http://lee.org/blog The coldest winter I ever spent Sun, 07 Feb 2010 12:45:29 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Each of the 2 full size suitcases on his head weighs 30 lbs. In the underpass between tracks in the Kanpur India train station. http://lee.org/blog/2010/02/07/porter-carrying-our-bags-in-kanpur/ Along with 3 friends, I am will be presenting SWARM at the Techkriti Annual Technology and Entreprenurship Festival February 11-14th, 2010 in Kanpur India! Dr Jonathan Foote, Marnia Johnston, Niladri Bora and I will be exhibiting SWARM throughout the entire festival. On February 13th we will present our talk. We are greatly ... http://lee.org/blog/2010/02/03/swarm-at-techkriti-kanpur-india/ busy busy! Tutored 2 students today Started teaching Intro to Mechanical Sculpture class last night Starting teaching Electromechanics for Everything class tomorow night I've got to straighten out my flight plans with a guy 12.5 time zones away. Hopefully he just woke up http://lee.org/blog/2010/02/02/busy-busy-busy-is-what-we-bokononists-whisper/ http://lee.org/blog/2010/02/02/happy-groundhog-day-eom/ I'm excited about this! I ran into this problem just the other day, trying to make a list while qualifying the listees at the same time. I'm a big fan of the semicolon but didn't know that I could do this! What do you think, is this kosher? (via, and they ... http://lee.org/blog/2010/01/30/semicolon-as-a-super-comma/ Cracked.com has more well researched SCIENCE than the news. Read this article about The 6 Most Statistically Full of Shit Professions. And follow the links. This is science people! And it's awesome too. http://lee.org/blog/2010/01/29/why-i-love-cracked-com/ I'm using wikis more and more for business. I have a lot of content that I need access to on a daily basis. I need to be assured of having access to this data wherever I go. Some examples include the phone numbers and addresses for my tutoring clients, shopping lists ... http://lee.org/blog/2010/01/29/looking-for-iphone-offline-website-caching/ It's San Francisco! They were delicious. It was a crazy event! I met some cupcakeers. They were intensely into ... CUPCAKES! I met a woman from Holland and man from Estonia who had never eaten a cupcake before! http://lee.org/blog/2010/01/28/iron-cupcake/ I saw Avatar in 3D at the Metreon with Stacy. It's pretty, awesome, and pretty awesome. Totally beautiful, sumptuous visuals, gorgeous realization of an alternate world. And the aliens are totally hot! I should write more about it but I'm short on time. So here's bullet points: the first 1/2 of the movie hurt my eyes ... http://lee.org/blog/2010/01/28/saw-avatar-pretty-awesome/ Just do 5 minutes of googling and you'll realize that Fungisil is a scam. It's almost definitely made by the same people that make Zetaclear. Why do I say it's a scam? The ingredient list has nothing but common, inexpensive ingredients like undecylenic acid (a good topical antifungal. Buy a lifetime supply ... http://lee.org/blog/2010/01/26/fungisil-is-a-scam/ My friend Laura in Manhattan needs some help. She describes it well so here is her letter to me I previously wrote about this and got some help, thanks! The Facts: My apartment was destroyed on Oct 24th by my upstairs neighbor who opened a hot water main and flooded out the three ... http://lee.org/blog/2010/01/26/need-apartment-rental-in-nyc-architect-in-nyc-acting-job-good-karma/ There's all this chatter on the Noisebridge list. Someone working on an important new Calendar and Room Reservation System asked for brainstorming on what the system needed. I gave some feedback. 50 chatty/bitchy posts on the subject later I wrote some more feedback. I notice that the wiki Todo list ... http://lee.org/blog/2010/01/25/todays-win/ In my whole life, I can only remember being asked to write a bio four times... three in the last three weeks! Weird! The Crucible (not done yet!) IUH Techkriti (an Indian technology conference I'm presenting at in 2 weeks) (done but needs fixing!) Flaming Lotus Girls http://lee.org/blog/2010/01/25/biography-writing/ I'll be teaching a breadmaking class at the Institute of Urban Homesteading Open House on May 16th. Hopefully that will lead to many more bread making classes :-) My biography is now on the