Sasquach wears a yellow hat

CMYK images in PDFs

2012-01-24T15:00:00.000-08:00

For the few of you out there that are parsing PDFs manually in python, JPEG images (including CMYK images) can be extracted with the following code fragment.

  # reader is a PDFReader object from pyPdf, value is the operand to a Do operator. 
from PIL import Image, ImageChops

  xobject = reader.getObject(value)
  if xobject['/Filter'] == '/DCTDecode':
    raw_data = xobject.getRawData()
    if xobject['/ColorSpace'] == '/DeviceRGB':
      _CreateFile('image/jpeg', filename, raw_data))
    else:
      f = cStringIO.StringIO(raw_data)
      of = cStringIO.StringIO()
      i = Image.open(f)
      if xobject['/ColorSpace'] == '/DeviceCMYK':
        i = ImageChops.invert(i)
      i.convert('RGB').save(of, 'JPEG')
      _CreateFile('image/jpeg', filename, of.getvalue())

The CMYK images I found in the PDFs needed to inverted. PIL versions before 1.1.7 would do that for you, but version 1.1.7 removed in the ImageChops.invert() call.

Make is still my friend

2011-12-23T08:46:00.000-08:00


The following is a makefile fragment I seem to start each of my appengine projects with.

GAEPATH = $(HOME)/bin/google_appengine
PORT=8081

PYLINTS = $(wildcard *.py */*.py */*/*.py)
PYLINTFILES = $(patsubst %.py,.%.lint,$(notdir $(PYLINTS)))
PYLINT = $(join $(dir $(PYLINTS)),$(PYLINTFILES))

PYTHONPATH=$(GAEPATH):$(GAEPATH)/lib/yaml/lib:$(GAEPATH)/lib/webob:$(GAEPATH)/lib/django_0_96:.

APP=new-app

run:
        $(GAEPATH)/dev_appserver.py ./ --port=$(PORT) --datastore_path=/tmp/$(APP).dev_appserver.datastore


.%.lint: %.py
        @PYTHONPATH=$(PYTHONPATH) pychecker --only --no-miximport $?
        @touch $@


lint: $(PYLINT)

clean:

-rm ${PYLINT}

.PHONY: run lint clean

Appengine backends and task queues

2011-12-11T10:40:00.001-08:00

To get appengine to send queued tasks to a backend, you need to set the host header when queuing the task. E.g.

    deferred.defer(
        batch.DoStuff, arg1, arg2, arg3,
        _headers={'Host': backends.get_hostname(backend='backend_name')})

Appengine

2011-11-23T16:35:00.000-08:00

I've been working with appengine for a few months now. I've managed to find out the hard way that appcfg.py rollback is useless. I've learned to create a git branch for each refactoring I start on. The git branch also includes a new app version for the branch. When push all my changes to my live site, I upload one last time to the new app. Merge my branch into the master then change the live version from the old one to the new one.

I haven't learned how this work flow translates to having multiple developers. Hopefully, it is simple enough that other people can follow.

I also use make since it's an easy way to automate tasks. I hear redo is good, but for python, I'm not really compiling anything, I'm simply writing shell scripts and make is a great shell script dispatcher.

Code reviews

2011-07-09T23:32:00.001-07:00

I'm reading through http://scientopia.org/blogs/goodmath/2011/07/06/things-everyone-should-do-code-review/. So, I'll make my comments here since I expect they will be long. As a caveat, I still work at Google and have done a lot of code reviews. I've made a lot of mistakes while code reviewing, I've had difficult code reviews, but my biggest problems were non-code reviews. The caveat is for most of the code reviews, I know the code being changed better than the person changing the code.

I'll reply to sections as I come across them: "Given a problem, there are usually a dozen different ways to solve it. Andgiven a solution, there's a million ways to render it as code. As a reviewer, your job isn't to make sure that the code is what you would have written - because it won't be.". I disagree with this. There are many times where code is first written in a (1) Ignorant way (2) Sloppy way (to try to save trivial amounts of work). I agree that the code probably won't be the way the reviewer wrote it, but it is good to comment on how it could have been written. Many times the reviewee isn't familiar (or ignores) with the idiomatic style of a larger bit of code.

"The second major pitfall of review is that people feel obligated to say something.". It's fine to say something, but if that's what you say most of the time then you are wasting the reviewee's time. If you do a first pass and don't find anything, you should go back and read the code and be sure that you understand it. Most times I've seen people say nothing is that they don't want to know what the new (or changed) code does.

The last section is about speed. For speed there are two types of code reviews, one which is quick, small and fixes something important. Those should only take one round and typically only need the reviewer to ask for tests. Then there is everything else, which includes small and unimportant. For those, it's ok to take more time to start the review, but each iteration should get smaller and faster.

For anyone that's gotten this far, I guess I can say my comments about Mark's blog post are purely bike shedding, but that's something with code reviews, it's ok to say you think the bike shed should be neon pink as long as you don't force the reviewee to paint the bike shed neon pink.

New Toys

2011-03-27T21:08:00.000-07:00

I went to a borders today that was going out of business and got a couple new toys. I got a Kobo ebook reader and a Demy by Key Ingredients. First impression of the kobo is that it is fast enough to read off of, but not as fast as the 3rd generation Kindle. The Demy is a slick device with a couple flaws. One is that it requires desktop software to sync and two the "saved list" feature/button isn't a list, it's simply rotates through the items you have saved, so it is really painful to use the saved list to actually save recipes to cook later. I got the Demy cheap enough that I'm considering getting another one that I can alter in fun ways :)

Taiwan

2011-01-22T18:13:00.000-08:00

A couple quick impressions from the trip Sonia and I took to Taiwan for her cousin Arthur's wedding. One is that sidewalks are for selling not for walking. The streets are good enough to walk on. Second is that there are a lot of scooters in Taiwan. It should be easy to meet green house gas goals**. 1) Get electric scooters down in price (it looks like they are close), 2) Finish off the nuclear power plan so that the new electric scooters are powered by something other than coal.

** Obviously there are many complications and emission sources I'm not thinking of.

Santa Weekend

2010-12-05T22:56:00.000-08:00

I'll start with an apology that I didn't get any pictures this weekend. However, many, many other people did. This weekend started with a simple holiday supper for Sonia's work (ok, there was some Karaoke). Then it moved on to the crazy. Saturday was Santacon. I pre-partied with Sonia's crew (she even stopped in on her lunch break). Then had a delivery of 1/2 Cord of firewood that will be well used over the coming year. Then it was back to SantaCon still dressed as an Elf to meet up with Lina. Then back to Sonia's crew to bring Sonia her reindeer antlers that I'd forgotten to drop off at her place. (ok, there was some stops for karaoke, Lina was at the Mint, and Sonia was at Encore).

Sunday was as crazy as Saturday, but not as long. The Santa Skivvies run was a simple get dressed down to the bare essentials of red underwear and a santa hat, then run into the Castro from The Lookout, and back. Since any Santa event wouldn't be complete with only Santas, Sonia dressed and Santa and I was the red-nosed reindeer (complete with reins). (ok, there was no karaoke on sunday (the Mint was closed on the way home from The Lookout).

