Moving

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 01:09:16 GMT

So I am moving again, but this time it is not within Santa Cruz again. After very nearly 10 years here I’m moving out to the high desert. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is that I’m going to be working the fair circuit for at least the next year so I need somewhere cheap enough to keep whileArdamax http://www.qualidade-toques.com/toques-para-celular-v3-computer-upload.html keylogger 2. I will be gone for months at a time. The second is that I’m suddenly gainingBeruhmte http://www.casinokostenlos.de/wetten-casino-tropez-sites.html. a family and we will need the extra room.
While out at the bristol faire I met a woman named Victoria who has an 11 year old son too so we now need a 2 bedroom place of our own.
I will be down south for about 4 months then in the midwest for another 4 or so then back in CA probably in October.

Originally published at clever title.h. You can comment here or there.

Predictify

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 00:14:21 GMT

I stumbled across a real neat site that lets you predict the outcome of future events and even get paid for some of them too. Granted it is not lots of money but it is still novel to know that I made $1.56 for predicting the outcome of the first republican caucus in Iowa. The questions cover a huge range or issues and you can even post your own for people to vote on. If you sign up through my affiliate link I would even get a small percentage bonus of whatever you may make.

Originally published at clever title.h. You can comment here or there.

Review of the new Apple keyboard

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 01:23:50 GMT

I have been somewhat unhappy with my old Logitech keyboard for a while now. The actual act of typing on it never felt good, it had some neat multimedia features on it but it never excelled at being a keyboard though. The new aluminum keyboard from apple is a pleasure to type on and still can do most of what my old keyboard did too.
One thing I have always liked about laptops was the short key travel that they had, I could always type much faster on them than standard keyboards. All the other external keyboards that I have seen that mimicked the laptop style were just straight copies of the layout though. They usually lacked such things as a number pad or were so cramped that typing was difficult. While this new keyboard is also tiny compared to my old one it fits all the keys needed with enough room to not feel like they were trying to shove everything in.
Even though it is an apple keyboard it works fine under windows too. There is an application called SharpKeys that allows you to remap the scan code from any key to that of another. I used this to make use of most of the media/function keys to control winamp since I never use F7 and above. Since it also goes up to F19 the extra keys were mapped to other useful functions too.
My only complaint is the box that apple shipped it to me in. Had the box been an inch or two wider I think they could have fit about 30-40 of the smaller cardboard boxes that held the even smalled box that the keyboard was actually in.

Originally published at clever title.h. You can comment here or there.

Nature: Maison de Plougrescan

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 01:32:42 GMT

Nature: Maison de Plougrescan, another great picture that I cam across. While looking at more pictures of the same area in France, Côte rose de Granite I came across a great house for hatching evil plots. It looks like it should be the setting of a survival horror game or some tactical shooter. Another picture of the house. And one last picture.

Originally published at clever title.h. You can comment here or there.

chadzilla: making vodka pills in 24 hours

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 21:28:26 GMT

chadzilla: making vodka pills in 24 hours looks like fun to do but honestly also looks like more effort than I would be willing to invest in it. Might be fun to do for a party sometime though.

Originally published at clever title.h. You can comment here or there.

YOUNG GALLERY

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 23:28:09 GMT

YOUNG GALLERY has some great wildlife photographs. Many of the animal portraits really feel like pictures of individuals as opposed to a picture of just some animal.

Originally published at clever title.h. You can comment here or there.

Misadventure

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 21:48:13 GMT

When driving I don’t have the best sense of direction and often wind up taking the long or scenic route to where I am going but last week I outdid myself.
Last week I went to go visit one of the other faires where there is a SingleTree booth to deliver some stock to the manager there and to try and do a bit of work on the displays to increase sales. So after talking to the boss I went online and looked the faire up and wrote down 4 lines of directions to get me to the nearby town and a few more to get me to the actual faire. On Wednesday I took off for Michigan to the town of Grand Blanc sort of late with the intention of meeting the manager at the site the next morning. I made it there through Chicago and quite a few toll ways with no problem and then found the faire the next morning just as easily.
The problems started when I was trying to find the booth before the manager got there but just could not find it. Then she got to the site and we could not find each other on the faire site.
Then it dawns on me, I’m at the wrong faire in the wrong state. It just so happens that there are faires in both Minnesota and Michigan that start on the same date and when talking with the boss about the trip we had only briefly talked about what state it was in. So now it’s 12pm on Thursday and I’m a 7 hour drive in the wrong direction from the place that I need to be. I have to both get the stock to the correct faire and get back to Bristol by late Friday night so I can be ready to open my shop up on Saturday. I wound up driving over 700 miles on Thursday but I managed to get the stuff there and get back in time.
I normally don’t buy into the whole blond airhead thing but it’s really the best excuse I can come up with for this.

