Obviously the workaround is to stay away from Fisherman's Wharf.

Zipping past Fisherman's Wharf, Chris Paget's scanner downloaded to his laptop the unique serial numbers of two pedestrians' electronic U.S. passport cards embedded with radio frequency identification, or RFID, tags. Within an hour, he'd "skimmed" four more of the new, microchipped PASS cards from a distance of 20 feet.

"There's a reason you don't wear your Social Security number across your T-shirt," Albrecht says, "and beaming out your new, national RFID number in a 30-foot radius would be far worse."

But Gigi Zenk, a spokeswoman for the Washington state Department of Licensing, says Americans "aren't that concerned about the RFID" in a time when "tracking an individual is much easier through a cell phone."

Henry kicks back with a beer
Originally uploaded by Nooks

When Henry and I stopped at the refreshment stand near the Lincoln Memorial I read the menu to him, including "beer". Henry allowed as he'd really like another beer such as he had in this picture---ie, a root beer. Such subtleties are a little lost on him, I guess.

http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2009/06/15.html

It's time for the 2009 SFBG Best of the Bay readers' poll. We made a pretty good showing last year, including winning "Best Dance Club". Let's see if we can do that again, shall we? Categories in this year's poll that are applicable to DNA and our alumni include: "Best Overall Bar", "Best Cocktails", "Best Dance Company", "Best Dance Club", "Best Rock Club", "Best After-Hours Club", "Best DJ", "Best Burlesque Act", "Best Local Blog", and (oddly buried way at the end) "Best Bar".

I've changed the calendar pages a bit, and added links that makes it easy for you to add an event into your personal calendar. It handles iCal and Outlook (they're actually the same) and also Google and Yahoo calendars.

Most other sites tend to hide this stuff under a +Share box that does a Javascript popup filled with a bunch of "Nascar badges" for the various sites. I'm not sure if that would make this more clear, or less. I'm guessing less.

Annoyingly, the API for getting events into the Google calendar won't take URLs that are more than 705 bytes long, so I had to truncate the event description on that kind.

You can also subscribe to our full calendar feed in most calendar programs, of course, but this lets you put events in your personal calendar à la carte.

Let me know if you find any problems with this stuff, or have suggestions.

I keep making the assumption that if we make it easier for people to electronically tell their friends and stalkers about their plans, this will translate into more bodies through the door. It's hard to tell if it's working.

Remember yesterday when I asked everyone to "fan" the DNA Lounge Facebook page so that I could set a user name on it? Well, it turns out that they only let you set user names on pages if you already had more than 1,000 fans last month, so the fact that we have more than 1,000 now doesn't matter to them. Oh well...

There's also an interview with them from the same show, which is pretty terrible, but I note it only because at around 1:30 and 4:24 in the interview clip you can tell that they're sitting upstairs in the lounge, and that the bricked-over windows on the back wall have glass in them, and are painted black! I had forgotten that they used to look like that.

This is from a local public-access music video show called "Post" that I remember watching. They seem to have shot a lot of shows at DNA. Many of the truly ancient clips I've found have come from there. I wonder if it's possible to get DVDs of this show somehow... With a name like "Post", it is, of course, completely ungooglable.

You stay classy, RMS.

Bumblebee
Originally uploaded by Nooks

Bumblebees have to be my favorite kind of bee, I think I really should devote some time to learning more about them. I do wish they'd move a little more slowly while I try to photograph them though.