Need a Luo language guide?
Look no further! My sister and brother-in-law have published one on their family website. So next time you need to bone up on your Luo, check it out here: Lou language guide.
Comments November 8th, 2008
Confession: data backups
I have been burned before. Hard drives die, data gets lost. This has been painful, especially for me (a data pack-rat). My goal has always been to preserve every digital item I’ve created - I have all email ever sent going back to late 90’s, etc.
So why haven’t I backed up in 6 months? I couldn’t tell you, except that life catches up with you. But this is inexcusable! That is 6 months of irreplacable digital photos of my child, family, life. But it takes ~1 hour to manually do this, I have to do it for both my and Franny’s laptops, and it’s annoying.
James and I designed a better solution. Not enough hours in the day to build it though. I wish someone else would, but all backup software I’ve seen so far is crappy. Ah well. End rant.
Comments August 7th, 2008
Even Apple fails the test
Apple is held up as user friendly and simple. In many ways it is. However even Apple fails the test when it comes to abstracting technological underpinnings from the user. I love my iPhone, but frequently am unable to take photos with it. It tells me “There is not enough room to take additional pictures. Please delete some existing photos.”
The iPhone should free space for me. I should never know this happened. My iPhone knows that it is a cache, not a storage medium. It knows which photos I have saved to my computer and which are unique. It knows which songs I haven’t listened to in months. It could free space, but doesn’t. Apple simplicity for the loss!
In the “unforgivable sin” category: even if I delete a number of photos, my iPhone still claims there is insufficient space! Wait a minute - I know there is more space - I just deleted photos (that thing you told me to do so you would stop complaining!!!) Argh. 
Comments July 1st, 2008
Technology has far to go
Technology still sucks a lot. This is probably obvious to everyone, but as a technologist, I know exactly where the failings are and get more frustrated than the average person. Sure, you get annoyed when your wireless network doesn’t just work, but I actually know why it doesn’t work, see the terrible engineering decisions that lead to this outcome, and get frustrated and disappointed in humanity.
Ok so it’s not that bad. But we have far to go. An example: I can no longer get on my home wireless router, because a neighbor just added a router in their house on the same wireless channel. So the signals are competing. So I’ll have to change my router to a new channel. Which begs the question - why should I need to do this? The two routers know they’re competing, they can “see” each other, they should switch channels automatically. Little things, big headaches.
Comments June 27th, 2008
Ninja baby
Where do you stand on Ninjas vs. Pirates? Isaiah knows ninjas have the upper hand, and has already started practicing. He was running around outside in his pajamas, picked up a stick, and I snapped these shots with my iPhone. I had to make a comic - he looked like a little ninja master:
Have a look at the standalone shots: these were cut out of the iPhone photos, then passed through a watercolor filter to give them a gravelly dark comic feel.
PS - If you have a better idea for use of these images in a comic let me know - this is a barebones version just to get the idea out.
Comments June 12th, 2008
Old Isaiah photos
Catching up with untagged photos. Check out these silly photos from Photo Booth. Isaiah was so small! Crazy. Links: photo album, slideshow.
Comments June 6th, 2008
New Isaiah photos
Isaiah is very proud of having his own laptop. (I picked up an OLPC for him off a fellow Googler who was done playing with it). Tonight he sat in my lap while I helped him open it up. He turned it on, and smiled when it chimed. He then picked it up and walked over to the black rocker, put it down, and sat by himself pinging away on the keyboard.
Photos, photos, photos. Isaiah is loving getting wet in the sprinklers and the pool (as well as the Long Island Sound). As happy parents we take occasional bursts of photos, so enjoy these documenting his laptop and recent sprinkler / pool fun.
Comments June 6th, 2008
Isaiah collage
Check out this collage of Isaiah. It contains all Isaiah photos we have taken to date (about 1,000). It’s generated using the Shape Collage software I recently stumbled upon. This goes into my suite of cool photo tools (which also includes Rasterbator for hugified posters). Click through to see the full size image (5MB) which is a lot of fun. A detail of the 2nd “a” is shown below.
Comments May 31st, 2008
Draw yourself as a teen meme
Have you drawn yourself as a teen? This is an internet meme I couldn’t pass up, though I’m a bit late to the party. (I read about this originally on the Flight Comics blog). I felt I needed to do three versions: the 15-17 year old Abe, the 18 year old Abe, and me today. If you’re honest with yourself, this is actually a lot of fun. Crazy to think how much our world can change. At the core, not much has though; still focused on kindness, honesty, and giving back more than I’ve been given.
Comments May 25th, 2008
My second launch at Google
Sharing another personal success: my second launch at Google - real estate search! This has been one of my main focuses, and is great to get out there. Both Google Operating System and Lifehacker picked this up fairly quickly, though they both incorrectly come to the conclusion that data is not from Google Base (it is).
Comments May 14th, 2008