bismark's blog

My first attempt at rotating blocks off of the x-y axes.

Mon, 04 Jul 2011 14:42:16 -0700

My first attempt at rotating blocks off of the x-y axes.

Decided to stick w/ original Game Boy colors for simplicity. ...

Sun, 26 Jun 2011 19:58:00 -0700

Decided to stick w/ original Game Boy colors for simplicity. Not super happy with lighting just yet but it’s better than the first set.

Just spent way too long making this… creating stuff is...

Fri, 24 Jun 2011 01:07:00 -0700

Just spent way too long making this… creating stuff is just too much fun sometimes.

I hope to use these as building blocks for a big piece of pixel art soon.

Friday == Pig out day Kaimal Mark II Lens, Ina’s 1969...

Fri, 13 May 2011 15:36:09 -0700

Friday == Pig out day

Kaimal Mark II Lens, Ina’s 1969 Film, Dreampop Flash, Taken with Hipstamatic

Thoughts on Battlestar Galactica (Spoiler Alert)

Thu, 12 May 2011 23:17:56 -0700

If you haven’t finished BSG yet (Amy Jo!), stop reading immediately.

Ok. Mariam and I made it through all four seasons of Battlestar Galactica. Overall, I really enjoyed it. The series was fun to watch and for the most part ended in a satisfying way.

Favorite character

Surprisingly, I think it was Gaius Baltar. Yes, I know that seems like a strange choice, but a lot of times I actually felt sorry for him, both for his own stupidity and the unfair way that the other characters treated him. He was certainly the most interesting character (not nearly as one dimensional as someone like Helo). I am glad he “redeemed” himself in the final episodes, but I also really found him intriguing while on New Caprica.

Least favorite character

Felix Gaeta. I found him obnoxious from the beginning and it just went downhill from there. Really hated him during the Baltar’s trial and the mutiny. He was closely followed by Cally. Massive whiner.

Biggest Disappointment

I hate the way the Chief’s story end. I like him a lot, but after he killed Tori, it seemed we didn’t see anything else about him. But according to the BSG Wiki, the following occurs in Daybreak Part 3:

Walking in the savannah, the Tighs speak with Galen Tyrol a final time. He has decided to go to the northern highlands of Earth (likely Scotland). Before they part, Saul says that if what happened to Cally would’ve happened to Ellen, he “would’ve done the same frakkin’ thing.” As Galen leaves, Saul and Ellen embrace.

So I went back to re-watch that episode on Netflix, and that I cannot find that scene (it’s supposed to be right after the fleet flies in to the sun). I am disappointed about that since a) that would have given me at least some feeling of closure and b) now I wonder how many other scenes were missing from the Netflix episodes. Strange.

Questions

1) Do the final five not age? They all looked the same way as they did during the Earth flashbacks, but didn’t Tigh and Adama know each other for a really long time? That part didn’t seem to make much sense to me.

2) What were the final five? Were they humans that had figured out resurrection or were they actually a different species? They were descendants of the 13th colony of Kobol, so it seems like they would just be humans. But the above issue about aging may go against that theory. The other seven models are also obviously not human (no aging, don’t appear to need to eat, can hook up to computers by shoving wires in their wrists). It just seems strange that “cylons” existed as a separate group alongside the humans on Kobol.

Overall, I was not very happy with the explanations of the origin of the final five and the current race of cylons.

That’s about it. I’m not sure if I would watch the entire show over again or not.. It is pretty long and even with a few sicks days doing little aside from watching episodes, it took a while to get through.

Blogging Again

Thu, 12 May 2011 22:34:36 -0700

Hi again.

I’m going to start writing again. I am tired of just being a consumer, it’s time to start producing again (more on that later).

Things are going well. Mariam and I had a nice relaxing vacation for two weeks in Mexico (though we did pick up something that’s doing nasty stuff to our digestive tracks… yes, we are getting it checked out). Work is good; I leveled up this last quarter, which is a nice star on my resume plus added responsibility. Which I like.

So yeah, life is good.

Mendocino

Wed, 27 Oct 2010 22:14:12 -0700

So Mariam and I have been married now for six months and last week we were finally able to take some vacation time. I wanted somewhere laid back and relaxing, so we decided to drive up the coast to Mendocino. It was just what we needed.

