I RIDE FOR LIVESTRONG by Purpose in the NY Times Media Decoder Blog!
I was in charge of the music and audio and also worked on animation and visual/interaction design.

Stuart Elliot reports:

A new agency whose name, Purpose, signals the kind of campaigns it hopes to produce is creating for Livestrong, the Lance Armstrong initiative that fights cancer, a virtual version of an annual bicycle race.

The effort is in the form of a game called I Ride for Livestrong. The online race began on Wednesday and continues through May 23, which is the end date for the actual race it mirrors, the 2010 Amgen Tour of California.

Next course was Ash-e joe, a thick soup with lentils, black eyed peas and mixed greens, topped with yogurt and fried onions.  Healthy, hearty, and delicious.  The soup could easily be a meal in itself and is perfect for a cold day rainy day like the day we visited.

Then I had some tongue sandwich.  I love tongue for its chewy, meaty texture, and go for it every time I get Japanese or Korean BBQ.  The tongue at Attari was different though.  It was almost falling-apart tender, like the best pot roast or pastrami.  The sandwich itself reminded me a bit of banh mi in the best possible way.

In summary, Attari has generous portions, reasonable prices and an authentic Persian experience in LA.  Definitely check it out.  I heard that they have brain sandwiches there too, try it if you are feeling adventurous.  My dining companions weren’t ready to deal with that when I went.

Attari on Yelp
Review of Attari in the NYTimes

I checked out Kogi, the much-hyped Los Angeles Korean BBQ Taco truck when I was in town visiting the family last week.  We followed them on Twitter and drove out to Encino to wait in line for the Korean/Mexican fusion food cart.  They have multiple trucks that park at different locations in LA on different days.  All I have to say about the experience is “Yes!”

Yes, the place has a lot of hype, but the food was great.

Yes, it’s fusion, but it’s fusion that just works.

Yes, the lines are long, so get there early.

Yes, the truck was late, stuck in traffic on the 405, but this is LA…

Yes, it’s cheap. Two bucks for a taco and five for a quesadilla.

I tried the tofu and spicy pork tacos and the kimchi quesadilla.  The tofu was flavorful with Korean marinade and seared to make it taste “meaty” rather than gelatinous.  Worth trying even if you are a total carnivore.  The spicy pork was great too: spicy, sweet, meaty, and fatty.  I have to admit this one was an easy sell for me.  When I go to Korean BBQ, I prefer the pork belly to the usual beef dishes like kalbi and bulkogi.  The quesadilla was amazing too.  The umami that comes out of the ménage à trois of kimchi, sesame, and melted cheese is divine.

Kogi Official Website
Kogi on Twitter
Kogi on Yelp

More NYE photos on Flickr.

Here are audio recordings I made of the speakers from last night’s ccSalon SF at PariSoMa.  Right click or control-click on the speakers’ names to download the MP3s.

• Chris DiBona, Open Source Program Manager for Google, Inc.
• Evan Prodromou, co-Founder of WikiTravel and founder of Identi.ca
• Nathan Yergler, Creative Commons’ Chief Technology Officer

More photos on Flickr.

Last night on No Reservations, Anthony Bourdain visited San Francisco.  One of the places he checked out was the Pirate Cat Radio Café in the Mission District, (in)famous for their Maple Bacon Latte ($5).  Joe, Michelle, and I went after work to check it out for ourselves.

The lowdown:

Milk, maple syrup, and concentrated bacon grease.

Mix and foam the previous ingredients together.

Double shot of espresso.

Top with crunchy chewy powdered bacon bits.

Sweet porky caffeinated goodness.  And pure evil.

The maple bacon latte came with a vegan chocolate truffle, which was covered in a scary, unidentifiable pink powder.  Sort of guilding the lily if I do say so myself.  Perhaps a shot of whiskey in the concoction would have been a better bet.  As Bourdain once said, “vegans are the Hezbollah-like splinter faction of vegetarians.”  Pink powder is a weapon of mass destruction.  But I digress.

Let me just say for the record that I am rabidly pro-pork fat in the most un-kosher/un-halal way possible.  After all, I hail from the pig-loving Pacific island of Taiwan, where a common comfort food from simpler times is a steaming bowl of rice mixed with lard and soy sauce.  Lard runs through my veins.  Liquid pork fat is the lipid love in my beloved Japanese tonkotsu ramen.  Pork and maple syrup is certainly not without precedent; they are all over the pork and maple combo up in Québec.

