Geek knitting!

I thought I was the only programmer/knitter in the world, but no, like rocker/hacker ch1Xors, there is an active group of my odd demographic on the internet!

First of all, the awesome folks at KnitML have created a standard content model for knitting patterns, along with a pattern renderer, so you can get an idea of what your knitted object will look like from its pattern. I always thought that knitting patterns were computer program-like in style. And of course they should be: knitting machines need deterministic, procedural instructions. I always thought it was interesting how crafty folks, many of whom would probably claim they know nothing about writing computer programs, comfortably use control structures in knitting patterns.

Here is a great talk on the history of knitting in relation to computing/hacker culture, including open source patterns, knitting in public spaces, and how technology and the internet is shaping the state of the art.

Also, here is a roundup of geek craft from 2007, including knitting a space invaders scarf. Pixelated old video game images make good quilts and knits.

RFID tags in new $20 bills

Apparently this is not new, though it's new to me: new $20 bills have RFID tags in them, and when you microwave them, they explode! That's way more fun than microwaving AOL CDs. Link

So now a thief can not only determine remotely if you are carrying your US passport, he can also determine if you're carrying large bills. Awesome.

MSI Script vs Windows Security

I have recently been working on fixing bugs in my company's software installer (using Wise, hacking msi script), and have discovered some frightening things about how easy it is to do silent, invasive things during an install that Windows really shouldn't allow you to do.

1. Change the value of windows system registry values:

If you try to do this explicitly as a regular user (or without elevated privs on Vista), Windows will politely tell you that you can't. But if you execute the following MSI script during an installation (running the installation as a regular user), msiexec gets elevated priviledges, and can do whatever you want. Here's an example silently disabling UAC during an installation by launching regedit from cmd. (This is run in Wise via 'Execute Program from Destination', Working directory: SystemFolder):

"[SystemFolder]\cmd.exe" /c "[SystemFolder]\reg.exe" ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v EnableLUA /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

2. Run a low-level system tool:

Similar idea, you can basically run anything you want from cmd. This example gives everyone full access rights recursively to a directory, not necessarily one that you own or have permissions to change. As long as it's run within msi, Windows lets you do it:

"[SystemFolder]\cmd.exe" /c echo y| "[SystemFolder]\cacls.exe" "[ProgramFiles]\DirectoryYouWantToMessWith" /T /G everyone:F

Yikes. I'm going to programmer hell for exploiting things like this as quick workarounds. The moral of this story is: be very careful about the random executables and installers you download from the internet. There's nothing preventing malicious users from using techniques like this to do arbitrary bad things to your computer.

Pennsylvania: still the land of pie

I visited my parents in Gettysburg, PA last weekend, and confirmed that PA is still the reigning Land Of Pie. Pumpkin, pecan, (my favorite), strawberry, rubarb... you name it, they bake it, then sell it at the famous annual Gettysburg Bake Sale, held at the local high school (where I managed to not have frightening high school flashbacks). So here we are doing a bit of shopping. After making the rounds of the pie and crafts with Claire leading the way, my Dad and I could barely see over our armloads of cookies and pie. Yes, this is what we call food from the heartland: meat, potatoes, and if you're good, pie.

Also at the bake and craft fair was a whole stand dedicated to lamps made out of cowboy boots. I guess there's not much else to do with turquoise cowboy boots.

There's also snow in PA. It's pretty. After living in Seattle for a few years (where, when it snows that one time per year, it shuts down the whole city), and CA for 4 months, I had forgotten about snow. While living in CA, I knitted myself a fabulous pair of fingerless gloves (perfect for the chilly office). But when I wore them in Gettysburg, random townsfolk would stop me on the street and say, "Hey now, those aren't real gloves! Don't yer fingers get cold?" No they don't, thank you very much, their hipness warms them from the inside out.

fractal jewelry!

Awesome: http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/fimofractals

The Karl Denson Trio

Sacramento is not a hip place. It's a nice place- it has big trees, fancy houses, wide streets. The Governator keeps it safe and clean. But it's not generally the place to find cool new music. So I was pleasantly surprised last Wednesday when I went to see The Karl Denson Trio at Harlow's in Sacramento. It's been a long time since I've seen good jazz live.

