Over at The Online Photographer blog there’s been a bit of a ruckus over their suggestion to spend a year using a Leica to develop photo skills. I think their suggestion is valid, and mostly a reasonable (if somewhat inconvenient) thing to do. You can find the initial and follow-up posts here: The Leica as …
Category Archives: General
Trailing-Edge Geekdom
As snolan pointed out in a recent comment, I’m a geek. Specifically, I’m a technology geek. but I don’t insist that only the latest and greatest tech is always the best (or most interesting). I love bicycles, photography, and even horology. In fact I have a decent retro-bent going these days. I ride an old, …
TeX and Me
I just wanted to document how I installed TeX on my MacBook Air. I grabbed and installed BasicTeX-2008 from the MacTeX folks. TeX binaries were installed in: /usr/local/texlive/2008basic/bin/universal-darwin. So I added that directory to my path. Next I updated the installed packages: tlmgr update bin-texlive texlive.infra tlmgr update –all Since the ACM style file seems …
Sandro’s Freshwater Aquarium
It started innocently enough, I wanted a 36 gallon bow front tank, and Kim wanted to find me another nice christmas gift (we got each other a couple things each). She got a great deal on craigslist (on x-mas eve no less). A 36 gallon bow-front with stand for $100. Of course a month later …
Cholesterol Numbers
My latest blood work is back, and I have new cholesterol numbers: Triglycerides: 121 HDL Cholesterol: 41 VLDL Cholesterol: 24 LDL Cholesterol: 57 Total Cholesterol: 122 Sweet! Total cholesterol is down from about 214, which is a pretty massive reduction (thanks to Lipitor).
Love is a Warm Scanner
I have too much paper. Between various old documents, bills, statements, and magazines there’s reams of paper cluttering up my life. While I’ve been shifting as much as possible to paperless solutions where possible, the paper still accumulates. That’s why I love my Fujitsu ScanSnap. It’s a little scanner that tames the paper piles. While …
Magically Multiplying Fish Tanks
Kim received a “free” fish tank from my buddy Rob last fall. In the past 5 months that single tank has magically expanded into 4 separate fish tanks: Kim’s 29 gallon Freshwater Hex My 3 gallon Freshwater Eclipse My 46 gallon (Empty) Bow-Front Kim’s 29 gallon Saltwater Reef BioCube Here’s a new page of pictures …
Stripped Screw Solution
For years I’ve been looking for a good screw extractor. So far I’ve had the most success with these: Grabit Screw Removers. While working with several stripped screws (mostly small aluminum and light steel), it removed all but one when used as per directions. I don’t think I’d try removing a screw that has the …
Travel Gear: Normal
While I might spend a few days at a beach resort with just my lightweight travel kit, for work related trips a “full” laptop is necessary. So here’s my normal travel setup, which centers around a new Macbook Air, and support accessories. Clockwise from upper left: Macbook Air – I’ve spent most of the last …
R/C Plane: Supercub
I’ve been enchanted by flying animals and aircraft my entire life. I’ve always wanted to get into radio control aircraft, but the time, complexity, and cost of radio control aircraft kept me away. These days modern high-density lithium-poltmer (lipo) batteries and foam aircraft have addressed the issues that kept me out of the hobby. For …