I Blame Beer

I just don’t get the East Bay –me.

Or maybe it’s more like: The East-Bay doesn’t get me.

I’m a city boy. Despite having grown up in the ‘burbs, I’m a city boy at heart. I like to walk. I do just fine with busses, cabs and other public transportation. Oh, and I hate to drive.

Walking around in SF and in Oakland I’ve noticed at least one glaring difference - cross walks. In Oakland you have those push-to-cross things on almost every street. In San Francisco they almost do not exist. Oakland was designed for driving, pedestrians come second (if that). I guess Oakland was designed with the thinking that people like to live in one place, work in another and be entertained in yet another place (or places). This is not how I see my Urban Life.

I like neighborhoods like Haight-Ashbury (where I live) or the Mission because they combine living and entertainment. I don’t have to walk further than 5 blocks to find 3 coffee shops, 4 bars and close to a dozen restaurants. If I expand that radius, the selection grows significantly. Wanna see? Walk score calls it a “walker’s paradise.” I’d agree except that they don’t take into account the hills… still, it’s a great place to live!

There are neighborhoods like San Francisco’s South Park that almost combine living, entertainment and working. With more co-working spaces (like the Hat Factory for example) and people working from home or from coffee shops, we’ll probably start to see more and more neighborhoods that offer a good combination of all three. Imagine that! Never having to leave home

Oakland has some pockets of activity, in fact, I’m sitting in one right now on College and Alcatraz. It’s about 3 blocks long. About 20 minute walk south of here is another fun strip on Telegraph. 20 minutes that consisted mostly of houses, a dog park and crossing under a busy highway (never a fun experience). I was almost the only one walking and I saw no buses or cabs along my path. If I had walked for 20 minutes on Mission st. and did not see a single bus I’d think something was wrong with Muni (I know, tell me something new!).

Now, Berkeley seems to do better, at least in some parts. There seems to be more of an emphasis on public transportation and biking lanes. As a result, there are more people walking, bussing and biking around. Recently there seems to be an emphasis on mixed use neighborhoods like around Shattuck and University or some parts of San Pablo Ave. and the newly revived 4th st. area. I guess that’s why I feel much more at home in Berkeley than I do in Oakland. We seem to have similar ideas about what Urban Life should look like in the 21st century.

By the way, if you want to read more about walkable neighborhoods and why they’re good for us, check out walkscore.com.

I just finished listening to the audio version of Tribal Leadership (Tip: You can get it for free from Zappos and a big thank you to @tempo for twitting that). I’m not, by any stretch, a leader and, frankly, don’t really know that I want to be one but I found the book fascinating - it was hard to hit stop when I finally got home - and enlightening - for the last few days I’ve been looking at world through Tribal Leadership glasses. I will definitely have to give it another listen possibly even get a text copy for deeper exploration.

Two things about the book:

1. Giving stuff away for free works: I’m recommending the book here to my friends and I might actually buy a copy myself. Why does it work? Because the book is awesome! So free works… when you’re awesome.

2. The main thing I’m taking away from this book (in addition to a lot of inspiration to be more awesome) is the authors’ description of the 5 levels where “corporate tribes” exist and the way they characterize the thinking at each level (and despite their focus on corporations and the work world, I think this applies to communities in general):

• Level 1: “Life Sucks!” - This is the level where street gangs live. People are mostly concerned with survival and create groups to further that goal. Most people I know have probably never seen this outside of movies. I think for a while, while in the army, I had a few visits here.
• Level 2: “My life sucks!” - Think “The Office” or the DMV. This level is better than level 1, people who exist here see that it’s possible for things to be better they just don’t see it happening to them any time soon. I’d say most of my army service was spent squarely in level 2. It was the fact that I had a clear date of when this will end that kept me disappearing in a black hole. Some part of my work life was also spent here, working for a boss I could not handle, doing work I had lost interest in, constantly hounded by the demands of a broken system I could not fix. Imagine how the people who worked for me at the time must have felt…
• Level 3: “I’m great!” - This is where most professionals today exist, college and university students, athletes, etc. The full description of level 3 is actually, “I’m great, and you’re not!” I don’t need to say much about this level, do I? We’ve all been there. In recent years I’ve been getting tired with this rat race and have been trying to move beyond this outlook on life. It’s not easy but I’m getting better at it (and there I go again… *sigh*)
• Level 4: “We’re great!” - This is where great groups come to life. Sharing values, sharing a common goal, expanding connections and building a social web. Every once in a while I find myself in a team that works at this level, it’s great! Information flows in all directions, everybody is committed, and everybody knows their role. It’s like a group of people in Flow, together. I’ve seen this happen at companies where I worked but more interestingly I’ve seen this happen in my community.
  I’ve seen events coming up, seemingly from nothing, and becoming great happenings - music, lights, food, people all showing up as if by magic. I’ve seen an industrial kitchen full of people cooking up wonderful, fantastic meals that brought friends together around a table (or 5) for slow conversation and singing around a piano. Imagine a community of people brought together by values like Openness, Acceptance and Love, a group dedicated to supporting each other and making life better for everyone involved. It’s a pretty cool place to call home and it’s a place worth investing in.
• Finally, Level 5: “Life is great!” - This is a rare place that few people get to visit and fewer yet get to stay. At this stage the group is no longer trying to outdo the competition, they’re just doing the right thing because it will make things better for everyone. This is the level that puts humans on the moon or cures cancer.

