Scooter shorts

Best boxer shorts ever! (Though the boxer boxers come in a close second.) Just ordered 4.

Getting wireless to work in Ubuntu on a Lenovo ThinkPad X200

I ordered my X200 with the default wireless ethernet adapter, the ThinkPad 11b/g Wireless LAN Mini PCI Express Adapter III. I’m not even sure why I had a choice between that or the more expensive Intel WiFi Link 5100/5300, but…

Setting up Ubuntu from scratch

This is mostly to help me remember what I like to do when setting up Ubuntu on a new computer, but maybe other folks will find it useful too. I’ll probably update it over time. Update Ubuntu sudo apt-get update…

Setting up a nice LAMP development environment on Ubuntu

This is more to aid my memory the next time I have to set up a LAMP development environment on a fresh install of Ubuntu (can you tell what I’ve been up to this weekend?). The nice thing about starting…

New hallway carpet

Shortly after Stephanie and I moved into our apartment in San Francisco we bumped into our landlords measuring the hallways. “Yay,” we thought, they’d be replacing the ratty old carpet soon! Turns out we were right about the “replacing the…

Bumpass Hell

I mean with a name like that… you’d think it was a joke. But it’s actually the Old Faithful of Lassen Volcanic National Park, which Stephanie and I visited with Joy and Kyle over Labor Day weekend. We started the…

Justin versus the Volcano

Shortly before our Lassen trip, I was cruising Google Maps in satellite view and stumbled upon the after-effect of a dramatic volcanic eruption. Flipping back to the awesome Terrain view, I discovered that these were the Fantastic Lava Beds, and…

Morning campfire

It was below freezing on the last morning of our trip to Lassen Volcanic National Park, so I immediately started building a fire after emerging from the tent. The embers from the previous night were still hot underneath the ash,…

Grand Canyon for the weekend

Once again, in less than a month, Stephanie and I showed up to work with our backpacking packs, stuffed to the gills. Whereas Lassen was more of a dry-run—they were just convenient hands-free suitcases—this time we were really going backpacking.…

Along the South Kaibab

We started off around 11:40 at the South Kaibab trailhead. We each had about 30lbs of camping gear, clothes, food, and 4 liters of water strapped to our backs. This was our first-ever backpacking trip. And we chose the Grand…

A surprise dinner guest

So we put up our tent, moved our food into the protective “ammo” boxes provided for that purpose, and generally prepared for the night. We could barely use our legs. I set up the camping stove and started to boil…

A meal I’ve been waiting months for

Literally. Stephanie and I brought back two backpacking meals from France. Hachis Parmentier for me (ground beef and mashed potatoes), Purée au Jambon for her (ham and mashed potatoes). Check out our cool sporks Update: Here’s a proper review, requested…

Black bridge over the Colorado River

The very bottom of the Grand Canyon I was quite literally holding my camera an inch off of the water. This also shows how we got from one side of the Colorado River to the Bright Angel Campground on the…

All the way up Bright Angel

We woke at 6am on Saturday morning and began taking down the tent and packing our bags. We hit the trail around 7:30, hiking to the river and then over the Silver Bridge. We followed the river for some time,…

Accidental Collection

Of course I use the word “accidental” loosely. My growing collection of National Park maps Missing for some reason: Sequoia National Park. Aww shucks, I guess we’ll just have to go back and pick up a new map. Update: In…

Wow, what a loss: Don LaFontaine, voice of movie trailers, dies #

Best (I mean worst) title ever: Homosexuality: Legitimate Alternate Deathstyle #

We were strapped into chairs in uncomfortable positions, we were put into cages with blood on the floor and told we would never live, we were sleep deprived the entire time. There was an interrogation every night and they kept us up all day. They never turned the lights off in the cells. We were fed food that was inedible, we were not given potable water. Any time you threaten and take the numbers of family members and take down home addresses, there’s an element of mental torture there. There’s physical torture in the form of us having to sit in uncomfortable positions all day long and spending the night strapped to a metal chair inside of a cage.

