Apparently I was not the only Justin born in the late 70s early 80s

In the 1980s, “Justin” was actually the 12th most popular name. I wonder why that is? And before the 1970s, it was virtually unheard of. It’s crazy to think that my name dates me. “Justin” name popularity graph

The financial crisis finally hits home

To our loyal customers, Due to the rise in prices of everything in the world we have been forced to slightly increase our prices and begin to charge sales tax. We have tried to hold off as long as we…

Blogger’s block

I want to write, but I don’t know what to write about. I feel like I’ve kind of painted myself into a corner where I only really blog about two different things. Hiking trips I’ve taken and technical howtos. (I’m…

So I live and work in the city now

It’s been almost two months. I’ve been walking to work almost every day. It’s nice to integrate a little exercise into my daily routine. It’s actually a remarkably direct route. I walk all the way down Pine Street to Market,…

At Free Culture 2008, sort of liveblogging

It’s been 3 years since I’ve spontaneously up and attended a conference semi-related to my sphere of interests, taking advantage of the Bay Area’s hotbeddedness. I read about “Free Culture 2008” on Boing Boing this week. And now I am…

Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis

Thanks to the San Francisco Film Society’s French Cinema Now, I got to see Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis (roughly translated as “Welcome to the Land of the Shtis” or alternatively, “Welcome to the Sticks”) the second most attended movie in…

Liveblogging Evan Williams at the CM Summit

John showing off his Twitter account, where he was crowdsourcing his CM Summit interview questions for Twitter co-founder Evan Williams. John Battelle: Twitter’s Quantcast graph shows 2 million uniques, Compete shows 3 million US uniques, Comscore tells us you have…

Bored online

I used to really look forward to spending time doing stuff on my laptop. It was how I wound down at the end of the day. It was a way of taking some time for myself. But lately I seem…

New old shoes

Is this just a sign that I’m getting older? Or that I have impeccable taste? (I don’t know, I seem to have a similar problem letting go of old laptops.) I’m not sure when I got my green shoes (sometime…

San Francisco at dusk from Pier 14

The Hills Bros. Coffee building is at the center San Francisco lights reflected in the bay Reflected light as “watercolor”

What to do with cayenne peppers?

Found in the veggie box this week: Cayenne chili peppers Any ideas?

San Francisco has a Cheese School?

Yes it does. I stumbled upon it over a year ago while looking for fondue restaurants on Yelp. The only problem is their classes are so popular they fill up within days of releasing a new season’s schedule. I tried…

Boats ad infinitum

Taken walking by South Beach Harbor yesterday.

I am a bank

Back in May I created a Kiva account, and funded it with $100. At the time I was feeling especially fortunate, and wanted to give something back. Kiva is this really amazing non-profit organization that makes it possible for anyone…

City sunlight

One of my favorite moments each morning on the walk into work comes just before I get to Market. On a clear day, the sun blasts down Beale Street, creating a surreal glow around the historic PG&E building at the…

Look ma, no hands!

Happy Halloween!

I’d really like to know more about what they mean by this:

The system also makes it easy for us to write backfills that automatically parallelize, detect errors, retry, and backoff from overloaded servers. As an essential part of the move-data-to-another-cluster pattern and the omg-we’ve-been-writing-the-wrong-value-there bug fix, this is quickly becoming the most common use of our queue.

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It’s me! Justin Watt in Google, circa 2001 (Justinsomnia was still half of a year off—I started blogging in June 2002) #

Jimmy Wales is my hero! Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales meets China’s censors #

Death by txtmsg:

The engineer of a commuter train that collided last month with a freight train here, killing 25 people and injuring more than 130, was sending text messages on his cellphone seconds before the crash, federal investigators said Wednesday.

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Just when you think you’ve seen everything, Andre sends you a link to a Dan Deacon video. #

Crappy headline, great article: Agency’s ’04 Rule Let Banks Pile Up New Debt, and Risk

Many events in Washington, on Wall Street and elsewhere around the country have led to what has been called the most serious financial crisis since the 1930s. But decisions made at a brief meeting on April 28, 2004, explain why the problems could spin out of control.

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Stephanie posted a neat “infographic” of our hike down into the Grand Canyon, along with scads of photos: DOWN Down down… #

Awesome or awful? John Lydon’s butter commercial (I just like listening to his voice) #

I’m looking forward to the movie: As Credit Crisis Spiraled, Alarm Led to Action #

NEAT! (Then again, these are neatlinks)

I shot these photos at a denim factory in Kentucky that specializes in distressing high-end jeans for a few top designers. I used to scoff at paying a premium for jeans that come with holes in them already. Then I saw just how much work goes into distressing jeans, and I realized that these people are artists.

