Mark Bult Design: San Francisco, CA, Established 1988
Web design and development for small and large business, e-commerce, b2b, b2c, SAAS, and community websites. User experience design and usability testing.
Carl Sagan, “A Glorious Dawn” featuring Stephen Hawking (Cosmos Remixed)
The PBS show “Cosmos” was one of my favorite things to watch with my dad when I was young. This remix just makes it 100x awesomer.
Romance Reader, Unashamed
Daily Kos contributor Laura Clawson examines the myths about romance novels (many of which I held until recently; and some of which I’m still having a teensy bit of trouble disavowing, but mostly just to tweak Velma).
The weekly Thursday Top 5 lists the five most notable, interesting, funny, outrageous, cool, or simply strange things of the week. It is intended for distractionary purposes only. Do not take orally. If ingested, seek a doctor’s advice. If you like it, share it with others, or check out the long list of previous entries.
Posted by espd at 8:45 AM |
0 comments
Share and enjoy:
| Email this:
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Thursday Top 5
Cory Doctorow’s Makers Tor.com is serializing Corey Doctorow’s upcoming new novel before its November release, with a new installment every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning.
This art is junk Literally. Artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster make shadow art out of piles of trash.
NPR Road Trip station finder NPR has relaunched a redesigned site and there are lots of improvements and new features. One I like is the ability to find NPR stations for a road trip, plotting between two points. You can also find local stations and the map gives you an indication of their signal strength in the area. They haven’t redone the NPR Shop or the Music section yet, but the overhaul of rest of the site must’ve been a tremendous project and I suspect the other two sections will come in time.
“The Trooper Believer” by DJ Schmolli Austrian DJ/remixer DJ Schmolli has mashed up of Iron Maiden’s “The Trooper” with The Monkees’ “I’m A Believer.” [via Dave W.]
Posted by espd at 7:24 AM |
1 comments
Share and enjoy:
| Email this:
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Heinlein collection = ~675
Some of my loyal readers no doubt know I collect stuff by science fiction’s Grand Master, Robert A. Heinlein (you could hardly miss the fact if you’ve been to our flat). Indeed, we have a great many books in our place, quite aside from my collection of Heinlein stuff.
Sometimes people ask us how many books we own, and we have no idea really. I thought I’d just count the Heinlein stuff first, since it would only take 15 minutes or so : )
As of June 11, 2009
Hardcover books (fiction) by Heinlein: 171 (including 30 leather-bound editions and 19 foreign language editions)
Paperback books (fiction) by Heinlein: 191
Hardcover collections containing fiction by Heinlein: 33
Paperback collections containing fiction by Heinlein: 41
Pulp magazines containing fiction by Heinlein: 120
Nonfiction books, etc. by/containing Heinlein: ~50
Posted by espd at 5:45 PM |
0 comments
Share and enjoy:
| Email this:
Saturday, May 16, 2009
And Another Thing book cover released
Here’s the first look at the book cover for the forthcoming And Another Thing, by Eoin Colfer, the 6th book in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy, due from Hyperion in October (pre-order from Amazon).
The actual books probably won’t have Colfer’s signature on it like this picture. I think the original pictured here was an early version of the artwork, signed by Colfer himself. The covers seen on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk don’t have the signature, and have slightly different typography.
Scanned from issue 112 of “Mostly Harmless,” the newsletter of ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha, the Douglas Adams fan club.
Posted by espd at 7:18 AM |
1 comments
Share and enjoy:
| Email this:
Thursday, April 02, 2009
Thursday Top 5
Youngme Nowme A thread full of photos of people posed the same way, then and now.
Think Taste — Not Waste! My friend Laura Stec is featured on MSN’s Health & Fitness channel in this article and short video. She shows a quick tip for making soup stock from the detritus of your cooking chores, using mushroom stalks, pepper “skeletons,” carrot peelings, and more. This “food waste,” which you might otherwise throw in the garbage, causes our nation’s landfills to output more harmful methane (a climate-disruptive greenhouse gas like carbon dioxide) than all the livestock in the U.S. Buy Laura Stec’s book, it’s great!
San Francisco Bay Model Velma and I were thinking of going to see this last weekend since we were going to explore Sausalito a bit, but it’s only open until 4pm on Saturdays, so it’ll have to be another trip. The walk-through hydraulic model takes up two buildings and is apparently the size of two football fields. According to the guy in the video, it was built by the Army Corps of Engineers in the 1950s to test an idea they had to dam the bay. I once saw an old map of another Army Corps concept they had in the ’50s or ’60s, to fill the entire bay with landfill except for a narrow shipping channel. Communities could then build all the way into the middle of the bay. I shudder to think of the Bay Area we would live in today if that had been allowed to happen. [3:51min] More about the Bay Model (yes, their site is awful).
Interview with sci-fi author John Scalzi I really enjoyed his book The Ghost Brigades, and I really enjoyed this interview too. It starts with this intro by interviewer Jason Henninger: “John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War took me by surprise. I picked up the book because I’d heard a lot of good things about him and decided I’d give it a one-page tryout. Either he’d grip me right away or I’d drop it. Twenty pages later I realized I hadn’t moved from the spot. OK, John. Grip achieved.”