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I love reading stuff like this:

Kastner, I believe a sculptor by trade, had never designed a book. His wife had never photographed a book, food or otherwise. Grant and Nick had never done a book either. And they were told by numerous publishers (in a nasally dismissive tone, Kokonas suggested) that they just didn’t have the skill or experience to do what they wanted to.

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I can only imagine what it’s been like at Mozilla HQ this week: Google Chrome (still catching up on my blogs from 3 rare computerless days over Labor Day weekend)

A taste:

Admittedly, there are moments when I half-wish for a nice quiet job where I’m not competing against the world’s biggest tech companies and I don’t have to worry about the future of the Internet. But that would be so boring. Having a job I’m passionate about is worth the stress.

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Stephanie beat me to posting about our trip to Lassen Volcanic National Park last weekend: Volcanoes, steam and rotten eggs #

John coins a new backronym for OS: operate shit #

I think I’m realizing that I’m a fan of the American Craftsman architectural style (more here: The House that Sausage Built) #

Laugh-out-loud: What’s the Best Adult Diaper? #

Stephanie and I were sitting right across from Adam Savage at dinner on Friday #

A weekend of my life (and several weeks of Jonathan’s): BB Gadgets’ Joel at Outside Lands: Crowdfire deconstructed #

Cool (well, hot really): Pictures of the “Door to Hell” in Darvaza, Turkmenistan #

I haven’t forgotten about White Noise Lounge, we’ve just been busy. Finally got around to posting a recording I took at Lassen of our morning campfire. #

Crazy pics, especially #11: The short – but eventful – life of Ike #

To read later: Dettifoss (more container ship travels) #

This is supergreat: Stabilized bigfoot film #

Joy just posted her pics from our trip to Lassen: Day One and Day Two (bonus Justin & Stephanie shot at the end of day 2) #

Just mentally pre-spent my next bonus (and then some): Canon 5D Mark II (finally…!) #

With a name like Big Green Egg, what’s not to like? (via Andre) #

Neat read: Is 190 Bowery the Greatest Real-Estate Coup of All Time? #

I’m curious… T-Mobile G1

This sounds good to me:

The G1 will be a great phone for geeks. A more-than-worthy heir to Windows Mobile. The best handset yet for coders, tinkerers, experimenters, and open-source iconoclasts (or those, like me, who just like to profit from the fruit of their labor).

Unfortunately I’ve got a 919 area code number from my days in North Carolina, which happens to be one of the markets T-Mobile is not in, which means I’m unable to transfer my number. Or so they say. Might be time to upgrade to the 415. #

Is it just me, or is animation getting a lot cooler? Waltz With Bashir #

Must be fun to be on the web teams at either bank: WaMu website before and after SUPER EPIC FAIL #

To read later: When Michael Lewis and his family move into a house they can’t afford, he gets a taste of the new American nightmare. #

This looks cool: Miracles at St. Anna #

WOW, Google comes out against Proposition 8:

While there are many objections to this proposition — further government encroachment on personal lives, ambiguously written text — it is the chilling and discriminatory effect of the proposition on many of our employees that brings Google to publicly oppose Proposition 8. While we respect the strongly-held beliefs that people have on both sides of this argument, we see this fundamentally as an issue of equality. We hope that California voters will vote no on Proposition 8 — we should not eliminate anyone’s fundamental rights, whatever their sexuality, to marry the person they love.

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Wow. How WordPress Has Changed My Life #

Ok, I guess I can link to this: SFW XXX #

Late night Wikipedia find: Albino redwood #

Thomson-Reuters is about to get fucked by the blogosphere:

George Mason University is being sued for over 10 million dollars by the owner of EndNote (which happens to be Thomson-Reuters)…for Zotero’s ability to convert – in direct violation of the License Agreement – Thomson’s 3,500 plus proprietary .ens style files within the EndNote Software into free, open source, easily distributable Zotero .csl files.”

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To read later: Flickr Engineers Do It Offline (from Andre) and Dive into HTML 5 #