This is the personal blog of Brian Enigma, a guy living in the Pacific
Northwest who likes technology, alcohol, and industrial music. For more
information about me, please see the "About" page.
I went to the open house for TechShop Portland the other night. For those that have not heard of TechShop (I hadn’t until just last weekend), it is a sort of co-op machine shop. They described it something like “start out with a gym, then remove the useless stuff like exercise equipment, then bring in machine tools.” You pay a monthly or annual fee and have free access to the machines. They have everything from laser cutters, CNC machines, 3D printers, lathes, welders, woodworking tools, and whatnot. The machines that are dangerous enough that you might damage yourself or the tool require some basic certification. Additionally (and I’m especially looking forward to this), you can take classes there without being a member. In that way, if you like the idea of TechShop but are not sure what you would build or how you would build it, you can learn more about the tools and methods first before sinking money into a membership.
I think that I am mainly interested in the laser cutter and 3D printer. I remember seeing an iPhone stand made of plexiglass on Make a while ago that was laser cut and thinking to myself that it’s not too different from a lot of the paper-folding stuff I’m into. It’s just a matter of tab A into slot B. Of course, there are places like Ponoko that you can send your files off to have cut for you, but the turnaround time on a laser-cutter a few miles away is appealing.
Do you know what else is strangely appealing? The thought of taking classes in something extremely low-tech, like blacksmithing–which they will, of course, offer.
I have two Powell’s-branded Nalgene bottles (one for math and one for physics) that have served me well over the years. Unfortunately, they were made with the toxic BPA plastic, so both needed replacing. The first one was replaced a couple of months ago by a steel Nathan bottle with a flip-top sippy-straw. I didn’t think I would like the straw, but it’s really rather nice. Cleaning it is not as big of an issue as I originally imagined. I think I end up drinking more water, too–for much the same reason that McDonald’s gives you a big fat straw so that you’ll drink more soda.
But, anyway, the main reason for this post is not to talk about the Nathan bottle, but about my new KOR ONE bottle. Errr, make that “Hydration Vessel.” I first heard of these bottles a few months ago on some blog like LifeHacker or TreeHugger or Gizmodo. As best as I can remember, the story went something like this. A few people really liked Nalgene bottles, but kept finding shortcomings with them. The opening is a bit too wide and dumps water on you. The lid, on its little strappy thing, more often than not ends up slapping you in the face. The bottles are often too bulky for many bags and bicycles and require too hands to open. So they decided to address the shortcomings by designing their own bottle. I pre-ordered one and it finally arrived yesterday. I have to admit that it’s a damn fine bottle. The bottle itself, the latch, and the hinge all seem quite sturdy. I worry a bit about what is going to become of the hinge over time, but it seems strong and has a metal core, so I have high hopes.
Of course, one of the main reasons I bought it was the style. It looks like the sort of bottle that should contain a dreadful green liquid. The bottle will get damaged toward the end of Act 1, releasing the nasty virus that ushers in the zombie apocalypse. With zombies still in vogue and with Halloween coming up, I am not sure if getting this bottle now is good timing or bad timing.
I was in Whole Foods the other night and discovered they had the Google G1 phone! And it was on sale! It was much cheaper than I remember the reported cost being and I did not even have to sign up for a service plan. After bringing it home, I’m starting to wonder if maybe I got ripped off. I can’t figure out how to make a call and am not sure which end you are supposed to speak into and where the keyboard slides out from.
Posted in Dear Diary, Work by brian on
October 22nd, 2008
At work today our source code repository disappeared. This is a bad thing. You know how, at 7-Eleven, they have that big safe bolted to the floor behind the counter? It has the slot in the top to make night drops if the cash register ever gets a lot of money in it so that someone robbing the place only gets a tiny bit of money and cannot open or take the safe. That safe keeps piling up money inside until a manager makes a deposit. That safe is sort of like our code repository, only instead of holding money it holds intellectual property (which is as good as money in many industries.) Admittedly, that is a bit of an oversimplification. The “safe” we use for code, under this analogy, would also have a time machine attached to it so we could see what was in the safe yesterday. It would have a blank-book journal with a pen-on-a-chain attached and wouldn’t let you open the safe or even put anything inside until you wrote in the book. It would also send you an email any time someone made a deposit. It would probably have lasers on it too, because lasers are cool.
