Katie

matcha ice cream

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 14:29:18 GMT

Here is some matcha ice cream I made with my folks last weekend, since I had some old leftover Koyamaen matcha around. We used Alan's recipe and froze it in my parents' classic hand-crank ice cream maker, and we learned a few lessons along the way. First, breaking up the ice into smaller pieces makes the cranking easier, since larger pieces jam between the outer wall and the rotating can. Second, if you've got a large-capacity maker, for the same amount of time, effort, ice, and rock salt, you can make five quarts of ice cream just as easily as you can make one. Since ice cream is yummy, you should make five quarts. :)

high school memories

Fri, 29 May 2009 20:12:39 GMT

This week at work we've been bringing in our high school yearbooks and chuckling at each others' dorky pasts. One of my co-workers pointed out that, according to my yearbook, I was in the astronomy club my sophomore through senior years and was president my senior year. But although I have always been interested in astronomy, I have no recollection of there being an astronomy club in my high school, much less of leading it. Meetings, events, equipment, a faculty advisor? My memory comes up blank. Huh.

a week of bicycling

Sat, 16 May 2009 01:01:15 GMT

I've ridden my bicycle 120.4 miles (194 km) this week. I'm pretty sure that's more mileage than it has seen in the previous two decades I've owned it.

Last autumn elwing2000 convinced me to sign up with her for a May 10-13 women-only beginner-level bicycling tour on Maryland's eastern shore. It sounded like fun, and I'd have plenty of time to train, so I agreed. My bike is a ten-speed Schwinn Woodlands hybrid-style, not an ideal road bike, but acceptable. In preparation I picked up a rear rack and bag so I could carry things like a windbreaker, camera, binoculars, and snacks; a handlebar mount for my GPS receiver; a couple of jerseys and an extra pair of cycling shorts; and a new gel saddle, cycling socks, and water bottle clamp thanks to my brother and sister-in-law's Christmastime generosity.

They say around here there are only two seasons: winter and summer, and in the weeks leading up to the cycling tour, that truism held. It went from cold to sweltering to raining for nearly two weeks straight. This is my way of excusing the fact that I didn't train nearly as much as I should have. My parents introduced me to the BWI Trail when they visited, and I rode it another time on my own in spite of a forecast chance of thunderstorms, but that was about it. In desperation at the continuous rain outdoors, I borrowed a trainer setup from seelevarcuzzo a week before the tour (thanks!). Miraculously, though, the weather forecast for the tour itself was looking perfectly mild and rain-free.

elwing2000 and I drove to Easton mid-day Sunday, checked in at the inn, met the other riders, and embarked on our first group ride, a leisurely backroads ride to Unionville and back (18.3 miles / 29 kilometers). This was my first time riding on "real" roads. I knew the guidelines, but I'd never done it before, so riding through (green) traffic lights, using hand signals, and taking up my share of a lane all came as a revelation. The drivers in that area seem to be used to bicyclists and are refreshingly deferential.

Monday's weather was, in an unpleasant surprise, cool and rainy. Still, we rode, this time starting at the visitors' center of Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge. My bike's stubby off-road tires were not an advantage when we encountered a muddy, unpaved patch of Wildlife Drive. While others' slick tires rode right over the terrain, my tires gripped it and flung it over my bike and over me. It was a mess. Adding the obvious speed advantage of road bikes, I came away from this trip with some serious bike envy. :)

Despite the rain, I rode 36.9 miles (59 kilometers) that day, my longest ride to date. Unfortunately, it seems my GPS reciever, a Garmin eTrex Legend, was not as water-resistant as I thought. Ever since I changed its batteries on Monday, it hasn't been able to power on.

Tuesday's weather was back to nice for our St. Michael's Ferry Ride. We rode from Easton down to Oxford, where we caught the Oxford–Bellevue Ferry across the Tred Avon River. From there, we rode up to St. Michael's for lunch at the iconic Crab Claw Restaurant. I feasted on lump crabmeat cocktail and steamed oysters. I was surprised to see "Chesapeake Bay Oysters" on the menu in a non-"R" month, but they turned out to be decent-sized and tasty. From the large second-floor window we had a view of, among other things, the Schooner Sultana, the same vessel in which elwing2000, her husband, and I sailed across the bay last May.

