Life, technology, and other good things
Once again, Kara, Marie, and Terry are running the Photo Advent project this year: 25 days, 25 photos from various photographers. They’ve been kind enough to ask me to contribute, and I didn’t have to think long about which photo I wanted to submit: the view Hong Kong from Victoria Peak that I took in 2007 and that remains […]
This year I’m turning 35 years old, and I’m giving up my birthday for water. What does this mean? There is a water crisis in the world. I was vaguely aware of it, but as with many causes and charities, I didn’t feel compelled to act. Then I heard Viktoria Harrison, the co-founder of charity: […]
As I mentioned on Twitter recently, duplicate detection (or de-duping) is one of the most unappreciated problems that the developers of certain types of applications face sooner or later. The applications I’m talking about share two main characteristics: item collection and some sort of social aspect. A prime example of this is Delicious. Users collect […]
I miss blogging and the conversations that used to go with it. My friend Chris Shiflett probably feels the same way, because he is trying to start a blog revival with his Ideas of March post. I used to blog much more actively, but with Twitter gaining momentum in early 2008 I found it easier […]
Becoming an American citizen a couple of years ago greatly eased travel-related headaches for me – no more visas to worry about (in general), way faster processing at the passport control, and so forth. Because of this, I was finally able to make it to PHP UK conference this year, and I have to say […]
I love San Francisco and I love to walk. So I started a new Tumblr blog called 42 Hills that tracks my progress through doing all the 27 walks in the Stairway Walks of San Francisco book. Check it out and join me, if you like.
My friends Kara, Marie, and Terry started a new project called Photo Advent this year based on a very simple idea: 25 days, 25 photos. In the spirit of Christmas, they’ve asked 25 photographers to each select a photo or two and share it with you. Well, they were kind enough to ask me as well, […]
I haven’t yet compiled a list of my top 10 beers, but if I did, Lost Abbey Angel’s Share would definitely be on it. I first tasted it at the 2010 Barleywine Festival at Toronado, and it was love from the first sip. The intense, rich maltiness, full body, and surprisingly dry finish — enhanced by the […]
I’ve seen a lot of problems solved with regular expressions, but last Friday, thanks to Chris and Sean, I found out that one can use them to determine whether a given integer is a prime number. The original articles showed the following regular expression: /^1?$|^(11+?)\1+$/ You don’t apply this to the integer itself. Instead, you […]
About a year ago, I finally wisened up to the obvious: 1) losing data sucks, and 2) doing daily (or frequent) backups manually are a pain in the ass, especially for portables. 2) is why most people forgo backups in the first place, resulting in 1). I needed something that I could set up once […]