Shanan Delp

Volvo P1800 S

2012-01-23T10:53:00.001-08:00

Volvo P1800 S, originally uploaded by Auto Clasico.

Via nils.

Straight Down

2011-12-29T15:03:00.001-08:00

Straight Down, originally uploaded by shanan.

It's Bologna Biscuit Weather

2011-12-27T18:17:00.001-08:00

No doubt, originally uploaded by eric-m.

Blue Light

2011-12-21T15:58:00.001-08:00

Blue Light, originally uploaded by sf eyes.

Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands

2011-12-06T18:44:00.000-08:00

From Blonde on Blonde, of course:

With your mercury mouth in the missionary times,
And your eyes like smoke and your prayers like rhymes,
And your silver cross, and your voice like chimes,
Oh, who among them do they think could bury you?
With your pockets well protected at last,
And your streetcar visions which you place on the grass,
And your flesh like silk, and your face like glass,
Who among them do they think could carry you?
Sad-eyed lady of the lowlands,
Where the sad-eyed prophet says that no man comes,
My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums,
Should I leave them by your gate,
Or, sad-eyed lady, should I wait?

With your sheets like metal and your belt like lace,
And your deck of cards missing the jack and the ace,
And your basement clothes and your hollow face,
Who among them can think he could outguess you?
With your silhouette when the sunlight dims
Into your eyes where the moonlight swims,
And your match-book songs and your gypsy hymns,
Who among them would try to impress you?
Sad-eyed lady of the lowlands,
Where the sad-eyed prophet says that no man comes,
My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums,
Should I leave them by your gate,
Or, sad-eyed lady, should I wait?

The kings of Tyrus with their convict list
Are waiting in line for their geranium kiss,
And you wouldn't know it would happen like this,
But who among them really wants just to kiss you?
With your childhood flames on your midnight rug,
And your Spanish manners and your mother's drugs,
And your cowboy mouth and your curfew plugs,
Who among them do you think could resist you?
Sad-eyed lady of the lowlands,
Where the sad-eyed prophet says that no man comes,
My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums,
Should I leave them by your gate,
Or, sad-eyed lady, should I wait?

Oh, the farmers and the businessmen, they all did decide
To show you the dead angels that they used to hide.
But why did they pick you to sympathize with their side?
Oh, how could they ever mistake you?
They wished you'd accepted the blame for the farm,
But with the sea at your feet and the phony false alarm,
And with the child of a hoodlum wrapped up in your arms,
How could they ever, ever persuade you?
Sad-eyed lady of the lowlands,
Where the sad-eyed prophet says that no man comes,
My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums,
Should I leave them by your gate,
Or, sad-eyed lady, should I wait?

With your sheet-metal memory of Cannery Row,
And your magazine-husband who one day just had to go,
And your gentleness now, which you just can't help but show,
Who among them do you think would employ you?
Now you stand with your thief, you're on his parole
With your holy medallion which your fingertips fold,
And your saintlike face and your ghostlike soul,
Oh, who among them do you think could destroy you
Sad-eyed lady of the lowlands,
Where the sad-eyed prophet says that no man comes,
My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums,
Should I leave them by your gate,
Or, sad-eyed lady, should I wait?

2:20 PST, One Year Ago

2011-11-28T17:49:00.001-08:00

2:20 PST, originally uploaded by shanan.

Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T10:51:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving, or Thanksgiving Day, is a holiday celebrated in the United States on the fourth Thursday in November. It has officially been an annual tradition since 1863, when during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of thanksgiving to be celebrated on Thursday, November 26.

In the middle of the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln, prompted by a series of editorials written by Sarah Josepha Hale,[1] proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day, to be celebrated on the final Thursday in November 1863:

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years, with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people.

I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.

And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.

via Wikipedia

Postcard View

2011-11-13T08:35:00.001-08:00

..., originally uploaded by shanan.

As much as I'm annoyed by the worst of the San Francisco tourist circuit, like Fisherman's Wharf, I don't mind the scene at Alamo Square.

This scene is just up the hill from my house, and it has its fair share of double decker buses and german camera-philes painstakingly shooting from their tripods.

To me, it's just where I walk my dog, and how I get to the market.

Good Luck Dim Sum.

2011-10-30T18:35:00.001-07:00

Good Luck Dim Sum., originally uploaded by shanan.

