MarcoFrom.Com ☆ Marco in Seattle

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June 16, 2006

FSM Bible - Must have this book

I must have this book!

The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (Paperback) by Bobby Henderson

Posted by marco at 1:24 PM | Comments (1)

Street Sweep in action

After all the fuss about the signs, on 6/13 the first Street Sweep happened.

Before:

The Sweep Crew:

After:

The good citizens of West Seattle all removed their cars to make way for the big machine. And the gutters are free now, free at last!.

Posted by marco at 11:36 AM | Comments (0)

Seattle replies: Street Sweep

In a previous entry I complained about my taxes being wasted. I politely asked what was up with this and got response from the Street Sweep Team. See the extended entry for the full emails (posted with permission).

At least they didn't put up the full heigt signs at all locations and stopped the roll out as soon as they found out. Interesting that the main reason for cutting down the signs was aesthetics. I'm not sure I'll ever consider any traffic sign a thing of art or beauty.

Hi,

while I recognize that the Street Sweep Project is a good thing, I'm
really unhappy about what you did with the signs.
Not only was one put up directly in front of our bedroom at 8am very
noisily, a few weeks later every one of them (I'm sure there is at
least 40 of them in our 5 block zone in West Seattle), was revistited
and cut down.

How much money did that cost to send a work crew to cut those signs
down to a lower height?

Was that really necessary?
Especially since you say no tickets will be handed out, which doesn't
really encourage people to move their cars at 8am anyway.

And then there was a third round of changes to the signs, putting the
stickers with the dates on.

How much taxpayer money would have been saved, if all of this had
happened in one go?
I'd really like to know the figure. Especially if tha same thing did
not only happen in West Seattle, but in the other two areas, too!

-- 
Thanks,
Marco



Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2006 11:24:36 -0700
From: "SPUStreetSweep SPUStreetSweep" 
To: 
Subject: Re: Sign height

Dear Marco, 

Thank you for supporting the pilot project's mission of improving the
health of Seattle's waterways. The project would not be successful
without the support of you and your neighbors. 

The Street Sweep team understands your concern and we, too, were
disappointed that installation of proper height signs with decals did
not occur in one session. However, a miscommunication between the Street
Sweep Team and the sign shop resulted in a multi-day job to correct the
situation. When the original signs were installed, many of your
neighbors agreed with the city's preference to install shorter, less
intrusive signs with distances that fulfill both communication and
aesthetic goals for the neighbors. When we realized that the 10 foot
tall signs at double the capacity were installed, we asked that the
quantities be decreased and the proper 4 foot sign poles replace the
towering signs. Again, trying to remain sensitive to the neighborhood
aesthetics. 

For your own peace of mind, you should know that as soon as we realized
these mistakes, the crews were asked to halt installation until the
proper sign height poles were available. There were only a few streets
in Columbia City that were also effected, and the third neighborhood of
Duwamish has not yet started. We hope that you understand that mistakes
happen, and in this case, the resources were managed as well as they
could be in the midst of trying to prepare for our first sweep on June
20 and keeping neighbors happy with signage requirements.

Please let me know if you have additional concerns. 

Best Regards, 
Seattle Street Sweep Team 
 

Posted by marco at 11:25 AM | Comments (0)

June 7, 2006

The endless Mosaic

This cute bunny is a part in the endless mosaic. Fancy!

Also very cool: The community mosaic and the simpler inverted mosaic.

Posted by marco at 11:22 PM | Comments (0)

June 4, 2006

Visit Germany for the WM

WM = Die Weltmeistershaft = The Soccer World Cup

If you want to give me something nice: I like these Soccer-Hater shirts ;)
Now I'm very happy to not be in Germany for this great spectacle, given I have absolutely no interest in any organized sports competition and the broadcasting therof. Almost like the the Women for a Football-free England.

But if you really must go and see it first hand, the following links will be helpful:
See this very handy list of tips for Tourists visiting Germany.

Other means of preparation: Listen to The German Joke of the day.

Posted by marco at 2:05 PM | Comments (2)

June 1, 2006

Thanks for wasting our taxes, Seattle

Update: Seattle replies to my complains

5 Blocks around our house have been selected for a pilot project from Seattle Public Utilities: Street Sweep. For one year they will sweep the streets, each side every other week. And to make people move their cars temporary parking signs have been installed.

All of that is fine by me, but what I really hate is that they installed one of these many parking signs right in front of our bedroom window at 8am.
Actually that's not the worst: The worst was that they first installed those roughly 100 no-parking signs at regular height, like the give way sign in the background of the picture and then 3 weeks later they revisited every single pole to cut it short to the lower height of other no parking signs.

WTF? Nobody cares if the signs are at standing height or at sitting in a car height. People will just leaver their cars out anyway, since the FAQ states that no tickets will be issued.

Way to burn some taxes, Seattle! Just like the Monorail for which you collect taxes, but I'll never see it built!

Update: Seattle replies to my complains

And by the way, your website looks ugly in my Firefox on Mac.

Posted by marco at 8:14 PM | Comments (2)

DVD to iPod conversion

For Windows: I just went through this and if you plan on ripping more then 1 DVD I think it's worth to spent the 30$. I recomment the ImToo product: DVD to iPod Ripper Or another good Product is Nero Recode, which comes as part of excellent Nero Burning ROM package. The commercial products can rip directly to ipod, whereas the free solution goes to Avi (XVid) first and needs more fiddling. If you wanna go free, follow the Videora conversion guide.

For Mac:
I didn't try it on the Mac myself, Handbrake is just the Software that always comes up in that context.... here is a guide for that.

Posted by marco at 3:15 PM | Comments (0)