Here are pics from Saturday’s early morning ride (that’s jesse on his sweet new bike in the pic on the top left!) This was a really nice ride that runs along hwy 1, up tunitas creek road, and then along the idyllic backroads of half moon bay. There are some moderate climbs, rolling hills, and super fun fast descents! 24 miles with 1,500 ft of elevation gain and almost no cars except along hwy 1.

Here’s the map for anyone else wanting to go on the ride.

I also went on another ride today from SF to Nicasio and then to the Marin Cheese Company, but have no idea how I got there unfortunately since others were leading the way so will have to depend on arena to draw a map. (and have no pics either since most of my time was spent trying to catch up with speed demons kathryn and alon!)

Filed under: cycling, tiki lifestyle | 1 Comment

As an engineer, you probably have 10+ computers at any one time, and every once in a while, you’ll get a bad one. A bad hard disc, or flaky memory, or an airport card that doesn’t work.

Customers get those bad machines too, although not as frequently.

The big difference is that Apple engineers get to take borked machines to on-site, but the customers aren’t so lucky.

If you have a production machine with no internal software, try calling AppleCare sometime for support. Or even better, help fix a family member’s machine, and give AppleCare a call. It’s a painful process.. The friendly person who answers the phone will try to convince you that your hardware problem is really a software problem. It’s both interesting and sad to see what Mom or Dad has to put up with.

Even scarier is going to the Genius bar. I took my brother and his iBook (G3, with the recalled logic board) to the Apple Store in LA. They were packed and running way behind on the appointments, so we sat at the Genius Bar for an hour and listened to the Genius give bad/wrong advice to every customer in line before us.

Navigating the support structure is painful. I’m not exactly sure how to fix it, but there is something to be said about eating your own dog food.. Every engineer should use the same support system that customers use, at least once.

Filed under: support | 3 Comments

I passed by this place on my ride home from the train station the other day…I think it was on Folsolm and 12th. I have a feeling it won’t be around for long since it looked rather sad and empty inside. I read a review that said it was “weird in a bad way.” But I took a pic just to add to our collection of SF tiki ephemera. :)

Filed under: tikibar | 4 Comments

• the first one was free…
• it’s for your own good, trust me…
• look, i haven’t been completely honest…
• i’m smiling, i’m happy… can i go now?
• must … get … waffles…
• stay like that, i’ll get the camera…
• but… i made these for you…
• let me get that for you…
• oh…i see how it is.
• i don’t care, i’m keeping it on…
• the nerve of some people …
• hey… look what i got!
• that actually kinda hurt… a lot.
  

Filed under: comix | 1 Comment

This document came up as a search result for “screensaver security.” It’s the quintessential LOL. The layout is perfect, the fonts are flawless, the NSA seal is in color. You think it’s a joke but it’s not a joke.

Unclassified indeed.

Link to the PNG screenshot and the original PDF (3mb)

Filed under: design, osx | 1 Comment

My friend Doria was visiting from New York last weekend and gave me this bracelet that she designed and made with a laser cutter. This one is made of rubber but she also made these beautiful leather ones as prototypes for a medical ID bracelet (for a class at NYU). Here’s more info on her project.

Filed under: design | 2 Comments

They launched last fall but I only came across this today. What an awesome awesome idea!!

Kiva lets you loan as little as $25 to a qualified low income entrepreneur in the developing world….By choosing a business on Kiva.org, you can “sponsor a business” and help the world’s working poor make great strides towards economic independence. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates from the business you’ve sponsored. As loans are repaid, you get your loan money back.

The story of how Kiva got started and Matt Flannery’s blog are inspiring.

Filed under: inspiration, why are we here? | 5 Comments

For those of you who know what Amateur Radio is, I’ve been a licensed ham for about 20 years. In the past few decades Amateur Radio has been on the decline. Increased urbanization has made most communities hostile to RF antennas and it’s a heck of a lot easier to just send an email to a potential friend in Djibouti than to key a message in Morse Code. And cell phone tech makes Ham radio gear feel pretty quaint.

It would be cool to keep the call sign since the renewal fee is only $6. But the renewal form says “Pursuant to the Debt Collection Act of 1996, the FCC now requires submission of your Social Security Number (SSN).” I don’t think I need to dump my SSN into yet another database, thanks.

Besides all the cool stuff these days is going on in unlicensed spectrum.