The trio was made up of a drummer, sax/flute player, and keyboard player. They produced a huge sound for only three people. The keyboard player played two keyboards at once: he played the bass melodies on a Nord with his left hand, and funky gospel-y organ with his right. The driving melodies and harmonies were super tight, and the sax player and keyboard player had perfected a mysterious system for building up melodies while improvising over the course of the song. Sometimes the sax player would play the flute, and I've never seen flute played in such a bad-ass way. He literally had to wipe his face with a towel in between flute solos. Jason (the bass player in our band) said that he hoped one day to achieve the musical level of the keyboard player's left hand.

The Karl Denson trio had the whole crowd dancing on the floor. And these were mostly middle aged white guys in their "going out" tech teeshirts.

I think my favorite song was Lunar Orbit (it had a killer face-mopping flute solo), which is also the title track of their new album.

Grant got the memo

On Thursday we all had to dress up for the company photo. As you can see form this picture, Grant, the company mascot, got the memo.

How many engineers does it take to arrange a group photo? All of them. First everyone suggests all possible ideas for lighting, arrangement of people, location. Then everyone argues about the order in which to try all specified permutations, then the camera is accidentally set on 'auto' and takes 40 pictures of everyone arguing. 45 minutes later we had 100 photos of the team, the probability of having taken a good photo finally approaching 1.

the beach in late november

Yesterday Skip and I went on a long hike down the Pacific coast trail starting from Muir Beach, which is a little bit north of San Francisco. The day was perfect: 65 degrees, sunny, breezy but not too windy, and the views were spectacular. It's been 65-70 degrees and sunny for the last few months. Why have I not been living in California my entire life? Seattle had a good music scene, but you lose the whole winter to gray and drizzly gloom. And everyone in the office buildings have those (ironically depressing) bright anti-seasonal-depression lights in their offices.

Anyway, the beach was beautiful, and it felt great to hike for a few hours. Afterwards we went to San Francisco and hung out in little italy where we had some fantastic Italian food for dinner and hit up the City Lights bookstore. I managed to only buy two books. I need to work down my stack of books to read before I let myself get any more books. I'm currently working my way through all of Phillip Roth and Ian McEwan, who are quickly becoming two of my favorite authors. Ian McEwan in particular is a master storyteller.

Happy Rocksgiving

While millions of Americans braved the ever deteriorating airlines to visit loved ones, and hundreds of Davisites headed east to Lake Tahoe, this year I was lazy and stayed home. We made a huge thanksgiving dinner, and then rocked out in the garage.

This was the first year I had ever attempted to make a turkey. Last year we celebrated with friends who made a mountain of steamed dumplings, and the year before with friends who welded together a roasting spit from an old motor and bicycle chain, then roasted an entire lamb ("lambsgiving").

Roasting a turkey for the first time worked out well, thanks to the internet. We looked up turkey roasting guides and videos on youtube and managed to average together the sometimes conflicting information into a coherent recipe. We also made potatoes, greenbeans, stuffing, and Jason brought over salads.

So we put the turkey in the oven, and then headed to the garage for some music. It turns out that our average extended jam session length is about the same amount of time you're supposed to wait between basting the turkey. Skip was on the drums, I was on the vibes, and Jason was on the bass, achieving a nice balance. We wrote a few songs, ate a massive amount of food, and then passed out. Good times.

I'm an internet subgroup!

riot prrl

binary solo! (flight of the conchords)

I can't possibly do this band justice with description, so I'll just post links.

The humans are dead

Business time

Angry dance

How to be in a band

I've been in rock bands on and off for the past 10 years. They were all fun, and all dysfunctional, but in predictable ways. Looking back on these bands, I've noticed some patterns and some lessons I wish I had learned earlier:

1. Decide early whether this band is a collective or all about one person.
There are benefits to both types of band. If one person is running the show, the burden of writing songs, booking gigs, footing the bill, and doing marketing is mostly on that person. The rest of you just have to show up and play. Or if it's your show, you get complete creative control. If it's not your show, sometimes you do have to put up with hearing the lead person talk excessively about how awesome they are, and about their various relationship problems (which usually end up inspiring the songs). Sometimes you have to put up with getting your opinions carelessly vetoed. But you get to be in a band for relatively little cost in terms of time and money.
In a collective, everyone gets a say, and everyone is treated equally. Generally you all split the costs, and do the songwriting and marketing work together. This is more free and equal, but the downside is that everything takes longer. Writing songs as a group that actually congeal as distinguishable songs (and not 20 minute jam sessions) takes a long time. Also, you are constantly negotiating and compromising. And if your collective is comprised mostly of hippies (as collectives tend to be), the process of making any decisions (where should we play out? what kind of music should we make?) will take forever because no one wants to be the leader.

