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Ten thoughts on the Atmosphere Conference...
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How This Was Built, How It Works
A little behind the scenes look
Connecting to Bluesky...
A test post to see if Bridgy is working properly
And we're live!
Glances around. And, uh, looks like the new site is live. The last post was a test of the dev testing site, and this one is a test with the newly moved domain name, away from the old site. It turned out it was a bit more of a process to get the domain working than I expected, some of which had to do with… well… how old the old site was and some legacy cruft that had to be cleared…
Is this thing on?!?
Huh. Perhaps this works? If you look at this (very differently looking) Masnick.com page, you might notice that the last blog post I had posted here was from… 2012? 2012! Dang. That’s a long time ago. It’s so long ago that the WordPress install I had on the old site was so incredibly out of date that nothing worked on it any more. And, for about the last year or two I’d…
My New Sit/Stand/Elliptical Desk
Okay… so, this blog has been totally neglected for two whole years. I know… I know… it just seems like with Twitter/Facebook/Google+ handling the small stuff, and Techdirt handling a lot of the big stuff, I haven’t had as much need for a personal blog. Plus, somewhere, a little less than two years ago our son arrived… and (shocking, shockers) pretty much any and all spare time has switched over to…
2009 In Cities
Ok, a little late on this (again). I realize this blog has become neglected, but hope to start posting a bit more again soon, but in the meantime, I need to repeat last year’s tradition , totally ripped off from Dennis about my “year in cities,” highlighting every city where I spent at least one night… So, here we go, in order of attendance: San Carlos, CA (home, so multiple times) Washington, DC…
On Being Thankful and Saying Goodbye
Five years ago, one of my college roommates was getting married in Miami, and with my grandparents (at the time) living just a bit north of there, it became an opportunity to visit them and (more importantly) to introduce them to Sunnia for the first time. She was nervous, and even I was a bit nervous, though I knew my grandparents would make her feel right at home. They did much more than that.…
Wanted: A Better Twitter Client
Well over a year ago, I wrote about just how useful Twitter can be, and over time that’s only increased. I have to admit that until about a month ago, I mostly just used Twitter in the web interface. I did install Digsby as a client, but I basically just used that to notify me when new Twitter messages were showing up. But then I kept hearing about neat things (such as groups) that TweetDeck…
Getting Back To That Podcasting Thing...
So, last year I tried doing two separate ska/reggae podcasts that I posted to this blog… and I’d been meaning to do another one, but really wanted to try one with a co-host, because I think it sounds a lot better. This weekend, I went up to Dennis’ place and we set up and recorded another one. I’m pretty happy with the results (though, yes, there were quite a few mistakes if you listen closely…
You Can Go Home Again... But They Might Build Yankee Stadium There...
So… I actually wrote most of this post in July of 2008, while I was traveling somewhere on a plane. It sat in a text file for all this time, because I was too lazy/busy to get the images. I figured, however, now that it’s spring training (whoo hoo!!), I might as well finally get it posted. I did some editing on what I originally wrote so that it makes sense now — i.e., saying “last year” instead…
Behind the Scenes at MidemNet
My presentation at MidemNet last month in Cannes has received more attention than I ever imagined (nearly 17,000 views on YouTube at this time!). If you haven’t seen it, here it is: However, being that this is a personal blog, I wanted to discuss some of the behind-the-scenes stuff that went on and answer some of the other questions that have been asked by some folks. First, I have no idea how I…
My Murderous Ex-Boss Goes To Trial...
Long time readers of this blog (all three of you) may remember my post in 2007 about how Bob, my boss at Super Bagel — where I worked throughout my high school years — had just killed his wife, Ann , with whom I also worked. The story is really tragic. I’d received a couple calls from TV magazine show producers thinking of doing an episode on the case, and I occasionally have looked around for…
Music Meme Thing: Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa
I’m usually not a big fan of these sorts of things, but eh, haven’t had time to write up any actual posts, so via Dennis we get a silly high school style musical meme test that reveals a bit of what’s in my music collection… Here’s how it works: Put Your iTunes on Shuffle. (I used Party Shuffle, cuz Shuffle isn’t really “random”) For each question, press the ‘next’ button to get your answer. (or…
Podcasts On Failure And Bad Apples
Been catching up some random podcasts lately, and there were two totally unrelated ones that both caught my attention and seemed worth mention. The first, was Kevin Smith’s “SModcast” that he does with his long time producing partner Scott Mosier. I started listening to Smodcast a few months back, and while there are times it goes off the rails a bit, when it hits it’s really quite enjoyable. It’s…
2008, In Cities...
