2004
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2005
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2006
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2007
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2008
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2009
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2010
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2012
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2012 April 29
New Shocks for Arti's Car
I spent the bulk of yesterday replacing the shocks on Arti's car -- a 2007 328i wagon. We bought the car new, and it has about 90K miles on it now. Overall, it's been a great car and still looks and drives very nicely. I've noticed though over the past year or so that it feels a bit "wallowy" in some situations. Usually I felt that in in sweeping turns with some undulations -- the car felt like it was moving around more than it should, and felt less stable than it should. Sounds like the shocks are done! -
2012 April 21
Rio Vista's Perpetual Storm
In the weather app I use on my phone, there is a map view with configurable overlays. One of the most useful is the Doppler Radar overlay, which usually shows precipitation level on a colorful scale. One thing I've noticed on the radar overlay is that there is an area in the north bay, near Fairfield and Rio Vista that appears to always have storm-level activity over it. -
2012 April 21
DIY: iPhone Macro
It's easy to capture amazing close-up photos with your smartphone. All you need is a nerdy motivation and a little magnifier... -
2012 April 08
New Hike: Black Mountain
Today I decided to try something new, since I'm pretty sure I've gone up and down Mission Peak, Mt. Allison, and Monument Peak every possible way now. Looking at Google Earth and talking with Arti, I decided to see how to get up Black Mountain. It's a 2800 foot peak to the west of Mountain View and Los Altos. Rancho San Antonio Open Space Preserve is the closest park, and provides a great route up. -
2012 March 18
My Super Efficient Email Workflow
Like most people, email is a big part of my workday, as well as personal life. Over the years I've worked out a very efficient way of going through the tons of email I receive, never missing an important message, and never having an oppressive number of unread messages. I've realized that email can be used effectively as a to-do list, and use it accordingly. Hopefully someone may find these tips bring more efficiency to their email lives! -
2012 February 18
Winter Bounty
The girls assembled this themselves in the backyard... ... -
2012 February 18
Angry Birds
Marina's latest clay obsession... ... -
2012 February 01
S2D
Of the 30 Studebakers my Pop has bought, restored, and sold over the years, the black beauty known as "S2D" is still my favorite of all... -
2012 January 28
Solar System
It was Marina's idea to do this project ... I just helped her with the order and told her what the planets looked like. -
2012 January 28
Monument Peak Panorama
A 360 degree view from the top of Monument Peak. -
2011 October 04
Nerd Alert ... or Precious Moment???
First chess game with Marina. She did great!... -
2011 August 27
Miniminimus
I got a pair of New Balance Minimus shoes at Zombie Runner this week. Really love how they fit and feel, but I wasn't crazy about the big silver N on each shoe... So out came the seam ripper and 20 minutes later... I call this new shoe "Minimini... -
2011 August 18
Nerd Alert!
I use my phone a lot to find satellites and stars, but it's bright white light ruins my night vision. Enter red cellophane... ... -
2011 July 11
Why I'm a Car Control Instructor
Almost seven years ago I did my first BMWCCA Car Control Clinic as a student. The CCC is an all-day high performance driving school, with a focus on real-world skills. It's also a prerequisite for the club's driving schools held at local racetracks like ... -
2011 June 16
ISS Flyby
Thanks Ernest for the continuing coverage of visible ISS activity! Here's a video shot with an iPhone 4 of this evening's pass. It's interesting how visible it was considering how bright the sky still was. ... -
2011 May 24
Shangri-La Toes
Nice light at the Chinese restaurant in Pleasanton.... -
2011 May 11
Clipper / Caltrain Frustrations
Below is a letter I sent to Clipper's customer service and Caltrain's Board of Directors... To whom it may concern - I have called 6 times and spent more than three hours on the phone this month with Clipper customer service trying to resolve an issue w... -
2011 April 14
Protect Your Git Repo With a Test Hook
We have a situation at work where we're using a git repository as a data source. The quality/correctness of the files checked in to this repo is critical to the operation of a larger and very important system. To help ward off mistakes, we built a series... -
2011 April 04
Alternative Single Table Inheritance for Rails
Nearly as simple to implement as Rails built-in single table inheritance pattern, but infinitely flexible. -
2011 February 20
Year of the Loser
I started 2010 with a fat realization that I was too heavy! It happened one cold December day at a playground with Marina. She was getting really good on the monkey bars -- and I thought I could show her a couple things. As soon as I grabbed the bar and... -
2011 January 24
Selectively Disable Session Cookies in Rails 2.3
In doing a project at work to more fully utilize our content delivery network (CDN) and nginx to cache static content, we ran up on a cookie problem in Rails. We didn't want any cookies returned to requestors in the case where the content would be marked ... -
2011 January 05
Google Apps Authentication for Internal Company Sites
Recently I was challenged by my company's CEO to make accessing internal sites as easy as accessing our email. He needed to get to an internal app from the road. He didn't have a computer that was blessed with a VPN configuration, and he's not the type t... -
2010 October 25
Finally, No Blisters!
