Rants and Raves

Author: Kenny

Today’s Butthead

On almost every commute home, there’s usually a driver that does something dumb at this light on the Embarcadero.

Drive from the far right lane to the left lane? Check
Run the light with an illegal left turn? Check
Run across two train tracks while you do your illegal turn? Check

It was good to see some SA Kids playing with Sting last night

Sting and Last Bandoleros at The Masonic on Feb 6, 2017
Sting and Last Bandoleros at The Masonic on Feb 6, 2017

It was nice seeing some kids from my hometown playing with Sting last night at the Masonic. I hadn’t seen or heard of Last Bandoleros before, but I’m looking forward to checking them out more. Plus, they’re from SA!

In other news, I switched earplug brands and tried out some Alpines last night- they were great. And they’re a million times better than generic Hear-os for music.

I’m not bagging on the Hear-o, they’re not made for music, but I usually take a pair with me to concerts.

Here’s a link to Amazon if you want to buy a pair of Alpines. They come with two types of end pieces (the tiny metal bit on the end in that pic).

 

 

Russian Slot Mafia

An interesting read:

Russia has been a hotbed of slots-related malfeasance since 2009, when the country outlawed virtually all gambling. (Vladimir Putin, who was prime minister at the time, reportedly believed the move would reduce the power of Georgian organized crime.) The ban forced thousands of casinos to sell their slot machines at steep discounts to whatever customers they could find. Some of those cut-rate slots wound up in the hands of counterfeiters eager to learn how to load new games onto old circuit boards. Others apparently went to Murat Bliev’s bosses in St. Petersburg, who were keen to probe the machines’ source code for vulnerabilities.

Via Wired

Links for Jan 23-Jan 31

Hey man, where’d you buy those empanadas?!?  I bought them from Venga Empanadas – go check them out on Valencia.

Hey man, where’d you get those co-co-co-things? They’re called COXINHAS and I bought them at – Cafe de Casa

Anything to read this week?

Sure- try:

FIGURING OUT YOUR’E NOT A CLIMBER, UNDERSTANDING THE VALUE OF MAYONNAISE FROM BJARNE RIIS, AND THE VUELTA A COLOMBIA. COLOMBIAN INSIGHTS FROM CYLANCE’S KYLE MURPHY.

 

Reading and Links Jan 15 – 22

Who killed the great British curry house?

VeloNews Podcast on race weight.

Interesting research findings on the background and players in the DDoS attack. Who knew there was a Minecraft Protection Racket?

A large, successful Minecraft server with more than a thousand players logging on each day can easily earn the server’s owners upwards of $50,000 per month, mainly from players renting space on the server to build their Minecraft worlds, and purchasing in-game items and special abilities.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the top-earning Minecraft servers eventually attracted the attention of ne’er-do-wells and extortionists like the lelddos gang. Lelddos would launch a huge DDoS attack against a Minecraft server, knowing that the targeted Minecraft server owner was likely losing thousands of dollars for each day his gaming channel remained offline.

I’m too depressed to post the long list of links about new #facts I was reading.

Some Readings – Jan 8 – Jan 14

Some links and things from the week:

I need to think of a better way to share what I’m reading. Not everything I save to Pocket is worth a share, nor are my random bookmarks. For example, I went off the deep-end reading about DACs and amps and DAPs when I went to look up something about a pair of headphones. Hoo-boy that was a deep dive into something…

Stuff I was reading last week

NextBus data went down in SF this week so TransitApp released their software for SF. Great timing and marketing. I rode last week so I haven’t used the app yet.

A controversy in the Doula industry?

I’ll skip the politics article links this week.

Books: Sam Fuller‘s Brainquake – I’m about halfway done. I’m a sucker for pulp. You can follow me on Goodreads.com if you’d like, but I don’t read a ton of stuff. I’m trying to change that and read more (books) this year.

I went down a rabbit hole reading about DACs when I was looking up the price of headphones. Do any of you use a DAC?

This week- an article about The Sleeping Giants in the NY Times.

note: when I started to write this post, I thought I had saved up a bunch of links. I can’t find them. I must have just sat in silence for most of my time.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

CQ and Lyft in Japantown – Dec 12

Pulled footage from my Cycliq Fly6 for CQ on Dec 12. CQ is the rider behind me and we both (but 99% him) were honked at and almost cut off by a Lyft driver. I told CQ that I had a camera and he asked if I could pull it for him to see what had happened.

You can see and hear what happened with the video below. CQ keeps a MUCH more level-headed approach than I would have. I’m trying to be more zen on the bike, but I still want to slap mirrors*.

*I’ll try to find that old post or write a new one about being zen and mirror slapping

Here ya go: