Archive for January, 2018

Honey bear invasion

January 30th, 2018

Tony the Tiger honey bear Honey Bowie bear Flava honey bear
 

On the way to work this morning I noticed SOMA had been invaded by honey bears. Anyone familiar with local street art — or regular readers of this blog — would immediately recognize this as the work of fnnch. But what was up with all the bears appearing at once? And why were they strapped to the utility poles instead of painted on?

I didn’t have to wait long to find out, because pretty much every local news outlet covered the project.

To sum up an already short story, fnnch got a bunch of friends together to raise awareness of a petition to decriminalize certain types of street art. But to learn more in fnnch’s own words, check out this post on Medium about the project.

Robot barista cafe expands to second location

January 24th, 2018

Cafe X at Market and Second
Cafe X at Market and Second Cafe X at Market and Second

A while back I visited Cafe X in San Francisco’s Metreon only to find its robot barista charged me for health care.

I thought for sure the novelty would wear off quickly, but it seems every time I’m at the Metreon there’s still a bunch of people gawking at the robot arm shuffling cups around. I’ve even ordered a couple more times myself when I was too desperate for coffee to wait in Blue Bottle’s notoriously long line.

But still, I never expected to see another Cafe X robot barista. Well, I was wrong.

Last night as I headed home I noticed something unexpected: a new Cafe X location at a small storefront on Market Street near Second Street. Despite walking by frequently somehow I hadn’t noticed the signs going up. I peered in the window and sure enough, there was the robot, sitting still, waiting for an order to be placed. A paper sign on the window indicated the grand opening was the following day.

Fast forward to this morning and I decided to stop by and grab a coffee on the way to work. The place was busy, but I breezed through the gawking crowds, fired up the Cafe X app on my phone, and ordered a cappuccino. A few moments later the robot arm gave me my coffee and I headed to the office.

Yes, yet again a robot charged me for health care. Perhaps it’s time to embrace our future of robots and spurious surcharges.

Why the new Firefox logo looks wrong, yet oddly familiar

January 14th, 2018

Back in November Mozilla released Firefox 57, aka “Quantum.” It was the first major change to Firefox in many years with a new look, new extension system, and significantly faster performance. While it did break some of my favorite extensions this was a temporary problem, and despite a few bumps the upgrade was ultimately a huge win in my book. Finally, Firefox became as performant as Chrome while retaining most of its customization options.

There was another change though that didn’t seem quite right — the logo.

Sure the new logo isn’t that different than the old one. It’s just a few visual tweaks here and there, and the colors were modified slightly. No big deal, right? Shouldn’t be, but something looked off and I couldn’t quite put my finger on what bugged me about it.

Then in a moment of realization I figured it out: the new Firefox logo bears a stunning resemblance to Trump’s infamously bad hairstyle:


 

Unfortunately once I saw this I couldn’t unsee it. Enjoy!

New water feature installed on Second Street

January 5th, 2018

Fire hydrant vs. truck
 

With the fountains at the 303 Second Street plaza and the muddy rocks thing at the c|net CBS Interactive building, one would think Second Street has enough decorative outdoor fountains already.

But a certain truck driver decided to create his own temporary water feature installation this evening at Second and Stevenson, located between the KPMG building and Uno Dos Tacos.

It was dazzling many passers by on their evening commutes, many of which stopped to take photos and videos. Even a crew of fire fighters showed up to enjoy the spectacle!

One has to wonder if this artist could secretly be Banksy in his most audacious display of guerrilla art yet? We may never know.