I gave my Asolo TPS 520 a lot of chances to do well. Great reviews on Zappos, designed in the Italian Alps, how could they not be awesome? Well after 50 miles and sore, blistered feet I knew how. Zappos let me return them for a full refund, even though ... -
2010 September 11
Ed Levin and Beyond - or - The Importance of Good Foot Underwear
I took a walk through Ed Levin County Park today, but strayed from the trail early on and found some awesome trails outside the park. ... -
2010 September 03
Mission Peak for Time
I went up everyone's favorite east bay peak this morning to see just how quickly I could do it. Going from the Stanford Ave parking lot up the Peak Trail is just under 3 miles and the elevation gain is just over 2,000 feet. My goal was to do this in an h... -
2010 March 21
Peak Trifecta
I went for a big hike today. I've been up Mission Peak a bunch of times, and I've always been curious about the the transmission antennas on the peaks to the south. In looking at the map, I knew that the peaks had names -- Mt. Allison and Monument Peak. ... -
2010 February 02
Mission Peak
Pop and I went up Mission Peak on a beautiful January morning. We took the "normal" path up the Hidden Valley trail then cut across Hidden Valley on the Grove Trail to Horse Heaven Trail to get to the peak. That's definitely the best way up and down. http:... -
2010 January 20
Is God a Democracy?
I firmly believe people are well intentioned. Â We really want to be good and do the right thing. Â One thing that helps to guide us through life are our beliefs: Â Who is in charge? Â What does this all mean? Â Why are we here? It is a faith in our own... -
2010 January 20
Tip Tips
Divide By Six This one is simple, but I'm surprised that not enough people know it. Â My tip secret to divide the bill total by six. Others use shortcuts like "twice tax", but that works out to over 18% now. Â Still a decent baseline to round up or dow... -
2009 December 07
25 Hours of Thunderhill
Photos available here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thenobot/sets/72157622954200256/... -
2009 November 30
Thanksgiving photos
0035-CRW_1580, originally uploaded by thenobot. Some pictures from Thanksgiving weekend 2009. ... -
2009 November 30
Kite at Don Edwards Wildlife Refuge
Kite at Don Edwards Wildlife Refuge, originally uploaded by thenobot. No kites allowed! ... -
2009 June 06
Oh it's a Bear!
Normal: Silly: Lyrics: Going for a walk Going over the corn field Come to a cave Stretch out your hand Touch a wet nose Oh it's a bear! Open the door, Home at last... ... -
2009 April 20
Satspotting
My folks used to live in the Santa Cruz mountains -- where it's nice and dark. They had a hot tub outside. When I'd visit, a dip in the tub at night was usually a nice thing. A couple of times, I'd luck out and spot a satellite zooming overhead. It was... -
2009 April 16
Transparent Access to a Serialized Column in ActiveRecord
I started a job a few weeks ago where we're using Ruby on Rails. I had never used it before, and am starting to learn why it has been able to grow as quickly as it has -- it's just damn cool in a lot of ways. One technique we used a lot in my previous co... -
2009 March 01
Sluggy!
Marina helped me get our vegetable garden beds ready for spring this past weekend. There were lots and lots of critters living in there, but she was really taken with this slug ("Sluggy -- she's hungry!"). So after a night of captivity, I took some photo... -
2009 January 26
Naomi Toes
Naomi likes to play with her toes. -
2009 January 05
Naomi Rolls
She's been working on this for a couple of weeks now... Naomi Rolls (5 Jan 2009) from Zack Steinkamp on Vimeo. ... -
2009 January 05
Free SCCA Test Day Excitement
Derek and I drove up to Thunderhill on Sunday morning for a free test day there. Â Anyone with an SCCA racing license and a race-ready car could just show up and enjoy a full day of driving, err I mean testing. Â This was also going to be the first time we... -
2008 December 30
Vegetarianism
Such a lame blog title I know. Â "Great, another self-absorbed hippie with a blog". Â Well, maybe. Â Anyhow, this is the story. Anyone who knows me well knows that I am motivated by my dreams (ref: Marina, etc) -- or at least I talk about being motivate... -
2008 December 26
The Bucket Analogy for Photo Exposures
There are three primary aspects to a photographic exposure: How sensitive is the recording material? How bright is the light contacting the recording material? How long is the recording material exposed to the light? I've found it useful to map ... -
2008 December 22
One-Line Javascript Templates
I came up with this today. Â Maybe it's not original, but I think it's pretty cool. The overall concept is that there is a DOM node that holds an output template. Â A template is defined as some HTML that contains some strings to be replaced. Â In this ... -
2008 October 12
Double Standard?