Back to the matter at hand. The maple bacon latte tasted alright at first.  The mouth-feel was definitely creamier and richer than a normal latte because of the bacon fat.  But as the drink cooled, the bacon grease started to separate and congeal a bit, feeling a bit heavy.

But that part was ok.  My biggest issue was with the smell.  The porky, smokiness smell was more off-putting than the presence of bacon grease in my coffee.  If anything, the bold flavors the maple and the bacon overshadowed the coffee.  More astringent bitterness from the coffee would have balanced some of the cloying sweetness and lipid overload.

My palate was craving something.  Perhaps a bit more saltiness to bring out the flavors.  Or some freshly ground pepper (or something spicy) to tie together the sweetness of the maple with the richness of the bacon.  Or maybe a shot of whiskey to help it all go down.

Needless to say, none of us could finish our drinks, but I guess that’s hardly the point.  If reading Tony’s books and watching his show have taught me anything, it is to go with the flow and take in the local attitude and charm.

I may have enjoyed it more if the weather were colder, or if I were hung over or something.  Hanger helper or breakfast of champions perhaps.  Gut bomb, for sure. But definitely not an ideal after-work-on-a-Tuesday kind of beverage.  But that’s my bad.  We probably should have went for beer (or whiskey) somewhere.

Definitely a worthwhile once-in-a-lifetime experience.  I thought I was going to have a heart attack walking up the hill on my way home.  For sure, there are worse ways to die, but alas, I live to tell the tale.  Despite eating some pineapple to clear my palate, I can still smell swine on my breath three hours later.  Thanks for the thrills Tony!  The LOLs are on us.

T minus 3 days until NYC.

See also: Pirate Cat Radio Café review on UrbanDaddy

Textbooks have not gone the way of the scroll yet, but many educators say that it will not be long before they are replaced by digital versions — or supplanted altogether by lessons assembled from the wealth of free courseware, educational games, videos and projects on the Web.

[...]

In California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger this summer announced an initiative that would replace some high school science and math texts with free, “open source” digital versions.

With California in dire straits, the governor hopes free textbooks could save hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Among the article’s interviewees is Neeru Khosla, co-founder of the non-profit group CK-12 Foundation, which develops “flexbooks” that can be adapted to state educational standards.  (Khosla has also been featured on OpenEd and on the Creative Commons blog.) Khosla explains the virtues of the flexbooks:

You can use them online, you can download them onto a disk, you can print them, you can customize them, you can embed video. When people get over the mind-set issue, they’ll see that there’s no reason to pay $100 a pop for a textbook, when you can have the content you want free.

The article uses terms like “digital textbooks,” “free courseware,” “open source,” and “open-content,” but what exactly do these terms mean? While there is reference to the adaptability and customization digital texts, the article does not explicitly mention copyright.  While digital delivery of educational materials may solve some of the cost barriers of education, without an explicit understanding of terms like “open” and “free,” legal and social barriers remain.  As far as I am concerned, government-funded “digital textbooks” or “free courseware” should be as free as possible from copyright restrictions (licensed under Creative Commons BY Attribution license, the least restrictive of CC licenses) or in the public domain.  Only then will they be truly available for sharing, collaboration and reuse.  The fact that they are simply “digital” or “available on the Internet” alone is not enough.

The road to a digital future for education is not without its bumps.  Lewin brings up the issue of a the digital divide: “Not every student has access to a computer, a Kindle electronic reader device or a smartphone, and few districts are wealthy enough to provide them. So digital textbooks could widen the gap between rich and poor.”

The increasing adoption of digital textbooks may save on some costs, but will also require additional investment in computer hardware.  But the real issue at stake is not just the economic costs of education, but instead the need to focus on increasing the accessibility of knowledge.  In order for learning resources to be truly accessible, the issue is not just online vs. offline, digital vs. print.  To reach their maximum social and educational potential, learning materials in the digital future  will need to free from excessive copyright constraints (with clear open licensing like CC-BY or public domain declaration) in order to allow teachers and students the maximum freedom to legally share, modify, and improve upon them.

