How to rsync your Ubuntu home directory to an external hard drive

This is not hard to do, but backing up my laptop is not something I do often enough to remember exactly how I did it the last time. Using rsync in this way is by no means specific to Ubuntu—but…

Ubuntu crashing randomly? Run Memtest86+!

Shortly after I upgraded Stephanie’s desktop computer to Ubuntu’s Intrepid Ibex (8.10), it started acting up. Most noticeably when she scrolled Google Maps or Firefox too quickly, the display would get all garbled. I figured something in the upgrade broke…

I prefer my chocolate without slavery

Doesn’t seem so California after reading this. Thanks TCHO.

Freshly milled flour

At the Ferry Building Farmer’s Market this weekend, I noticed some stone ground whole wheat flour for sale in large ziploc bags at the Eatwell Farm stand. When the guy there noticed my curiosity, he asked if I wanted a…

Musing on PBase

Every once and a while when I’m searching for sample photos shot with a particular SLR lens (e.g. Pentax smc P-FA 77mm f/1.8 Limited), I’ve found that PBase’s users’ photos, tagged with a given lens, tend to rank highly in…

You can’t beat a pizzeria with its own “pizza wine”

Pizza Red, a 2006 Mourvedre from Pauline’s

My love-hate relationship with IM

It all started in the fall of 1998 when my dorm’s newly wired ethernet network was switched on. Turns out a lot of my stories start like that. The computer that I’d “built” with money I received after my high…

Curing olives

Fresh from the farmers market Dry-curing in salt It’s like I’m on a mission to cook things that you can’t easily find recipes for. I mean who cures their own olives? But sure enough, there they were, calling out to…

Waxing cheddar

Stephanie already documented “the making of” our first urban farmhouse cheddar (as she did most of the work) but I wanted to put up a few pics from the waxing. After one week of air-drying (smells like cheese!) About to…

On telegraphs and newspapers

So I just finished reading this book called The Victorian Internet about the transition between the pre-telegraph age, and the post-telegraph age, a transition that took less than 20 years, in which the maximum velocity of messages accelerated from the…

Montgomery and Pine

A sleepy weekend

Friday night was a late dinner at The Hyde Street Seafood House & Raw Bar, Stephanie had scallops with a ginger cream sauce, I had an superbly simple salmon en papillote. We came home and literally fell asleep in each…

Separated by a common language

Reading Andrew Purvis’ Running on empty carbs piece in the Guardian brought to light an unusual number of words and phrases in British English that I didn’t know (or would have used a more common American English surrogate for). So…

Where is the Daily TCP/IP?

“Time itself is telegraphed out of existence,” declared the Daily Telegraph of London, a newspaper whose very name was chosen to give the impression of rapid up-to-date delivery of news. The Daily Telegraph is such a great anachronistic name for…

Rear Windows

Nicely complements Between buildings at night.

Alpine Cheese and Alsace Wine

I don’t know what made us sign up for this particular Cheese School class back in January. The description certainly didn’t let on to its awesomeness. Yet tonight we were taken on an entertaining tour of some of the best…