Brent
South Africa, Day Two: The Journey Around the Mountain
This is the third in a series of blog posts about my recent trip to South Africa. I’m posting them a week after they happen. For all 825 photos from my trip, see my Flickr photo set. Today, I fully toured Cape Town. Those sightseeing buses were fabulous. I took hundreds more photos, learned all sorts of interesting factoids (the thickets of thorn bushes that cover one side of Cape Mountain were […]
South Africa, Day One: The Dangers of Developing Nations
This is the second in a series of blog posts about my recent trip to South Africa. I’m posting them a week after they happen. For all 825 photos from my trip, see my Flickr photo set. I awoke at 7:00am on Friday, feeling relatively refreshed (jet lag wouldn’t allow full recovery), and determined to take a photo walk around Cape Town. The night before, I’d studied some maps and books about Cape Town, […]
South Africa: On The Way
This is the first in a series of blog posts about my recent trip to South Africa. I’m posting them a week after they happen. For all 825 photos from my trip, see my Flickr photo set. The first challenge of a trip to South Africa is getting there. My flights lasted a total of about 24 hours each way, including layovers in Dakar (Senegal) and Johannesburg (South Africa). Fortunately, airplane travel these days is […]
Landed in South Africa
I made it! Currently lounging in my hotel room; it’s 10:30pm local time and I’ve been traveling for about 24 hours. Now to take a nice, hot shower, and get a solid night’s sleep. Tip: On Amazon.com, buy an electrical outlet converter for the country you’re going to (most see, to cost about USD $10), and take chargers for your camera and other devices. That way, you don’t have to buy and take multiple batteries […]
South Africa
On Wednesday, I leave for my week-long trip to South Africa. I’ve no idea what kind of web access I’ll have. I’m sure I’ll have some, but I don’t know how easy it’ll be to get to this blog and update it. So, I don’t expect to be blogging a lot while I’m down there. As expected, I’m excited and scared. Still running around. Worried I’ll forget something important. I expect […]
Quick Life Update
I’ve found the house I want to move into. Planning to make an offer this week. Otaku, No Video continues to expand, so that it now includes: Two to three videos per week on YouTube (at least one anime review and at least one manga review) A live video news show, streaming on the internet every Saturday afternoon for 1 to 1.5 hours. Three blog posts per week A chat room, which […]
What should my contribution be?
Read this today in Peter Drucker’s Managing Oneself: Throughout history, the great majority of people never had to ask the question, What should I contribute? They were told what to contribute, and their tasks were dictated either by the work itself—as it was for the peasant or artisan—or by a master or a mistress—as it was for domestic servants. And until very recently, it was taken for granted that most people were subordinates who did as they were told. […]
Apple Cinnamon Bread
Apple Cinnamon Bread Hardware Bread machine Appropriately-sized pan or a baking sheet Software 1 small apple 150 grams water 4 Tablespoons butter 520 grams bread flour 3 Tablespoons wheat germ (optional) 1 Tablespoon cinnamon 1 teaspoon salt 1 Tablespoon yeast Directions Peel and dice the apple. Place the ingredients in the above order in the bread machine. Put the bread machine on the dough cycle and start it. […]
Suburban Self-Sufficiency: The Backyard Homestead
I may be moving soon. My new job at NASA (squeeee!) requires a minimum 75-minute commute twice daily, usually in heavy traffic. While I’m okay with the drive itself–having grown up in this area, I have to be–I’m losing too much time. Even with audio books, three hours a day on the road is too much. So I’ve been looking at houses near Goddard. One is a small house […]
My, How Wired Has Fallen
My impression of the last half-dozen issues of Wired: Messy, cramped layout. Colors that clash and don’t add information. Tons of ads. And I mean multiple consecutive pages of just ads. Very few full pages of content. Many stories have a fearmongering aspect. A good example is the article on Simon Singh, who was sued about his work on pseudoscience. This is portrayed like a Worrying Threat To Science, as though religious nutjobs […]