Also check out Jane Park of ccLearn’s post from last September: “Back to School: Open Textbooks Gaining in Popularity.”

The cringe-worthy Cobb salad scene where Julie Powell has lunch with her friends made me strangely homesick for NY.  The depiction of Julie’s shamelessly ambitious, cell phone-tethered friends was pretty-right on.  They represent all that is terrible yet strangely charming about NYC (or maybe it’s just because I’ve been away for the too long).

Watching all that French food being made and eaten on the big screen piqued our appetite, so I busted out the iPhone and found Le Charm French Bistro in SoMa.  The restaurant is a charming, old-school French bistro, with a very reasonably-priced $30 three-course dinner prix fixe.  I had the French onion soup, a seafood bourride, and the strawberry tart for dessert.  Yum!

One more week to go for my ccLearn internship.  The rest of the ccLearn crew will be in Vancouver next week for the Open Education Conference, while I will be sticking around SF wrapping things up and documenting my work.  Then back to NYC next Friday.

Farley’s and Hazel’s Kitchen have become my usual San Francisco Sunday morning spot for a one-two punch of caffeine and breakfast burrito.  Farley’s is a coffee shop, and Hazel’s is a tiny deli/takeout joint.  They are located right next door to each other in in Potrero Hill.  You can order food to-go from Hazel’s and eat at Farley’s or when the weather is nice, they have tables outside on the street.  As a creature of habit, I always order the breakfast burrito with tofu at Hazel’s, so I can’t comment on the other food, but the other stuff looks good too.  Everything is fresh and homemade.  Farley’s is an shabby-chic anti-Starbucks, with hip and friendly baristas and an awesome selection of magazines for sale (including my favorite, Monocle).

Farley’s
1315 18th Street
San Francisco, CA 94107
415.648.1545

Hazel’s Kitchen
1319 18th Street
San Francisco, CA 94107
415.647.7941

I had dinner at Yamo, a hole-in-the-wall Burmese place in the Mission tonight.  When I say hole-in-the-wall, I really mean it, it’s just 10 seats along a long, narrow counter looking on to the kitchen area with three Cantonese ladies engaging in a frantic ballet of taking orders, cooking, pouring water and collecting money.  I had the fish chowder noodles (above), which consist of rice noodles in a velvety turmeric-spiced broth with shredded fish, and topped with crunchy fried lentils.  The noodles, like most of Yamo’s entrees, were only $5.25.  CASH ONLY!

I also recommend the fried rice.  They don’t serve alcohol, but if you want more than water, I suggest the fresh young coconut, which is literally a whole coconut that they cut open with a cleaver in front of you.

As far as Burmese food goes, Yamo is not as good as Mandalay in the Richmond, but it’s much closer to home and the prices can’t be beat.

Yamo
3406 18th St
(between Mission St & San Carlos St)
San Francisco, CA 94110
415.553.8911

• Yamo on Yelp!
• Yamo on MenuPages
• Yamo on MenuPix

Photo: Portuguese-style tuna salad ($11.50)
Line caught tuna conserva, new potatoes, garbanzo beans, kalamata olives, cage free egg, red onion and parsley dressed with Victor Guedes olive oil and red wine vinegar

I went to check out Horatius, a “market gallery, bistro, wine bar and event venue” at the base of Potrero Hill today.  The food is simple and flavorful California cuisine with strong Mediterranean and Portuguese influences, reflecting the founder and CEO Horacio Gomes’ Portuguese roots.  I had the Portuguese-style tuna salad, which resembles the classic French salade niçoise but with the addition of chickpeas and spinach.  A tasty and light lunch for a sunny Saturday in San Francisco.

Horatius
350 Kansas Street
(between 16th and 17th Streets)
San Francisco, CA 94103
415.252.3500

After work on Friday, I headed to the University Club of San Francisco in Nob Hill for a Young Ivy Alumni Mixer.  It was my first time in Nob Hill, and it was cool to check out the neighborhood’s historic ritzy grandeur.  I’m glad the University Club of SF doesn’t have a strict dress code like the University Club of NYC (one of the venues for last summer’s HRW Council Summit), so I could just show up as my normal casual self (after living out of a suitcase for an entire summer, I’m almost ready to burn my wardrobe and start all over agin).  I enjoyed talking to other young alumni in the University Club’s gorgeous 4th floor lounge with sweeping views of downtown SF, and got to practice my Creative Commons talking points when addressing the inevitable question of  “what do you do?”.

