A blogger’s laptop

I don’t know what exactly compelled me to purchase an ultralight ThinkPad X23 in the spring semester of my senior year (as opposed to a heavier model), but I knew it was the right decision the first time I was…

A project and the big move

It must be pretty bad when your dad asks if everything is ok, because you haven’t been posting as frequently to your blog. No big secret, just been busy. Mostly I’ve been trying to focus on a project at night…

A Thanksgiving dinner that has taken on a life of its own

I’d previously written about my uncommon collaboration with Enda O’Donoghue, an Irish artist living in Germany who used a photo I’d taken as the basis for a pretty cool painting. He just sent me an email letting me know his…

A/C gone wild

Today was my first day working in a “real” office in the “big” city. Which means the internet was slow and the air conditioning was always on. I spent half the day sitting in this white noise cone of silence…

I work in an office. In the city. OMG.

This is a view I’m guessing very few people ever experience. I call it, The Reverse Hills Bros. This is not exactly the new view from my desk—I’ll post that in a day or two. The Reverse Hills Bros. Update:…

With a new office comes a new view!

Third in a series of stellar views at FM (exhibit A and B). This is the view due west from the Hills Bros. Coffee building, with the green glass Infinity tower in the foreground on the right And for the…

Sound check

Ok, this is not exactly white noise, nor is it really “noise” at all. Yesterday afternoon I had the opportunity to catch one of my favorite bands, Two Gallants, do a sound check over at the Independent in San Francisco.…

Two Gallants, a sound check

Yesterday I found myself sitting on the floor of a small room backstage at The Independent, recording an interview with one of my favorite bands. I’m not even sure how it came to be that I was sitting there in…

Cherry tomato picking

I’ve been looking forward to Capay Organic‘s summer farm tour (and heirloom cherry tomato picking) since I went to their spring farm tour and strawberry picking back in May. This time Stephanie was able to come, and we had a…

A little bit about the new laptop

I’m typing this on my new laptop. The totally hot Lenovo ThinkPad X200. It’s like 4 generations of improvement over my X23. The best part about it is the 12.1″ 1280×800 resolution LCD screen. The worst part is that Lenovo…

Sweet: Get Your War On: The animated series! #

Nice industrial photo with lovely colors: Extrusion #

Note to self: Remove hard drive from laptop the next time I’m re-entering MY OWN FUCKING COUNTRY!

Federal agents may take a traveler’s laptop or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.

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Ouch.

Our government gives America’s public lands and waters to Big Oil. Big Oil extracts the oil and consumers are forced to buy it because they have no other choice of alternative technologies or fuels – it’s buy what Big Oil is selling or walk to work. Big Oil takes that money and invests that money not in cheaper, cleaner renewable energy, but in stock buybacks and dividends.

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To do next weekend: DWR Fort Mason Warehouse Sale #

And when my life is through! Bury me in barbecue!!! (via Webb) #

Totally wacky Devendra Banhart music video featuring Natalie Portman (of all people): Carmensita #

Whoa: Al Gore Joins the Lineup At Web 2 Summit #

Neat full body scanner art: Catlin Harrison: Self #

Neat! DIY Railroading #

New O’Reilly Book: TSA Hacks

If I had simply printed off a second boarding pass at home, I could have presented that instead of the marked one, and gone through the metal detector as usual.

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About the Olympics, but not in the way you might think: French are left out in the ‘froid’ #

This is funny: Did McCain Plagiarize His Speech on the Georgia Crisis [from Wikipedia]? #

Who knew PHP’s libgd on Ubuntu doesn’t support imagerotate()? Annoying.

Using bundled libraries is security hell. It will never happen in Debian. And I very much doubt that it will happen in Ubuntu.

I thought PHP taking over the GD project was a good thing… This doesn’t make any sense! #

Wow. I think Obama just won:

Speaking to reporters about the situation in Georgia, Sen. John McCain denounced the aggressive posture of Russia by claiming that:”in the 21st century nations don’t invade other nations.”

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A week in the life of Stephanie: The great 08 of 08 #

You can do that?

Georgia offered them citizenship two years ago, hoping to promote beach volleyball among children there.

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Neat pics: Free range workers #

If I were to buy a place in San Francisco, I’d definitely want it described like this:

All the period details intact, for the discerning buyer who doesn’t want to pay for the cheesy remodel done by someone else, this flat is ready for your good taste.

Now if I only had 140k in the bank… #

After a two week hiatus, White Noise Lounge is back with a doozy of a screecher: the A/C in our new office, gone wild! #

Photo of the day: Land’s End (given the description, I was wondering whether I could find it on Google Maps. Easy.) #

Best quote about education I’ve ever read on the geekiest blog I actually subscribe to:

students should learn to love their own possibilities before they learn to loathe other people’s restrictions

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Wow, the ultimate insult: Mozilla “patches” Internet Explorer with a plugin adding Canvas support #

I can relate:

There are few forces more powerful than geeks desperately trying to get internet in a new apartment

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Very cool project: Dear Lulu #

I’ll have to go check this out: Abraham Obama (at Larkin between Geary and O’Farrell) #

The “other” thing I am doing this weekend: CrowdFIYAH! #

To read later: Not so middle management #

Sign of the times:

Miliband noted that Russia’s foreign exchange reserves have fallen by $16 billion and risk premiums for investing in Russia have soared since the crisis began. By contrast, when the Soviet Union attacked Czechoslovakia in 1968, “no one asked what impact its actions had on the Russian stock market. There was no Russian stock market.”

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Boing Boing makes me laugh: Shooting Nazis and looking at snapshots: two great tastes that taste great together. #

What is that sucking sound I hear?

Comcast Corp said on Thursday it will cap customers’ Internet usage starting October 1, setting a monthly data usage threshold of 250 gigabytes per account for all residential high-speed Internet customers

(So is that uploads, downloads, both? But really the more important question is—what do I use now?) #