Sitting on the dining room table are 37 Hugo bases. (32 is the maximum number that could possibly be needed.) No nameplates yet, since voting hasn't finished. But they're done ( Read more... )

I've been on an existentialism kick recently, and as part of that I just finished rereading Steppenwolf. It was one of my favorite books as a teenager, one of the ones that really resonated with me in enlightening and sometimes scary ways. It marked a turning point during my first real job after undergrad, when I realized how deeply depressed I was ( Read more... )

Last January my spice tolerance, which was already fairly high, mysteriously jumped off the charts overnight. I haven't been even slightly challenged by a dish in months at this point. At first I was amused by my new superpower, but it's actually getting fairly annoying. I'm really missing the sensation of a tasty dish right on the edge of what I ( Read more... )

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Mr. Musk, you and SpaceX are on the verge of accomplishing something truly extraordinary. It looks inevitable that you will manage to safely land the first stage sometime very soon now. For this, you have my respect and admiration. But I humbly ask you to consider the historic nature that event, when it happens. Thousands of people will be watching ( Read more... )

I have become obsessed with the idea of thru hiking the PCT in 2017. Why then? It's far enough out I can reasonably think about making it happen. (Particularly saving up the money I'd need to replace the lost income.) And that would make it 10 years since doing the Mackenzie. And I'd turn 40 while on the trail. Seems auspicious ( Read more... )

On September 17, 2008, Tony emailed me to remind me to update a configuration detail on the webserver I ran. I keep my inbox pretty clean, using it as a todo list as emails which need action come in. I never got around to fixing the server, since I hate messing with servers and the problem just never happened again, so that email was never archived ( Read more... )

It occurred to me to me today that saying "small world" when you see a weird coincidence is not only trite, it's exactly backwards. Weird coincidences aren't suprisingly common because the number of objects that can interact in the world is very small. They're common because so much stuff is going on, because the world is so much more insanely ( Read more... )

This is the residency I just applied to and rather desperately want to get into. It is pretty much everything I've ever thought of building if I won the lottery. There is much fretting.

A couple years ago, watching the livestream of the Hugo ceremony, I joked I should have a Hugo base design in mind, just in case I was ever asked to make one. See, the base is different every year, usually made by a local artist. Not long after making that joke, some pretty cool ideas for a base popped into my head. So I decided to look into the ( Read more... )

I was asked to do some live art for a bike appreciation event. It was canceled due to weather, but not before I had already done most of the prep work. So I decided to finish what I had started, just to see what it looked like.

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In other news, I recently submitted a design for the 2015 Hugo base and should be hearing back on that fairly soon. (Can' ( Read more... )