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personal

A collection of 20 posts

Vacay

I just realized I went almost a year without taking vacation and it was the stupidest thing I've done in my career. Thanks to a couple trips this month it turns out I'm only working half of August and I'm feeling way less burnt

I'll miss you, Brad

"I try to be my own hero. That may sound flippant, but 15 years ago when I was really trying to grasp a direction for my life, a friend wise beyond his years reminded me that no one is perfect, that heroes fall and white knights on horseback are

adventuresinbraintumors

Adventures in brain tumors: part one of many

You know it's going be bad news when the ER doc slides a chair over to sit on. Good news is quick, a simple "You're gonna be fine! You can go home!" Seeing that chair slide over with her let me know I was

Cling Clang Clang

Four years into parenthood, I want to look back and say stability is very important. As much as you can, try and be stable people, with a stable marriage, keeping a stable home, holding stable jobs, with stable schedules. The cornerstone of our stability as a family is our nighttime

Trying something new

I've been meaning to redesign this site for a while, to set aside more screen space for writing, both to make it easier to read longer pieces for readers but also to help me focus more on just plain old writing instead of all the other junk I

Ten Years

In spring of 1995, while using a borrowed computer (I didn't own one myself) in the undergraduate lab, I noticed a new icon in the main window. It was a blue globe with a snake-like S shape around it. It was labeled Mosaic. It was an early version

woot

A few weeks ago, an editor at the NYT contacted me asking if I wanted to write gadget reviews for the thursday tech section. I was floored by the opportunity and jumped at the chance. After pitching a few ideas, I got one greenlighted and spent a couple days testing

Modern living

I can't begin to describe how happy I am to see that the next This Old House project is a rennovation of a modern house. I'm a longtime fan of the show, and even though lately it's become a show with too many field

Going fallow

I noticed it in myself several weeks ago. I hadn't touched my camera in two weeks and I had no desire to snap anything when I did pick it up. Then I noticed that I don't the time or motivation to write up all the ideas

Webvisions

Tomorrow morning I'll be speaking at WebVisions 2005 about convergence and digital devices -- all the cool ways small gadgets can talk to one another thanks in part to open standards and lots of hacking. Webvisions is my favorite "small tech conference that's almost as

Bursting any day now

The writing has been on the wall for ages but the real estate bubble's getting really bad lately. Now I know my friends in SF have been hearing about it for a decade, but let me tell you: it exists and it's real because it'

Getting Things Organized

I have to admit I'm a bit of slob. If there's a horizontal surface near me, chances are I'll stack piles of crap onto it until it falls over. I've been meaning to get my act together for a while now and

Strange, Troubling Privacy

There's a new service that will delve into the background of anyone in the US and it's freaking reporters out, even though it hasn't launched yet. But you know what's even freakier? Why reporters hadn't written about this sooner. Last

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A MetaFilter user passed away and my condolences go out to his family. I recall his contributions and his entry in the recent redesign contest. An odd reminder of this will stick around for years on my computer. I now have three names in my email client that can auto-complete,

Note to self

I'm just posting this as a reminder to check out week in review every so often. Last week's was great, and I always seem to lose this site's URL, so it's here, in my archives for my personal retreival.

My childhood, seen by Google Maps

(My childhood, seen by Google Maps, originally uploaded by mathowie) Something I never anticipated in a million years was finding out that my good friend Kathryn Yu recognized names and places in this shot, then over IM we realized we attended the exact same elementary school (she, 8 years after

iTalk

(iTalk, originally uploaded by mathowie) I've had my new iTalk unpacked for about five minutes and I'm amazed by how simple it was to use (just click into place, and push to record). Playback is easy and you can even use it as a small, tinny

Signs you need to cut back on the online shopping

The UPS man just drove up, but gave me the courtesy honk before coming to a rest in front of my house. The "hi! I'm here!" honk! When I was a kid the only person in the neighborhood that got that honk from the UPS truck

Don't be like your uncle Matt

The universe never fails to amaze me. Today I became an uncle for the second time, and my Brother-in-law and his wife purposely avoided finding out the sex of their child until birth. Apparently they wanted to go old school on that and be surprised. A few weeks ago, we

Growing old online

The other day I made a comment on someone's blog and I noticed I was the only one that put my online pseudonym into the name field. Everyone else posted as "Jane Doe", "Bill Simpson", etc.. Thirty real people and then there's