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There’s a website named Walk Score, which rates how walkable your house is. That is, “Walk Score calculates the walkability of an address by locating nearby stores, restaurants, schools, parks, etc.”
Yes, the downside is typing your address in. However, I tried an intersection fairly near my house, and that worked just fine.
My house rated 60. (The intersection rated 69. What a few feet can do…)
Via Commute by Bike.
This morning, during our run, Rob said, “I can read frothing about the iPhone just about anywhere. How’s the play coming?” (Yes, I see Rob two to three times a week and he still keeps track of what I’m up to via my blog.)
The Foothill New Works Festival rehearsals are in fact under way. I go twice a week for an hour and a half and watch the director go through the script with the actors, blocking movement on stage, working out the characters and why they’re saying what they’re saying. I sit there and applaud and offer absolutely no feedback to the actors other than to say, “Wow, this is great! You’re wonderful!” Because this is now the director’s show, not mine, and for the writer to contradict or overrule the director during rehearsals is A Bad Idea. This is made much easier by the fact that I think my director’s doing a fabu job.
After rehearsal, when the actors have taken off, I compare notes with Brennan, my director. I’ve made a couple of changes to the script—for example, God and Lucifer are both being played by women (strangely enough, the Almighty is female in every single play in the festival, and this wasn’t planned in any way, shape, or form), so I changed all the pronouns and possessives to female, because using “he” and “his” was grating on me. In general, the rehearsals have been wonderful: the actors are really doing a great job bringing these characters to life. A few times (and just a few) I’ve pointed out places where I think the actors should use some different choices. What’s been awesome is that Brennan always seems to be on the same page and often has the exact same notes.
The best thing by far has been the way Brennan and the actors have found stuff in the play that I wasn’t even aware of putting in there. At one point, God says, “Don’t mess up the furniture,” and several minutes later Lucifer and St. Peter are jumping on the tables. I was completely unaware of the link there. But Brennan’s highlighted it, by having St. Peter make a show of putting the furniture back the way it was when God returns.
Actually, the best thing was when Brennan said, “We’re all about the coffee in this show.” Because, as anyone who knows me knows, coffee is pretty much the major theme in all my work. And it was nice to have someone else recognize that.
You know you want tickets. It’s going to be a fun evening of theater! Here is all the info you need.
Otto pinged me the other day and said, “You’ve had your iPhone for 8 days and there’s no post yet?”
Well, he has a good point there. So without further ado: my new iPhone!
The iPhone really is better than sliced bread. It’s better than sex. It’s better than chocolate. It does everything you want or need it to:
The iPhone makes coffee for you!
The iPhone will help you hash out story ideas, and sometimes even takes over the writing for you!
The iPhone will play with your kids and read them stories, while you dash out to the store to pick up a few staples!
Who wouldn’t want one of these things?
But seriously folks.
I like my iPhone, I really do. I look forward to getting calls on it in a way I never did with my v60. I even look forward to missing calls because the voicemail is really much, much easier to use than old cell voicemail. (Pause for a moment of Homer-esque shuddering.) I don’t actually think the iPhone is better than sliced bread or sex or even chocolate sex, but it is better than my old phone. Syncing contacts: a snap. Uploading photos to have a really cool (and sharp-looking) wallet of photos of the kids: the only hard part is picking out which photos of the kids. I haven’t uploaded any videos to it because, well, I don’t have any videos. (Although I am thinking about getting the Ninth Doctor episodes of Doctor Who to check out while the kids are swimming.)
I haven’t had a problem with the Edge network yet. Sure, if I were on my Macbook and it took that long to get my mail, I’d probably be annoyed. But this is my phone, not my business machine. I’m not expecting to surf the web at top speeds. I’ve used the web browser to do such crazy things as a)look stuff up when I’m in Barnes and Noble and wondering, What was the name of that author again? and b)play iPhoneSudoku.
Do I recommend getting one? Hell yeah! If nothing else, baby needs a college fund! (Actually, two college funds. I think both of them are going to give college a shot.)
Do I say you have to have one? We don’t keep Kool-Aid frozen pops in this house, sorry.
The coffee is excellent, however.
Or for anybody, really.
Via Theater Ideas, here is Ben Cameron’s excellent advice quoting of advice from Anne Bogart, offered as he left TCG (Theater Communications Group?):
* Do not assume that you have to have some prescribed conditions to do your best work.
* Do not wait.
* Do not wait for enough time or money to accomplish what you think you have in mind.
* Work with what you have right now.
* Work with the people around you right now.
* Work with the architecture you see around you right now.
* Do not wait for what you assume is the appropriate, stress-free environment in which to generate expression.
* Do not wait for maturity or insight or wisdom.
* Do not wait till you are sure that you know what you are doing.
* Do not wait until you have enough technique.
* What you do now, what you make of your present circumstances will determine the quality and scope of your future endeavors.
When we went to see Neil Gaiman speak at SJSU, he read from his work in progress, The Graveyard Book. He told us the genesis of this work — sitting in a graveyard with his son — and how he kept putting off writing it until he had the talent and ability to do it right. Then one day he said, I’m never going to have the talent and ability, so I might as well just do it now. (This is a horrible and probably inaccurate paraphrase, but it’s in the general ballpark. I remember raising a metaphorical eyebrow at Gaiman not thinking he could do justice to the story.)
Friday afternoon I told Darin I wanted to go to the mall and see the iPhone hysteria first-hand. But then Simon got sick, so that plan was cancelled.
Saturday afternoon we did make it to the mall, because I needed to get a dress for the party that night. While I was off shopping for dress, shoes, and makeup, Darin did such things as go to the Apple store and discover the 8 gig models were already sold out.
Saturday night we went to the big iPhone party up at the Exploratorium, which totally rocked but did not have the party favor I was hoping for. Most of the Apple employees there had iPhones, and 99% of them had gone to their local Apple dealer to buy one. Just in case you’re wondering if the employees believe in the product. And no, they did not serve Kool-Aid at the party.
Sunday morning Darin checked the iPhone website and headed down to Oakridge to get me one. It turned out that Oakridge was totally sold out on Saturday, but for some reason the website didn’t update.
Sunday afternoon all the stores in California had red dots.
I ordered my iPhone from the online store. I’m hoping the estimates for when it will ship are just a wee bit off.
(And I haven’t spotted one in the wild yet, but I keep checking every time I see someone on the phone.)