2016-08-16

13:00

Assess string LED lights and the big fur coat.

14:00

Start attaching LEDs to big fur coat.

18:00

Wiring LEDs is done. Now eating some dinner (curry and rice Yizhen made me, some spinach Yizhen bought for me, and some chicken I made from Derek’s super old frozen chicken stock) and figuring out what I’m going to do for a controller. I’ll probably make another FLORA control board with potentiometers for brightness and speed and a button to switch modes, and a microphone.

Later

Write blog entry: Sound reactive fur coat

2016-08-17

I woke up quite late. I did some organizing and computer work, and had a conversation with my grade school friend Emily about her brother, who has apparently been struggling with addiction, as I learned from Ben. She was in pretty good spirits, but the situation doesn’t seem like it’s turning around any time soon. We also talked about the role of Facebook in keeping us connected and how bad I am at reaching out to people who aren’t immediately around me.

I got absorbed into a creepy Instagram project when I realized the phone app lets you find accounts based on your contacts. I’ve accumulated many phone numbers over the years, and thanks to the Instagram app, I’ve discovered many of their full names, many of which were different than they told me, if they even told me at all. It was also interesting to see all these photos of many people who wouldn’t even send me photos when we first talked.

I also made a contribution to a scraper Python app for that social network. I spend some time integrating it into my workflows and got a cronjob set up to make use of it. While I was at it, I researched and fixed an issue with my scheduled tasks that were supposed to sync my audiobooks to my remote server. It hadn’t been working because cron doesn’t normally interface with ssh-agent, which holds the password for my SSH key. I got a solution working by installing Keychain with Homebrew and adding a line to my cronjobs.

I went to bed quite late, after 5 a.m. I blame Instagram and my compulsion to find new music ahead of Burning Man.

2016-08-18

10:25

Got up to doorbell ringing. Yizhen was on a call. It was the mailman, who apologized as always for ringing the bell so much. He gave me a few small packages for me, and a large and small one for the neighbors. I put those by their door in the garage. Right foot was still bruised feeling, so I decided not to run today. I was quite tired, but stayed up, and felt better after a couple of hours.

I went to the post office to mail overnight something my landlord left at the house, apparently unintentionally, though he said he looked for it yet it was the only thing on the dining room table…

I tested a new brand of ADHD medication, and it seems to work, unlike the other new brand that didn’t work at all.

I worked on my website for about six hours: * I created a “collections” blog so I could more easily post little things that I didn’t want to make full entries in this blog. At first I thought it would contain categories for different types of content, like quotes and excerpts from books. But in my typical fashion, I agonized over the ideal categorization and where to draw the line between a quote that might be from a speech or book, and quotes that apparently are just something someone said. I couldn’t convince myself there was a good way to separate them, so I just made a single category: quotes. * I modified the JavaScript file to put a hash value when the “Oldest First” or “Newest First” links are clicked and allow for me to give out a link with the hash tag and have it automatically show the oldest content first, if that’s appropriate. Generally newest first is what I want, but I find for certain categories, like the travel destination ones, it works better to see the oldest content first because it’s kind of like a story. I thought about hard coding certain categories to behave differently, but I figured that would be too confusing, and having the option to change it is helpful anyway.

19:00

I’m getting a bit tired, but don’t feel satisfied I accomplished much all day. I’m planning to bike to Alan’s tonight and bring Marco Polo so we can start the sixth or seventh episode. He wanted to go to Castro and look at a Donald Trump statue he heard about on the news, but now he has dinner plans, so we might do that another time. I’m hoping to go to SF City Clinic in the morning so I can get my results before leaving for Burning Man, and perhaps I’ll also sneak in a haircut tomorrow at Nice Cuts in the Castro. Hopefully I don’t accidentally see the Trump thing without Alan, though…

I’d like to wrap up my notes on the vulnerability lectures I started two months ago. I’m not sure I’m in the mood right now though. I guess I’ll finish eating all this random food I’ve been snacking on since my pizza had apparently gone bad. The strawberries aren’t totally bad, but still they’ve made me room smell of moldy strawberries.