Faculty page of the IUH website (was here)  :-) Lee Sonko http://lee.org Lee Sonko is an entrepreneur, educator, machine artist, ... http://lee.org/blog/2010/01/25/institute-of-urban-homesteading-breadmaking-bio/ (via JWZ) This is art that sells itself. Literally. And that's why it's art. I love it! The art is currently selling itself on eBay ... WHEREAS: A. Artist has created a work of art titled “A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter (2009)” (“the Artwork”) which consists of a black box that places itself for sale on ... http://lee.org/blog/2010/01/24/smart-art/ I might put this under the category of "Today's Affirmation" A Ted Talk David Blaine: How I held my breath for 17 min http://lee.org/blog/2010/01/24/david-blaine-how-i-held-my-breath-for-17-min/ That place is a disorderly house injurious to the public welfare and morals. And JWZ put up the sign to show it. FNA http://lee.org/blog/2010/01/24/the-dna-lounge/ I have trouble giving myself a day off because I've got a million things on my todo list. But today, I was off. Went to the shooting range with Schuyler and his friend Mitch. While I was officially Schuyler's Parent or Guardian because of his tender young age (!), I spent ... http://lee.org/blog/2010/01/24/a-day-off/ Niladri wrote to the SWARM list a few days ago: I reflashed the daughter board on Orb 3 and Michael Toren and I roll tested it. The moment I hit the joystick the orb took off and wouldn't stop even when I let go of the joystick. ... P.S. 1 - The kill ... http://lee.org/blog/2010/01/22/pure-comedy-gold-insane-killer-robots/ I was introduced to this absolute gem at Noisebridge 5 Minutes of Fame last night. A fantastic 8 minute piece showing a taste of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton with a decidedly novel approach. And the story is the thing. http://lee.org/blog/2010/01/22/the-existentialist-1963/ Play All is Love - Curt Smith.mp3 (locally archived) (Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License) (this track from Amazon.com, at no cost) I wrote on Curt Smith's website (of Tears for Fears fame) Curt, Thank you so very much for this song. I found All is Love when browsing around for for ... http://lee.org/blog/2010/01/22/all-is-love-by-curt-smith/ My call to Omnipage Sales... Short form: Their sales website is huge and very pretty. They spent a lot of money on it. Omnipage 17 costs about $150, Omnipage 17 Professional costs about $500. And there's the "Enterprise" version. I clicked the pretty "chat with a representative" popup on their site to find ... http://lee.org/blog/2010/01/21/nuance-omnipage-17-slime/ My car has been running a little rough at idle when cold. It would sometimes cut out for a moment and almost stall. The "Check Engine" light came on. It was due for a Test-Only smog check so I took it in for a smog test. The smog guy said ... http://lee.org/blog/2010/01/20/help-me-car-repair-advice/ Here's my review I posted to Yelp. Charlotte, Riley and I went there last night. Kern was buying as our holiday present. 1550Hyde 2 1/2 of 5 stars. It was "fine". My yellowtail was cooked fine with a bit of bitter green sauce on it. The cooked baby green things beside it ... http://lee.org/blog/2010/01/20/review-of-1550-hyde-restaurant-san-francisco/ Small Business owner - Tap Pen Teaching Faculty at the Crucible - teaching 2 classes starting in February - Introduction to Mechanical Sculpture - Electromechanics for Everything Tutoring School Students - right now I have a 2nd grader and 4th grader Teaching Bread Making at the Institute for Urban Homesteading Presentation Manager for SWARM's trip to ... http://lee.org/blog/2010/01/20/whats-in-the-works/ Update 1-18-10: I have temporarily(?) disabled this plugin. Read the comments. I just installed RSS Count Comments. Findable on Wordpress. When you read my RSS feed, you'll now see the number of comments in each post. So a title might read: It Was on Fire When I Got Here (3 comments) I installed this because ... http://lee.org/blog/2010/01/17/installed-rss-count-comments/ ...immunizations. In preparing to go to India to show off SWARM, I had to get stuck with a bunch of needles. Joy. I got my immunizations at the San Francisco Department of Public Health Adult Immunization & Travel Clinic They