Where it’s always sunny
OSM PLUS
In just under a week, OSM PLUS will be held at the San Francisco Marriott Union Square. We have over 60 people attending and a very strong set of talks and sponsors.
The support for the event has been overwhelming since I announced the idea at last years State of the Map in Portland. We’ve tried repeatedly to bring business to SotM and it’s not really worked, in my opinion. Trying to find the right overlap between some extreme ideologies on one side and practicalities on the other didn’t leave a whole lot of room for consensus.
Trying something new like this, to bring explicitly for-profit organizations together, has worked out really well so far and I can’t wait for the day itself.
How not to advertise a bicycling event
Put a big electronic sign in the cycle lane for a week before the event, so cyclists can’t use it.
13.6
Eleven days in, no carbs at all. And there’s the results, down almost 10lbs.
Excel has lots of fancy features I used for this. Conditional formatting for the coloring. Some maths on the right hand side, including using the COUNT() function to figure out how many days have passed and TODAY() to figure out today, plus the number of days to go, to figure out the very theoretical completion date of losing 20lbs. Or, actually, 23.4lbs.
I’ve been biking practically every day, or doing some extreme Coloradan activity like watching deer in the back yard or hiking some hill up 1,000 feet.
I want to look at that graph and supply a narrative, like, it is converging on some value. There is a gentle curve there, not a downward line. But, it’s all BS and there isn’t enough data, but there is lots of noise. For example, I have no idea where the positive fluctuations come from, so I’ll call them noise.
Keep calm and keto on.
Kickstarter update #13: Website
I’m catching up my blog to the kickstarter updates I’ve been posting. Here’s the original.
Howdy!
I’ve spent a little time to make a website; gpsartposter.com
Now, I can point people who missed the kickstarter, or want more posters, over there, instead of making a big long list of people.
It was built using the awesome tools by woo themes including woo commerce and thesuperstore theme. WordPress is incredibly good these days. With a $4.29 domain name from godaddy (always, always use coupon codes from fatwallet), a few hours and some free tools, building a site like this is now trivial.
The theme was actually free as a bonus download since I already have a woo theme for another site. The hosting too. But, if we factor them in anyway, the sum total to build the site is under $100 plus a few hours playing with settings.
There are a couple of minor design issues I don’t like; the blue login bar is a pain, the product sorting functionality is superfluous… but it’s worked out pretty well so far.
I’d love to hear what you think!
Kickstarter update #12: Posting Prints
I’m catching up my blog to the kickstarter updates I’ve been posting. Here’s the original.
Hi another update on your GPS ART POSTER
As a fair weather mustachian I sometimes tire of PUNCHING MYSELF IN THE FACE. That is, I bicycle instead of drive to places. Sometimes.
The post office is a three mile bike ride away. The only problem is to somehow carry posters between these two places. Enter the trailer which is designed to take kids, but is equally good at carrying groceries or… large boxes of posters as you can see below. The box was a little unstable so I used a bungee cord to hold it in place.
Colorado, where I’ve moved to, is one of those places where even normal people cycle. That, combined with a bike path and a short distance meant very few odd looks. The last time I biked, to a bar, in Washington, a passing driver slowed to tell me to “go to hell” which I think was code for “I’m drunk, please inform the police.”
(It turns our American English style is to “close a quote like this”. But, in England “it’s like this.” Who knew?)
On eBay you can even get cargo trailers for your bike. If I had to look, I bet someone’s even written a book on the topic. But for me, having a kid, the kid trailer works.
I wish I could find some comedy in going to the post office, perhaps some kind of DMV-related dark humor on the merits of worst places to be in the world. But, I had a mostly pleasant time mailing posters.
The weighing scales at the post office are flat which works great for, say, packages. For poster tubes not so much, they keep rolling off. Clearly someone needs to do a kickstarter for curved weighing scales for the USPS. So, we spent a lot of time balancing poster tubes on their flat end, pointing up in to the air like a rocket. Or, more often, like the leaning tower of Pisa.