Some of the other bicyclists pedaled back to Easton after lunch, but my legs were exhausted by the 33.5 miles (54 kilometers) before lunch. I poked about St. Michael's a little, enjoying an ice cream cone and a stop inside the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum's gift shop. Alas, I didn't have time to re-visit the museum itself before it was time to hop on the sag wagon for a lift back to Easton.

Wednesday morning's 20.7-mile (33-kilometer) ride took us north of Easton, by a historic Little Red Schoolhouse. One thing on this ride that piqued our curiosity, amidst the open farmland, was an incongruously long, high, opaque fence along a property on one side of Old Cordova Road. Research farm? Nudist colony?

After Wednesday morning's ride, we packed up, checked out of the inn, gathered for lunch, and said our goodbyes. I really enjoyed the support of our guides and fellow riders, and I would certainly consider signing up for another, similar-level cycling tour the next time I have some spare vacation time. Here are all of my photos from the cycling tour.

Today I participated for the first time in Bike-to-Work Day. I joined about a dozen other members of my workplace's bicycling club for the 5.5-mile (9-kilometer) ride to work. As recently as yesterday I wasn't sure I would do it, what with the chance of rain and the steep hills to climb and the car traffic and the logistics of showering and changing at work (when I hadn't prepared by keeping anything like a towel or clothes at work). Maybe it was my feeling of a need to keep this cycling momentum going, or maybe it was knowing that I'd have two of my closer co-workers riding with me, but I went for it, and I'm proud I did. That said, I don't think I'll be biking to work on a regular basis, between the scary drivers around here, strenuousness of the hills between me and work, and inability to carry my laptop on my bike without investing in panniers and a sturdier rear rack. I think I'll stick to riding recreationally on trails and back roads.

quick opinion check

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 17:51:06 GMT

View Poll: Japan photo

favored spirits

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 18:44:32 GMT

Mostly for my own future buying reference, here are three alcoholic beverages I've discovered over the past several months that I like:

Kim Crawford Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc
sparkling wine with Chambord liqueur mixed in
apple lambic

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 00:35:08 GMT

This weekend, I spent eleven hours in meetings. Perhaps agreeing to be on the board of directors of both HacDC and Chado Urasenke Tankokai Washington DC Association this coming year was not so smart an idea. I am feeling overwhelmed. It's not so much the meetings themselves that overwhelm me—neither group holds organizational meetings very often—as it is the responsibilities I've accepted. It's making me worry whether I'll have time to do things like read a book, take a walk, or plant a flower. I can only hope I'll look back on this entry as an anomaly, a time when things just happened to pile up, rather than a sign of things to come.

comparative graphic design

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 01:16:28 GMT

When I saw this poster for Dorkbot Austin (left below), I was struck by the ways it does—and does not—remind me of the LinuxChix logo (right below).

(Artist credit: Joey Lopez for the Dorkbot flyer; Colin Adams for the LinuxChix logo, which is licensed for use under the CC Attribution Share-alike license)

Fritz

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 16:29:10 GMT

I've just heard that our longtime family pet Fritz (my parents' since I left home) has died. When he found us—maybe eighteen years ago?—he wasn't quite full-grown, but he was friendly, and he amazed us with his tolerance for riding in cars. There's so much more I could write, but I'm overwhelmed by sadness right now, so I'll just say that we loved him a lot. And we'll miss him a lot.

Spa World

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 17:35:12 GMT

I spent a relaxing New Year's Day with some friends at Spa World, a fancy but not expensive Korean-style sauna and bathhouse. Those of us who hadn't been there before—myself included—felt some anxiety about the mandatory nudity in the gender-segregated sauna part of the facility. Hanging out naked with our same-gender friends (or family, or strangers for that matter) has not been part of our range of experience. For an American, it's easy to get the message from society that an "imperfect" body should be covered up, not only in public but also in private. Seeing people blissfully ignorant of that message is refreshing. You probably won't be surprised to read that I found the actual experience comfortable and not difficult to get used to.

