June 2008 Archives

Matthew's biggest walleye ever. Where was I? I was listening to some memorable speeches at a work function in Vegas.

My Hitchhiker, originally uploaded by timbu.

Recently I drove from Sunnyvale to Minnesota. I was hoping to get a hitchhiker to come with me. I tried Craigslist but that person decided riding the rails would be easier, faster and safer than riding with me. I picked this guy up near the border of Montana and N. Dakota and dropped him off in Fargo. It was nice to have someone to chat with. He explained to me how grain elevators are built. I tried to explain computers and the web and probably failed.

Great article in the Atlantic talking about how google and the web in general are making us stupid. I think that is what the article is about; I skimmed it so I can't be sure.

:)

Bus Bench outside BIg Brain Comics, originally uploaded by timbu.

Looks like Obama is doing great with the kids who like stickers and hang out near bus stops. Googling for McCain stickers left me suitably underwhelmed. From a design point of view the Shepard Fairey sticker is pretty hard to beat.

The Road to Pune, originally uploaded by timbu.

I ran into this in the latest print copy of wired. I haven't seen it online yet, so I had to take a picture. I was shocked that they reported speeds of 170 MPH on the road between Mumbai and Pune India. The road is quite nice compared to other roads in India, but very windy. steep and mountainous. If that weren't enough by itself you sometimes overtake huge Tata trucks 2 & 3 abreast which meander around the road without regard for the lane markings going at roughly 20-40 KPH. Now my driver got our car up past 100 KPH at times, but I cannot imagine going 170 MPH on this road -- not without an ejection seat and a parachute.

Seriously, the rate of accidents in India is something like 7X the rate in the US. I still feel like I was bad for egging my driver to go faster on the straight aways or clapping when he slipped between two trucks with complete impunity.

I sent this off to my friends in Pune and they don't think it could be possible either. Everyone believes that the reporter mixed up KPH and MPH.

If you have evidence of going 150 MPH or faster on the road to Pune, I would love to shake your hand or at least meet your next of kin.

There are some moments in my life where I knew something has changed permanently.

Last night I got an email about a young woman who died tragically. When you read something like that it either far away or far too close. In this case it was in the middle. I didn't really know Julie in real life, but I read her blog. She was a friend of a friend. Hearing of her death, clicking on her rss feed and clicking the link to her last post was a moment I won't soon forget. Her blogspot "Location" left as it always was ... "amidst the water & the trees, minnesota". My heart goes out to those who lost a dear one.

Family friend, Lisa Slotsve, took family portraits in our neighborhood a few weeks ago. See if you can spot us in the her latest blog entry. Did I forget to smile again?

Here is another way for twitter to let you down. You can subscribe to a book via dailylit. They will send you a tweet with a link to the installment of the book you are reading. Now that's cool, but wouldn't it be more fun to read "Pride and Prejudice" 140 chars at a time?

Here is another way for twitter to let you down. You can subscribe to a book via dailylit. They will send you a tweet with a link to the installment of the book you are reading. Now that's cool, but wouldn't it be more fun to read "Pride and Prejudice" 140 chars at a time?

I saw a white squirrel running around near Lake Johanna today - seemed like a good omen.

Rod Stewart is a serious model railroader. Who knew?

[Link courtesy of Make]

900+ miles today. I made it through Nevada, Idaho well into Montana.

I had some of the best biscuits in memory this morning in Nevada at the Cowboy Cafe in Lovelock.

The views I saw today were really unforgettable. I didn't stop to take photos too often because I had to keep the pace, but I really want to go back and explore more.

Yesterday I elected to not go to bed. My flight was at 6:20 AM, so I stayed out with the gang until 3:30. I hit m room, packed and found a cab to the airport. I made the flight to Salt Lake City and slept like a baby. I made a few phone calls and three hours later I flew to San Jose. Once there I was picked up, bought the car, took a quick shower and headed out on the road at about 3:30 PM. Of course, I was in stop and go traffic for three hours in the Bay area. Once out of the Bay area things moved, but slowed down a little at Sacremento where I got a little sleepy. I took a catnap, had dinner and kept moving. After one more catnap near Donner pass I made it to Reno around 11:30. I decided it might be a good place to stop and took the Motel 6 on the outskirts of town.

At least I can spend one more night in the blessed state of Nevada.

What have I learned so far.

• California might as well be a "developing country" if you judge it solely on the basis of it's roadside rest areas.
• If I wanted to eat at non-chain restaurants I should have not planned a freeway route. Chain restaurants clump around freeway exits like cholera victims clumps around pump handle.
• I need a navigator.
• I'm going to need a lot more coffee to complete this trip. I've had one cappuccino so far and it's not enough. I need a thermos.

More later; I have miles to go ...

I'll be appearing at the Ventian all week for a work conference. I'm not a gambler, but I enjoy Vegas for how odd it is. The one thing I really don't like is the smell in the casino. I don't know what the pump in but it is artificial and gives me a headache.

I'll be bringing popcorn to Vegas to check this out.

If this is real I'm definitely going to buy a hat made of the grid stuff you see in microwaves!

I'm betting this is a hoax, btw.

If you use google, you've probably noticed the new favicon that they use.

The old icon looked like this.

