Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Monday, April 28, 2008
The Ocean
I live in a little town in what is called the North county part of San Diego. Back on April 14th we had a really nasty Santa Ana wind condition that raised our temperatures well into the 90s. I decided that given the heat it would be a great day to take all the kids to the beach and I couldn't help but take my first plunge into the sea. It was cold but awesome.
Having lived in a great surfing area for almost ten years now, I have made it an annual ritual to promise myself to learn how to surf and each year I neglect to follow through on this. Instead I am a big fan of boogie boards. I have some decent boards, a spring wetsuit and flippers than make me look something like a hybrid between a seal and a walrus depending on how my diet is going.
All my life I have lived near the ocean and I have to admit that weird things in the water creep me out. I especially hate seaweed but as I get older it is less of a concern. This last week freaked me out. Let me explain...
The picture above was taken on Christmas day at Seaside beach in Cardiff.
View Larger Map
The map here is a close approximation of where the fatal shark attack happened last week. the picture I took, is about half a mile north of there and it is at the beach we usually go to during the summer. Yikes.
I don't expect this to stop us from a lot of beach trips this summer but I am thinking that I am going to be wearing the wetsuit and end up being mistaken for a tasty little shark snack.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
More Socialthing Invites
I just realized I have 10 more socialthing invites. If you want one send me an email to derrick AT doien DOT com.
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
Google Maps Goodness
I am heading to San Francisco tomorrow for a speaking event at Haas and for some meetings. One of my meetings is with someone I have never met before who happens to live in Santa Cruz. I asked him to meet me in the city and he asked me to suggest a place. There is a place over on Brannan near Bacar that I can't remember the name of for the life of me. It is a place I like to go to when I am meeting with Six Apart or some of the other companies in the area.
I used Google maps to search for Six Apart. After that I did a local business search for restaurant and cafe and bar. None of the results were the place I was looking for. That didn't make any sense to me. I know this place is all three of those things. And it is good. I had a bright idea. How about I use the street view and meander down the street. Having been there many times I knew exactly where it was but that would be of no help to the guy I was meeting. I cruised down Brannan until I saw the familiar place, The Brickhouse cafe and bar. Now that is some useful stuff.
I used Google maps to search for Six Apart. After that I did a local business search for restaurant and cafe and bar. None of the results were the place I was looking for. That didn't make any sense to me. I know this place is all three of those things. And it is good. I had a bright idea. How about I use the street view and meander down the street. Having been there many times I knew exactly where it was but that would be of no help to the guy I was meeting. I cruised down Brannan until I saw the familiar place, The Brickhouse cafe and bar. Now that is some useful stuff.
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Art
Earlier in the year I attended the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The conference was good but one of the highlights of the conference for me had nothing to do with wireless technology. The flight I took to Spain ended up in Madrid and given that I was going to get in at 7 AM and was in no rush to get to Barcelona, I decided to spend the morning checking out Madrid.
I had never been to Madrid and have always had a strong desire to get there but it had never happened as other places had called us instead. Back in 1997 when my wife passed the bar we had made it to Barcelona and had plans to go to Madrid but it was hot in Spain and we instead opted to head to Italy and then Germany.
In Madrid there are a number of places that I have always wanted to visit and at the top of the list was the Reina Sofia Museum. The Reina Sofia is home to the National Modern and Contemporary art collections and, of most interest to me, Picasso's Guernica. I have always been fascinated by this painting and it had some particular interest to me based on my Western Civilization class in high school.
In my senior year I took the Western Civilization AP test and the question I answered for my essay was roughly as follows:
Two paintings were shown, Picasso's Guernica and Goya's The 3rd of May 1808. We were then asked to write about the paintings, the artistic movements they represented and the socio-political setting in which the paintings were made. While there might have been easier questions, this one was a no brainer for me as I had studied the military history of Spain both around the time of Napoleon and during the Spanish Civil War and have always been a huge art fan. Needless to say I did well. I bought a small Guernica print and hung it in my room for many years.
Seeing the painting in person was an absolute treat and unfortunately for me my time was short as the entire museum was hosting the Picasso museum of Paris's collection during renovations. I briskly walked through the various rooms and took in the wonderful paintings many of which I had seen in Paris previously. Goya's painting is in the Prado and I had no time to visit but hope to make Madrid the next destination of a European pleasure trip sometime in the coming years.