The "naked area" there isn't just the saunas (steam and dry) but a bade pool, hot and cool tubs, a "sunflower shower", a heat-radiating stone relaxation area, and a corner where you can get an exfoliating scrub. We spent a good while there before returning to the locker room to don our issued loungewear and head to the main, gender-integrated rest area where families were spread out on the heated floor. We got some refreshments from the juice bar before heading into the poultice rooms, which felt a little redundant to me since I'd already used the saunas in the other part of the facility and was skeptical of the therapeutic benefits attributed to the hot, mineral-lined poultice rooms. I tried out most of them, but after a while I'd had enough heat; I did enjoy the one cold poultice room. The place was quite busy yesterday, so I didn't get a chance to have a massage. Between the facility's restaurant, sleeping areas, 24-hour access, and free wi-fi, I could envision coming at a less-crowded time, perhaps with a book, and making an even more leisurely day of it.

to-do list for 2009

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 23:02:09 GMT

see The Presets live at least once (scheduled for 1 April)
achieve a healthy weight
learn more about micro-controllers at HacDC
make something special for my friends who are getting married in April
go bicycling on the eastern shore with elwing2000
attend Space Mission Challenges for Information Technology in July
dedicate a weekend's time and effort to an entry in the ICFP programming contest
visit Japan (scheduled for October, a group trip similar to the one I took in May 2007)
figure out where to live
finish putting together the archery karakuri ningyō and read Loving the Machine: The Art and Science of Japanese Robots so I'm marginally qualified to give a talk on karakuri at Dorkbot DC
make a satellite contact with my amateur radio gear
go on a (beginner-level) kayaking outing with the Chesapeake Paddlers Association

out of curiosity

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 01:38:12 GMT

Dear Lazyweb,

What are mapping sites' estimates of the drive time between two points based on? I'm talking about when you go to Google Maps or Mapquest to get directions, and it gives you an estimate of how long the drive will take. I'm curious as to where those estimates come from. Speed limit data? Actual measurements of vehicle speeds at particular parts along the roadways? (In which case, how do wait times at traffic signals get factored in?) Actual measurements of vehicle travel times between sets of points?

a consumer electronics question

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 01:09:36 GMT

I'm asking this because I'm using up my new G1's battery much faster than I used my old cell phone's battery, which makes sense because I'm using the G1 almost like I would a netbook:

View Poll: electronics chargers

Oahu trip recap

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 05:37:03 GMT

First, here are my photos from the trip.

I arrived in Honolulu on Friday the 7th, in the late afternoon, so there wasn't time to do much besides get settled in. jmsa and I picked up barawn from the University, and we went out to eat at Maguro, a decent Japanese restaurant featuring teishoku and very closely spaced tables.

On Saturday the adventures began with renting sit-on-top kayaks at Kailua Beach, which it turns out is famous for windsurfing and kiteboarding, thanks to the strong, steady winds. This does not make it an ideal kayaking location, as we found. I got a single kayak; jmsa and barawn shared a tandem. It may be for the best that no cameras were brought along to capture the epic struggle/comedy that was launching, not to mention paddling upwind. It was the most difficult paddling I'd ever undertaken, and it didn't help that my rented paddle was feathered in a way that didn't seem to be adjustable. We'd brought plenty of drinking water with us, but we didn't drink even a sip of it while out on the water, so rough was the paddling. jmsa was pretty uneasy about the experience, so we turned back after about fifteen minutes; I don't know how much longer I could have kept it up myself. Back on dry land, we grabbed lunch nearby and took it to Lanikai Beach to eat it and stroll.

We stopped at notoriously windy Nu`uanu Pali Lookout to enjoy the vista and take some pictures. Most visitors there don't seem to realize that if they turn right, they can walk along a quiet (and not windy!) trail that used to be Pali Highway, now overgrown with flora. barawn happens to know that there are some guava trees along the trail, so in the course of our walking the trail, he ~~attacked~~ gently commoved some branches, producing several nice guava fruit. Back at their place, we enjoyed the fresh snack. I couldn't restrain my impulse to bite down on the many hard seeds, though; if you find yourself with some fresh guava, my recommendation is to use a juicer or strainer to separate the seeds from the juice and pulp.

That evening, we got "plate lunch" dinners at Rainbow Drive-In and ate them on Waikiki Beach. Eating two out of three meals on a beach—that's paradise! It was dark by this time, but that just meant we had the beach to ourselves as we chowed down on Hawaiian-style macaroni salad and—in my case—delicious mahi-mahi, listened to the breaking waves, and felt the warm ocean breeze. After eating we made our way along Kalakaua Avenue, taking in the street life and shops. This stretch of road boasts an absurd density of ABC Stores; they almost put Starbucks to shame on that front.

On Sunday, jmsa and I headed to Diamond Head Trail, only to find it was closed through the 20th for slope maintenance. So instead we checked out an arts and crafts fair we'd passed by on the way there. We saw a number of interesting craft booths, but for me the highlight of the fair was the chance to try andagi. Sātā andāgī! Sātā andāgī! Sātā andāgī! (Reference to Azumanga Daioh, the pertinent episode of which I just had to re-watch.)

Later in the afternoon, the three of us went to Chinatown, which wasn't nearly as lively as I imagine it is at other times and on other days of the week. We dined well at Little Village, and on the way home we stopped at the Ala Moana Center (a big shopping mall) so I could savor the Lupicia tea shop in person. I bought several different teas, among them a chestnut tea that's not in stock in their web store and one of their limited Hawaiian edition blends. Yay tea!

Monday: after a breakfast of haupia-filled malasadas, barawn headed off to work while jmsa and I headed to Hanauma Bay, a nature preserve that's also a very popular beach. Since I can't see much without my glasses, I stuck to the beach, but jmsa went snorkeling.

Next we drove northward along Oahu's southeastern coast, stopping at scenic lookouts along the way. At least one of them turned out to be a filming location from the TV series Lost. That's something I looked up later, and I found it'd almost be difficult not to happen to find yourself at one of that series' filming locations on a casual tour of that island.

It was a scenic drive. It's funny, you know that phrase, "I took the scenic route," that serves as a euphemism for, "I got lost"? In Hawaii, if you do get lost, it really is the scenic route! Which is not to say that we got lost. :)

On the way home, we picked up a manapua for jmsa and a shave ice for me. Then, grocery shopping at Don Quixote, "the Japanese Wal-Mart". How I wish they had a location near my home! Anticipating the next day's outing to the North Shore, we picked up some bottled tea and a package each of Oreo daifuku mochi and peanut butter daifuku mochi, forms of the traditional Japanese confection that had—like spam musubi—been fused with processed American staple foods to produce something charmingly Hawaiian. For my pantry at home I bought a matcha–potato soup mix (intriguing!), curry sauce mix, some fresh udon, a soba tray, sparkling sake and yuzu-flavored sake, and Kewpie mayonnaise.

That evening we dined at Tsukuneya Robata Grill, where everything was yummy; I'm a particularly ardent fan of their "misonnaise" tsukune. My mouth is watering at the memory of them. They were soooooo good!

On Tuesday morning, my last day in Hawaii, one of jmsa and barawn's cats caught a gecko. Apparently gecko-watching and -hunting is one of these cats' major pastimes, right up there with eating and sleeping. They're obsessed.

We drove up to the North Shore, stopping at Dole Plantation briefly on the way up. As is virtually required, we stopped at Matsumoto Shave Ice, too. From there we beach-hopped: Haleiwa Beach with its stand-up paddlers and shore critters, Waimea Beach with its crazy cliff-jumpers, and then Sharks Cove, where we settled down after grabbing a bite to eat at a grocery store and Sharks Cove Grill. Sharks Cove is a reef that was under particularly shallow water that day, so you could just walk around on the exposed rocks or wade through perhaps a foot of water to get an up-close view of a wide variety of marine life. The ride back on Kamehameha Highway along the northeast coast of Oahu was yet another scenic drive. We had some time for dinner before my return flight, so we bellied up to the bar at Izakayaka Nonbei, a well-regarded Kapahulu pub that didn't disappoint. I had simmered taro, fried oysters, and several snagged-from-barawn edamame, which I'm mildly—and pleasantly—surprised to find myself enjoying the more I try.

And then, all too soon, my vacation was over, and I returned to the chilly, wet, and dreary place I call home. :)

not-so-comfy shoes

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 00:56:20 GMT

Inspired by ravenblack's recommendation of Vibram FiveFingers footwear, I want to share my experience with another brand of crazy shoes. I'd walk barefoot almost everywhere if I could (and be socially acceptable and not get frostbite). And as much as I like my stompy-boots, I don't like how they keep my feet completely out-of-touch with the ground.

So I got a pair of green canvas Vivo Barefoot Odettes a few months ago. I was pretty excited about getting a pair of shoes engineered to be as close to barefootedness as possible. The first pair I got were too small, so I exchanged them for a larger size. Having acquired a pair that I think are the right size, I wore them around—rendering them unreturnable—and found that they were sheer torture. Not for the soles of my feet, which I didn't even notice, but for my Achilles tendon and the top of my foot, thanks to the chafing of the too-tight, too-firm upper. I modified the shoes by cutting out the elastic straps and adding a scrap of fleece to the back like so, but the upper edge of the shoes remains too tight for comfort. I wanted to like these shoes so much! They were an expensive disappointment.

Update: I've submitted the above review to Terra Plana's web site, where I bought the shoes, and got a message saying it would be reviewed by their webmaster before posting. Anyone want to place any bets on its (not) showing up there?

Weight Watching

Sat, 25 Oct 2008 23:00:49 GMT

I started the Weight Watchers At Work program (where the weekly in-person meetings happen at my workplace) this past Monday. They have two options, a Core Plan where you can only eat foods on a designated list of very healthy foods, and a Flex Plan where you keep track of the "points" values of the foods you eat and drink and keep it to a target level. (Apparently physical activity counts for negative points, but we won't hear about that until next week's meeting.) I'm going with the Flex Plan.

So far, it has been difficult. On the first day, I ran out of points before dinner, having discovered that one of my favorite lunches—Tandoor Chef's Paneer Tikka Masala with a piece of their Garlic Naan to mop up the yummy sauce—is hugely costly in terms of points. It's hard not to feel resentful about not being "allowed" to eat dinner.

I've become much, much more aware of the nutritional content of specific foods, to the point where I feel I've spent an enormous amount of mental energy obsessing over Weight Watchers points. When I went grocery shopping this week, I made different choices than the ones I usually make, for the first time optimizing for something other than taste alone. I think this is a good thing. I can only assume that I will spend less time calculating and obsessing as I get into the routine of the program and develop healthier "default" eating habits.

I wish it were easier to find the points values of a lot of different foods. I really don't want the difficulty of finding points values for uncommon foods that aren't packaged and labeled, or foods at non-chain restaurants, to push my eating habits away from homemade, ethnic, organic, and independent sources of food. I have no idea how many points to assign a bowl of matcha or the wagashi that accompanies it. When I went to Dino on Wednesday with a couple of friends to sample their mushroom tasting menu, I had to make wild guesses, the accuracy of which I'll never know. This lack of knowability bothers me.

I believe that following this program will result in my losing weight—I've already lost a few pounds over the past six days—but I wonder how long I'll be able to stick with it. I may well be able to change my eating and exercise habits, but I don't foresee changing my pique at the impossibility of calculating points values for foods I don't intend to give up.

omnibus update

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 05:26:54 GMT

Things I've been up to lately:

Organized a joint DC LinuxChix/HacDC gathering. It was purely social (but of course with geeks the social is technical). I think it went well. I had been apprehensive that a LinuxChix meeting advertised to the "outside world" could attract drooling fanboys or something, but that turns out not to have been the case at all.
Looking for a new car. My '97 Neon has been breaking down too often lately. So far I've test driven a Mazda 3 and a Honda Fit; also on my list to consider and test drive are a Scion xD, Toyota Yaris, and maybe a few others. If I don't trade in my old car, I don't know where I'll find the time to sell it.
A healthy dose of Japanese tea ceremony stuff, including classes, a kimono-dressing workshop, and a big tea ceremony event this Sunday. Although I won't be performing the ceremony per se this time, I'm planning to wear my new pale green kimono with the ivy that I've come to think of as my 死ぬまで ("until death") kimono based on the seller's description of its flexibility and presumably its quality. It sounds morbid, but that phrase stuck with me, if for no other reason than that I understood it among the stream of Japanese that I didn't. I found a beautiful tagasode-themed obi to go with it. The other day I finally picked up a high-compression sports bra to wear under all this (and further layers of underkimono), and I chuckled to think of the unlikelihood that the staff at the sporting goods store had any idea what my purchase was for.
I went to a Presets show at the 9:30 Club along with underfiend and his posse. It rocked. Technically it was a Cut Copy show, but I was tired enough from dancing to the Presets—and from the increasingly dense crowd—that I only stayed for one or two of Cut Copy's songs.
I got to play at least a peripheral role in MESSENGER's second flyby of Mercury in the mission control center. I don't really understand why the project feels the need to delay release of all of the images the spacecraft has captured in each flyby, meting them out sparingly instead of just making them public when they're on the ground.
Playing Akoha, "the world's first social reality game."
Watching movies including The Darjeeling Limited, Swimming Pool, Venus, In The Bedroom, The Family Stone, Cube, and Crash.
Making plans to visit jmsa in her island paradise around the middle of next month.
Went to a Dorkbot DC meeting and took pictures.

