I took pictures of a couple of boxes in Golden Gate Park this morning.

There are some public pianos in the park, kept in big boxes at night to elude the attention of drunks, raccoons, and coyotes (who never learned to play well but refuse to admit it). A couple(?) of weeks back, the piano by the Conservatory was knocked over. At the time, I blamed drunks. But now I guess that a bona fide musician knocked that piano over while struggling to extract it from its box. Today, there was a new box on rollers and tracks, a lot easier to move. Hopefully, future musicians can sit at the piano even if they've skipped leg day for the past twenty years. (Well, almost: when I rolled the box back to take this picture, I couldn't get it all the way back; a couple of cutouts on the back panel weren't quite big enough to clear obstacles without me lifting. But that's fixable!)

The de Young Museum sphinxes are under repair. They're pretty old, the internet says they've been there since 1907. For now, you can't see them, they're enclosed within big boxes. There's a flyer on one of the boxes that tells you what's going on and encourages you to call the arts council with any questions. I was tempted to call up and ask "What is it that walks on four feet in the morning, two feet in–" but I thought they might not have anyone answering questions at 0730 on a Saturday morning,

sidewalk piano partially enclosed by a big wooden box on rollers on tracks

big box looms over a modern-art-ish bench on a sidewalk

Permalink

2025-09-27T15:58:52.808756

Occam's Razor hard at work in Golden Gate Park this morning.

Me walking past the tennis courts: Hm, why is there a big crowd of people standing around awkwardly at 0730 in the morning?

Me walking along JFK: Who is this bozo driving their car along the car-free part of JFK? Oh, there's a big decal on the side of the car. "Laver cup?" What is that? Are they advertising something like a Stanley Flask?

Later on, I'd get on the internet and find out that the Laver Club is a tennis tournament, and I was watching some tennis official gradually figure out that they'd passed the place and were lost and late.

Permalink

2025-09-20T15:54:24.895315

Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts

It's a puzzlehunt drama, with the emphasis on the drama. The hunt's designer says "And the true prize, the jewel at the end of the journey, is the discovery of the self." I kept trying to emphasize the puzzlehunt; but this book ain't Winston Breen.

The story's a mystery; this book report contains, uh, converse-spoilers. That is, I kept reading the book in puzzlehunt-mode and thus anticipated things that don't happen. I guess they're minor? (If you were hoping for a plot synopsis or discussion of the (interesting!) characters, probably you want someone else's review. If you're reading my blog, I assume you're here for puzzly stuff.)

Our protagonist reads a note from the puzzlehunt designer, noting there are typos. I, of course, reached for a pencil and a piece of scratch paper to jot down the typos to see if they spelled out a secret message. They do! You think that's a spoiler, but: Nobody in the book ever notices. The secret message is an easter egg for the reader.

So that got me thinking about other places the puzzlehunt designer might leave overlooked easter eggs. There's a coded message made of dingbats: ☥☈⚰…many symbols…♀♛. I wondered about the choice of the [spoiler redacted] and [spoiler redacted]: those symbols seemed like they could relate to the plot. I wondered what meaning the puzzlehunt designer assigned them in the code. But when I read the decoded message, it mostly but didn't quite match up to the coded message. Maybe some editor decided to to re-word the coded message but then didn't go back to insert a couple of new dingbats? Anyhow, I gave up on that one.

image meme of that kid asking about a butterfly "is this a pigeon?" but the text "pigeon" has been replaced with "puzzly easter egg"

At one point, a secret message says "Seek well," a reasonable phrase to use in instructions to puzzlehunters. The main characters really fixate on the phrase. I wondered: is this an "easter egg" from the author to readers that we should be on the lookout for a sequel? It's been years since this book was published, and no sequel has appeared. I think I was once again barking up the wrong tree.

It's a fun book. I probably would have had more fun if I hadn't hared off chasing down mirage "easter eggs" though. (But maybe not? I am kinda wired for that?)

BTW, if you "view source" on the blog post version of this here post, below you'll see a kinda major spoiler: my notes on the dingbat message. If you want a head start on analyzing and don't want to figure out how to enter weird characters like ☈, it could come in handy. (I'm guessing "you" are me, five years later.)

Permalink

2025-09-14T15:46:44.662677

A neighborhood mystery solved: Some weeks back, I walked past as someone in a forklift repeatedly rammed into the side of a UCSF building at Arguello and Irving, poking a big hole in the wall. Since then, the room thus entranced has been under construction. Like the guy in the Tom Waits song, I wondered "What's he building in there?"

As I walked past today, a forklift stood by for the delivery of a big ol' medical scanner (MRI?).

a big ol' medical scanner barely fitting through the whole in a wall. off to the side, a forklift stands ready. (could a little forklift handle a big ol' medical scanner? idk. anyhow

Permalink

2025-09-13T18:02:24.248781

It's a vax selfie.

dude with his t-shirt arm rolled up to reveal a couple of band-aids. also it looks like he did a pretty haphazard job of shaving last night, lotsa stray whiskers. oh well

Normally I'd wait a month for the COVID vax so it would be full-strength for mid-January. But I worried that some worm-eaten snake oil huckster might find a way to ban all vaccines in the next few weeks, so got it early.