Moving Beyond Flickr

2011-10-28T18:01:00.000-07:00

This post seeks to track the arc of my love affair with Flickr as a community project and job, and to trace some reasons for why it still hurts me to ponder every now and then. It's an attempt to be fair, avoid the easy diagnosis, and even offer some reflection. Gosh it's long. And no one ever reads long things any more.

Flickr was the poster child for Social Media back in 2005. Like, literally

Flickr loves you.
This emergent, community focused website was changing the way that people used the internet, explored ideas, met people and expressed creativity. It was not merely a photo site, it was a way of connecting with other people and their ideas, politely for the most part. I think I first heard some guy named Jeremy Zawodny talk about how it was a good way to host photos for blogs, which was a problem back in the day.

And it was indeed rooted in photos. After long struggling to become interested in photography, Flickr was the community where I was able to get feedback, find inspiration and become a more capable photographer. Here's a early photo from me, and here's one a bit later in my time. I think I discovered lighting and framing along the way, along with this desire to share my perspective with other people-- often complete strangers.

The name and concept behind the photostream evoked commitment to a new sort of personal storytelling. Their robust and liberal API suggested a new type of business. Don't tell me that Apple, with their new iOS photostream and Twitter with their on-again, off-again API openness, were there first.

And in 2007 I was going to go work there. I had been introduced to Kakul Srivastava who was by then acting-GM of the place, and we had these informal interviews where I espoused my vision for Flickr as a sort new-fangled media company. The concept that people could publicly share their views of the world, contribute to some common good and hopefully make a little money along the way with advertising and licensing. My ideas were rough, but I had a tremendous passion for the Flickr experience, the staff and the potential.

Video on Flickr

"Flickr is launching video.... soon." That was the joke going around the industry when I started, and I was lucky enough to be thrown into the deep end of this project. If you remember back to this time, people really cared about what Flickr was doing, and its central role in the emergent social media universe. Facebook was still a youth-service in 2008, and Twitter hadn't yet gone mainstream. Myspace was crass and commerical.

Oh my god.. this Video team was the best team I had ever worked with: Cal Henderson, Dunstan Orchard, Heather Champ, George Oates, Eric Costello, John Allspaw, Tara Kirchner. I was humbled, and mostly just prodded things toward launch.

The team, pretty much knew what they wanted video on Flickr to be-- they were time limited long photos. We didn't torture ourselves over the too much of the big picture, but did struggle with the Yahoo-supplied video infrastructure. After a few stops and starts, the Yahoo folks in Dallas and Sunnyvale came through, and Flickr video launched in March 2008. It was big news, and controversial in the community. So exciting!

Mobile at Flickr is Cursed
A Few of us from that Video team-- Eric, Dunstan, me plus Paul Hammond and Ross Harmes-- somehow stumbled onto thinking about Mobile immediately after that. Flickr leaders had recently secured a slightly longer leash for our team to develop our own mobile experience. Previously, the vaunted "connected life" division of Yahoo put their own homogenous sheen on things like integrated flickr experiences on Yahoo Go phones, etc. Flickr had an old WAP mobile site and that was it.

Flickr's future was in mobile, some of us believed way back then. So for a brief window, we were going to develop a superb HTML5 experience, then move on to an already-overdue iphone app, then, then.

Then we were told we had a budget to hire a iPhone developer. Then not. Then we were told that the in-house team at Yahoo! sunnyvale would develop our app to our specification. Then I remember yelling more than I have ever yelled at work before, when a Yahoo designer told me and Dunstan how we were wrong about how Flickr should work on mobile phones. The utterly mediocre, still mediocre Flickr iphone app is the result.

And Flickr has largely handicapped in mobile ever since. They launched a Windows phone app last year (I don't think anyone uses windows phones, but who knows), and launched a quite nice Flickr+Instagram experience for android a few weeks ago. They did some iPad optimization, but I would not classify them as iPad leaders.

If I had to name one massive strategic miscalculation in the modern Flickr era, it would be sitting out while consumers realized that their phone was their camera.