I’d been meaning to work on this over the holidays and didn’t, but now that Dennis (from whom I got the idea) put up his annual post of cities where he spent the night , it seemed like I finally ought to get around to it as well… So, here they are: cities where I spent at least one night during 2008 (in order of attendance): San Carlos, CA (home sweet home, so multiple times) Phoenix, AZ Somewhere…
Aggrolites Definitely Didn't Let Us Down...
In a bit of a followup to my recent post on great ska performers like the Scofflaws and Skapara , I finally had a chance to see the Aggrolites live a week and a half ago. I’m a child of the NYC ska scene, so my exposure to California ska was a bit delayed — and often came through a New York City lens — I discovered CA bands like Hepcat and Lets Go Bowling only because they put out albums on Moon…
Ska Radio Days... Part II
Two posts in one night… and both music posts. Actually, this one is a follow up to my first attempt at recreating my old ska radio show from the 90s. This is my second attempt and while it’s fun… getting it to really sound right isn’t going so well. Getting the levels on the voice right is really tricky and I know I need to work on that. Hell, I was so frustrated by the voice levels I considered…
Sesame Street Ska
Another quickie post. Back when I was first getting into ska in the early 1990s, the band I first was obsessed with was the Scofflaws, who not only made great recordings but put on a great live show. It wasn’t just that they performed well, but that they entertained . Soon after I started trying to find out about any and every ska band out there, someone (maybe my friend Rod?) gave me a tape of a…
Night Vision
So, Dennis posted about how he almost almost almost bought some night vision goggles on Woot recently, but was talked out of it via instant messenger by his brother. It caused me to write the following story as a comment on his post. However, in thinking about it, perhaps it deserves to be a blog post on its own: When I was in high school, I read an article in Time Magazine about how, following…
Radio Days
As some of you know, my wife’s been away traveling for the past 5 weeks, though she’s currently driving (my car) back across the country, and I’ll be flying out to meet her shortly, after which we’ll drive around a bit, checking out the southwest. In the meantime, I’ve got way too much free time on my hands, so I’ve been killing time catching up on various things, including ripping a bunch of old…
Email I Just Sent To BART Customer Service
To BART Customer Service, This morning, October 4th, 2008, my wife and I tried to take BART to the San Francisco Airport. We have done this in the past with no problem. We purchased a parking permit, drove to Millbrae, and parked in the lot. We purchased our tickets, $1.50 each, and boarded the 5:48am train on Platform 3, which was clearly labeled as going to San Francisco Airport. We had looked…
End of an Era
I first met Sugar, our golden retriever, over ten years ago, when she was just a little puppy, days after my future wife had adopted her. I remember going to her apartment in Foster City with some friends (who worked with her). There was this tiny, friendly, playful golden retriever who no one could resist playing with. I had no clue she would one day become a part of my family.
Fast Food Potluck: Flagship Burger Tasting Event
Okay, so I still (yes, yes, I know) have a bunch of other posts I’m planning to put up, but here’s a quick one. Our friends Kai & Ingrid (newlyweds, congrats) are moving up to Seattle, and so we all decided to have a bit of a going away event for them. Mike Ho misremembered an idea that Kai had and decided that should be the event. Here’s Mike Ho’s version (which is what we actually did):
Blog Post Update And Some Music...
Yeah, ok, so this blog has been totally neglected lately, but I’ve been sorta crazy busy. The truth, actually, is that I’ve got about 7 or 8 posts that I’ve written up over the past 3 or 4 months, mostly while flying on airplanes… and then I just haven’t had the time to actually import them from text files into WordPress as posts. I know… I know… it shouldn’t take much, but for some reason I…
One Year In...
