You have new Picture Mail!

Another venue, this time daquoris

You have new Picture Mail!

Rodger and Mike's BDay. Silly hatz

You have new Picture Mail!

The courtyard at work

What's in a Name?

Sometimes it's better to make up a name for your company.
 
 

A New Blog

I've started a new blog (at http://blog.xdraw.org/, of course).

I'm writing about more nerdly subjects there, as well as some notes about my Javascript drawing library.

For friends and family, I imagine I'll still post mostly photographs and personal notes here, so now you just have one more RSS feed to deal with.

The First Computer I Owned

So, this is the Kaypro II, much appreciated by budding screenwriters in the first half of the 1980s. I bought one much like this, used, for $650.00 in 1985. The seller thought he could sell the software separately, so I got on the telephone and found some sympathetic salesman at a computer store in Orange County who copied the appropriate disks for me.

A year later I managed to sell the computer to a college friend for close to what I paid for it and buy an Atari ST.

Spencer Parasailing in Lake George

Me, terrified, taking pictures as I fly along behind him.

Meme Game

1. How many books do you own?
Maybe four hundred. I try to shed old ones like reptile skin in favor of, say, seeing the floors in my house. I've sold dozens and dozens on Amazon used books. I used to think I had to keep every book I've ever touched, but I think the 21st century thing is only keep the dead trees when they're particularly meaningful and/or useful in that format.

2. Last book I bought:
"Essential Computer Graphics" and "CSS The Definitive Guide" and "Software That Sells" -- all within a half hour of each other during a binge at Quantum Books and the MIT Press bookstore.

3. Last book I read
*Almost* done with "4-Part Dissonance" by an up-and-coming Vermont mystery author.

4. Five books that mean a lot to me (without exceptions or apologies):
Neuromancer
Snow Crash
Linked
The Stars My Destination
Mysteries of Harris Burdick

5. Tag five more
No!

Jill had never seen The Gnome Burrow before, yet something inside kept beckoning her in...

Taylor hits the Big 10

A Picture Share!

Hollywood Bowl, Video Games Live

The Mission Inn makes very large margaritas

Dinosaurs

A Picture Share!

Taylor at the Blue and Gold Dinner

Darth Tater

Together we shall rule the universe as father and spud!

Wow! The E3 Demos of the XBox 360! (powered by twin Mac G5s)

A little brown bunny at the Claremont botanical gardens

From the Brewery Art Walk last weekend. Jill pointed out that it looked like "Blog 22"

I saw this while I was at the Python Sprint in Portland a few weeks ago. It's an electronic ink display eBook reader. Notice that the screen is perfectly legible, even in the direct flash from the camera.

Galen's ray-tracing demo from last week's bring your kids to work day. The laser at the end of the black wand was directed through holes in the black square, and the kids put magnetic color squares that corresponded with where the laser hit the beachball.

And I thought he was doing so well

I'm playing with Taylor's new light saber

More Computers Than Toes

I have had a lot of computers in my life.

But if you tell them it's a "costume" then you can sometimes get them to wear something cute for an hour.

The preferred costume of the nearly-teenage.

Glam Jill, replete with feature boa

Dal tile bathroom floor, because Barbara wanted to see it.

I got carded buying cheap red wine at Trader Joe's today. I'm exactly as old as TWO drinking-age people. Yay me...

Jill photographs the antimatter core in the central courtyard at work.

The vicious plastic alligator in the DreamWorks duck pond.

Not any of that there black-and-white digital photo-graphee, nosir.

Guess the dotcom

"The lyfe so short, The craft so long to lerne."

Why we love Pasadena

My car hit 63!

A better view of Gort guarding the Frame Shop from petty humans who threaten to extend their violence to two-inch matte boards.

"Well, Herf, it might LOOK like one of my bugs, but..."

God promising I'd never have to move boxes in the rain again.

No fire, just low hanging clouds

Commitment

DreamWorks holiday party

iPod ad in the works

Who can blame Spencer for wanting a car like this?

Part of Kathy's elaborate Christmas gift search for the boys

buoy are we lazy...

I work here

Firefox is my hero

Ahhh, fatherhood...

Spencer made these last night as a Christmas gift for a girl in his class.

My Blue Heaven

Then the party gets interesting...

Grape vines in Winter in front of the South Lake Peet's.

I love Peet's coffee, even crowded on a Sunday morning.

It was so weird this morning. Bright and sunny at my house, and pea soup a few blocks south.

First you take the magic beans...

Is it an ill-tempered jack-o-lantern?

Klattu Berada Los Feliz Frameshop

Damage

The caption that came with this picture advised the recipient to read the following before opening the attachment:

With all the news on TV lately about the sub zero weather and snow that the east coast and midwest areas are experiencing, we shouldn't forget that Southern California has it's share of devastating weather also. I've attached a photo illustrating the excessive damage caused to a home from a west coast storm that passed through the Los Angeles area a couple of days ago . It really makes you cherish what you have, and
reminds us not to take life for granted .

My Mantlepiece

Photo by Jill; Rodin from Grandpa; Uma from Jill; Weird Copper Gremlin by Miasma

The Finished Bathroom!

At the NaNoWriMo TGIO party at the Brewery

Mom at La Casita Mexicana

The Magic Bus!

Can you see the parrots?

I kid you not. These guys really do go around dressed like this. They're The Geek Squad!

Firefox 1.0 Launch Party. More

Well, it *was* pretty exciting...

Precision Napping Drill Team

Jill, beautiful without trying

Wacky Packs! Oh, the hours and allowances squandered on this. The whole back of my door in my room. This is, I think the Second Series.

Pre-adolescent boy question yesterday: "Hey dad, what rhymes with 'Uzi'?"

Silicon Valley 2004

The tub is in!

Where the Magic Happens (PDI Campus, Redwood Shores)

Monet-colored China at the Sofitel

Great... ish... sorta... American Novel!

Almost ready for tile.

My angel, Jill.

SPOOKY!

Happy Halloween!

Americans are NOT Cowards!

But there are some people who think they can scare us into doing their bidding

A Ceiling! A light, even, sorta...

A floor!

Ooops! Where *did* that floor go?

Taylor gets more handsome every day!

Huntington gardens. Examining Koi with Jill. Photo by Herf.

Ferreting out the truth in an election year. 

Scott at work. He had connections at a toy company, I think. 

And here it is tonight. 

Witness the horror of 70s do-it-yourself style. This was my bathroom this morning. 

The New Paul Graham Essay

Good Bad Attitude


I lived for a while in Florence. But after I'd been there a few months I realized that what I'd been unconsciously hoping to find there was back in the place I'd just left. The reason Florence is famous is that in 1450, it was New York. In 1450 it was filled with the kind of turbulent and ambitious people you find now in America. (So I went back to America.)

The Picasa enhanced version of a TOTALLY BLACK picture of me 

Jill with a rose; beautiful by any name. 

Welcome to my world

Not mine yet, I suppose. But I'm working on it.