Flickr and Yahoo! Leaders
Surely Yahoo has much blame to bear for not knowing what to do with this once-marvelous asset. There was once a really exciting strategy in the Yahoo Search business, where Flickr once resided, about how the company would use community-data and patterns to fashion an entirely new version of search. That's why they bough delicious and upcoming. But this strategy never materialized, and the company then treated Flickr as their photo service (loss leadership), advertising property (plastering poorly targeted network ads on every page of the site), all the while trying to subsume it into a Yahoo social networking strategy that no one believed would work. And they had that arrogant centralized mobile organization. They probably also starved Flickr of resources because they didn't understand what it could have been.

I didn't really get to work much with Stewart. And the rest, I'm too close to comment too much on Flickr leadership post-Butterfield. They had a lot of stress, a fair amount of internal discord, some turnover, multiple masters and humongous shoes to fill. What they didn't do (what WE didn't do) was succeed in establishing the path to the strategic future.

We did not develop a connection for members between the contacts/photostream-- centerpiece of the Flickr experience-- and the interesting new views that the team developed: maps, people, galleries, search.

What Could Have Been
I sat in a lot of rooms in San Francisco and Sunnyvale telling anyone who would listen that Flickr *was* Yahoo's social network. Yahoo! 360, Yahoo Mash, Yahoo Mosh, Yahoo Profiles were not the future, the Future was Flickr. This is not my original idea, but one that a lot of the people at Flickr believed deep into their bones. Before Facebook and Twitter were big, Flickr had a vibrant community, social "graph," streams of compelling content, advertiser sexiness, brilliant technologists.

There was a way, we mused, where you took those special building blocks, added new capabilities beyond photos, injected a community-media mindset, brought in your most brilliant advertising strategists and made a big go of a new type of social media experience. It was risky, it was a longshot, but it leveraged Flickr in a way that respected Flickr's uniqueness as the Eyes of the World. I could see this product, and so could a few other folks.

I Quit

Was pushed out. Couldn't work with the people was being asked to work with. Put in an uncomfortable position. Certainly contributed to alienation with these folks though a sometimes pushy desire to get things done. Was occasionally uncouth. Hurt to leave more than could have predicted. Still hurts, obviously.

Flickr Today

I still know a handful of folks over there at FlickrHQ, and at least the ones I know personally all care about the institution and its future. But I sense in my own photostream, and the ones of my friends that the early, exciting vibrancy of seeing what was happening on Flickr has largely moved elsewhere online. That anticipation of what had come in, what people were commenting about, what crazy tags you might stumble across, that's not there anymore for me. That's on Twitter, or Instagram, or someplace else.

I made a graph yesterday which annoyed some people -- it sought to answer my suspicion that some of the newer staffers that have joined Flickr don't use it much. At least not as the eyes of the world, to post public photos for others to see and discover. I used a truly oversimplifed metric to try and measure what I sensed about the changing mission. Here it is, don't read too much into it.

I see incremental things coming out of Flickr. A co-slideshow viewing interface. A new lightbox. An android app. Interesting ideas about geo-fencing. All good things, but not collectively moving the service into a platform of the future. I sense that the team needs to have the fear of god put in them from a profoundly strong new technical leader. That's not Yahoo. But I see that the team cares. I know that many of them love Flickr.

Have I mentioned that Yahoo appears to be for sale? That some private equity dudes might see some special spark coming from all that Flickr was and is? Do I think that Flickr has a clear path back to centrality in online identity, no probably not. But I do like to dream that maybe just maybe some strong leadership at some company in the future might make something special out of it again.

I guess that's why it still hurts.

Flickr: Mea Culpa

2011-10-28T08:31:00.000-07:00

I'm going go be writing a blog post this weekend about why I failed flickr when I worked there, and perhaps to put some semblance of structure about why Flickr hurts me in the gut every few months. When I worked there I believed in the mission deeper than I have ever believed in a job, and to be gone still hurts every now and then.

Is there a way to write an analysis of a company that you worked at without being mean to those still working there? Without being self-serving? Without just throwing blame around to the parent company? I'm gonna see.

In thinking about Flickr this week, I made a graph of photos uploaded/flickr employee. It provoked! It was taken personally, rightly, by flickr staff. Heather Champ said it was an asshole move. For this I apologize, and have taken this photo down. Grab me a beer and I'll tell you what I was trying to do.

More to come.

Ed Lee, MC Hammer, Brian Wilson and the Joke is on Us

2011-10-25T17:52:00.000-07:00

Go ahead, watch this video

By watching it, you're giving a deep pocketed group of poltical fundraisers social media cred. They've created something "hip" and ironic, and able to be shared across the internet. Give them the views and shares.

