I just finished reading Yeager (Chuck Yeager’s autobiography), having retrieved it out of the local library’s "buck-a-bag" book section along with a few other selections. It’s a pretty decent read, and paints an interesting picture of a man who was in the thick of many of the most exciting aviation developments from the ’40s through …
Author Archives: user
Oliver’s Second Birthday
We recently celebrated Oliver’s second “birthday” (when he came to live with us) with a very special treat, one that he was more than happy to devour: smoked salmon. It was impossible to get a good picture of him eating, because his head was firmly planted in that bowl until all of the salmon was …
The Mobile Browsing Experience: Getting Better?
Sandy recently got an iPhone 3G, and I’ve been fairly impressed with the web browsing experience (through Safari) on it. While the JavaScript support is somewhat flaky, the mobile browsing experience on it is close enough to the desktop experience to be acceptable. The responsiveness of the browser is also quite good, at least on …
Continue reading “The Mobile Browsing Experience: Getting Better?”
Getting Rid of 3 1/2″ Floppies (Somewhat Safely)
A few months ago I wrote about getting rid of old hard drives safely, by destroying the data contained on them. I was going through some more old stuff recently, and came across some relics — 3 1/2″ floppy disks. None of them really contain anything sensitive or that I’d want to keep, but at …
Continue reading “Getting Rid of 3 1/2″ Floppies (Somewhat Safely)”
Death Watch: CD Singles
I happened to be browsing through Amazon and eBay the other day, and got to thinking about the CD single format. I used to be quite the avid collector of these back in the late 90’s and earlier this decade — you could often find hidden gems among the b-sides, and I just liked the …
Grocery Store Sociology
A somewhat famous quote from Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin: Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are. The contents of the grocery basket belonging to the shopper in front of us at a grocery store in Arcata, CA: One loaf of white bread (store brand) A jar of peanut butter A …
Matthew Sweet at the Coach House
Last night I saw Matthew Sweet play at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano. He’s on a mini-tour to promote his new album (out since a few days ago), which I picked up but haven’t listened to yet. The show was OK — heavily weighted towards the new album, which I am cautiously optimistic …
Bureaucracy
Recently, I went to the DMV in order to renew my car registration, as well as renew my driver’s license. Now, if this were a very tired comedy shtick, I would proceed to complain about how this experience wasted an entire day of mine and destroyed my soul. Instead, because I try to give things …
Backing Up My Music
After finishing my CD ripping project, one of the first things I considered was, "How should I back this stuff up?" The last thing I want to have happen is for my hard drive to fail, necessitating a repeat of this epic project. My brother had suggested just using another hard drive or some sort …
Braid
Braid is a very good game that overcomes some ham-fisted writing and overly ambitious themes. I won’t really dwell on talking about the game in this post other than to say that I recommend it, and that there are some mild spoilers in the remainder of this post. I saw a post by the author …