Autumn Tea Ceremony

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 14:07:57 GMT

You're invited to a tea ceremony event hosted by the Chado Urasenke Tankokai Washington DC Association:

Autumn Chakai
Sunday, 12 October 2008 at 1:00 p.m. (lasts about an hour)
Hillwood Museum & Gardens, 4155 Linnean Avenue NW, Washington, DC
If you'd like to come, just let me know—you'll be my guest. (While it's open to the public, space is limited.)

By way of explanation, a chakai is a relatively informal tea ceremony event where guests are served a small sweet and a bowl of matcha. For this event we'll probably have someone explaining what's going on, and guests can choose whether to sit seiza(-ish) on the tatami or to sit on a chair outside the tatami area. I won't be hosting the ceremony per se—my role will be mostly behind the scenes, but we'd get a chance to chat before and after the tea ceremony part. There will probably be at least fifteen to twenty other guests, I'd expect, so while it won't be an intimate tea ceremony experience, you definitely wouldn't have cause for anxiety about not knowing exact points of etiquette, which our guests generally aren't assumed to know anyway. A chakai is a fun, social, educational kind of event that doesn't require a whole afternoon, and you could bring a friend and wander Hillwood's lovely gardens too.

ennui

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 00:47:38 GMT

I'm in a funk.

I had been thinking of vacationing in Japan at the end of this year, partially with aitai, but it's proving to be a difficult time of year to visit if you aren't staying at someone's home, with businesses either closed or charging extra and transport crowded with people traveling to and from their hometowns. It could be a blast—at the very least it would give me something to do over New Year's, when I tend to feel especially lonely. But the practical side of me is leery of spending all my vacation days at work and money that I could otherwise spend on, say, a car to replace my increasingly-failing one. I just don't know, and I'm having a hard time deciding one way or the other.

Work is okay. I've been attending to things like this flight software upgrade and working predictable but erratic hours. (I'm not sure if I'll be able to make it to the Renaissance Festival this year if I don't want to go alone.) I'll be working at least one shift in support of MESSENGER's upcoming second Mercury flyby. One of my co-workers just had a baby, and I made this space-themed baby quilt for her.

Aside from tea ceremony classes, I'm not taking any sort of classes these days; perhaps that's contributing to or a result of my ennui. I would certainly benefit from more physical activity, if I could just commit to something.

The once-regular movie nights with friends are getting less and less frequent, and living out here in the suburbs feels somewhat isolated. I'd be hard-pressed to give up the thirteen-minute commute, but it would be nice if I could walk to a corner store or a bar or restaurant, catch the Metro without a significant drive, and be closer to a vibrant street and cultural life.

I'm not sure how to get out of this funk. Something about my life needs to change. Probably multiple things do. Where I'll get the energy or confidence to figure it out, I don't know.

what I've been listening to lately

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 20:22:40 GMT

I just found The Moth—a not-for-profit storytelling organization along the lines of SpeakeasyDC—and its associated podcast, and I've been gobbling up available episodes like a kid with a tub of Cool Whip.

I've also been listening to audio from talks at The Last HOPE that I missed in person last month. I have many yet to hear, so this is not a complete list, but here are a few of the talks I thought were particularly interesting and useful:

Packing the Friendly Skies - Why Transporting Firearms May Be the Best Way to Safeguard Your Tech When You Fly [slides]

After a particularly horrible episode of airport theft, Deviant made the decision to never again travel by air with unlocked luggage. Because of this he now flies with firearms all the time. Federal law allows (in fact, it requires) passengers to lock firearm-bearing luggage with non-TSA-approved padlocks and does not permit any airport staffer to open such bags once they have left the owner's possession. In this talk, you will learn the relevant laws and policies concerning travel with weapons. It's easier than you think, often adds little to no extra time to your schedule (indeed, it can expedite the check-in process sometimes), and may actually be the best way to prevent tampering and theft of bags during air travel.

A Hacker's View of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)

As part of his book on the history of phone phreaking, Phil submitted hundreds of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to various three-letter government agencies. In this talk he will give an overview of how FOIA works, describe the type of documents you can get via FOIA, and discuss some of the typical FOIA stumbling blocks and workarounds to them. He will then focus on FOIA from a "hacker's perspective" and will examine the recent launch of several FOIA/hacker related websites such as GetGrandpasFBIFile.Com, GetMyFBIFile.Com., TvShowComplaints.Org, UnsecureFlight.Com, WhatDoTheyKnow.Com, and GovernmentAttic.Com.