Posters have started arriving, which is great. And, in one piece and undamaged, which is even better.
I’ve run out of paper and ordered more which will arrive today or tomorrow. This time the rolls are the same width as the prints, so for example I have 200 feet of 36 inch wide paper. This will make printing even quicker since the printer includes an automatic paper cutter.
Lastly, if you’re waiting to hear back from me, apologies for the delay but I will get back to you, often when I’m best placed to take care of your print request (quite a few people have minor change requests, changes of address and so on).
Kickstarter update #11: Some posters
I’m catching up my blog to the kickstarter updates I’ve been posting. Here’s the original.
Here’s 20 or so ready to ship. Had a lot of fun printing them!
Microsoft Denver
Reminds me of Mountain View
Kickstarter update #10: How to cut paper
I’m catching up my blog to the kickstarter updates I’ve been posting. Here’s the original.
Ordinary individuals limit themselves when cutting paper to things like scissors.
Real Men use the Rotatrim MONORAIL 48. Mine arrived today.
Yes, a four foot paper cutter. This is useful when you’re using 44″ paper. Rotatrim actually make cutters over 8 feet long for a cool $1,800. These look good in any living room, government laboratory or space station.
The monorail is actually the lesser, budget, paper cutter. No self-respecting professional would even think of using anything but their dual rail systems, for a straighter, more sure cut. But, the monorail is about half the price and I don’t think I will be able to tell the difference, as a mere amateur study of the art of paper cutting.
Now, I can actually cut the posters efficiently. Below is a picture of the beast, with some scissors for scale.
In other news, the extra large 4 foot poster tubes also arrived yesterday morning.
15.8
Either four or five days, depending on how you count it, and 7.6lbs down to 15.8 from 23.4, or 1.5lbs a day delta. Thats about one third of the way toward my goal. I feel incredibly good though there have been minor complications, now past.
Om Nom. Nom.
I’ve pretty much been eating the largest steaks possible, including a T-Bone the size of a car tire yesterday. Plus veggies, just to save face. Go green and all that. This guy is eating 5,000 calories a day to “disprove” calories in/calories out, which is cute, but there have already been large controlled studies which do the same thing.
Yesterday was bacon & eggs for breakfast. Salami and cracked pepper goats cheese for lunch (about a metric ton of that). Steak, peppers and edamame for dinner. And lots of water. Talking of amounts, when I say eggs I mean three. When I say bacon I mean two strips. This isn’t a calorie restricted diet.
I gave up coffee yesterday which was painful. I have some kind of love for the Right Coffee but the Wrong Coffee gives me the shakes and some form of light-headed trips. The problem is the Right Coffee is just the same as the Wrong Coffee after, I don’t know, 6 cups. It was the same with Diet Coke; I used to do 10 cans of that a day easily until a doctor told me it was a neuro toxin. Then I quit immediately.
I remember that moment with a lot of clarity. I was at some horse trials in Colorado. What that means is a bunch of people drive their horses to a farm and then have to do five or six tricks or something. Like, “ride around in a circle”, best man wins. Or, “ride along a creek and pick up clues”. There is probably some complicated methodology to scoring that I’m too dumb to understand, but at the end of the day someone wins and everyone else gets to have some fun with their horse.
Drink Diet Coke and attractive women of all possible hair colors will be your friend. Even the redhead at the back right that they carefully hid.
Said doctor was standing next to a railing, looked at my can of (delicious) Diet Coke in its shiny silver can, and looked at me like I was some sort of complete idiot and gave me the news. So I threw it away, and haven’t had one since.
Back to coffee. This time, both coffee makers have broken. One broke in the move, and then the french presse decided enough was enough and shattered. Maybe it was in the wrong country, or was just tired of playing second fiddle, but it has exited this Earth and will be turned in to a wine bottle or something in the next life. In any case, I think the Coffee Gods were sending me a Message which I Received. I’m enjoying Capitalizing too much, too.