and especially the upholstery, mystery stains and all.)

We spent a foggy Friday morning on Alcatraz. I'd taken the tour once before by myself, but this time we made a whole morning of it. We watched the video, saw all three gift shops, took the audio tour, walked around the entire island, and followed part of a walking tour.

After floating through the clouds back to the mainland, we ventured up into the Wharf for lunch at In-N-Out. I try not to overhype the place before my guests have had a chance to taste the food, but I always come off as a paid spokesperson. Luckily, the food hasn't disappointed yet. (If anybody at In-N-Out is reading, I accept payment in cash, check, or Double-Doubles.)

After lunch, we burned off the calories by walking straight up Hyde Street to where it meets Lombard, and down the curvy part into North Beach. This is where I got to show off the defining characteristic of the city — the various different neighborhoods all jammed together within a few blocks. Through a ten-block journey, we went from the million-dollar Victorian houses on Russian Hill to the Italian bistros on Columbus to the crowded streets of Chinatown. The invisible yet tangible borders between the city's contrasting districts is something foreign to those accustomed to sprawling suburbs and cookie-cutter houses.

Speaking of foreign, Chinatown's ability to make you feel like you've stepped into another country never fails to impress. I dragged Cameron to a couple of the places I learned about on the walking tour of Chinatown, including the Tin Hau temple and some of the lesser-traveled alleys. He said Chinatown was his favorite part of the city.

We ventured in and around the Financial District and Civic Center for a while, stopped off at a Thai restaurant, and then off to a mind-blowing concert.

Day 2 started with a trip to the studio. Cameron and I were garage bandmates in high school, so asking him to sit in with the current garage band seemed like the logical thing to do. We played through the usuals: Foo Fighters, Collective Soul, Jimmy Eat World. It was a three-chord salute to 90s hits worthy of a compilation record.

After the jam session, we continued on our whirlwind tour of the city, hitting Alamo Square, the Castro, Twin Peaks, Stern Grove, Ocean Beach, the Golden Gate Bridge, Marin Headlands, Sausalito, Haight-Ashbury, and the Mission. Whew!

My parents are the next victims; they'll be here over Christmas. Then I get to play tourist all over again. It's great living here.

Not so silent shout

The Knife did not disappoint. The show was well worth the overpriced tickets. Once we found the place (not an easy task considering the alley it's on winds around Soma like a drunk and dismembered caterpillar) we stood in line with the hipsters for 30 minutes.

We filed inside and rushed to the front of the stage, where we were to spend the next two hours being bombarded by the creepiest and loudest pre-show music I've ever heard. The sound juxtaposed opposites — at one point a muffled and distant-sounding opera singer could be heard over the ambient sounds of a rainforest. A few minutes later, bubbly synthesizers accompanied what sounded like a lightsaber fight. It was surreal.

Finally, at 10:00 the quirky siblings appeared on stage, opened with "Pass This On," and the crowd went wild.

Everything that should be written about the Knife's live show has already been written, so I'll just copy it here:

The Knife's performance at Webster Hall last night wasn't just great, it was kind of revelatory. Olof and Karin Dreijer, dressed in black coveralls and black ski masks (or was it blackface makeup?), were just a small part of the entire immersive experience, a combination rave/art installation/laser light show.

They stood both behind and in front of screens, on which were projected trippy geometric shapes, childish drawings, and ghastly figures, and were flanked on the stage by balloons bearing images of distorted faces. The way the elaborate light show hit their own faces made the pair look alternately like jack-o-lanterns, monkeys, or bank robbers, which pretty much sums up the varying moods of the performance: mischievous, playful, terrifying.

My personal favorite song, "We Share Our Mother's Health," was particularly impressive live. I got some decent video footage of it on my camera, but there's a much better version here. Karin morphed into a baritone with the help of her pitch-bending gadget, an effect that is much more impressive live than on a studio track.

The spectacular visuals flanking the duo on either side were, as advertised, the coolest part of the show. Although the front screen made it very difficult to take decent photos, the arrangement was novel to me and the audience loved it. The creepy animated bloated faces on either side of the stage also added to the unearthly vibe.

After an hour of bone-rattling music and eerie animations, they played "Like a Pen" as an encore and then walked off the stage with the crowd cheering for more. Must be nice to be a phenomenon.

I think I've just added a new DVD to my Christmas wish list.