Posted by espd at 8:29 AM |
0 comments
Share and enjoy:
| Email this:
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Terrible news: Stacey’s Bookstore in SF to close in March
SFGate reports that the 85-year-old store on Market near 2nd has taken a severe hit with the latest plunge in the economy, on top of a 50% drop in sales since 2001.
I’m very sad about this. I used to shop almost every week at the Stacey’s in Cupertino when I lived in the South Bay, and I was bummed when they had to close that location years ago. I shopped all the time at the SF location once I moved up here, in part because it was only a few blocks from where I worked, but also because they have a great selection of magazines and design books, the two things I buy most of.
I buy a lot of stuff from Amazon, so some might call me a hypocrite. But I buy a lot of books and a lot of my magazines at independent local bookstores. And anyone who’s been to my house knows I have a lot of books.
Here are my top local (San Francisco) fave bookstores, in no particular order:
Stacey’s Bookstore 581 Market Street, near 2nd Great selection of magazines and design books, plus one of the best selections of computer/technical books. Stacey’s is large, clean, and well organized, and I will miss it a great deal.
Alexander Book Co. 50 2nd Street, near Market It’s easy to miss this store if you don’t know it’s there, but they have a fantastic selection of graphic design books, maybe the best in the Bay Area, probably because they cater to students at the nearby Academy of Art University. Design books are pricey, typically being $35 to $55. I try not to go here too often ; )
Borderlands Books 866 Valencia Street, near 20th Street This place only has sci-fi, fantasy, horror etc., with some graphic novels and a small selection of DVDs. I buy a lot of science fiction here and sometimes get really good recommendations from the staff. They carry some used but mostly new.
Modern Times 888 Valencia Street, near 20th Street Full of leftist propaganda and I love it for that. Modern Times has a brilliant selection of progressive books on everything you can imagine, and it’s my go-to place to get the Slingshot organizer for Olya.
Dog Eared Books 900 Valencia Street, at 20th Street I occasionally buy a used book here, but mostly I like Dog Eared’s selection of graphic novels and their terrific variety of outsider art books.
Aardvark Books 227 Church Street, near Market I don’t get to this place very often but when I’m in the Castro I try to drop in here for a look through their big, round table in the front of the store featuring a ton of used graphic novels, comics, and art books. Most are in very good condition.
Adobe Books 3166 16th Street, near Valencia I like this funky used bookstore but it’s really hard to find anything worthwhile in the mess of unorganized stacks of books. I usually take a quick look in the two or three sections I regularly peruse (art, photo, and sci-fi) when I’m waiting for my Pakwan takeout order to be ready. One of the coolest things I saw in 2004 was when a local artist was allowed to rearrange all the books by color for a couple months.
Please go support your local independent bookstore!
Posted by espd at 1:39 AM |
2 comments
Share and enjoy:
| Email this:
Thursday, November 06, 2008
Thursday Top 5
Jetpack Dreams Trailer for a book.
Shatner–Hasselhoff ’08 I shoulda voted for these guys instead.
Interesting ad for a bank Featuring treesitters.
Imapatient Texas cop tazes a woman in 45 seconds Is he a bigot, a bad cop, or just having a bad day? Trick question. Those attributes are not mutually exclusive. Yet another example of why people distrust cops.
Funny Graduation Musical Speech I wish the speech at my graduation had been half as creative as this.
No other woman in the Hemisphere has been in prison on such charges for so long a period [as Lolita Lebrón]; a fact which Communist critics of your human rights policy are fond of pointing out.
When early American revolutionaries chanted, “Give me liberty or give me death” and complained of having but one life to give for their country, they became the heroes of our history textbooks. But, thanks to the power of the U.S. media and education industries, the Puerto Rican nationalists who dedicated their lives to independence are known as criminals, fanatics, and assassins.
On March 1, 1954, in the gallery of the House of Representatives, Congressman Charles A. Halleck rose to discuss with his colleagues the issue of Puerto Rico. At that moment, Lolita Lebrón (b. 1919), alongside three fellow freedom fighters, having purchased a one-way train ticket from New York (they expected to be killed), unfurled a Puerto Rican flag and shouted “Free Puerto Rico!” before firing eight shots at the roof. Her three male co-conspirators aimed their machine guns at the legislators. Andrés Figueroa’s gun jammed, but shots fired by Rafael Cancel Miranda and Irving Flores injured five congressmen.
“I know that the shots I fired neither killed nor wounded anyone,” Lebrón stated afterwards, but with the attack being viewed through the sensationalizing prism of American tabloid journalism, this did not matter. She and her cohorts became prisoners of war for the next 25 years.
Why prisoners of war? To answer that, we must recall that since July 25, 1898, when the United States illegally invaded its tropical neighbor under the auspices of the Spanish–American War, the island has been maintained as a colony. In other words, the planet’s oldest colony is being held by its oldest representative democracy — with U.S. citizenship imposed without the consent or approval of the indigenous population in 1917. It is from this geographical paradox that the Puerto Rican independence movement sprang forth.
