Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Tsunami? Oh, wait…

by Suw on June 15, 2005

Geeks + Beer + Tags = Technorati Tag Tuesday

Fairly simple concept – get a bunch of people interested in tags in a bar with beer and let them mingle. Kevin Marks and Stewart Butterfield of Flickr were both gonna give a informal talks just to get people thinking.
The original venue was way too loud, so we migrated out onto the bayfront, down on Embarcadero, just north of the Bay Bridge. It was a lovely evening, although with a chill breeze, but it was fun to sit and talk as the sun went down.
Then, around 9.05pm we heard from a nearby loud speaker the following announcement (remembered as best I can):
“There has been a magnitude 7.2 earthquake off the coast of Northern California. A tsunami is expected at 9.20pm.”
The loud speaker was a bit far away, so I didn't hear the whole announcement, but the repeat of the word 'tsunami' got everyone milling around nervously, before promptly deciding to get the hell away from the water. Despite the fact that we were on the other side of the peninsula from the ocean, tsunamis still refract around headlands so it seemed sensible to leave.
As Maciej and I were walking up towards his car with his friend Vicki, I found myself uttering words I never would have expected to hear myself say. Vicki was describing how her house was inland and up a hill a bit, and I heard myself quite calmly say 'Oh, you should be fine from the tsunami there'.
Maciej turned on the car radio as soon as we got in it, and we were relieved to hear that the tsunami warning had been cancelled. No tsunami today. Phew. Left us a bit jittery all evening though, all the same.
Apparently this is the first time that the newly-installed tsunami warning system has been used. The people on the radio seemed to think that it had been successful, but I am not really sure that if it had been a real tsunami whether we would have survived. We were still hardly any distance from the water when the expected time of impact came and there was precious little between us and the bay. But all that's just postulation – there was no tsunami, just a very surreal end to what had been a very interesting evening.
The weird thing was listening to the radio afterwards and hearing the newscaster explaining the difference between strike-slip and thrust earthquakes. I got a sudden flashback to first year geology lectures. Strange.
Anyway. No tsunami. That's good. (Despite the disappointment felt by the little voice in my head that kept saying 'Oh cool! You get to see a tsunami!)

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OK, now this is California

by Suw on June 15, 2005

Written last night:
Just sitting on the train back up to San Francisco from Palo Alto. The difference in climate between the two was, well, wow. San Francisco has been like London in disguise since I got here, if slightly foggier. A cross, perhaps, between London and Cornwall.
Palo Alto is like what you think California should be like – hot. Blue skies, and hot. Very hot. Thank god for air conditioning.
Had a lovely lunch with Ross Mayfield from Socialtext, talking about how blogs and wikis get used in business, how the IT is easy but the cultural changes less so, and what I've been up to lately with the whole Dark Blogs project. I first met Ross in November last year, and both of us have made serious progress since then, so it was nice to catch up.
Spent the afternoon in a wifi cafe, fretting about whether my friend Jim would find me, after I changed the venue of our meeting up. The cafe he wanted to meet in had no wifi, but it was next to the bike shop above which three tiny companies once started: Yahoo!, Excite and Danger (who do the Hiptop, for those of you not addicted to mobile devices).
Jim found me fine, though, and we had the best evening just talking about stuff. Went to the Palo Alto Apple store, which is all cute and dinky compared to the London store (the only other one I've been in), but apparently Ol' Stevie Boy lives not far away so is a regular. (Hah!)
So now I'm on one of those big double-decker trains, the ones with the horn and the bell constantly going 'ding ding ding' in a way that I had imagined only happened in the movies. Every time I get to a station I search for wifi, and sometimes there is an open access point and just enough time to open a new page or read an email.
My sore throat has developed into a cold, and I'm losing my voice. It's gone all husky, which I am sure some people would say is an improvement on normal, but I'd rather not be croaking and all snotty, thanks.

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Gorgeous!

by Suw on June 15, 2005

I'm always wary of waxing too lyrical about the cool stuff my friends do, primarily because it always seems a bit trite and annoying, but I have to point you at Kate's final project. Kate's only just starting out on a career in artistic glass, and but she's already making things I love.
I wish I had the money to commission her to make cool stuff for me, although that would also require that I have somewhere to put all that cool stuff. One day, maybe.
Oh, and her blog is cool.

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