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[05 May 2008|07:37am] |
I'm throwing a Memorial Day get together for anyone in San Francisco on May 24th.
The official video invite:
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| Bikram Yoga |
[17 Apr 2008|12:36pm] |
Figure 1: Hippies
Bikram Yoga is hard. Lauran has been raving about it for sometime now. Last night I agreed to go with her to Funky Door Yoga in Cole Valley.
The room is 105 degrees F and 40% humidity. The class lasts 90 minutes. We went through 26 different poses and two breathing exercises. The last ten minutes I started to get tunnel vision and had to lay down. I was zapped.
The instructor was really good. She knew I was new and kept giving me advice on the hard stuff. She kept calling me "James" though. Apparently I mumble my own name.
I wasn't aware it was possible to sweat that much. After a cold shower I felt 10,000 times better.
Afterwards Lauran and I went to some sushi place in Cole Valley. I haven't explored that neighboorhood much. It's actually really cool. I would like to live there, but Noe is really nice, too.
It's only $29 a month and you can pay as you go. Since one class is $16 I signed up for a full month. I'm actually looking forward to going back next week.
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| Apparently Daylight Saving Kicked In |
[11 Mar 2008|06:06pm] |
Me: Whoa, it's bright out.
co-worker: yeah, daylight savings time.
Me: Oh yeah, when is that?
co-worker: it was this past Sunday
Me: get out of here
My phone is my primary clock and my laptop secondary. They corrected themselves and didn't mention it to me. For the past three days I've been trying to figure out why I've been feeling so sluggish. I guess that explains it.
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| 50 million voters in Democratic TX primary tonight (not really) |
[04 Mar 2008|06:25pm] |
Hrmm... We have one million votes counted from only 2% of the precincts? That's from CNN. MSNBC says the same thing.
I assume that most of those votes are from ballots that were cast before the election day (absentee voters). Nowhere on either site (CNN or MSNBC) do they explain this.
Seriously, media, get your act together.
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| Dinner party madness |
[29 Feb 2008|09:05am] |
Eight days, four dinner parties. - Saturday: Iron Chef Noe Valley. The secret ingredient was cheese.
- Wednesday: Cooking at Brad's: Belize themed.
- Thursday: Steve's in town. Eats and drinks at my place.
- Saturday: Flying to San Diego for Sean's third annual Soiree de Crepes.
Wow! It's a busy week for my stomach.
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| Room 641a in 611 Folsom St, San Francisco, CA |
[14 Feb 2008|10:13am] |
You know how in Monopoly you trade Park Place and $500 for Pennsylvania Avenue, but you get immunity the first two times you land on the big blue monopoly? And then the other players complain that immunity isn't fair and it's not in the rules and you can't do that?
Yeah, that's basically what G.W. Bush and congress is doing with the warrentless wiretaping. I thought we elected democrats en masse in 2006 to stop this kind of nonsense?
For the record, here is a handy chart (via SFist) to remind you what Democrats didn't vote to stop immunity:
EFF is fighting this. Read their coverage.
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| Automatically connect EVDO card on insert on MacBook Pro |
[05 Feb 2008|11:47pm] |
I bought a card for my MacBook Pro laptop that will connect to the high speed EVDO network. I've been annoyed that it takes about eight clicks to connect after insert the card. This should happen automatically whenever I insert the card. Here is a Perl script to automate that.
( instructions after the cut )
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| VPN with EVDO Card and OS X on a MacBook Pro. |
[28 Jan 2008|02:12pm] |
Question:
I have a Verizon EV-DO card. I connect on my MacBook Pro using the built in "Internet Connect" It looks like it creates a PPP connection. When I launch Cisco VPNClient it tells me that there are no interfaces connected and exists after I click okay. What do I have to do to connect to the VPN when I'm using my EVDO card?
Answer:
After connecting to the EVDO network you need to restart the VPN service by running this command in terminal:
sudo /System/Library/StartupItems/CiscoVPN/CiscoVPN restart
Now if I can just figure out how to automatically connect when I insert the card.