When the thinking mind is quiet and the attention careful, all of a sudden we “get it.” We take a step a realize the no one took it - there are just the sensations of body movement along with sights, perception, impulses. … In the light of awareness, the constructed self of out identification relaxes. And what is seen is just he process of life, no self nor other, but life unfolding as part of the whole.

From The Wise Heart, Jack Kornfield.

As I was reading the chapter on the illusion of self I kept getting stuck in the same place - it is hard for me to imagine letting go of my sense of self, almost impossible actually. But as I was reading the paragraph above something clicked - I have been to that place before and it was awesome.

The name I have for that feeling is Flow. Wikipedia says:

Flow is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.

You know the feeling, when you’re doing something - writing, creating, programming, playing a game and everything just clicks. You don’t need to think about the next step, you just do it. You don’t need to look for the button to press, your hand is already there. Challenge after challenge show up and you just sail through them. The only way to describe that feeling is Wow!

The most amazing thing is that (in the rare times) when I’m there, I really am not aware of myself. There is no doer, there is only the doing, the process unfolding and it’s not at all scary.

So I looked at the details. Amazon wants me to:

• Pay $360 for the device (haven’t played with one yet so I can’t account for quality, ease of use, etc. but I’ve read some criticism online)
• Buy electronic, DRM limited, versions of books for about $10.
• And pay at least a buck a month per blog subscription!

I’m not sure if I want to laugh or cry… For now, here’s my counter offer:

I’m willing to pay $300-400 for the device. It’s still new and cool and probably using some technologies that are not in very wide use quite yet. I’m willing to pay the premium but I expect something that’s fun, easy to use and is at least somewhat extensible.

$10 for an electronic book sounds like a good deal but I want to be able to read it anywhere. I want to be able to lend it to a friend. Or give it to a friend. So you know what you can do with your DRM (one more reason why DRM is bad) Also, it would be cool if I could get the electronic version for free when I buy the physical book. Actually, I think that’s a requirement.

As for that last point, I only have one word to say to that: SRSLY??

Until I get all that, I’ll happily continue reading whatever electronic versions I can find out there on my laptop or maybe my phone (my Palm Vx used to be great for this).

In recent months I became more aware of what I eat and how much I eat. In general I try to eat healthier, I try to eat more varied food, I try to eat less simple carbs, and I try to eat less. Strangely, it’s the last part that I’ve been having the most trouble with.

As a kid, even as a teenager, I remember never being able to eat what was put in front of me. I would always leave some food lying on the plate whether it was at home or out at a restaurant. As I grew older, maybe in my mid 20s, I started eating more. I actually found that it was getting hard for me to stop eating! I would only be done eating when I simply could not eat any more. And even then I would sometimes eat a little bit more. Now, when I try to bring myself to eating more reasonable portions I end up hungry just a couple of hours after lunch and I still sometimes find myself eating to the point of being bloated.

It’s even worse because when I get to that point, I end up completely useless. I can do little more than sit on my chair at work or on the couch at home and stare at a screen. This becomes annoying very fast, especially when I want to try and be productive or practice some new concept.

I guess all I can do is what I’ve been doing so far. Try to eat less. Any tips on how to keep from getting hungry?

Although in this case, i blame Bourbon.

It’s a nice sunny day out which is why I’m inside, hiding. Well, doing the best I can at least. The power sockets at Café du Soleil are all right next to the big glass windows facing the street and the horrible sunshine that comes with it. Speaking of sunshine, that’s what I’m drinking too. I bet that when New Belgium decided on a name for their wheat beer they figured it’d be really funny to have people come up to the bar and “a pint of Sunshine, please.” You gotta admit, it’s somewhat amusing.

Wheat beer with extra lemon (and a twist, I gotta have some bitterness) on a sunny day. I could grow to like this combo. It might just make those occasional summer days in San Francisco almost bearable.

Ha! Ryan beat me to it.

tblee has some interesting articles about philosohpy and design posted on the w3c site. Definitely makes for some good reading.

• Principles of design - You’re probably already aware of most of these but the Test of Independent Invention definitely deserves some thought.
• The World Wide Web and the “Web of Life” - About the parallels between the philosophies behind Web design and the Unitarian Universalist church.
• Evolvability - How to design for evolvability and interoperability.

I just wanna know where does Nicholas Carr find the nerve to call someone else, really anyone, antagonistic.