sparkrobot

Saturday night was roller derby night in the city of Tacoma. Perhaps you heard. The flat track roller derby team, Tacoma’s Dockyard Derby Dames rolled at the Soccer Center on Bay Street. Most anything you want to read about the event has already been written over at The Weekly Volcano’s Spew blog. I published a bunch of pictures from the event. Take a look at out Jules Doyle’s shots too, because he used way better glass than I…

The Soundview Trail opened last Saturday, May 5 with a Dog Walk and Fun Run. I did not run, because, um, yeah, that’s just not my thing. We did walk the 3.8 mile paved trail around the new Chamber’s Creek Chamber’s Creek Golf Course which is slated to be opened later this year (June 23rd). I do not golf, but the grass was looking really nice out there for anyone who does.
The trail is described as such:

Located in the northern part of the Chambers Creek Properties, Soundview Trail will meet with Grandview Trail at 62nd St Ct W and at Cirque Plaza making the two trails walkable as a loop.

Also noted:

Difficulty Level: Difficult (grades in excess of 10%)

Dude. I wish I had known that in advance. I think the English Bulldog would have appreciated some head’s up on the grade as well. Deciding to flat out quit at the top of the trail, I had to go get the car to come back and get her. Here are some photos from the trail.

Metroblogging Seattle: Tacomawatch: Safe empty of treasure

Well…no. After two hours worth of drilling the thing open, they found some wood chips, five paper clips, and a spider. (Now, perhaps the spider is the owner of the safe and we’re dealing with some sort of complicated magics here. It’s possible.)

Also, a link to the story in the PI.

Sunday, April 29th was Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day. A pinhole camera is essentially a camera in it’s very simplest form. There is no lens. Just a tiny hole to let light pass through an improvised camera body to film. I set out over the weekend just past and created my first set of pinhole images. I could tell you I knew exactly what I was doing, but I would be lying to you. I ended up putting expired Kodak Gold 400 in a Zero Image 135 I picked up from Freestyle. I sometimes used the light meter on my Nikon to calculate approximate exposure times for the pinhole. Mostly, I guessed.

Lo-fi from the gate, here are some of the photos: needle drop, forest, forest light leak, beached briefly, dash point, the vet, abandoned, cherries, sky light, the old girl, & thai. (Once the gallery is open, you can click on the right or left side of each image to move back and forward between the images.) Thanks for looking.

ABCNews.com redesigned their site. It’s terrible. Looks like they needed room for bigger ads and that drove the design decisions. Somebody also got a little carried away with the javascript animation too. Put all of this aside for a minute though and take a look at this screen capture from this morning. Four years to the day after the Mission Accomplished fiasco, “Bush Prepares to Veto the Iraq Bill”. Take a look at the implied trajectory of the soldier’s weapon in this collage. Looks like the photo editor is asleep at the wheel and some Photoshop, uh, wizard dropped a bomb of his own.

It’s no secret Austin Texas is known for it’s live music scene—self-proclaiming to be The Live Music Capital of The World—not to mention for being weird. The locals might be a little jaded, but there’s something in the water down there that keeps the apples alive. From what I’ve heard of Grand Champeen’s latest Dial T for This, apples don’t fall far from the tree. There are some brilliant power pop rock gems here. Wounded Eye slays. Well, they all do… Listen to a couple of the tracks below.

When I was down in Austin for a conference last summer, I took a break from the nerdy software worship scene for a bit and decided to head over to Emo’s Lounge. I had read in the Chronicle there would be punk rock djs spinning vinyl, so I headed over.

Emo’s lounge was empty, when I arrived, but they were spinning Vee Dee and it sounded good on the vinyl, I decided to hang around for a bit. After a while, the bass player for Grand Champeen Alex ended up there after a shift at Stubb’s bbq where he proclaimed that the set by Gnarls Barkley had just sucked it up. Say no more. We had some drinks and got to talking about the band he plays bass in, Grand Champeen. Referred to as having a big Minneapolis sound and paying homage to bands from MN from late 80s era, Husker Du, Replacements, etc., he mentioned that they were either wrapping or had just wrapped recording on their new, presumably this, record. I told him to let me know if they ever got up to the Northwest. And so now you know.

