alexjohn (left) chats with his partner badrobot88 at Noc Noc, a downtown Seattle bar, at a gathering of LJ friends arranged by the latter.

A few people have seen my Twitter posts that are automatically aggregated by LoudTwitter. Note, however, that LoudTwitter is an entirely separate site from Twitter.

So what is Twitter? CommonCraft has put together this easy-to-understand explanation.

If you want to my follow (and even reply to) my Twitter posts as they happen (instead of waiting for the summary the following day), look up Bucephalus on Twitter.com and click Follow.

I live near Seattle's liberal and stylish neighborhood of Capitol Hill, which is also considered the official gay neighborhood. Not far from my home is this establishment, "Mother's Place" daycare, which advertises its phone number (324-5427) on its awning.

Clearly, they intended the last four digits to spell out "Kids." But do they realize the whole number spells out "Fag Kids"?

Maybe the neighborhood is even more liberal than I thought.

Reports of the day:

• 09:54 Drinking the usual Diet Lipton Green Tea while contemplating punching the clock and starting work.
• 10:01 Getting half naked in my office. Which is normal about this time of day. So far no one still working here has caught me.
• 11:29 Brrr. Time to add an undershirt. More in-office stripping!
• 14:07 Still trying to clearly define this week's projects.... I hate unclear tasks.
• 15:51 And the battle to stay awake resumes.... Argh.
• 15:55 Afternoon sun has arrived.... More office stripping as layers come off.
• 16:24 Need to clean the house this weekend. Maybe I should do it naked... on webcam.
• 19:28 eating sugar-free licorice and watching House, M.D., on DVD.

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• 22:27 is chilling at home after dinner #
• 14:12 is doing chores at home after a pleasant brunch and walk with friends. #
• 14:38 is ignoring yet another phone call from a guy he shagged in October. How long before he gets a clue? #
• 15:18 is going through bills and setting up online bill paying. I know, I know. How very 1999. #
• 15:51 is catching up on shredding. Shred, shred, shred. Bye bye paper trail... #
• 21:24 is doing a little IM chatting before bed. As usual. #

Posted automatically by LoudTwitter

In Pennsylvania today, Democrats (and Republicans who switched their registration to Democrat) are going to the polls for the first primary election in several weeks. With a large number of delegates at stake, the contest is being closely watched by much of the nation.

Here in Seattle, Obamania continues at a quieter pace. My good friend chiaroscuran is making and distributing campaign buttons of his own design. One example uses Star Trek fonts to proclaim "Barak Obama: The Logical Choice."

Closer to my neighborhood, an unidentified storefront window proclaims enthusiasm for Obama in a more artistic way. This decidedly Warholesque presentation adds some welcome color to my daily walk to work.

No one will ever accuse Seattle government of being too creative.

In addition to our legendary traffic problems and baby steps towards rail transit, we have this locally famous location on Capitol Hill: The intersection of Bellevue, Bellevue, and Bellevue. (Technically, Bellevue Avenue, Bellevue Place, and Bellevue Court — as if that removes all the confusion for visitors.)

People in the neighborhood say "I live near the Bellevues." Locals know exactly what that means. But out of towners? Not so much.

Oh, and we also have a city named Bellevue just on the opposite side of Lake Washington.

Need more examples? Capitol Hill also has two streets named Olive.

Come on. How hard is it to come up with varied and original street names?

Oh well.

I like to think it adds to local color, one of the quirky things that makes Seattle noteworthy.  And besides, how many people (like the guy I went out with last Friday) can say they live at the intersection of Bellevue, Bellevue, and Bellevue?

On Friday night, I attended a show by the touring band Enuma Elish, who performed their score for Fritz Lang's 1927 silent masterpiece, Metropolis. A longtime favorite of mine, Metropolis has been interpreted by several different composers, including, memorably, Giorgio Moroder's 1984 tinted pop-music version. (You can hear free audio samples at Amazon.)

Film composers always face a tug-of-war between the desire to create a work that is driven by its own internal structure and musical ideas, and one that is driven externally by the events in the movie. Since the composers are seldom in charge, this contest is almost always decided in favor of the needs of the film rather than the integrity of the composition. Good composers can pull it off in a natural sounding way.

But because they created a score for a work in the public domain, Enuma Elish didn't have to sacrifice any creative control. The result is a work that maintains its musical integrity but sometimes at the cost of illustrating what is really going on in the film.

For example, the discordant electronica brilliantly melds with the scenes showing slave-labor conditions in the machine district. But the music is unwilling or unable to switch gears effectively when the scene changes to show the Club of the Sons, garden playground of Metropolis's ultra-rich.

Overall, however, my date and I enjoyed the work. It was great to see them use the longer Restored Authorized version, which is available on DVD.

Enuma Elish consists of Warren Jones on the bass clarinet, bassoon, tenor sax, mizmar, electronics; with Yuri Zbitnoff providing electro acoustic percussion, according to their MySpace page. I believe they are planning on releasing a CD of their Metropolis score, but have not yet done so.

