The Individual is Cosmic

There's a pretty decent FM station in LA called Indie 103 that falls somewhere between college and mainstream radio. It's a commercial station, but they actually program interesting music, like Spoon and other indie artists who have a wide enough audience to appeal to corporate sponsors, plus classic punk and alternative staples that have never really had a place on American airwaves, like the Smiths or the Stooges. Anyway, one Indie 103 feature that I look forward to on my morning drive is the daily weather with David Lynch. That's right, David Lynch. He phones in every morning shortly before 10 a.m. to give the weather report and a thought for the day, and then abruptly hangs up.

It's not as weird or arty as you might expect, either. It's pretty matter-of-fact. And David Lynch isn't a meteorologist. He doesn't predict what to expect over the weekend or on my evening commute. He literally just tells me exactly what I can see for myself by looking outside at precisely that moment... which I'm doing because I'm driving to work. But it's David Lynch! Of course I want David Lynch to narrate my drive to work!

In closing, he offers a random thought for the day, like "a green man in an orange chair" or "the individual is cosmic." It's like a little David Lynch fortune cookie every morning. I love it.

Click on the thumbnail below for a video feed of the David Lynch weather report, straight from the David Lynch website, where you can also order David Lynch's signature brand coffee. No Twin Peaks viewing party would be complete without it.

Oh Diane, I almost forgot. Got to find out what kind of trees these are. They're really something.

Little Modules

One day recently, while discussing the widgets, my coworker Gaby informed me with a straight face that according to corporate policy, we can no longer refer to them as “widgets.”

“What? Really? Why?”

“Yeah, it’s not PC. Apparently they prefer to be called ‘little modules’.”

Zing!

LA On Foot: Temescal Canyon

We went hiking in Temescal Canyon yesterday. Located just off Sunset Blvd. in the Santa Monica Mountains, Temescal Canyon State Park is a small part of the much larger Topanga State Park. The brief 5-mile trek up the canyon ridge and back offers great views of Santa Monica, Hollywood and the bazillion-dollar homes of the Pacific Palisades.

Driving in LA

Prior to moving here, I had the idea that the traffic in LA was horrible, and I was braced for the worst. It's actually not that bad. It exists, sure — there are several million people here — but crosstown traffic is always moving and highway traffic isn't much worse than I-35 at rush hour. My work commute is about 20-25 minutes, and I never get stuck in the frustrating gridlock I used to experience in Austin at 6th and Lamar.

Call me a sap, but one of the little things I enjoy about driving around town is catching glipses of the Hollywood sign. I see it several times on my way to work, and I don't know why, but it makes me happy to be here. In Austin, I got a similar little daily thrill driving over Town Lake and looking out at the water. The intersection below is just a few blocks from our apartment, and although the photo is a little fuzzy, in person the Hollywood sign is clear as day (mouse over to zoom).

The Internet is HUGE

In December, I took a job with a NY-based interactive agency called HUGE, with offices in Brooklyn, Sweden and LA. I’m part of a team that’s doing rich front-end development for a Disney website. When I started they had just launched a travel portal that implements some pretty nice Google maps customization, which you can see here (click "Map It!") and here.

For the next phase, we’re helping Disney build a social networking site, and I’ve been tasked with figuring out how to build widgets. For the benefit of my family members over 30, widgets are small, self-contained content modules or applications that users can add or remove to thier personal profiles, customizing their experience on a website. Check out netvibes or iGoogle for good examples.

So I’ve spent a lot of time recently prototyping drag & drop widgets. Drag this paragraph around for a very simple drag & drop demo (using the YUI JavaScript library). No, really — click this paragraph and drag it around. This example is very basic. I'll show you something a little fancier in a future post.

Race Report: Surf City Half Marathon 2008

Janet, Judy & I ran the Surf City Half Marathon in Huntinton Beach this past Sunday. Huntington Beach is about an hour south of LA in Orange County, so we drove down Saturday afternoon to pick up our packets and spend the night.

This was Judy's first race, and we figured what better way to ease her into the sport than a nice run on the beach? The weather was amazing. It looked like this was going to be a great run.



When the alarm went off at 5:30 the next morning, however, we heard the unmistakable pitter-pat of rain. Sure enough, a storm had blown in, and what we'd hoped would be a fun run in the sun turned out to be a bitter, soggy slog through cold wind and rain. An estimated 15,000 runners participated. Many, including us, took shelter in the nearby Hilton resort lobby to keep dry until the last possible moment. With wet runners huddling everywhere, the hotel was trashed, but the staff was kind enough to hand out garbage bags for use as panchos. We were soaked within the first mile, and the rain never let up. We all made it, though, and despite averse conditions I finished in 1:33, my personal best. Perhaps the poor conditions were a good motivator for reaching the finish.

All in all, it was a pretty miserable run. Even if the weather had been nice, the course was a boring out-and-back down the PCH. When I neared the finish and saw the full marathon runners turning around to repeat the same course they'd just completed, I never felt so relieved to only be doing the half. Welcome to running, Judy! If you made it through this, the full marathon will be a breeze.



On our drive home, looking for somewhere decent to have lunch in a series of strip malls and actual malls, we came across, of all things, Z-Tejas. Who knew they'd become a chain? Anyway, we finally our queso fix, just when we needed it most.