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It appears that Google has finally done an update to the PageRank system. It had been a seriously long time in coming being that the game since the last one was nearly six months! Many people rely on these updates to rate the worth of their site. I'm sure that if pressed about the delay, Google would respond, "You and your users should determine the worth of your site." Of course, if something like this were the only judge of a site's worth, then there would be little use to make the PageRank public.       I had the great pleasure of once having a rank of five on this site. After the last update, I went from a five to a four though, which kinda sucked, since nothing had changed. With this latest update, I really dropped, from a four to a three. This is really unfortunate as that's something of a sucky rank. Or at least, it used to be. I noticed that SF Gate dropped to a five, while other new sources didn't change. One friend of mine is now a four, while he has less content on his site. Another friend is still a three and he has a great deal less content on his site.       I have been musing about this for the last couple of days, since it really felt like a blow to some kind form of my pride. The only thing I can figure is that the index has been recalculated based on the number of sites out there and in reality, I was just on the cusp of a four and this new review bumped me to a three. That still doesn't really explain it and I suppose I'll just have to keep writing the best articles that I can, get a few more links (oh yeah, I have more links from other sites now as well), and keep updating my photos. I suppose at this point we all exist at the whim of Google saying we exist.

Yesterday, I had the enjoyment of "scaling" Bernal Heights for the first time in the nearly ten years that I've lived in the Bay Area. Yeah, truly pathetic. But, at least I finally made it out there and in the process realized that I had missed out on one of the most spectacular views in the city. Now I understand why all these families have move there and caused the rechristening of "Maternal Heights". It is a place that you really can raise kids and have a dog and hurtle yourself down the hill on a winding road in a shaky car you built yourself.       Yes, yesterday was the Illegal Soap Box Derby for 2007 in San Francisco. I would gladly link to a site for it, but apparently it is so illegal and so underground that they don't even have a website. In San Francisco, this is unheard of. Or maybe it's just that no one really got around to it as they were busy putting the finishing touches on their rabbit head or beer bottle holder for the car.       Ultimately, the event is just a screwy thing. From what I saw, there was no prize other than bragging rights and showing up with a cool soapbox. While the shark car and aforementioned rabbit suit were cool, there were no cubicles setting off down the hill.       As to why it's illegal is the fact that (I think) it's because you're not allowed to race in the street or block off a street without a permit. Also, the drinking and driving isn't looked upon too fondly either. But given that no cops showed up and the "street" is really this windy bit of asphalt that dead ends at the top of the peak, it made me wonder how illegal it was. Regardless, it made for some good shots and a great walk over Bernal.

Almost two weeks ago, my brother had my family's first grandchild, this making me officially an uncle. Of course he and his girlfriend were taking care of three other kids from a previous relationship of hers, so this little guy rounds it out for an even four, if four is an even kind of thing.       Dylan Christopher Cole Hudin is a cute little guy, but at just a few days old when I saw him, who knows where he's headed. Will he get his mother's red hair, or my brother's generally clueless look? Sorry Chris, cheap shot, but I am the older brother.       The thing is, little babies just sleep I found out. And here the whole family came up to see him, when all he really is, is a little poo machine at this point. Man can those kids pump it out. But, that's about it: eat, poo, cry sometimes, pee on someone sometimes, and then sleep a lot.       I have a feeling that the uncle duties really start to kick in once they can walk and they want someone to watch the little guy or take him to the park or go hiking or something. We'll see. Thankfully he has three older siblings than I can test these things out on first to see how I stack up as an uncle.

For those who don't know, apparently October is the Open Studio month in the art world. This is the time when large groups of artists in various cities open up their studios for people to come around and see the "grit" or art making, as well as hopefully buy something.       One of the first cities where I checked this out was up in Chico. Their studio tours took place over a couple of weekends this month, as well as in the neighboring towns of Oroville (my hometown) and Paradise (a deceptively blissful, yet wholly inaccurate town name.) Overall, I was quite impressed with the tour and enjoyed it a great deal. Sure, there were your part time soccer mom artists on it whose work wasn't the greatest, but there were also a lot of genuine artists as well. There were people who were much more interested in the craft than the being of artistry if that makes sense.       This was something of a contrast to San Francisco where the studio tours seemed to bring out much more of a "scene" group of people. The number of artists that I truly respected the work of were quite few. There seemed to be a suspicious amount of Art Academy students who had learned the basics of technique, but had no clue how to actually make something that was interesting.       There were some highlights in the group like Hilary Williams (a print and doll maker) and Paul Madonna (graphic artist I suppose is the best description.) Paul is rather well known in the city and his studio, which was actually his apartment, was freakin' flooded with people to the point where it was hard to walk around in. It was there that I finally saw the bored housewife in a track outfit with painted toenails that I know so well from my days growing up with artist parents. Paul showed himself to be a good professional by giving her a lot of "Mmm hmm" and "Right, of course" as she was annoyingly hogging him to ask about a commissioned work. Maybe she ended up following through, but I seriously, seriously doubt it. These groupies are trouble.       At any rate, these studio tours are very cool and a lot of fun. Whether you're unable to draw a smiling sun with a crayon or able to paint like Van Gogh, I think that they're something anyone can get something out of. Of yeah and there's the art buying. I way, way, overspent.