Filed under: no code, tronix | 0 Comments

Here are a couple pics from my bike ride on Sunday! I started in the tiny town of Occidental and did a loop through Coleman Valley and Bodega Bay. About 32 miles of riding with 2,100 feet of elevation gain through picturesque countryside and some coastal cruising along Hwy 1. More mellow than last week’s ride but I was still plenty pooped at the end.

I hadn’t been on this ride before so I followed directions (from this really great book) and started inland…but next time, I think I’ll start in Bodega Bay at the Bodega Head Trail so I can get some oceanside napping in. (No afternoon nap meant that I got hit by sleepiness on the drive home and had to pull over.) Nonetheless it was a glorious ride!

Here’s the map (and a larger version here).

Directions to Occidental:

Take the 101 North across the Golden Gate Bridge to Santa Rosa. At Hwy 12, drive west for 5 miles to Sebastopol. At Hwy 116 continue straight on Bodega Hwy for 5.7 miles. Make a right on Bohemian Hwy and drive west for 3.8 miles to Occidental where you can park.

Bike route:

From Occidental head west on Coleman Valley Road
Left on Hwy 1 to Bodega Bay
Right on East Shore Road
Left on West Shore Road (it later becomes Bay Flat Road) until you get to the parking lot at Bodga Head Trail.
Hang out at the beach a bit, then turn around and head back
Left on East Shore Road
Left on Highway 1
Right on Bay Hill Road
Left on Bodega Highway
Left on Bohemian Highway
Pass through Freestone back to Occidental.

Something for Hitchcock fans - The Birds was filmed in this schoolhouse off Bodega Lane in the town of Bodega. You’ll pass by it on the ride down Bodega Hwy.

Filed under: cycling, tiki lifestyle | 1 Comment

A lot of people have stepped up to defend having fires on Ocean Beach. Keep it up!

Over 1700 folks have written letters OPPOSING the ban on fires at Ocean Beach! (and less than 20 letters in favor of it)

Link to Save Ocean Beach and their web store.

Filed under: tiki lifestyle | 1 Comment
Tagged: tshirt

At E*TRADE opening an account is easy but closing an account is hard. It may take several days. And it definitely involves calling customer support and being placed on hold, sometimes for up to an hour.

Don’t make the same mistake I did, stay away from E*TRADE….buy banking products based on customer service rather than price (i.e. interest rate). It’s just not worth it.

I’m moving all my accounts to Vanguard. They’ve got the best phone service I’ve heard since the 80s.

Filed under: sucky companies, support | 3 Comments

How crazy is this? I just read how this dude at Eyebeam extraced 3D models of NYC buildings from Google Earth and then printed them on a 3D printer.

Right after I noticed this entry from mang in my RSS reader: “I’m pleased to announce that I’m the new 3D Printing/Digital Fabrication intern at the Eyebeam OpenLab.”

Way to go mang!!

Filed under: tronix | 2 Comments

Neat. Busker Du is a recording service for subway and street buskers (people who perform in public spaces hoping to get your spare change) The service allows for buskers and spectators to call up on a cell phone or pay phone and have a performance recorded. Busker Du will record 3 minutes of audio which is then sent to the blog.

We all have our favorite street and subway musicians: the guy in the tunnel between 6th and 7th avenues on the L line that plays Beatles and Dave Clark Five songs, the tap dancers at Union Square, the red headed violinist, the guy that plays accordion and violin, perhaps one of those pan flute / cd player combo acts. Now, with the help of Busker Dial Up, you can preserve their music forever

Well sort of. Most of the audio is pretty scratchy and hard to hear…kind of like the audio equivalent of a blurry camphone pic. but still interesting, I think. I like this trumpet banjo duo in Washington Square Park!

Filed under: beats | 2 Comments

What is a SuperMax prison exactly? According to the Spunk Library SuperMax prisons are essentially solitary confinement for the duration of the sentence. Prisoners are locked into a small cell for 23 hours a day, (1 hour a day “exercise” in a different concrete room with a pullup bar) communication is restriction or totally denied, etc, etc. This quote from the article is notable:

The effects of solitary confinement have been known for more than a century. The following is a quotation from an opinion by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1890: “[E]xperience demonstrated that there were serious objections to [solitary confinement]. A considerable number of the prisoners fell, after even a short confinement, into a semi-fatuous condition, from which it was next to impossible to arouse them, and others became violently insane; others still, committed suicide; while those who stood the ordeal better were not generally reformed, and in most cases did not recover sufficient mental activity to be of any subsequent service. . . .”

Filed under: why are we here? | 0 Comments
Tagged: counterproductive

How Weird is one of my favorite street fairs in SF.. Here are a few pics from this year!