We took our time getting there. I picked up the rental car early Saturday morning and we started driving up the 1.

Unsurprisingly, it was a foggy morning, but the drive was still beautiful. We made stops along the way to take pictures.

For a quick side trip, we drove up the Russian River to Geurneville.

I think I actually got five skips with that stone. Very impressive I must say.

After some ice cream, we drove a few miles north to Armstrong Redwoods State Reserve to do a little hiking. It’s amazing how quiet and still everything becomes as soon as you walk into a redwood grove.

We saw some really old trees.

I told Mariam to go stand inside this one. I liked the picture of her nervously looking inside more.

After the relaxing hike, we kept heading north along the coast. The road gets really winding north of Jenner, so I quickly got tired of driving. Since we didn’t have a reservation on Saturday night in Mendocino, we decided to spend the night at a Motel 6 in Ukiah. Well, the road we took from Point Arena to Ukiah was even worse:

View Larger Map

I think that was the second most stressful drive I have ever done, right after the 2 hours of trying to stay awake driving between Needles and Blythe on Highway 95. But we made it without any problems.

The next day we went to church in Ukiah then drove back out towards the ocean. The Mendocino coast is pretty awesome.

We grabbed some dinner and then walked out on the headlands.

This is Mariam at the top of one of the many water towers in town.

After exploring town, we went to check in to our bed and breakfast. We stayed at the Glendeven Inn, which was awesome. Our room was amazing. Mariam loved the fireplace and the hidden door behind the bookshelf where they innkeepers would bring us breakfast each morning.

We started Monday morning off early with a yoga session with one of the owners of the inn and then we set out to explore. Well, first we decided to meet the llamas there on the farm.

Afterwards, we drove up the coast a bit to Fort Bragg to check out the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens.

The dahlias were in bloom, which was really nice.

The gardens also had some really nice paths along the ocean.

After the botanical gardens, we went to the Point Cabrillo light house.

That’s my Gladiator moment.

It was a nice relaxing walk out to the point and back.

By that time, we were hungry for dinner but also wanted to catch the sunset, so we grabbed a pizza from Mendocino, dropped off our car back at the inn, and ran out to the coast.

We caught it just in time.

It was a nice way to end a great day.

Tuesday started with another yoga session and breakfast. I should point out now that the breakfasts at the inn were awesome, especially the eggs fresh from the chickens. Then it was time for the ocean kayaking.

All of these pictures were actually taken at the end when we got back to the cove. There were a few more waves on the other side. The guide took us few a few caves along the shores of the state park, and it was really beautiful. Most of the time we were in between large rocks and the cliffs, but a few times we had to cross open water with some decently large waves. Mariam got a bit nervous a few times, but we still made it. Sadly, I only saw one seal for a brief moment.

Since the coast was covered in fog, we drove a few minutes up the Big River canyon to the sunshine for our picnic.

Mariam’s clothes got a bit wet during the kayaking.

We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing by walking around town and taking naps. As part of Mariam’s birthday, we went out to Cafe Beaujolais for some romantic French dining to finish off our fun day.

Wednesday was sadly our last day and we took our time leaving the inn. We took the much faster inland route down the 101 to Petaluma. Since it really doesn’t feel like Fall here (honestly it never feels like any of the 4 seasons), we thought we would try to get a bit into the mood by going to a pumpkin patch.

We got thoroughly lost in the corn maze (maize?) and we picked out a pumpkin that is still waiting on our counter to be carved.

We left this little guy at the patch.

Having the corn maze surrounded by big sun flowers kind of ruined the whole Fall mystique for me.

We finished off our trip with a stop at Roy’s Hot Dogs for some greasy meat products. I got a deep fried chili dog. Pretty much amazing.

That was a much needed and a much appreciated vacation.

Moving

Sun, 26 Sep 2010 23:40:51 -0700

Just one last post about moving: I am so sick of it. Honestly, I really wish this tiny studio apartment would be enough for me for the rest of my life so I never have to see another cardboard box again. Let’s recap the last eight (eight!) years of my life:

Provo MTC
Kiryu
Ageo
Takaoka
Nasu
Kamagaya
Kawagoe
Baraboo
Deseret Towers
Helaman Halls
Baraboo
Carriage Cove*
University Villa
Wyview*
Kyoto
Yokohama
Cinammon Tree
Provo House
Sacramento*
Provo House #2*
Sacramento
Madison House
Eagle Heights
Excelsior District
Mission District

Twenty four places in the last eight years. The ones with the * are the locations I lived for 8 months, the longest continuous length of time spent in any one place. I am really sick of moving. Our current lease is for a year, so we shall see what happens.

Catching Up (Photos!)

Sun, 26 Sep 2010 23:28:27 -0700

Ok, since the last month has been absolutely insane with finding a new apartment, moving all our stuff from Wisconsin, big releases at work, etc, I decided to just make up for my lack of posting with some pictures and short descriptions.

Here is Mariam and my grandparents with all of the furniture we bought at Ikea. Yeah, we basically furnished the whole place in one trip. I am still amazed that we were able to fit it all into the back of my grandpa’s SUV. It was so stuffed that I had curl up in the back seat and have Mariam sit on my lap. Longest trip across the Bay ever.

So yeah, our apartment is very little. It’s half the size but twice the price of where we were going to live in Madison. The joys of San Francisco. We just used UPS to ship all of our stuff out (which thankfully is not much, since we have no space left). It took us about a month to final get everything completely unpacked and all the furniture built, but now it is really starting to feel like home.

As you can guess, this was quite the challenge.

My coworkers. Yeah, this is what I have to put up with everyday at work. We have fun. Our schedule has been crazy busy, and I hope someday I will be able to talk a little more about what I have been working on. The really fun thing is that the week of our move was when we were doing our first major roll out. Staying at work until 3 am and then spending the next day moving suitcases is always a blast.

The weather in San Francisco has been really great for the past couple of weeks. We are finally getting our summer. Mariam and I spent yesterday out and about: first we went to the farmer’s market to pick up supplies for tonight’s tacos dorados extravaganza at our grandparents house. Then we hit up Katanaya with Brooke and her boyfriend Jon, which was tasty. Later in the afternoon Mariam and I walked up and down Crissy Field to enjoy the awesome weather and that’s when I took this picture. Hard to believe this is the same city where I spent the entire month of July wearing a hoodie.

I think Mariam and I have finally entered a state of normalcy, something that has been hard to come by since our wedding. It’s pretty crazy it’s already been 5 months. Since it’s her birthday and our six month anniversary coming up in October, we are looking into doing something fun like a long weekend up in Mendocino. We shall see. It’s just nice to finally feel like we can settle down.

Dropping Out of School

Sun, 26 Sep 2010 23:13:29 -0700

I mentioned in passing in my last post that I had dropped out of school. I am sure some of you might have no idea why, so I thought I had better write a post on what’s up.

I started as a full time employee at Zynga on August 16th. It was a pretty crazy week coming to the decision and figuring out logistics. On the Wednesday before my last week of the internship, my team lead brought up the idea of a full time position. HR made me the offer the next day and we had the weekend to think it over. We gave our answer on that Monday.

This was not an easy decision and I did not take it lightly. There were many factors that went into it, though first I want to make clear what was not involved in the decision:

1) This was not about money. Mariam and I were doing fine on my student income. We have no debt and school was essentially free. Sure, having a positive cash flow is awfully nice, but I didn’t drop out of school for financial reasons.

2) No one forced me to choose the job. Mariam was actually against it and it took a lot of discussing and convincing before she agreed.

So what were some of the deciding factors?

1) I didn’t love grad school. Some of that was my own fault: I didn’t put in enough effort to make it really worth my while. I think that part of the reason I didn’t try was because I didn’t really enjoy it. I’ve never been interested in research or writing papers. I just want to make cool stuff. Will I ever go back to grad school? Possibly. I know, I know, it’s so tough to go back to school after you get an income, but if I decide I really want/need it, I will do it.

2) I am not convinced a graduate degree in computer science helps me in my career goals. None of my peers have advanced degrees, but they certainly have years of experience that I lack due to school. Now, if I wanted to join a research lab at say Google, an advanced degree would be important. But when my ambitions are more along the lines of becoming an independent software developer, I think real world experience trumps academics.