Growing up, two things came to mind when I heard the name, "Michelin". One was tires. The other was that fat marshmallow man that they used for their uh... mascot or whatever you want to call him. It wasn't until the last two years that the name, Michelin means so much more.       For one thing, it's French. For another, they make a massive series of restaurant guides that are, from all accounts, considered to be the finest there are. Inclusion or exclusion from their guides can mean feast or famine for a restaurant because so many people take them to be the bible of fine dining.       So it was that last year, their first guides entered the US with New York City and San Francisco being their entries in to the market. I didn't get to read the 2007 guide, but took more of an interest this year as they're introducing Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Also, the director, Jean-Paul Naret was at a local bookstore to promote it a bit. So, I went down to see it.       The event itself was more than a little frustrating. Even though Jean-Luc was there before it was supposed to start at 6, the event actually started at 6:30. While this is not enjoyable, it forced me to be privy to a quartet of gay guys sitting behind me letting loose an endless, driveling stream of auditory diarrhea. Thankfully the event did eventually start, as I can only take so much of, "And so, like, for Thanksgiving, maybe London is that, you know, or perhaps I was thinking Moroccan tonight, but it's too spicy, so, like maybe it's just that we should drive up to Napa tonight..." Seriously, I kid you not.       But, listening to Jean-Paul Naret was amusing. He's a very charismatic fellow and very, very French. With him, for some reason they had Marcia Gagliardi of Table Hopper there to talk as well. She's a nice girl and likes her food, but her and Jean-Luc are in such different leagues that it would be akin to the president of the neighborhood watch and the president of the US talking on the same panel. Although, this is something of a misnomer, since I don't want to compare Jean-Luc to our current monkey at the desk.       The questions were okay from the crowd. There was one point when one of the boys in the quartet naturally had to ask make the accusation that the Michelin Guides are biased because they don't seem to grace any Asian restaurants with three stars. Jean-Luc deftly answered that they're not biased, they just haven't found one yet and that Masa in SF is a Japanese restaurant that is two stars.       Of course I bought a copy and now that I have the book, I want to eat everywhere that's in it. Chez Panisse is looking quite good...

I was running through my photos and updating the section here on the site (check out the Sarajevo Gallery if you haven't) and I came across this gem of my hugeness while we were running around the town.       It's true that in general, my height wasn't as much of a problem as it was elsewhere, but still, there were a number of "no Michael zones" to be found. One such one was the Svrzo House (yeah, had to start my own Wiki page for that one.) It's full of low doorways and many a Hudintrap. Obviously, it was built in a time when people were a great deal smaller. And if you look at the pictures, by great deal, I mean, midgets.       The only person who had it worse was the blind fellow who was checking out the place (they gave him special permission to touch things in the rooms) and he was also my height.

Again, more of the Man Called Chick continues from my buddies Paul Kramer and Hus Lee Miller. Good stuff here. The boys are finding something of a thread with this really funny character. You can view the first episode here or see it on the Funny or Die site.              

