A fairly patriotic triffle for Independence Day
Here's a little treat we made for the 4th.
July 08, 2005
April 15, 2005
Many scooters out at lunch today...
I actually saw about 2.5x as many scooters today as I took pictures of. The others were a variety. One was a Aprilia, I think. There was also an old beat-up Yamaha I regularly see on California Ave.
Anyway, here're a few pics, because, well, I have them. The first one is of my bike and a friend's, parked at PARC. The second is an all-electric bike that Joy has been considering, although it has pretty crappy range characteristics (“45 miles”, but those numbers are always exaggerated). No scale shots, but it's a little bit smaller than the Piaggio, probably about the size of the Metropolitan (which is too small for me to sit in comfortably).
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I know my scooter photography leaves something to be desired. I'll try to get better at it...
April 10, 2005
Lemon Meringue Pie
Joy and I-Chant and I made lemon meringue pie. From scratch. It rocks! Now, if only we'd had an electric beater, instead of just a hand one.... making meringue by hand is, literally, a pain.
March 13, 2005
The new machine....
I now own a 2005 Piaggio Typhoon 50 (http://piaggiousa.com/pscooters/Typhoon.cfm). It's a 2-cycle, 50cc scooter. Not unlike a Vespa... even made by the same folks. Hopefully, it'll hold up better than the eGO... more to come.
December 12, 2004
Catching up on some old cactus photos...
Not sure whether I've put these out before, but posting them at Flickr gives me at least a fighting chance of them ever getting accurately labelled.
November 24, 2004
Petrified Wood!
Here's a set of photos taken last weekend. Who knew there was petrified forest to be found so near the Bay Area? Admittedly, it seemed a bit overdone and small for $6/person.. but, on the other hand, they rarely oversimplified their sign-age to keep it from being too “difficult” for a spectator to get to.
November 16, 2004
Yeah, that's about got it right...
We may never get snow, but we do get some mighty thick haze 'round these parts...
August 08, 2004
Happy birthday, Joy
Well, almost. Here's the quintessential photo from last night's party.
July 29, 2004
Pic of the Day: Fireworks photography attempt
June 12, 2004
Pic of the Day: Presidential Contemplation
Just thought, at the end of this week of remembering a past president, I might offer this semi-relevant photo, even though it didn't really come out that well.
June 07, 2004
Today's Pic of the Day - A duck in a pool?
I thought this was so funny, I just had to take several pictures (and a couple of movies)
March 24, 2004
Enola Gay
I haven't had a Pic of the Day for quite a while, so here's a panoramic shot I took during my visit to the Smithsonian Air and Space Extension in DC in December of 2003.
Sorry it's a little blurry. The shots were taken without flash from a walkway running through the middle of the huge space used for this facility. The problem is, the walkway was not very riggidly attached to the ground - thus, it was shaking slight the whole time I was taking pictures. With no flash and a lot of shaking, it's a wonder this came out as well as it did.
September 12, 2003
Liquid lunch anyone?
Yum!
September 10, 2003
Anyone know the origins of "Men are Circles", "Women are Triangles"?
This has been an occasional topic of discussion. Does anyone know anything about the origin of the standard symbol usage where "men" or "male" is triangular, and "women" or "female" circular? Here are some bathroom signs as an example:
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Please, comment if you know the origins of this symbology.
August 25, 2003
Silliness in the Valley
I've seen plenty of instances of much-larger-than-should be vehicles, normally SUVs, in spots labeled "compact", or "small car", but this recent occurrence takes the cake. Thanks to J for getting a pic of it.
Yes, that really is an SUV parked across two spots labelled "small car". No shame, none at all.
August 20, 2003
eGo roundup (discounts, flats, safety), PotD
It's getting a bit tedious to do day-by-day updates, so here's a summary:
eGo has dropped their prices, at least for "Back to School". It's now $999 for an eGo 2 Cycle through their website. Yes, I once again got burned (can anyone say iBook? Yeah, model upgrade and $200 that time, too). I called them, though, and they didn't leave me totally out in the dark.
I got a flat on the eGo Monday morning. That made for kind of an annoying day (not to mention that PARC didn't have Internet, thanks to a rather annoying version of MSBlaster, and a lot of unpatched machines). I fixed it with a fresh tube, which I proceeded to blow out (yeah, very loud). Sage wisdom: Before inflating a 100p.s.i. bike tire at a filling station, make sure that their gauge runs to the same range of pressures as you're filling. I'm fortunate to still have both my hearing and my sight... others have been less lucky with blowouts.
However, because it was violent, it makes for the Picture of the Day:
Pretty impressive, eh? Replacing that mistake was a little more difficult - the eGo can use normal inner tubes (although "thorn resistant" ones are recommended), but it must have high pressure tires, especially for a heavy rider such as myself. Calling around bike shops, it's not impossible to find such a beast, and I eventually ended up purchasing a replacement at Chain Reaction in Redwood City. I didn't realize it until I was being wrung up, but I even bought the exact same model tire as my eGo came with, which isn't even the one that the eGo folks were recommending over the phone.
In all the rear-tire maintenance, I had to re-tension the eGo drive belt twice. The first time, just before the blowout, I had it just right. Today, after a second trade, including the whole tire this time (and 100p.s.i. tires are hard to get off of the frame, too, in case you couldn't guess), I wasn't as successful. Good tools help, though. Yesterday I was using an entirely inadequate wrench, today I had tools that fit well, and snug, just not enough time to tweak.
Because of my foolishness Monday night, I've cost myself an extra two days of commuting with the old gas guzzler. Put gas into it today for the first time since I got the eGo in late July, though. At 2.05 for the cheap gas, I'm looking forward to a lot of eGo miles in the future....
June 18, 2003
Can you believe things were this bad?
Today's PotD is from the height of the recent oil pricing concern, taken on 3/17/03. Yes, gasoline was really this expensive in California. Of course, I paid $1.919 for gas this morning, but that's besides the point.
(Yes, all of those prices are still phenomenal)
June 16, 2003
Tahoe is Beautiful
This picture was taken in March, from a resort looking over Caples Lake, near Kirkwood, California.
June 09, 2003
Once in a Century....
Well, maybe not. There's a variety of huge cactus that lives in this region which supposedly only blooms for about a week every century. One such plant is blooming at Stanford right now. The stalk which shoots out is really tall.
 Here's a shot of the plant |  Here's another, for scale |
A quick web search shows that the cactus is called Agave Parryi
May 26, 2003
I'll be moving soon....
So, today's PotD is a picture of the place I currently live. It'll be on the market soon, so, if you're interested in a place in Redwood City, CA, I can get you in touch with my landlord.
Administravia: As part of the move, my gallery back-end will be down for a few days while the new DSL comes up. Just means you can't browse the galleries that I link to the PotD. You did know that the PotD images are almost always a link into a gallery of related pics, right?
May 22, 2003
First entry
The danger of digital cameras... here's a category for pictures I've taken that I really like. It's not supposed to be a daily feature, or even topical. Just a periodic feature of pictures I like, primarily ones I took myself.
So, the first pic is the first sunset I took with my digital camera, last year. It's a composite, stitched panorama. Anyway, enjoy:
