Archive for June 22nd, 2008

Sunday, June 22nd, 2008

Fun With the Ponies

Talk about a cheap date.

I went out with a bunch of friends today to celebrate another friend’s birthday today at Golden Gate Fields — the Bay Area’s last remaining horse track. We had a great time drinking beers, eating hot dogs, betting on the ponies and listening to a killer 80s cover band.

The total bill? Just $8 before the wagers. Evidently every Sunday is dollar day, where parking, admission, beers (3), hot dogs (2), and race program are all just a buck.

To put this in perspective for anyone outside the Bay Area, I spent $9 on Friday night for a single drink at a bar and $12 for parking at Union Square the day before.

With the $18 I bet on the the first five races (losing $8), it still comes in cheaper than a movie, dinner, or just about any other outing in San Francisco short of sitting in the park and reading a book (which is also fun when you can avoid the fog).

It’s a shame both Golden Gate Fields and Bay Meadows Racecourse are continually struggling to survive; both are on the verge of becoming strip malls, condos or car dealerships. Given my afternoon today, I hope at least one can keep afloat until the next time I need a lazy, fun afternoon with the ponies.

(Picture courtesy of Flickr user ian_ransley)

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Sunday, June 22nd, 2008

How to Nap

The Boston Globe published a fantastic infographic a while ago called “How to Nap.”

It’s a shame the American economic engine hasn’t ever accepted the mid-afternoon siesta — evidently it’s part of an afternon quiescent phase in our psychology. I’ll pull that one out next time I’m nearly comatose at my desk.

Bucking the trend, however, some companies, like Google, actually have futuristic nap pods dotting their campus buildings.

For the rest of us, check out Pzizz — a piece of software that uses Neuro Linguistic Programming to create soundtracks for naps and longer rest periods. Skeptical at first, Sunny and I have found that it actually does work pretty well — particularly for those times when one or both of us are under a lot of stress.

Anyway, I’m heading to Los Angeles in the morning on a 6:30 a.m. flight, so I might just have to squeeze in a 20-minute catnap tomorrow… yeah, I wish.

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Sunday, June 22nd, 2008

Finally: Inline PDFs in Firefox 3.0

I switch between Web browsers more than Paris Hilton switches between cheap miniskirts.

First it was Camino — a Mac browser based off the Gecko rendering engine that powers Firefox. It was great, but was always fairly slow.

Then came the switch to a MacBook with an Intel processor, which meant I couldn’t use the PDF Browser Plugin to view inline PDF forms. Without that plugin, Firefox and Camino were non-starters, so I switched to Safari.

Safari was a solid choice, and I was particularly impressed with its strict adherence to Web standards. But it often ran into trouble with Javascript-heavy applications like Google Reader, slowing my system down to a crawl, so it was destined to go.

Then came Firefox Download Day and Firefox 3.0. It was nearly a perfect browser — fast, clean and widely-supported. But still no inline PDFs — until I ran across a plugin on Google Code that restored the nice quick inline PDF form viewing I had come to expect from Safari.

Add the GrApple Blue display plug in to clean up Firefox’s interface and Fission, which combines the progress and location bars similar to Safari, and I’m back in browser heaven.

For now.

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