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How @purplehayz tweets

Introduction This post was started because I get asked regularly if I ever sleep. I do, typically from 10P Pacific time til about 4:30A eac...

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> How @purplehayz tweets
>

We bought a house

We finally bought a house in SoCal – its not as close to Los Angeles as we wanted (its in Woodland Hills), but its big and its ours; ...

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> We bought a house
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ComicCon 2009, Thursday: Pictures

My son Nathan and I attended the Thursday opening of ComicCon 2009; we had a great time, we walked the whole exhibit hall floor. I got a c...

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> ComicCon 2009, Thursday: Pictures
>

A bunch of pictures taken on my Blackberry phone

Just a bunch of pictures I took with my Blackberry over the last month or so; no one category deserved a separate post, so here’s a g...

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> A bunch of pictures taken on my Blackberry phone
>

Visit to Palm Springs, Wayne Thiebaud retrospective

We visited the Palm Springs Art Museum to see the retrospective of Wayne Thiebaud titled “70 Years of Painting.”  Thiebaud be...

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> Visit to Palm Springs, Wayne Thiebaud retrospective
>

Make your very own IC earring

My geekiest fashion accessory is my IC earring; I’ve made several because friends have asked (sometimes demanded!) them.  I’v...

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> Make your very own IC earring
>

Paper model of Chartres Cathedral – IT’S DONE!

I bought a model to assemble of the famous Chartres Cathedral in the Cathedral gift shop, and this entry will track how I put it together. ...

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> Paper model of Chartres Cathedral – IT’S DONE!
>

Weekend in Palm Desert

March 1st, 2010 by alephnaught

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Weekend in Palm Desert

Lily doesn’t like dogs.
They’re dirty, she says – they smell and they’re dangerous. After this weekend, Aviva’s mom changed her mind a little bit.
She agreed we could bring our new puppy Iggy to her house as long as we brought his “cage,” a metal and plastic fence that can be shaped in many ways. So [...]

Demo music track: Bliptronic

February 14th, 2010 by alephnaught

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Demo music track: Bliptronic

I got my Bliptronic 5000 from ThinkGeek a few weeks ago and was inspired by a riff I created on it, so here’s the demo so far – this is a sketch, its quite incomplete but might be fun to listen to.  Please feel free to leave comments/opinons/suggestions!

[...]

How I got the nickname ‘wizard’

January 30th, 2010 by alephnaught

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How I got the nickname ‘wizard’

A long long time ago I did real-time programming for a high energy physics research laboratory, KMS Fusion, located in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I programmed a Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) PDP-11/45, and I knew all the assembly instructions required to process an interrupt from the backplane to my code (eventually I wrote a multi-device driver [...]

Table topics: Toasts

January 26th, 2010 by alephnaught

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Table topics: Toasts

Today I was once again Table Topics Master (my club likes that I pick themes for the questions and often pick things they didn’t expect).
Since this was my last meeting with Navigators Toastmasters (I’ve taken a job that makes it impossible for me to make their meetings any longer), today was my last meeting. The [...]

Pasadena

January 24th, 2010 by alephnaught

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Pasadena

Yesterday, we decided to take a trip out to Pasadena with our new puppy Iggy. As usual, we got a late start…
Our first stop was the Armory Center for the Arts, which was formerly an armory (seems like its very popular to turn armories into art galleries); the photo show was interesting: Jeff [...]

Table topics: What is your favorite…

January 19th, 2010 by alephnaught

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Table topics: What is your favorite…

Today I was once again Table Topics Master for my Toastmasters club – I love this role because I get to ask my club members questions and therefore learn more about them.
I love using themes for my Table Topics – today’s theme was, “What is your favorite…?” and here are the items I planned to [...]

The Griffith Observatory (and dinner in Los Feliz)

January 15th, 2010 by alephnaught

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The Griffith Observatory (and dinner in Los Feliz)

We decided to check out the Griffith Observatory, which stands on one of the higher hills in Los Angeles; Aviva’s brother Howard took his family up there and said the views were amazing. We stopped at Wacko on the way – its a cool store for books and odd gifts; I kid you not, there’s [...]

A gallery of more pictures of Iggy

January 15th, 2010 by alephnaught

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A gallery of more pictures of Iggy

Now that we’re all humming “Pictures of Lily” by The Who, here is a gallery of pictures taken yesterday and today of our puppy Iggy, who is almost 7 months old.

Yotsuba&! 6 and 7

January 10th, 2010 by alephnaught

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Yotsuba&! 6 and 7

Title: Yotsuba&!, Vol. 7
Author: Kiyohiko Azuma
Paperback: 208 pages
Publisher: Yen Press; 1 edition (December 15, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0316073253
ISBN-13: 978-0316073257

Title: Yotsuba&!, Vol. 6
Author: Kiyohiko Azuma
Paperback: 208 pages
Publisher: Yen Press (September 15, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0316073245
ISBN-13: 978-0316073240

I completed the first 5 books a few months ago and was bummed because there are many more books, but only 5 had [...]

My new wedding ring and another shot of Iggy

January 9th, 2010 by alephnaught

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My new wedding ring and another shot of Iggy

I love titanium wedding rings – they are light and typically of modern design.  But, my old one was getting a little tight and, due to its design (a small diamond leaving a hole in the back) I was getting dermatitis underneath.
So we bought me a new ring (also titanium):

I also took a picture of [...]