2. Create bands with people who are at your skill level.
You don't all have to be musical super geniuses, but being at the same level will allow to write songs you know the rest of the group can play, allow you to improvise more easily, and will allow you to avoid fights. If one member of the group is much more technically advanced than the rest, there will be an inevitable fight about this person being an uninvolved snob. If one member of the group is technically less advanced, there will be an inevitable fight about this person not improving. It's much easier to avoid this situation altogether.

3. Expect to argue about the band name for about 6 months.
Choosing a band name is hard. Finding a name that everyone doesn't hate is harder. But hold out hope, and avoid compromising on a mediocre name that nobody likes but nobody particularly dislikes.

4. Don't burn out
When preparing for a gig, it's easy to want to practice many times a week, for hours each time, but in doing this you hit diminishing returns too quickly. It's fun to sit and noodle for hours when you are writing songs, but when you're rehearsing a set list, it's better to limit practices to roughly twice the length of the set list. I personally don't find it useful to practice more than twice a week, and would find once a week ideal. I also don't like to have a practice the day before a show. Also, it's important to give yourself time to continue to play and create music on your own, so you can keep the creative juices flowing, and make sure you get some musical cross-pollination.

Practical Password Formulas

It's hard to remember passwords, so many people use the same passwords for everything: email, bank accounts, etc. The problem is, if a hacker gains access to one of your accounts, he now has access to all of your accounts. Some people save all their passwords in a file on their computer, or on a piece of paper on their desk to make the passwords easier to remember- this is also bad because there's only one location or file to compromise, and then a hacker has access to all your accounts.

So how to get around this? Have a password formula stored only in your head. A password formula is a simple algorithm that takes as input a key word (usually relating to the site you're trying to login to), performs some operations on this keyword to transform it, and the result is your password for the site. If you do this, then you only have to remember one piece of information: your formula. Mapping backwards from the password to the keyword should be so difficult that even if a hacker got access to one of your passwords, he shouldn't be able to deduce the formula and crack your other passwords.

Here's a (bad, insecure) example:

1. I'm logging into amazon.com, so my starting word is Amazon
2. reverse the letters and get: nozama
3. capitolize the second syllable: noZAMa
4. Turn the letter a into the number 4: noZ4M4
4. add the number of years you've used this site on the end: noZ4M46
5. ta da: your password for Amazon is noZ4M46.

This formula can apply to any site you're logging into. But please don't use it- it's very easy to guess. So how can you make your password formula easy to remember but difficult to create? This is a hard problem, but there are some helpful strategies.

Strategies to avoid:
- Don't allow dictionary words in your passwords. An alphanumeric password of length 8 has 36^8 = 2.8 trillion possibilities, but there are only about 300,000 common English words. That is a much smaller set of possibilities for a hacker to check.
- Don't use common transformations like turning the letter i into the number 1, or turning the letter e into the number 3. These are easily guessable.
- Don't simply translate the keyword into another language: there are password hacker dictionaries in other languages too (though, as one of my coworkers pointed not, not yet for Elvish)
- Don't simply add a number at the end of a word- this is also easily guessable

Some better ideas:
- Use word transformations based on your personal experience, free-association style (free-association is hard for other people to predict or guess). Example: one free-association type transformation rule could be "The site Amazon reminds me of the childhood memory of watching the Jungle Book", so transform the word Amazon into JungleBook. The rule is "x reminds me of the childhood memory y." Do you know what childhood memory Schwab.com reminds me of? I doubt it.
- Scramble the word so that no dictionary words remain. Example: switch all pairs of letters: JungleBook becomes uJgneloBko
- Funny rules are easier to remember. My old password formula had, as a transformation step, "Snoop Doggification"- I'd turn words like house into hizouse.
- Make sure your password formula has multiple steps.

And by all means do not enter your password into a website that claims it will tell you your password strength: what is to stop this website from archiving all the passwords people enter into a better hacker dictionary?

