Birds like the rain.
Dec 072004
Dec 072004
My parents first started buying wine when no one in the United States was buying wine. They would spend a good amount of money on very good French wines and throw them in their basement. Some of the wines have been stored for too long, but many of their wines are now extrordinary. We had three bottles of wine; two of which are pictured below. All three bottles were quite amazing. It’s really interesting drinking bottles of wine that are around as old as you are.
Dec 072004
Ever morning I take the subway to 47-50th Street, Rockefeller Center. From there, it is a short 5 minute walk to work. I generally get in the office around 10 am, which in New York City is still part of rush hour.
This morning, I was going towards the stairs as usual, and I noticed that everyone was moving to the right side of the staircase. This is a bit unusual in the morning; typically in the morning rush, every bit of staircase is used. When I got to the stairs, I saw that a man was sitting on the staircase with his head between his legs. I placed my hand on his shoulder and asked, “Are you okay? Do you need help?”
It turns out that he had just sat down and nodded off. The man said, “No thanks, I’m fine,” got up, and hopped in the waiting D train. This was not at all shocking to me; many people work hard, and it is easy to fall asleep when you are tired.
What was a bit surprising was that at least fifty people passed this man before I did. Was I the only person who asked if he was okay?
Dec 012004
I went to a Christmas party at Keira‘s work last night. They timed the party to coincide with the lighting of the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center. Her office is on the 16th floor of a building overlooking the skating rink. In the past I have made a point of avoiding the tree lighting ceremony. The crowds can get a bit annoying. However, the view from Keira’s office was very nice.
Keira doesn’t like having her picture taken, but I think she looks stunning in red.
Tree is off.
Tree is on
Nov 122004
I have nothing of substance to write today, so I am just posting some photos.
Election night was a bit of a disappointment. I watched the results at Superfine with James. My horse didn’t win, even though I thought that they swapped in a good reliever in the seventh inning. Or am I mixing metaphors?
The bartenders at Superfine are faster than the speed of light!
The York Street stop on the F-line can be nice and peaceful. This photo was taken on an early Saturday night. (My camera date and time were wrong. This makes the EXIF date headers fairly unusable. I wish there were a built-in self-synchronizing time-zone aware clock in my camera.)
Otto Enoteca and Pizzeria has a cool bar. It gets pretty crowded later in the week, but it is relatively quiet on Monday and Tuesday nights.
Harri and Kristiina visited my neighborhood the other day. We walked around a little bit. It was a good night for a walk. Yesterday was Veteran’s Day, which is why the Empire State Building was in red, white, and blue lights.
Nov 012004
A few weeks ago, I went to the DUMBO Arts festival with Betsy. We both went there a few years ago. Basically, the Arts festival is an annual event where artists open up their studios to the public. One fun studio we visited was run by Jane Walentas. She is restoring a carousel from 1922.
We saw “real” art as well. Some of it was pretty great, and some of it was mediocre. All of it was interesting in one way or another.
Saturday was misty and gray without being chilly. You couldn’t see the other side of Manhattan from my window. I walked into the park and chilled out at the waterfront. Fall is my favorite season, and this was a great example of a perfect Fall day.
The birds were having a fine time on the rocky shores of the east river.
Saturday night I went out with my friends Harri and Kristiina. We went to their local bar later in the evening. Harri just had his book The Dodo and Mauritius Island: Imaginary Encounters published. Kristiina has been doing a lot of work taking photos at weddings.
I decided to walk home after I left. I was going to get a cab, but even though it was after 1:30 am the streets were quite crowded. It was the night before Halloween; since it was also Saturday, everyone was out that night. I started at Broadway and Elizabeth. I got into Chinatown and started across the Manhattan Bridge. It scared me a bit, which made me even more determined to cross that way. Once you are one third of the way across the bridge, it is quite difficult to see either end. It is much more desolate than the Brooklyn Bridge. With the mist over the city, you could hardly see a thing. But the bridge was crossed without incident.