I had never been to Madrid and have always had a strong desire to get there but it had never happened as other places had called us instead. Back in 1997 when my wife passed the bar we had made it to Barcelona and had plans to go to Madrid but it was hot in Spain and we instead opted to head to Italy and then Germany.
In Madrid there are a number of places that I have always wanted to visit and at the top of the list was the Reina Sofia Museum. The Reina Sofia is home to the National Modern and Contemporary art collections and, of most interest to me, Picasso's Guernica. I have always been fascinated by this painting and it had some particular interest to me based on my Western Civilization class in high school.
In my senior year I took the Western Civilization AP test and the question I answered for my essay was roughly as follows:
Two paintings were shown, Picasso's Guernica and Goya's The 3rd of May 1808. We were then asked to write about the paintings, the artistic movements they represented and the socio-political setting in which the paintings were made. While there might have been easier questions, this one was a no brainer for me as I had studied the military history of Spain both around the time of Napoleon and during the Spanish Civil War and have always been a huge art fan. Needless to say I did well. I bought a small Guernica print and hung it in my room for many years.
Seeing the painting in person was an absolute treat and unfortunately for me my time was short as the entire museum was hosting the Picasso museum of Paris's collection during renovations. I briskly walked through the various rooms and took in the wonderful paintings many of which I had seen in Paris previously. Goya's painting is in the Prado and I had no time to visit but hope to make Madrid the next destination of a European pleasure trip sometime in the coming years.
Monday, April 07, 2008
Email Assasination
Where am I? Haven't been here in a while. I find my blog is an inverse reflection of what is going on in my life. Relatively calm and peaceful? Blogging. Crazy and overworked. No blogging. Today however I was moved to put the hands on the keyboard and share something.
My email was hijacked last night. What do I mean? Well, my personal email that I have been using for around 8 or 9 years had a giant inbox this morning. I keep up with all my stuff all the time although I don't usually respond over the weekend unless it is critical. As of last night, not much. As of this morning, 10 pages. What the hell?
I started combing through the list of emails and all of them were bounces across a variety of domains across the Internet. The senders were various people but all the from email addresses were mine. Ouch.
I have spent a chunk of time today deleting the various bounced emails and other than a nuisance I haven't been too concerned. More important though is that I am certain that I am a very likely to have my personal domain listed on the RBL. That is essentially death of your email account.
While I have often laughed at the stupid amount of spam that I get from all these poor people who I generally assume are hijacked spam zombie computers firing from all over the world, I never expected to see my name as the sender of one of these messages, much less a million or so which is what I am sure happened. In my case, neither my laptop or domain were compromised, but the net effect to me is the very real possibility that my personal email is at risk of becoming a dead useless email address.
It is interesting to read the stories about the death of email and the various attempts to "fix" email. It is less than interesting to be on the other side of the problem and realize that any of us can be easily hijacked by spammers and rendered the unwitting roadkill in their ongoing attempt to get people to buy Viagra.
My email was hijacked last night. What do I mean? Well, my personal email that I have been using for around 8 or 9 years had a giant inbox this morning. I keep up with all my stuff all the time although I don't usually respond over the weekend unless it is critical. As of last night, not much. As of this morning, 10 pages. What the hell?
I started combing through the list of emails and all of them were bounces across a variety of domains across the Internet. The senders were various people but all the from email addresses were mine. Ouch.
I have spent a chunk of time today deleting the various bounced emails and other than a nuisance I haven't been too concerned. More important though is that I am certain that I am a very likely to have my personal domain listed on the RBL. That is essentially death of your email account.
While I have often laughed at the stupid amount of spam that I get from all these poor people who I generally assume are hijacked spam zombie computers firing from all over the world, I never expected to see my name as the sender of one of these messages, much less a million or so which is what I am sure happened. In my case, neither my laptop or domain were compromised, but the net effect to me is the very real possibility that my personal email is at risk of becoming a dead useless email address.
It is interesting to read the stories about the death of email and the various attempts to "fix" email. It is less than interesting to be on the other side of the problem and realize that any of us can be easily hijacked by spammers and rendered the unwitting roadkill in their ongoing attempt to get people to buy Viagra.
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