Evilmatt's blog

So it was independence day at the weekend which basically just meant a long weekend. I didn’t see any parades or fireworks I guess I’m too far of the beaten track for that sort of thing.

Signed up for a cooking lesson which was today it was free and I figured why not I might get to meet some people out here.

It was in one of the club houses in one of the other developments. It was a nice size kitchen they had there and there were maybe 5 people when I got there which grew to maybe 10 total.

I was in Fry’s looking at vacuum cleaners figuring I’d probably need to get one since I rent the place and I need to keep it in good nick. I discovered that vacuum cleaners are quite expensive, I also discovered robot vacuum cleaners are not as expensive as I thought.

So I bought a roomba robot vacuum cleaner.

Went cycling again today it was a lot cooler partly due to it being later and partly better equipment. One downside to going later is on the trail I was taking I was cycling directly into the Sun.

I’ve been trying to use the nice climate and facilities I now have access to get in better shape. I’ve been doing swimming for the last week, not pushing it too hard I know the risk of going too mad too soon so I’ve just been taking it easy.

I've been watching the next gen ereaders for a while, I like reading and I read a lot sometimes a book a day. I've never been that interested in eBooks partly due to the fact that I quite like dead tree books they never need charging and the display dots per inch is pretty good random access and the ability to display full colour pictures and even animation (flick books).

So I managed to find somewhere nearby that had the new xbox 360 s in stock so I drove over and picked one up. This new model supposedly has fixed the red ring of death issue that plagued the early models and it incorporates the hdmi port of the elite and now has built-in wireless. Having had to replace 3 xbox’s due to red ring of death to get rid of that would be great.

Something I saw today was this maybe 5 to 10 year old otherwise stock mini van with spinners on the wheels. Which besides looking crap actually was a little worrying as it looked like the wheels were still going when the thing was stopped, which at a junction is not what you want.

When into the target down in Sunnyvale and picked up a few bits, among them a kettle. So I can finally make a decent cup of tea a landmark event.

Saturday I decided to visit Techshop over in Menlo park area which is 20min or so down the 101 from me. They are one of these Hackerspaces or membership run workshops. They had an open day on saturday so I toddled along.