For those who don't know, Blog Action Day has come and gone this last Monday. It was a novel idea about trying to get everyone in the blogosphere to chat about a single topic; in this case, the environment. I wrote a post for it because I blather endlessly here and figured, hey, why not?       It seemed like it might do... I don't know, something. Well, in looking at the statistics that they amassed and my own site, it really appears to have done nothing. I think the post on Slashdot summed it up pretty well:              You can almost hear the sound of the vacuum created by bloggers thinking that their words matter when the people with control don't even know how to read the tubes. Lick a stamp or march- that's harder to ignore.              They're right. A great deal of us write just to hear our own voices and blogging is in general something of a reference system as opposed to an action system. And because of the ubiquity of blogs and email, using them for any kind of campaign doesn't really have the impact that we could hope it would.       But, back to the stats thing for a minute. Did I see anymore traffic on my site because I was one of the 20,603 bloggers posting about the environment that day? No. In fact, my traffic was a bit lower last Monday. Sure, I'm just one of thousands and a minor voice in a vast cosmos of bit and bytes that are running around the planet and I don't mind being overlooked. What I do mind is that this hasn't really brought any new faces in to the game. All the big posters that you can see on the Blog Action Day site were already big posters. The Technorati authority ranked blogs are pretty meaningless because to get up high in that list means already being high in that list. In other words, it's a joke, like getting in to something by having experience doing that something.       Maybe in the future, some juicy tidbit that someone wrote will surface and lead to a change in how we do things. But really, we're all bloggers and that was bound to happen with or without this event. So, in a nutshell, what has this really done except use up more electricity that's going to have an more of an impact on the environment?

It was the case in my most recent trip that the two midrange camera lenses we were using both started to freak out. One, which was a Canon 28-135mm EF series lens started have some auto focus problems. The other, a Canon 24-70 L series lens had its zoom ring completely crumple. This is never a good thing to have happen as these are the lenses you use all the time, but what made this worse was having it happen in the middle of a four month trip.       Thankfully, the 28-135 started to act a little better once we got in to cooler climates, but the 24-70 was pretty much hosed. I had to manually pull the damned thing in and out to get the right focal length. It was either that or run around with the 70-200 on all the time, which is a lovely lens, but really intimidating to people, because like the 24-70, it has a 2.8 aperture which means a lot of glass.       Upon getting back home, I sent both of them off for warranty work. The 28-135 was about 8 months old and the 24-70, a mere 2 months old when this happened. The result was that the 24-70 came back in two days after they got it. The 28-135 took two weeks! And the repairs done to the two were very similar. It turns out that the 28-135 had a similar problem, except without the busted up zoom ring.       It's at this point that I should mention that the 28-135 cost $400 and the 24-70 about $1,200. Hmm, curious that the more expensive lens got fixed faster. I mean, it's great how fast they fixed that one, but if they're dragging their feet on cheaper lens, that's ridiculous.       Canon really doesn't need to sell us on the fact that their more expensive lens are worth the money by slowing own repairs. You can feel and without any doubt, see the difference between the lower end and higher end lenses. I just think that they should either repair them all at the same time or offer crappier warranties on the cheaper lens to encourage people to buy the more costly ones.       Maybe I'm wrong and there was some reason that the cheaper lens took longer, but from where I'm sitting it looks mighty suspicious.

It's inevitable that when I go to a restaurant and they ask for a name that when I say, "Michael", they always put down, "Mike". If I go to a deli, I am always a "Mike". Calling up a shop, I am a "Mike". Phone solicitors will call me a "Mike". People I meet and introduce myself to as "Michael" will then call me, "Mike" within a matter of minutes. Why is this?       There is the fact that people in the US really like to shorten things. I mean, why say "United States of America" when "USA" will suffice? But, that is a choice made by the individual and they can call the country by whatever name they want. When it comes to a person, it would seem that you call them what they request unless they give you an alternative.       But this is the problem with short nicknames in that they're all over the map. For instance, how did, "Jack" become a nickname for, "John"? That's not shorter. Yes, "Mike" is shorter than, "Michael" but not by much when you think about it.       This isn't getting any closer to answering the question though. Why do people rename me without asking me? And it really is just me. "Josephs" don't become, "Joes" and "Margarets" don't become "Marges" automatically. More to the point, "Barry" would never become, "Bar" or, "Adam", "Ad".       Ultimately it all revolves around the fact that I don't want to be a "Mike". "Mikes" like sports and beer and driving lowered Hondas as well as raised Ford trucks. I like being, "Michael". It's the name I was born with and even though it's pretty banal as far as originality goes, it's still my name.       I don't expect anyone to change here, but it makes me look forward to Europe even more when I go there because no one screws with anyone's name there. I don't know if it's because people have more respect for each other, or there are more cultures and thus unknown nicknames, or just that it's an American thing. Since, as Butch Coolidge so eloquently put it in Pulp Fiction, "I'm American, honey. Our names don't mean shit."