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Don’t let the kids see! (via Benjamin Carpenter)

(local copy)

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I just came across a piece of software called KFC that removes Flash Cookies AKA Local Shared Objects from your computer. These are new to me but a little googling shows a pretty consistent theme, e.g.:

(webdesign10.com)Web sites use them to track you because they know that most people don’t know about them and that they can track you even after you have cleared your privacy settings.

(wikipedia)Several services even use LSOs as surreptitious data storage to reinstate traditional cookies that a user deleted, a policy called “re-spawning”

I’m going to add KFC to my  occasional  spring-cleaning of cookies and the like. Find KFC here or a local archive of KFC here.

I went to Paris, France on business a couple weeks back. Here are some more notes from the trip. Previously, Previously.

Had a crepe formage 2 blocks from Notre Dame :-)

Right-click and download this giant panorama for best results.

Notre Dame is pretty awesome. The structure totally rivals the Taj Mahal, which I had the pleasure of seeing in February. Personally, I liked Notre Dame better than the Taj Mahal. I took that image to the left. Right-click download it and view it up close. The panorama came out pretty awesome!

Went inside Notre Dame at about 11:30pm following a procession in the doors. The Virgin Mary and son had left at about 10:30 with a grande accompaniment celebrating the Feast of the Assumption. I looked at the holiday’s calendar and darn if I didn’t miss Gregoran chanting at the cathedral by just a few hours! The interior looks like… well… a Catholic Church. The ceiling is pretty nice.

The confessionals in Notre Dame have awesome little Get Smart Cone of Silence things surrounding the traditional wooden cubbies. I hope they work better than the real Get Smart Cones ;-)

Had an “Andouillette AAAAA moutarde de Meaux” for lunch at Dudule just outside Place d’Italie. When I picked it with my patented menu order randomizing system our French host Arnaud cautioned me “be careful with that”. Sounds like a dare, right? What other food based on a dare do you know about? That’s right, Scottish Haggis! The anduillette was umm.. err..  Ok, it was pretty gross but I’m glad I tried it. It’s a sausage made with intestines, not just the casing but the whole thing. When I cut open this unassuming sausage, it looked like it had lots of rolls of.. I don’t know.. Maybe little rolls of soggy paper. Not so bad. But it smelled like… When I held it to my nose, Arnaud immediately said “It tastes better than it smells, like cheese.” he was somewhat correct:  as long as I didn’t use my nose, I couldn’t smell the stench of death and entrails bundled on my plate! It smelled awful. It had the texture of soggy rolled up postit notes and had almost no flavor (barring the stench).

I passed through Gare d’Austerlitz station many times on my way to the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, and other spots. Here’s a nice panorama of the place I  stitched  together:

Saw a guy jump a 5′ tall turnstile on the Metro. It was amazing. The guy was walking and then he was springing 6′ in the air. And there was only like 3′ clearance to the ceiling. I might have told the station attendant who was 5′ away but there’s that language barrier.

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The energy around the eifel tower totally had a Burning Man feel to it! All these people are milling around this grand structure trying to figure out exactly how to extract the vibrant energy of the moment, and even just trying to characterize the energy… is it national pride, or an engineering achievement, or just the pretty lights that makes it so magical?

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At once, blacks seem to be more integrated into French society than in the US and also  seem more prone to being an underclass, working worse jobs (like window washers and runway crew at the airport) and having sketchier roles (like the kid at the restaurant who acted grabby and the guy who jumped the turnstile).

The black kid at the restaurant: he was maybe 12 years old, accompanied by a 40ish white woman. The kid did little things that made me feel like he came from poverty. He grabbed at food like it was going to be taken away from him. He called to the dog as if it should serve him. He grabbed at things on the table that he thought his matron was going to grab. He literally was shifty-eyed. It was really strange watching this play out during my dinner.

5:31am the phone rings. My coworkers are downstairs ready to go to the airport. I throw the last items in my bag, a still-wet jacket and my computer, and head downstairs with it rolling behind me. Brent and Arnaud are standing in the sleepy dark lobby. The smell of fresh pastries fills the room. They are  ready to go. The  concierge  brings out a plate of chocolate and plain  croissants for me and sets them on the bar. Holding an empty glass in his hand, He asks what I would like to drink, coffee or orange juice. It is wonderful.

Brent and Arnaud look at me. The tension of “time to go”  pushes on me. I walk over to the bar, place a hot chocolate croissant in my mouth and hold a plain one in my hand. Oh if I only I could carry more! We walk out  into a cool drizzling morning and get into the car.

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Oh yeah, and the real reason I was in Paris… setting up a new camera rig for earthmine.

Infinite Scroll looks like a fun plugin. It almost worked perfectly right out of the box (see my note about WP-FancyZoom). I found it on the Balsaman blog.

Just scroll down to the bottom of the page and the next page should load up automatically. :-)

To make the WP FancyZoom WordPress Plugin work well with Infinite Scroll, I figured out that I have to add the following to the “Javascript to be called” section:

addDOMLoadEvent(setupZoom);

Please tell me what you think of this change!

