This exchange in Silicon Valley’s 3rd episode may sound familiar:
Erlich: Richard, take Aviato. That’s not a name that I found, it’s a name that found me — on a vision quest. Something that you should do. Richard: No, no, I’m not going to eat a bunch of drugs and sit out in the desert and hope a name randomly pops into my head. Erlich: Then I question your leadership.
For those who aren’t familiar with the gossip (or haven’t read Isaacson’s Steve Jobs) the scene contains not-so-subtle fruit clues:
Today BART launched the first of several workshops with a full-scale prototype of their new train cars. They’re looking for rider feedback before finalizing the design. Most of it seems pretty nifty:
Comfortable, easy to clean seats
Extra set of doors for faster boarding
Bike racks
Digital signs and maps
BART says their new trains will be quieter on the inside and have better air conditioning, but these features weren’t part of the demo.
I took the time to voice my concerns about the boarding difficulty that the redesign didn’t address. One BART representative suggested a couple mirrors might solve the problem, which is an interesting alternative I hadn’t considered.
If you’re interested in checking out the prototype and giving feedback, several more workshops are scheduled. If all goes as planned we’ll start seeing these new trains in 2017.
Mike Judge’s new show “Silicon Valley” satirizes Bay Area tech culture. From Peter Thiel paying kids not to attend college to unconventional social norms to strange business practices, the show has some pretty easy targets to mock.
One of my favorite aspects of the show is the unusual architecture it highlights on the Peninsula. From the Google-inspired “Hooli” campus to the incubator housed in an Eichler, the Bay Area’s architecture has the same experimental quality as everything else here.
Not all experiments are successful. One particularly notable example of bad Peninsula architecture is highlighted in this scene: (click for larger version)
It’s an unusually ugly building on an unusually ugly stretch of El Camino in Palo Alto. Here’s what it looks like on Google Maps:
According to LoopNet this building was constructed in 1961. One can only imagine that drugs were a factor in the decision to attach those garish metal panels to the upper floor of what would otherwise be a tolerably bland building.
But it may not have long for this world — plans are afoot to replace it with a larger office building (PDF warning.)
I’m not entirely certain what compels someone to write out the lyrics to the 2005 hit Hope There’s Someone by Antony and the Johnsons, then tape the page to a pole in a BART station. Perhaps they were inspired by the recent Avicii version?
In all likelihood we’ll never know. It will remain as one of the unsolved mysteries of our time, just like that wooden box.
Sometimes in life there’s questions that don’t seem to have concrete answers, like who shot JFK or the career of Shia LaBeouf. Today another such question popped into existence in the form of a perplexing wood box installed on a utility pole at 16th and Guerrero. It’s the kind of thing one wouldn’t notice easily, like a slightly misplaced item you only catch out of the corner of your eye.
Some of the questions I’ve been able to come up with:
Who made this?
Why?
Is it art?
Why wood?
What does the pattern mean?
Why on this pole, of all places?
WTF?
If any answers are provided I’ll post updates. Until then, I’ll be scratching my head.
While the weather outside may lead you to believe that spring is just beginning, let’s not be so quick to judge. According to this sign in the Financial District, spring is over.
The new BART train cars will have lots of improvements over the current ones. But there’s one boarding issue that they didn’t quite tackle.
See what’s missing from their design, as pictured above?
You may have to take a step back, so to speak, in order to notice. Consider how people board BART trains: commuters and other frequent riders wait in a line or small group on the station platform near where the train’s doors stop when it pulls into the station. Generally they let other passengers off first before anyone gets on.
Or at least, they try to. On current BART trains it’s difficult to tell if there’s someone waiting to exit before you get on, because the trains are designed like this:
As you can see from Todd Lappin’s above photo, there aren’t windows next to the doors. This means you can be standing on the platform, unable to see an exiting passenger before you try to board. Not exactly a well thought out design.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
As the above photo by Roshan Vyas illustrates, even when Muni Metro’s doors are open you can still see the people inside. You can wait for them to get off before shoving your way on — or not, like certain impolite Muni passengers at rush hour. But either way at least there isn’t a wall at a crucial point in the train car exterior.
BART’s new trains narrow this boarding blind spot, but they don’t eliminate it. Look at all this wasted space:
I understand there needs to be a place for a map and maybe some ads on the trains, but this isn’t the place for it. There shouldn’t be a need to pick between faster boarding and information — both goals are attainable without sacrificing one for the other.