Home is Where the Heart Is? The Question of Jurisdiction

A presentation on the subject of corporate legal jurisdictions and related topics. While this sounds boring on the surface, it's actually not - and is more and more relevant every year for those in the tech game. As physical human beings, we do in fact have a "home jurisdiction" in the legal sense, which is wherever we are living at present. However, corporations are also "people" in the legal sense but have a flexibility of where they call home. This ties into areas of international legal issues, corporate governance, privacy of company information, financial systems/banking, personal versus corporate liability, and so on. Basically, for anyone from a coder who wants "a company" to bill his clients through, all the way up to major tech projects that span multiple jurisdictions in a sophisticated way, few of us who play the tech game are not directly impacted by the question of where a company lives, where it calls home.

Who knew law could be so interesting?

the sound of aerogel

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 15:32:15 GMT

For any of you samplers out there, here's something potentially interesting: a recording I made (3.1 MB flac format, 49 sec) of the sound of a chunk of silica aerogel clattering and bouncing on a hard surface after being dropped from a few inches' height, repeatedly. Weird, eh? Feel free to use it according to the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License. I'd love to hear about any uses you make of it.

seen at a fair last weekend

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 21:32:15 GMT

snoozin' goats
Originally uploaded by MissionControl.

any Neal Stephenson / historical fiction fans?

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 19:16:51 GMT

Anyone interested in a free hardback copy of Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson (the first book in his series The Baroque Cycle)? I'm trying to pare down my bookshelves, and although I'm hoping to expend minimal effort—the recycle bin would be a last resort, but I don't care about getting any money for them—I thought this one in particular might be desirable to some of my friends.

Update: Taken!

quack

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 22:57:22 GMT

resident duck
Originally uploaded by MissionControl.

Quack.

That is all.

for DC/MD/VA-area peeps

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:36:22 GMT

Looks like I'm going to have some free time next Sunday, 3 August.

Weather permitting, are any of you interested in getting together to visit the Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens (where I expect the lotus will be in bloom, as in the photo) or perhaps Hillwood Estate, Museum, and Gardens?

The Last HOPE

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 23:50:52 GMT

I took the train up to New York City to attend The Last HOPE this past weekend. It was a smooth, comfortable ride to Penn Station, right across the street from the hotel where I shared a room with a couple other HacDC folks. One thing I did not do was spent much time at the hackersmart run by HacDC; when there's so much exciting stuff going on—and I've paid good money to participate—it just didn't seem like a good use of my time to try to sell vintage linesman's handsets to random passersby.

My preparations for this trip: instead of making a point to leave behind my pocket knife and any liquids of greater than three ounces as I would on a plane trip, I strategically removed any RFID tags and read up on using a SOCKS proxy to foil eavesdropping on my websurfing traffic. (I even filed a bug on that topic as I was testing it out.) I arrived too late on Thursday to register that evening, so after getting a bite to eat at Tic Toc Diner and trying unsuccessfully to use wifi from my hotel room (dozens of wifi networks were visible, but I couldn't successfully connect to any of them), I hit the sack.

On Friday morning I sat in the back of a few talks and realized I'd need to be more aggressive in beating the hordes of fellow attendees to decent seats. I think I can now appreciate why the ShmooCon organizers insist on capping the number of registrations. I did spend some time hanging out with other HacDC people, pretty much all of whom were more dedicated in their running of the hackersmart than I was. On Friday afternoon I attended The Attendee Meta-Data Project where we learned what would be done with the data collected from the RFID tags many of us chose to wear. amd.hope.net may be (back) up in the near future with more information on that. The team managed to barely scratch the surface of applications for that system, and I'm happy that they're being so open with the platform and the (non-personal-information) data collected on it. I hope they open up some public discussion area on it.

Next I attended Monumental Women Who Influenced Today's Technology. I found it rather disappointing because of the speaker's encyclopedic style of reciting names, dates, and facts supplemented by bullet-point-filled slides. Ugh. Weirder was that the second half of her talk was about "Women of the Phone", which profiled some voice actresses who were "famous" for being the voice of the date/time announcement or the voice menu on your provider's voicemail system. To me, these profiles just didn't make sense in a discussion of technical women. During the question-and-answer period, some audience members enlivened the hour with questions and comments about women in the IT sector today. I was surprised that the speaker hadn't even read Unlocking the Clubhouse, and I suspect the hour would have been more enlightening if it had been entirely based on audience participation.