Grand Champeen headlines an EARLY SHOW (Starts at 5PM) at Hell’s Kitchen this Sunday and their new record, Dial T for This, can (and definitely should) be purchased at CD baby. Other bands on the bill are Never Quiet Never Still, The Beltholes, Glossary and The Lund Bros. I know it’s a Sunday night, but it’s a good night to make an exception to the rules. Ditch school. Go on now, get it.

The band is playing a live in-studio at KEXP on Saturday at 3PM which you can hear on the web and if you can’t make it Sunday, they’re playing the Tractor Tavern in Ballard on Saturday night.

A million smackers. That’s a lot of dough man. This Friday April 20th, it will only cost you $5. The F**king Eagles are having their record release party for the release of their latest offering, A Million Dollars Worth of Music at Hell’s Kitchen on 6th Ave. The sound is garage rock r&b a la the Oblivians, Deadly Snakes, The Gories, et al.

But wait, that’s not all. You get Girl Trouble. You get Ape City R&B. You get Gold Teeth. Well, I don’t know if you will actually get gold teeth, but you get to watch the bands in action.

Wow. Tacoma, you’re pretty lucky if stop to think about it. I know this sounds totally crazy, but there are actually two good rock shows… in one weekend. I’ll expound on this shortly with another post on Austin, Texas’s Grand Champeen who are making a stop in Tacoma on Sunday Night at Hell’s Kitchen…

After allowing the tax return preparation to come down to the wire, essentially not leaving the house for an entire day, I was not really in the mood to prepare food at the house. Looking to get out of the house, I hit the Google Map of Mexican Restaurants in Tacoma, WA in search of something to get my mind out of Schedule C mode. Ugh.

Deciding we were going to head to Titlow Beach for sunset, we happened upon El Jimador at 6409 6th Ave. Located in a strip mall just past the Tower Lanes bowling alley, the exterior of the building was unassuming and upon entry, the interior was similarly humdrum with a commonplace color scheme and glass block walls last installed in abundance when Duran Duran was huge (the first time).

Appending the customary chips and salsa rojo brought to the table, we ordered a side of guacamole, a Negra Modelo ($3.75) and a Corona ($3.75). The guacamole ($3.95) had good flavor and texture and the beer was — well — deserved. (I mentioned tax preparation right?) The entrees ordered: Tacos Al Carbon and Tacos Adobado, both entrees priced at $13.55. While ordering, our server asked my wife if she spoke Spanish. He mentioned that we had used the proper pronunciations. “Poquito. We’re from Tucson.” This happens from time to time.

I found the Tacos Al Carbon were tasty, the flank steak was prepared perfectly and stuffed in corn tortillas with pico de gallo and garnished with queso blanco (Mexican white cheese). The Tacos Adobado (chile-marinated pork tenderloin) were served in corn tortillas and garnished with sliced lime and a marinade on the side. The dishes were both served with rice and beans on colorful 14″ inch plates, every inch filled with food.

In my opinion, pretty spendy for tacos, but the food was good and there was PLENTY of it. We ended up with two to-go boxes which will be great come lunch time tomorrow.

We’ve visited most of the Mexican restaurants in Tacoma. And a couple of months back, had a discussion with some friends about the best Mexican food in Tacoma. If you ask me, it’s up in the air and really depends on what type of Mexican food you’re looking for, but El Jimador is on the “will return” list. Not to mention on the way out, I spied a Barbwire pinball machine. Now I have to return simply to play some super classy pinball.

Using Windows on the Macintosh via Parallels Desktop to prepare a Tax Return and not being able to use the number pad on my Apple keyboard was driving me crazy, so I turned to the series of tubes and discovered this: The Official Parallels Virtualization Blog: Ask Ben Anything – Using the number pad, moving from Parallels to Boot Camp, Backing up a VM

2) How the hell do I use my numeric keypad in Parallels?

– Eric B.

If you’re on an iMac or Mini and are using a PC keyboard, its as easy as hitting the “NumLock” key, just like you would on a real PC. If you’re on an Apple keyboard there is no NumLock key, so you’ll need to hit the key that sits in it’s place…the “clear” key. That’ll get your keypad working.

Ben, you’re a real nice feller.

Ran across a video of Dick Dale’s advice to up and coming musicians.

“And that’s the reason why the system hates Dick Dale.”

An elaborate break down of the phenomenon can be found in Steve Albini’s “The Problem With Music“, aka “Some of your friends may already be this fucked.”