Monthly Archives: March 2005

Dinner with Jef and Becky

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My friend Jef and his girlfriend Becky came over for dinner and a little hot tub last night. We had a pretty good-time, and I used it as an excuse to crack out a few recipes I had been meaning to make and post. So here’s the menu (with links to the cookbooks or the recipes):

Appetizer: Rock Shrimp in Pernod Sauce – a favorite from the Village Bistro in Rosslyn, VA. My version isn’t as good, but it’ll do in a pinch. (You’ll be happy to know that this recipe is pretty Atkins-friendly, leave out the veggies if you’re tight carb points).

Main course: Rack of Lamb – simple, elegant, tastes great.

Side dishes: Asiago Cheese Grits and Flageolets au Beurre de Cerfeuil (I admit it, I couldn’t find flageolets, so I used navy beans).

For dessert, Becky and Jef brought over sorbet, fresh fruit, and whipped cream. We all ended up stuffed. Jef seemed to really like the lamb, and Becky was pretty polite about the whole meal, but the beans were a delight for me. It’s the first time I made that recipe, and now I’ve got to hunt down flageolet beans — although the navy beans weren’t too bad :-) .

Apple I: It’s alive!

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I completed the Apple I replica (Replica I). I had a couple of false starts, and ended up redoing a few low solder joints, but all in all the assembly went pretty smoothly. All told, I probably spent 3 hours on the assembly, and didn’t really run into any real problems. Tom Owad’s book “Apple I Replica Creation” came in handy, in spite of the review on Slashdot.

A few of quick insights:

  1. Boot times on a device with no disks rock!
  2. I don’t remember much BASIC
  3. BASIC is kinda fun
  4. No line editor == not as much fun
  5. I should have added the serial interface board

That last one is a killer, I can’t store anything I write (or load existing software) without the interface.

More effective blogging, making an impact in 30 seconds

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I’ve been having a great time surfing Blog Explosion; there are some truly interesting and wise people blogging out there. It goes without saying that there are also some crackpot and opportunist blogs out there. But one of the really frustrating things are blogs that don’t give their audience a chance to discover their worth. Most of the advice in this post is specifically target to Blog Explosion users, but the principles apply to most websites. So without further ado, my list for improving your blog’s effectiveness:

  1. Put actual content “above the fold”. In the newspaper business, “above the fold” is the part of the front page people see first and putting interesting headlines there sells newspapers. In blogging terms, this means putting interesting content on the first screenful of your blog. Have a look at how many headlines the New York Times and the Washington Post cram onto the first screen of their websites.

    While surfing Blog Explosion, I’ve run across several sites that don’t have any meaningful content above the fold. Between normal user interface junk (menubar, browser title and tab bars), the Blog Explosion banner, their own blog title, and a banner ad or two; some sites have absolutely nothing interesting to see without scrolling down the page. Sometimes I do scroll down, but if I’m surfing Blog Explosion, I’m more likely to let the 30 second timer expire and move on without bothering to check out the rest of the blog.

    Sometimes, the blog owner has a cool graphic or picture to attract my attention, but again they allow these elements to push the actual content off the first page of their site. I hate to say it, but there are a lot of blogs out there with great designs and pretty pictures; filling 50% of my screen with yours won’t necessarily keep me at your site. Of course, photoblogs are an exception to the large image rule; if the image is content then by all means – go large.

  2. Make sure your page loads quickly; I’ve actually been to pages on Blog Explosion that don’t even load in 30 seconds! You can blame it on a slow connection, but I’m surfing on a broadband connection at home (1.5 Mbps), and a seriously fast (OC-12 – 622 Mbps) connection at work. If your blog takes more than 30 seconds to load, it’s pretty much not my fault. If your page doesn’t load before the 30-second timer expires, what are the chances that people will stick around?

    In most cases, the problem seems to be all of the cool toys people put on their front pages: virtual pets, wall clocks, weather widgets, etc. Last week’s blogroll outage was a good example of how external dependencies made lots of people’s blogs extremely slow. One external widget (from a dependable source) included in your blog won’t hurt your speed much, but let it get out of control, and it will start to impact your blog traffic.

    The same is true for music, images, and flash animation. Load too many large items into your first page and it might not even render in the first 30 seconds. You can help yourself here, by including the width and height properties for image tags and embedded movies; also using progressive jpeg gets something on screen faster, but it somewhat slows page loading.

  3. Check your blog in at least two browsers (and preferably more). I’ve been to a few blogs that load poorly, or not at all, in some browsers. In a couple of cases, the whole design loaded, but there was no text on the blog at all, just the images and backgrounds. One or two sites brought up a blank page. Most of these websites are simply suffering from a slight HTML or CSS error, and are easy to fix, but the owner doesn’t even know there’s a problem. Viewing your blog in Firefox and Internet Explorer will at least ensure most web surfers can see your design, and that it looks the way you want. If you want to be really popular, make sure to check your site in Opera and on several Macintosh browsers as well.
  4. Finally, if you’re going to include music on your page, provide a way to turn it off or mute it. I often browse while listening to music; if your blog starts playing music as well, the result is just noise. Give me an obvious way to turn off your music; I’ve often surfed off a site immediately to shut-off their music rather than even wait for the 30 seconds to expire.