Originally published at clever title.h. You can comment here or there.

Tool porn

Sat, 28 Jul 2007 05:35:05 GMT

The Son of PryThing is a beautifulComment jouer le poker online. looking tool to start off with. But if that is not enough add pattern welded steel or go all out for the mini damascus version.Sie konnen manche casino nur virtuell und fur Freude spielen. The Satin Sumo is equally well designed and also has a pattern welded version.
The guy who makes all these even has a blog.
Now if I could just justify spending over $100 on a small pocket tool.

Originally published at clever title.h. You can comment here or there.

Park Tool Website has good bike service docs

Sat, 28 Jul 2007 02:26:51 GMT

Park Tool Website has a section on how to do most of the service needed to keep a bike up and running well. I spent some time looking for good tuning info on my derailers and this was the only site I found that explained everything in enough detail to be truly useful. My bearing are still probably all shot and the cups as well, but the bike should live though the fair here.

Originally published at clever title.h. You can comment here or there.

New trail

Fri, 27 Jul 2007 17:36:44 GMT

It looks like I will be able to get a reasonable amount of exercise here with very little riding on highways. The Des Plains river trail runs for 31 miles through various Lake county forest preserves. It’s also much nicer to ride than the bike trail I found last week that runs farther east, requiring less riding on highways to get to and having been designed as a trail as opposed to a converted rail line. Having things like hills and curves sure beats riding in a straight line for 10 miles then turning around and doing it again. I never thought I would look forward to small elevation changes but around here it’s hard to find real hills to climb. Generally the highest thing I can see around me is one of the many water towers that dot the landscape.

Originally published at clever title.h. You can comment here or there.

My internet

Thu, 26 Jul 2007 01:52:06 GMT

I just love technology. I have my cell phone tethered to my old laptop as a modem by bluetooth. All I have to do is tell my computer to dial and it seizes control of my phone to get me a network connection. As long as my phone is somewhere in this booth I should be able to get a connection. All this without getting the actual phone as a modem service either. The Samsung A900 can be used with the regular internet on your phone service from sprint thanks to a perfectly timed tip from my brother.

Originally published at clever title.h. You can comment here or there.

More great HDR photos

Fri, 20 Jul 2007 03:51:02 GMT

Here is a flickr gallery of HDR shots of a plane graveyard out in Mojave.

Originally published at clever title.h. You can comment here or there.