So it’s been one full year since the wedding , and for our anniversary I could write up a long post about how wonderful married life is and how awesome my wife is, but since me sitting at the computer rather than spending time with her isn’t the most effective way of showing her how much I appreciate and love her, I’ll just say: married life is wonderful, and my wife is awesome. Year one was…
Cats, Dogs, Mass Hysteria
Last Friday evening, I had mentioned on Twitter that we were preparing to dogsit for two rowdy dogs for a week — joking that I wasn’t worried how our dog would handle it (seeing as she’s incredibly lazy and prone to ignoring other dogs), but more about how the cat would handle it. Little did we know what was to come. Our cat has learned to live with strange and rowdy dogs in the past when we’ve…
To My Grandma Rose, On Her 90th Birthday
On my mother’s side, I have 5 cousins, making a total of six of us. From oldest (my sister) to youngest (my cousin Steven), there’s only 7 years difference. We all grew up in and around New York City, and we spent plenty of time together. We’re extremely close to this day (even though I’ve been 3,000 miles away for the past 10 years). The six of us all come from three sisters who were born to my…
High School Nostalgia... (Part I)
“True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.” — Kurt Vonnegut I went to a fun gathering last weekend, put on for Jonathan Zittrain, the founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard. The occasion was Zittrain’s new book The Future of the Internet… And How To Stop It . I’ve known Zittrain’s work for a while, but never met…
Go Ahead And Compare Atari Desks
Ok, so remember that last post about the old photo of an Atari 800 on a desk from 1983? The one that I said reminded me so much of the old Atari 800 I grew up with? The one that I said that I was pretty sure my parents had walled off as a disaster area? Yeah, well, my memory was correct, and my parents are awesome. They just sent me a photo of the desk, taken today.
That Atari 800 Looks Awfully Familiar
Boingboing has a post today including a photo from one of Pesco’s friends, Jennifer Brown, of a computer desk showing an Atari 800 . The photo is circa 1983: The scary bit is that looks exactly like the setup I had with my Atari 800, which I used all through school, right up until I went away to college. The differences are really small. But we had a similar ancient TV. We had the tape player…
Self Medication On The Way
Thanks to RSS, just noticed that Amazon is now taking pre-orders on the latest Slackers album, Self Medication which will be out in a month. Fred was asking if I’d heard it, and while I haven’t heard the full album, I definitely recognize some of the songs, especially the first one, so I figured I’d post it here: Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio…
Turns Out Lots Of Folks Listen To 'All Things Considered'
Mentioned this over on Techdirt last week, but might as well mention it here as well, since all sorts of folks are emailing/texting/calling to say they heard the show. On Friday evening I got interviewed by Robert Siegel on NPR’s “All Things Considered” talking about “The Streisand Effect,” the phrase I jokingly coined a while back. It was quite a bit of fun. Siegel seemed pretty cool, making sure…
Twitter Spam Does Exist, If Only A Little Bit
I’ll admit that I was pretty skeptical about Twitter for a long time. I had a few false starts in trying to use it, but a couple months ago I got serious about it and have discovered that it can be useful in surprising ways . It seems that a lot of bloggers have recently been coming to the same conclusion with a bunch pointing to Howard Rheingold’s post about why Twitter is useful . Russell…
Coming Up With A Ska Wedding Mix... Not So Easy
This is a crazy long post, so if you actually decide to read it, might as well hit the play button on this playlist, since it’s equally as long. And, yes, if you’re wondering where the hell I found the time to write this up, I’ve been traveling way too much lately, so this post was written over the course of a month during multiple flights and airport layovers, in between sleeping.
The Usefulness Of Twitter
Ok, I’ll admit that I was a bit unsure of the actual usefulness of Twitter, but a couple months ago I figured I’d give it another shot, and it’s been growing on me. The first thing about it that struck me was how incredible it was to follow the Iowa caucuses via Twitter. People who were actually taking part in the caucuses were reporting in real-time on what was being said in the caucuses, and it…
Scotsman For A Night, Yeah?
So said the guy renting me the kilt. As mentioned, I’ve been in Edinburgh, Scotland for the week, thanks to Mike Clouser over at the Edinburgh-Stanford Link. It’s really been a blast. I gave three separate talks (one on market research, one on economics and business models and one on the history of Techdirt) and then we had a Techdirt Greenhouse over at a local incubator, the Alba Innovation…
TVs With Interactive DOS Applications?