No one in Davis looks to Batman for wisdom and guidance

When I am feeling low or confused, I take a step back from my problem and ask myself, What Would Batman Do? Usually the answer is to use some expensive gadgets to kick some ass, which fits in well with my job. So today, not for Halloween but for general awesomeness, I wore my WWBD teeshirt. Not a single person at work got it, or even asked about it (at least, until I dramatically prompted them to). I got some flickers of recognition at the grocery store, but no smiles. Sigh. Clearly the town of Davis is not properly aware of the Adventures of Dr. McNinja, perhaps the best serial webcomic ever. Oh, and in case you were wondering, ninja zombies are not very effective ninjas. But they're pretty good at choreographed dances.

College application essay or folk song asking to be written?

An excellent college application essay, underscoring the irony of having to justify your eminent worth and prestige when you're barely old enough to form your own opinions. It's just asking to be turned into a folk song. I could hear a few promising riffs in my mind when reading it. Perhaps the chorus would be "I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru..."

Speaking of college, nowadays I have a handful of friends who are teaching college classes, and surprisingly, the experience seems to be quite disappointing. Students don't come to class, don't pay attention in lecture, they tell complicated and obvious lies to get out of homework and tests. I guess I knew this already, but when I was an offending student (minus the lying about tests) it never occurred to me that these lofty authority figures who were my teachers would actually take it personally and feel depressed when students did this. But despite the depressing stories, I still have the naive and hopeful idea that if I were teaching some class, it would be fun and the students would pay attention. I would, of course, use tricks from my favorite college classes, like overemphasizing the connections between the subject and $$$, letting one student hold a water gun in front of the class to shoot people who fell asleep, going heavy on the cartoons in slides, etc.

Obvious American Words

About half the time, when Marco and Lavinia (who are native Italian speakers) ask me what the word is for something, my answer makes them laugh and say "oh, it's so obvious! the word is the use of the object!" Example: comforter- it comforts you as you sleep! Power cord: it's a cord that provides power. Flip flop- that's the sound the shoe makes when you walk around in it.

Once I started noticing these obvious American words, now I can't stop noticing them. They're everywhere: arm hair, cashback, fingernail, bike seat, waterfall...

Also interesting: almost all programming languages use english keywords, so no matter what your native language is, you must learn bits of English to become a programmer. English is the international language of computer science, like Italian is the international language of music.

pumpkin carving

Last night a bunch of the coworkers gathered at Kristy and Bhavik's house to carve pumpkins. It was Marco and Lavinia's first Halloween, and they carved by far the best pumpkins. We got a few of those trace-and-carve books, which are surprisingly organized, with more directions than you could possibly need to take a knife to a vegetable, and a difficulty rating system for the pumpkin designs. Though the designs seemed mostly to be aimed at kids, there was this one design where a sexy vampire guy was going to either bite or kiss a sexy girl. Very Anne Rice. I then got to tell the story about the vampire romance community on Amazon. Anyway, the evening was lots of fun, with Kristy's spread of cookies and Bhavik's liquor, and by the end we were all covered with pumpkin guts. I stuck to my roots and carved the Batman pumpkin second to the right in the picture. More pictures here.

barefoot hiking

Last Saturday, we went hiking near Cache Creek way out in the boonies north of Davis. The day was bright and beautiful, but it had just rained the day before (presumably to remind me of the Seattle winter I'm missing), so the path we hiked was very muddy. So muddy it made our boots heavy. Anne S looked at her dog Lily who was bounding up and down the hills unhindered and said, 'I think Lily has the right idea' then took off her shoes and started hiking barefoot. After she oohed and aahed about how nice it felt, I took off my shoes too, and it *was* a very nice mud massage. We spent the rest of the hike teasing the boys about refusing to take their shoes off.

