http://lee.org/blog The coldest winter I ever spent Mon, 30 Jun 2008 04:53:56 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I'm off for a week to go see family. I'll land in New Jersey and then we'll be wisked off to Vermont. I haven't been there in... geez... years. But I'm confident that the place will be relatively unchanged and comforting. http://lee.org/blog/2008/06/29/off-to-vermont/ I heard on Security Now about Crash Plan. It looks like it might be an excellent online backup tool. I had been fiddling with the idea of using BoxBackup (local mention). But it was too much of a bother to set up (and limited to <2 GB files). Right now I ... http://lee.org/blog/2008/06/29/crash-plan-good-online-backup/ Cracked Magazine did a piece called 5 Works of Art That Can Probably Kill You By Robert Brockway It gives me a sense of tremendous pride and joy that my art made that list! Here is the Serpent Mother portion of the article. If you click on the image to the right, you'll see ... http://lee.org/blog/2008/06/29/a-work-of-art-that-can-probably-kill-you-grin/ Last night Charlotte and I went to Valentina Ristorante in Bernal Heights. It was just terrific. http://lee.org/blog/2008/06/27/valentina-ristorante/ A while back I paid a dealer to "fix" my brakes because they were squeaking when I drive at low speed and put the brakes on. I would pull up to an intersection and SQEEEEEEEEK to a stop. Having the dealership work on my car did not work out too ... http://lee.org/blog/2008/06/26/how-to-fix-my-squeaky-brakes/ (via) [Joseph] Pujol became the first flatulence musician. It was a skill that eventually made him the most well-known and highest paid entertainer in all of France. http://lee.org/blog/2008/06/26/farting-out-of-context/ I was speaking to a solar panel prospect of mine a while back. I was telling him how he probably should not buy panels made by Sun Tech because you can't really trust the reliability of high-tech products from China. I started talking about Harbor Freight and he told me ... http://lee.org/blog/2008/06/26/how-china-is-building-cities-like-harbor-freight-builds-tools/ I love the Yellow Drum Machine. I love it's mission in life.... seek out friends and play with them objects and bang on them with a joyous noise. http://lee.org/blog/2008/06/26/im-in-love-with-a-yellow-drum-machine/ Today: went to acupuncture. I feel great after. Mailed off several boxes of photos from Morley's house. Productive... Went to the Box Shop. I was greeted with 3 different people wanting help from me :-). Figuring out how to keep a Mac Mini cool on the playa (put it in an ice chest ... http://lee.org/blog/2008/06/24/whats-up/ I'll give you $10 if you sign up with my Stamps.com referral code. You see, they give me $20 in postage for every friend I refer. So I'll split the referral I get with you. Here is how to get $10 free money when signing up for Stamps.com. If you don't ... http://lee.org/blog/2008/06/22/stampscom-referral-discount/ WATCH THE TRAILER SF-based, female-driven and fuel-powered art collective The FLAMING LOTUS GIRLS announce a benefit with the screening of "Dust And Illusions", by director Olivier Bonin for our mega fire-art project MUTOPIA, destined for the playa of Black Rock City 2008. All proceeds go directly to the Flaming Lotus Girls. PLEASE ... http://lee.org/blog/2008/06/19/flaming-lotus-girls-fundraiser-dust-and-illusions-6-28-08/ Groovy. Firefox 3 is really nice. Pages load faster and the new features I've found so far have all been non-intrusive and all quite welcome. :-) http://lee.org/blog/2008/06/19/firefox-3-is-super-snazzy/ Heh. Beer: Now Cheaper Than Gas! "Drink, Don't Drive" http://lee.org/blog/2008/06/16/drink-dont-drive/ Get 10% off your subscription to Mozy AND money from me. Here's all you have to do: First, sign up for Mozy with my referral link (and get $10-15 free money) Then, when signing up, there will be a box where you can type in a promotion code. "JUNE" gets you 10% ... http://lee.org/blog/2008/06/09/mozy-june-2008-discount/ Last week I went to another wedding with Charlotte. This one at the Shipyard in Berkeley. The vows were performed by several Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Yes, really. It was a blast! And yes, that's the Neverwas Haul Handfasting And the space! That's Charlotte and I in the lower left, talking with Michael ... http://lee.org/blog/2008/06/06/sue-and-aimees-wedding/ At Maker Faire, Corey McGuire married Hallie McConlogue. Their invitation was divine. . . And here they are actually getting married on the Neverwas Haul Yes, Charlotte and I dressed up for the wedding! . [FLV:http://lee.