So my hotel room in Edinburgh is tiny, but decent enough. I realized that it was missing things I’ve come to expect in a hotel room, such as an alarm clock, but was a bit surprised to see a note saying that I could schedule a wakeup call through the television. I’m fairly used to hotels having interactive TV systems using LodgeNet, which seems to be the standard interactive TV solution, but I…
This Might Have Convinced Me To Clean My Room As A Kid
Man. Wasn’t expecting this when I opened my BoingBoing feed today: There are a ton of little hidden ska jokes in both the song and the video. Someone had a lot of fun creating that. As a sidenote, in my dealings with him, at least, Alex was one of the nicest, coolest people I met in the ska world way back when — perhaps even cooler than the character he later played in the movie Swingers . Though,…
Comet Watching With The Neighbors
It’s funny that in all the time I’ve lived in California, I’ve barely known any of my neighbors. Perhaps it’s been my fault for being anti-social, but it just seems like I always end up living places where neighbors pretty much keep to themselves. Apparently, that’s no longer the case. Following our Halloween fun with the neighbors (and, yes, the caramel covered apples were delicious), we’ve had…
Participatory Pre-Wedding Event: Everyone Search For The Lost Wedding Band
[ ]( http://www.flickr.com/photos/45779952@N00/1866684517/ ) Originally uploaded by Paul M. So, DiPasquo and Robin got married last Friday, and while it was a lovely and fun wedding in many ways, it may be most memorable for the… er… somewhat unplanned pre-ceremony group event known as “everyone search through the grass for the missing wedding band.” While apparently the rings were originally tied…
Deconstructing Halloween — Reverse Trick Or Treaters
When I lived in Foster City, every year at Halloween the house would be mobbed by kids trick-or-treating. It was a non-stop barrage of costumed kids, and required quite a lot of candy. I don’t know if things were organized, but Foster City is a very planned community, and my neighborhood was very residential (and very flat). There was a shopping center nearby and I once drove by on Halloween and…
Don't Fall Down! — Sound Track For An Earthquake
So, we’re finishing up dinner tonight, and just as I stand up to pick up the dishes, the whole house starts shaking along with a low rumble. It sounded like a big truck was driving by, but the truck sounded really close and really loud… There was a brief discussion: “Is this an earthquake?” “Hmm… yeah, it’s an earthquake.” At which point my wonderful wife, still seated in her chair as I move…
Anyone Got Recipes For Figs?
Well, my last request for help from all two of my readers didn’t work out so well, but I can’t resist trying again. As mentioned , as a wedding present, Audris put together a really cool cookbook with recipes (and stories and well wishes) from all our friends and relatives. We’ve actually been using some of those recipes (thanks!) but now we could use some more help. We moved into our new house…
Quick Question...
I recognize this sounds like a Steven Wright bit or something, but… uh… how do you throw out a garbage can? One Comment masnick.com » Anyone Got Recipes For Figs? on October 8th, 2007 […] Well, my last request for help from all two of my readers didn’t work out so well, but I can’t resist trying again. As mentioned, as a wedding present, Audris put together a really cool cookbook with recipes (and…
Skunks and Cats Living Together! Mass Hysteria!
One of the things I enjoyed most back when I lived in Foster City was that I was like a block away from the Foster City Bay Trail and could bike along the Bay up to the airport and back. These days, I tend to (when I get the chance) drive down to Oracle and pick up the trail there (just south of Foster City). Over the years, if you bike that portion of the Bay Trail, one thing you learn about is…
The Secret Thinkpad Powerbutton Code To Bring Dead Laptops Back To Life
Two months ago, I got a new laptop. It’s a Lenovo Thinkpad z61t. I actually ordered a t61, but I accidentally got the z61 instead — and, I actually really like it. It’s quite similar to the t61, but a little smaller and lighter. I was worried that the smaller part would be a problem, but I’ve gotten used to it. I really like the fact that it’s much lighter than my old t42. It just makes it seem so…
Other People's Weddings...
So I really do plan to write more about our wedding, but time is seriously lacking. Maybe I’ll get to it by our first anniversary. In the meantime, we went to two great weddings this past weekend, so I wanted to share my photos. Mike & Thu Tom & Joann Lots of photos at those links, but in the meantime: Two very different weddings, but both were a lot of fun.
Getting The On The Spot Video Treatment With Kara Swisher
So last week, I got to stop by and get lunch with Wall Street Journal star reporter Kara Swisher (and her son, who required some practice pitches from me while he worked on his baseball swing). As always when talking to Kara, it was a fun, fast-paced and eye-opening conversation. Kara, along with Walt and John P (whose writing I’ve always been a huge fan of), are doing a fantastic job with…
With Documentaries Like This, Who Needs A Mockumentary?
I’ve got like 3 or 4 other wedding-related posts I want to write up, but don’t have the time right now, so here’s a totally unrelated post about a movie we saw last weekend. “Mockumentaries” have gotten pretty popular in the last two decades, in large part due to the success of Christopher Guest’s This is Spinal Tap… . Guest has gone on to make a bunch of other mockumentaries (though, none nearly…