I won’t read blogs with disabled commenting


From now on, I won't read blogs that have commenting disabled. There will be only one exception to this rule — Andrew Sullivan's The Daily Dish gets a pass. I decided this after reacting to a post about Amtrak on plope. The author, Chris McDonough, felt that Amtrak's cost was too high, and its predictability too low, … Continue reading I won’t read blogs with disabled commenting →

Dyson Airblade is a Win


After helping a family friend catch a Downtown Airporter to Sea-Tac airport, I had breakfast at the Warwick Seattle Hotel at 4th & Lenora. Their men's restroom provides a Dyson Airblade for drying your hands. I've read about the Airblade, but never used it until today. It's great! I'm normally skeptical about company propaganda marketing, but in … Continue reading Dyson Airblade is a Win →

A flash drive example of surpassing Moore’s Law


In March 2003, I bought a Sony 128MB Micro vault flash drive for $107. That was $.83/MB. Today, I bought a PNY 4GB Attaché flash drive for $25. That is $.00625/MB. This won't be an apples-to-apples comparison. My 2003 purchase was for the then-highest capacity available, whereas today's purchase is not. And, the drives are … Continue reading A flash drive example of surpassing Moore’s Law →

Zipcar.com embeds messages in query strings


I visited Zipcar to see what car makes and models were available in my neighborhood. Alas, I couldn't log in, because I couldn't remember my password. It, apparently, wasn't one of my standard web passwords, nor was it in 1Password. (I haven't logged in to the site in over a year.) So, I clicked their password-reset … Continue reading Zipcar.com embeds messages in query strings →

I won’t attend OSCON next year


I greatly enjoyed OSCON 2008. But I won't attend OSCON 2009, because its locale was moved from Portland to San Jose. I lived in San Jose for six months, when I worked for a former employer. (Maybe it was nine months... That job is fortunately a distant fuzzy memory.) Deciding whether to attend a conference … Continue reading I won’t attend OSCON next year →

Counterbalance park: A Bogus Tagline


My October rant about Counterbalance park included intellectually sublime comments about the park's tagline, "An Urban Oasis." Let's examine it more closely. It contains, gosh, three words. An: A preposition. There's nothing to complain about here, these aren't the droids you're looking for. Urban: An adjective meaning, "in, relating to, or characteristic of a city or town." … Continue reading Counterbalance park: A Bogus Tagline →

Building PyLucene for Review Board on Ubuntu Hardy


My team (well, there's just two of us now) is creating the development infrastructure for our big project, which is building my company's new CMS on Plone. We'll be Agile, of course, but without zealotry. It fell to me to install Review Board on our Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy) administrative server, to evaluate it for our online code reviews. This should … Continue reading Building PyLucene for Review Board on Ubuntu Hardy →

PithHelmet support: Yoo hoo, anybody home?


I've paid $20 in PithHelmet registration fees. On November 13, Apple released a Safari update. I waited a couple of days, and then upgraded. After a short time, I, like many others, discovered that PithHelmet crashed Safari 3.2. I e-mailed Mike Solomon twice last week, asking if he had an ETA for a PithHelmet update. … Continue reading PithHelmet support: Yoo hoo, anybody home? →