Walking home from work yesterday, I spied a pair of shoes in very good condition, placed neatly off to one side of the walkway. The shoes were next to the side entrance of Capitol Hill's First Covenant Church. I was amazed no one had snatched them up. (At least not at the time I passed by.)

What's going on? Is the church too hallowed to allow any shoes inside? If so, why weren't more shoes to be seen? Or maybe all the good shoes had been stolen, and the local homeless people were above taking tassled loafers!?

This isn't the first time I have seen odd shoe phenomena in this very neighborhood. But this one is different.

Theories, anyone?

I recently decided to spring for a cool new gizmo called the Eye-Fi card. It's a memory card for your digital camera, in many ways completely indistinguishable from other memory cards its size. But the difference is, this one contains a wifi (wireless) chip so it can communicate to your home (or preferred) wireless network.

That means no more searching around for a cable every time I need to transfer photos from camera to my computer. It also eliminates the extra step of transferring photos from my computer to a photo hosting site like Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket, Shutterfly, or the like.

When you first get the chip, you have to plug it into your computer and set it up to recognize your own wireless network with the proper passwords and so on. After that, you just leave it in your camera. Anytime your camera is in range of your network, it will start transferring photos when you turn the camera on.

I always leave my main desktop computer running, so that isn't a problem. But the Eye-Fi folks now have an installable update that works even when your computer is off. As long as your wireless network is powered up, the Eye-Fi card will still send your photos to the Eye-Fi Web service and from there to your designated Web photo hosting service. Later, when your computer is on, the Eye-Fi service also sends them to your computer.

I was pleased to discover that the Eye-Fi creates a separate folder for each date photos are uploaded and sorts your pictures into those folders. That's perfect for me, since that's how I organize photos anyway. However, it sorts them by the date they are transferred, not the date they are taken. So, unless I'm traveling, I try to transfer them the same day I take the pictures. Which basically means, just turning on my camera when I get home. I just leave it on for a few minutes, and it all happens invisibly.

The Eye-Fi software also intelligently only uploads photos that haven't been uploaded before rather than trying to upload everything on the card every day.

I wish I could tell it to rename each photo based on the date (something I like to do), but I guess you can't have everything.

Another feature I wish it had is to upload directly to my wireless laptop when it's in range, rather than requiring my home wireless network. If it did, it would really make traveling with the camera and laptop even easier. As it is now, I'll still need my connecting cable with me on trips.

But those are fairly minor complaints. Now that two common chores of dealing with digital pictures all happens automatically, I find myself taking more pictures. I try to carrying my camera with me everywhere. It's great!

Considering the Eye-Fi card holds 2 GB of photos, I don't think $100 was too much to pay. It's been a great timesaver and convenience.

No, I don't work for Eye-Fi or any of its affiliates. I just really like my new toy and wanted to share!

Here's a little something for you architecture fans. I've always been a fan of modern and/or offbeat architecture, and this one featured on Dvice.com definitely fills the bill. I have a hard time believing this house will be big enough for a family of four for very long, but it's an interesting concept nonetheless.

Okay, I'm a complete nerd, but I just love this. I dedicate this post to brilliant musician and fellow nerd jayceeloop.

I know what you're thinking. Me too. I could really use this, at least if they made it in a bigger size. (MUCH bigger, my friends tell me.) But it could probably end in pain and anguish.

Read all about this and several other "Products that Look Like Sex Toys But Aren't (Officially)" at OMGLists.

I might note that this isn't the first time some of these items have been identified as sex toys: A memorable gag in "Sex and the City" has Samantha quarreling with a Sharper Image salesman over her broken "vibrator," which he insists is a neck massager.

To each his own.

I hate it when I make my usual high-protein turkey and fat-free cheese sandwiches at home and then forget to bring them to work. But at least it means I can pig out on more chicken from the local deli. And wash it down with skim milk. No rice, extra meat, please.

Ready or not, my alarm goes off at 6:30 every work day morning, telling me to get to the gym. Today is chest day.

We've had many sunny but decidedly cold days in Seattle this January. But we've also had a couple of rare snow days, the last one being this Monday. I brushed snow off my windshield in the early hours of the morning and skidded my car around until I go to and from the gym.

But, as usual, it melted off as quickly as it came. Even so, it made for a pretty sight from my deck and added some seasonal variety and natural beauty.

Until the next snowfall or other weather change, it's back to Seattle's year-around rain festival.

This is just a housekeeping note: After spending waaaaaaay too much time messing with HTML and CSS, chasing down dead-ends and using a lot of trial and error, I have finally come up with a version of my photographic 2007 year-in-review post that isn't completely messed up either by the quirks of some browsers or the coding imposed by my LJ template. The latest edition appears to work in most Web browsers — or at least the ones I was willing to test. If you were unable to view it before, chances are it should look passable now. Look for it here (link requires friend status).

