Weekly Links: March 16 – March 22

White+ at Los Globos last week:

  • A 26-Story History of San Francisco: a psychosocial history of the former Pacific Bell building at 140 New Montgomery in San Francisco
  • A short history of the Public Storage building on Beverly & Virgil. I’ve been mildly obsessed with this building on the Silver Lake/Hollywood border for a long time. Never suspected that it was designed out here, it always felt as if it was a east coast-styled building transplanted over here
  • A New York Times profile of surrealist Alejandro Jodorowsky.
  • Nick McCabe talks about his favorite albums.
  • 360 degree view of the Milky Way as seen via the Spitzer Space Telescope.
  • The Next America – The America of the near future will look nothing like the America of the recent past. Everyone who makes a living from futurism needs to get hip to what the demographic landscape is going to look like.

I recently became friends with a peregrine falcon

I just started working inside one of the tall office buildings on Wilshire Blvd and soon learned that one of the building’s peregrine falcons likes to hang out on the ledge outside the server room.

Peregrine Falcon on the ledge

Supposedly there’s a pair of them living on the building but I’ve only seen the one.

Peregrine Falcon on the ledge

I don’t know if it’s a male or female, but she/he does come by right at roughly the same time in the late afternoon.

Peregrine Falcon on the ledge

Tempted to call the falcon “Squeaky”

One legitimate falcon sound and then outta here.

And the weekend forecast is: heavy torrents of stellar plasma followed by supernova on Sunday.

Weather application interfaces must be a basic problem that all intermediate-level UI-folks have to solve. There’s a wide-range of precise numerical data, but transmuting that data into a quick, non-quantitive “how is it going to feel?” seems difficult to do in an interesting way.

A couple of apps display forecasts as an animated movie that best represents the weather. It’s a cool idea. According to Clear Day, the record heat wave that’s bearing down on the Southwest this weekend is going to include heavy torrents of stellar plasma

Clearsky solarheatwave1

followed by a supernova on Sunday.

Clearsky solarheatwave2

Stay cool out there!

Echo Mountain

I’ve been wanting to hike the Mt. Lowe trail ever since I first heard about the ruins of the Echo Mountain House and the Mt. Lowe railway but hadn’t had a chance to get around to it until last week. Apparently Independence Day is one of the busier days on the trail as from up top you can see several different fireworks shows simulataneously.

Waiting for fireworks

Wheels and pieces of train car

Echo Phone

Echo Mountain trail Google Earth

(full Flickr set)

YouTube user brotherBvideos put together a great comprehensive guide to the Echo Mountain and Mt. Lowe trails and what exactly the ruins are/were.