Today, it was as if our hypothetical 7-Eleven employee turned his back for a minute to pour more flavor syrup in the Slurpee machine and then noticed the safe was gone. Not only is the safe gone, but the bolts holding it to the floor are gone. The tile floor under the safe is pristine–no sign of holes where the bolts used to be. The can of soda that was placed on the safe before refilling the Slurpee machine is resting on the floor directly under where it would have been had the safe been there. The safe is gone. The safe had never been there. These are not the droids you are looking for.
Fortunately, just a short time ago, I had a tiny bit of an epiphany. It’s possible that two tiny bugs in two completely unrelated systems combined, Voltron-style, to form a particularly nasty super-bug that extracted the “safe” with surgeon-like precision. Fun.
It now appears that we have a pair of mousers. Last weekend, Kim discovered that Norman caught a mouse in the back yard. I don’t find the video disturbing–if I hadn’t known it was a real mouse, I might have suspected it to be a toy from the video because there is no close-up and no blood–but if you’re extremely squeamish, don’t click play. One animal was harmed in the making of this video. It was then completely consumed–head to tail–shortly thereafter. The food chain in action.
A few days ago, we woke up to blood on the linoleum. Charlotte had caught the mouse living under the oven. He would repeatedly let it crawl under the refrigerator, then fish it out again. While it had not previously been unusual for Charlotte to chase mice, he has been getting a bit arthritic in recent years, making this event a bit surprising.
In cute news, Norman got wild when chasing his tail the other day.
The website “dvice” has a nice clickable map of the states and what sort of voting equipment they use–and consequently how prone to hacking and software bugs they all are. Click a state to see what kind of equipment each district uses and a little more detail on the systems.
I have to say that I rather like Oregon’s 100%-vote-by-mail system, but they dinged it for things happening out of the public eye. I’m not completely sure how accurate that is because last time I heard, the tallying gets done over in the elections building on… Morrision? Belmont? and that has lots of glass walls that allow the public to see the proceedings, strict handling procedures, and citizen/volunteer oversight of each step in the process. Or maybe that is just for county stuff…?
Posted in Dear Diary by brian on
October 19th, 2008
I picked up a copy of Anathem about two weeks ago. It’s a great book but is very, very, very slow going. I am told it is easier to read than his previous trilogy, the Baroque Cycle. I kind of believe it because I never really made it past chapter 1 of the first book. With Anathem, I am only a little over 100 pages in (out of so many pages that I have decided not to depress myself by skipping to the end to see the total page count.) I can see that it’s genius. A lot of thought and calculation has gone into every single page of the story. It’s also slow-moving. There is a constant battle going on in my mind between wanting to drop it to get on to another book and wanting to get immersed in more of the world. Also nagging at me is the stack of recent book acquisitions, waiting to be read:
The Most of P.G. Wodehouse - I picked this up at Conrad’s suggestion and am about half-way through. It’s okay, though, as it is a collection of short stories that I can put down and pick up at any time.
The Design of Everyday Things - This is one of the definitive industrial design manuals and I have been meaning to read for years. It has been floating around on my Amazon wish list for a while and I finally added it to a recent order so that the total would be enough to qualify for super-saver shipping. Yep, I spent extra money so that I could save money. “I am a consumer whore!” “And how!”
It’s All Too Much - This is a book on living a better life by getting rid of a bunch of the crap you hang on to, taking up space in the house. I picked up based on a review by Merlin Mann a while ago. I’m not entirely sure how whole-heartedly I will agree with the entire concept, but I’m intrigued enough to give it a read and perhaps sell it back to Powells if it’s crap. At the very least, it will help me learn the techniques and philosophy to get rid of the ubiquitous “junk drawer” that every house seems to have.