My last laptop, a Dell Latitude, was a cut-rate refurbished model that needed more than one serious repair in its day. It was annoying in many ways (compared to my previous ThinkPad), but at least it did the job. And its DVD player kept me company during many a sick day a year ago.

Sadly it died on me just days before the new year, a total loss. I didn't lose any important data (thanks to a fortuitously timed backup), but it meant hurrying to buy a new one before my upcoming business trip.

I did a little checking around, but when I got to Fry's, my planning and sales resistance melted when I saw the Fujitsu Lifebook. It's big, beautiful display and full-sized keyboard were irresistible. I sprang for it. (Go ahead: Call me a size queen. You know you want to.)

Here's what the new system's desktop looks like today, for all you desktop meme fans. I don't normally have the computer's desktop quite this clean, but I haven't had time to really clutter it up yet. This theme also represents how it looks on business trips. At home, the background is a lot more bawdy.

I don't exactly have buyer's remorse, but the new baby is significantly heavy and large, meaning I'm going to need to get a new bag for it. Moreover, the battery life is a pathetic one hour. And it doesn't help that my trip to took me to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where sleek, lightweight ThinkPads teased and taunted me.

If only computers would warn you when they were going to die. I could have used my holiday vacation to do more careful comparison shopping.

But hey, no regrets. It may be a battery pig, but my Lifebook is a joy to look at.

It actually snowed on Christmas day in Seattle!

A real holly bush grows outside the Chinese restaurant where we enjoyed a Christmas brunch.

Here's wishing everyone comfort and good cheer for the holidays. Peace.

For some, the commercial Christmas shopping season is magical time of traditional icons, pretty lights, and familiar heart-warming music. For others, it's an abomination of passive consumer submission to mindless greed and marketing manipulation. Like many people, I tend to drift between both points of view, intellectually condeminng the waste and shallowness on the one hand, but enjoying the sounds, sights, and gift-giving on the other.

If you live in the Seattle area, there's probably no better place to indulge the superficial joys and commercial horrors of Christmas than in the suburb of Bellevue (called "Blah Void" by some of my friends). Think of it as Seattle's Oakland; there really is no "there" there, either.

Freelance work had kept me sheltered away from much of the season so far. But on Friday night, I joined my good friends White Eagle and his partner Adrain (who aren't really bears but could certainly pass in the right setting) for a seasonal outing in the land across the lake. I hadn't seen them for some time, and this proved to be an enjoyable reunion.

We braved Bellevue Square, one of the largest shopping malls in the area so my friends could wrap up some holiday gift purchases (no pun intended). Afterwards we had a pleasant meal at P.F. Chang's, and then hurried along to another mall, Lincoln Square (with its two-story waterfall that runs along titanic sheets of glass), for a showing of Sweeny Todd. A bloody musical for a blood-thirsty holiday — what could be more appropriate?

A new store opened in my neighborhood in the last month or so, just in time for the holidays. The first window display proclaimed the merchandiser's specialty, namely men's designer underwear. You think maybe my neighborhood is just a teensy bit gay?

The store adjoins a spa that offers, among other services, genital waxing. In fact, I was startled last weekend to drive by and see the mannequins replaced by a prone naked man who was getting waxed in the front window! Only a few bystanders crowded around (it was cold, and the performance was apparently not well advertised). It was over before we could park and check out the action.

Still, the place promises to add a little zing to an otherwise quiet section of street. Happy holidays indeed.

Gym time for Bucephalus.

For many decades, one corner of my neighborhood was home to a red brick building dating from (I'm guessing) the 1920s. It had gotten a little funky and dilapidated over the years, but still maintained its architectural integrity and a certain charm. Moreover, it housed an antique junk store, a wifi coffee shop, and a hair salon catering to ethnic minorities. It was part of our 'hood.

Last fall, the building was razed, along with a charming early 20th-century home next door, to make room for future development. But new construction is unlikely to begin before next spring (if then), leaving us with an eyesore of an empty lot of torn-up concrete and chain-link fencing.

In the wake of these events, a tagger left this comment on a wall abutting the property.

Urban renewal indeed.

It doesn't snow very often in Seattle, so when it does, it's a special occasion to be enjoyed. As if to herald a more reasonable arrival of the holiday season than the one pushed months earlier by retailers, the fluffy flakes fell continuously for much of this, the first day of December. Before long, Capitol Hill was laden with a good two to three inches of winter beauty.

By evening, the snow was already showing signs of melting: Good news for motorists, but a little sad for those of us who were enjoying the scenery. Fortunately, it will be around at least through the Holiday Party I'm attending tonight.

Hurt and I had originally planned a day of shopping but soon abandoned our cars and went for a walk amid the swirling ice crystals. I snapped a few shots with my cell phone, which was the only camera I had on hand.