These days

cabinporn: Smokehouse on Brighton Beach, UK. Jack Mills, a...

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 14:43:52 -0400

Smokehouse on Brighton Beach, UK.

Jack Mills, a retired fisherman, and his wife Linda opened up their little black smokehouse on the seafront fishing quarter of Brighton over a decade ago. The couple can be found daily smoking fresh caught fish in the traditional way, using just oak, applewood, and salt.

Contributed by Ondra Loup.

@eldang you never told me about this!

beatonna: when does a serious looking face not mean something...

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 19:53:09 -0400

beatonna:

when does a serious looking face not mean something like this

Me too. You can pretty much count on it being Kenny Rogers or some damn thing in there.

My brother-in-law passed this BBC4 special along to me and...

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 01:21:25 -0500

My brother-in-law passed this BBC4 special along to me and Eldan. It’s all about this fellow building his dream bike, and visiting the various people who make bike parts along the way. It’s worth watching for that (especially the Brooks factory tour), but three things made it really exceptional, in my mind:

What may be the first snot rocket to air on BBC4
Joe Breeze eats it sliding out on a bike that was definitely not made for mountain biking
Boris Johnson claims that cycling will make you have “ideas coming out of every orifice”.

Your Sweetpea looks awesome!

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 16:03:13 -0500

Thanks, it is! Natalie did a totally amazing job with it.

ridepdw: Our friend Natalie at Sweetpea powder coated one of...

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 13:35:00 -0500

ridepdw:

Our friend Natalie at Sweetpea powder coated one of our Payload racks a while back to match the color of a frame she was building. Looks like candy!

Here it is in action:

It’s shitty outside today and the weather is more windy...

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 11:19:04 -0500

It’s shitty outside today and the weather is more windy than I want to ride my bike in, so I took a trip down memory lane this morning.

Eldan took this in August.

(The Sky Octopus turned 2 a couple of weeks ago. It’s still awesome. I most recently used it to take 6 dozen cookies to an exchange, and the next day, shoved 40 pounds of groceries on the front rack because I forgot to bring panniers to the store.)

I write letters

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 00:30:00 -0500

Governor Gregoire,

I’m writing today to ask you to do something small that can make a big difference to a lot of people and families in Washington State. As you know, we just decided to make marijuana possession legal here, and I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that you’re leaving office soon.

I’d like to ask you, before you go, to pardon the people who are in jail and prison here for marijuana possession. I’m not asking for a pardon for violent criminals- just nonviolent offenders.

It seems to me that we have collectively decided that having some marijuana is okay. It is unjust to keep someone in prison for something that Washington voters have decided is acceptable behavior.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Feel free to steal this wholesale. You can get ahold of her here: http://www.governor.wa.gov/contact/default.asp

kaipai: SIGNAL BOOST FYI. Voter fraud.

Sat, 03 Nov 2012 19:17:00 -0400

kaipai:

SIGNAL BOOST

FYI. Voter fraud.

JENS. JENS. JENS. JENS. cranktastic: Saw his data for this...

Fri, 24 Aug 2012 20:43:15 -0400

JENS. JENS. JENS. JENS.

cranktastic:

Saw his data for this stage on velonews. At this point I will just say ‘Holy crap. Legend’ and move on.

fuckyeahcycling:

BEAVER CREEK, CO - AUGUST 23: Jens Voigt of Germany riding for RadioShack-Nissan-TREK waves to the crowd as he approaches the finish as winner of Stage Four of the USA Pro Challenge from Aspen to Beaver Creek on August 23, 2012 in Beaver Creek, Colorado. (via Photo from Getty Images)

Have fun riding the Olympic peninsula. Do you have any specific plans there? e.g. Hot springs + camping?

Sun, 15 Jul 2012 14:12:15 -0400

Since my better half isn’t sure that he likes bike camping, we’re credit-card touring and staying at bed and breakfasts and Olympic National Park lodges. We’re also setting a pretty chilled-out pace, since I want to have lots of time to fart around and enjoy the scenery.

It’s going to go something like this:

Evening 0: Take the foot ferry from Seattle to Kingston. Stay in Kingston for the night, have dinner at the nice bar there.

Day 1: Kingston -> Sequim, stay on the Dungeness Spit.

Day 2: Sequim -> Port Angeles, gaze up at Hurricane Ridge, save it for next time :D

Day 3: PA -> Forks. I have already found a restaurant that serves pancakes larger than my head and I am excited about it.

Day 4: Forks -> Kalaloch. Also my birthday. We left plenty of time for playing on the beach on day 4.

Day 5: Kalaloch -> Lake Quinalt

Day 6: Lake Quinalt -> Montesano

Day 7: Montesano -> Yelm

Day 8: Yelm -> Home, which is actually something like 85 miles all told, but we really only have to get to Tukwila in order to take the train from there. I plan to ride the whole thing, though!

In case you were wondering

Sat, 14 Jul 2012 21:54:52 -0400

Here is what has been going on since the last time I wrote something:

Riding my bike as much as I want, finally, since I don’t have some stupid sinus infection anymore. E and I are going to go ride around the Olympic Peninsula in three weeks, and my main concern is my lack of good bike shorts and sports bras. It’s nice that I’m not worried about my fitness, but I don’t know how I got away with having this little gear for so long.
Went to Yellowstone with my parents. It was amazing. I don’t even know where to start.
The cat has cancer on his face. The tumor is slowly growing, and has been for a number of months. He mostly doesn’t seem to care about it, but nobody has any idea how long that’s going to last.
We’ve also been trying to sell our place because we want to move back to Capitol Hill. Lots of people have come to look; nobody wants to buy yet.
I made some popsicles this week, because, you know, summer.
I got promoted at work and now I am leading a big team. That’s been an adjustment.
I’m still learning Turkish. I am slightly less awful at it every week.
Small ongoing side projects: reading all the books in English in the house that I haven’t read before because they’re Eldan’s; paring down my stuff so I don’t have to move it; balcony gardening instead of P-Patch gardening; mending clothes that have holes in them; eating jam; drawing more; getting through my enormous photo-editing backlog.