Weeping Tile

2010-09-29T00:17:00.000-07:00

So I never had the chance to see Weeping Tile in Concert, but this year I have managed to see both Luther Wright in concert and Sarah Harmer. That and I found "The show 1995" channel on youtube which does have weeping tile in concert. And Uncle Remus.

Monthly Events

2010-09-15T00:51:00.000-07:00

I discovered another awesome monthly event. This time it was Sci-fi Burlesque. I got a couple pictures, but unfortunately, I didn't get a good picture of the storm trooper. Nothing says awesome like tribbles, storm troopers and burlesque!

The previous interesting event was Bawdy Storytelling.

A speech that didn't happen

2010-07-06T17:04:00.000-07:00

I have a lot of papers lying around. I now try to keep them organized, but I haven't got through the back log of when I didn't organize them. Sometimes I come across stuff that I'm happy I had in the pile. The following was my attempt at a valedictorian speech for the 2005 Math class at the University of Waterloo. I was not the valedictorian, but I tried, and thus have a speech.

Ladies, Gentlemen, Doctors and children of all ages. Thank you for spending our last day at Waterloo, here with us. I am one of those people who won't be staying here after day, but somehow I was still chosen to be the valedictorian. So, when I was asked to be the valedictorian by some friends of mine, I was thrilled. I also though I could do a good job, heck, I got my degree in CS, therefore, I can do anything. So, I accepted the nomination. I looked at the nomination form and didn't find any hints on what to talk about. At this point I realized that this speech may be a little underspecified. In fact, there was no specification at all.

I gathered what I could from the form, i.e. a speech had to be written by, and performed on the 18th of June 2005. Skip forward a few weeks, I'd accomplished nothing more than vague thoughts on what to talk about, then I got an email. All potential speeches had to be presented on the 6th of April 2005 (the deadline had moved up, and still no specification). However, a performance objective was given in that email -- each speech must be completed in 5 minutes. Given that I don't have a spec, I can only hope no one else has one.

What follows is my implementation of this unknown specification.

Another cycle in our lives is over. We are finished our latest round of education. This time from the University of Waterloo, in some Math program. Many of us have changed significantly while we've been here, but we are still the same people. We know we are older, we can guess that we are wiser, and we are certainly more educated. So, here is a quick tour of my cycle through Waterloo.

When I got here back in September 2000, I was amazed at how many smart people could be put together in one small place. I am actually still amazed by all the smart people here. I simply happen to know a bit more about some of these people and the amazing things they have done. With all these smart people here, I even had to do homework to keep up.

Skip forward to second year. Second year is when the university decided there is no more room for me in residence. In fact, they do that to almost all second year students. So, I found a sleezy place to live off-campus and started discovering what life is like outside the university bubble. For example, there are stores not in the plaza. There are a couple malls, a bus station, and a train station.

By third year Waterloo had become home despite working in two other cities and growing up on the other side of Toronto. I no longer had to fear being kicked out of CS since I had enough courses with good marks racked up that my cumulative average wouldn't drop too low unless I started failing, which would have been a bad thing to do.

In fourth year, I could see the end in sight. Grad school applications needed to be done pronto and some interesting job prospects lured me away from yet more years of school. Co-op didn't help keep me in school, I enjoyed the working world. I know there are others that used co-op to find that the working world wasn't for them. I expect those people to be in some school for a good long time.

Now we are at the end, and the cycle is complete. I've been across the country, lived over in sunny California, and biked through Scotland, but no where has compared to Waterloo, or the great people that make it such a wonderful place to be. I'm sad to go, as I'm sure many of you are, but I hope you are excited about the next step at the same time.

That was my 5 years, in a non-chronologically accurate order. But it's been even better to help and see people do amazing things. Small things, like getting a group of friends together to go get pints of Bubbletea. To large things like running frosh week for thousands of first year students.

Now that we have looked at the past, what about the future? One of the things I didn't wan to say during this speech is that "We are the future". What does that even mean? Are we useless now? I don't know what it means, it could even be partially true, but we are not useless. In fact our time is now! Among this graduating class are those who are doing cutting edge research. There are those we are already running their own companies. There are those who are already half-way through there plan to rule the world. There are even those of us who are simply going to help others do those things. So, we are not "the future", we are "the now".

Being "the now", (don't I sound like Dubya?) is one thing, but we should always be "the now". We can always make now be our time. We should do this because if we aren't the ones living happily and making the world a better place, in our own ways, then who is going to do it?

If nothing else, I really hope everyone lives happily. For me, I found if I can keep my hat then I can be happy. Well, I can be happy promoting "No Pants Day"!

DOWN WITH PANTS!!

At the end, I finally figured out the specification for this speech. It's simple: Remind people of the awesome things they have done here, the amazing people they shouldn't forget. Lastly, to convince people to keep doing the awesome things despite what might happen or what obstacles appear.

Thank you, I enjoyed being your VD today.

Home

2010-04-19T20:15:00.000-07:00

I was riding home tonight along Howard street. I passed a cop on a bicycle, then started speeding up so I would make the next green. I made the green I was shooting for, but unfortunately was caught at the next couple lights. So the cop (who I think took the pedestrian signal as a means to go at 4th and howard) caught up to make at 6th street. At that point he said to me "Boy, you are in shape!". Ahh, it's good to be home :)

Apple

2010-01-27T23:12:00.001-08:00

Is it me or does Apple leave out obvious features from v1 product launches? 3G on a phone, a camera on a tablet... It's like they don't want them to sell.

Running home

2009-05-19T13:47:00.001-07:00

I've been running home from work on mondays for the last couple months. I started with the direct 3.5 mile route home. Now each week I vary my route a bit, last night I took Geary most of the way west. However, while running I was thinking I should find as many hills to take on the way home with only a small amount of back tracking. Well this 5.3 mile run looks to be a good approximation. Anyone up for a run next monday evening?

Sita Sings the Blues

2009-05-11T20:57:00.000-07:00

Sita sings the blues is playing at the red vic. I went to see it tonight, it was really cool. There are 4 styles of animation and the narration is a lot of fun. The narration style is 3 people sitting around chatting trying to remember a story. The really cool part is most of the music is recordings of Annette Hanshaw from the 20s.

My part in tonight was using 2 rolls of dimes to pay to get into the movie :) That's two rolls of dimes now back in circulation.

Same Cities

2009-05-09T13:32:00.000-07:00

On thursday I went out to see Loquat, The Greycoats, and Head like a kite. Head like a kite was a lot of fun, they had a dancing panda and foam heads (the ones you put whigs on) to throw around the audience. The strange part of the night was that I met Mark Johnson again. Mark was someone who knew a bunch of the same people as me in secondary school, then we both did co-op Math/CS degrees at UWaterloo, and since leaving school have both lived in the bay area. I didn't know Mark was in SF until this week, well, now we've met again, four years later.

Random thought:
Why are Canadians more patriotic when they are away from Canada? I saw a guy with a flag on his ipod shuffle while running yesterday.

I love resharing

2009-05-03T22:35:00.000-07:00

Today I found something that bubble shared on Google reader. It was AWESOME. So I shared it. The second best part of my day, besides finding the item was seeing two other friends share the same thing. This is why the internet was built!

Also, climbing was good today. Trisha seems to improve much faster than me. 5-6 - 5-10B in one day. I have now finished only one 5-10A.