You know a company has you over a barrel when any tiny little change causes mass hysteria. A lot of people think the new icon stinks. I hate it, but I'm trying to let it grow on me. It's certainly better than the new logo that NetApp gave itself.

Google showed off some of the runner-up icons and asked for user submissions on their blog. Feel free to show off your own idea's for a better icon. I plan to create a script and just upload the old one repeatedly.

Part three of my tribute to Lore and his seven basic blog posts.

CIMG5826, originally uploaded by timbu.

We recently had some ducks overnight with us. They were hatched at Matthew's school and will be released later this summer. It's was so cute watching these three ducks follow the children around the yard. I was relieved that we got them back without any unfortunate mishap!

Part two of my tribute to Lore and his seven basic blog posts.

I just paid too much money for a few sheets of paper with a cheap soft cover. You should buy one too so you can be cool like other bloggers.

Bloggers are known for their ability to find a product and flog it like there is no tomorrow all while avoiding the uncomfortable truth that they are being paid on each and every sale and the item in question was given to them for free. It's the classic Judas kiss, where you trade your ethics for a bag of gadgets you don't need. It's all a part of their desire to be "citizen journalists" only instead of the traditional demarcation between news and commercial speech bloggers blend them seamlessly so you have no idea which is which any more.

Part one of my tribute to Lore and his seven basic blog posts.

I'm upset with Hollywood. It seems like they can't make an original movie any more. The only thing people are willing to make is prequels, sequels, and re-makequels. Worse than this Hollywood trend is the American public's willingness to pay good money to see these dreadful pieces of unimaginitive warmed over crapola. I'm all for recycling, but what can you really make from pre-chewed pablum. So what's next Hollywood, are you going to start showing passing off reality shows as movies?

Lore Sjöberg opined today that there are really only seven basic blog posts. It's sad and mostly true.

I think I'll try and write an example of each of these and see where it leads.

"What all those years of CORBA taught me, BTW, is that RPC, for a number of reasons, is generally A Really Bad Idea." -- Steve Vinoski, RPC is Bad

I'm still not sure I want to learn Erlang.

I am stunned by the sheer number of reality shows. I think these shows are just dumb.

Who actually watches all these shows? Who cares about the alliances? Who cares about the lurid revelations? Who cares about the he said, she said nature of it? Who cares about these twisted competitions?

Wonder Woman 03, originally uploaded by bbaltimore.

I was sitting around thinking about what comic book heroes hadn't been made into movies. The one that jumped out at me was Wonder Woman. It turns out that there was something going on, but it appears to have gone off the rails somehow.

We aren't going to have a woman president as far as I can tell, can't we have a female super hero on the big screen?

Can you tell Linda Carter was one of my first "loves".

Being a Bloom County fan I never could stand that fat cat Garfield. At the same time I am totally intrigued by the "Garfield minus Garfield" website. I can't believe how good the strip is if you simply remove the main character. Check out the interview with Jim Davis in the Washington Post and get the low-down on what the original artist thinks of this re-mix.

It takes quite a bit to impress me when it comes to software, but yesterday I was blown away by this little plug-in for web browser called PicLens. Think of it as a browser add-on that gives you something like the i-Tunes style cover flow visual browser but for web sites like YouTube and Flickr. The stunning thing is how fast and responsive it is -- assuming your net connection is reasonably fast.

This plugin only runs on Windows and Mac and only on IE, Firefox & Safari.

Try it, it rocks.

You might be able to guess that I would believe in Net Neutrality. I generally don't favor regulation, but i hate the stagnation that occurs when global entities ban together to snuff out the competition.

I ran into this graphic on I Power that sure gives me the heebie jeebies and probably explains the issue better than any one image I've seen so far.

The provenance of the image can be found on boing^2

Why don't more people create art like Lilly McElroy? Among other things she literally throws herself at men and takes a picture of the results. I just wish her website were not all tangled up in flash so it's hard to link to it. Anyway, you'll find it eventually.

What are you going to throw yourself into today?

The Crystal Skull from The British Museum 1a, originally uploaded by Y-Not ?.

The movie was ok. Some parts were good old fashioned blockbuster summer fun. The ending left me feeling like somehow there had been a collision in the elevator between the Indiana Jones screenwriter and the X-Files screenwriter. When they bent down to retrieve the mess of papers on the floor they mixed up a few pages. No one noticed until the movie was complete.

In addition to the notes I intend to leave in the wall this website is also inspiring me to do more for my community.

I worked a little more on my basement office this weekend. All the sheetrock is up on the inside.

Every time I work on a home improvement project I run into inevitable problems. I solve them in my own way, probably not the most professional way. I always pity the next person who comes along and tries to modify or improve my work only to discover I used 6" inch screws when a sane person might have used 1.5" screws or something of that ilk. It makes me happy to think about the many little mysteries I am leaving for the future.

Today I ran into this blog post entitled, "The letter in the pond", It was a laminated note left under a pond liner that the current owner was digging up and removing. I'm totally inspired, I know that I'm going to have to leave some notes for the next person before I close up the walls completely.

To whom it may concern:

You probably understand by now that building walls and installing sheet rock is not my day job. I really like working with my hands and find it very satisfying. I'm sorry if my hobbyist wanna-be a carpenter antics have caused you an un-due problems.

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