Reason 927 why my missus is awesome

From my wife’s blog, Dancing Hula in the Sunset:

OK, so 927th place out of 1086 is pretty close to coming in last but I still did it. I climbed 1197 steps in 27 minutes, 10 seconds.
I was super sweaty and stank a little but I did something I was only “pretty sure” I could do.

Read more here.

Collected tweets about San Francisco’s Central Subway

On March 17 I tweeted from a forum about San Francisco’s Central Subway at the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association. But all my tweets about the meeting subsequently disappeared from Twitter. A couple of people (including the excellent Transbay Blog) have asked me to repost the tweets, so here they are, with the misspellings and fat-thumb typing cleaned up. Thank goodness for the fact that I tweeted by text message, since my phone retains sent messages.

12:34 p.m. At SPUR forum on San Francisco’s Central Subway: John Funghi of SFMTA and SPUR’s Steve Tabor.

12:37 50 people not counting staff at SPUR’s Central Subway talk.

12:53 Funghi sez Central Subway designed so it could accommodate surface travel to Fisherman’s Wharf.

12:56 The proposed temp traffic realignment to extract Central Subway boring machine looks like it will be a puzzler for area near WashBag …

12:58 … But Funghi sez disruption at that triangular park across from WashBag will be only about 18 weeks.

1:08 SPUR’s Steve Tabor: “I have grave doubts” the Geary rapid buses could ever go farther downtown than Laguna.

1:10 Tabor sez SF is the densest population and destination center in the nation not already served by a Metro-style system.

1:13 Tabor explaining possible expansion of Central Subway all the way to Doyle Drive. Pie in the sky?

1:14 Wait, that pie is higher in the sky: Central Subway to Golden Gate Bridge?

1:17 Another Central Subway option could send line toward Presidio but route a spur line off to Fisherman’s Wharf.

1:18 Tabor: Success of Central Subway hinges on ability to accommodate three-car trains.

1:23 Funghi: $1bln / mile is as cheap as Central Subway can get.

1:30 Though Tabor sez three-car trains needed, Funghi says two cars are where Muni is headed. In part because stations planned for two cars only.

Regarding the 1:23 and 1:30 tweets, I think they bear some clarification.

When Funghi said that $1 billion per mile is as cheap as the Central Subway can get, he meant that’s as cheap as the city can do it by bore tunneling instead of cut-and-cover tunnel construction. He explained that the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency went with bore tunneling because of concerns about the potential social and economic disruption that might be caused by a lengthy process of tearing up city streets.

About the disparity between Tabor’s three-car statement and Funghi’s caution that that isn’t what Muni’s going to do, Funghi said that Muni thinks it can make up for the reduced capacity by running trains more frequently. Besides, he said, it costs more time and money to have two drivers couple and uncouple three-car trains than to just run more trains. Make up your own mind about whether you buy that explanation.

To view a PDF of Funghi’s slide presentation at the SPUR forum, click here.

Fancy Food Show, here I come

I’m spending the day at the Fancy Food Show at San Francisco’s Moscone Center. Look for short posts from the show today, plus tweets at http://twitter.com/tomprete.

Wireless connections are a bit spotty in Moscone Center and no cameras are allowed in the show, but I’ll post what I can, when I can.

Mobile gadget test

This post is just a test of the wordpress.com gadget from my mobile phone. I’m lying in my backyard hammock with my daughter, trying to not think about how strange the balmy weather is for January.

How did you get here? Week of Friday, Oct. 3

I don’t know what was more fun this week, watching the Palin-Biden debate on TV or watching MC Hammer at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in Golden Gate Park. In any case, both events proved quite popular among visitors to PretePress. I’m sure that if I had included that photo of a woman dressed as a cow that’s going around, it would have beat everything.

Some of the search terms that brought people to my blog this week, in no particular order (remember that WordPress truncates some terms when compiling its lists):

• weird stuff found in the bay after hurri
• galveston pictures – fish in fence
• bay bridge tanker oil spill san francisc
• anti-palin rally burlingame
• elitada
• carmen chu
• vice presedential debate grading
• newspaper headline “bastards” for 9/11
• http://pretepress.wordpress.com
• palin biden debate
• nucular
• cnn debate audience response graph meter
• old fashion gas stations
• animals covered in oil
• dave burgin
• oil spill photos of cosco busan
• tom prete
• is stuart hanlon a good attorney in san
• na lei hulu i ka wekiu
• i hate critical mass

Elitada News stole my content

I know I’m not the only blogger whose content has been stolen and reprinted in its entirety elsewhere without payment or acknowledgment of ownership, so I won’t whine on forever about this — but I do want to say something for the record.

Please don’t visit the site (no reason to reward thievery with page views), but this morning I found that my post analyzing the first McCain-Obama debate reprinted on www(dot)elitada(dot)com/news/ — every word of it. The only indication that they got the content from me was a tiny link to my original post at the bottom of the page, with the permalink concealed. This isn’t an excerpt or a blogroll we’re talking about, it’s a clear violation of U.S. and international copyright laws.

Furthermore, the site seems to have a dummy comment form designed to prevent feedback. The form looks normal, but trying to submit a comment results in an error message that the commenter didn’t fill out the email address field — which doesn’t exist on the form.