Orkut

2009-03-16T20:21:00.001-07:00

If anyone is still on Orkut, you now can import your friends birthdays into calendar. There is a link off the homepage. Now all I have to do is write some scripts to scrape all the local convert and movie venue calendars so I don't have to pick up the onion every week.

Fruit fly

2009-03-15T21:36:00.000-07:00

I went to see Fruit Fly at the Castro Theatre tonight. It was a really fun movie and very local. Oh yeah, it's a musical, I don't think I've had that much fun watching a movie since I saw Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter the first time. The opening number is a song about public transit and not needing a car in San Francisco. The previous film by H.P. Mendoza is Colma: The Musical, it's got a lot of the same cast and also look like a lot of fun. Unfortunatly, movies are behind music and I can't find a stream or download on hulu, amazon or youtube of Colma the musical.

Anyway, if anyone wants to go see Fruit Fly it is playing in Berkeley on friday. I don't think I'll make it out to that since the Castro Theatre is having a triple bill "nerds with balls" Midnites for maniacs on friday.

In other good news, I couldn't get either a Petzl size 1 or size 2 harness since my legs are size two, but my waist is size 1.

Recent Bands

2009-03-14T00:56:00.000-07:00

13 Mar 2009
White Swan, Black Swan: nice vocals, I only caught a couple songs

The Donkeys
Decent band, fun to listen to. A good whale joke:
Two whales are sitting at a bar
one says to the other [long whale noises]
The other says, "man you are trashed."

Quick to get on stage and play

Phosphoressence
Good country rock band. Slow to start playing and some assholes decided to pop into the front of the crowd, they were tall so they blocked a bunch of peoples view. Then they gained an extra 3 people and started moving backwards. For once someone actually got inside my bubble.

7 Mar 2008 -- Red Devil Lounge
* "Three of" (good luck googling these guys) -- very good
* A, b, and C -- not good, the lead singers voice cracked a lot, they did look like they should be in the movie "That thing you do" (my first date was at this movie).
* Moonlight Sexy -- ok, Andy didn't like these guys
* Marcy Playground -- Great!

14 Mar 2008 -- Writers with drinks
S.G Browne with Breathers: A zombie's lament. The chapter he read was really funny. I think this was the best part of the night. The host was also really good, but the host could be described as slightly scripted talking out of her ass.

Random Notes

2009-03-10T22:37:00.000-07:00

Horse Gym USA has a picture of a Canadian at the top of the page.

San Francisco looks like a small place from the top, i.e. the top of Golden Gate Heights. It also seems like all the views of the city face northwards. Mt Davidson does have some views south, but they aren't as pretty. San Francisco is sand and rocks, the trees that do well here are not from here. The cloud forest plants should do well, the botanical garden has lots of them.

This post is for Akash. You'll have to ask him why.

AlphaBar - C

2009-03-05T23:50:00.000-08:00

For anyone that goes to Cantina at 580 Sutter, you may as well skip the cocktails since they are weak and overpriced. It's as good to go for the crappy red strip which is still overpriced, but at least only by a dollar or two.

Larry

2009-02-16T18:02:00.000-08:00

[This is something old I wrote up while I was in Brazil]

It turns out I can't have an uneventful *set* of flights when Brazil is involved. My first flights to Brazil would be the most uneventful, I got earlier flights than I had booked. The next time I tried to fly, I flew out of Brazil, which since I booked through an agency outside Brazil I had to get paper tickets. The paper tickets didn't get to me in time, so I basically had to rebuy my tickets.

So this time, I learned my lesson, I bought the international tickets separate from my inside brazil tickets. This means I could get electronic tickets all the way. One problem is that I can't pay any of the Brazilian carriers directly since I don't have a Brazilian CPF. So a friend bought my ticket the day before I left. The ticket had a small problem, I had to go through Rio to get to São Paulo. I would have two hours between the flight from Rio to the flight to JFK. Unfortunatly the leg from Rio to São Paulo was an hour late and I had to run to get checked into to the flight to JFK. It turns out I had lost my seat, but I did get on the plane and wasn't the last one to check in. The way back to Belo Horizonte was supposed to be simpler, I had a lot of time in São Paulo before the direct flight to Belo Horizonte. Well, unfortunatly the boarding passes I was given was for Larry Morrison going to Lima, not for James Morrison going to São Paulo. It feels really bad that the woman who checked me in, used checked two pieces of ID, and the security guy who checked my boarding pass didn't notice this. I didn't notice this either since I had two boarding passes with the first one going to Miami. Anyway, so after Larry and I had the same seat on the flight to Miami we figured out I had the wrong ticket. I got the right one then we were off. We arrived in Miami in good time, but our gate was occupied, which meant we disembarked 20 minutes late and 10 of us had to push through the aisles to get out and onto the connecting flight to São Paulo. This flight was again uneventful. However, in São Paulo there was a nice long wait at customs, no processing time for me, then the discovery that I had made it to São Paulo, but my backpack hadn't. Fortunatly, there was a second flight from Miami arriving in 30 minutes (left 2 hours later than mine) that should have my bag. It turned out I did, so I could finally go check in for my flight to Belo Horizonte. That checkin was almost uneventful, but again the line took forever. I waited for 8 minutes as the second person in line. Again, I took no time getting processed. Given the time I take to go through customs and checking in, how could both those lines move so slow?

Umbrella

2009-02-15T18:29:00.000-08:00

It's been a little wet around here recently. Enough so that I bought an umbrella yesterday. Unfortunately, I didn't take it out on my walk today. So on my way back from Golden Gate Heights, I felt more soaked than when I went out to walk all of Broderick in the pouring rain.

On the getting things done front, I have finally put up my disco ball. It's been 9 hours and it is still up so I think it will hold over night.

Thanks to James

2009-02-04T20:07:00.000-08:00

I would like to thank James for saving me two tubes and two floor pumps.

Gadget

2009-01-27T21:00:00.000-08:00

I've decided I would like to get myself a small laptop that has a projector built in. It doesn't have to be super powerful, but the projector from a phone would probably be good enough.

SimTower

2009-01-24T15:23:00.000-08:00

I found a reference on the 'net about a week ago about SimTower. I remembered playing it a long time ago and thought it would be fun to try again since I hadn't beaten it. so I found my old copy and started playing. I've acheieved TOWER status in the game in 9 years.

The basic plan I used to beat the game was to build as wide as possible and to use 3 normal elevator shafts per 15 floors, 8 stairs and 2 escalators. Primarily my building was all offices. For the there are two sets of stairs going up 3 floors from each lobby. There is also an escalator going down from the lobby for each set of stairs and one more set of stairs going down a floor from the escalator. For the floors that have stairs going to them, there should be no elevator for that floor.

Now there are only 9 floors left that need elevator transportation. The best strategy I figured out for these floors was 3 elevators, each hitting 5 floors. That way each floor got one elevator shaft and a 3rd elevator shaft provided a bit of extra transport.

The 14th floor in each set is a good place to put cafes, and shops. I put a couple cafes and shops in, a security office at on one end, then put some offices in to use up some of the remaining space on the outside of the building. I left a bunch of space between the cafes and offices.

