TECHNOLOGY CAN HELP US ALL

Here's something I've been wondering about ever since talking to friends of mine in LA: what sort of picture would you get if you could go to all of the bars or clubs in a given city every single night and make note of what kind of crowd existed there?

It wouldn't actually be too hard to do. The data to capture is simple:

- Which bar
- What day
- Crowd rating 0-10
-- 10: I would stay here until closing time
-- 5: I could have a drink here, but finding somewhere else would also be OK
-- 0: I will either kill myself or everyone else in this place if I stay here for five more minutes

Then you could just graph it. Behold an example of a theoretical scatterplot, made with the precise and exact hand of years of expertise in statistical science:



The red, green, and blue might represent results for bars you might find anywhere in San Francisco but the Marina. The purple represents the projected results for basically any bar in the Marina.

You could then take this numerical data, average it per day ("here are the results for all the Mondays"), and transform it into a heatmap of the city for a given night, something like so:



Which would give you a decent idea as to where might be a good place to go, or avoid entirely.

There are some problems with this idea, though:

- In order to gather the data, you would have to crowdsource this junk, which means there would need to be agreement among the crowd on what constitutes a 10 bar vs a 0 bar. Chad and Trev (SIG EPSILON FOR LIFE, BRA!!) are going to have different ideas for what makes a good time than, say, me.
-- This could be circumvented by only letting friends of mine into the project, friends who share my taste in environments. The usefulness of the whole thing would be constrained, then, to people who are as awesome as me. I'm OK with this.
-- Although honestly, now that I think about it, your typical yeah-dude would still be able to use this data; he'd just need to flip it around and interpret the red as "sweet party, bro."

- It might get expensive. In order to gather data on a bar's crowd, you have to go inside, even if only for a minute or two. Lots of bars or clubs have cover charges.
-- You could get around this by robbing a bank.

These are the things I think about when I've got my brain to myself. I don't know what else to tell you.

ANNOUNCEMENT

I don't care even a little bit about the god damned Kindle 2. I'm not convinced I ever will. All of my "caring about gadgets" juice has been poured into a jar labeled "Google Android smartphone for Verizon," whenever the howling fuck that's going to happen. If ever.

You are now aware of more of my opinions. Rejoice

YOU CAN'T HANDLE MY KNIFE STYLE

I never knew this before, but I apparently cut my apples in a way that not many people are familiar with. When I bring them an apple, or when I eat an apple in front of them that I've prepared, they look at me as though I am the bringer of some kind of technology from the future. I'm not sure what's going on in everyone else's house. Look, I don't mean to cast aspersions on yo mama, but let's just say I am not the one to blame if you ain't know what I'm talkin' bout when I cut my apples, son.

I recognize that I have made an extremely crude diagram. I know this. I don't have a tablet or anything, all right. I roll mouse-style. You will just have to deal.

I WOULD LIKE A STRAIGHT ANSWER

We've all heard by now about this thing where there'll be no booze, floats, or nudity allowed at Bay to Breakers this year. Which makes it about as fun as a regular footrace. In other words: very god damn little.

But.

- There's always been a ban on nudity on the books (and I think maybe even on booze), and it hasn't really been, uh, enforced in the past.
- They also said they'd put out extra dumpsters. For the ... trash? Generated by who? The non-drinking, non-float-pushing, non-partying participants? That doesn't really make much sense.

So.

Is Bay to Breakers 09 going to be no booze, floats, or nudity? Or "no" booze, floats, or nudity? Does anybody have any real information. Because I had some plans this year that seriously involved two out of these three things.

MORE DISAPPOINTING THAN ANYTHING ELSE

I'm still getting people spamfollowing me on Twitter. People, or faceless corporate entities, or bots of some sort. It's saddening on many levels. Observe:

- Perhaps they simply don't understand how Twitter actually works
- Perhaps they don't care
- Perhaps they think I don't understand how Twitter actually works
- Perhaps there are simply enough people out there who don't understand how Twitter actually works to make this a viable marketing channel
- Perhaps all of the spam entities are simply following each other

Okay, that last one is kind of funny, though.

GOAL

I was talking about this over dinner with a good friend of mine the other day, and I figure I might as well get it down here.

Whenever it is I die, I want to be able to look down at my body and say "Thank you." I want to be able to say that I used this thing, this chunk of meat in which my spirit is housed, to provide me with all of the joy that it was possible to extract from this life. Without removing said joy from the lives of others, of course. And without resorting to chemical input, within reason. I mean otherwise I'd just be a crazed heroin junkie who ran around raping people. That would be ... kind of a change, I think, from the Jon you all know.

This is probably not what you'd call a great insight, but what do you want. Welcome to my blog

OUTRUNNING MYSELF HERE

This is the first night I've had without some kind of social obligation or activity in weeks. My body has almost no idea what to do with itself. Sitting my ass down and just reading something is very nearly a foreign activity to my cells, which tells me I need to do less stuff. I'm aware I'm having a diamond-shoes moment -- a bloo bloo blooo, I have too many people to hang out with -- but I need to find some damn balance and just chill the fuck out.

If you're reading this and we've hung out in the past three weeks, know that I don't regret doing so for an instant. You are my people and there is a reason I choose to spend my time with you.

Maybe what I actually need is just more time. A few more hours inserted between midnight and 7AM would do nicely.