4 posts from 2008

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Is it just my weird brain...

IMG_0300
IMG_0300
Galois moved downtown last week.  I love it!  Our new space is gorgeous, and conducive to both concentration and collaboration. Downtown is just so alive...it's invigorating.

On the trivial side of things, this sign is outside our window, and it's made me think...

Am I alone in parsing this sign as saying "Think Bank, Big Smart"? Maybe this was intentional: I kind of like it - bad translations from, say, Japanese are hip, edgy even.  Is this what U.S. Bank had in mind?  Nahh, that's over-thinking it...it's probably just incompetent design.


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Perhaps a little overboard?

Sylvia PID #1
Sylvia PID #1

In the past few months, the seriousness of my "coffee hobby" has escalated. I bought a coffee roaster, a "Gene Cafe,"  and I installed a PID-controller, which is a computer-controlled thermostat. While I don't think that everyone I know should follow these footsteps, I certainly am getting mighty-fine coffee out of my setup.


A couple weeks ago, Heidi and I collaborated with our friend and neighbor David Griswold, founder of Sustainable Harvest coffee company, on an auction item for our children's school, Sunnyside Environmental. We hosted a coffee seminar: David described the origins of coffee, growing, harvesting, processing and importing. Heidi lead a cupping of coffee's from around the world, as well as a comparison of different roasts. Finally, I described brewing techniques, culminating in making espresso drinks for everyone. It was a blast.

Sometime soon I'll add photos of my PID controller and roaster at work...


Post a comment Tags: coffee, espresso, pid controller

Simplify Media is cool

Simplify Media is a tool that lets you listen to your home iTunes library from work (my "killer app") and it also lets you choose up to 30 people to share with as well.


You might think the RIAA will be all over these guys to shut it down, but they've done a couple clever things that I think will keep the RIAA at bay (even though I think it's going the way of the dinosaur soon anyway):  first, the music is only streamed to your friends, they can't copy the files via the tool.  Second, the 30-person-limit keeps you from sharing all of your music with everybody in the world (a-la Napster).

One concern I have is that it will saturate the uplink direction of my DSL connection if multiple people are listening to my library at once. Hopefully, someday, DSL bandwidth in the U.S. will start improving past 1.5MB/s, as it has done everywhere else in the world.


It makes me happy because this was the feature of TrueDisk* that I missed the most.  It's also heartening because Simplify Media has a better interface than TrueDisk had, and it's a free service -- they're having "issues" with their business model, just as we were at TrueDisk.

* TrueDisk was a startup I spent an exciting three years working on with a great group of people...

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A lunch with David Byrne and Brian Eno

I grew up admiring David Byrne and Brian Eno.  From the great music they've made to the incisive social commentary to being consistently ahead of the curve in both technology and cultural trends (the good ones). 


I found the audio clips attached to this Wired article charming -- you get to listen in on a casual lunch between them.  This both brought them down from the stratosphere in terms of approachability, as well as bolstered my preconception that their signal-to-noise ration is higher than 99% of us achieve.

Great stuff. See the sidebar 1/3rd down, titled "David Byrne in Conversation with Brian Eno" 


Oh, and it's not news, but I'm ever more convinced after listening to these guys that record companies, as we know them, are doomed.

Post a comment Tags: david byrne, brian eno