The first 15 floors are special since those floors should have 3 floors of offices, 6 floors of hotel rooms, one housekeeping station per floor, and a service elevator between the hotel floors. Then topped off with offices.

The basement floors had shops, cafes, restaurants and a cinema on floors b1 and b2. Parking was on floors b3, b4, and b5. The recycling centers were on floors b6 and b7, then the metro was on floors b8, and b9 with the metro taking up b10. I also put shops and cafes on floors b8 and b9 with the metro.

For the express elevator I tried to have on each express elevator go to the basement floors and 1 above ground floor. This way floor 15 and floor 30 has separate elevators shafts. Each elevator had as many elevator cars as it could take.

Using this strategy I used 63 above ground floors to get to 15k people and had 128 million dollars. I didn't lower the rent on any offices until I was building up to floor 100 for my cathedral, where I lowered prices on many offices between floors 45 and 60 where I did lower the price to keep tenants. I did lower the price on some hotel rooms much earlier in the game.

You can browse with my wide tower.

A better phone

2009-01-22T16:21:00.000-08:00

I've been using my G1 phone for a month now. It is nice, but the one that I like more about my old phone was that it had a real number pad. So, I'm pondering how well a touch screen would work on a cell phone with designed sort of like the LG MediaFLO phone.

Border

2009-01-09T21:33:00.000-08:00

What a difference a border makes.

Compare Windsor to Detroit.

Grand Canyon for new years

2009-01-09T21:04:00.000-08:00

Sarah came up a great idea for us to do over the long, long weekend after New Years. She wanted to go to the Grand Canyon, and hike in it. I, also enjoying hiking trips, went along.

We organized the trip rather late, I think on the 27th of Dec from my parents house (I think my mom enjoys being around for trip planning since it reminds her of the trips she should plan). Given our late planning we could only get a reservation at Phantom Ranch for the night of the 1st. So the trip plan was get back to SF on 30 Dec 2008. Take bart from the airport, sleep/pack (in either order), then drive to Williams, AZ on the 31st. Take a bus the to Grand Canyon on the 1st, hike down to Phantom Ranch, sleep, hike back up to the top, see the Grand Canyon from the top. Take a bus back to Williams and drive somewhere near the Hoover Dam. Sleep. Drive, see the Hoover Dam, get to Las Vegas, and see the Cirque du Soleil show Ka. Sleep. Drive home.

So that was the plan, now for the execution. We got back to SF on time and picked up our bags from the baggage claim without any issue. The next morning we got up and moving. The optimistic hope was that we would be on the road by 8am to Williams, then stop in Fresno for gear and food. It turns out we weren't ready to go until 10, so we got hiking poles and fake crampons at the REI in SF. We also did our grocery shopping in SF. We were on the road to Williams by noon. We shared the driving Sarah took the parts with traffic, I took the 4 and two lane highways. The fortunate part about this is that I drove through the San Joaquin. One the way there, it was basically IFR conditions (I had no instruments), so I was driving through a cloud (some call it fog) and I couldn't see anything that wasn't on the road. It was really pretty but not the best for a road with lots of ups, downs and turns. I felt like a race car driver. The other interesting part (at least while I was driving) was going through the Mojave desert at sundown. I don't think Sarah has any pictures, but it was very pretty.

Finally we arrived in Williams, AZ and got to the Grand Canyon Railway Hotel, at 2345hrs, (for those counting that means we were on the road for 10h 45m). We checked in by 2358hrs on 31 Dec 2008. So we stood by the fire for two minutes, counted down, and kissed for New Years.

In the morning, things went as expected, we backed our bags to hike 10 miles, and put the rest of the stuff in the car. We got in a van that took us to the Grand Canyon. Our driver up to the Grand Canyon was very nice and showed us the sites along the way. We also met two Japanese exchange students on their way to see the Grand Canyon.

On the way was slow since we took a lot of pictures (Sarah has them all since I lots my 1GB SD card before it made its way into my camera). Unfortunatly, Sarah got tired on the way down, and also hurt her ankle. So we stumbled our way to Phantom Ranch around 1600. From the time we got to the ranch until supper at 1830, we laid back and relaxed, we needed it, our feed were sore and Sarah iced her ankle. The food at Phantom Ranch was good, not great, and there was enough of it after being on our feet all day. At end end of the day, we slept, as planned. In the morning we got up for the early breakfast. Again, it was decently, but not great, but there was enough food. Unfortunatly, Sarah was sick (She'd figured out how to deal with her ankle though) (Oh, and she isn't pregnant). So we harrassed the rangers, got some imodium, and started on our way back up the Bright Angel Trail, we took the Bright Angel Trail down and were planning on the South Kaibab trail up but the Bright Angel Trail has places to stop the South kaibab trail doesn't. Again were were planning on an early 630hrs start, but started a little later at 745hrs. We used our poles with gusto on the way back up and made it up by 1345, 6hrs on the way back up, the same time it took us to get down. The rest of the daylight hours was spent taking the village bus around the Grand Canyon village and seeing the sights from the top.

After the Grand Canyon, we drove to Kingman, stayed there, then continued on, saw the Hoover Dam, it is like Itaipu, but less political and taller, then went on to vegas. In Vegas we saw the inside of a couple hotels, I spent $1 on a slot machine, then we say Ka. Ka is an amazing show, I don't think it really suck in until after the show was over all the things the performers pulled off. That said, the stage itself was an engineering marvel that I watched almost as much as the performers.

After Vegas, the drive back was mostly uneventful, the fog in San Joaquin was a little lighter, but still heavy, Mojave is prettier at sunset and it is still good to sleep in my own bed.

Google Reader

2008-12-17T22:20:00.000-08:00

I read my rss feeds through Google Reader. I like it, it is fast and easy to use. I also really like the 'share with note' button. I dislike the share button since you are sharing something without telling me why! Anyway, as a public service announcement.

NEVER SHARE XKCD COMICS ON GOOGLE READER!

Everyone who you are going to share it with already reads xkcd and 6 of your friends
have already shared it. They are wasting your time, as well as mine. (I was tempted to share this annoucement by sharing an xkcd comic.

The end of the fixie?

2008-10-11T11:08:00.001-07:00

Apparently someone actually did some research to find out if the fixie trend will die out. This link lead people to debate, on SF2G, about what people should ride to work on next. The ultimate response was that a penny farthing on skyline is the way to go.

Is your riding important?

2008-10-05T10:13:00.000-07:00

It seems someone has figured out where in Canada it is worth strategically voting. So take a look to see if you live in an important riding.

I wonder if it is worth setting up a counter website that says if you live in a riding where the Tories, Grits or Bloc are almost certain to win, then you can vote to give the NDP or Greens money. Remember your vote is worth C$6.

QoTD

2008-09-30T20:33:00.000-07:00

"At least in this part of McCain-Palin energy policy it doesn’t seem that Palin will add much to the debate other than supporting the official position on clean coal." -- y Matthew McDermott, treehugger.com .

Where has Mrs Palin ever added to the debate? Well except for me to mention her in my blog and getting mentioned on almost any other news source.

Remember, put your C$6 to work, vote green.