3) Stock. Ok, yes, I know above that I said it wasn’t about the money, but maybe it did play a small role… Given the direction that Zynga is going right now, I feel like it’s important to get as much stock as quickly as possible. Obviously I know nothing about the business decisions at Zynga, I just have a gut feeling the stock is going to be quite valuable in the future. I think an opportunity like this, a change to join a fast-growing startup company that is actually making money, is pretty hard to come by.

4) I’m feeling old. Yeah, I know, I am only 26. But so are guys like Marco Arment and Alex Payne, and they are already rockstars in the tech industry. The more I thought about spending another year away from real world experience, the more I felt like that was just something I could not afford. My hiring manager took me out for lunch during my “deciding” period, and he told me that he would have thrown out my resume given the lack of actual experience. I feel like it’s time to stop spinning my wheels and I really did not feel like one more year of grad school was going to put me any closer to achieving my goals.

I’m happy with the choice I made. I enjoy the interesting engineering challenges I’m getting at work and the fun atmosphere. Now that San Francisco is finally having some summer weather, Mariam is starting like the city too. Things are going well.

Posters

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 00:34:19 -0700

Ok, this might seem like a strange topic after such a long recess from posting and given all of the really interesting things I could be talking about (dropping out of school, new job, new apartment, etc). But during the course of our unpacking, organizing, and trying to fit our lives into a small San Francisco studio apartment, some stuff just had to go. Being the unsentimental minimalist Scandinavian that I am, I was pretty quick to toss things into the throw away/donation piles, some of which Mariam had to fish out later.

Anyway, as a married man with Ikea furniture and a 401k, I decided that the posters that adorned my walls through college were no longer needed. Mariam convinced me to at least document them before I threw them all away. So, here are the few posters that have stuck with me through the years:

Wall Drug

Ok, I really have no idea why I still have this thing. I picked this up about ten years ago on a family road trip back from my sister’s college graduation. If you have never been to Wall Drug, well, don’t worry about it, you aren’t missing much. Honestly nothing sticks out from our short stop there except for me wanting to make sure I got a bumper sticker. Pretty weird thing to have kept on my wall this whole time.

Boondock Saints

I picked up this poster at a BYU Bookstore poster sale a few years ago. I found that a bit ironic… Such a goofy movie, perfect for a bunch of roommates to sit around and watch late on a weekday night when we were supposed to be studying. “There was a firefight!”

Serenity

Good movie inspired by an amazing television show. I remember reading about Firefly on Slashdot and then being introduced to it by Kenji back in Carriage Cove. One of the few tv shows I have watched through multiple times. I think Kenji gave me this poster. “If wishes were horses…”

Weezer Green Album

This one goes back a long ways. My friend (girlfriend? who knows, life was so complicated as a teenager :P) Lindsey gave this to me back in high school. I loved Weezer. I felt like Pinkerton was speaking directly to my soul. I spent many hours driving around playing and singing along to Weezer during high school. I haven’t really kept up with their music, though from what I hear, sadly I am not missing much. “The world has turned and left me here..”

Josie and the Pussycats

Ah, yes. This poster (including the RLC’s head cut out from some teen girl magazine) held a special place in my high school locker. I’ve written about my huge crush on Rachael Leigh Cook before, and this poster was just a small part of that. I remember watching this music video over and over. Oh man, early ’00s pop punk. And then there was this one. She’s All That? Still a good movie is you ask me. Josie and the Pussycats? Ok, yeah, it was pretty terrible, and I am ashamed to admit just how many time my friend Andrew and I watched it. Man, it’s making me all nostalgic :P. “It took six whole hours, and five long days, for all your lies to come undone. And those three small words were way too late, ‘cause you can’t see that I’m the one.”

Anyway, those are the posters that survived high school and college. They served me well.

How you know you are way too tired

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 07:25:40 -0700

This is my team last night after a few weeks of pushing hard to launch our product:

Yawn.

Re: Reverence

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 23:43:35 -0700

Tianna wrote the a post about reverence in the context of Doctrine & Covenants 107:2-4 and using words like God, Heavenly Father, etc. in our speech.

