(I'm not really juggling, but Nick is a cunning photographer).

Part of living in San Francisco is fulfilling a social obligation to occasionally do ridiculous things in costume so as to entertain other San Franciscans. So today we had a fine old-fashioned tea party in Dolores park, in various variations on the theme of formal wear. There was tea (by Oracle Greg), cucumber sandwiches (by Opera Greg), a wicker hamper full of china (purchased collectively from various thrift stores in the preceding weekends), and classical music (provided by iPods, my inMotion and a lot of D-size batteries). There was also a cane, which, combined with formal wear and a hat, predictably led (if you're me) to dancing: yes folks, San Francisco is managing to make me even more gay.

Of course, this being San Francisco, we were not the only ones involved in impromptu public performance in the park on Sunday, so when a marching band showed up and started playing a bunch of quite catchy tunes, there was general merriment and more dancing. It was, I think it's clear, a whole lot of fun, even if our original plan of having the formal picnic on the nude beach was spoiled by the somewhat chilly weather outside of the Mission's wonderful little microclimate.

Other weekend highlights included the arrival of Mrs. and Mr. Matt Lock, who I am certain will take the town by storm as soon as they get over their jet lag.

So you may have heard of Joost, supposedly the future of (legal) television broadcasting over the Internet. It's from the guys who brought as KaZaA and Skype, so it's worth paying attention when they come up with a new product. So I signed up for the beta, and got in today. You can go and read my screenshot review on Flickr, or you can just read my conclusion, right now.

Basically: not ready for prime time, but it has some serious potential. There are a few questionable interface decisions, but in general it's slick and intuitive. Where it really falls down at the moment is reliability of playback: the content, once it's cached, is high-quality and smooth, but the download process is not nearly fast enough, and so content frequently halts, doing so so frequently that watching most content is unbearable.

Is this the future of television? Well, maybe, but probably not. It's interesting that they've got MTV and Warner Brothers on board, plus some major advertisers: this is a platform that the big guys like, which means there's potential for high-quality content on there, although at the moment it seems to be mainly second and third-tier stuff. It's also very interesting that Viacom, one of the partners in this deal, is suing YouTube, which is far and away Joost's biggest competitor. Will Warner be next to sue Google?

I shall watch with interest to see who else gets on board with content and what happens to the video quality as more users pile into the P2P network. But in the meantime, YouTube still has the edge: this platform has no viral sharing, and no user-contributed content, and those are both crippling flaws in the new world of democratized media.

The letters F and B

For Frigid Bitch, Matt's anti-Burning Man gathering, where there was much drinking and snark, on Friday night.

The number 11

That being roughly the amount that I won at the end of E's mainly-lesbian poker night on Saturday. I was most entertained.

The Easter Bunny

It turns out, unsurprisingly really, that San Francisco's idea of Easter Sunday is to get a bunch of drag queens, hundreds of gay men, assorted local eccentrics and performers and have a hunky Jesus competition in the park, if possible while dressed in a bunny suit or at least in a really stylish hat, all overseen by drag nuns.

I really like living here.

B9 d+ t++ k- s u f- i-- o x+ e+ l- c--

Get your own (via Kottke, whom I envy for his "u=" status).

It's official, folks. The Don't Be Evil party is over. Google has spent $3.1 billion -- in cash -- for DoubleClick, the inventor of all manner of the world's most annoying advertising.

The equation is simple. DoubleClick are evil. DoubleClick are Google. Therefore, Google are evil.

Why are they evil?

Internet advertising server DoubleClick is tracking the online activity of users, recording their names, purchases, and addresses, reports USA Today. DoubleClick is combining the data it accumulates on Web user activity with a direct marketing database of 90 million households maintained by Abacus Direct, which DoubleClick acquired last year. Privacy International's David Banisar says the move threatens online anonymity, while consumer advocates say they will complain to the FCC. Junkbusters' Jason Catlett says, "For four years [DoubleClick] has said [the services] don't identify you personally, and now they're admitting they are going to identify you." DoubleClick says the practice allows ads to target users better, improving the online experience, and the company also points out that users can opt to not have their use tracked. Banisar claims that opt out language is usually buried in a site's privacy statement.

They track your online behaviour and map it to your offline address, and spam you with ads in both places. Pop-ups, pop-unders, audio ads, full-screen ads, uncloseable flash "floaters", all the worst forms of advertising are pushed enthusiastically and primarily by this nightmare of a company. And now everyone's favourite poster child for the friendly face of the Internet are bought in wholesale to this concept.

I should be happy -- after all, Google has been lording their non-evil status over Yahoo! for years (Yahoo! sold their soul to graphical advertising long, long before I joined up). But I'm not, because it's sad to see this aberration of the normal flow of capitalism -- a big, ethical company -- go the way of all other big companies. It took an admirably long time, but make no mistake, it's over, and that's sad.