This movement is based firmly on international law, which authorizes “anti-colonial combatants” the right to armed struggle to throw off the yoke of imperialism and gain independence. UN General Assembly Resolution 33/24 of December 1978 recognizes “the legitimacy of the struggle of the peoples for independence, teritorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial domination and foreign occupation by all means available, particularly armed struggle.”
Prison did not dampen Lebrón’s revolutionary spirit as she attended demonstrations and spoke out to help win the long battle to eject the U.S. Navy from the tiny Puerto Rican island of Vieques in 2003.
Posted by espd at 8:28 PM |
0 comments
Share and enjoy:
| Email this:
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Hitchin’ site featured in a new book
Just in time for our anniversary (well, a day late, since it was yesterday), I received this book in the mail today. Before we got hitched in 2006, Velma and I created a custom wedding site, Mark & Velma’s Hitchin’ Party.
It was featured on a bunch of CSS design galleries, and now it’s in The Web Designer’s Idea Book. Get your copy from Amazon.
Posted by espd at 7:01 PM |
1 comments
Share and enjoy:
| Email this:
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Thursday Top 5
Flying pengiuns
Counting to 4 with Feist and Sesame Street
I’m a PC Microsoft’s fighting back against Apple’s “I’m a Mac” ads, and so far the ad campaign is pretty good.
I’m a Wii
The real hunt for Red October Author David Hagberg and former USSR Naval Chief Engineer Boris Gindin tell the true story of the events that inspired Tom Clancy’s novel. Red October’s one of my favorite thriller movies, so I’m definitely interested in reading Hagberg and Gindin’s Mutiny.
Posted by espd at 7:58 AM |
0 comments
Share and enjoy:
| Email this:
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Thursday Top 5
The Lost Colony: Book 1 I can’t recall having seen a trailer for a graphic novel before. This book looks cool though. More info from the publisher; or buy The Lost Colony from Amazon. Update: Removed the embeded video since it loaded automatically every time (lame). See the trailer on the video page.
Ninja cat comes closer while not moving! [via Jason]
Artistic pool part 2 This guy has waaaay too much time on his hands. But he’s freakin’ awesome.
The sixth book is reportedly titled And Another Thing... and is scheduled to be published in October 2009 by Hyperion.
The book has been sanctioned by Douglas Adams’ widow Jane Belson: “I am delighted that Eoin Colfer has agreed to continue the Hitchhiker series. I love his books and could not think of a better person to transport Arthur, Zaphod, and Marvin to pastures new. The project has my full support.”
Colfer told the BBC he feels “more pressure to perform now than I ever have with my own books,” adding that he was “determined that this will be the best thing I have ever written.”
Colfer told the BBC his first reaction was “semi-outrage that anyone should be allowed to tamper with this incredible series. But on reflection I realized that this is a wonderful opportunity to work with characters I have loved since childhood and give them something of my own voice while holding on to the spirit of Douglas Adams.”
I suspect there will be a lot of negative criticism for the eventual outcome. Fans tend to have strong opinions about the purity of their favorite writers’ oeuvre. For fans of Douglas Adams, perhaps doubly so.
Interestingly, almost this exact same thing happened just a few years ago with my other favorite writer (Adams and Heinlein are the two faves, in case you haven’t been paying attention). A partial manuscript was uncovered from the Heinlein Archives at UC Santa Cruz, and Spider Robinson was asked to complete it. The result, Variable Star, was not exactly a Heinlein book, but still an interesting read and not so disastrous as I’d imagined it could have been. I actually liked it a fair amount.
So I will adopt a cautious skepticism about the sixth Hitchhikers’ book, dust off the Artemis Fowl books I haven’t read yet, and wait for 2009.
The Boston Globe’s 2009 in Photos on The Big Picture
).
Prison did not dampen Lebrón’s revolutionary spirit as she attended demonstrations and spoke out to help win the long battle to eject the U.S. Navy from the tiny Puerto Rican island of 
, by Mickey Z and 
.
. 
.
has been contracted by Hyperion books to write a sixth book in the evermore inaccurately named 
trilogy.
, was not exactly a Heinlein book, but still an interesting read and not so disastrous as I’d imagined it could have been. I actually liked it a fair amount.
Aaron
Alexis
Anne
Anya
April & Matt
Ari
Bo
Brian
Bryan
Chris
Cousin Carol
Dave & Terri
Dave H.
Debby
Drue
Fibu
Four Waters
Fwegan (aka Ynnej)
Gary
Holly
Hilary
Internet Rockstar
James & Eric
Jason
Jen
Jesse
Jessica
Joey
Kansinee
Karl
Kelly
Laura
Leah
Marc
Martin
Matt
Mike
Morgan
OkayDave
Olya
Paco
Peter
Rick
Rocky
Ryan
Stellah
Tatum 
Trent
Velma
Veronica
Whiskey Media
Yuliya
Yu-Po