The trip out

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 04:19:51 GMT

I have been meaning to write up some of my experiences and thoughts from my drive out to Wisconsin. In all it wound up being just over 2400 miles from my place in Santa Cruz to the faire here in Kenosha, WI and I did it in 6 days total. The vast majority of those miles were in the last 4 days where I averaged 500ish miles per day.
Day 1: Santa Cruz, CA to Sutter Creek, CA
The drive out to my bosses house should have taken about 2.5 hours according to google maps but between traffic and me not making good enough notes about the directions it took nearly 5 hours. Not much of note aside from finding that there is a castle on the biggest hill in the town of Ione. I tried to take a picture of it but I was driving at the time and the light was fading so it did not come out. The castle is part of a youth correctional facility according to the kids of my boss.
Day 2: Sutter Creek, CA to Davis, CA
I decided to go visit my friend Angel in Davis before heading out on the road fro parts unknown. We went for a walk around town and explored their arboretum and some of the UC campus there. It is a nice campus and I liked how everything was setup for bikes on campus. I got pictures of a couple of uninteresting statues and a modern building who’s function I have forgotten. We visited the soil science lab where she works and played in the playground on the way back to her place. We had dinner at the Bistro 33, it was good but probably only really worth going for drinks and munchies though.
Day 3: Davis, CA to Toole, UT
This was about 600 miles and I was on the road for 11 hours total including stops. There was not much to see past Donner lake although there was a nifty new building at one of the truck inspections facilities in Nevada that I would have liked to take a closer look at. It’s also interesting how just at the CA/NV state line the highway suddenly gets much better and stayed in great condition all the way through the state. In Toole the motel I stayed at was right next to a flying J truck stop and had the only non fast food place that was open at that time of night. Eating there was a bit of and experience in it’s own right. THe first thing I noticed was that the plastic cups that they use for water and drinks there are the size of a large or extra large drink at a fast food place, and they offer free refills. I ordered some combo meal thing for $10 that had a meal and an appetizer. I soon found out why truckers are often so fat. The appetizer was enough to fill me up and the actual meal was huge, fortunately my room had a microwave so it was breakfast too.
Day 4: Toole, UT to Big Springs, NE
Only 9.5 hours on the road this time. Not much to note but again I stayed in a motel near a truck stop. The big surprise here was again in the restaurant where I found an ashtray on my table. I had totally forgotten that people still smoked in restaurants, it was somewhat of a challenge to find something on the menu that did not involve bacon, gravy or being fried.
Day 5: Big Springs, NE to Davinport, OH
This was the 4th of July and I came out to my car in the morning to find that one of my tires was completely flat. Fortunately being right next to a truck stop meant that there were service guys working 24/7 and they fixed lots of tires for trucks so they were able to fix mine at a decent rate. The landscape of Ohio was far more interesting than Nebraska but thats not saying all that much. I did manage to see a few fireworks from towns that bordered the 80 as I was driving by at ~80mph. I wound up eating at a Flying J again and one again found that there was tons of food and friendly service. My room sucked though, it was the most expensive of all of them and was the smallest. The water from the tap was nearly undrinkable it had so much chlorine in it.
Day 6: Davinport, OH to Kenosha, WI
I didn’t take notes this day and by then everything was running together anyways. Until I was nearly in Chicago I had not strayed out of sight from Highway 80. One of these days I’m going to take the train down to check out the sites there. Got to the faire site and started working on the booth. We cleaned lots and painted for the first 2 days. Now that I have been here for 2 weeks I have a relatively comfortable living space set up and a workable internet connection.

Originally published at clever title.h. You can comment here or there.

Back on the net

Sat, 14 Jul 2007 02:58:39 GMT

I finally have what appears to be a stable internet connection again. It’s been only 2 weeks and I have felt serious withdrawal from it. I hope to get my pictures and whatnot posted early next week. I doubt that I will have any time to do that this weekend. The help that I hired for the booth here is probably not going to be able to work this weekend so it’s going to be crazy for me.
Now to get back to polishing all the pewter flasks and tankards before opening tomorrow morning.

Originally published at clever title.h. You can comment here or there.

still alive

Fri, 06 Jul 2007 06:01:58 GMT

I made it to the faire site today after some 2400 miles. I have pictures and more to say, but posting from my cell phone is tedious. I expect that monday I will have the time to sort out abetter connection.

Originally published at clever title.h. You can comment here or there.

On my way

Sat, 30 Jun 2007 22:17:28 GMT

It has been a crazy 4 or 5 days for me but I’m all packed for my 2 month trip. This stuff always seems to take twice as long as one would expect. I’m sure there is stuff I’m forgetting but I’ll have to deal with it as it comes up.
I have many more things I would like to say about this whole process/adventure/whatever, but neither the time nor focus to do so right now. More updates once I get settled in.

~2400 miles to go

Originally published at clever title.h. You can comment here or there.

If fire were water

Fri, 29 Jun 2007 23:21:16 GMT

I should be packing but the Internet is just so distracting.
A few photos of objects that normally produce flame but these have been edited to have water splashes instead.

Originally published at clever title.h. You can comment here or there.

Sunscreens

Wed, 20 Jun 2007 08:38:56 GMT

Anyone have experience with European sunscreens? I have read that they have products that use some different active ingredients than we have here. I ran across a cosmetics database while looking into new sunscreen options but it has not cleared up too much for me. It sure has lots of data about all sorts of aspects of the products but it’s not getting me any closer to a decision.
Still it’s a neat site and would probably be unnerving to lookup all the hazards the ingredients of my shampoo, conditioner, and toothpaste pose to me.

Originally published at clever title.h. You can comment here or there.

Pirate Festival this weekend

Thu, 14 Jun 2007 08:23:09 GMT

I’ll be working at the pirate festival thats happening this weekend. It seems like it could be lots of fun, there are lots of groups doing entertainment and lots of the booths there are ones I know from the fair circuit. It’s going to be at the Vallejo Waterfront so anyone who’s got some time and will be in the area should stop by since it is free to get in. More details at the NorCal Pirate Festival website.

Originally published at clever title.h. You can comment here or there.

