a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
It was raining lightly this morning as the Uber driver pulled up in front of my house, dry at my arrival in San Francisco throughout the day, with rain starting here tonight, as well. There were several people dressed up to the nines in Halloween garb on the street, and on the subway. I saw a Spiderman, a bunch of grapes (purple balloons), a teddy bear and a witch.
It was raining lightly today*, but that did not stop me from taking my Sunday afternoon walk down to Capitol Hill train station for a run to downtown to go check up on the biosphere construction. I also stopped at the Barnes & Noble bookstore downtown. Sunday afternoons are just perfect for browsing through the cornucopia of offerings on the bookstore shelves.
*It’s been a very wet October here in the Seattle area. Seattle-Tacoma Airport’s October 2016 rainfall has now exceeded the previous October monthly record of 8.96 inches.
It’s almost Halloween (Monday Oct 31st). The Saturday before the day, is when grown-ups have their Halloween parties .. and on then on Halloween itself, the kids will go out for tricking and treating.
There was a massive cyber attack last Friday on the internet here in the United States (affecting web users in other parts of the world as well : Brazil, Germany, India, Spain and the U.K). Authorities are still trying to determine who was behind it. (A group calling themselves ‘New World Hackers’ claimed responsibility on Twitter – without proof). The diagram from TIME magazine shows what happened. A botnet of internet-connected gadgets (surveillance cameras, printers, digital video recorders were deployed). These devices have weak or non-existent security, and we may soon see legislation that will force manufacturers to build in more security. They had better hurry : there are an estimated 6.4 billion things connected to the internet already, a number that will balloon to 20.8 billion just four years from now in 2020.
Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) defined only two kingdoms for organisms in 1735 – animals and ‘vegetables’ (plants). But mushrooms are not plants : they cannot make their own food.
Soon after, the microscope ushered in discoveries that ultimately led to the six recognized kingdoms of living creatures today :
Bacteria (bacteria; their cells have no nucleus),
Protista (single-cell organisms),
Chromista (algae),
Plantae (plants, shrubs and giant Sequoia trees),
Fungi (mushrooms, yeasts, molds) and
Animalia (worms, insects, birds, fish, whales, salt-water sponges, star fish, sea cucumbers, animals and humans*). *Yes, we are animals, every one of us!
I suppose when alien creatures from outer space land on Earth we can add a seventh kingdom !
Construction on the Marea cable has started : the highest-capacity sub-sea cable ever placed across the Atlantic, and the first to connect the U.S. to southern Europe. Construction started in August, with completion scheduled for October 2017. Bloomberg news reports that cables have been laid on the ocean floor for a long, long time : the first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable in 1866. The Marea cable will be paid for by Microsoft and Facebook, and be able to carry up to 160 Terabits per second of data.
My vote for the 2016 election is cast, and on its way to the King County Elections mailbox. (We vote by mail in Washington State). I see I can track my paper ballot on-line, to confirm that it was received by King County Elections. Great !
A postcard from France landed in my mailbox on Monday (not for me : it’s just for an address close to mine, so I will put it back in the mail). But hey – let me check out this postage stamp first, I thought. It celebrates the bicentennial of ‘steam navigation’ (vapeur is French for steam). The first successful steamboat was invented by the nobleman Marquis de Jouffroy.
Here’s a blurb from WIRED magazine about the cutting edge steam boat technology of that time : ‘The Pyroscaphe (Greek for ‘fire boat’) steamed upstream at 6 mph without a sail, and the crowds cheered this technological marvel. But after 15 minutes, the boat began to break up under the pounding of the engine. De Jouffroy quickly and cannily steered the boat ashore, and then bowed to the cheering multitudes’.
My Facebook group ‘South Africans in Seattle’ held a bake-and-grocery sale in the Mount Baker Community Center on Sunday, and I felt compelled to go check it out. Maybe they have those giant jars of Marmite, or Pronutro (breakfast cereal) or Mrs Ball’s chutney, I thought.
Alas – none of those items were on sale. Several other types of South African food were on offer such as curry (with ground beef) and rice, biltong1, braaivleis2 and sweet desserts such as koeksisters3 and and melktert4. The space inside was very crowded and the lines were very long, though – and I was too impatient to wait in line for food. I did chat to some friendly South Africans :). Not many have been in Seattle as long as I have been.
1jerky, but saltier and never sweet 2barbecued meat 3a sticky syrup-infused version of a doughnut 4Afrikaans for “milk tart”, is a South African dessert consisting of a sweet pastry crust containing a creamy filling made from milk, flour, sugar and eggs.
Here’s ‘Hillary’ (Kate McKinnon) in Saturday Night Live’s skit about the third Presidential debate, declaring that she has been playing ‘Trump Bingo’ all year, and showing off the collection of five bad bingo things Trump has said. (I cannot repeat them here). The SNL writers include some phrases from the debates verbatim, and then add a little twist, or go overboard with it even more – blurring the line between reality and entertainment.
Another Thursday has rolled by, and I got to go home and sleep in my own bed. The year we call 2016 is rapidly running out on us, all of us. It’s crunch time on our short project with the holiday season approaching, and with even the very end of the year now in sight.
It was a long and busy day, but it is over. I got to watch the last half of the third and final US Presidential debate. (Can we dispense of all these silly formalities and all go vote now and get the 2016 US Presidential Election over with, once and for all?).
Here are today’s pictures of the city. The weather was a perfect 70.
Another week in San Francisco has started for me. I took a nice walk around a block or four during my lunch break, and ‘discovered’ the beautiful Buich Building with the Tadich Grill restaurant inside, on California Street. (It’s been there since 1909).
There are 22 days to go to the 2016 US Presidential election on Nov 8. Early voting has already started in several states, actually – and I expect to cast my vote by Oct. 25 or so, as well. Washington State conduct voting by mail, so voters do not have to show up in person at the polling stations.
I see a ‘Letter from London’ on politico.com warns the US not to get too complacent about a victory for Hillary (the latest nationwide polls has her up by some 10% over Trump). All the pollng agencies underestimated Brexit ‘Leave’ vote, and yes : one poll had the Remain vote up by 10%.
There was a second storm on Saturday here in the Puget Sound Area. We were warned to stock up on batteries, and charge our cell phones in case of a power outage, even to stock up on water and food. Well, while there was some damage to trees and property, the storm was not as bad as predicted.
My plan in case the power went out, was to crawl in bed and wait for it to pass!
It’s wet in Seattle .. a 
very large system has moved in that will bring rains for Friday and the weekend, and high winds (up to 60 mph) later tonight.
Our pilot explained that there may be some turbulence on our flight, but he would fly at 24,000 ft all the way up to Seattle (usually it’s 40,000 ft). It was wet at our arrival, but the flight was not bad at all. I even took the train and the bus in home, got a little wet from walking the two blocks from the bus stop – but probably got in earlier than I would have, with a taxi that would have had to deal with a lot of wet weather rush hour traffic.
Here’s a peek inside the hole-in-the-wall Mensho Tokyo (676 Geary St), one of Japan’s most acclaimed ramen (noodle) bars, this being the first one outside Japan. I read online that the place has been mobbed, ever since it had opened in February. About 50 people were patiently waiting outside on Wednesday night to get in, when I walked by. The text on the wall describes katsuo bushi, a stock made from dried bonito flakes. (Bonito is a medium-sized predatory fish in the same family as tuna and mackerel).
Here are some interesting sights from Mission Street in downtown San Francisco.
Another week started in San Francisco for me. I went for a nice walkabout during lunch time. Sunny but mild outside (57° F/ 13° C), so light jacket weather – to ward off the wind chill from the breeze from the ocean.