Now ask yourself, whether you're a San Francisco resident or not, why wouldn't you vote for Ed Lee. I mean, there's nothing in this video (or his campaign) to suggest who this politician is, but who cares. He's hip.

I'm not even sure where MC Hammer lives, but I'm pretty sure that it's not San Francisco. And while I have not known will.i.am to be active in San Francisco politics, I probably oughtta give him the benefit of the doubt. Right?

Arguably, it doesn't matter. The video is a distraction from the fact that Ed Lee is heading towards a massive victory on election day. Notes the Bay Citizen:

Lee’s dominance shows how San Francisco, despite its reputation as the liberal poster child of American politics, remains in the grip of a classic political establishment that has overwhelming influence in elections and policy battles. The mayor’s ascent in the polls has been helped along by independent groups — largely associated with the city’s political machine — that can raise unlimited amounts of money but are prohibited from coordinating their activities with Lee’s official campaign.

Two reviews I read in the New York Times Today

2011-10-01T18:51:00.000-07:00

Is there anything as nice as taking a leisurely time on Saturday getting through the New York Times? Some would say that doing this on Sunday is at least as good, but I digress...

Today I happened across two reviews that made me want to learn more about both of these things.

1) A review of Voyage of the Rose City:

John Moynihan, who during the summer of his junior year at Wesleyan University decided to join the merchant marine and spent four months crossing the equator on an oil supertanker called the Rose City. His excellent account of that trip, “The Voyage of the Rose City,” is packed tight with cigarettes (and other things you can light with a match).

Every book’s publication has a story behind it, this one more so than most. John Moynihan, who died in 2004, was the son of New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who as a young man had been in the Navy and worked on the New York City docks. The senator worried about what his son might be in for, and argued against his going. The author’s mother, Elizabeth Moynihan, however, was an ardent sailor who, as she writes in this book’s preface, “immediately set about helping him.”

And 2) a review of Prohibition, the new Ken Burns doc that starts airing on Sunday.

You can hear history talking directly to the Americans of 2011 all through “Prohibition,” an absorbing five-and-a-half-hour documentary by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick that runs for three nights, beginning on Sunday on PBS stations. Especially now, the story of America’s disastrous experiment with banning alcoholic beverages seems made for Santayana’s phrase about learning from the past or being condemned to repeat it.

...Extremism that sabotages itself by refusing to compromise. Hmm; sounds like tomorrow’s headlines.

Bay Area All Stars

2011-09-25T11:30:00.000-07:00

Who says BART and SF MUNI aren't the best public transportation systems in the world?

Tip to Streetsblog SF.

Went here for lunch

2011-09-22T14:16:00.001-07:00

Late Night Bar, originally uploaded by shanan.

I love this old bar in NYC.

Mike Mullen is a Good Man

2011-09-13T20:48:00.000-07:00

It's clear that Jon Stewart admires the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Mike Mullen

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog

The Daily Show on Facebook

..

2011-09-05T21:53:00.001-07:00

.., originally uploaded by shanan.

Much Noted, Old S.F. is the Real thing

2011-09-04T17:46:00.000-07:00

Old photos on a map, it does not get more simple than that. Except until Old S.F. launched a few weeks ago to much fanfare among people who like such things, all these great photos were mixed up around the web.

Dig around, you'll happen across things that you didn't know you were curious about. Here's the old Portsmouth Square before the courts building was destroyed in 1906, and before the city built that tragic Chinatown parking garage:

Crescent: on how to regard an old jazz album

2011-08-20T10:57:00.000-07:00

If I had to put a time band around my years of Jazz fandom, I would pick 1991 through let's say 1999. After that, I spent a lot of time listening to Bob Dylan, and then just diversified.

But in 1991 I still remember buying a couple of contemporary Wynton Marsalis albums. He started one of his ambitous yet relatively soulless compendiums, this one being a 3 part album called Soul Gestures in Southern Blue. I liked it, and then bought some Miles Davis. I found some Coltrane.

Then came my years at the best radio station run by a university in Santa Cruz, KZSC. I spent 2 years there hosting an oft-moved show called the Jazz Hour. To a 3 hour sountrack of Jazz I tried to be funny and interview people of the world. And I discovered Freddie Hubbard.

