Google Maps StreetView

I seem to have made somewhat of a habit of mentioning the cool new Google Maps related things that I come across, and here's another that you may have already noticed: Google StreetView. Currently only for selected cities (SF area, Denver, Miami, Vegas, NYC), you can click on a street and get a pan-able panorama of what it would look like if you stuck your head out the sunroof of a car driving down that exact street in that exact spot. It's pretty ridiculous. There's a video of what it is and how to use it here, or you can check out the view from the top of Lombard Street for yourself. Drag to pan over to the left to see down Hyde towards Alcatraz.

The Dingus and Tr-octopus

This spring, I decided to sign up for a couple local "adult education" classes. It's always a good excuse to get out of the house on a weeknight and learn some fun new skills, so I signed up for a "mosaics" class and the Thai cooking class I mentioned earlier.

I knew it would be a bit of a stretch for me to take an art class - despite the wonderful artistic genes provided by my mother, aunt, and grandmother, I've never exactly been a natural talent. I recall one day in high school when my friend Steve and I presented our art projects to the class. The art teacher commented, "Steve, that is really wonderful work. You are very talented. Kate.... well, you try REAL hard!". Heh.

Anyway, at the first day of mosaic class, I was happy to see that the try-harders outnumbered the natural-talents about 9 to 2. We are quite the motley crew - we have gone through two emergency kits' worth of band-aids already. For my contribution, I have clipped my fingers with tile cutters 2 times, gotten one small piece of flying tile shrapnel in my eye and probably inhaled a fair amount of silicon grout dust. But no sacrifice is too great in the pursuit of true art!

And so, without further ado, I present to you the first two Kate Nichols originals. I call them the Dingus and Tr-octopus. Anyone need a really big drink coaster or two?

NL All-Star Ballot

Part II of my MLB All-Star Ballot:

1B: There are some great candidates here, with Derek Lee, Todd Helton, Adrian Gonzalez, and prince Fielder all performing quite well so far. I think given the Brewers' surge thus far and his impressive 12 HRs and .600 SLG, I'll give my vote to Prince Fielder. I wouldn't complain if you voted for Helton or Lee - some of those doubles of Lee's are going to start turning into homers soon. Unless something changes, Pujols and Howard shouldn't win this.

2B: Kelly Johnson of the Braves has been a pleasant surprise for Bobby Cox and is probably worth a look here, but Chase Utley beats him out.

3B: Another strong NL position with Chipper, Cabrera, ARam, and Wright. However, the Braves are playing well and Chipper beats these guys out in all the meaningful stats, and gets my vote.

SS: Wow with the way that Jose Reyes started the season I am surprised there's even some competition here, but look at what J.J. Hardy has done - it's pretty ridiculous, considering how much he struggled last year. Reyes has the speed (23 SBs) and OBP advantage, but Hardy has 12 HRs to Reyes's 2, and edges him in RBIs and SLG, and OPS. You can't go wrong with either one really, and lost in the shuffle is Hanley Ramirez (batting .345, but only 8 RBIs to go with 5 HRs), but I'm going to go with J.J. Hardy here.

C: Too bad Brian McCann lost some time to an injury. As it is, I think Russell Martin has to win here. McCann might be the clear choice by June, however.

OF: Hmmm... Well, Bonds, for one. Matt Holliday for two. Number three can be your choice of Dunn, Beltran, Griffey Jr, or Carlos Lee. I guess I'll go with Beltran, as I like centerfielders better. Honorable mentions to Aaron Rowand and Josh Hamilton.

All right, now it's up to you to point out where and why I'm wrong.

AL All-Star Ballot

While we're on the baseball theme, I'll run down the 2007 MLB All-Star ballot and make my case for my choices.

AL
1B - Papi. A little hesitation because he's not worth beans playing first, but the competition (Teixeira, Konerko, Giambi, Hafner, or Morneau) haven't really done anything to unseat him. And come on, his OPS is over 1.000.

2B - This is a little tougher, but you've got to go with BJ Upton over Kinsler here. Kinsler has an advantage in the power numbers (barely), but his AVG has dropped to .244 lately. And despite his 4:1 K/BB ratio, BJ is batting a pretty insane .345, with an OBP of .408 and an OPS in the Papi neighborhood at 1.018. He gets the vote.

3B - blah blah, A-Rod, blah. Deservedly so, though. And can anyone explain why Alex Gordon is on the ballot here? Ugh.

SS - Another tough one. Jeter will win, but the vote should (as of now) be between Carlos Guillen and Jhonny Peralta. Jeter falls behind these two in most offensive categories except AVG, and his less than mediocre defense thus far should take him out of consideration. I guess I'll give it to Guillen, considering Peralta's quite low AVG and tendency to K.

