My laptop suddenly stopped working, throwing me into panic - what if it’s a problem with the motherboard, the same problem that killed my last laptop?

It turned out to be the power adapter, fairly easily remedied, but it got me thinking about backups.

I realized I actually don’t have a lot to backup. All of my important work stuff is already under version control, available from another server. Losing my pictures would suck, but the majority of the ones I like I’ve already put on Flickr.

My email is already on gmail and Yahoo mail, as are my contacts and calendar. My personal documents are mostly on Google docs, and the others are available from various servers here and there.

Just about everything I do is already in the cloud. Which makes it very nice - practically speaking, if I had to rebuild my working environment the majority of the effort would go into setting up the various development tools instead of recovering things from backup.

Quite nice, and quite different from 5 years ago.

Is it me or does Palin struggle to say “nookiller” instead of nuclear? It seems like she knows the correct pronunciation but goes out of her way to say it incorrectly. Some sort of Bushism or republicanism maybe?

Actually it’d be interesting to draw party lines along pronunciation. I say potato, you say potAto.

Here’s a lazyweb question for you: what’s the best way to convert my flickr photo stream into facebook albums on an automated, continual basis? I much prefer dealing with flickr than facebook for photos, but many of my lazy friends are on facebook, keep asking for photos, but are apparently unable to click over to flickr or subscribe to the RSS feed.

There should be an easy way to have my photos automagically show up in facebook, right? I tried the top 2 flickr apps in facebook but they don’t seem to do this.

As you may know those Apple ads annoy the crap out of me. And I actually like the new Windows ad:

And just to stay with my general Apple disdain, do you have any idea just how closed and crappy the iPhone development process is?

How exactly did the linux crowd turn into Apple fanboys? 

How’s this for a productivity tip: leave your power cord at home. I’m in this situation now, and I’ll tell ya, it does bring a razor sharp focus to what you need to be doing with those precious few minutes you have of computer time.

(Of course if I was being really productive I’d be working instead of posting this)

I’m surprised to find I use Chrome pretty regularly already. It’s mostly my interface to Gmail, Google Reader, and GCal, and sits quietly in the task bar until I need to check email. Lack of firebug and various other extensions prevent me from using it for everything, but it’s part of the regular line-up of apps.

The Chrome download was surprisingly fast (as in, less than 5 seconds). FireFox options import during install didn’t work, but it’s been smooth sailing since then. It’s snappy and so far not buggy. Aesthetics of rendering web pages is good, seems better than FireFox. Quite fast too.

I remember thinking the Konqueror guys were crazy for writing yet another HTML renedering engine. That turned into WebKit, and now it’s in Safari, the iPhone, and Chrome. Amazing.

Interesting that Google’s Chrome is based on WebKit instead of the Mozilla rendering engine…

What I know about the innards automobiles I learned from a book on Wankel engines when I was 8. So when my “check engine” light turned on I knew I’d be in for a severe siphoning of money out of my pocket.

Buoyed by my strong sense of miserliness, however, I decided to take a stand and brave the world mechanical. And I’m proud to say I managed to change a broken O2 sensor on my Honda Accord without having to visit a mechanic (or, to be more accurate, watched as my dad changed it, but hey, I was there).

Here’s the key trick: all cars built since 1996 have a standard system called OBD-II (On-Board Diagnostics) that monitors much of your car and its health and reports standard codes for any mis-behaving components. There are code readers available from your favorite retailer (here’s one from Amazon for $62) or to borrow from certain auto repair shops.

Connecting the reader to car is generally easy (it was simply a matter of attaching it to the connector under the steering wheel in the Honda) and you can find explanations for the codes online.

Armed with information about what exactly is wrong with your car you can have a much more … productive conversation with your mechanic.

Or, you can fix it yourself, as we did. Changing the O2 sensor turned out to be surprisingly simple, and not only did I save myself about $300, I also feel extremely proud of myself. I think this is my crowning achievement of 2008. Handy, I am.

Image courtesy of MadMan the Mighty.

I frequently run into pages with loads of images (here’s one via Kedrosky, here’s another, and here’s yet another). Viewing these images involves a dance of scrolling or hitting space, then scrolling again to get the image lined up in the viewable part of the browser, and repeating over and over again.

The better user experience would be to have Google Reader style hotkeys that bring each picture into view, lining it up properly for easy viewing. You’d be able to hit “j” after viewing each picture to see the next. No more messing with the scrollbars.

I’m guessing a greasemonkey script to enable this with any page would be pretty straight forward to do. Anybody know if it already exists? If not, someone should do it.

Several friends have been at work on several startups and are looking for technology leaders to round out their teams. One opportunity is in the social network / eduction space and is looking for the VP Technology / CTO as well as good web/php guys. Another is more hardware related. Both are very viable early stage companies in San Diego. If you have interest or know of people who might let me know - darugar at gmail .

MI5 report on terrorist profiling, via Schneier. The short version: it is very difficult to come up with a valid profile.