Waves to Wine

2008-09-28T00:37:00.000-07:00

Thanks to all that donated to the MS society in my name. Thanks to the generous donations and a match from Google I surpassed my goal and I may even get a cool bike jersey from the event. The actual ride was a lot of fun. The ride was very well supported. It felt more like 8 12 mile rides the first day instead of one 100 mile ride. The second day was even better. I managed to tag along with a group of cyclists from Deloitte who I could draft off of, for the second half of the ride, which made it very fast and a good learning experience. I have not had many opportunities to draft on rolling hills before.

The first day route had 7400ft of climbing over the 100 miles. The second day route had only 3500 over the 75 miles. However, by looking at the routes it is obvious that neither day was exactly the most direct route to the destination. Which is ok, I had all day to do the ride on each day and didn't have to turn around and ride home afterwards.

Speaking of afterwards, when I got back to AT&T park to pick up my stuff, I tried to ride back to my house. That was the slowest riding I have done for a very long time. The bright spot was I passed a couple of people starting on the wiggle, who did comment that everyone seems to be passing them :)

Great Canadian parties

2008-09-25T21:20:00.000-07:00

So, I would like to see the Green party win this election. There are some other good parties running canidates this time around. The Rhino's are back! There is also the 'Work Less Party' and the Bloc Québécois.

Awesome mechanical clock

2008-09-21T13:51:00.000-07:00

The corpus clock

Professional Slide Installer

2008-08-31T23:13:00.000-07:00

So the Google SF office now has a slide. Unfortunatly, this slide is not well tuned. So our discussion over dinner was based around the question: Do professional slide installers exist? If they do, are there professional slide testers? Can I be one?

How not to find a friends blog

2008-08-23T22:01:00.000-07:00

A while ago I started using Google Reader. Reader has a nice social feature where you can share articles with your friends. This is nicer than posted items in an activity stream since you don't have to click on anything, the article is right there. Anyway, I got a shared item in my stream of articles today with the second sentence as "She somehow got her own claw stuck into her paw.". Then it struck me, I've heard this story before. My dinner guests last week told this same story. So it seems I've found Michelle's blog. Thanks Tony.

Good exercise

2008-07-08T00:37:00.000-07:00

Mark is in town visiting after spending this last year at CMU. While here, he graciously organized a hiking trip to Sequoia National Park. We did around 20 miles over two days, 12 of which with full packs, and over 4000ft of climbing with full packs. The consequence of this work was that my old trusty camping backpack finally broke. The duct tape came loose, my sweat helped, and the left shoulder strap broke. This pack has lasted around 15 years, so it has done its job. Now is probably time for a new one.

My other bit of exercise was riding home from the tenderloin without a seat on my bike. Someone managed to get the seat, and post, off of my bike while it was locked up . Normally riding without a seat should be challenging, but not too bad. Unfortunatly, my bike is a fixie and I had clipless pedals and shoes with me today. I learned after the first block that I shouldn't clip in since it is very hard to clip out while pedalling and standing up. I also had a down hill section that was very scary. It turns out if you have your butt too far back on the bike that it becomes wobbly.

Overpopulated

2008-06-30T23:26:00.000-07:00

I've always thought Canada was overpopulated. I finally have evidence to support that. Canada has a higher population density than Iceland (and Australia)!

Watching TV in a browser

2008-06-14T10:04:00.000-07:00

So TV has finally come to the browser. The current incarnation that I'm playing with is Hulu. Hulu has two seasons of babylon 5, so that's what I have been watching. The annoying part of Hulu is that even after it has buffered the video, it will still pause during play back if a network connection is lost. My guess is that they have a set of pings they send back to ensure you are still watching. If a ping has not been acked in so long, then a synchronous ping will be send which blocks playback until the video can continue.

Stalking has gotten so much easier

2008-06-02T22:31:00.000-07:00

So there are three things people should know about stalking on the internet.
1) Every Canadian is on facebook.
2) Every Brazilian is on Orkut (pronouced or-ku-chi)
3) Whoever is left is probably found through a quick google search. Youtube content does help with this.

Pet Peeves of the web

2008-06-01T12:28:00.000-07:00

Two things have been bothering me for a while:
1) Titles that are links. For example my stupid canvassers post has the title linking to the same page. This is especially annoying on link filled news pages since the title should be the only thing to click on to get focus into the browser windows.
2) Pages that refresh themselves. This annoys me because it forces me to stop reading an article as I am trying to read it. It is also annoying since any embedded youtube videos stop downloading, stop playing, and lose my place in the video.

Stupid Canvassers

2008-05-31T13:31:00.000-07:00

So some canvassers came by my apartment building. They tried ringing a bunch of door bells and someone eventually let them in. They went door to door and tried to knocked on every door.

I leave my apartment door open when I am home, so if anyone wants to visit they know they are welcome. This seemed to confuse the canvassers as they couldn't find apartment 6, which is across from apartment 5, below apartment 8 and above apartment 4. They even joked that the building may not have an apartment 6.

Random thought

2008-05-16T14:55:00.000-07:00

So qwerty was designed to avoid having two keys beside each other typed in a row. This was to avoid jamming keyboards. Dvorak decided this wasn't a useful design goal, so made his own keyboard. Anyway, this criteria to avoid jamming also makes qwerty better for small keyboards, since the jamming is now done between my fingers instead of the keys on a typewriter.

Out of the hospital

2008-05-14T02:47:00.000-07:00

I woke up saturday morning with a pain around my stomach, and rather nauseous. After puking for a number of rounds and passing out each round of puking (Thanks for the help Sarah), Sarah suggested we stop by the emergency room to see why I would be passing out, so we did.

Well, I finally got out of the hospital today. I ended up having my appendix removed since it was causing problems and seemed to be why I was puking on saturday. To verify that I was doing well enough to go home from the hospital I had to do two things:
1) Fart
2) Take a dump

Now, if this could be the exit criteria for other things in life, then life would be very good. The other part of this is that I get to feel proud of myself for every fart this week!

Open cores

2008-05-04T21:09:00.001-07:00

The OpenCores website is down :(

Blogger

2008-05-04T21:06:00.000-07:00

It has been a while since I changed the template I used for blogger. Mostly since I had a couple minor things on my page, I didn't want to remove. However, I changed to using the "Layout" instead of a template, and I must say, I am rather impressed. It is now every easy to change the layout of my blog. So that I am not too positive about Google (it is a fun place to work :), the "Google Profile" available through reader sucks. If my friend adds something with a feed to her profile, it doesn't get automatically added to my subscriptions.

Niti days

2008-04-14T22:05:00.000-07:00

I don't think any of these are mine, but this needs to be published to the general public (at least until it rests on AlumNit).

