Tag Archives: san francisco

How to defeat terrorism

posted on 15 April, 2013 also tagged , , , , , , ,

Bruce Schneier’s essay on today’s bombings in Boston helped shake me out of the daze I found myself in since hearing the news this morning. I am far away from Boston, and knew nobody in the blast radius, but the ability to keep refreshing feeds to read more news, hear more rumors, see more pictures, [...]

A visit from San Francisco’s wild parrots

posted on 7 April, 2013 also tagged , ,

Earlier this week I was treated to a visit from some two dozen of San Francisco’s wild parrots, the cherry-headed conures that live on and around Telegraph Hill. It was pretty spectacular — I was sitting at the kitchen table by the window, and first one, then two, then maybe a half dozen landed right [...]

Kicking off year two of Iron Blogger SF

posted on 14 January, 2013 also tagged

I’ve just completed the wrap-up of the first week of Iron Blogger SF, year two, and man am I excited this time around. By almost every measure, Iron Blogger SF has been a success for me: I’ve written many more posts, been much happier with the way my writing has developed, and as a side [...]

Sunday morning in San Francisco

posted on 6 January, 2013 also tagged

I took this photograph this morning from Bernal Hill, a little earlier than I would normally be awake because the dog I’m sitting for (Hi, Ace!) demands it. I’ve been up to the hill a bunch of times, and the view is still striking. I’ve lived in San Francisco for a little over a year [...]

Walking the Ohlone Way

posted on 2 January, 2013 also tagged , , , ,

Maira and I were walking around her neighborhood in Glen Park when we stumbled across a tiny road called Ohlone Way. It’s pretty charming. It’s properly marked as a street, but the entire length is unpaved, and not much wider than a single car across. It rained a few days ago, and the ground was [...]

Connecting to SFPL-Wireless

posted on 22 December, 2012 also tagged , , , ,

The San Francisco Public Library has the right idea about offering unfiltered Internet access. When you connect to the open wifi network, you’re given this notice and the ability to click right through: San Francisco Public Library is committed to providing free and equal Internet access to the public without filtering content. We do, however, [...]

Implementing a CryptoParty Oneself

posted on 19 November, 2012 also tagged , ,

There’s an important rule in the cryptography world: you should never implement it yourself. So much can go wrong in the implementation of a crypto-system that you’d better leave it up to experts. Funny, then, that exactly the opposite rule applies to planning CryptoParties. Saturday I hosted the first CryptoParty SF at Mozilla’s San Francisco [...]

My 2012 San Francisco ballot

posted on 4 November, 2012 also tagged , ,

On Tuesday, I’ll be voting in person for the first time in my native California. I’ve only ever voted by mail before. (I voted from Berlin in the 2008 presidential election, and had a charming exchange in broken German with the women working at the post office. They, like nearly all of Germany, were following [...]

Bike Rac-Man

posted on 13 August, 2012 also tagged , , , ,

For some reason I’ve never been able to not see this.

Public transit and lawful access

posted on 6 August, 2012 also tagged , , , ,

Eric King recently posted a link to London’s Oyster Card FAQ page explaining Transport for London’s policy on requests for information from police — it rejects 5-10% of requests for providing insufficient information. It inspired me to look up Clipper Card’s policy. As I suspected, it doesn’t report any similar numbers, but it says in [...]