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This is a headline I can get behind: Google Patent Could Kill Off Cellphone Contracts #

Photo of the day: big giant heaping steaming pile of seafood #

I’m totally thinking about going to this on Saturday, anyone want to join? Free Culture Conference 2008 (it’s at Berkeley) #

Whoa: Rock slide prompts evacuation of Curry Village at Yosemite #

I wonder what Andrea Dworkin would think of Peter Acworth? #

I learned how to speak to an octopus! Tarvusim (omg this has changed my life) #

I felt that! 3.1 near Berkeley (just kind of rose out of my chair) #

PSA: The last day to register to vote is October 20, 2008. If you have moved, changed your name, or would like to change your party affiliation, you must re-register to vote. #

Holy cow! Angel Island on fire (this might explain the ash on my scooter this morning) #

I feel safer: TSA screener ripped off hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of electronics from passengers (I blame Kip) #

Stranger than fiction: Vladimir Putin releases judo instruction DVD #

OMG, this is incredible, did anyone hear about this? Iceland’s financial system collapsed Thursday (I mean really, this has been like one big global financial soap opera) #

Re: Iceland, check out: Surreal Reykjavik #

This looks fun: Carl Zeiss PhotoScope #

TSA fail:

Later, Schnei­er would carry two bottles labeled saline solution—24 ounces in total—through security. An officer asked him why he needed two bottles. “Two eyes,” he said. He was allowed to keep the bottles.

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Hot shit: EFF Challenges Constitutionality of Telecom Immunity in Federal Court (must donate to EFF) #

Wow, Narwhals (and lots of other good pics) #

Oh, I guess you’re right, we’re both socialists, yay socialism!

McCain calls Obama a Socialist, but McCain voted for the bailout and wants to spend government money on the mortgage crisis

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Instant classic xkcd: Scrabble #

This is pretty fucking disgusting: The End of Bailout Transparency #

My mind is blown: Sticky tape generates X-rays (watch the video) #

Go, check this out! Idée Multicolr Search Lab Flickr Set #

Something I did not expect to stumble upon while reading a Wikipedia article about 4chan:

Around midnight on September 11, 2007, a student posted photographs of mock-pipe bombs and another photograph of him holding them while saying he would blow up his high school—Pflugerville High School in Pflugerville, Texas—at 9:11 a.m. on September 11.

That’s where I went to high school. #

Umm, has anyone else out there heard of RapidShare? (two co-workers mentioned it to me offhand last week) #

Wow, these are nice: Comparative Perspectives – Heights of Mountains, Lengths of Rivers #

Ha, HAHAHAHA! Gay Scientists Isolate Christian Gene Finally! #

Joel Johnson on the G1:

Those of us who review products for a living — gigolos of gadgetry, who seduce an endless succession of products in one-week stands for your titillation by proxy — have learned to open our hearts quickly to something new, take a quick reading of our quickening pulse, and then move nearly effortlessly to the next victim. It’s useful to a shopper, certainly, but not the same as the knowledge gained over the slow arc of fidelity.

Dude has a way with words: “Poor Linux, always a bridesmaid…” #

I LOVE this: Dry Hump the Vote #

Hardy-har-har: political professionals are putting their bets on McCain going back to Phoenix, not rising like one. #

Ouch:

Until Microsoft comes up with a way to greatly shorten the time it takes to load Windows, PC makers are speeding up boot times using programs that bypass Windows. The systems vary technically, but they all rely on a version of an operating system called Linux that gives users quick access to Web browsing and other basic functions of their computer. In some cases, Windows never boots, while in others, Windows starts in the background.

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Thing I did not know: Al Franken is running for US Senate! #

Andre is having a baby, on Twitter

Update: it is done! We don’t have a name for this little kid– we were told he was going to be a girl. #

Too cool! This is more creative than creative: The Unfinished Swan #

iPhone+Twitter=Blog death: Twitter ate my blog! (and only 5 years ago blogs were killing newspapers, times how they do change) #

The World Toilet Organization, “the other WTO” #

So that’s what happened to Geekcorps:

[Geekcorps] is largely dormant since my successor [OLPC News’ Wayan Vota] moved on to another job. Even before Geekcorps went dormant, it wasn’t working the way I wanted it to.

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Too good for words: Stephen Colbert Endorses Barack Obama #

Neat: A Roadmap to Our [Bay Area] Highways in the Sky #