I spotted this piece of decoration/obsolete technology (photo below) at the University Club.  Anybody have any idea what it is?  It resembles a faucet and sink, but with a wooden box with upholstery inside instead of a sink.  Weird.

After the mixer, I walked down California to my bus stop on Polk St.  I was feeling a bit peckish after three Sierra Nevadas and a bit of cheese an crackers, so I stopped into Cordon Bleu (a Vietnamese restaurant with a French name and Cantonese-speaking chef-servers) for dinner.  Cordon Bleu is the sort of the Vietnamese equivalent of a greasy spoon.  It’s a tiny restaurant with a counter around the open kitchen where two Cantonese/Vietnamese ladies cook your meal.  I had the “number 1,” which consisted of a few pieces of grilled pork, a fried imperial roll, cole-slaw like “house salad,” and “meat sauce” on rice.  The meat sauce closely resembled my aunt’s Taiwanese “spaghetti sauce,” a slightly sweet, perhaps ketchup-based bastardized (in the best sense of the word) Bolognese with meat and onions.  Perfect guilty pleasure gut bomb to cap off my Friday night.

Looking at myself in the Self-Centered Mirror

Broken Red Mirror: pieces of a portrait of Red Burns

Broken Red Mirror viewed from the front

Snow Mirror

Mirror No. 5 (Pac Man Mirror)

Mirrors Mirror

More photos on Flickr

The Creative Commons summer interns gave their midsummer presentations to the CC staff yesterday.  Creative Commons CEO Joi Ito was in town, so he sat in on our presentations and gave feedback.  I talked about my main project for the summer: coming up with an internationalization strategy for ccLearn’s OpenEd project.

The OpenEd site (currently in beta) is:

for anyone interested in open education, from Open Ed experts to those new to the field…

This site should help you arrive at a variety of information, whether you are looking for an organization contact, a particular report, guidance on how to license your educational work, or information on where/when a particular conference is being held. However, please keep in mind that thought we host some of these resources (such as event data), most of the information on this site is linked to other sites. Rather than duplicate efforts, we choose to drive traffic to the many excellent, existing resources out there. The goal is for everyone to contribute by adding information and links to sites we have not yet discovered.

OpenEd is a point of departure for people to understand some of the issues and aspirations related to open education, and we expect it to drive interest in creating new forms of media and outreach to help more people understand open education, CC licenses, and hopes for the future.

In related news, the CC interns have been participating in periodic lunch talks with interns from other tech-related non-profits in the area.  Previously, we have “done the Google” and also gone down to Stanford to hear a presentation by Ryan Calo, a fellow at the Center for Internet and Society.  Today, we are headed to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) for a talk by Seth Schoen called “Information Security Discovers Physics.”

See my entire “Summer 2009 in San Francisco” photo set on Flickr.

The Creative Commons Salon San Francisco took place on June 24th at PariSoMa, “a coworking space that provides desks, wi-fi, coffee and community to independent professionals.”  The theme of the salon was “[t]he digital intersection of art, history, and culture, and how CC can play a defining role in enriching all three.”  Videos after the jump.

Part 1: Francesco Spagnolo

Francesco Spagnolo, Director of Research and Collections at the Magnes Museum. Francesco will explore the sharing and marketing of cultural heritage through the lenses of the Magnes’ “Digital Narratives,” a project that seeks an alignment between a narrative approach to history, a collaborative practice in the interpretation of cultural history, and the uses of technology and online social media.

Part 2: David Toole

Dave Toole, CEO and Founder, Outhink Media, will present on how storytelling bridges the cultural and business arenas, outlining the challenges posed by the new social media and the crucial role played by research in information technology.

Part 3: Nancy Van House

Nancy Van House, Professor, UC Berkeley School of Information, will respond to the other presenters by reflecting on the way in which academia is looking at social media and personal/historical digital archiving, exploring the human interactions that populate the online world.