old friends, new friends, and salsa

Last Tuesday was my birthday, and I was planning on being low-key about it because I wasn't really sure if I knew my coworkers well enough yet to coerce them into some kind of birthday celebration. So to my surprise, on Monday Kristy stormed into my office, demanded to know why I hadn't told her sooner about it being my birthday, and planned a birthday dinner for me. On Tuesday, I came into the office and found a vase of fresh flowers (from my parents) and a card signed by the engineers (with notes like "May your birthday be free of deadlocks"). That night about 10 of us went out for delicious Caribbean food at Delta of Venus, then ice cream afterwards. It was a boisterous and fun dinner, interrupted only occasionally by an over-amplified poetry reading (it happened to be poetry jam night). On Wednesday, Skip surprised me with dinner at Chez Panisse, a restaurant I've wanted to go to for years, home of the famous Alice Waters. It was the best meal I have ever had. On Thursday the fabulous Danielle was in town, and we had an impromptu dinner party with her and a few other new friends. Some of the new friends ended up also being musicians, which lead to the inevitable raucous jam session in the garage. Somehow we managed to avoid getting the cops called on us. We suspect our 90 year old neighbors are mostly deaf. Friday we went over to dinner at Lavinia and Marco's place, and they gave us a salsa dancing lesson. Lavinia and Marco are incredible dancers (and ranked 14th in a national salsa competition in Italy last year), so at first I was a bit intimidated, but they were good teachers and soon we were shuffling around their living room hitting most of the 1,2,3 .... 5,6,7... steps. I'm into it.

The Video Hopper-Kelly revolution

Last February, after returning home from Mardi Gras where we spent 4 days following street musicians and performance artists around (while avoiding frat boys), I impulse-bought an accordion from Trading Musician, and then proceeded to ignore it for about 4 months. My excuse was that it was heavy, and my poor software-weakened left tricep couldn't handle the bellows. This was all a sham. In truth, I was just lazy. But, in the last month I have redeemed myself and rediscovered my fabulous 60s accordion, and in the process, strengthened my left tricep. Soon I will have something similar to bowling arm.


For some reason, my accordion's name is Video Hopper-Kelly. I can only assume its parents were hippies, what with the hyphenated last name. But the first name is just utterly odd. Maybe my accordion is really the one who killed the radio star?

Skip and I recently watched Felini's 'Nights of Cabiria', and the ending was quite depressing. The heroine was taken advantage of yet again, and wanders miserably through a forest at night. But suddenly out of the trees appear young people dancing and singing, apparently returning from a picnic. One carries a guitar, one an accordion. They surround the heroine and play her a beautiful folk song. She finally smiles, and the movie ends. We found this simple guitar/accordion song so enchanting we transcribed it and learned to play it. It's been a great song to learn how to play the accordion with. The folk song structure works well with accordion+guitar: a simple, strong melody for the accordion, and a rhythmic driving accompaniment for the guitar. I'm digging through my old Grieg and Rachmaninoff piano music for more promising folk songs.

yellow and green hills

Here in NE Cali we are surrounded by the hot, dry, flat desert, but on clear days (which is most days actually) in the distance you can glimpse mysterious yellow and green patchwork hills. They almost look like a mirage. Last weekend we set out driving towards this mirage and found ourselves at Lake Barryessa on the highway to Napa. We decided to do what looked like an easy 4 mile loop hike, which turned out to be a 5 mile hike where the first 4 miles were a steep incline (and the last mile was such a steep decline we thought we should be skiing). We found ourselves precariously following the path up and down the tops of the hills. The views were incredible. The yellow in the hills is dried grass, and the green is sturdy shrub-like aromatic trees. We couldn't figure out why the grass and shrubs arrange themselves in stripes along the hillside though. More pictures here.

Wiki and Doggies

I found myself missing Amazon's internal wiki today, as I shuffled through the notes on my desk and the docs that have been emailed to me, so I set up an internal company wiki server. Response so far is positive, though time will tell if the engineers will actually use it. Obnoxiously asking "why don't you document that in my wiki?" after the answer of every question I ask may help.

I set up the wiki server on, gasp, a windows machine, but it was actually pretty easy. This site has an excellent set of instructions on how to install a WAMP (windows+apache+mysql+php) stack and then install mediawiki.

Grant, the VP of engineering's dog, is the sweetest dog ever. He sat on my feet during my interview. He follows the CEO around most of the day, and makes sure no mean people try to sell us anything. He's a yellow lab with a patch of curly fur on his back. He was trained as a seeing eye dog for the blind, but got disqualified at the end of the training process because he broke his front arm. Being well trained, he never barks or tries to steal food (though begging is another story). And if any Amazon people are reading this, yes Grant is nicer than Miso. And cuter.