Poo Alliterations
- The Earl of Excrement
- The Duke of Dung
- The Prince of Poop
- The Sultan of Shit
- The Father of Feces
- The Matriarch of Merde
- The Steward of Stink
- The Dignitary of Dangleberries
- The Grand Poohbah of Grand Poo
- The Tyrant of Turd
- The Shogun of Scheisse
- The Baron of Bowels
- The Cardinal of Crap
- The Director of Dump
- The Surveyor of Stool
- The Lord of the Log
- The Crown Prince of Cow Patties
- The Royal Archbishop of Road Apples
- The Duchess of Droppings
- The Princess of Poodie
- The Legionnaire of Loaf
- The Supervisor of Stinkers
- The Pharaoh of Floaters
- The Magnate of Manure
- The Tycoon of TCPDumps
- The Czar of Czesspools
- The Mogul of Bowel Movements
- The Ruler of the Runs
- The Dean of Diarrhea
- The Royal Ringleader of Rump Raisins
- The Denizen of Doo-doo
- The Emperor of Evacuations
- The Headmaster of Horrible Odors
- The Titan of the Trots
- The King of Klingons
- The Big Boss of Bum Beans
- The Taskmaster of Turtleheads
- The Supervising Sovereign of Sewer Serpents
- The Colonel of Colon Cobras
- The Nobleman of Number Two
- The Top Dog of Toilet Twinkies
- The Kingpin of Keester Cakes
- The Shepherd of Sea Pickles
- The Head Navigator of Heinie Nuggets
- Rectal Representative
- The Commander of Cow Pie
- The First Mate of Fecal Matter
- The Creator of Cloth Touchers
- The Protector of Porcelan
- The Theologian of the Throne
- The God of Grunts
- The Small Insignificant Yodeling President of Shit in your Pants
- The Diaper Destroyer
- The Loader of Loincloths
- The Pontiff of Plum Pudding
- The Daiymo of Dysentery
- The Master of Montezuma's revenge
- The Squire of Squirts
- The [Weaver] of [WvLog]s
- The Primary Contact of Pudding Cookies
- The Best Producer of Brown Puddles
- The Senior Partner of Steaming Piles
- The Fine Baker of Fudge Brownies
- The Sheriff of Stench
- The Don of the Deuce
- The Torrid Putrid Tainted Pervert of Two-Ply Toilet Paper
- The Sacred Monarch of Skid Marks
- The Main Scientist of Microfeceological Studies
- The G.I. Joe of Gastro Intestinal Journeys
- The Premier of Polyps
- The Brigadier General of Bedpan Gold
- The Plunger Pilot
- The Specialist of Splashers
- The Foreman of Fake Farts
- The Ambassador's Under-Secretary of Astounding Unearthly Scents
- The Old Man and the Sea of Odiferous Monsters in the Sink
- The Bafflingly Blunt and Blasphemous Bearer of Big Bad Beastly Booty Burdens
- The Crisp Pungence of Chain Pooping
- The Goddess of Groundhogging
- The Burly Bobby's Brief Battle with Brim Blasting Bowel Bombs
- The Nasty Neighbour's Noisy and Nefarious Neglect of Normal Nasal Niceties
- The Judge Jury and Executor of Jolly Jumper Excrement
- The Forwarder of the Forwarded
- The Wizard of the Water-closet
- The Grunting Lobber of Great Logs
- The Annoyingly Arrogant Architect of Awful and Abhorrent yet Amazingly Aerodynamic Anal Atrocities
- The Dark, Dangerous and Delusional Dealer of Death-Defying Doses of Disturbingly Decadent Dung
- The Shakespeare of Sinfully Smelly and Supremely Scary Scripture with Soggy Stains and Screaming Splashes
- The Wise but Weakened Warlord Whose Willful Wrath Was Wholly Wrought With Wicked and Wretched Winds from Within
- The Languid and Lackluster Legend of the Little Log from the Loo and its Lavish Life of Luxury in a Lasagna
- The Kahuna of Kaka
- The Emergency Evacuator of Enraged Entrails
- The Squire of Sultry Stinknuggets
- The Deadening Discomfort of a Dearth of Dumps
- The Far From Favourable Fragrance of Four Fragments of Fantastically Fresh Feces
- The Principal of Prodigiously Putrid Pellets
- The Markedly Morose Maintenance of Maniacally Mounded Midden Movements and Mostly Meaty Meals Mysteriously Made Mushy
- The Crass and Cranky Coroner Connecting Clues Concerning a Cornucopia of Casualties Caused by a Crude Cluster of Completely Contemptible Colon Concoctions
- The Thinking Thoughts of a Thinker
- The Horrible, Hubristic Heathen Hoarding Hoary Humps of Hideousness Hailing from His Huge Hairy Heinie in His Harmfully Heady Hovel
- Inane Writings on Irritated Wreathing of the Incubator of Wrath
- That Special Numbness from Sniffing Noodled Stink Nougat
- The Moral Sanctity of the Mystery Shit
- The Ornery Opressor's Opulent Outpost Overseeing the Ordinary Occupants' Outrageous and Ongoing Observance Of an Occasional but Offensive Orgy Of Offal
- The Rector of Relief
- The Rectal Regurgitator
- The Shit Squat
- The Smelly Surprise
- The World Wide Wisdom
- The Slayer Supreme of System Shock

Silly movie reviews

2008-01-07T16:40:00.000-08:00

So I seem to watch a lot of movies now. First is the Abigail Breslin trio. First, No Reservations & the Ultimate Gift. I watch these on airplanes between Brazil and Canada. In both Abigail plays some disadvantaged girl who hooks up her mother figure with a random guy who shows up in the mother figures life. The Ultimate Gift is more about teaching us good values in life than the mother figure getting laid. So given this caveat, let's compare the box office revenues. No Reservations: $92,572,766; Ultimate Gift: $3,438,735. Oh, I also saw Little Miss Sunshine. It was cute, but I don't think I appreciated as much as the people who recommended it to me.

Next up is The Golden Compass and The Big Hit. The Golden Compass had a horribly done evil mother character and watched like someone playing an RPG where they don't screw up and you don't have to think. So, don't both. As for The Big Hit, it is cheesy, but it is supposed to be. Grab some guys, grab some beers and sit back and enjoy.

Climbing

2007-11-05T13:26:00.000-08:00

So the New York Times had a nice article about all the bars in BH. One of these many bars is even cooler. Sete Cumes has a climbing wall in the bar that is available for use during the week when the bar wouldn't have as many customers anyway.

Anyway, it's time for me to go climbing.

Rain

2007-10-18T18:40:00.000-07:00

When I was back in Canada last we got a nice rain storm while driving to see Kevin, his wife and little son Tank. Tonight in Belo Horizonte our football game was cancelled because of rain. The rain really was something, the thunder was fantastics, a few of the strikes were big enough to make me drunk.

Oh, other good thing, I have internet in the Hotel now.

Birthday!

2007-10-03T05:02:00.000-07:00

I got a little older yesterday. I'm 26 now. It was a fun day. It started out by going to the Federal Police to get my temporary id. The agents who register foreigners are on strike for the last week or so, but there was someone there dealing with the registration. So my name got put in a big book and I've got a piece of paper that will let me back into the country next week.

Now for the actual birthday. A bunch of use went out to a place called Pinguin (yes, Penguin in Portuguese). We had some chopp, some very good garlic bread. Then since it was my birthday we got a cotton candy cake, and a nice little Penguin!

Belo Horizonte

2007-09-08T17:24:00.000-07:00

I finally made it into Brazil today. I have to say, the customs here was awesome. The guy looked at my passport, said "Yup, that's a work visa", stamped my passport and let me in without any other comments. Canadian customs is more annoying that that. My guess is that no one has authority in Brazil, so when something is actually accomplished there isn't any second guesses.