I’m convinced that as a culture at large, we don’t give proper respect to deity. Is it possible that as a church culture we still don’t give proper respect? We understand that we shouldn’t use His name in vain… but is that enough?

If the name of God were rarely said, it would draw more attention to His sacred nature. As it is, has God become more of (for lack of a better term) a household item? Do we treat him with the reverence that He deserves?

I had a few thoughts that I want to share:

1) I think it’s difficult to say exactly what this scripture means. Like Tianna says, there are a number of possible interpretations. I think it is also worth pointing out that these verses sound more like a Joseph-ism (i.e. Joseph attempting to explain something according to his understanding) than a Koran-style passage coming directly from the mouth of God (for more on this, take a look at this awesome post on revelation). This pushed the meaning through an added level of interpretation.

2) Jesus had no qualms about speaking about His Father. I really think we should have a more personal relationship with God than we tend to, even to the point that I have a hard time agreeing with the Mormon culture of using archaic language when addressing deity. If our goal is to become more like Jesus, doesn’t that include striving to have such a personal relationship with our Father in Heaven that we can call Him Abba?

3) Using the names of deity as expletives is the most common form of taking the Lord’s name in vain, but it surely is the least damaging. The real sin occurs when people claim to be acting in the “name of God” for their own personal gain (yeah, I’m looking at you, politicians).

4) The Atonement gives us greater access to our Heavenly Father through Christ, which I believe is one reason that we have moved on from things like only allowing the high priest to enter in the presence of God once a year. The Atonement gives everyone that same opportunity anytime they wish.

Given the above points, I think the answer to Tianna’s question is no, these verses do not indicate we should ever avoid talking about God. The closer our relationship with God, the more natural it should be to talk about Him as part of our daily lives.

Why the name change? I dunno. In the grand scheme of things, I don’t think it really matters.

Slavonian Burger

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 23:13:21 -0700

I took off a few weeks from Sunday cooking due to July 4th and the Disneyland trip, but I was able to start up again last week. I got really excited when I first saw this recipe for Slavonian burgers and I’m glad I made them: they were great. Mariam had me make them again later in the week with some of the leftover ingredients because she liked them so much.

Here is the set of ingredients, nothing too fancy, which is good for a mageirocophobic person like me.

If my hand are chopping, then who is holding the camera??? On a related note, apparently I can chop garlic.

Here is the ball-o-meat I created after mixing together the beef, the garlic, and the spices. The first time I made the burgers, I was too timid with the paprika and the cayenne pepper. The second time around things were quite a bit warmer.

Frying away.

The buns were definitely the most difficult part of the recipe, and to be honest I am still not sure I got them right. They got pretty soggy after a bit of steaming and the dipping into the broth. They kind of stuck to the pan when I tried to fry them. They ended up being kind of hot and gooey, which perhaps is right? I may never know given the dearth of Slavonians in my life. And no, these are not ciabatta rolls; our local Safeway seemed to not sell anything of that sort.

Here is the final product, fresh green onion and all. That chip in the plate takes away a bit from the artistic value doesn’t it… The green onion dipped in salt was pretty tasty I might add.

And another happy customer, which is definitely my best motivation for doing this stuff.

Thoughts on Disneyland

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 23:29:36 -0700

Ok, now that we have the travelogue out of the way, I wanted to post a few things I’ve thought about since the trip down to Disneyland. The week before we went, while I was trying to describe Disneyland to Mariam, I told her it was “the Apple of theme parks”. After our weekend there, I’ve decided that it actually lacks in a number of areas, keeping it from being truly great.

Now I’m sure some of you absolutely love Disneyland and my family is packed full of die-hard annual pass holding fans, so I hope I don’t offend anyone by pointing out some of these flaws. Actually, I’ve reflected a bit on why Disneyland breeds such strong devotion, and I think it comes down to one word: nostalgia. Parents take kids, kids love it, parents love seeing their kids love it, good memories for all. Parents take kids again once they are older, original fun memories a remembered, good times are had. Kids become parents, bring their new kids, fun times are remembered, kids love it, rinse and repeat. I can bet that some members of my family probably have some fond memory from almost every inch of that park; no wonder they love going back.