Jazz was sort of like that, you kept stepping from one quartet to the next, usually following the knockout soloists. Kind of Blue is the best jazz album of all time, and look at the amazing folks who are playing on it.

Miles Davis – trumpet, band leader
Julian "Cannonball" Adderley – alto saxophone, except on "Blue in Green"
Paul Chambers – double bass
Jimmy Cobb – drums
John Coltrane – tenor saxophone
Bill Evans – piano (except "Freddie Freeloader") liner notes
Wynton Kelly – piano on "Freddie Freeloader"

So I often find myself pulling out and old album that I discovered 10-15 years ago and feel as though I'm catching up with someone I've known for a long time. This morning that's Crescent.

According to Wikipedia:

Crescent is a 1964 studio album by jazz musician John Coltrane, released by Impulse! as A-66. It features his jazz quartet group of McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones playing all original Coltrane compositions, with the leader playing tenor saxophone exclusively. It is commonly regarded as the saxophonist's darkest album. Only the brief, infectious medium-up "Bessie's Blues", and a samba-tinged groove in the midsection of the otherwise sedate "Wise One", break the sombre mood.

This tasty chicken is being processed

2011-08-17T14:49:00.001-07:00

This tasty chicken is being processed, originally uploaded by Laughing Squid.

MAS*H

2011-08-08T21:29:00.001-07:00

Work

2011-07-31T11:49:00.000-07:00

Are you working?
What kind of work do you do?

Uhh...
("Boy, what is it you want to do when you grow up?")

Aiyyo I'm gonna be on ti-dop, that's all my eyes can see
Victory is mine, yeah surprisingly
I've been laying, waiting for your next mistake
I put in work, and watch my status escalate

Now I'ma start collectin props, connectin plots
networkin like a conference, cause the nonsense is yet to stop
Jakes shake me down, haters wanna take me down
Break me down, CLAP all they heard was the sound
Yo I scoped it out, I took your weak dream and choked it out
Your bitch don't really got no ass, she just poked it out
on the deelow, I'm sayin, you versus me though?
We can do this shit right here, in front of your people
See time is money kid, and BS walks
And to me, it's funny kid when you meet heads talk
I see Feds stalk, they wanna dig up the dirt
Son is it me they hawk, cause I be puttin in work Son?

Aiyyo I'm gonna be on ti-dop, that's all my eyes can see
Victory is mine, yeah surprisingly
I've been laying, waiting for your next mistake
I put in work, and watch my status escalate

You cornballs get stonewalled, blackballed I own y'all
The veteran, runnin my plan I'm the better man
Crazy raw, doin my job like the mob
Blazin y'all, and disappearin in the fog
or a mist, and chicks can't resist what I kick
They be beggin for attention or some more of the dillznick
Word up baby, someone may have to get hurt up baby
Shit is mad shady, but I got to get the gravy
Platinum respect like the force of a tech
keep you hittin the deck, feelin heat in your chest
Bangin your thoughts with the hot onslaught
A kid got shot on the spot for goin where he should not
Viciously, I make history, instantly
Those other lame ass loser ass niggaz, they can't fuck with me
I'm doin my thing now, to lamp later on
Paid in the shade, with some fly gators on
But now I'm grimy as they get, mud on my pants and shirt
I bet you niggaz out here know, I be puttin in work

Aiyyo I'm gonna be on ti-dop, that's all my eyes can see
Victory is mine, yeah surprisingly
I've been laying, waiting for your next mistake
I put in work, and watch my status escalate

5DMY725

2011-07-30T09:09:00.001-07:00

5DMY725, originally uploaded by shanan.

The New Malaise

2011-07-27T07:15:00.000-07:00

The malaise obviously has several causes, some of which are beyond our control. One major cause, however, is entirely our doing. We do not spend enough time focusing on our actual economic problems.

We are too often occupied with distractions, rather than trying to answer a simple question: What works? What economic policies have succeeded before and are most likely to lead to the best life for the largest number of people? Instead, we’ve effectively decided that because the United States is the richest, most successful country in the world, it is guaranteed to remain so.

David Leonhardt - Lessons from the Malaise - NYT

What We Aren't Talking About in the Debt Debate

2011-07-24T19:08:00.001-07:00

Tavis Smiley has it right.