Live Sushi Bar
2001 17th St (at Kansas St in Potrero Hill)
San Francisco, CA 94103-5012
(415) 861-8610‎

On Sunday, After spending the whole day outside watching the San Francisco Pride parade and checking out the festival in front of City Hall, I went back to the tranquility of Potrero Hill and treated myself to a nice sushi dinner at Live Sushi Bar.  I ordered the Live Sushi Combo – 6 pieces of nigiri, 4 pieces of sashimi and 6 pieces of spicy tuna roll for $16.95 and the sake tasting sampler ($9.50).  They kind of have a weird name and a logo that looks like the Jesus fish, but they are close to my summer crash pad, so it’s become a good place for the occasional splurge.  Last time I had dinner here, I had the grilled shio saba (salted mackerel) and tempura, which were decent, but nothing mind blowing.  This time, my decision to actually order sushi paid off.  The sushi rice was perfectly prepared and the fish tasted very fresh and clean.  I’m not sure what is going on with the Pepto-Bismol-colored salad dressing, but it didn’t taste bad.

Above: Sakes in the intended sampling order from right to left (click on image to view enlarged version)

Masumi “Okuden Kantsukuri” – 真澄 奥伝寒造り (Junmai – 純米)

Dewazakura “Oka” – でわざくら 桜花 (Ginjo – 吟醸)

Hoyo “Kura no Hana” – 鳳陽 蔵の華 (Daiginjo – 大吟醸)

The Masumi tasted like a pretty standard junmai to me, a good starter sake.  The Dewazakura, with a seductive floral bouquet, was definitely my favorite.  My white wine taste tends towards Rieslings and Gewurztraminers, so it’s no surprise that I like the fruity floral sake.  The Hoyo had a strong star anise taste in it’s flavor profile, which I would expect from sake.  It went really well with the earthy spiciness of the spicy tuna rolls, and I bet it would

One of Adam’s friends suggested that I check out another sushi place called Umi, which is also in Potrero Hill.  I will definitely be there to check it out soon!

Creative Commons interns do the Google.

The architectural story says “suburban high-tech campus.”

The architectural story, continued.

The mythic and cryptic Google whiteboard

Lunch@Google: Sushi, curry & Chinese food in one cafeteria = my kind of celebrating diversity

Honest Tea imparts ancient wisdom of the Orient.

Google’s dirty laundry.

Pancho Villa Taqueria
3071 16th St
between Caledonia St & Julian Ave, in the Mission District
San Francisco, CA 94103
(415) 864-8840

Pancho Villa on Yelp

Kris and I went to Pancho Villa Taqueria for a late night dinner last week.  I love how this place is hopping even at 11 pm on a weeknight (compared to other places in the the neighborhood), and how it attracts a motley mix of clientele – from hipsters in skinny jeans to hip-hop kids in sweat pants to businessmen in suits.

We shared an order of the garlic prawns ($9.95 – pictured above) and washed it down with a medium horchata ($1.65).  The plate, which included rice, beans, avocado, fresh tortillas AND tortilla chips, was enormous and delicious. The salsa bar made things even better.  A real Mission District gem.

Como dice el “Governator,” “I’ll be back.”  Más Pancho Villa, por fa-please!

Magic Curry Kart guy (above) had a Burning Man fundraiser at the Bryant Street Sports Basement today.  I went and had a tofu red curry (below).  Five bucks for a take-out container of curry on rice.  The vegetables tasted fresh and the price was right.  I like the extra touch of cutting the carrots into star shapes.

I noticed that Magic Curry Kart man used Mae Ploy red curry paste, a common mass-produced Thai curry paste.  The curry itself was made by frying the curry paste in some coconut milk, and then adding the tofu and vegetables, and seasoning with sugar and fish sauce.  Chicken curry was also available.  Maybe it was vegetarian fish sauce for the tofu curry, because I noticed a second bottle of liquid on the cart.  There is shrimp paste in Mae Ploy curry paste anyway, so it’s definitely no vegan if you are strict about that sort of thing.

Another thing I noticed was that the curry was very thick.  I don’t think water was added to dilute the curry, which is commonly done.  It was a bit on the thick side for my taste, and the rice was a bit mushy in places and hard in others.  But all in all, you can’t beat the price, and the concept is great.  And you can’t go wrong supporting a local micro-business.  Follow Magic Curry Kart on Twitter to find out where he will show up next.

Magic Curry Kart on Yelp
Blogpost about Magic Curry Cart on Mission Mission
SF Gate blogpost on food cart mini-trend

My dinner at Dos Piñas last night: Avocado, lettuce, beans, rice, and cheese burrito at Dos Piñas ($4.95), spiced up with some hot salsa and cooled down with horchata.

