Please Put Your Cellphone in the Refridgerator
Why a refrigerator? The answer does not, as some might assume, have anything to do with temperature. In fact, it does not matter particularly if the refrigerator was plugged in. It is the materials that make up refrigerator walls that could potentially turn them into anti-eavesdropping devices.
Planets Closer to Us
Ron Miller, a former art director for NASA, used digital trickery to superimpose scale drawings of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune over the same landscape, highlighting the sheer size of the planets.
How would life be different if we saw our planetary cousins closer to us?
The Fragmentation Argument
Siri–the semi-intelligent virtual assistant feature–has been available on the iPhone since the iPhone 4S launched with iOS 5. However, Siri did not work with the iPad until the iPad 3 came out with iOS 6, and it still doesn’t work with earlier generation iPhones, iPads, or iPod Touch devices.That’s just one example of the subversive fragmentation within iOS. While almost every iOS device is running the latest and greatest version of Apple’s mobile OS, the available features and general experience vary widely from one device to the next. The highly-touted Passbook feature works with all iPhones and iPod Touch devices, but not on the iPad. The Panoramic picture feature of the camera app works with newer iPhones and iPod Touches, but not the iPad.
I’ve only been one iPhone model behind, at the most so I would get most of the iOS features of a new update. I always felt the fragmentation issue with Android and iOS was more a developers issue and not a consumers problem.
It is weird to me that new Android phones can come with older versions of Android. When considering an Android phone I looked at the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the HTC One. The HTC One comes with Android 4.1 whereas the Galaxy S4 with 4.2. The difference, from what I understand, is features I would enjoy. I could hold out hope that the HTC One would eventually be updated. But how long would I have to wait?
Matt Says Goodbye
Never thought someone could take David Tennant’s place as the Doctor Who. But now I can’t imagine anyone taking Matt Smith’s place. Funny how that is.
Update: I had to replace the BBC video with a YouTube version because the damn BBC version would auto-play. How annoying, right?
Cover Songs By Monster
Enjoy the Silence is one of my favorite Depeche Mode songs. This cover is great!
Cover Version 4 from Kristof Luyckx on Vimeo.
Sidewalk Biking
Per San Francisco Transportation Code 7.2.12 it is illegal and unsafe to ride on the sidewalk if you are over the age of 13. Not to mention there have been a number of recent news articles that also seem to suggest there's a high level of meth use among people who bike on the sidewalk. That's why we're creating a city-wide sidewalk biking offender list. We won't be listing names or showing faces (we're not evil, come on), we will be taking your eyewitness accounts of people riding their bikes on the sidewalk and adding them to our offenders map below.
I didn’t know that biking on the sidewalk was a sign of meth use.
Eating Cake
You can have diabetes and have a piece of cake. You cannot have diabetes and eat a whole cake.
Paula Deen can sure give out great advice. (via 7 disturbing things Paula Deen has said)
Testing the Tubes
“The aim is to create a better understanding of how to respond in the event of them being deliberately or accidentally released”
Time
I feel I don’t have enough time during any given day. At least not enough to do what I want, when I want to do it. This is why my blogging efforts have fallen by the wayside.
Wife. Kids. Work. Eat. Commute. Sleep. These are the priorities in order. Wife. Kids. Work. Eat. Commute. Sleep.
Sleep is nice if it can be had. When it is possible, it doesn’t come in consecutive hours, not since the kids were born. I’ve learned to function with chunks of sleep here and there, sneaking in a few extra minutes on the commute to and from work.
Commuting and working are dedicated blocks of time. The commute is not fixed in its length. It can take up to 2 1/2 hours a day. And if there is an incident on Caltrain, add another 90 minutes to that time. I try not to take my work home with me, but my job is easily accessible through any device. This makes it easy to read and answer work issues.
That leaves the time spent with the wife and kids. They are the center of my world, the reason I do what I do. During the week I don’t have the opportunity to spend much time with them. An hour or two in the morning while getting ready to leave for the day. A few hours at night at dinner time than bedtime. At least we have the weekends together.
Eating is done between all of these times.
Setting aside time to write has been tough. I can steal a moment away here and there to jot down a thought I want to explore. Finding the time to think that thought through and writing it down can be difficult. But I believe I need that time, the time to use my brain and stretch my fingers. My writing may not be revelatory but it is mine. It is seething I wish to express, even if it is a trivial matter.
And so I’m making an effort to post more, to write more in this space. It may be a simple comment on a link or a long bitch fest about a day gone sideways. But it’ll be something I want to share. Whether you want to read it is up to you.
I hope you do.
Graecyn Mumbling
Graecyn is watching sitting back and watching Justin Timberlake’s fifth appearance on Saturday Night Live. I think she’s commenting on his performance.
Mia Following Kaleb
Mia follows Kaleb up a hill during Kaiden’s first birthday party.
Mia and Kaleb were blowing bubbles outside during Kaiden’s first birthday party. Kaleb decided to walk from the playground and down the sidewalk trail. Mia followed. There was a little hill past an intersection path that Kaleb decided to walk up. Mia followed. Up the hill, they both went toward a house. Kaleb made it all the way to the top. Mia - about 90% before she slipped, causing her shoe to fall off. I was there right behind her to fix her shoe and encourage her the rest of the way up to the top.
Getting down is a different story.
This photo was taken on March 2, 2013.
Encourage or Discourage
But rather than tell people they can’t shoot their food — the food they are so proud to eat that they need to share it immediately with everyone they know — he simply takes them back into his kitchen to shoot as the plates come out. “We’ll say, ‘That shot will look so much better on the marble table in our kitchen,’ ” Mr. Bouley said. “It’s like, here’s the sauce, here’s the plate. Snap it. We make it like an adventure for them instead of telling them no.
I guess at some restaurants they’ll help you take better photos, while at others they’ll stop you from taking photos. I’ve never really thought twice about taking photos of the food I eat. But then again, I don’t go anywhere too fancy.
Why I Bought Boys' Underwear For My Daughter
Yes, it’s sexist, but it’s also just weird and sad. Why can a boy walk around with Yoda on his underwear, but a young female "Star Wars" fan can’t? It’s gender marketing at its very worst.
Mia has a Darth Vader “Star Wars” shirt. If she wanted “Star Wars” underwear, I wouldn’t hesitate in buying them, even if they were boys underwear.
Hallelujah Leonard Cohen
"I wanted to push the Hallelujah deep into the secular world, into the ordinary world," he once said. "The Hallelujah, the David's Hallelujah, was still a religious song. So I wanted to indicate that Hallelujah can come out of things that have nothing to do with religion."
Breaking down Leonard Cohen’s classic Hallelujah. I loved this song, even though it has been so played out in the last several years. If you like this song, you should seek out more Leonard Cohen songs.
Mia and a Sunday Afternoon
Are you looking at me?
We were hanging out in the living room on a Sunday afternoon before baby Graecyn’s arrival when I took this photo. Mia was enjoying a few vanilla wafers and wearing her sunglasses while watching an episode of Dora the Explorer.
This photo was taken on November 4, 2012.