Jeffzilla

Team Desertaxi, who’s website and field communications I oversee, has gotten a little more press coverage. The team, and their micro-nation of Taxistan have been written up in the London Evening Standard newspaper including pictures taken from the Team Desertaxi Blog.

With this story, it seems like print media is starting to looking more closely at blog media now…. these photos the London Evening Standard printed were originally uploaded by the team from the field via satellite link directly to Flickr, and then posted to the blog using the wordpress xml-rpc.

This evening a film crew from the Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS), a Japanese TV network,  came to my apartment to interview me for a “60 Minutes”-like news segment for  Japanese TV. They’re doing a piece on Panasonic’s corporate name consolidation, and wanted to get my take on Japanese electronics brands, etc. I talked to the producer a bit about my electronics, what I thought of the industry, what brands I liked and disliked.  They are sending me the segment once it’s completed, so I’ll be sure to post it up…

Check out this film crew in my apartment! Thanks to Elsye for taking the shot of me in front of the camera!

Talking to the camera...

The Tokyo Broadcasting System filmcrew...

I work with Mongol Rally entrant Team DeserTaxi, and set up their website, blog, and manage their field communications. Their mission is to drive a London black cab from London all the way to Mongolia.

They were trying to cross the Kazakhstan-Russia border on the eve of Russia starting war with Georgia - and were denied entry into Russia - only to be denied entry back into Kazakhstan. They’re now sitting in a ring of barbed wire, between both borders, with no resources and only a satellite link to blog from.. check out their full post on their blog…. intense…

read more | digg story

Last week I took photos and volunteered at the Friends of the Highline Design Book Release Party. The party was actually underneath the Highline, and featured a great band, food and drinks. The new book, “Designing the Highline” showcases the Highlines’s design from Gansevoort to 30th street. I haven’t been up on that section of it yet, but I did get the opportunity to explore the upper section, near the rail yard. Pics from that soon.

Photos are posted up on my new photography site - AcidLoungeMedia.com/Vision.  Additionally, the Friends of the Highline blog wrote about the party, and linked to the photos.

Gmail has been down for me for almost 12 hours now. And it’s only my main account. Seems like there is a documented issue, which is good to hear, but still not fixed. According to the Google Groups Gmail discussion board, they are working on the issue:

Update: our engineers have identified the source of the problem and are working to restore account access as quickly as possible. We know how important email is to our customers, and we are taking this very seriously. We apologize for this inconvenience, and we will provide updates as new information becomes available.

This makes somewhat glad about using my own domain for my email. Right now, any email you send me gets forwarded to my gmail account. However, if this gmail situation doesn’t get fixed, it’s a quick switch with my domain registrar to have my email forwarded somewhere else - either another gmail account, my own hosted webmail, or another email provider altogether.

Gmail 502 Error

**Update Update**

Google just updated the 502 error message, with more familar Gmail branding, and a very slightly more reassuring error message.

Update 2* - And… we’re back! Luckily gmail didn’t lose any messages. But those few hours were intense - also kind of nice.. like a vacation.

Update 3* - 2008-08-11 - Gmail is back down, but now it seems to be down for many more people. It’s down for me, too. Luckily, I’m still doing just fine with email. My email address is at a domain I own. I simply have it all forwarded to my gmail account, so I can use the great gmail interface and services - imap, etc etc. However, during the latest gmail outage, i fiddled with some settings on my webhost, and set it up to not only continue to forward to my gmail acct, as it has been, but to also use a locally hosted email box. So, for now, since gmail is down, I’m seamlessly switching over to my own hosted email box. Victory!

Ikea Brooklyn

I’m going to Ikea Brooklyn… Here goes nothing. I will now spend the
next hour or so wandering endless aisles of strangely named Swedish
furniture.

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Sent via mobile.

Dessert?

Would you like some dessert? 25 feet of the most intense dessert
spread I’ve seen in a while….

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Sent via mobile.
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Wordpress 1.0 for iPhone and iPod Touch was just released on iTunes. So far, it seems to be working well. I’m composing this post on my 8gb iPod touch. The installed app had no problem interfacing with the XML-rpc of my wordpress 2.6 blog backend. Additionally, it gives me full access to all of my old blog posts… A nice touch.

For version 2.0, I would love to see integrated, optional GPS location posting, comment moderation, and link creation - with URL copy/paste from Safari!

Dinosaurs Roam the East Village

Originally uploaded by jamfan2

Seen painted on the side of a building, SW corner of 13th Street and 3rd Avenue, NYC.

Sent via Blackberry Curve 8300

Over on pagetable.com, they managed to pull the original Apple I Basic off of its uber-old school cassette tape, and re-compile a working version of the code. And… it works! I managed to run it on my own computer, and re-write my first program. I actually remember writing this program, and many other similar programs back in 4th and 5th grade, in the elementary school computer lab filled with Apple IIe’s. Those Apple IIe’s managed to follow me up until about 8th grade, at which point they started being replaced by Apple Quadras etc.