Company Exercise Day

Maybe it's not surprising that a small health care company run by a pair of health fiends (who could probably individually out-run and out-benchpress the whole engineering team) has Company Exercise Day. Once a month everyone stuffs themselves into stretchy pants, piles into cars, and drives to the local gym, where a special Cedaron exercise class is held. This month it was "Pilates/Yoga fusion."

I was a bit skeptical at the start of class, but it ended up being a lot of fun. All the not-terribly-flexible engineers were good sports, and we saluted the sun, downward facing dogged, and made my ab muscles sore in ways I didn't think were possible. It was kinda funny seeing people who usually never leave their computers and live purely in the realm of the mind with their legs in the air following orders from the world's perkiest yoga instructor. There were more than a few accidental farts, and a bit of groaning and falling over, but overall everyone felt good at the end of the hour. And then we hurried over to Del Taco and ate lots of tasty junk food.

Spreading the vibes love

I have had an irrational love of the vibraphone for as long as I can remember. It's so smooth, so jazzy, so mellow. It can have a staccato or sustained sound, be soft or loud (without additional amplification), and the vibrato speed is adjustable. Last year I achieved my life goal of getting one, buying it from a 13-year-old on craigslist (who was over the vibraphone phase and moving on to the welding phase; too bad). The vibraphone made it's first public appearance at the Greenbean Coffeehouse in Seattle when Skip and Anton and I played some music to help raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Foundation.

A few weeks ago Mike, Sara, and baby Rosie came over for a BBQ, and I showed Rosie the vibes. She loved it (and not just because hitting things is fun when you are 1), and I'm convinced she's going to be the next great jazz vibes legend. I suspect someone hovered me over a vibraphone when I was 1, and that's where my irrational love came from.

More excellent music discovered at Delta of Venus

Delta of Venus continues to impress me with it's unpretentious atmosphere, loyal crowd, and reliably good music. It's a bit like Gallery 1412 in Seattle with a more folk-oriented (rather than jazz-oriented) crowd. We biked down there last Saturday and discovered some wonderful musicians:

Garrett Pierce: Unassuming and straightforward, Garrett Pierce sang simple, poetic songs and accompanied himself on the acoustic guitar. We couldn't help but be captivated by his soft, sad voice and poignant, honest writing. He was simply very good. I liked the solo live performance even better than the recorded songs on his myspace page that have a band behind them.

Ralph White: banjo + fedora + songs about bacon = folk hero. He played both a 6 string and 5 string banjo (that looked like a cross between a guitar and a mandolin), the fiddle, and the accordion, all as a virtuoso. His lyrics are earthy and funny, blending old time americana with psychedelia. And yes, there was a song about going wild pig hunting when the bacon supply ran out.

The Places (Amy Annelle with Ralph White): Dark, melodic, haunting melodies and songs about ghosts. Beautiful and hypnotic.

Craft binge!

I hate shopping. I hate waiting in line, I hate trying things on, I hate the mindless materialism of the mall, and I hate the salesgirls who pronounce "thank you" as "theeenk yeea" presumably taking on some sort of sorority girl accent. So I taught myself how to sew over the past few weeks. Its definitely easier than shopping (especially in terms of total time spent), and it's very satisfying to make things from scratch. I bought a sewing machine, and mostly relied on internet tutorials for explanations on how to thread a sewing machine, how to make a pattern, how to hem, etc. There are lots of great tutorials with pictures on sites like instructables, craftster, and craftzine.

Here's some stuff I made.

Lined messenger bag. This was the first thing I made with the sewing machine, and by far the hardest thing I've made, because of all the pieces you have to cut out to make the box shape of the outer bag, inner liner, and batting. Also I added magnet clasps which needed to be hand-sewed. The whole process took about 4 hours. But it was worth it, it's a great bag. I wouldn't recommend anyone just starting out making this first though.

A camera case and a wallet. These were both pretty easy, about an hour each. I found patterns online and just followed the directions.










A grocery tote. This was pretty easy- about a half an hour to make. Learning how to square a bag was pretty key- cut down the time of making the bag box-shaped from an hour to about 15 minutes. It's lined and pretty sturdy, so I'm going to use it as a grocery bag. Down with plastic bags!







A shirt. I reverse-engineered my favorite shirt to get this pattern. It ended up being pretty easy- you just put an existing shirt flat on a table, trace it, then cut out two shirt pieces from new cloth. I didn't make separate sleeves, the sleeves bits are just part of the cut out shirt piece. I hear shirts are much harder with separate sleeves.