Filed under: beats | 2 Comments

Library Thing is a pretty neat site that lets you catalog, tag, rate and review your books *really* easily. Just type the name of a book and it pulls up a list of results from Amazon or a U.S. Library. Click on the correct title and it’s added to your catalog in a snap, which you can view as a list or as thumbnails. Why would anyone want to spend time doing such a thing? To find people who have similar books, read their reviews, and see what else they’re reading! So far people have added 2,634,375 books to the site! Here are some of mine. Now I just have to review some of them (if I could only remember what they were about).

Filed under: books | 1 Comment

Dust off your pineapples and eye patches folks. It’s time for the sunniest TikiRobot party ever!.

Time: 6pm Wednesday!!!, May 10, 6pm
Place: Zeitgeist, SF
Address: 199 Valencia

Come on down and join us for beer, BBQ smoke, and sunshine. Did I mention beer?

(drawing from Dead Monkey Comics)

Filed under: all talk, tiki lifestyle, upcoming | 5 Comments

Linking to Lev because his comics are hilarious and I keep forgetting the URL. Check out the videos! He does this combined comic/DVD thing which I love. Besides breaking into Comedy Central “Jump Cuts” recently he says:

In addition to that though, “Tales” will also be available on the Comedy Central portal for Video Ipod devices later this year. I will be honored if some of you will watch my stuff on the bus coming home from parties, totally drunk at 3 in the morning.

Link to Tales of Mere Existence and lots of other cool stuff.

Filed under: all talk, comix, video, why are we here? | 2 Comments

Steve Vaught decided to battle depression and obesity by walking from his home in Oceanside to New York City. Steve weighed 410 at the start of the journey. Today is the last day of his walk! People in the NYC area can join up and walk the last mile. Meet at George Washington Bridge, today, at 5:30pm.

Link to TheFatManWalking.com

Filed under: upcoming, why are we here? | 1 Comment

So, a project I’ve been working on lately is finally ready for some testing and you can click below to give it a whirl! I’d be grateful if you helped me test it.

This phase of the project lets people send voice messages to each other without ringing each other’s phone. If you want to send or receive messages from people other than me (like your mom, s.o. or someone living on another coast) lemme know and I’ll get you a beta account! Would really appreciate the feedback. and apologies for the wonkiness that may show up in mac browsers - haven’t had a chance to test with the mac so let me know if you spot any problems. thanks!

Filed under: all talk | 1 Comment

is a gallery of old boxes turned into monsters, robots, animals and other fun things!

Speaking of doodles, if you like watching people doodle as much as I do, then you might find this pretty mesmerizing.

Filed under: doodles | 0 Comments

a Sunday spent on my bike! yay!

Today I woke up early and went on a really great bike ride. I started in Pescadero along Old Stage Road and did a loop up Tunitas Creek to Skyline Blvd and then down Alpine Rd back to Pescadero. It took 6 hours and was 50 miles with about 4000 feet of elevation gain…definitely a butt kicker (and mine really hurts right now) but it was beautiful! Especially because the hills were lush and green from all the rain and the wildflowers were out in fine form.

The best part of the ride was Tunitas Creek Road (which I’m pretty convinced is where bicycles want to end up when they die and become reincarnated). it’s not an easy one (9 miles up hill) but it runs along a creek and is shaded most of the way by towering redwoods. And because it’s a single lane, there are virtually no cars! My second favorite part was riding west along Alpine Rd. More redwoods, but this time, downhill 2000 feet over a 7 mile stretch. You definitely need steady hands on your brakes for this one and even still, you’ll be flying. scary but lots of fun!

I think most people start and end this ride in Woodside, but I like starting and ending it along the coast even if it requires a longer drive. That way, you can go to the beach afterwards, lay your sleeping bag on the sand and curl up inside for a long nap with the ocean at your back.

Here is a map of the ride (and a larger version over here)

Filed under: cycling, tiki lifestyle | 3 Comments

Mike made this great timelapse of the sunrise in the Alabama Hills:

Larry made a bunch of pretty timelapses of San Francisco. I like the Kite Hill sunset one..

Filed under: video | 2 Comments
Tagged: mike , timelapse

These Cube World guys remind me of Bitman, the Japanese dancing guy on a pic chip. Now you can have a whole neighborhood of them, but with an LCD screen. Connect the cubes together and the virtual neighbors play and hang out together…

Link to a Cube World Purchase Point.

Filed under: medicine, tronix | 1 Comment

Another good comic without an RSS feed!

Filed under: comix | 4 Comments