Dos Piñas is conveniently located right next to where the number 10 bus drops me off from work, at the foot of Potrero Hill where I am living.  I’d say that the burrito was well above average and the location is convenient, so I’ll be back.  They definitely get brownie points for melting the cheese in the burrito, which Chipotle does not.  Wow, I can’t believe I even compared it with Chipotle.  Ok, nevermind, I guess I was deprived of good cheap Mexican food in NYC (although La Esquina Taqueria in NoHo is definitely an exception).

Apparently they are known for their 2 dollar Coronas on Fridays and their fish tacos, so I’ll be back to try them out.

Dos Piñas official site
Dos Piñas on Yelp

251 Rhode Island St
(at 15th St)
San Francisco, CA 94103
(415) 252-8220

Photo by Sheenie L., via Yelp

Little Saigon Deli
Vietnamese Sandwiches – Snacks – Desserts
131 Steuart Street, Suite 101
San Francisco, CA 94105
(415) 284-7375
Monday – Friday
8 AM – 4 PM

See all my photos on Flickr.

End of summer update: I got back this morning from a week-long holiday in Northern California. Tons of pictures on Flickr. I will blog more about it later.

Above: The famous Fisherman’s Wharf of San Francisco. Below: LS plays with eels at the Monterey Aquarium.

Sophia & Perilla

I hung out with Sophia today. We had dinner in the West Village at a place called Perilla, which is Top Chef Harold Dieterle’s restaurant. The ambience was casual and cosy, typical West Village. Our waiter was attentive and the menu looked good. I was a big fan of Harold’s when I watched Top Chef, so I had high hopes. But unfortunately, things got weird, but not in a good way. We were presented with exactly one slice of bread each. Mmm, gee thanks. Nobody asked if we wanted more. We shared an heirloom tomato salad and seared sea scallops for the appetizer course. The tomato salad was good, but a bit pedestrian. The pine nuts and the feta cheese in the salad overpowered the subtly of the tomatoes. The scallops themselves were executed to textbook perfection, but like the tomato salad, had some balance issues: their were bacon or pancetta bits that were a little overwhelming, and not advertised on the menu.

Entrees. This is where it gets bad. We had the Romesco Oil Poached Chatham Cod with black olive gnocchi, oyster mushrooms & summer zucchini sauce and the Grilled Pork T-Bone with lavender, lychee-black chick pea salad & green mustard sauce. Off the bat, the cod dish was way too salty, and had a weird “squeaky texture.” The “romesco” was a red sauce smeared on the cod with chunks of nuts in it, a departure from the smooth Catalan classic. I found the nuts too aggressive in texture compared to the tender cod. Much better after I scraped off most of the sauce. The summer zucchini sauce was more of a color element than a flavor contrast, so I can’t say it was all the memorable. The black olive gnocchi was too similar to the oyster mushrooms in color, but were surprising in taste and texture when I bit into them. The color and texture reminded me of Taiwanese pig’s blood black pudding, and not in a good way.

The pork t-bone was a big, thick peace of meat, but not at all juicy or particularly flavorful. It was covered by a giant mound of salad that obscured the meat on the plate, not all too flattering a presentation. I couldn’t really taste the lavender, and the lychees were just kind of random surprises that lacked a real context.

Dessert was redeeming. Sophia ordered the Vanilla Scented Doughnuts with peach compote filling & sour cream curd. Fried dough. Peaches. Cream. Yum. ‘Nuff said. I had the local blackberries Linzer Torte, which was very well executed as well. It did a nice job of clearing my palate of all excess salt from the entrees.

Sorry Perilla, I really wanted to like it. I really tried, but I left disappointed. Luckily, we were able to amuse ourselves with some great people watching, as we observed two very awkward dates at adjacent tables unfold before our eyes. Made up for the lackluster food. We noticed that the awkward date people were drinking a lot more than we were. Maybe they were on to something.

Interactive Telecommunications @ NYU Tisch

Orientation starts tomorrow morning for the masters program in Interactive Telecommunications that I am doing at NYU. Updates forthcoming.

Below: Lee-Sean and the giant sunflowers of Sonoma.