Oct 302004
I ate lunch today at Almondine, a new bakery in DUMBO. Almondine was opened by Herve Poussot and Jacques Torres. Jacques Torres also owns Jacques Torres Chocolate across the street. In addition to bread, pastries, and other items you would expect at a small bakery, they also sell small sandwiches served on freshly baked bread. I ate a prosciutto, mozzarella, and tomato sandwich served on a thick white bread with a flour-coated crust. Unlike many prosciutto sandwiches I have eaten, this prosciutto was tender and easily eaten; I was able to tear through the meat without pulling an entire piece of prosciutto off the sandwich. After the sandwich, I had a chocolate brownie with walnuts and chocolate icing.
I am meeting Harri and Kristiina shortly for dinner, so I stopped at the chocolate store to buy them some chocolate. Jacques Torres’s chocolates are exquisite. I have to start going there more often. I took my parents there a couple of months ago. My father prefers rich dark chocolate, but even he was blown away by the sharpness and richness of these chocolates. He had six or seven, which made him wired for the rest of the day.
It was damp and quiet today. This morning I could only see half of the Brooklyn Bridge because of the fog. Now, I can’t see the bridge at all. I took a couple of photos from the park at the base of the bridge earlier; hopefully, I will get a chance to post them tomorrow. The park at the base of the bridge is relaxing; you can hear the tide washing in and out, and the boardwalk is calm and peaceful. There is some noise from the cars going over the bridges to Manhattan, but the park is not something you would expect in a city this large.
Oct 282004
I am in the process of switching Internet providers. I hope to kill my old account within the next couple of weeks. I was with my old hosting company since 1995, when I just graduated from CMU. That company, Best Communications, was purchased by Verio a few years later. Shortly after that purchase, Verio was bought by NTT DoCoMo for around $5.5 billion dollars (see this Forbes article). The service hasn’t been horrible, but it has stagnated over the years. While the price remained fairly constant, other providers managed to provide the same service for less money.
I have switched to DreamHost. There was a really good deal for a year of service, but their regular prices are pretty good as well. In fact, I will probably upgrade my level of service next year. I have been really happy with their services so far. The servers seem to be a bit snappier, and I like their attitude more than that of Verio.
This post is only posted on my site at DreamHost; the fact that you are reading this post means that my move is going well. People who are viewing my site at Verio will not see this post.
Oct 262004
I’ve often thought that people have a hard time understanding large numbers. For example, when you hear the numbers $10 million dollars versus $20 million dollars, is there really a distinction in your day to day life? For me, I interpret both numbers as, “More money than I will ever have.” When the numbers go into the billions, there is simply a lack of understanding of what that means. (Especially if you live in the United Kingdom. Then your definition of a billion is all wrong.)
I ran across a web site that attempts to put $87 billion dollars into perspective. This is the money that President Bush asked Congress for last year to continue to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. $87 billion is a lot of money, no matter how you stack it.
[Link courtesy of Del.icio.us]
Oct 192004
A while back, I wrote that my site has started to accept advertisements through the Google AdSense program. Before I go any further, let me share some information from the Google AdSense program. The Program Policies contain the following clause:
Incentives
Web pages may not include incentives of any kind for users to click on ads. This includes encouraging users to click on the ads or to visit the advertisers’ sites as well as drawing any undue attention to the ads. This activity is strictly prohibited in order to avoid potential inflation of advertiser costs. For example, your site cannot contain phrases such as “click here,” “support us,” “visit these links,” or other similar language that could apply to any ad, regardless of content.
The Terms and Conditions of the Google AdSense program contain the following clause:
7. Confidentiality. You agree not to disclose Google Confidential Information without Google’s prior written consent. “Google Confidential Information” includes without limitation: […] (b) click-through rates or other statistics relating to Site performance in the Program provided to You by Google; […]
So what does this mean to you, my dear reader? Simply put, please do not consider anything I am writing to be an exhortation to click on advertisements on my site. Nor will I reveal what I am make from the AdSense program or what advertisers are paying to be a member of the AdSense program.
