Informality

Breakthroughs

Two things. (Revised)

1. Most days, I take the BART to work, which is the massive transit train that goes around the Bay Area. In San Francisco, the train travels as a subway. There are actually two subways in San Francisco, one on top of eachother, and BART is the lower level (meaning, there’s another tunnel above it, and then above that is street level). So it’s pretty deep underground. When you get off the platform, you can either take the escelator or the stairs. I try hard to take the stairs as often as possible. Usually involves my legs burning and some heavy breathing.Today, though, I noticed that it had all changed. No hard breathing. Very little soreness. It was like walking up a small hill. I guess all those squats have done some good.
2. The past two days have been the most stressful I’ve had in a very, very long time. Involving leases and lawyers, theft and ridiculousness. 3 months ago I would’ve spent the evening eating a burrito and a ton of chips and popcorn and a six pack. But, yesterday was different. All I wanted to do was go to the gym. So. Cool.

Oh!

Well, as obvious as it may be, this blog seems to have served its purpose for the time being. So! I suggest you visit me on Flickr (where there’s a small chance you’ll see what I’m up to lately) or just enjoy these constantly (one would hope) updating figures:

New server

If this is showing up, it means everything’s working. Yay!

Whee. New server. New WordPress.

Flickr

Oh! I almost forgot. The rumours are indeed true. I work at Flickr.

That is all.

Technorati.com Redesign

Well it took a few grueling months, Jellied Salad Nicoise, and a few last minute tweaks this morning at 5am, but the all new Technorati has been released! Don’t be fooled by just the pretty new design, we put a lot of work in behind the scenes to make taking care of her a lot simpler, and hopefully more reliable, responsive, and fun to use. All the usual boring standard compliant, css based layout, partially unobtrusive javascript and all that are, of course, included for your pleasure.

As always, a huge thanks to Chris Pederick, not only for his Web Developer Toolbar (in particular, Edit CSS and Validate Local HTML), but also for helping to keep me partially sane for the past few months.

Thanks also to Matt for giving me a sane PHP environment to work in (and inspiring me to grow a mustache), Scamper for designing for the web (and his love for lentil pies), Liz for constantly defying expectations (and shifting my perspective, and also for snorting), Dorion for keeping the execs out of the room (and, in general, keeping stress levels bearable), and of course DJ Gordon, for being a snappy dresser (and for keeping the beer flowing.)

If you’re interested, Dave penned a novel about the redesign.

Jellied salad nicoise

Jellied salad nicoise

Originally uploaded by treebjen.

So, after consulting AskMe, I decided to make Jellied Salad Nicoise.

It was DELICIOUS.

Grover asks what marriage is

Shouldn’t have hit the snooze button

While I’d love to say a word about this, I think I’m going to refrain until it’s all settled. Let’s just say that my opinion of other drivers hasn’t changed much. And that I heart my anti-locks.

What I can say is that while I luuurve America’s Test Kitchen, their recent Chicken Tortilla Soup recipe is pathetic! [Try an obvious target domain name based choice minus the dot com @ benjenkins.com as your registered login, if you’re lazy.]

In other news, I’m trying an experiment to see if I can completely convert myself to Mac. In general, I’m waiting for VirtualPC or VMWare or some very nice virtualized environment to run my Windows browsers for testing. Also, I hate the term “MacIntel” and I bet Steve does too. If I’m lucky Chris will continue to beat me down my lust (for the MacBook).

The truth being that

the truth being that

• January/February were particulary dark, anti-social and pathetic months (as usual, I suppose. Some are worse than others.)
• It’s now light past 6pm - brighter days are here
• My new ipod really is quite precious. Part of waking up
• Snow isn’t all that bad when you have a warm place to go home to
• A cold empty house really is nonetheless rather lonely
• Driving with an old friend is remarkably comforting
• California has a fucking beautiful coast. I should visit it more often (as I have).
• I miss New York
• My house is full of night-lights
• Who knew wild lettuce was so good?
• I can’t stop thinking about islands

Four Things. Really.

Crikey. I’ve been tagged. And after 5 hours of Lost and a few drinks, I may as well.

Four jobs I’ve had:

1. Delivery for the Ann Arbor Observor in the Old West Side. The Observor is this enormous monthly paper that’s delivered for free in Ann Arbor. It was terrible.

2. Technology Assistant, Community High School, associated with the University of Michigan’sHi-Ce Group. (Center for Highly Interactive Classrooms, Curicula & Computing in Education). The beginning of the end!

3. Production Assistant, Borders.com.

4. Senior Interface Developer (Consultant), Razorfish

Four movies I can (probably) watch over and over:

1. The Player.

2. Being There.

3. Green Card (My family used to disconect cable-teevee during the summertime when I was younger. This was one of the only movies we had on VHS. I probably watched it 30 times one summer.)

4. The General (I haven’t actually watched this very many times, but I have a feeling I probably could. Thanks Mom for introducing me to Buster!)

Four places I’ve lived:

1. Ann Arbor

2. Oakland

3. San Francisco

4. Dolores Street (with palm trees outside my bedroom window)

Four TV Shows I love:

1. Good Eats

2. America’s Test Kitchen.

3. Twin Peaks.

4. 24. (The best show ever to watch while exercising)

Four places I’ve vacationed:

1. Sleeping Bear Dunes, MI

2. Branson, Missouri (Really.)

3. San Francisco

4. Maho Bay

Four of my favorite dishes:

1. Salmon nigiri

2. Popcorn

3. Butter

4. Uncle Charlie’s Indian Potatoes

Four sites I visit daily:

1. Bloglines

2. The Eric Update

3. Flickr (yawn)

4. Orbitz (really)

Four places I would rather be right now:

1. Madison, WI

2. Maho Bay

3. The woods

4. Bed

Four bloggers I’m tagging:

1. Chris.

2. TJ

3. Wally

4. Alton Brown