The flights over here were pretty good, I got a flight to Miami instead of NYC, then to Rio, then an early flight to Belo which landed 5 hours earlier than the flight I was expecting to take.

For my first night here, I am classing it up with a bottle of beer, a razor and a can of pringles. I think the beard has gotten way too scruffy, so I need to clean it up before I try to party with any Brazillians.

Public transit

2007-07-05T21:44:00.000-07:00

If anyone has a public transit system like the one described in this article, please let me know. Thanks go to Ryan for the link to the article.

Dancing gorilla

2007-06-30T15:28:00.000-07:00

That 3k run in this gorilla suit was too easy, so there was dancing gorillas afterwards.

Sarah

2007-06-30T15:25:00.001-07:00

For those that don't know who Sarah is, here is a picture.

Bike Pictures

2007-06-24T23:31:00.000-07:00

Here are the pictures I promised a while ago.

Liberal meme

2007-06-22T14:16:00.000-07:00

I found the results at fight conservatives. In a popup, I got "You're so Liberal you didn't even take the test! Do you own a Prius?". Actually, I don't own a car at all :)

Knackered

2007-06-15T19:16:00.000-07:00

I know the proper word for the state I'm in now: Knackered!

New Bike!

2007-05-26T18:12:00.000-07:00

I bought myself a beautiful black fixie today. The ride is nice and smooth! Now if only I could find the usb cable for my camera to post pictures.

13 going on 30

2007-04-09T21:27:00.000-07:00

5 drink minimum. I actually suggest 8. Even if you are cheap drunk.

Speeding up the internet

2007-03-28T22:32:00.000-07:00

I had some conversation this weekend about what makes the internet slow. The following snippet from my /etc/hosts file shows how I've managed to keep the internet fast and avoid some rather annoying blinking websites:


127.0.0.1       doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1       ad.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1       ad.ca.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1       adremote.timeinc.net
127.0.0.1       adsremote.scripps.net
127.0.0.1       a.as-us.falkag.net
127.0.0.1       interclick.com
127.0.0.1       a1.interclick.com
127.0.0.1       media.fastclick.net
127.0.0.1       network.realmedia.com

Bums

2007-03-14T21:34:00.000-07:00

I've got bums arguing outside my living room window. Sometimes being in the Haight has its downsides. Why can't they go argue in the park like good bums?

crack

2007-02-24T11:56:00.000-08:00

Last weekend (I have a post I'll finish soon about that) was getting up at the crack of dawn, this weekend is getting up at the crack of noon. It's good to get up early :)

Crazy friday

2007-02-23T07:18:00.000-08:00

Wow, today is nuts, I've gotten 3.75 invites to parties for only tonight. That's 3 real invites, an invite to crash a games night and critical mass. So 3 events in the city and 2 in mtn view. Well, the christmas tree that's still up and a huge bottle of Jaeger have made my choice. Why did I move to the city again?

Camping (2007 post)

2007-02-22T14:29:00.000-08:00

This weekend was a great camping trip thanks to Scotty. We snowshoed in on saturday afternoon, set up camp and slept. We couldn't have any camp fires so there didn't seem to be much reason to stay up once it went dark. Without the camp fire we did get to see orion amazingly well. It's the first time that I've seen all of orion. Sleeping in a backpackers tent on saturday night wasn't as good as any of the tents I used while in Scouts, but my sleeping bag is still pretty good and it didn't get all that cold saturday night, my camelbak wasn't frozen in the morning.

Sunday we played around the camp site, we built a wall around our cooking area, which by the end of the morning had a table, a bench and a trench between them. The trench was too deep in many places for me to sit on the bench and have my feet at the bottom of the trench. The wall we built surrounded 2 of the sites of the cooking area. Once we had our cooking setup done, we moved on to sleeping. Mark and I decided to go for a snow cave since it was simple and would be warmer than the tent. We dug out a nice hole for ourselves in a snow bank in the early afternoon.

Laundry accident

2007-02-20T09:07:00.000-08:00

I managed to have my first real laundry accident today. I washed a bunch of new orange shirts with everything else and anything white came out beige.

Waterloo and forgetful

2007-01-31T11:47:00.000-08:00

Well, I made it to waterloo safely and on time. I've only forgotten a few things this trip, a power cable for my laptop, extra documentation, and to tell my parents.

I found my line

2006-12-16T01:52:00.000-08:00

It's puking on my window. Great party(ies) otherwise.

Flying

2006-12-14T14:12:00.000-08:00

So, I spend about 24 hours flying last week. However, it wasn't nearly as much fun as flying today was.

Wow, it's time to sleep

2006-12-09T13:42:00.000-08:00

So I got home from a place that is best described a meat market meets speed dating at the cost of a strip club, or worse. Overall, it was an experience to be had. I danced with some girls, got some phone numbers, lost a phone number, perhaps caused by a second girl putting her number in my rented phone. Oh yeah, and no one spoke English.

Dancing Seoul

2006-12-08T16:36:00.000-08:00

I've managed to go out dancing all night long (until 7am) two days in a row. There are some good parties in Seoul. Sleep is definitely not for this week.

TOGA!!!

2006-12-01T18:29:00.000-08:00

My toga rocks! That is all.

Canadian fiscal update

2006-11-24T16:13:00.000-08:00

I took a look at Five year fiscal projects from the Canadian federal government. The interesting part about these projections, is the text says the debt is going away and the cost of the debt is going down, but nothing in the numbers indicates that. Take two main bullet points:
* Canada’s New Government believes that we should aim as a country to eliminate Canada’s total government net debt by 2021 at the latest.
* The federal government will show leadership by continuing to plan on annual debt reduction of $3 billion.

Now the first bullet says all government debt, which includes provinces, many of which are still running deficits. So, let's assume that the first bullet point only means the federal debt. Which $3Bn a year is being put towards that. At $3Bn a year, it will take 160 years to pay down the debt, which is much after 2021. So, let's guess that the payments on the debt will go up. We can assume an increase in payments by X percent per year. So we solve for sum(i = 0, 15, 3*x^i) = 480. The result is x = 1.2666, or 26.66% increase per year for 15 years. That means the final payment is $103 billion, or about a third of revenue for 2021.

The other annoying point in the update is that it says the money saved on debt financing can go to tax cuts. However, for the next 5 years, there is no reduction in debt financing. The numbers are "33.8 34.6 34.7 34.6 34.7 34.6 34.6", those don't really go down, now do they?

Alumnit

2006-10-30T14:26:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I'm back on alumnit. I'm sorry to all those that had to see those same old 4 posts for so long. What happened is that my feed changed and it looks like PlaNit didn't deal too well with redirected feeds.

Accretion

2006-10-29T19:01:00.000-08:00

If anyone could tell me why people on the google image labeller game guess 'accretion' for random pictures, could they please tell me! 'Abrasives' also seems to be used. Today's image with the 'accretion' guess was http://www.batmannews.de/gotham_multimedia/fan_art/pics_big/Batman%20Begins.jpg.

March/Protest

2006-10-22T15:16:00.000-07:00

So a march/protest went by my window today. They were chanting "No Peace, No Justice", similar to OPSEU's old "No Justice, No Peace". The march was against police brutality. However, the march had a large police escort.