With the election in just a few weeks, here are some interesting questions to consider... -
2008 June 03
Into the 4th Dimension
We just released a new kind of photo viewer. It will search Flickr for whatever you're interested in, wherever you're interested in it and give you a fun way to flip through photos with an interactive map alongside. -
2008 March 14
Homemade Rollbar Camera Mount
A cheap, simple, and flexible way of mounting a video camera to a rollbar inside of a car. This works better for my bullet camera than the expensive IO Port mount. -
2008 March 02
Ruined
Pictures - Video from the school. I'm now ruined for lapping days. This past weekend, Derek and I went up to Thunderhill for the SCCA Driver Licensing School. This is a mandatory step to being able to compete in SCCA road races for those who don't alre... -
2008 February 14
Apple TV as Remote Speakers
I didn't see any mention of this in the news stories about the new Apple TV software or on Apple's site, but I noticed it today. iTunes now lists Apple TV as a remote audio device, ala AirTunes. This is really nice, since you can now play music through... -
2008 February 13
Autechre Dipity Timeline
Here is a timeline from Dipity! var dipity_options = { width:'800', height:'500' }; Embed away!... -
2008 January 06
OpenDNS on DD-WRT
After checking out what OpenDNS provides, I was excited to give it a try on my network. I use a Linksys WRT-54GS with the excellent DD-WRT firmware. Since the original WRT-54 firmware was Linux based, Linksys had to release the source code to it, which s... -
2007 November 15
Dipity v2 Released on Facebook
We have finally come out with our big release on Facebook's Application platform. This update allows for the creation of Dipity events and will hopefully kick off viral growth! -
2007 May 16
Also Usable as a BABY VAPORIZER
"Waaah! Waaaaaaaaaaah!""BZZZZZZAP!" Found this morning in our backyard underneath where the shed used to be. The people we bought our house from lived here for 50 years.... -
2007 April 26
Goodbye Pinger, Hello ____!
Springtime brings all kinds of new things. -
2007 January 11
Goodbye Yahoo!, Hello Pinger!
I start my new job this coming Monday! Pinger was started by Joe Sipher and Greg Woock, who were instrumental in the success of Palm and Handspring. They had an idea for a new mode of communication that filled the space between having a phone conversatio... -
2006 December 31
Miata Blog Started
I've started a new blog to chronicle the birth and life of a little racecar that Derek and I are building. It's called "spec.this.miata " (http://specthismiata.com/). We're building a Spec Miata, which is basically a Miata with a hardtop, rollcage, and i... -
2006 December 30
Clean Cut
To provide contrast to the naptime crazy hair photo... ... -
2006 December 27
Checkpoint Marina
A few snapshots from a day in the life of 15 month old Marina. -
2006 December 04
25 Days of Thunderhill
I managed to hook up with the Car and Driver / BMW of North America team that raced in the 25 Hours of Thunderhill endurance race in two 335d Diesel race cars. -
2006 September 03
In-Car Camera 2.0
The latest revision of my quest to get the best possible setup for putting a camera in/on the car. -
2006 July 31
Marina in the Dishwasher
Marina offered to help her Nani do the dishes the other day... -
2006 July 27
Thunderhill with PDC
Back from a great day at the track with a small group of junkies known as "PDC". -
2006 July 19
New FCABs and RTABs or The Search for Steering Feel
We tell the story of one man's quest to make a BMW feel like a Porsche. It's a wild ride that is sure to keep every member of the family on their edge of their seats! -
2006 July 01
World Cup For Dummies
A brief guide to the World Cup, 2006. -
2006 June 06
Infineon Coastal Driving Recap
Another great day at the track. The mysteries of Sears are slowly unlocked... -
2006 May 21
Finally! Balanced Autocross Handling
The M3 is now dialed in for good times on the autocross course. Read on to learn some things that will help your E46 M3 get around those cones! -
2006 May 08
Thunderhill NCRC Recap
This could very well have been the ideal day at the track. Great company, great cars, great weather, and lots of learning was done. -
2006 April 16
Takes Two (Cores) To Tango
Apple's new Intel-based Mac Minis are all they are cracked up to be, and then some... -
2006 April 16
New Unified RSS Feeds
The RSS feeds for stories and pictures are now rolled into a single feed. It also includes videos, so your nobot.needs are covered. -
2006 February 28
Potty Time, Excellent
Toilet train an infant? Unheard of in disposable American diaper culture, most babies around the world are potty trained by the time they are a year old. We decided we would get Marina on the track to becoming Diaper Free... -
2006 February 26
Kanta's Palampur Paneer
Arti's mom makes a delicious Paneer dish. It's made in a rich, creamy, spicy sauce with sauteed veggies. Simple to make, and really delicious. Give it a go and learn how to make real Indian food! -
2006 February 14
New Tricks
A short summary of Marina's development in the past month or so. Potty training, rolling over, grabbing things, and interest in food are her new tricks. -
2005 October 12
The Story of Marina
A recap of the events leading up to, and including the birth of our beautiful Marina. -
2005 August 12
Wowsers! Ground Control Coilover Kit Rules!