Now if you hate crowds or American consumerism, then let’s face it, you will never like Disneyland (and probably not Apple either). But here are a few things Disneyland could really improve on:

1) The food. Ok, in the two days that we spent in the park, we certainly didn’t get a chance to sample all of the food, but we definitely did eat some pretty terrible stuff. The burger from Taste Pilots Grill in California Adventure in particular stands out as being absolutely tasteless and nasty, all for $10. Aside from that, much of what we ate was pretty generic: try getting some non-blah Dreyer’s ice cream in the park. Perhaps we just never made to it to the good stuff (ok, the deep fried corn dog was pretty good, but greasy late night theme park food is hard to screw up), but the fact that any of the food is terrible is a pretty large blemish on the park (think iPhone 4 death grip). There is no excuse for crappy food in this world. Disneyland should let outside independent restaurants come in and open up shop. The competition would be great for keeping the prices down and quality up. Imagine what all around amazing food would add to the atmosphere.

2) The souvenirs. Full disclosure: The existence of 99% of souvenirs makes me lose faith in mankind. Why anyone would spend their hard earned money on cheap, worthless crap is beyond me. Sadly, I am sure Disneyland makes a large amount of their profits from selling crap shaped like mouse ears. But if they are going to do that, can’t they at least sell something interesting or unique? Why does Disneyland sell the same junk you can find walking down the toy aisles at Walmart? Let me give one example: as you walk out of the Star Tours ride, a couple of really awesome Star Wars-themed travel posters are hanging on the walls. Even I, Mr. Anti-Souvenirs himself, was sucked into the trap and wanted to buy those posters. The ride exits directly into a souvenir shop, so I looked around for the posters: nowhere to be found. The place was just full of crappy plastic light sabers and stuffed Yodas, just like any Walmart across this country. What I am trying to say is: if you are going to sell crap, why not sell crap that is unique and different?

3) The cruft. Like I said, Disneyland basically runs off pure nostalgia, so I know that this last suggestion is probably the most far-fetched: lose the cruft. Animatronic elephants may have been all the rage back in the 1950’s, but now they are just cheesy and lame. Disneyland has enough money, why not real animals? The fake submarine ride just doesn’t make sense to me; why not fill the pool with real marine life? And seriously, please lose the Grand Canyon panorama with the stuffed animals. Things like that, especially for those who have seen the real thing, are always just so stupid and cheesy. It reminds me of the fake Eiffel Tower and Statue of Liberty in Las Vegas. Just kitschy.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on what could be improved at Disneyland. Let’s be honest, I will probably take my kids someday, and they will take theirs regardless of whether any of the above change. But seriously, those changes would be nice, wouldn’t they?

Disneyland

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 22:50:41 -0700

Whoa, long time no blog. Time to catch up a bit.

Two weeks ago I took off a Friday from work for a whirlwind trip down to Disneyland. It was Mariam’s first time, so it was fun introducing her to it all. We went with my grandparents and my Aunt Wendi, who is pretty much as hardcore as you can get concerning Disneyland, which was nice. Since she knows all the ways to work the park, we never had to stand in line (those Fast Passes are a pretty good idea) and we always had a great view for the shows. We left the Bay area at around 4 am on Friday and didn’t get back until around 8 pm Sunday night, and it was non-stop the whole time we were there, so by the end, we were both crazy tired. A lot of fun though. Some of the highlights include:

Mariam completely hiding herself for the entire Splash Mountain ride because of her fear of the big drop.
Mariam almost crying because we got stuck in the far back seat on the big roller coaster in California Adventure and then having her say she loved it after we got off.
Mariam and I getting the back row on a late Pirates of the Caribbean ride and.. oh never mind.

Here are a few pics:

Before going in we stopped by to say Hi to Grandma Tic Tock’s brick. She was my great-grandma who passed away two years ago. It’s nice to have that there just a few feet away from the entrance.

Here is the requisite shot in front of Sleeping Beauty’s castle. Quite a beauty if you ask me.

I let Mariam drive on all the rides, including Autopia. This about sums up how I felt the whole time. Wild ride indeed.

As you can see, Mariam got a first timer badge and we both got “Just Married” badges as well. I guess “just” was used rather loosely; it was always a bit awkward when people asked us when we got married and we would say April. Just having that many people coming up to ask was awkward enough already.