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/corey-slays-the-dragon.flv 360 240] Corey slays the dragon for his love, Hallie [FLV:http://lee.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/riding-off-in-a-steam-carriage.flv 360 240] Corey and Hallie ride off in a ... http://lee.org/blog/2008/06/06/the-marriage-of-corey-mcguire-and-hallie-mcconlogue/ Comparing TJIC's blog ranking to Lee.org on Alexa Trav said he had only 15 readers. I disagreed, did the math and then.... agreed. 15? You must have many more lurkers than that. I get like 1000 page views a day. How many do you get? Oh yes, that’s right. you have no idea ... http://lee.org/blog/2008/06/06/alexa-rank/ Credit where credit is due. Here are all the Plugins I'm running as of 6-6-08 on this Wordpress 2.5.1 install. Admin Drop Down Menu (v. 2.1 ) by Ozh. Brian's Latest Comments (v. 1.5.10 ) by Brian Meidell. DoFollow (v. 4.0 ) by Kimmo Suominen. Exec-PHP (v. 4.7 ) by Sören Weber. Flexible upload (v. 1.13 ... http://lee.org/blog/2008/06/06/my-wordpress-plugins-6-6-08/ Some fliers made it to the front step of the building. They remind me that I live in San Freaky Cisco. From the website... Rent control has been a road block for Landowners, but it does not stop them from taking advantage of renters. For example: - 2 bedroom apartments being ... http://lee.org/blog/2008/06/05/san-francisco-rent-strike/ 450: Number of people that voted at the 25th and Valencia polling place for the June 3rd election 1: Of those, how many that were registered Libertarians Last night at about 7:45pm Charlotte and I walked in to the voting place at the Synergy School on Valencia. When I was signing in, ... http://lee.org/blog/2008/06/04/the-libertarian-in-the-mission/ I run several Mediawiki wikis and Wordpress blogs on my Dreamhost shared hosting. I continue to work on improving performance on my wikis. Here are some performance hints for the Mediawiki LocalSettings.php file I am running right now: ## Compress output if the browser supports it # I commented this out in favor ... http://lee.org/blog/2008/06/03/mediawiki-wordpress-and-php-performance-improvements-on-leeorg/ My friend Free points out: ...Unlike Massachusetts, California does not have a law prohibiting marriage in the state if your home state would not recognize the marriage. Thus, allowing same-sex marriage in California will open same-sex marriage up to a lot more people than the Massachusetts change did. ...In addition, any same-sex ... http://lee.org/blog/2008/05/30/same-sex-marriages-may-not-divorce/ When I switched my permalinks from http://lee.org/blog/archives/... to http://lee.org/blog/... I had several links in my blog with the old "archives" links. Thankfully, the Permalink Redirect plugin redirects hits to those pages with "303" errors. But I still needed to change the 30 or so posts with those old links. Search ... http://lee.org/blog/2008/05/29/search-and-replace-wordpress-plugin/ This show was quite a lot of fun. The piece I found most fun was a piece involving real dancers. A dancer was moving around, dancing this repeating pattern and I saw a placard around her neck that read something like "1, 1 2, 1 2 3". On the wall ... http://lee.org/blog/2008/05/29/night-light-at-the-climate-theater/ Nice. (via) Taylor Square is a new public artwork created by Paul Ramirez Jonas and installed in front of the renovated Engine 8, Ladder 4 fire station in northwest Cambridge, at the intersection of Huron Avenue, Sherman Street, and Garden Street. Taylor Square is the smallest public park in Cambridge, measuring ... http://lee.org/blog/2008/05/29/public-private-art-nice-taylor-square/ I was wondering today, "What exactly is the purpose of the International Space Station and all those Space Shuttle trips for upkeep? Aren't those flights really really really expensive?" A pretty convincing answer comes from Maciej Ceg?owski. In short: government space-cheese. They could be doing potentially useful things, but instead "...the ... http://lee.org/blog/2008/05/29/the-space-shuttle-makes-me-sick/ A Victorian trans-Atlantic viewing tunnel revitalized for the 125th anniversary of the Brooklyn Bridge. [FLV:http://lee.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/Saying_Hello_Across_The_Pond_-_New_York_Post.flv 320 240] [FLV:http://lee.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/telectro-visit.flv 320 240] . . The ends of the telectroscope had been sealed off for more than a century, forgotten... almost. [FLV:http://lee.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/Drilling-Telectroscope-City_Hall_London.flv 320 240] [FLV:http://lee.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/telectroscope-NYC-drilling.flv 320 240] Find out more about the Telectroscope here and here. I found out about the ... http://lee.org/blog/2008/05/29/the-telectroscope/ Airgas sells dry ice under the Penguin Brand name all over the place. Click here to find out exactly where you can buy dry ice in supermarkets. I found this dry ice box in the front of a Safeway in San Jose. http://lee.org/blog/2008/05/28/where-to-buy-dry-ice/ Here are some Motivational Posters for you. Envy: When you can't have one, pissing people off who do is the next best thing. . Inspiration: Sometimes you just have to seize the moment. . Stereotypes: They're based on reality . Birth Control: Because if you aren't careful, one of these could be yours. Way way more follow... They see ... http://lee.org/blog/2008/05/27/motivational-posters/ You are Jayne, the Merc You have a unique sense of fashionable hats and a discomforting closeness with your firearms. You may be the object of adulation for a small group of people. Take the Which Firefly guy are you? Quiz at HeavyInk.com ... http://lee.org/blog/2008/05/27/ha/ The YSlow Firefox Addon suggested a few performance boosts for the blog. This seems to cut 1-2 seconds off loading time. Nice :-) added <?php flush(); ?> just after </head> I put this in my .htaccess file (at the root of lee.org). This helps a lot when revisiting my site :-)) ExpiresActive On ExpiresByType text/html "access ... http://lee.org/blog/2008/05/26/yslow-wordpress-performance-improvements/ I sent this reply to Rick about... well, read for yourself Don't tell Charlotte. She wants a motorcycle but refuses to get one because she knows it'd be WAY too dangerous for her. And I should definitley NOT get a jet pack! NOT NOT! NOT!!! -------- Original Message ------------- From: Rick Taylor Sent: Sunday, May 18, 2008 ... http://lee.org/blog/2008/05/20/jetpack/ I went to a molecular gastronomy talk put on by Michael Zbyszynski at Maker Faire a few weeks ago. Here's the bullet points I wanted to remember Get supplies here: http://le-sanctuaire.com/ 315 Sutter Street on the 5th Floor Recipes: Read the "Hydrocolloid Recipe Book" Sous Vide cooking (pronounced "sue veed") is used by ... http://lee.org/blog/2008/05/20/molecular-gastronomy/ Several years ago I ripped the original Hampsterdance.com homepage from Archive.org. It's just a joy that every few months I get a thankful email from someone. Here's the one I got today: Hi Lee- I just wanted to thank you for preserving the original hamsterdance so faithfully. I click ... http://lee.org/blog/2008/05/19/the-hampster-dance/ Last month Melissa sent me a banana bread. I have to say that it was completely terrific. She wrote, i made three, gave one to a friend and kept one. the one i kept was super cinnamon and was so good, it was a borderline cinnamon bread. yeah that ... http://lee.org/blog/2008/05/16/my-sister-made-terrific-banana-bread/ I haven't made the plunge yet but I'll be taking this person's suggestions and buying my next pair of prescription glasses online. (Actually, I'm making this post mostly to remind myself of that blog post) Here's a copy of his article in case the internet eats the original Adventures in $40 eyeglasses Matthew ... http://lee.org/blog/2008/05/16/where-to-buy-prescripton-eyeglasses-online/ These people are amazing. If you are near New York City on June 1st, you should go see them. You won't be sorry! Here's the email I got from them tonight "A delicate blend of untamed nature dialoguing with new technologies, Lulacruza is a cornerstone in the musical DNA of Latinamerica." - Revista ... http://lee.org/blog/2008/05/16/go-see-hear-amazing-music-in-nyc-june-1-2008-lulacruza/ Last year there was a new Babylon 5 movie/show, "Babylon 5: The Lost Tales". Charlotte and I saw it last month on Netflix and we quite liked it. It got poor reviews on IMDB and Netflix but we both agreed it was probably because people's reminiscence of the original series. ... http://lee.org/blog/2008/05/14/babylon-5-the-lost-tales/ If you have a "Personal" Paypal account, you can accept $500.00 USD monthly and up to 5 credit or debit card payments annually. Credit cards are charged a transaction fee of 4.9% plus $0.30 on your Personal account. So you can accept payments from your friends (paying restaurant tabs ... http://lee.org/blog/2008/05/14/how-to-avoid-paypal-fees/ My name is going to the moon. Well, it'll go around the moon a whole lot, never to actually land, but that's beside the point. NASA's LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) is being launched later this year and I registered to have my name written on a (hopefully radiation-proof, ... http://lee.org/blog/2008/05/13/to-the-moon-alice/