Trying to lose weight, again

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I briefly had a successful campaign against my weight last year; I had been bicycling daily and managed a couple of longer rides (20-50 miles). Graduate school and legal consulting work took too much time for me to maintain the old program. I’ve put most of that weight back on, and I’m facing another year of being intolerably obese. This year my plan is to be more moderate in my weight-loss regimen.

First, I’m going to commit to getting back on the bike, and I’ll publish my track record here. Furthermore, I’m going to go back on the hacker’s diet with a goal of reducing my caloric intake by about 5250 calories per week (1.5 pounds of weight loss/wk). Who knows, I might even mix in a little Atkins for fun. Hopefully, I’ll have an easier time maintaining a more moderate weight-loss program (my average is less than 3 months). Links to riding and weight data in a future post. Any encouragement or advice is welcome!

Published?

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Whoa. Stopped by photoblogs.org, and noticed that the French paper le Monde is running a piece on photoblogs. Called “Un jour dans le monde” — a day in the world — it chronicles a subjective set of photos from photoblogs on March 12, 2005. I was shocked to find that I’m the 4th link from the top :-)

Apparently this is an ongoing project, and new links get added each day. I’m listed as the third link from the top for March 12.

Update: So it appears that le Monde is simply hosting blogs for it’s readers, and this is the blog for “Mark M”. Nothing to see here, move along…

Apple I replica board has arrived

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My Replica I board has arrived on thursday. I ordered the “barebones” kit with just the board and the rare integrated circuits (ICs) from Vince Briel — the creator of the replica I. Since then, I’ve been scavenging around the house and garage the parts I need to complete my Apple I. As of last night, I’ve got most of the small components sorted out and installed, and placed an order for the missing parts at Jameco. If anyone is interested I’ll put up a detailed shopping list for this project, although you can just order the complete kit from Vince. I’m throughly having fun with this little project, and it’s had some beneficial side effects.

First, I’ve had to rummage around and find all of my electronics gear; there’s quite a bit of it, and it’s been spread around the house. I’ve even discovered my old single board computer from college — Dr. Hawkin’s V40 board. Unfortunately, my V40 board no longer seems to work; I sent off an e-mail to Dr. Hawkins hoping for some of the old notes on the board to see if I can bring it back to life.

Fooling around with getting the V40 working meant cracking out the good, ol’ logic probe, and that led oddly enough finding my probescope. I hadn’t realized how cool the probescope really is. I remember basically going broke and eating ramen for a week to get it, but I had either not realized, or not known that it’s a 2MHz oscilloscope (I remembered it being less than 1MHz). While I’d still like a scope capable of working on more complicated systems (1GHz) this one will be great for noodling around the Replica I.

Anyway, part of rummaging through all this old computer and electronic stuff got me aggravated with how cluttered the house/garage/life is, so I called up my friend Austin, and gave him anything he would haul away. Essentially he got: 3 complete PC’s (486, Pentium, Pentium II), a PowerMac, a monitor, a DVD-rom, a (broken ?) Playstation, a bunch of expansion cards, a 12-port hub, plus some junk I made him haul off as payment. Oddly, Austin was excited since he currently gets a kick out of rescuing and rebuilding computers. He’s got the all the parts necessary to make a homebrew Tivo, and now there are only five or so spare computers around here; everyone is happy!

One fine day

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I’ve always liked Sundays; especially if I can get my butt in gear early and make something of the day. I’ve always thought of sunday morning as the time when the city belongs to native Washingtonians; the legions who are only here because of the Government are no where to be found.

Eastern Market is one of my favorite sunday destinations; the a bazaar atmosphere with the farmer’s market and vendor stalls is always interesting, and photographic opportunities abound. But I’d been craving dim sum for months, I think I last had some in Seattle about eight years ago, so I went down to Chinatown instead. On weekends many of the restaurants in Chinatown serve dim sum for brunch, and I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to feed the craving. My housemate Soeren and I had a wonderful couple of hours stuffing ourselves with bite-sized Chinese delicacies at Tony Cheng’s. Afterward, we went over to Starbucks where I had a Chantico — best hot chocolate I’ve ever had; I’m not sure it was worth $3, but it was pretty damn good.

Well satisfied with our brunch efforts, we went down to the National Mall with the intention of checking out an exhibit at the National Gallery of Art. There’s a great sculpture of a perspective changing house in the sculpture garden, and we had a chance to sit next to the skating rink and people watch while waiting for my friend Scott to show up.

The main attraction of the day was the André Kertész exhibit at the National Gallery of Art west wing. Kertész, a friend and compatriot of one of my favorite photographers — Brassai, started making photographs in 1912, and the exhibit spans his whole photographic career through his death in 1985. With the majority of the twentieth century documented through his lens, the exhibit is inspiring, but hard on the eyes; some the work, especially the earliest pieces, were made without the use of an enlarger and are only 2-3 inches in size. The result is that the viewer is forced into intimate contemplation of many of the 113 pieces in the collection. Kertész’s quixotic view of the world and his strong compositional sense make the entire experience worth the effort to see the exhibit — both in time and eye strain. The André Kertész exhibition is at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. through May 15, 2005.