I went to Balsa Man Saturday night with Charlotte and Rick. Rick thought it would be funny if we burned the man like 10 minutes early. And….. well, images speak louder than words on this one…

In case you need some words, one claim to fame of Paul Addis is that he attempted to burn the man early in 2007. His mug shot gained quite some  notoriety. We weren’t aware that Paul was at Balsa Man until my friend Dan pointed it out. Thanks for the pix Dan! (via, via)

Balsa Man was really pretty awesome. See other peoples pix about Balsa Man 2010. My pix don’t do it justice but here you go:

I’ve also got to mention that I apparently was officially the first injury ever at Balsa Man.  Some fireworks strayed my way and exploded about 8 feet away. It felt like I got punched in the chin. Some debris flew my way and I can’t tell if it was a burn or a scrape but it took a little chunk of my chin. It looks like it will heal just fine, but ouch!

My company of is looking for a full time office manager. Look here for the job listing

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/ofc/1907786796.html

Find out about the company: earthmine

If you’re a friend of mine, tell me you’re applying and I’ll make sure your resume gets seen. This kind of job usually pays 35-45k, more if you’ve got solid executive management skills.

BT Express Liquidators 166 Baypointe Pkwy, San Jose, CA
We just got several large tables for the Hardware group at Earthmine. $350 each instead of $1000+ new. Nice and super sturdy. You never know what they’ll have though… they really are office liquidators!

The Crucible is having a sale on fall classes, including all my beloved Kinetics classes like Flame Effects, Mechanical Sculpture, and Arduino.

Here’s the deets:

Crucible Friends and Family Promotion

SAVE 30% on all Fall class tuition, exclusively available to Friends and Family of Crucible Board, staff and faculty!

Available by telephone orders only — call 510/444-0919 and use the code FRND10 to get this unprecedented discount.
Registration must be completed by 6PM on August 31 to qualify; discount is only for tuition, class materials fees are additional to discounted tuition

For a complete listing of classes, visit thecrucible.org

Advice for life as seen in the breakfast room of the West Western hotel in Dallas Oregon. This sign hangs over a crock pot full of breakfast gravy. Brent and I, while travelling for earthmine, noticed that this sign had a secret special significance.

Gravy is not
replenished
once depleted.
It is served as a
first come first
served basis.

Caution: Gravy
is hot!

Woke up yesterday grumpy. It hasn’t been sunny in SF in a while. Finally got moving and grudgingly rode my bike to a Public Bike party at South Park. (an emotional grudge, not logistical. Thank you so much Cindy for the invitation!!).

I got to talk to a product designer at Public about this weird little loose-ish screw on the bike. (I won’t go into it here) and he responded “That’s quite astute of you to notice”. Ha! We had a great little product design and user experience conversation.

I got to meet the owner of The American, a new Grilled Cheese restaurant in San Francisco! I’ve spoken with Charlotte many times somewhat flippantly about wanting to open a grilled cheese restaurant. You can make them sweet or savory, it’s almost the perfect food! (ok, I don’t want to hear any non-perfect comments… to me, it’s almost the perfect food!). I explained how I didn’t know anything about being a restaurateur. His response, “Me neither. I just quit my job at Oracle and put my life savings into the business! We’ve been open 3 months and, so far, it’s going really well.” Anything is possible, eh?

At the end of the party, Cindy’s friend Dan had to get his Fun Cycle conference bikes back home. He was asking “Hey who wants to ride these bikes back to Pier 39 and Golden Gate Park?” I was thinking, “Umm, my legs burned on the way here via bike, I don’t need to push it. But I’ve got nothing else going on today… Feh, why not” And we were off!

Ok, conference bikes are fun! We must have had our picture taken 50 times on our route down Embarcadero to the parking lot near Pier 39. People are all waving and smiling. We stopped and got beers for the ride, and did donuts out on one of the piers! It was such a blast!

We parked the bike and Patrick and I went into the Spy Shop across the street from the parking lot. Boys Toys!

Then it was back to South Park to pick up our bikes… but first a stop at 21st Amendment for drinks! Wee!

On to a birthday party for Cindy Woo in the Mission!

Laurie suggests we go to a party at Adobe Books and then the Lexington, and we’re off! Adobe has it’s requisite compliment of fun and weird! Then we’re off to the Lex where I met Carla :-). We meet up with these Brits who say this is their last night in San Francisco after a whirlwind tour and keep demanding we show them the “real gay San Francisco”. Carla and I walk them from the Lexington to The Cafe in the Castro, meeting a few characters along the way. These 2 boys saying joyously despondently “Oh, it’s 1 am, all the good looking guys are already gone!” I say hopefully to our British contingent, “Now there’s just desperate guys left. Maybe even some good looking desperate guys. You’ll find yours, don’t worry!” We drop off the Brits at The Cafe, get some pizza slices and walk back to fetch her car from a garage in the Mission. :-)

What a night!