Permalink

2025-09-12T17:55:25.134533

#SFHellscape a couple of far-away big orange construction cranes loom over the new UCSF Parnassus hospital going up. They're framed by some buildings and trees that are closer, this photo having been taken from a hilly street several blocks away

a couple of far-away big orange construction cranes loom over the new UCSF Parnassus hospital going up. They're framed by some buildings and trees that are closer, this photo having been taken from a hilly street several blocks away

a flotilla of rubber duckies and similar plastic bath toys sits atop a fountain in the form of a sort of Japanese stone lantern maybe? I'm not a garden decor expert

that t-shirt shop at the corner of Haight/Ashbury in morning light. closer to the camera, some tourists mosey around, realizing they've arrived at this tourist site too early to see hustle and/or bustle

sunrise-y clouds behind the intersection of 17th St and Uranus, where a bodega nestles in shadow

Permalink

2025-09-10T15:14:29.935681

Some things I saw on my morning walk in #SanFrancisco, mostly:

The San Francisco Dahlia Garden is doing its thing.

A Golden Gate Park coyote. (Actually, this photo is from last weekend, but I didn't post it, distracted when I finally learned Kal Zakzouk's name. I was glad to see that coyote; I hadn't seen any since large areas of the park were fenced off for concerts. I thought maybe the coyotes had fled all the hubbub? If so, they didn't flee permanently; more likely, they were fenced in while I was fenced out. Anyow, I saw a coyote this morning, so I guess I'll post this photo now.)

Some sidewalk chalk art at 20th and Irving. Because of the location, it might be by Kal Zakzouk, but it doesn't look like his usual style, maybe it's by someone else? Some interesting fish chimerae. (Sorry I couldn't get a better picture from the other side to give a clearer view of that fish-panda; I dunno how to make my phone compensate for pointing into the sun like that.)

some brightly-colored flowers growing amidst stakes

coyote ambling along a road in front of some trees. pretty blurry. I asked too much of my phone camera's zoom

sidewalk chalk art. There's a lot going on here. There's some Chinese text I don't know enough to translate, sorry. Nearby, there is a sort of dog-goldfish chimera swimming; the dog head exhales some bubbles. Further back, there is a fish-cat chimera, also blowing bubbles. Furthest away, a fish-panda chimera.

Permalink

2025-08-31T16:18:02.015807

It's spelled "fascists," kid. You got the important parts right, though.

stenciled graffito on yellow crosswalk paint on asphalt. It reads: Facists wont stop until you [picture of crossing guard's handheld stop sign] stop them

Permalink

2025-08-25T14:17:41.542976

For years, I've enjoyed the sidewalk chalk art at 20th Ave and Irving (or, earlier, Judah) street in #SanFrancisco. Today, there was no sidewalk chalk art, so I looked up… and thus spotted a window sign telling me who the artist is: Kal Zakzouk. Apparently, he even got written up in the neighborhood paper, but I didn't notice (perhaps distracted by the many many unhinged letters to the editor that dominate that paper's feed)..

He has a gofundme for legal fees. If you've enjoyed his art and can spare it, maybe toss a few bucks his way.

sidewalk chalk art. There's a cute anthropomorphic beat wearing headphones with text 'let the beet drop'. There are four monkeys: see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, and wearing headphones and staring at mobile phone oblivious to real world (no evil). There's Chinese text I can't translate, alas. And more.

faded sidewalk chalk art. There's a lot going on here. Text in the background: We the sheeple. Text at the bottom: What they hate in you is missing in them. Depicted: A weightlifter lifts a barbell. He's standing on an upside-down wok that has one eye (which is looking up at the weightlifter). The weights on the barbell are peace signs.

sidewalk chalk art: hexagon filled with a grid of triangles constructed from circular arcs rendered in colored chalk with a gradient heading out from the center.

sidewalk chalk art. pretty surreal. an anthropomorphized egg has climbed a ladder and addresses a few neighbors. text below reads ¿dónde están los huevos?. text above is in Chinese which I can't read, but when I plugged 'where are the eggs?' into Google translate and tried a few dialects, I noticed the Traditional Chinese translation had a few characters in common. The neighbors... Well, there's a lady with a cloud head carrying a turnip. There's a caftan-wearing rainbow-headed figure carrying a chard? kale? leaf. There's a ✳-headed figure carrying a loaf of bread. There's a potato-bodied person covered with human eyes. The potato-eyes thing makes me wonder if I'm overlooking puns in the other figures. Off the the side, mostly out of frame: a snake (Happy New Year!)

Permalink

2025-08-25T13:58:38.316301

Puzzle Hunts are Everywhere: David Hill writes about gambling nowadays; but back when he lived in Hot Springs, Arkansas he was kind of a big deal in their Midnight Madness puzzlehunts. So maybe it's not surprising that he ran a puzzlehunt for serious sports bettors in Las Vegas recently https://davidhill.substack.com/p/not-fun-at-all-really

nerdy-looking David Hill is dealing blackjack, but the cards are weird: one has just a big star on it. Another, a triangle surrounding a star. Another has an arrow in a circle? Weeeeird

Permalink

2025-08-22T15:36:38.271780