Lee.org

For the new job.

I’ll be back Monday.

Phew!

Ok, this is an unusually frank post. The title pretty much speaks for itself. Put the word out. Ask that dear friend of yours if you think we might get along nicely. Don’t be shy, life is short!

Without any help from Steve Jobs I downgraded my phone from the stupidly slow IOS 4.0.1. It is SOOOOOOOO much faster.

Thank you Lifehacker! Downgrade your phone here.

Previously, and.

This is exactly what IOS4 did to my 3G iPhone, no exaggeration.

local version:

I called Apple again today to try and resolve this problem. I was on hold for 13 minutes. “Ryan” came on and the call quality immediately went to crap. The call failed after a few seconds. I’ll call back later after my phone rage has subsided.

It is rage because I got this phone because it “just works”. But last week Steve Jobs broke my phone and the best answer I’ve gotten so far is “Well, it was an optional update so we won’t support it.” (yes, exact words). Me along with a million other people got your fucking^W update. I paid to live in a walled garden and now the gardeners are telling me in no unambiguous terms that it is their right to burn down the garden and make me buy another one. The evil Droid phone is starting to look pretty good.

I’m on my way back from Oregon. It was so beautiful that I couldn’t stop taking pictures. I must have taken 160,000 pictures or so with my new 12 megapixel camera rig! Yes, really!

Or… Hey, check out my new portable panopticon! Every 10 meters it automatically snaps a 360 degree panorama image that gets stitched into a 36 megapixel 3d image!

I’m on my first business trip. Brent and I are driving to Oregon right now to take 20,000 160,000 pictures of some roads. Back in SF on Friday.

Then off to Paris Aug 9-13!

Then off to Malaysia Aug 16-20!!

I got an email Saturday 9am on Dorkbot saying that SRL is going to have a few machines at some River Town Revival thing in Petaluma. I grabbed my things and went right up there.

Coolness abounded.
* I missed the art-boat race but saw some nice vehicles: a sea monster thing, a hand-made row boat, a giant floating wicker basket.
* Saw an artist’s terrific rusted mini submarine
* “Experience the Black Hole” had this spiraling water flowing into a hole. I threw in a donation for it
Here is the view from the top of the Experience the Black Hole. :-)

Yes, that’s the Big Arm and Running Machine by SRL attacking a big glass sign with face shots of elderly people doing errr…. umm… things; suffice to say that the photos appear benign. Later the machines attacked a giant chicken; when the running machine choked the chicken mercilessly, everyone laughed and didn’t tell their children why.

I met up with Noah, a great student of mine from Crucible Youth Kinetics. And Jessie, Erik, and Trebor (who got me the happiest beer of the day!) We all went off to a great dinner in Petaluma.

A great day :-)

I just left voicemail on the BART comment and complaint line  510 464-7134:

Just north of the west Oakland Bart station there is some sidewalk construction going on. Pedestrians are blocked by a fence from crossing Center street. To avoid the fence pedestrians must walk east or west a very long block. Understandably, pedestrians instead choose to break down the fence and walk across the construction zone. It would be easy for Bart to make a safe crossing zone in a nearby area instead of allowing this unsafe crossing.

Please create a safe way to cross this construction zone.

We’ll see if the problem is fixed anytime soon.

This looks like it’ll be pretty nice. I’ve been watching them practice. Singers and dancers and flame throwers and contortionists and smithing oh my!

It’s going to be this Friday and Saturday at the Crucible in Oakland.

Bring a date!
http://www.thecrucible.org/events/heat-a-fire-cabaret