Read Some Stewf

Polite Smoking in Tokyo

Japan Tobacco Inc. educates the people about cigarette etiquette.

Last Hurrah

Beloved Salt Lakers, both those I have and have not had the good fortune to see on this stop in the valley, please consider joining our blithesome throng on Thursday, July 15 at the Circle Lounge (328 S State). Sushi, music, good times ’til 2.

Update: be there at the 10:30 pm hour!

Which Home Movies Character Are You?

Which 'Home Movies' character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Gee — for a goofy cartoon quiz this result is pretty accurate (just substitute “job” with “city”. Though he clearly has nothing to do with the quiz, I credit its verity to the genius spirit of series creator Brendon Small.

By the way, if you care as much about this recently cancelled gem as I do, a DVD set of the 4 seasons is said to be on the way. In the meantime, I've "acquired" all 52 episodes and I'm making a DVD of my own. Let's plan a marathon now. I'm back in the Valley at the end of June (as the little maps at on page one indicate).

Chocolate Debut

Everybody, there’s this rad new band in town called The Chocolate Factory. Got their CD for review today and the press photo above should tell you everything you need to know about how great it sounds. Oh, SLC, I miss you. It’s only a few days now...

An Announcement

“too much is the new enough”

— today’s Contact standard for the quantity of design elements on any given piece

A Dodge

“i am not interested in simplifying this”

— Steph, following my attempt to sum up her social philosophy in a neat little iChat package

A Plea

“zebras please come run all over europe.”

— Lupe Nuñez-Fernandez of my new favorite spring fun band: Pipas

Curried Lamb Stewf

EGOSURFING REPORT: I'm pretty pleased with the top 10 Google results for “stewf”. My monicker (developed by a corporate naming think tank in San Jose) is proving to be search engine optimized. The only result that doesn't have anything to do with me is for a Curried Lamb recipe from Iowa’s KWWL Channel 7. Hot. Can’t complain.

Come with Me to the Magical Land of Orkut

Friendster was a great idea, but it's outgrown its little body. The website was built on the notion that people meet new people through their friends. While that’s certainly true, and Friendster often brings people together, the system is limited to that single type of networking. It ignores the fact that even more friends are made in groups of folk with a similar interest. Followers of Noam Chomsky are likely to dig other Chomskites, Howard Zinners, and Gore Vidalies. Terry Gross listeners might hang with other Grossers, Ira Glassheads, Garrisons. Scorpion fans and White Snake fans often find common ground. And so on.

Enter Orkut, a new online community concept created by Google engineer Orkut Buyukkokten (hence the ill-advised name). Instead of merely listing people with a similar interest, Orkut offers communities, each with its own discussion forum, in which to meet and gab with your kindred spirits.

Orkut = Friendster + LiveJournal-style communities + a goopy layer of cheesy design

(Don’t gag too much on the cheese bit yet — we’re feeding the developers a good dose of aesthetic advise, so hopefully the bad graphics will soon be replaced with simple functionality.) Joining requires an invitation from a current member, so if you’re not Orkutized yet, let me know and I’ll hook you up. Anyone who still endures my stewf.com ramblings deserves at least that in return.

Seriously, Orkut is good. Just today I got some good nightclub and hostel tips from my Stockholm group, soaked in fans’ favorite lines from the canceled-but-not-forgotten “Home Movies”, and even joined a “John McLaughlin Group” community. Yes, John freaking McLaughlin. If that’s not proof of Orkut’s goodness I don’t know what is.

Thanks to Dave for the tip.

Feather

Found today among some old files is this movie. Some pigeon down got stuck to our skylight at work. Music: Calexico.