A skirt. I also reverse-engineered my favorite skirt to get this pattern. It's made from 4 pieces of cloth: skirt front, skirt back (which are the same), a wide piece for the waist (no zipper or button needed since the fabric is stretchy), and an optional border piece for the bottom. I added the border because it was easier than hemming the stretchy fabric. Turned out cute.






Overall, I've learned that:

• the amount of time to make something is directly proportional to the number of pieces that need to be cut out and sewn
• big fabric stores like Joanne typically stock mostly fabric that's in surprisingly poor taste, and some really nice stuff can be found in the bargain bins
• traditional patterns and the instruction set that comes with a sewing machine make no sense, stick to picture-heavy internet tutorials
• use stretchy materials for clothing- the fit is better and you don't have to be as precise with your pattern
• cheap-o sewing machines like my Brother 2125i work just fine, you don't need a fancy model with an LCD screen
  

Dog-sitting

We are in Oakland, house and dog sitting for Mike and Sarah. Camper (green kerchief) is Mike and Sarah's dog, and Cody (the fat one) is Mike and Sarah's usual dogsitter's dog (out of town for a funeral). Camper is a very high energy dog, with a bark that would keep an army of thieves away at night. Fortunately, he has decided we are his friends. Cody is an extremely sweet, mellow dog. He mostly just looks around inquisitively and falls asleep on our shoes. But we still think cats are better than dogs.



Conveniently, Cody and Camper wear each other by wrestling.










So with a pad close to the city, we've been exploring San Francisco, Berkeley, and Oakland this week. Lots of great food and peace graffiti in Berkeley. Here is one small swatch of the Peace Wall. We tried to go to Chez Panisse (the birthplace of organic, local CA cuisine), but there was a line out the door. So instead we went to a bookstore and found a Chez Panisse cookbook instead. The eggplant lasagna was amazing.

BBQ Oysters, and other highlights of the northern california coast

Skip and I spent the last few days exploring the northern CA coast via Route 1. We made it up to Mendocino county, and the drive was beautiful. Most of the coast that we saw is surprisingly unspoiled by development because of the sheer cliffs jutting up against the ocean. All our pics can be found here.

Nearest to San Francisco is Muir Beach. The beach is set against a wildlife preserve and nestled between two sheer cliffs. The beach itself isn't very long, but it was packed with picnickers, swimmers, and even a few horseback riders. Trails near the beach take you up the side of the cliffs and connect up with the California Coastal Trail. The views are spectacular, and over the southern cliff you see a view of Pirate's Bay.


We camped one night near Point Reyes, a peninsula historically populated mostly by dairy farms. As we made our way along the peninsula, the weather changed dramatically from hot and sunny to cool and misty. We did part of a hike along the western tip of Point Reyes, and there was so much fog you could only see maybe a hundred feet in front of you. Then we went to the southern tip to Point Reyes Lighthouse, and down on the rocks at the base of the cliff we saw many many sea lions, whose cries echoed along the cliffs. Ar! Ar! Ar! They are small in this picture, but you can see them if you look closely in the rocks. They look kind of like slugs from this distance.

The next day we camped in Caspar, CA. We saw miles of bright sunny beaches, and hiked around Point Cabrillo Lighthouse where we found more sea lions. Inside the lighthouse are displays of the intricate architectural plans used to build the lighthouse, and stories about and artifacts from the wreck of the Frolic, that had been carrying Chinese goods to San Francisco in 1850. Near Caspar is Russian Gulch, a huge park with beaches, trails, and a sink hole near the sea named "Devil's Punchbowl" which apparently spits huge streams of water during storms. Even on a sunny day it looked menacing. It's amazing ships were able to navigate at all around the sharp craggy cliffs.

When driving through Caspar the breeze blows the most wonderful smell into the car: it's a mix of desert (sage, sand) and northwest (sun-baked pine needles).

And finally, BBQed oysters may sound questionable, but they are delicious. We stopped at Bodega Bay on the ride back home and had lunch at the Two Crows Roadhouse. Everything was amazing: the best fish & chips and best clam chowder I've ever had, plus the unexpectedly delicious BBQed oysters. The atmosphere at Two Crows is pretty laid back and unpretentious- I half expected grandma to emerge from the kitchen and give a few yuppies a scolding.