Sadists

2006-10-16T21:11:00.000-07:00

For those that don't know, Katelyn has become a sadist. Her idea of a slow 4 mile run.

Other recent events, I got learned about San Pablo. The fuzzy vodka party with some hot tub time was worth the confusion though. I wasn't as silly
cycling home though.

I hiked up Half-dome the other weekend. It was an amazing night hike. Too bad I wussed out on the cables. I think the world may be telling me to get a car, because this is the second time I've gone camping where my ride has left a day early without room for me. The last time I split my stuff up and hitched a ride home, this time I split my stuff up again, and went in one vehicle until the first BART station, then took the BART home.

Living in the city

2006-09-29T23:30:00.000-07:00

So I went out to a independent short film showing down in the mission today. I was able to put my bicycle inside the small theatre. I went down because one of the shorts that was supposed to be shown is called "Toddler Zombie Sluts", now with a title like that, I curious what is up. "Toddler Zombie Sluts" was not shown, instead I saw a music video for the song "My Pussy is Magic".

The other thing I learned is that going up Duboce from Castro is a rather steep section of road. I wasn't able to bike all the way up it. I'll have to work on that.

SF in the desert

2006-09-24T21:49:00.000-07:00

This weekend showed me that burning man is still San Francisco drops the stores and goes to the desert. The lovefest had the music, the Folsom St. Fair had the leather and the night ride had the glow sticks on funky bicycles.

I did get some cool chain ring tatoos this weekend. I think the chain ring belt buckle is the way to go.

Alumnit

2006-09-18T21:36:00.000-07:00

So, is it valid to have current niti employee's on alumnit? Oh well, at least they aren't breaking the page. Hint, Hint Kelly.

sailing

2006-09-17T18:36:00.000-07:00

I went sailing for the first time yesterday. It was a lot of fun. The weirdest part is this is the first time I've been on a small vessel in salt water. So when I got splashed with water it was obviously salty, but it still seemed like a surprise each time I got sprayed.

6:21

2006-09-07T06:57:00.000-07:00

What's up with me seeing the time first 3 days in a row at 6:21. My alarm goes off way before that time, but somehow that's when I get up.

Burning man

2006-09-03T23:52:00.000-07:00

Burning man has come and went for me. I made it there, made it back (on a yellow school bus), and it was good.

Pour Some Sugar On Me!

2006-08-27T14:06:00.000-07:00

I went out to see Def Leppard and Journey last night. It was certainly an all ages show and Def Leppard was better than Journey. I discovered today that Corb Lund was playing in the city last night. I thought they were tonight, this is the second time I've gotten the date of a concert wrong that I wanted to see :(

Quick ride

2006-08-15T22:34:00.000-07:00

I would like to thank those that rode into work with me today. You guys made it possible for me to make it to work in record time. The total ride time was 2.5 hours from 24th and Mission.

Google analytics

2006-07-30T22:24:00.000-07:00

Wow, I finally found a way to make Google Analytics. Above the graphs that don't display (I have no flash), there is few icons beside the word Export. The first icon is text, so I can get all the nice aggregated data out of Google Analytics using the text output.

Still interesting weekends

2006-07-30T21:27:00.000-07:00

I think the important thing this weekend is that I saw Katelyn truely drunk. Other than that the night ride organized by the SFBC was fun. I've yet to find a group in the city to do longer weekend rides with yet though.

Park stories

2006-07-23T21:39:00.000-07:00

Yesterday in the park, there was other good stuff besides the Tour De Fat. There was some bicycle polo. There was also a game called sloshball being played. Sloshball is a simply game. It's basically soccer baseball (kickball) with the restriction that everyone must have a beer in hand at all times.

Mystery rocks

2006-07-23T18:59:00.000-07:00

So this afternoon while I was wading through some old email, I kept hearing rocks land in my kitchen. Twice I picked up rocks that magically appears. They could have come through the window, but that would be a difficult throw.

I've discovered that wandering over to Golden Gate Park is almost always a good idea. Yesterday was the Tour de Fat where I got rather sunburnt. This evening there was a drumming circle going on. I'll have to get a diggery-doo for next week's drumming circle.

Settled

2006-07-17T22:03:00.000-07:00

I think I'm now settled into my new place. I've done laundry and have internet. The next challenge is to bike to work. However, I need to get my bike back from the shop for that to happen.

Up to the city

2006-07-09T23:37:00.000-07:00

I moved up to the hippie district in the city today. The move wasn't too bad (thanks Katelyn), but Jeff's couch was a pain in the ass. It's in the living room at least.

On the way up to our place, taking a few things that didn't fit in the U-Haul, we drove up Castro St. On Castro we came across a group of men in long pink skirts twirling around. This city has some crazy stuff.

Awesome ride

2006-06-23T08:05:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I had an awesome ride to Santa Cruz, the clipless pedals were very nice to use. The ride was pretty simple, get to the top of Skyline (take redwood gulch) to down to big basin, get our water refilled, go to the top of empire grade (Jamison Creek, or some fireroad) and then down to Santa Cruz. On the way to Redwood gulch I we were stopped at a stoplight, then all of a sudden I leaned slightly towards the pedal I was still clipped into. So, yup, my first day with the clipless pedals I fell. During this fall, I managed to loosen the clips on my shoes, so I needed to stop shortly afterwards to adjust my shoes. The next adventure came when 3 of us decided to take the fireroad up to Empire Grade. The fireroad starts somewhere in HP's Little Big Basin area, and is a nice trail to hike. It was rather steep, it was sandy, it was rocky and everything in between, so we had to walk our bikes up this trail. I took my shoes off and simply wore my wool socks to hike up the trail. Coming down Empire Grade was a lot of fun, not too many cars, and one of those cars even decided that passing me was a bad idea and got out of my way.

To top off such a fun day, when I finally got back to my apt, I discovered that I had the wrong set of keys. I had my one set of keys that didn't have an apt key. Oops.

New pedals

2006-06-21T21:23:00.000-07:00

Woot! I now have clipless pedals to clip into tomorrow for the insane ride to Santa Cruz!

Super powers

2006-06-19T07:57:00.000-07:00

Well, I've lost my super powers again, hopefully for only a week.

housing

2006-06-11T19:28:00.000-07:00

I spent the day riding around SF looking for a place to live. Jeff and I only ended up seeing three appartments. Two where basically in the same building. The first was empty, suitable, but the a horrible paint job that had been done after the previous tenant moved out. The second was a really nice place where the guy is getting out of his lease. The last place was nice and big, sunny enough, but there were two problems. We couldn't figure out how to use the shower, and the landlord/super was absolutely useless to talk to.

Yesterday, I helped celebrate a few birthdays, one for Todd in his beautiful backyard, then later on up in the City for Sean and Trevors 26th birthdays. A good time was had by all, except Ben's replacement*, who got stuck at work the entire time.

* Further commentary and pictures are required for Ben's replacement.

Adam and Eve

2006-06-04T11:35:00.000-07:00

Old debate: Did Adam and Eve have navels?

Tricycles

2006-05-18T21:31:00.000-07:00

So today was bike to work day. So, I rode to work as usual. However, riding a bicycle was not enough for today. Will and I got some tricycles and rode those around all day. Tricycles are hard to ride.