C - Posada is hitting .365/.422/.548? Wow. I don't like the guy, but I think that probably beats out Mauer and VMart so far this year. Although I wouldn't be surprised to see Mauer turn it up a notch and become the clear candidate here by July. Truth be told, I actually voted for VMart, because I really can't stand Posada.

OF - What? No Jack Cust on the ballot? Well, Vlad is a no-brainer this year. After that, I really like Torii Hunter's performance this year, hitting at a brisk .324/.354/.618 clip with 7 SBs and stellar defense in center to go with it. I think Magglio Ordonez is pretty deserving, although a lot of his big numbers this year are due to his .424 avg with runners in scoring position. Honorable mentions to Carl Crawford (5 HR, 10 SB) and Nick Swisher (.935 OPS). Please don't vote for Sammy.

NL ballot rundown coming soon, stay tuned. And click on the image above to vote yourself - up to 25 times!

Twins?

Does anyone else think that Dan Haren is going for the 1980s Bruce Sutter look this year?

When life gives you loquats....

When we rented our duplex, we knew it was almost perfect. The only thing that could have made it better would have been a massive orange tree in the back yard. Home-grown california oranges are absolutely amazing, tender, sweet, tart, and soo juicy. Alas, no citrus to be found.

However, about two months ago, one of the trees in our front yard started flowering. Flowers were followed by little fuzzy buds, which were followed by small green fruits, which have now turned into fuzzy orange fruits about the size of a kiwi. We didn't pay too much attention to the tree - I had never seen any fruits like these in the grocery or even a farmer's market, so I figured it was either inedible or not too tasty. But a couple days ago, a young guy knocked at our door and asked whether he could pick some of them. The tree is enormous, so of course we said yes - we asked what they were but he only knew the word for them in farsi. He did show us how to eat them - you peel the skin off and eat around the four big nut-like seeds in the middle. Delicious!! If we had to compare the flavor we would probably describe it as peach-like, but a little milder, juicier, and sweet as candy. Banjo even likes them! We looked it up on wikipedia and discovered that it is a loquat tree.

So now we're loquat-eating fools! Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert, they go with everything! We've seen 4-5 people picking them off the tree, too - some may be relatives of that first guy and some may just be loquat-loving passers by. I saw a squirrel running across the lawn with a ripe loquat in his mouth this morning, too. At any rate, the word has spread, and we may soon have to get out a ladder to get the higher, less accessible ones. Maybe we'll even take advantage of this bounty and make some loquat tarts, or jams, or loquat wine! If you've got a birthday coming up, watch out...

Free Monies!

After seeing that my savings account netted me $2.84 last year, I had been meaning to investigate other savings options that weren't so pitiful. I knew we wanted to keep some money liquid as a worst-case scenario backup (the stock market crashes and we both lose our jobs), but it's no fun to watch it languish while our investments are cruising along at 15% a year.

Anyway, I had heard good things about online savings accounts, which offer relatively high interest rates (higher than inflation, at least) and are completely liquid - you can pull your money out any time. So last week I looked into them and had decided to go with an ING orange savings account. Interest is 4.5% (higher than inflation, at least), and they are an FDIC insured bank with a good reputation.

Tom took a little convincing, but when I pointed out that an investment of $5,000 would earn roughly $225 a year while a 0.5% savings account earns a paltry $25, he came around.

At any rate, I'm glad I waited that extra week because it turns out that if you can find someone to refer you to ING, your new savings account gets a $25 bonus! And the person referring you gets $10, too! So I got a referral from a friend, and then sent a referral to Tom, and when the dust settled we had two new accounts and a $60 bonus!

So I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself right about now. Now we just have to decide what we should blow our newly-acquired riches on!

Greensburg, Kansas

I'm sure most if not all of you have heard about the F5 tornado that destroyed basically all of Greensburg, Kansas last week. There are some pretty amazing images of the town before and after the devastation that GoogleEarth has just released, via DigitalGlobe. Pretty amazing and sobering. It's kind of hard to believe anybody in the tornado's path survived looking at them. Hopefully they can recover and begin to rebuild with the few National Guard resources that aren't currently on the other side of the globe. Click on the pictures for the link.

Genius!

I will be making these post-haste. Stay tuned for an update! (Click the pickle for more details....)


***********Update 5-11-07********************

The pickles are pickling!

I know where you live...

Hopefully this isn't too NSA-esque and creepy, but I found Statisfy.net, a cool google maps mashup on another blog that I read, and thought I'd apply it to this site. Basically, it geographically maps out where the hits on a given website are coming from. It's pretty new, so there aren't a lot of features - as it is it will cycle through the last 10 visits, pausing briefly to show you where each was from. If you have a website that you would like to add it to, there is a link from the site. Here is the link to the Commentators custom Statisfy site: statisfy.net/commentators

Enjoy!