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| Telecom Immunity Bill |
[26 Jan 2008|12:33pm] |
This is insane. Telecom companies (like AT&T here in San Francisco) illegally gave the NSA access to all my data flowing through their internet connections. Now that they've been caught the Whitehouse is pushing to give them immunity from lawsuits against them.
I'm in awe of how horrible things have gotten. The US has become a country that tortures, holds citizens without habeas corpus and spies on its citizens.
Check out the photo pool on flickr of people speaking out against telecom immunity.
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| Genius |
[24 Jan 2008|07:06pm] |
I love this idea:
Via ffffound
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| Gelaskins for my iPhone and MacBook Pro |
[17 Jan 2008|10:15am] |
Gelaskins.com sell great art that applies to the back of your iPod, iPhone or Laptop. They come off easily and are very durable. I bought Kobe by Aya Kato for my MacBook pro and I couldn't be happier with it:
For my iPhone I got Tea Party by Brandi Milne:
They're high quality and made from "3M vinyl and adhesive technology." I love mine and I highly recommend them to all Apple fan boys.
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| MyQ Gadgets |
[15 Jan 2008|02:52pm] |
Jay Janssen gave a talk today where he showed off his new
MyQ Gadgets pack. Super cool. If you've ever tried to decipher "show innodb status" you need this tool. Thanks Jay!
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| Weekend update |
[14 Jan 2008|03:37pm] |
Busy weekend:
- Friday night Kieran and I had horrible Chinese food at 18th and Mission. We each at about four bites and left the rest.
- I urged Kieran to start a citizen's action group to "fix" muni. He has a lot of great ideas.
- I'm dog sitting, so Rio, Sam's Dog, chilled with me and Kieran. I took him back Sat. Night.
- I got my Arduino Friday.
- I'm building a a 16x16 grid of 6" x 6"x 6" RGB cubes. Each one will work similar to this
- I designed a protocol for talking to the grid, example here
- Currently working with YACC to write a grammar for parsing that which I'll upload to the arduino
- Helped Julia put together a patio heater. It's fancy. Looking forward to using it at her next dinner party.
- Saw the ANSI art exhibit. Met my old school IRC friend (circa 1996), tHe_pUnk there. Very fitting. He's a great guy and we're still friends. I also met Steve there. He has a nice write up.
- went to the range with three guys from work. [pics on flickr]
- had a late lunch with Mike Schilli at Chow on Market and Church. Great place.
- got yet another ($40) parking ticket for street sweeping. I thought I had to move it by 9am, it was 6am. That's it: I'm selling my car. It gets posted on CL tonight.
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| New Year's Resolutions |
[09 Jan 2008|12:46pm] |
1. Shut up and DO something. I have a bad habit of having good ideas, tinkering with it for a while, getting 80% there and then giving up. I want to have an idea, commit to it and at the end have something to show for it. My first project is an iPhone Remote Control for iTunes. I'm 80% done, but I've committed to giving a presentation on it during a brown bag here at work.
2. Don't consume anything with high-fructose corn syrup in the first four ingredients. This means I'm off soda. I haven't had any this year so far, but it's harder than I thought.
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| weekend wrap up |
[07 Jan 2008|10:51am] |
* power was out Friday from 10:30am-9:00pm. I went to the dollar store and stocked up on candles. I found a video online on how to make a lantern out of cooking oil, cotton cloth and a glass bottle.
* traded music with lady-friend. Now I know Interpol and Al Green. And she can enjoy Radiohead In Rainbows.
* recovered from cold (juicer is magic giving my body vitamin goodness)
* Chad bought a Tenori-On
* Chad and I are going to burning man. tickets go on sale Jan. 16th.
* We started building a huge LED light display for BM. I ordered an Arduino to control it all.
* started watching Home Movies (the cartoon). Hilarious.
* wrote a simulator in Java to start programming light sequences in huge LED light display. Realized I had forgotten everything I knew about Java. nowIProgramLikeThis $instead_of_like_this.