And yes, in case you didn’t notice in the last picture, this is Mariam ruthlessly destroying the dreams of small children around the world.

This is me eating a huge piece of turkey.

Saturday night Mariam and I got some time to ourselves so of course we went to Fantasyland to ride on the little kid rides. We did the tea cups right after I ate a corn dog. Bad idea.

Our last ride was the carousel. That was nice.

Off into the sunset…

Here is my most recent attempt at pixel art imitation. This one...

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 22:04:00 -0700

Here is my most recent attempt at pixel art imitation. This one comes from the NES game Super Dodge Ball. The original screenshot can be seen here.

I like how this one turned out. The thicker lines made it a bit easier.

Pancakes

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 08:35:09 -0700

When I was a kid, whenever it was dad’s turn to cook dinner, he always made breakfast food (eggs, sausage, pancakes, etc). Given this strong tradition of breakfast food for dinner in the Johnson family, when I saw this pancake post on Salt and Fat, I knew it would make a perfect Sunday evening meal.

The sad truth is, I don’t think I’ve ever made pancakes from scratch all on my own, so this actually was a good learning experience.

Here are all of the ingredients put together. Simple enough for me to understand.

The recipe called for melted butter, but we don’t have a microwave so this is the best I could do.

All the dry stuff.

And now the wet.

And here is one cooking away. We had a big box of blueberries, so adding them seemed like a perfect idea, though there almost wasn’t enough to add to the pancakes towards the end because I kept eating them. Seriously, is there a more awesome fruit in existence?

This was a special surprise for Mariam (she was in the other room reading the whole time).

And here is the final product. Yes, I know I need to work on my presentation skills a bit (this looks no where near as nice as Jim Ray’s photo). And yes, that is turkey bacon. I know, I know, very ironic to follow a recipe from Salt and Fat and then serve turkey bacon, but sometimes the wife wins at the super market.

It was definitely worth it.

Actually, the pancakes were not all that amazing. They ended up being a little too dense and not as fluffy as I would have liked. If anyone has any ideas as to why that may be, please let me know!

Social Networks

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 07:55:10 -0700

Earlier this week the tech blogs started buzzing about the rumored existence of a Facebook competitor made by Google called “Google Me”. Everyone started speculating about whether it could beat Facebook or not, how would it be different than Buzz, Orkut, etc etc.

Without any way to see into the future, it’s really impossible to say what kind of “success” such a product will have. However, while thinking about the possibility of a major competitor to Facebook, I furthered realized just how broken the “social networking” industry is.

You Don’t Own Yourself

Log into Facebook and take a look at all the information about you contained within your account. Your profile page. Your list of friends. Your pictures. Other’s pictures with your face tagged. Notes. Statuses. Likes.

Taken as a whole, this information basically acts as many of people’s entire social presence online. It’s how you interact with friends, it’s how you send out updates about your life, it’s how you express yourself. And who owns all of this data? Facebook.

A few months ago, the trendy thing to do in geek circles was to delete one’s Facebook account out of protest of Facebook’s stupid privacy debacles. Though it made a few headlines, it’s likely Facebook gained more users in a few hours than they lost due to this nerd exodus. Most people probably are ignorant of or plain just don’t care about Facebook’s many issues. But even those that do care are faced with one large barrier: one’s entire social profile and social graph are completely locked within Facebook’s silo.

Let’s say Google release Google Me tomorrow and it is freaking amazing. It has all of the exact features you have always wished Facebook would implement and it also fixes many of Facebook’s problems. So, you go and create a profile. It’s easy enough to copy and paste from your current one on Facebook. Then you think it would be good to have all of your pictures. Well, Facebook doesn’t give you an option to export your pictures in their original resolution, but that’s not a huge deal. But of course, all of your face tags won’t come with… Ok, forget the pictures. Next, it’s time to add back all of your friends. Wait, only three out of your 357 Facebook friends have Google Me accounts? Well crap. I suppose you could try to evangelize a bit to encourage them to move over, but do you really think you are going to be able to convince Great Aunt Gertrude why she should move over to some brand new scary system now that she finally figured out how to comment on her friend’s Facebook walls? Not gonna happen.