The Art of Debugging with GDB, DDD, and Eclipse - “It’s for work.” Although it does not quite apply to how we are using GDB at work, I’m hoping it will give me a good understanding of some of the pieces I don’t quite grok yet. (Sidebar: the OS X spell-checker accepts the word “grok.”) My final undergrad work was in compiler design, which dovetails into debuggers, but we avoided threading because that was more graduate-level stuff. So my thread-based debugging consists almost entirely of printf, syslog, and variants thereof.
Yep, so I have a lot of books to get through. And it’s not helping that some of my favorite television shows have been returning with new episodes.
Posted in Dear Diary by brian on
October 16th, 2008
This morning, I saw a gardening truck for a company named “Mow Town.” It was in all the right fonts, styles, and colors to be of the motown record genre. It was so outlandish and surreal that I thought I might have been temporarily passing through an episode of Pushing Daisies.
And speaking of Pushing Daisies: Father Dowling, Father Mulcahey, and Sister Christian?! Bwhahahahaha!
In other TV show news, as much as I’ve been resisting (yet still watching) Fringe for being a “me too” version of the X-Files, the last couple of episodes have really grown on me.
As I’m always happy to say, I live in a house that celebrated its hundred year birthday this year. As such, there are some weird architecture bits. You may have also heard me mention Norman, the kitty who routinely hangs from windows, sits on the OUTSIDE of the windowsills, and whatnot.
These two points intersect because we have a “basement door roof” that is right outside the kitchen window.
Norman hops up there to say hi, to let us know he wants in, and to let us know he wants us to come outside and play.
This evening, I opened the side door to see if he wanted to come in for the night. I heard him mewing at me, but could not pinpoint from where. Around the corner? No. Under the entry stairs? No. Locked in the garage or basement? No. Mew. Mew. Mew. Finally, I was able to pinpoint a direction. Up. There he was. He hopped up on the basement door roof, then to the first floor roof, then followed that slant up toward the second-story window, behind which Kim was relaxing and reading. He was stuck up there and could not get down. We had to open the upstairs window to let him in. I worry that now that he knows a way up and that there is an easy way inside from up there, this may happen again. And again.
This is the personal blog of Brian Enigma, a guy living in the Pacific
Northwest who likes technology, alcohol, and industrial music. For more
information about me, 
I went to the open house for TechShop Portland the other night. For those that have not heard of TechShop (I hadn’t until just last weekend), it is a sort of co-op machine shop. They described it something like “start out with a gym, then remove the useless stuff like exercise equipment, then bring in machine tools.” You pay a monthly or annual fee and have free access to the machines. They have everything from laser cutters, CNC machines, 3D printers, lathes, welders, woodworking tools, and whatnot. The machines that are dangerous enough that you might damage yourself or the tool require some basic certification. Additionally (and I’m especially looking forward to this), you can take classes there without being a member. In that way, if you like the idea of TechShop but are not sure what you would build or how you would build it, you can learn more about the tools and methods first before sinking money into a membership.
I have two 
At work today our source code repository disappeared. This is a bad thing. You know how, at 7-Eleven, they have that big safe bolted to the floor behind the counter? It has the slot in the top to make night drops if the cash register ever gets a lot of money in it so that someone robbing the place only gets a tiny bit of money and cannot open or take the safe. That safe keeps piling up money inside until a manager makes a deposit. That safe is sort of like our code repository, only instead of holding money it holds intellectual property (which is as good as money in many industries.) Admittedly, that is a bit of an oversimplification. The “safe” we use for code, under this analogy, would also have a time machine attached to it so we could see what was in the safe yesterday. It would have a blank-book journal with a pen-on-a-chain attached and wouldn’t let you open the safe or even put anything inside until you wrote in the book. It would also send you an email any time someone made a deposit. It would probably have lasers on it too, because lasers are cool.
I picked up a copy of 
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