Monthly Archives: September 2007

Klingons, Cupcakes and Art Cars

Posted on September 30, 2007 by thedude

Where else, but at the Berkeley Art Car Parade, part of the “How Berkely Can You Be?” festival today.

More images here.

Posted in Bay Area, Design | Leave a comment

Gmail is Giving My Life Back

Posted on September 29, 2007 by thedude

I have heard from other folks how much they love Gmail, but I had been a skeptic – until this week. Now, I’m a true believer. Gmail and Google Apps are the two best things that have happened to me in a long time. They have decreased both my workload and the amount of time I spend with e-mail.

I never thought I could be satisfied with a browser-based e-mail client. I need keyboard shortcuts, speed, IMAP, spell-checking, an LDAP connector, etc. Gmail does not allow me to connect to my LDAP server, or to create server-side folders like IMAP, but after using Gmail with Firefox for a few days, my old trusty mail client seems antiquated. Gmail in a browser is absolutely fantastic. It offers everything my old client (Thunderbird) did and much more. You just have to see how Conversations work to appreciate them. Then there’s the built-in Chat feature, the ability to use Google search against your e-mail, tons of free storage, ease-of-use, compatibility, world-class spam filtering and more…

I’ll keep Thunderbird around for a while, because it’s easier and quicker to send a large number of attachments with it. But for everything else e-mail related, I’ll use Gmail.

So, now I plan to move all of the e-mail domains currently hosted on my servers to a Google Apps account. This will reduce my workload and stress level while providing a greatly enhanced user experience for my friends. A true win-win!

Posted in Computing, Work | 3 Comments

Wrong Lens, Ten Minutes Too Late

Posted on September 21, 2007 by thedude

I made the trek up to the roof to try and shoot the sunset again, with mixed results.

The walk up the stairs was not a total loss, though. As you can see, when you put a few images side by side like this, the overall effect changes. The shots you see here are the best from four minutes of shooting on the roof. Oh – and the cherry tomatoes were delicious!

Posted in Bay Area, Photography | 1 Comment

Oakland Weather

Posted on September 19, 2007 by thedude

This is odd weather for September 19th. We might get rained on tonight. Unfortunately, what I had hoped for – a huge thunderhead lit by the setting sun – didn’t quite materialize. At least not from this vantage point. Oh well, the pano quite accurately captures what it looked like.

Look closely. How many vehicles do you see on the freeway moving left-to-right? I see one bus and three cars.

Looks like Cindy got it right! (Excluding the almost invisible cars on the far left of the panorama that Antonio just pointed out to me.) Here’s why “four cars and one bus” is the answer I was looking for. You see the same three cars three times in the composite!

Posted in Bay Area, Loft Life, Panoramic | 9 Comments

Comments are Busted

Posted on September 14, 2007 by thedude

My wife mentioned that it seemed odd that there haven’t been any comments on thedude.com lately, which caused me to do a little investigating. I discovered that comments are not working. :( This is evidently due to my aborted upgrade attempt a few weeks ago. (Sorry – MoveableType 4.0 is just awful.)

I’ll try to find a few minutes this weekend to fix things. Who knows? Maybe I’ll convert my blog to WordPress.

UPDATE: Fixed! My junk filter settings were a bit too aggressive. All of your comments were going to the junk folder. Sorry!

Posted in Computing, Just Blogging | 2 Comments

Three Days is Not Enough

Posted on September 11, 2007 by thedude

Forget three day weekends! From now on, when we take a short trip, we’ll stay at least four nights. Our last trip to Gualala was our best ever. Part of what made this trip so great is that it was just the two of us. This allowed us to plan just one organized event for the entire weekend – Winesong near Mendocino. The rest of the trip was spent relaxing for real – something we do way too rarely. Here are some random images from our wonderful, hot-tubbing, book-reading, sunset-viewing, tendinitis-healing weekend.

Posted in Food, Travels | 4 Comments

World’s Fastest Browser – Opera?

Posted on September 7, 2007 by thedude

Still not using the world’s best browser? C’mon! Here’s yet another reason to give it a spin.

Posted in Computing, Design, Just Blogging | Leave a comment

No Posts for a Few Days

Posted on September 6, 2007 by thedude

We’re doing something tomorrow that we haven’t done in a long time – we’re taking a vacation by ourselves! Oh sure, it’s a short one – just 5 days – but we’re both totally looking forward to four blissful birdless nights at our favorite destination up the coast. No computers. Ahhhh… (Of course, we’ll continue update Kelly’s cell phone images as they come in. :)

Posted in Family, Food, Holidays, Travels | Leave a comment

Surfing With thedude

Posted on September 5, 2007 by thedude

Tonight, while listening to an excellent version of Particle Man by They Might Be Giants with its inspiring Stylophone solo, I was delighted to learn that They Might Be Giants perform the Daily Show theme song (unconfirmed) – but more importantly – that Rolf Harris was the Spokesman for the Stylophone. This naturally led me to the first recording I ever purchased – Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport. Man, ya gotta love the Internets!