If you are thinking that your E46 M3 doesn't quite have "the handles", read on. By using a good quality suspension system, the car can be transformed from "Capable GT Car" to "OMGWTFBBQ Handling Machine". -
2005 February 13
Kite Aerial Photography, Experiment I
It all started when I saw these photos that George R. Lawrence took of San Francisco right after the 1906 earthquake. He had been working on using kites as aerial photography platforms, and had nearly perfected his technique when the quake hit. I had run... -
2005 February 09
VIM -- Frustrated With Perl Comments?
vimmers -- i've been writing LOTS of perl and CSS lately. one thing that has been frustrating for, oh, the last FIVE years, has been how VIM indents perl comments and CSS properties with 'cindent' enabled. since they look like C preprocessor directives,... -
2005 February 01
Say Hello to My Little Friend
Well, there it is sunning itself up in the upper-right corner of that kidney-shaped pool. We could see its little heart beating away. From crown to rump, it's 13mm -- half an inch. Imagine a raspberry inside your belly with organs and a brain and it m... -
2005 January 24
Mac Daddy
If my years at the Big Y! have taught me anything, it's that UNIX -- speficially FreeBSD -- rocks. It's incredibly reliable (there are busy production servers at work answering more than 50 requests/second that haven't been rebooted for three years), and ... -
2005 January 20
Make Your Own Mattress
When I was in college, my dad worked for a company that had a relationship with a mattress-maker. He was able to get products from them at a good discount, so when I "officially" grew out of my childhood twin-sized bed, he got me a Queen mattress. It was... -
2005 January 17
36 Glorious Plies
I put the finishing touches on our new bed today. It was inspired by the Leggero Bed from Design Within Reach. All in all it was a fun project, with very little monotony or frustration over the project. This is a simple platform bed. The platform is ma... -
2005 January 10
End Table Finished
After months of sitting in the living room built, but not finished, I finally did the final sanding and finishing of this table. It's a smaller companion to the coffee table I made about 4 months ago. The fun parts took about a day -- making the design (... -
2004 December 28
Ga-Lapa-Went-Us
What a trip! We returned from our Ecuador / Galapagos vacay yesterday. Pictures Here Here's a synopsis: Sunday, 12/19 :: Depart for Quito, Ecuador - We flew with Pardis and Nick from SFO to Houston, then on to Quito, lugging carry-on bags up a flight ... -
2004 December 18
Ga-Lapa-Go-Us
I'm packing up now for our trip to the Galapagos. We head out from SFO at 11am on Sunday 12/19 to Houston. A brief layover, then we head on to Quito, Ecuador. We land late at night, then go to the Swissotel in downtown Quito for a night of sleep. Monda... -
2004 November 10
Nation's Poor Win Election for Nation's Rich
(from The Onion) WASHINGTON, DC—The economically disadvantaged segment of the U.S. population provided the decisive factor in another presidential election last Tuesday, handing control of the government to the rich and powerful once again. Bush and Chene... -
2004 October 21
HDTV Experiment
So we have this big LCD TV in the living room. It has been doing a good job of being both a TV and a computer monitor for a few months now. But its untapped Hi-Def capabilities have been disrupting my sleeping patterns (see the previous article). I've b... -
2004 October 19
Off-Earth / On-Moon
Had to write this down -- it was the first dream I had that took place off Earth... Went into a metal contraption thru a door, sat down, got up, and opened the door and was "on the Moon". It was daytime on the Moon. There were 4-6ft bundles of blue/red... -
2004 October 11
Work Work Work Work Work Work
Over the course of the last nine days, we have doubled the amount of artwork we have in our display cache at home. Not only have we been blessed with a lovely three-years-late wedding gift from my lovely mom, but there has been much photography going on h... -
2004 October 04
Rambles On Art and Photography