The content presented at this site seems to be almost entirely stolen from other sources and reprinted without acknowledgment, so I’m not the only one with this issue.

How did you get here? Week of Friday, Sept. 26

My post about the fish stuck in a chain-link fence after Hurricane Ike was still the most popular post this week, but other popular pieces included one about Sarah Palin’s witch-proofing procedure and one about a party for local bloggers thrown by KPIX-TV’s blog about blogs, Eye on Blogs.

Some of the search terms that brought people to PretePress this week:

• fish stuck in fence (and variations)
• biggest rally in alaska’s history – oppo
• biggest rally in alaska opposing palin
• rush on the anti palin rally september
• palin witch blessing
• palin reverend blessing olbermann
• oil spill animals
• california adopts budget
• seal beach rock crab
• san francisco public space hidden
• robert mccarthy
• robert j. mccarthy sf
• number 317 (Um, OK.)
• sf events calendar polit*
• san francisco examiner september 11th
• “david burgin” 2008 editor
• california politics by county
• san francisco mccain obama debate 6 p.m.
• watch debate sunset san francisco

Fun at the Eye on Blogs party

So I went to the party thrown by Eye on Blogs last night not knowing what to expect, but I ended up having a good time and meeting some good people with interesting blogs.

First mention, of course (and many thanks for the party), goes to Brittney Gilbert herself, author of the Eye on Blogs blog at KPIX-TV/CBS5. I didn’t get to talk with Brittney for long, though, because the effusive and charming Beth Spotswood of (among other things) I’ll Flip You. Flip You for Real showed up and stole the show.

I know I’m going to forget someone, so apologies in advance, but I also had a great time talking with Kathryn Hill of Kosmonaut, Johnny and Shannon from funcheapSF, Janice from Sunset Style (nice to meet another blogger from the Sandy Quarter of San Francisco), Chris of Spot-ON and Becca of Bullpen Baker. Links to their blogs are below.

Some hastily-snapped pics from my phone:

P.S.: Only one sort-of complaint. As an old-time journo by temperament, I’ve always thought that three of the ugliest words in the English language are “no host bar,” so I was pleased to see Eye on Blogs spring for the beer and wine. But I still was a bit disappointed not to be able to get a gin and tonic, which is the perfect business-party drink because you can easily swap it for just carbonated water while everybody else’s tongues are getting looser and looser. Ah, well, free Anchor Steam and food — I think I can take the punishment.

Resources:

Eye on Blogs

funcheapSF

Sunset Style

Kosmonaut

Spot–ON

Bullpen Baker

How did you get here? Week of Friday, Sept. 19

If you want to know how people found PretePress this week, you need to know only three words:

• fish
• fence
• Ike

I was looking through photos of the aftermath of Hurricane Ike on Tuesday and found a picture like nothing I’ve ever seen, showing two fish stuck in a chain-link fence as if it were a fishing net. It appeared as if the fish were carried along by Hurricane Ike floodwaters, got stuck in the fence and were left behind when the waters receded. It was a photo from the Associated Press (reproduced in conformance with fair-use practices), but there wasn’t much information in the AP caption. I thought it was interesting, so I posted a tiny thumbnail of it, with just a few words of commentary — not really a serious post, just an off-topic one-off. Much to my surprise, that little one-off post has brought hundreds of people to PretePress every day since.

I won’t bore you with all the variations, but by far the most popular search terms by which people found PretePress this week were like these:

• fish stuck fence hurricane ike
• fish fence ike
• hurricane ike fish stuck fence

Some of the other search terms people used, in no particular order:

• alaska rally opposing palin
• biggest rally in alaska’s history – oppo
• sarah palin political successes and fail
• brt in san francisco
• bob mccarthy san francisco
• dead birds
• oil birds
• union bug
• toktumi
• san francisco street sunset district
• the hurried life of journalist (Amen, brother or sister)
• examiner bastards
• sara palin/dolores umbridge
• what can people realize after looking up (My favorite for the week)

P.S.: I know this is a couple of days late, but I had a big editing job this week and didn’t have time to update until now.

Top 69 reasons why blogging is stupid!

Ok, blogging isn’t actually stupid. In fact, I like it a lot. But sometimes it really chaps my hide.

On Tuesday, Sept. 16, I used “Press This” — the new instant-post feature on WordPress — for the first time, to post a tiny little picture of two fish and chain link fence, along with a total of 80 words. That post turned out to be my all-time most popular post by a long shot — popular enough that it earned the 69th position on WordPress’ “Blogs of the Day” top 100 posts for that day.

Blogs of the Day for Sept. 16, 2008: wordpress_pretepress_topposts_091608

Now, I don’t have any problem with a massive surge in the popularity of my blog. But what gets me is that I can spend what little time I have (after changing diapers and meeting freelance deadlines) composing a thoughtful analysis of one of the major landmarks in the current U.S. political landscape (even if it turns out later than I was wrong about some of it), and do only a fraction of the hits I get from posting a thumbnail photo of dead fish — although it was nice to see my blog on television. Something is wrong, either with the people who read blogs or with the way I write the posts I think are actually important. I’m inclined to think it’s a little of both, but since I’m in a better position to amend the latter I’ll turn my attention there.

Thus endeth the rant.