July 2, 2008
I’ll be honest: the best way to motivate myself to actually finish something is to be publicly humiliated by its incompleteness. So here I am, urged to wrap up the migration and styling of this little blog from Movable Type to glorious WordPress. Now, with just some CSS stuff to finish, I can get back to writing about cute sheep or the quality of tofu in Oakland (which is excellent).
Check out that sweet larger, new main column and please allow some time for the entries to work seamlessly with the slightly rearranged layout. Everything will be back to normal in no time (i.e. 3 weeks) and I can work on my summer plans that include not learning about math and/or JavaScript.
P.S. Sorry about any dead ends and broken images!
June 16, 2008
The other day at Indian Springs, while eating cherries and debating if I should take my shirt off and go in the pool, I was reading the latest issue of Harpers. The issue was fantastic, with a delightful article on The Magic Olympics (concerning the best type of magic: close-up tricks, i.e. not stuff concerning making a jet appear or anything to do with lions or tigers).
My eye was caught by a stunning three column ad for The Teaching Company that would reveal itself to be a masterwork of copy writing. I like ads that prey on my curiosity and desire, despite being lazy, to become smarter. I mean, it worked for PBS in getting me to watch that thing about the guy who solved that old guy’s problem.
That ad contains an eye-catching 3-D rendering of π and a deliciously inveigling comment about Archimedes, the ancient bad ass. From the opening line, the ad spoke to me: I have wondered about numbers! I have wished to learn more about them! It would seem that an esteemed member of the math community (Professor Edward Burger) was practically giving this knowledge away, and all he asked was for a thirty minutes of my time and a tiny seventy dollar charge. That’s around three dollars per lecture! Admittedly, I would probably just listen to the "Story of π" and promised myself that I would listen to the rest…"later."
If I could walk away from this summer knowing a little bit more about math, well, then that would be ok.
June 5, 2008
CupcakeCamp was fun for sure, but my main agenda for going was to talk to other vegans and see how they made their cupcakes light and fluffy, and not dense and heavy (the house specialty). I was delighted to see there were a shockingly high number of vegan entries, all of which were incredibly delicious. I regret that I did not have the time to spot or photograph all of them, but the venue filled up fast and I had a little crowd-induced panic attack which rendered me motionless.
[Special thanks to the organizers for being so, well, organized. And for having a lot of soy milk on hand.]
Looking forward to either hanging out with more vegans and learning the secrets of deliciousness or the next venue to bake for the general public, whichever comes first.
May 11, 2008
Everybody knows that walking is for suckers. But what if you’re a sucker that has to take BART into your job at a cool advertising agency down by Pier 23? And you often traveled during peak commuting times and couldn’t bring your trusty, non-dorky bike with you?
The answer: you get a totally cool single gear folding bike. The only one that doesn’t cost $1,600 is the Dahon Boardwalk. It rides like a BMX bike.
Pros:
- I can bring it on BART and only get a minimal look of annoyance from other commuters when the train is crowded.
- It shaves about 15 minutes off my travel time.
- Someday soon I will buff from carrying it up all the stairs that make up two BART stations.
Cons:
- I feel like an 80 year old man when I carry it up the BART stairs, since the bike seems to be made of lead.
- The feeling that it will, someday, fold when I am riding it.
My little friend does everything I need a bike to do, and even has a brake actived by back-pedaling. My hat is off to you, mighty Dahon Boardwalk engineers.
May 1, 2008
I’m sorry MT 4.x. I know we’ve had our problems over the past years, mainly having to do with the upgrade and eventual reinstall headaches you caused and that JavaScript error on my homepage I can’t seem to get rid of. (note: I believe this to be a Reinvigorate error. My apologies to MT. –RG)
We had some really great times! You easily managed two blogs on one page and helped me grow from a boy to a man. I will never forget you and I’m having some guilt cramps from my lack of loyalty to you. But then I remember how I would search your documentation and hit a dead link and feel like throwing my monitor through a window.
I’m rebuilding this little blog as WordPress-powered, as the 2.5 version is pretty smooth and sweet. Since this will happen during my non-work, non-wife, non-TV time, it might take a year. This whole thing needs an overhaul anyway, instead of periodic CSS patching. Oh, how I added padding to things with set widths when I was just a boy! And those ordered lists are terrible!!
However, I have to say MT’s ability to have multiple blogs seamlessly appear on one page is hard to beat. I have yet to crack that code with WP. I guess I’m having trouble saying "Goodbye". But WP seems to be a lot faster and I don’t have to rebuild anything to publish template changes.
And now the tears start.
April 24, 2008
In all the excitement of my birthday it slipped my mind that Nicole asked me to marry her two years ago while we were walking amongst big trees.
I realize that our marriage is a constant work-in-progress, mainly me learning to be less insane and crazy and maybe even a little less petty and grumpy. I know it certainly means I should be more tidy and not wear wrinkled clothing.
Still, you offered me half of your heart and that’s pretty awesome. (Thanks buddy.)