Saturday, Arti and I drove up to SF to check out some art that some folks were showing as part of Open Studios. This is a great event, and is held in a lot of places around the country. Artists interested in showing their work register with the Open Stud... -
2004 September 10
Proud to be CRT Free
Today marks a milestone in the Nobot household. It's a red letter day around here. Yes, today marks the first day where the final CRT has been laid to rest. This process started a few years ago when I decided that it was time to replace my old 17" trini... -
2004 September 08
Why it's bad to be dumb with Koni adjutable shocks
when i was 16, i had a 1977 VW Scirocco i raced with my dad in D Street Prepared SCCA Solo II. being young and poor, i couldn't outfit the car to the maximum spec allowed all at once. so i saved and saved until i could come up with the $500 or so for a s... -
2004 August 01
Hello From Singapore
Greetings from the Singapore International Airport. Totally doesn't seem like we've been travelling for 19 hours (13 hours SFO to Hong Kong, 2.5 hour layover, 3.5 hours Hong Kong to Singapore). Our flight left San Francisco at 1:30AM, so it was lights ou... -
2004 July 31
The Nobot is Headed to India
Well, today's the day we pack up our stuff for a three week trip to India. We're leaving from SFO late tonight, flying 15 hours to Hong Kong, a short layover, then a few hours to Singapore. 12 hours in Singapore (with a pint sized hotel room), then anoth... -
2004 July 07
Independence Day Diary
Went home from work friday feeling prety low. I had the achy body, the beginnings of a sore throat, and an unconquerable headache. Took a big nap and some vites, and felt quite a bit better toward the evening. That was good since Pop and I had planned t... -
2004 June 15
TV Upgrade
Got the new TV last night ... well, it's not so much a TV as a giant computer screen. It's a 37" Sharp LCD/TFT display. It will do 1280x768 resolution, and can also do a side-by-side screen from different input sources (computer, tv, dvd, etc). So far... -
2004 June 12
Lightning Stories
Here are two stories for the archives.... Sometime in 1995 when I was living on Orange Ave in Costa Mesa with Ryan and Mike, I witnessed a great lightning storm. It was around 9 or 10PM at the end of a mostly normal, warm, clear Orange County day. I ... -
2004 June 07
New Coffee Table Nearing Completion
Since we got our new furniture, including home made TV stand, our glass-and-metal coffee table is sticking out like a sore thumb. It's cold, heavy, and hard -- especially when you hit your shin on it late at night with the lights off. Also, there's no pl... -
2004 June 07
Miter 1000 SE is a Great Taper Jig
I was working on our coffee table replacement over the weekend and needed to taper some 3x3 legs I had laminated from 1x3.5 stock earlier in the day. Previously I had used a home made jig I put together around six months ago. It was flimsy and inaccurate... -
2004 June 07
Thanks For A Great Party
Thanks to all who came on Saturday to our house for our birthday get-together. It's always a great time to have the place filled up with friends -- everything just works out. Pauly and Ghizal drove up from San Diego/LA for the event. you guys are good... -
2004 June 02
TV Stand Finished!
At long last ... the TV stand is finished, installed, and operational. we were waiting until we got our new furniture to make sure the stain/finish on the tv stand matched. i put the final coat of polyurethane on last night (note to self: using a brush... -
2004 May 28
Recurring Dream Locations
This AM I had yet another dream that took place in the building I used to work in when I worked for the travel agency in Newport Beach in 1993-1996. I worked on the 8th floor in this 9 story building. A recurring theme in my dreams is to be sneaking arou... -
2004 May 17
48 Hour Film Contest
finished up the 48 hour film contest (http://www.48hourfilm.com/) this weekend.derek directed, oren wrote, jefferson and ricky handled cameras, ricky did editing, i did sound recording and failed miserably at scoring.you can download the trailer here.here ... -
2004 May 13
Saw the International Space Station
watched the ISS pass over this past thursday. it was magnitude 0.0, which made it the brightest object in the sky. that thing really hauls, it was past in less than 5 minutes....