So, you have two choices:

Forget about Google Me and keep your social graph intact on Facebook.
Cut out huge chunks of your social graph that has built up over the last 6 years that you’ve spent on Facebook.

Now it’s true many people had a MySpace profile before jumping on to the Facebook bandwagon. However, I think it’s safe to say that everyone’s social capital investment is much larger in Facebook than it ever was on MySpace, adding much more friction any changes.

Nevertheless, Google Me may win. It may just be so awesome that it garners the critical mass of users to make it worthwhile, even to Great Aunt Gertrude. But if Google Me is just as closed as Facebook, we would just be trading one poor master of our social graphs for another. Over time, the number one social network will continue to get bigger and bigger and will continue to suck up more and more of your social graph until there is absolutely no way you could possibly move to a competitor (and honestly, this may have happened already with Facebook).

So what are we supposed to do?

A Real Open Graph

In an ideal world, it shouldn’t matter what social network you are on. If you are on Google Me, you should be able to “friend” someone who is on Facebook and tag a photo of someone who is on MySpace. Why are social graphs limited by these walled off networks?

The thing is, we don’t really need another network: the Web already provides us with one. The Web (graph) is a collection of data interconnected by links (since we all use search engines so much these days, we sometimes forget to think about it that way). If I can create a link here on my blog to any other item that exists on the Web, then why isn’t adding another person on the internet to my social graph just as easy?

It may require defining a new standard of how to connect profiles as friends as an extension of the Web. Unfortunately, that would mean the social networking companies would have to collaborate extensively, something they have little financial incentive to do (have you ever thought how much in dollars your personal information is worth to Facebook?).

Another barrier to the Web as the social graph is the incorrect idea that personal information can be kept private on the Internet. Let’s just be honest: if you post it on the Internet, it doesn’t go away and someone who you never expected to see it will. Five years ago, did you really think your mom would ever get a Facebook profile so she could look through those crazy party pictures you are tagged in? Facebook is not private. Do not treat it as a private way to interact with your friends. Other people will see it.

Once everyone get’s over the illusion of Internet privacy, then perhaps we can start moving to a saner model for social profiles. Why not do it 1997-style and create a personal website containing your public info, public pictures, and links to your public friends? This gives you complete control of your social graph. Sadly, this is not nearly as simple as setting up a Facebook profile, and this is one area where we geeks have failed to help our Great Aunt Gertrudes.

Some of you may have heard about the Diaspora project which is seeking to free our social graphs from companies like Facebook. I think the idea is neat, but so far I don’t have much hope. Even a geek like me yawns when I see feature lists like:

OpenID
Voice-over IP
Distributed Encrypted Backups
Instant Messaging protocol
UDP integration

For Posterity’s Sake

Many of you reading probably think I am making a big deal about nothing. Well, I have one last point to make: Do you want your grandchildren to have records of who you were? Do you enjoy looking at old pictures of your ancestors and hope that your great grandchildren will do the same with pictures of you? Think about this: that last set of pictures that you uploaded to Facebook and then deleted off the camera is no longer yours. Will Facebook be around in 100 years? If it is, will your profile be around? Will your great grandchildren have access to your profile?

Honestly, I don’t have a good answer to all of this. I still have my Facebook profile, but I basically just use it as a place to aggregate my tweets and blog posts. I have made some attempts to control my social graph. One reason I started using Tumblr is it’s really simple export capabilities. I keep local copies of things I write in an archivable format (not .doc). I post my pictures to Flickr which gives me complete access to the original picture file (I don’t use some of their nifty tagging features since there is no portable way to export that data). I only put on the Internet something that I want my mom, my future employers, my Great Aunt Gertrude, and my great grandchildren to see.

If you care about this at all, try to take control of your own social graph. Forget about trying to hide it behind a Facebook privacy setting. Good luck.

More good news on the giving front

Sat, 26 Jun 2010 19:33:11 -0700

Some of you may remember my post about helping fund Mr. Baltazari Ngowi’s business through Kiva.org.

Well, I am happy to report that the loan has now been completely paid off. I hope that Baltazari was able to put the money for a worthwhile and profitable use.