I’ve been thinking a bit about the AdSense program and whether I want to continue to participate. Having advertisements is a nice way to generate income, but I’m not sure I have been happy with all of the advertisements that have been delivered by Google. For example, I wrote about bathroom equipment in Italy; astute readers may remember the ads that got placed. Frankly, these were not the most aesthetically pleasing advertisements I could have gotten. Today, I saw that Google placed an advertisement for political paraphernalia on my blog from an organization with whom I disagree. While I find it a bit ironic that this advertisement may cost the political organization money, I am not thrilled to accept money indirectly from the political organization.
I have a very easy choice: I can accept Google’s advertising placement or not. (I can also blacklist sites one by one, but the process is so difficult that it is impractical.) The advertisements I have seen so far do not bother me so much. Would I feel the same way if there were an anti-abortion advertisement on my web site? What about a bigoted advertisement? More importantly, how would I know such an advertisement had been placed? Google does not provide auditing facilities that show me what advertisements have been displayed on my site, and I do not visit my site very frequently.
The story becomes more interesting when you consider the advertiser’s point of view. Do you want to advertise on a web site when the web site is portraying your product in a negative light? Do you want to advertise on a web site if it portrays your competitors in a relatively positive light? For example, I felt Rossini Restaurant in Florence was a terrible restaurant. The food was merely adequate, but the experience as a whole was horrible and overpriced. Now imagine that I am one of the owners of Rossini and I wanted to place an advertisement. I would never want my advertisement to appear on this web page. People may click through my advertisement just for spite!
At Sports Illustrated, where I work, we are very concerned about advertising positioning. Most of what we do with regards to positioning is common in the publishing world. Advertisers can make sure that they are the first advertisement for their line of products in the magazine. For example, a car company may pay a premium to be the first automotive advertisement. Advertisers can also specific certain demographic or geographic splits. That is, in one part of the country, an advertiser may place one advertisement; they may place another advertisement in another part of the country. There are many other different variables, and the magazines at Time Inc. are very good at positioning advertising.
At the same time, many publishers, including Time Inc., strive to make sure that their advertising and editorial content do not conflict. This can cut both ways. I can cite two examples from my time at The Tartan, the student newspaper of Carnegie Mellon University. One time, our features section ran an article on contraception; it also briefly discussed masturbation. It was a fairly well written, serious article, and no one though two minutes about it. After our issue was printed, an advertiser from one of the local religious institutions stopped by. He was not concerned that we had run an article on this kind of topic; in fact, I believe that he would have felt foolish complaining about such an article in a college newspaper. However, he was a little disappointed with the positioning of his advertisement. Unfortunately, his advertisement for religious services was right next to the article on contraception and masturbation. Since his institution felt that both contraception and masturbation were, shall we say, less than ideal, he would have preferred a different location in the newspaper for his advertisement.
In a way, a publisher has an advantage over an advertiser–the publisher can always see the advertising content at any point in the publishing process; the advertiser cannot always see the editorial content before publication. While I was at The Tartan, an anti-abortion group asked to place an insert into the paper. The Tartan was a weekly broadsheet newspaper; the insert was a full-color tabloid size insert. Like most anti-abortion material, it was highly inflammatory and prejudicial. Personally, I was against running the insert in our paper. The group could distribute the insert on campus by themselves, and I didn’t feel we had any obligation to carry the advertising. I was outvoted, and the insert was distributed with the next issue of the paper. I wonder sometimes if I should have left the paper after this decision was made.
I wish Google AdSense were a bit more sophisticated in how it placed advertising. I can’t say a better algorithm exists, but I don’t want to give money to causes and organizations that I find objectionable. I’m not sure that Google can make this sort of guarantee. I think I will consider the issue for another month or so, but right now I am leaning towards dropping out of the program.
Do you have opinions on the topic? Send them my way.
Finally, here is a quick disclaimer: not only do friends and family work at Google, friends of mine work at Google’s competitors. And I also use many Google products myself, both in my personal and professional life. My disagreements with the Google AdSense program will probably not dissuade me from using their other fine services.