* making it look cool is way more difficult than I thought. I'm inspired by Marissa Meyers light wall seen at 4:15 in this video.
* wrote a perl script to write scrolling text to said LED light display.
* watched both the democratic and republic New Hampshire debates. Ron Paul was the only one that made any sense. I thought we elected republicans to end wars, not start them.
* went to a Barack Obama "what you can do to get involved" meeting. Learned how to be a precinct captain, which basically means making phone calls. Yuck. Decided I'd just print out some voter registration forms with stamped envelopes and give them to people that would vote for Obama but aren't registered to vote (i.e. most of my friends)
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| Some videos on politics |
[18 Dec 2007|01:28am] |
"The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis" is Bill Moyer's editorial mostly discussing the Iran-Contra affair. It was made in 1987, when I was six years old. It seems to me that the same argument could be made about today's executive branch. Transparency and openness in government is incredibly important.
"Larry Lessig on Corruption" Larry Lessig, best known for creating the Creative Commons license has switched his focus to corruption in government. As a Stanford post-doc and a lawyer that has argued before the Supreme court Lessig is a smart guy with great ideas.
"Ron Paul's Iowa TV Special. While I don't consider myself a Ron Paul supporter (I haven't given him any money), I have a tremendous amount of respect for him. He has strong principles and always supports his views with excellent historical perspective.
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| listmania! |
[18 Dec 2007|12:46am] |
* new userpic! I look like a normal person in this one.
* I'm addicted to podcasts now. NPR has some great stuff.
* getting into Make. I love their "Weekend Projects with Bre Pettis". I'm working on building LED cube.
* Instructables also rocks your socks. I'm learning so much about hardware hacking.
* writing a firefox extension to take a screenshot of the current page in the browser and upload it to flickr
* selling my armoire since it's not 1995 anymore and my room is too small.
* becoming a mac fan boy. I love Gelaskins. Tea Party for my iPhone and Kobe for the MacBook Pro
* flew the "bay tour" in a Piper Warrior PA-28 plane with a friend from work. Took off from San Marcos, flew around Angel Island, up to Stinson Beach and then touch and goes at Half Moon Bay.
* spending too much time watching political videos on stumble upon.
* "Dinner Parties" seem to be in vogue. They're great fun. I'm going to Sam's tomorrow.
* switched email client from mutt to Thunderbird. This is a one month trial period.
* firefox still hates me. Opening 15 tabs and watching lots of videos means it malloc()s 1gb of RAM and never free()s it.
* new found music: I bought The Disassociates over a year ago, but I'm just now learning to love it. "We're much preferred customers" is an awesome track.
* I paid $12.00 USD for Radiohead's In Rainbows. Well worth it.
* job is going well. Yahoo! knows how to deploy software. I don't think I can ever work without igor and yinst now. Still amazed at how many smart people I work with.
* Christmas shopping is completed. I'll be in Missouri from Dec. 22nd-27th to see friends and family.
* xkcd is awesome if you're a nerd. The author, Randall Munroe, gave a talk at Google. Fun guy.
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| Juicing Power |
[03 Dec 2007|10:35am] |
Check out this bad boy I bought last week.
With all stainless steel construction it has been called "The DeLoren of Juicers".
All my juicing fantasies have come true. Who wants carrot-pommogranit-apple-pineapple juice!?
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| Baracking the house |
[15 Nov 2007|10:13am] |
Last night my friends waited in line for two hours to see Barack Obama. I, on the other hand, showed up late, and said "thanks for holding my spot in line!" and got in after ten minutes.
I've been paying a lot of attention to this presidential race. While I don't agree with all of Obama's positions, he is, by far, the first politician in any race that I have ever liked and believed in.
Another hero of mine, Larry Lessig, summed up his thoughts on Barack quite well.
The differences between Barack and Hilary are exactly the differences that make me a support of Obama.
Pictures stolen from SFist
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