The Church of Saint John Coltrane

Last Sunday while visiting San Francisco, Skip and I visited the Church of Saint John Coltrane. It's not a church that worships John Coltrane (as I had hoped) but rather an African Orthodox Christian Church that uses Coltrane's music as a tool of worship and teaching. The service was 3 hours long, and about 2.5 hours of that was pure music. The church had a lead singer/ rabble rouser and live band (drums, keys, bass, two saxophones, clarinet) and Coltrane songs were adapted into raucous, joyful hymns interspersed with long meditative instrumental solos. Audience members were encouraged to sing along, bring and play their own instruments, and bang on tambourines.

The music was breathtaking and the musicianship was superb. The keyboard player effortlessly held down supporting chords, transposing when the singer would change keys unexpectedly, and played an amazing solo in Love Supreme -- all with his eyes closed.

About half of the people attending seemed like regulars- they greeted each other, clapped, danced, and sang with little inhibition. The other half of the people were like us: curious, jazz-loving, and slightly shy passersby.

I found the service to be intoxicating and pleasantly overwhelming. I hadn't been to church in many years, and consider myself an agnostic still recovering from Catholic school. As I sat in the comfortable chairs in this church, lost in the saxophone solo, every so often a woman in the back row would loudly mutter "oh yeah!" and "praise the lord!" I found myself flashing back to Catholic services I attended as a child. Catholic Mass couldn't be more different: the pews were hard, the sermons austere and often ominous, and the congregation held themselves to strict, ritualistic discipline: blank faces, clasped hands, stand, kneel, recite at the right time. Even singing in Catholic mass was disciplined and solemn. As I child I always gazed enviously into St. Paul's AME Zion Church I passed as we walked to mass. Inside St. Paul's everyone was singing, dancing, clapping, in what seemed like natural and happy rejoicing.

I feel as if I stepped into my childlike ideal of St. Paul's when I attended this service. Even though I'm not Christian, and don't believe in the scriptural passages quoted in the sermon, I couldn't help but be inspired by the energy of the place, the joy of the musicians, and of course the beautiful music of John Coltrane.

Welcome to Davis!

Davis is a fabulous hippy town. I love being able to bike everywhere- the whole town is flat and nothing seems to be more than a few miles away (this compared to the hilly 8 miles I used to bike to work in Seattle). Everywhere I go I see more bikes than cars. There's even a bike church. Also, the Davis DMV manual refers to police officers as "peace officers."

It's hot and sunny, and I'm on vacation and working my way through my book backlog, so I got a hammock. Above my feet in the picture you can catch a glimpse of the palm tree growing in our backyard.

The food so far is excellent. I had the best Greek food I've ever eaten at Symposium. Apparently Bill Clinton agrees. All the produce in this area is surprisingly fresh- you can get a great salad even at the diner. I guess this is what you would expect from an area with so much agriculture. Also, we discovered Himalayan food- also excellent.

The Delta of Venus cafe/bar is great: excellent Caribbean food, a relaxed yet well-populated scene, and reliably good music in the evenings. It's also a convenient 5 minute bike ride away. Last week we saw Agent Ribbons, The Dodos, and Jennifer Gentle at DoV. Only caught the last few songs in the Agent Ribbons set, but they seemed like a fun band- loved the powerful and theatrical lead vocals.

The Dodos blew me away. Perfectly synchronized hard driving virtuoso guitar vs virtuoso drums layered with passionate soaring vocals. The drum setup was interestingly unconventional- the snare was way off to the left side, the symbols were doubled up to make a more scacatto sound, and the drummer had a tambourine strapped to his left foot. The use of building tension with repetition and building up vocal layers with a memory/delay pedal reminded me a little of Animal Collective. The energy of the live show was wonderfully overwhelming, and the precision of the duo was impressive. I'd love to catch this band again.

We went to the Sacramento drive-in last Friday and saw the Simpson's Movie (awesome, go see it). The drive-in was totally fifties- even the sign declaring "no refunds due to fog" was in an old fifties font. Outdoor movies here are popular (it's actually warm and not rainy enough to pull them off). Hoping to check out free film noir nights on the projection screen outside the Davis Baskin Robbins.