It makes great business sense, of course. DoubleClick made $300m last year, and that's a great ROI even if the online advertising market weren't in an ongoing state of rapid expansion. This deal makes way more sense than the YouTube acquisition, which cost half as much but had no real revenue associated with it at all (plus, importantly, what DoubleClick are doing is entirely legal, even if it is detestable).

But now the corner has been turned, and a move that makes more money despite annoying and hassling end-users has been deemed Googly. Any number of dirty tricks -- and with market power like Google's, there are a lot of dirty tricks it can pull -- are now fair game. This will, inevitably, lead to them doing something to improve Google's bottom line at the expense of your Internet experience.

Goodbye, non-evil Google. It was nice knowing you.

So on Friday, on the advice of LJ, I went to Yuri's Night, Bay Area Chapter. The night bills itself as "A science and sounds expo" in honour of the anniversary of the flight of the first human in space, Yuri Gagarin. And there were a fair number of geeky exhibits and speeches and things, but the event starts at 7pm and goes on until 7am the next day, and by about half-way through the whole thing is just a rave.

Many of the participants are also participants in the acclaimed Burning Man, such as the Laughing Squid folks, who have some great pictures of the night. It was a pretty awesome event, especially surreal because the whole thing was held on what was very obviously a military installation run by NASA; not exactly the venue you expect to be associated with, for instance, a stall selling vegan-organic-wheat-free-raw "piazzas" (pizza shaped, but not baked... and not very nice).

My accomplice for the event was Nick, and we ended up spending quite a lot of time in the licensing dome run by DeMaTerial camp, who apparently provide the same surreal experience of voluntarily subjecting yourself to a pointless, endless round of government bureaucracy at Burning Man itself. After it got cold we ended up in the Laughing Squid bus with a large number of random people who were disproportionately (a) young, (b) hot, (c) from Stanford, (d) working for Google this summer, and often a combination of these traits (the would-be Googlers agreed that it's sad that Google are evil now but said the free gourmet food would probably compensate).

Having arrived straight after work around 7, we eventually left at around 2am, hitching a lift back to SF from a lovely couple who had just moved back to the bay area from NYC. The husband of the pair also had an awesome story about Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse that I shall hold back for later anecdotal use.

I think it's fair to say my weekends in SF have been, on average, a lot more interesting than my average London weekends.

There's never been a better time to come visit me, folks.

(It's been an awfully long time since I posted something like this... please indulge me.)

I saw Orion as I walked tonight
Above the streets of San Francisco
He was standing in the sky
Watching taxis passing by

The sky is bigger here
And so the dreams are bigger too
With a land that's big and empty
It seems there's always more to do

It's like a city full of children
With no adults to spoil the fun
And our toys keep getting bigger
I hope we don't hurt anyone

I saw Orion in the city sky
As the party spilled out of the bar
So familiar yet so strange
While an old man begged for pocket change

No, the streets aren't paved with gold
But they're not paved with broken dreams
They're paved with cold grey concrete
But there's grass growing in the seams

And the streets are full of theatre
And other naked cries for validation
As we insert yet more of the surreal
Into this our pretty plastic nation

I saw Orion shining carelessly
And he will still shine on tomorrow
For he was shining from a distance
And our streets don't make a difference

If the big one strikes tomorrow
It doesn't matter what we do
So we're all just living for today
Or so we think, but that's not true

Because we keep on forming friendships
And we keep on having fun
And we all secretly believe
The next day will be like this one

I saw Orion hanging silent
Over this city of my dreams
In this town where new dreams come in waves
I find old hopes I didn't know I craved

Dreams I don't remember having
And hopes I didn't know I had
I will fill the world with magic lights
And I'll write songs that aren't so bad

I'm so far from where I was
When I first felt this city's pull
I'm not the man I thought I'd be
For that we all are thankful

I saw Orion standing watching
But he is not standing alone
The night is full of his companions
And the city of my own

We are all crazy in this city
And this nation, and this world
For thinking we can make a difference
To the suffering in the world

But in this city full of children
With no adults to spoil the fun
They have reshaped the world already
And I am here to make the next one

The well-respected A List Apart is carrying out a survey of the web development profession to get some visibility of this fragmented and little-understood field. If your job involves any web work, you should take this survey.

Update: (And if you're in a survey-taking mood, you might want to take this one)

Further update: Thanks for your votes, but the survey from the AFA is actually fraudulent -- it always lists the same bogus results:

If a corporation supports the homosexual agenda, you would: Be more likely to do business with that company. 6,238
Be less likely to do business with that company. 188,722
It would not affect my buying decision. 3,946

The best thing you can do is post about their fraud to your own blog and hope to embarrass them into taking it down. If they're so righteous, why don't they have the courage of their convictions to show the results of a real poll?