Wife is in Florida with the youngest kid, and the other two spent most of the weekend at my parents’, giving me a chance to engage in plenty of bad habits. Mostly work and sleep.

It’s an amazing feeling to wake up after more than 8 hours of sleep. Really quite fantastic. It’s obvious with the kids - if they don’t get enough sleep they’re cranky and lethargic. The same is at work with adults, we’re just better able to mask it.

Anyway: sleep. I highly recommend it.

This is just incredible. The effects are amazing, but I’m guessing the models and tools behind what they do are going to fundamentally change the way we use video. Apparently these guys are divining a pretty good depth and color projection map from videos and photographs. With that you’ve added entirely new dimensions to the readily available information conveyed by video, opening the door to a huge range of effects and enhancements. Looking forward to seeing more of this.

Via Guy Kawasaki, a story on “persuasiveness” at work in Turkey.

I had several similar experiences in Istanbul, such as when our cab driver “persuaded” us to visit some place over the bridge, costing us a substantial amount of money and more importantly causing us to miss other sites we really wanted to see.

In fact there was a lot of persuasiveness all around. If you’re a tourist in Istanbul prepare to have the locals persuade the hell out of you as they relieve you of your money.

It can be pretty extreme - a friend of mine had his shoes held ransom as he visited a mosque (you have to take your shoes off before entering mosques).

These guys did end up getting our money, but the feeling they left us with is not an enjoyable one. I loved Istanbul, a beautiful city with beautiful, wonderful, warm people. But I hated the scam artists that would swarm around you like flies.

There’s a limit to useful persuasiveness. You can persuade someone to do something they don’t want to against their will, but you won’t do business with that person again.

I’m Jewish in the same way the Olive Garden is Italian.

From A.J. Jacobs’ Year of Living Biblically Ted talk. Pretty good talk.

I’m an unreasonably optimistic guy. Yet, after hearing nothing but doom and gloom about the economy all day today, even I’m beginning to think maybe I should hold off on investing in a new business, buying a new house, a new TV, or anything else that requires money.

If we keep saying we’re going into a recession we’ll push people into exactly the behaviors that cause a recession.

I couple of years ago I wrote about Taste Vectors, did a bit of hacking, and not much else.

The Strands folks have launched a similar concept in OpenTaste. Worth a look, will write more if I get a chance.

Via Duke Listens!

My brother-in-law bought Arabian Nights (aka 1001 nights) to read to his 2 year old daughter, thinking they’d be nice, quaint stories. He thought better of it and gave it to me, so I gave it a quick read.

You probably know the general story: there’s a cruel king that marries a woman each day and kills her the next, until one special girl enchants him with 1001 stories so intriguing that he can’t bear to kill her.

Well, here’s the start of the whole story, explaining why the king is so cruel:

Two brothers rule two kingdoms. One invites the other to come over for a visit. Shortly after the visiting brother leaves his palace, he misses his wife so much he decides to go back and give her a final kiss. On returning he finds his wife and her court having far too good a time with their male slaves.

Devastated, he kills the wife and leaves to visit his brother.

He’s happy to see the brother, but is so distraught over his wife he’s not much of a sport. He decides to skip the hunting party and stay at the palace.

The brother’s wife, thinking the men are away, throws a party of her own, and proceeds to similarly get down with the slaves. The visiting brother accidentally witnesses this and eventually tells his brother, who promptly strangles the wife.

The two brothers are so distraught they decide to leave their kingdoms and not return until they find someone more miserable than themselves.

As they’re about to make camp in the wilderness they see a giant genie (a nasty, gnarly one, not a cute one like the movies) emerge out of the lake. They quickly hide in a tree.

The genie comes over to the tree, produces a locked chest out of which he brings out a woman, and decides to take a nap while resting his head in her lap.

As the genie sleeps, the woman spies the men in the tree and orders them down. At first they refuse, but she threatens to wake the genie, so down they head.

She produces a string with 98 rings attached, and explains there’s a ring for each man she’s had a chance to party with since the genie has held her captive, and that she wants to make it an even 100.

The brothers, convinced that the genie is indeed more miserable than them, return to their kingdoms, and one of them takes up the lovely habit of marrying a virgin each day and killing her the next, since, clearly, womens can’t be trusted.

Now with a start like that, how can you not read the rest? Enchanting stories indeed.

Photo by PrincessAshley.

I just cancelled my Verizon broadband account, mainly because the card was no longer working in my PC and the mac doesn’t take PC cards. I was surprised at how little effort Verizon put in to keeping me; I’ve been paying the $80 per month for almost 2 years now, and they let me go without giving me much incentive to stay.

I’m hoping the new 3G iPhone will be able to act as a modem; I could possibly stomach paying the outrageous monthly fees if it replaces my extra broadband card. I’m pretty sure it’ll be able to, through legitimate or hacked means, shortly after release.

Anyway, I do need wireless broadband service, so I’m going to get a new card and service. If you have a card / cell phone / service you use let me know what you like and dislike about it.

Photo by joneser005.