You can’t tell me that doesn’t look like me, except...

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 15:53:53 -0400

You can’t tell me that doesn’t look like me, except for the fixie part.

bikeladiesunite:

princessbeancurd:

gremlin punx////fresh off the press, nice vinyl stickers sporting a qt bike babe i drew up for my buddy avi who runs Silver Sprocket. you can get get ‘em here!

Mars made these great stickers. She offered to take off the leg hair if it made printing easier, but Avi doesn’t care about dumb shit like that, so the hair stayed. These are my awesome friends that I am proud of.

This is going to be Eldan as soon as I can convince him that he...

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 15:12:20 -0400

This is going to be Eldan as soon as I can convince him that he wants a pair of trousers like that.

humansofnewyork:

“What do you want me to do?”
“You don’t have to do anything. I’m going to lay on the ground.”

Keratin

Thu, 24 May 2012 11:10:54 -0400

I just read an article in a week-old print edition of the Economist about how the increased demand for rhinoceros horn as a cure-all has increased the rate of poaching rhinoceros to the extent that more are poached each year than are born.

It outlines the stiff penalties for poachers that they’re caught, and also explains that rhinoceros horn is made of keratin, the same stuff that hair and fingernails are made of.

What I would now like to know is why these poachers aren’t just grinding up their fingernail clippings and selling them. It would be much easier, and much less illegal.

quantumaniac: Famous Physicists as Children From left to...

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 19:02:29 -0400

quantumaniac:

Famous Physicists as Children

From left to right:

Stephen Hawking (b. 1942) - Most well known for Hawking radiation and theorems involving gravitational singularities. He suffers from ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease - and is one of the most well known scientists of our time.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (b. 1958) - Currently the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space, Tyson is one of the leading science advocates in the world - and was one of the men who supported the demotion of Pluto.

Carl Sagan (1934-1996) - One of the most successful science popularizers of all time, Sagan was also the bestselling author of Cosmos, one of the most popular science books of all time. He was the first to propose that Jupiter’s moons Titan and Europa may hold liquid components of water on them.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) - The most well known genius in history, Albert Einstein was a boss. During his career, he revolutionized almost every area of Physics, including quantum mechanics and he effectively founded the study of Cosmology. His theory of general relativity has been wildly successful, despite ‘attacks’ by neutrinos.

Richard Feynman (1918-1988) - His most important contributions came via his path integral formulation of quantum mechanics and development of Quantum Electrodynamics (QED). Plus, he was a total badass.

Richard Feynman has clearly always been a badass.

I zoomed the image behind that...

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 13:04:41 -0400

I zoomed the image behind that link: http://zoom.it/cyEQ

infinity-imagined:

Cropped images from the highest resolution photograph of Planet Earth ever taken.

Male Programmers Post Horrifyingly Awful Comments On TechCrunch Blog Post About Etsy's Female Programmer Grants, Are Happy and Unafraid to Put Their Real Names and Faces Next to Said Horrifying Comments; Indeed, Are in Some Cases Applauded By Their Peers

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 14:55:11 -0400

Male Programmers Post Horrifyingly Awful Comments On TechCrunch Blog Post About Etsy's Female Programmer Grants, Are Happy and Unafraid to Put Their Real Names and Faces Next to Said Horrifying Comments; Indeed, Are in Some Cases Applauded By Their Peers:

programmersbeingdicks:

Backup screenshot here.

Nerdy Kid Biathlon

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 01:37:06 -0400

Thursdays are tiring.

I ride the giant bike to work, ride it home, eat dinner in half an hour because Eldan is gracious enough to put something in the crockpot, throw my violin on the bike, ride to orchestra, play for 2 and a half hours, and then ride home.

It’s awesome, but it turns both my brain and body to mush. Maybe it’s more like chess boxing than biathlon.

My stomach does input sanitization pretty well, thanks

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 14:08:41 -0400

At work, our reading group is covering Writing Secure Code. Chapter 10 starts like this:

If someone you didn’t know came to your door and offered you something to eat, would you eat it? No, of course you wouldn’t.

The thing is, I’d probably actually eat it.

I feel so much better today!

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:41:00 -0500

I have pretty much had a sinus infection since September (remember how I was supposed to ride my bike to Bellingham and wanted to take a nap under a picnic table instead?). It is just now going away in earnest.

In the past three days, I’ve biked 29 miles (two rides of 14ish miles each, which is the most I’ve done since sometime in October, I’d guess), and today I went skiing. Aside from feeling really good, I was also much more confident on skis than I had expected myself to be. It was a bluebird day at Stevens Pass and I had a really, really nice time.

Over the course of the past week, I’ve been waking up every day and saying “Wow, I feel so much better today!” It’s terrifying doing that for seven days in a row, because it makes me sit up and realize just how bad I had been feeling. It’s also a wonderful experience.

I’m leaving for London on Friday night and I’ll be there for two weeks though, so it will be interesting to see how that goes with respect to not getting sick (ugh airplane) and my overall fitness level.