After a short nap (yay for staying at the con hotel despite its dinginess), I went to Hacker Space Design Patterns and then A Collaborative Approach to Hardware Hacking: NYCResistor. The latter was an awesome panel talk that made me excited about HacDC and likely to hang out there more in the near future, in the hopes that HacDC can be half as cool as NYCResistor. I wandered back down to the hackersmart, picked up my spiffy black HacDC lab coat, and caught up with Andrew and friends for dinner at Soul Fixins'. On our way back, we randomly passed an historical plaque marking the place where Nikola Tesla died and picked up an impressively-constructed fake television sporting "Yo! MTV Raps!" on the screen. The latter was set out in the trash on the sidewalk, the volume of which piled up every evening was impressive, but not in a good way. I intended to check out digital music night, but I was feeling sleepy again—I should've tried a bottle of the Club-Mate they were selling.

On Saturday morning, I started out with Technical Surveillance Countermeasures (TSCM)-A Brief Primer on the Arcane Art and Science of Electronics Surveillance and Bug Detection by Marty Kaiser, the kind of old character who could tell you all kinds of fascinating stories from his life if you sit down to listen. I learned more about FBI politics than about surveillance countermeasures (which are apparently quite expensive), but it was a worthwhile talk. Next up was "Off the Grid" Voice/Data Communications, sort of an overview of two-way radio technologies. Incidentally, amateur radio is a sizable presence at HOPE, with a special event station on the air and all levels of license exams being offered. In such a privacy-conscious crowd, I'm surprised I've never heard any grumblings about the fact that getting an amateur radio license (in the US, anyway) means having your name and address added to a public domain database run by the FCC.

I sat in on some of the Debian OpenSSL Debacle talk, but I failed at getting a decent seat, so I couldn't really see the slides or follow the discussion. I left to wander the neighborhood for lunch. When I returned, I was determined to get a better seat at the next talk I wanted to attend, so in order to get a good seat for the Port Knocking and Single Packet Authorization talk, I showed up to the panel on Reprimand, an e-zine of which I'd never heard. It wasn't bad, but I wasn't really engaged with it. By the time the talk I'd really come for rolled around, I was feeling like—guess what!—taking a nap. If I felt the need for so much sleep on a regular basis I might be alarmed, but I suspect I was feeling exhausted by the sheer crush of people. I ended up sleeping through elwing2000's talk (sorry!). I felt pretty refreshed, though, for the dinner at Ninja I'd organized with a bunch of friends, including but not limited to elwing2000, princessleia2, and sfllaw. Sorry we missed you, searchingbuddha and secretsoflife! We had our own private ~~dungeon~~ dining room with ninja waiters and all. Okay, maybe they weren't real ninjas. The lighting was too dim for my camera (at least without the flash that I think makes most photos look awful), so I'm hoping to see some of the shots from those of us with snazzier cameras. I had a flight of Hanzo sakes, Clam Bombshells, a negitoro roll, and sashimi perched over a bowl of mist. Oh, and part of a "Ninja Star" for dessert, but I won't spoil the surprise by telling you what it is. :) I agreed with the consensus that the food wasn't great—this place is more about flash than about awesome food. The visit by a magician to our table toward the end of dinner underscored that point. It was entertaining, and I'm glad I went, but I wouldn't make any particular effort to return. Afterward we wandered TriBeCa, eventually settling down in Cowgirl and inadvertently crashing a birthday party. Wacky western fun ensued. :)

On Sunday, I wasn't sure whether to regret the few drinks at Cowgirl or the clams at Ninja (almost everyone had sushi too, so that's not high on my suspect list), but my stomach protested violently. We scrambled to check out even as I asked myself whether I should be giving up the only well air-conditioned place I could lay down and recover in proximity to a restroom. Everyone else had checked out of their rooms, too, yet the festivities wouldn't end until 7 p.m. or later. Resting on the floor of the anteroom to the ladies' restroom will not go on record as a high point in my life, but I felt much less queasy when I got up and caught the second half of Johnny Long's No-Tech Hacking talk. He walks a thin line between profiling and stereotyping in some of his "hacking", and it's inevitably based on the assumption that he's the only dissembler in a given situation. It irks me to see cases of social profiling that are smugly presented as successful without any evidence of their accuracy. That said, much of his work is solid.

I also caught the Attendee Meta-Data and Network summary parts of the closing ceremonies. I left early to enjoy my first real food of the day, a shepherd's pie, over at Stout before catching the train home.