City street

I enjoy living in the city. I enjoy having two big bay windows that look out over Pine Street and let in copious amounts of light. But there is a downside: street noise. We’re lucky. We live on the downhill…

Reunion

Well there’s nothing quite like a ten year high school reunion to trigger some reflection. Most of my conversations on Saturday night would start with where I live, San Francisco, how long I’ve been there, three years, and what I’m…

Onboard the Yankee Clipper

Over the holiday weekend Stephanie and I traveled to Seattle to visit two friends from grad school, Patrick and Christy. The last time I visited Seattle, which was also my first time, I went to catch Gillian Welch in concert…

Glacial melt

Over our 4th of July Seattle escapade, we had the privilege to approach the majestic Mt Rainier. We entered the park’s north-eastern corner and parked at the White River campground. Our plan was to hike up the trail for a…

Hiking Rainier

On Saturday, Stephanie, Patrick, and I drove out to Mt. Rainer National Park for a little day hike. We were hoping the weather would cooperate, but as it happens, we never saw Mt. Rainier, even though we were standing right…

Bridge of Glass

In the spirit of Les plafonds du Louvre We did not have a chance to visit the Tacoma Museum of Glass last weekend (beyond stumbling upon Dale Chihuly’s Bridge of Glass installation), but I do hope to see his exhibition…

Ubuntu Home Server FAQ

Basically this is the stuff I can’t remember how to do when I’m setting up Ubuntu as a backup server. Tested with Ubuntu Server 8.04.1 (Hardy Heron). How do I turn off the dang bell (aka PC speaker beep)? sudo…

Why buy?

What with all the mortgage crisis and bank failure drama in the news lately, I started to get the buy-a-home-of-my-own feelings again. As I’ve told Stephanie, all I really want to do is rip out the kitchen and install an…

Sizzling bacon

Bacon is tasty, but it is not photogenic. Least of all bacon sputtering in a pan of fat. But it sounds good! This recording was inspired by a link Andy sent me earlier this week to Sleep Phones—soft head-band-phones you…

MPG is specious

I read something today that blew my mind: If you raise a guzzler’s fuel efficiency from 15 miles per gallon to 35 miles per gallon, you save almost four gallons per 100 miles. But boost a fairly efficient car from…

Hanging onto old computers

A little over a year and a half ago, I rebuilt my first laptop computer to occupy me during the 30 minute bus ride to work. It was small and light and since it wasn’t my primary computer, I didn’t…

Firefox extensions roundup

The first thing I miss with a fresh install of Firefox is my own Copy as HTML Link extension, which I end up using almost daily in the course of blogging. Out of habit, I install Firebug, the Web Developer…

The Danger of Fingertip Memory

In the same vein as Deleting saved form entries on Firefox, I’ve noticed a bad habit I’ve developed recently of typing my password when no password is needed. Most recently, and most tragically, I was mindlessly leaving a comment on…

Hair dryer

Everyone has their own technique to dry their hair. Whether it’s towel dry, natural dry or hair dryer dry, to each our own. I like to par-dry my hair with the dryer and then let it finish naturally. I flip…

Into the Desolation Wilderness

Ah, a relaxing Sunday. Body’s a little sore, as Stephanie and I spent Saturday hiking into Desolation Wilderness, southwest of Lake Tahoe. We’d earmarked Saturday to help out her dad and Sabine with a garage sale, but turns out they…

Gurgling mountain stream

Somewhere around Avalanche Lake in Desolation Wilderness, MC Soleil and I stopped to record a stream running over some rocks. Unlike the pure white noise of Glacial melt, this sound has a pleasant depth to it. Like a constantly flushing…

Paradigm shift

Programming languages by themselves aren’t very interesting to me. I’ve never been a language geek in that sense. One thing however that is interesting to me, and has been for some time, is the web. Something changed for me in…