adrian is rad

Check out Cracked’s list of ‘that guys’. It’s a pretty good list; I recognized all of them but only knew the name of one of them.

In my line of business, it’s not unusual to get a couple packages from Asian (mostly Taiwan, China) a week. Sometimes the packing material is pretty cool. Some parts were packaged in this box last week.

I like the font (the ‘E’ in erasing and red-dotted ‘i’ in particular) and general graphic design. Also, having all that Chinese script just makes it that much cooler. It’s like someone’s bringing the traveling to me.

I went for a 3/4 mile swim in Aquatic Park today and I was reminded of some necessities for cold open-water swimming:

• silicone ear plugs: keeping cold water out of your ears helps keep you warm
• barracuda hot head neoprene swim cap: keeping your head warm helps keep you warm
• bodyglide: sounds dirty, but actually it’s just to stop chaffing. I use it in my arm pits mainly. (especially useful for salt-water swims)
• a swim suit: really, I recommend a swim suit for all swimming, just for modesty’s sake. I mean, really, you don’t want people to see everything.

Oh, and one more thing. So this is actually “5 things…”

• goggles: these things keep water out of your eyes

One optional other recommendation if you aren’t doing so well in the far sighted department:

• corrective lens googles: if you’re sighting off a far-off object, being able to see it helps. These goggles are relatively cheap and pretty comfortable.

I was talking to my friend Jesse on the phone. He was about to head to a bbq with some mutual friends.

me: Say hi to people for me.
Jesse: I probably won’t actually do that but I’ll say I will because it will make you feel better.
me: …

Thanks, pal.

I tried my hand at high speed photography courtesy of quake electronics

It started 10:30 last Sunday morning. I was still in bed and my other friend Dave gave me a call. The Maker Fair was great, he said, and that it’d be worth a trip to San Mateo to see it, so I headed out and met him there a little while later.

I got there and he was right. It was pretty awesome. I saw a bunch of really cool things, like what is below. I also got to hang out with the awesome folks at instructables, try my hand at welding (with the tech shop people), try high speed photography (see above), see some incredible and cool robots, talk to some interesting folks and eat a funnel cake. The presenters ranged from middle school kids who made lego robots to octogenarians with hand made, very precise engines that ran. All in all, if you have any geek in you, I’d recommend going to the Maker Fair next time.

Tesla coil!

A really cool cart with all mechanical, hand-cranked, hand-made mechanisms/ toys/ displays:

A really cool stylized sculpture with moving engine parts in the head:

more after the jump:
(more…)

Imposter Caught: High school graduate pretends to be a Stanford student, even living in the dorms, buying textbooks and ‘studying’ for exams

I can’t believe I was ever associated with that weird place….

Quite possibly the worst yogurt flavor ever is Yoplait Light Orange Creme. I don’t want that flavor in my yogurt! (I think I must have grabbed it thinking it was the much better apricot mango flavor.) It’s worse than the odd apple turnover flavor.

It’s mixtape time!

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes (pdf)
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an m3u file)

(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to file->import and then select the song list (the txt file). you should now have the 2007may playlist in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

If you want to read the liner notes before downloading the whole thing, they’re here. This one includes a lot of great indie pop/ rock plus some great soul and oldies songs. New Laura Veirs, some French Quarter, Bishop Allen, Elliott Smith.

Adrian’s May 2007 mix tape (zupload link with zip file, I’m trying this because hosting the zip was a significant bandwidth drain. let me know your thoughts on it; maybe I’ll switch to something else next month if that doesn’t work well.)

As always this’ll be up for a limited time (~1 week), so grab it now.

If you like the artists or songs, I suggest supporting them by buying their music, going to a show, buying merchandise from them or at least telling other people about them.

I have been swimming a mile at a time these days, approximately 1600m, or for ease, 1600 yards (yes, I know they’re not the same). I count in 50 m/ yard increments, 1 length if the pool is set up in the 50m direction, 1 lap if it’s set up in the 25 yard direction, so that ends up being 32 increments.

I often get distracted by the thoughts of the day—one of the best parts of swimming is the time to think—and some days, the hardest part of the swim is keeping track where I am. (Other days, it’s pacing, speed or endurance.)

The three points (or ranges) where I often lose track of where I am:

• 3-6
• 10-13
• 18-21

Do you like the part where I find the most mundane details of my life and blog about them?

“This is my favorite” is a new series in which I show you my favorite things. I am going to start with kitchen items.

This is my favorite fork. It gives me joy when it’s in the drawer when I go to get a fork. It has clean and attractive lines.

The spork resemblance has been noted, but I didn’t actually see it until someone pointed it out.

It is a marked “US” “United Silver Co.” and “Stainless Japan”.

My other friend Dave and I were out getting some snacks when we saw “X-13D” Doritos and we had to get them. The bag says “All American Classic”. What could go wrong.

We got back and cracked them open

and gave them a try.

Note: backup Fritos

Man, these things are weird.

“What did I just put in my mouth?”

Dave said they tasted like a McDonalds Cheeseburger but a little spicier. After trying one myself, I think I have to agree. It has that bad mustard-dill-fake onion-maybe-even-ketchup taste. Very very strange. I stopped at just one on these chips.