Bicycle Friendly Cities

Ever since moving away to college I have virtually stopped driving.  First, in NYC the subway was my chosen mode of transportation.  Quick, east, cheap, eco-friendly and always amusing, the NYC has its own culture and vibe.  I always looked forward to a good cross town trip on the subway.  Now I am living in Santa Barbara and commuting to the city college here.  The bus is the most efficient way of getting between downtown SB and Isla Vista.  A bus pass is included with tuition and runs every 30 minutes to school and back.  It is very convenient and gives me time to finish up some homework or read a book because I don't have to do any driving!  

THE UCSB bike path

Me biking on the UCSB campus

Bicycles are for short trips in Isla Vista: to go surfing, run to the store, to go study at the UCSB library or for getting to a friends house.  Bicycles are everywhere in IV, in fact, stolen bicycles account for 90% of Isla Vista's crime rate.  Nearly every street in IV has a bike line and a bike path runs through the UC campus.  

I wish more cities could be bike friendly like IV.  What is better than a fast, simple, human powered machine?  I don't think L.A. will ever make this list but there is always hope.

Grab a helmet and check out these 15 pedal heavens, where drivers have actually been known to use all five fingers when they wave at you.

Check out the cities that made the list. 

Ra Ra Riot and Death Cab Tonight!

Ra Ra Riot and Death Cab @ UCSB thunderdome!

Cool Designs

Check out some photos of new green designs in Milan

Click here for more

MON >> APR 27, 2009

More Photos From Saturday's "New York Street Advertising Takeover"

Jennifer Jacobs

Tristan Eaton

Gaia and Rachel

Peru Ana Ana Peru

Via Woostercollective

Tweet: What's the deal with Twitter?

I'm not really sure I understand the whole Twitter phenomenon.  For those of you not familiar with Twitter , it is basically facebook.... except it's just the status part.   Users sign into an account for the sole purpose of alerting their friends to what they are doing at that particular moment. I have a Twitter, but I have a feeling it will be short lived.  I'll stick to FB for now.

Real City/ Virtual Social Networking?

I discovered a new social networking site (just what I needed right) today called you city.  It is still in the beta phase but it seems very promising and facebook has already shown interest in it.  It basically is an interactive Sim City program.  It is very much worth it to check it out. 

Interesting

I was browsing through the CNN videos today and found this.  If you find it interesting, you might want to watch one of my favorite t.v. shows, The Tudors on Showtime channel.

Socialism Video from Daily Show

A great parody by John Stewart and friends.  Why are Swedish girls so hot?? I gotta get over there for my next trip.

Some Words on Advice

I recently discovered a song by the 70s rock band Faces called "Ooh La La" and I instantly took a liking to it.  The melody and music are all very good, but the lyrics are something... and they got me thinking.  The chorus of "Ohh La La" goes: 

I Wish That I Knew What I Know Now, When I Was Younger

I Wish That I Knew What I Know Now, When I Was Stronger

Take a minute and listen to the song for yourself...

The song is especially appealing to me because I am still young and do not have many regrets.  But I am 2o years old, and I therefore would like to offer some advice to the younger kids:

1) 

Do well in school.  Listen to your teachers, do your homework and study.  I don't know why it took me until freshmen year of college to figure this out.  It's so simple; do the hard work in highschool so you don't have to do it in community college.  Even if it means staying in for a couple of hours on the weekend, it is well worth it, believe me.  Even though you think it's funny and think it will score you chicks, don't be this guy.

2) 

Get a job! It will keep you on top of things, you'll save up some money and you will be satisfied with yourself.  Aim for a job that tips.  Being a busboy is probably the easiest for first time job seekers.  When you're older and looking for a job, they'll ask for your past experience... make sure you have some.

3)

Travel Travel Travel.

4)

Read. I know it sounds boring, but I really wish I would have read more when I was younger.  You will learn a lot of new material and build your personal lexicon.  The best part of reading is that it can be done virtually anywhere and with so little time/effort.  I take the bus to school everyday and instead of listening to an Ipod, I read a book.  The bus is about 45 minutes round trip, at this rate I finish a book about every 1 to 2 weeks.  I just finished City of Thieves by David Benioff, a historical fiction about the Siege of Lenningrad.  Check it out.  

5)

Establish a healthy diet.  I have always had a somewhat good diet, but when your older you really must always eat healthy.  One of the easiest and most beneficial tweaks is to cut out soda, energy drinks and juices.  All of these are essentially just sugar+water+high fructose corn syrup.  Eat eggs for breakfast instead of cereal.  Eat Chicken over red meat. etc. etc. 

That's all I can think of off the top of my head.  If anything else comes up I'll post it.  Please excuse any grammatical errors, I wrote this rather quickly.  In the comment section, I invite those older than me to submit their advice to me or others my age.

Very cool video

What is this and why the hell do I see it all the Time?

RSS FEEDS

What they are and how to use them.

You may have seen this icon on your favorite webpages and, unaware of its function, scrolled right past it.  But if you take just two minutes to read this post, you will save countless hours (even days) that would be otherwise spent wasting time online.  

• The is symbol denotes a link to a websites RSS page.
• An RSS feed, when saved into an RSS reader, sends information to you instead of you searching for the information.
• Here it is explained in plain english:

SORRY, SOME IF THE VIDEO IS CUT OFF ON THE RIGHT SIDE, I'M NOT REALLY SURE HOW TO FIX THIS, yet.

• As a fan of anything google, I highly recommend using google reader. GR can also be linked with your gmail account and blogger account, among other things.
• So for now on, when you sign onto the internet, just check your google reader page instead of the countless other pages you would visit. 

So try it out, copy my blogs URL and then go to your google reader homepage, click on add subscription in the upper left hand corner, click save, and now you have your first RSS feed.

1st Post

So I have sunken myself deeper into the internet... I've started a blog. My first post will be relatively short. It will be interesting to see how long this whole thing lasts. I'm not exactly sure why I have started this blog, and if the title hasn't said it clearly enough, this blog is basically a lot of nothing. This is simply a virtual clipboard in where I will post and discuss things I find interesting from various sources, and I invite you to do the same in the comments section.

To start off, I was not particularly fond of blogs until recently. However, I have come to realize that blogs are an invaluable source of information for the things that interest me. Sort of like a party for newspaper editorial columnists, but everyone's invited. And isn't that the whole point of the internet, to share information quickly and conveniently?

Here are some of the blogs I frequent:

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/ Buildings!
http://matadornetwork.com/ For the traveler
http://pruned.blogspot.com/ Landscape architecture.
3 lil bi*ches. Blogger won't let me post a link with a vulgar URL, but visit 3lilbi*ches.blogspot of you're interested but replace the * with a "t." A cool blog started by 3 high school friends of mine.
http://www.woostercollective.com/ Street Art: New Art
http://mbcon.blogspot.com/
http://fitnessblackbook.com/
http://www.thecoolhunter.net/ Hunting cool things
http://www.lataco.com/
http://beatlesnumber9.com/
L.A.

... to name a few.

I will let one of my favorite fictional characters, Hank Moody, rant about blogs. I share some of his grievances:
(please excuse the subtitles)




In a later blog, I will show you how to stay up-to-date with your favorite blogs, newscasts, sports scores, and other internet information in fast and reliable way by utilizing RSS feeds.

This concludes my first ever blog post.