TED Talks

Thu, 14 Jun 2007 08:08:19 GMT

A while ago I ran across a few more TED talks that had been put up on Google video and finally tracked down where they were coming from. The first one of these that I saw was the demo that Jeff Han gave of his multi touch interfaces that I blogged about here over a year ago. It turns out that they have now put up videos of many more of these talks on their website www.ted.com now. There is also a podcast on iTunes for easy downloading and watching of all of them. I currently have 119 of them downloaded but have only made it through a small portion of these.
I don’t think I can recommend that people take a look at these enough. The people who are speaking are all brilliant in my opinion and have great things to say. The two slogans/taglines that appear on the website are “Ideas worth spreading” and “Inspired talks by the world’s greatest thinkers and doers”. This really conveys what they have to share here. The most notable one that I have seen so far is on happiness and it’s synthesis. But it’s just one out of a great number that are there. In going back to the site to track down a couple of links I got sidetracked for a good 1.5 hours while writing this up.
If anyone finds a talk that they find notable let me know. I want more people I can talk about these ideas with.

Originally published at clever title.h. You can comment here or there.

Pandora on my cell phone

Wed, 23 May 2007 09:31:38 GMT

I just saw that Pandora now has a Java version of their player that will run on my cell phone called Pandora on the go. I grabbed the trial version and my brief test found that it works well with the handset form factor. The controls are real simple with just the directional pad being used to rate songs with a thumbs up/down or skip to the next song. All the features from the pop up menu except for the ability to purchase the track from iTunes or Amazon are also available.
With wireless service nearly everywhere having lots of local storage for music is not always needed. Right now it is only for certain Sprint phones but I hope that they will open this up to more networks in the future. They are charging for the service but the $2.99/month is the same as they charge for the ad free version of Pandora. Subscribing to one either the web or cell based services also gets you access to the other too.
Now I just need an adapter to go from the phones 2.5mm to a 3.5 mm jack for headphones or a stereo bluetooth headset and I’ll be set. I already have the data plan and use the Opera mini web browser just as much as I use it for voice. Getting a continuous stream of good music at any time I want it is totally worth the $36/year that this will cost. I already listen to Pandora more than the music that I have on my computer.

Originally published at clever title.h. You can comment here or there.

Video collection

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 06:24:12 GMT

I was going to do some sort of writeup covering my spring break but I wound up skiming through the video section of digg instead.
First the baby duck feeding some koi

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPxDw7ajfGE
Then there is Joseph Kittinger jumping out of a balloon at the edge of space. This is possibly cooler than actually going to space. He could see off the edge of our planet without looking up and then jumped.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1120619888350136916
And finally for the engineer in me there is the Retroencabulator

http://youtube.com/watch?v=TD1LHejil6M
and a follow up with the actor in the last one.
And one last video that I found on the LJ of Ladykalessia a while ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoN6XfyQsr4
Edited to add extra links due to the syndication feeds not picking up the embeded video. View on my main site to get all that. http://www.randomfactor.net

Originally published at clever title.h. You can comment here or there.

Coffee meets Milk

Sun, 01 Apr 2007 22:05:39 GMT

Coffee meets Milk a series of high speed photographs of milk drops falling into a cup of coffee. It is amazing what beauty lies in what would seem to be such a simple interaction. The red coffee cup works well to set off the contrast between the milk and coffee.

Originally published at clever title.h. You can comment here or there.

Bassnectar

Sun, 01 Apr 2007 09:04:50 GMT

The show on Friday was a great experience. It has been too long since I have danced for hours like that. In addition to Lorin spinning his crazy music there were a few other performers that shared the stage with him. Zilla did an interesting set with live instruments looped and whatnot. There was also the Funginears and a couple of guys who raped with Lorin. Basically I didn’t stop moving unless I was getting a drink of water from the fountain. It was pretty neat to hear Lorin imploring the crowd to check out and support net neutrality at the beginning of the show.
My plan had been to drive down to LA today but I was just too worn out to make that work well. Of course it’s now 2am and I’m still up and I’m going to be driving roughly 8 hours tomorrow.

Originally published at clever title.h. You can comment here or there.

Bassnectar show and spring break

Thu, 29 Mar 2007 06:36:27 GMT

On Friday is the first show for the Underground Communication tour to support his new record on the OM records label. Should be a good show, I saw him perform at a free outdoor event here in Santa Cruz before. Then on Saturday or Sunday I’m heading down south to spend some time out at my parents place in the desert. After my spring break week out there I will be working the opening weekend of Southern Fair.

Originally published at clever title.h. You can comment here or there.