knew which vaccines I needed but I checked up myself with the CDC ... http://lee.org/blog/2010/01/15/i-have-typhoid-hep-a-tetanus-and-whooping-cough/ I make a lot of bread. I believe that in the last 2 years I've gone through 3 25 lb bags and 1 50 lb bag of flour. It's time to start taking better notes. Here we go! I just added the "Bread" Category to this blog. I have retroactively put all ... http://lee.org/blog/2010/01/15/first-street-bread-flour/ I am excited to say that starting in February I will be regular faculty at the Crucible. I had taught some classes in June. Now Michael Shiloh, head of the department, has asked me to take on 2 of his regular classes: "Electromechanics for Everything" and "Introduction to Mechanical Sculpture". The ... http://lee.org/blog/2010/01/12/crucible-faculty/ Last week at The Exploratorium After Dark (which was loads of fun), I saw "Animanemone". Alan, one of the creators gave me the whole skinny, starting with "Well, my friend bought 2,000 stepper motors for like $0.23 apiece on eBay. So we needed to find something cool to do with ... http://lee.org/blog/2010/01/12/cool-art-from-exploratorium-after-dark/ Feb 4-16 or so I'm going to India with SWARM! We're showing the orbs for 4 days and giving a presentation at Techkriti in Kanpur, India. Do you want me to bring anything back with me? http://lee.org/blog/2010/01/12/going-to-india-with-swarm/ My car is in for service. I just got a call from the dealer in Walnut Creek, Michael Steads Walnut Creek Chrysler Jeep Dodge. ... "The mechanic opened the hood and... has there ever been a fire in your car?" "Hmm? mmm. Ha! No, but it's been to Burning Man! All that ... http://lee.org/blog/2010/01/12/car-fire-no-just-burning-man/ This morning Sparkfun had a "Free Day" giving away $100,000 in $100 increments to shoppers. Obviously, their servers came crashing down. Eric asked on the SWARM list Eric: anyone get anything? Lee: I clicked Refresh until my fingers were bloody stumps. But nothing. I'm writing to you now with voice recognition soft wear ... http://lee.org/blog/2010/01/07/lolz/ I was lying in bed this morning (after being up a while) and the bed started rocking. An earthquake! Wee!! It was really tiny, like 5 seconds total. It felt like someone was at the foot of the bed wiggling the frame a little. Just now I just tried to wiggle ... http://lee.org/blog/2010/01/07/earthquake-this-morning/ It's low and away. The count's oh and two. http://lee.org/blog/2010/01/06/swing-and-a-miss/ Last night I reported how "it was on fire when I got here". Well today, I get to report how my neighbor's apartment caught on fire, nearly burning my building down. Yipe. I'll write more later but the short form is: I called 911 at 11:23am The first thing they brought out was a ... http://lee.org/blog/2010/01/04/bring-the-fire-home-with-you/ Ok, they're rude. But they're funny. They are. I've loved this list for years. I remember when Luke Sullivan started quoting them at me with funny faces. I laughed and laughed! Though, truth be told, I was and am jealous that he has such an awesome memory... he could quote most ... http://lee.org/blog/2010/01/04/er-jokes/ My friend Marcus, the founder of the Berkeley Revolution is at this moment in New Zealand with his unicycle basketball team having a blast playing against all the best unicycle basketball teams in the world! He is at Unicom, The 15th International Unicycling Convention and Championships held in Wellington New Zealand this ... http://lee.org/blog/2010/01/04/the-berkeley-revolution-unicycle-basketball-team-rolls/ Christmas trees burning on Ocean Beach As I stood on one side of the street, a cadre of Christmas tree bearing revellers trotted across the street, passing the ranger's police car. He came on the PA and meekly said "Put those trees down, we're going to be arresting people real soon." ... http://lee.org/blog/2010/01/03/it-was-on-fire-when-i-got-here/ RT Nthng says holidays like animal fat! Over 40 Duck Fat Pecan Pies sold already & 25 bags of Lard Caramels in just a couple hours! Wow&Yum! # That retweet was from @humphryslocombe. Can Twitter's pan be flashed now? 140 characters is silly. And no way to respond to my friends ... http://lee.org/blog/2010/01/02/twitter-weekly-updates-for-2010-01-02/