utterly failing at upgrading a kernel

i had a great post started. except the success of what i was writing hinged on my ability to upgrade the linux kernel on my debian box. so i could get usb support. yeah, i know. your typical friday night.…

Thinking about Bill Neal

I got an eerie feeling reading the snippets of prose in between the collections of recipes in the book Remembering Bill Neal: Favorite Recipes from a Life in Cooking by Moreton Neal. It could just be envy, but I think…

watching unc beat duke

while six of our crew experienced the unc-duke game at the dean dome (tim wearing a tarheel-styled mexican wrestler mask), abe, jane, erik, and i watched the nailbiter at carlie and todd’s house, replete with chips, dips, carrots, and trail…

Say Hello to WordPress

Well, this is my first native-Wordpress post. I spent the better part of the week figuring out WP1.5’s theme system, importing posts from Blogger and Haloscan, and trying to “reconstruct” something that looked like the blog I already had. How…

google makes it hard to ask questions (of people)

so i was writing jackson an email, we’ve been going back and forth about wordpress, and i find that when i’m asking a question, a second or two after i’ve taken the time to explain what i’m asking, i’ll check…

one laptoper among many

the yardhouse last night patrick and i made our way out to the yardhouse (thanks corey!), just two blocks from the hotel, where they serve draught beers in glasses a half-yard and a full yard tall–in addition to pints and…

stuck in an elevator with doc and dave

so far this morning stuck in an elevator with doc searls and dave winer (update) dan gillmor’s brother, steve, at etech just before the second floor. we had to use the secret red telephone to call support and get us…

etech day two

some high order bits from the morning danny hillis of applied minds demoed some of their mindblowing work, much of it in robotics and hardware, but really in every conceivable technological field. imagine a plasma screen tv oriented like the…

etech day three

morning we heard neil gershenfeld of mit’s center for bits and atoms talk about a portable $20k fab lab he took all around the world (india on the border of pakistan, ghana) to expose adults and children to the wonders…

etech day four

larry lessig riled up the crowd with a powerpoint duet (where the powerpoint presentation automatically responded to/emphasized whatever he was saying). it was pretty effective, but almost too theatrical to take seriously. i kept wondering whether the presentation might keep…

last day in san diego

8 minutes left on this internet terminal. let’s see if i can be efficient. this morning patrick and i walked to the san diego zoo, got to see tigers and giraffes and some other animals i took pictures of. after…

back from sunny san diego

there really isn’t enough time in the day for me to do all the things i want to do. that’s why this blog is called justinsomnia. because all too often i find myself squeezing just another hour out of the…

just beautiful

program cover for the Islam and Hinduism in the Indian Ocean World conference at ucla using a photo i took in tanzania as the background image. score another point for the creative commons!

on drama

i watch relatively little tv. but when i do, i feel tired afterwards, like my mind, which has become accustomed to the visual and auditory surrogate, suddenly has to reacclimate to the slower pace of real life. like that feeling…

Moving from Blogger to WordPress 1.5

Update: This post is not intended for the faint of heart. It describes in some detail what it took for me to move my Blogger blog (circa March 2005) to WordPress 1.5. Much of it is obsolete, as WordPress 2.0…

the joel spolsky effect

this is what happens when someone with 7,000,000 hits/month links to someone with 4000 hits/month

in the city of brotherly love

dan and i made it to philadelphia (my first time here) sometime after 8pm. we hadn’t had any dinner (save a beer at rdu), so we left the hotel in search of some authentic philly cheesesteaks. of course we’re in…

philly cheesesteaks!

dan and i took a lunch break after setting up the measure booth (quite a process, i might add) and went out again in search of authentic philly cheesesteaks. this time we hit paydirt, courtesy of the aptly named, munchie’s…

pat’s vs. geno’s

tonight dan, clark, and i made the trek out to philly’s dueling cheesesteak joints: pat’s king of steaks and geno’s steaks. apparently pat’s is the oldest, passed down from the original pat olivieri who invented the chopped steak sandwich on…