Entries tagged with “harper”.


Yes, it’s true.  Harper and I have finally done it.  You can now buy yo-yos directly on HowToYoYo.com.  It has been the most requested feature for a while now, and since we didn’t want to get into sales on a massive scale, we decided to be a one-stop shop for the beginner/intermediate yo-yo player.  It can be hard to know what to buy when you are just starting out, and since there are so many choices now, we decided to make it easy.  We only carry 5 yo-yos.  It’s a carefully chosen group that we think is the best if you are just getting into yo-yos.

I just got a new hard drive and it didn’t come with a stand so that it could sit upright on my desk… fortunately I eat a lot of pizza.

Actually, I save these little pizza tripods for displaying my spin-top collection, and most of them I got, unused, from a friendly pizza shop.

It’s easy to remember to complain when something is terrible, but it’s much harder to remember to praise when something is great.

I absolutely love my web host. Dreamhost.com makes it so easy. I am pretty good with computers and figuring things out, but even with the help of my good friend Harper I can’t always understand everything I need to know to run my websites. Dreamhost spells it all out, and has a great sense of humor about what they do. Also, they do a really good job of playing to all levels of knowledge. It’s clear that they really know what they are talking about, AND they have that rare and valuable understanding that not everyone else knows what they are talking about. I truly have no complaints so far with Dreamhost.

Partly I’m writing about Dreamhost because they are great, and if you are thinking about changing hosts, or starting a web presence, I can’t recommend them highly enough. The other reason I’m writing is that if you click this banner, which names me as the referrer, I get paid. Everybody wins.

I would recommend Dreamhost to anyone who asked, even without the referral program, it’s just that this program is what got me going to actually write about it. So if you need hosting, click the banner and sign up. You won’t regret it.

I admit it: I have my dorky moments. But seriously… Star Wars is SO awesome. My friend Harper just gave me this link to a great read-between-the-lines reassessment of the Star Wars movies. If you are a web junkie this is probably old news, but it’s new to me, and besides… Star Wars is timeless. ;)

A New Sith, or Revenge of the Hope
Reconsidering Star Wars IV in the light of I-III

This weekend I went to Chicago even though I didn’t have any gigs. I just went up to hang out with my pals. It was the first time I’ve done that in YEARS, and it was really fun.

As luck would have it, the Threadless Christmas party was Friday night and my friend Harper invited me to come. Since I am often in Chicago in the middle of the day with some time to kill before or after gigs, I have spent a fair amount of time hanging out at Threadless. Mostly I hang out with Harper, but I know a few of the other folks there a little, so going to the Christmas party wasn’t the awkward I-don’t-know-anybody experience that usually happens when you go to someone else’s work party. The other thing that made it good was that Threadless really knows how to let it all hang out. Where most work places have one or two wild and crazy characters, at Threadless it’s the opposite, almost everyone is wild and crazy. There is never any shortage of wacky stuff going on with those cats.

Harper and Crystal

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This weekend I had a couple of gigs in the Chicago area, but I went up a day early to participate in a taping for Chicago Public Access Cable TV.

Harper, Matiss and I showed up with a bag full of juggling machetes and two pumpkins.


We carved this one in advance, and the other was to be carved while we juggled.

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I spent this week on the road doing shows. Monday was the Summer Music Clinic up in Madison WI, Tuesday and Wednesday down in Evansville IN, and then Thursday back up North to Skokie IL. It would’ve been nice if I could have had better routing so I didn’t have to do so much driving, but that’s the way it goes sometimes.

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I got to spend the weekend in Green Bay WI this week. I was up there for a gig at the International Bay Fest, 3 shows on Saturday and 2 on Sunday. It was a good time. Since I was staying at my friends Jeni and Adolfo’s house I got to bring my dog Vader. I love it when I get to travel with my dog.

Jeni was gone, so Adolfo and I got to have a Man Weekend. We did Man things like make “wraps” (black beans, cilantro, green onions, sour cream, hot sauce, cheese, and green pepper on flour tortillas… and no, they weren’t burritos), eat unbelievably good ice cream sandwiches, walk the dogs, go shopping, drink smoothies (Adolfo is a master smoothie maker), and play video games. You know… man stuff. It was awesome.

Bay Fest went well, with decent crowds, especially Sunday afternoon. I had standing room only, and it was an outside show. I got to eat some delicious sweet corn. I’m still regretting that I only ate one ear. What was I thinking?

The drive home was BRUTAL (8 hours with no help from Vader with the driving), but at least I got to stop in Chicago and see my friends Harper, Hiromi (visiting from Japan!), Matiss and Erica.

I am in Chicago for the next few days staying with my friends Harper and Matiss. Tomorrow is day two performing at Math Bowl 2006 down in Chicago Heights, and after that Harper and I are going to go to American Science and Surplus to buy parts to make new gizmos! It’s been too long since I have made anything cool, and my focus at the moment is solar power. I have a new project and I want to make some cool little gadgets that relate to it. With luck I’ll find just the right parts and be able to make a really cute little gizmo. I’ll post more details once I have had a chance to work on it.

Although it is still in the beginning stages, the time has come to reveal my new big secret project.

RenewNews.com

It’s a site on renewable energy. The intention is for it to be a community where people can find all of the information that they need about solar, wind power, biodiesel, firewood etc. At some point we are going to run out of oil, and every night the national news has a story on the high price of gas and/or our dependency on oil from around the world. I think the time has finally come when more people than just the hippies and the big-thinkers are interested in renewable energy. We’ll see how it goes.

I’ve been working for the last week getting RenewNews.com installed and working the way I want it to. I have so much more respect for computer people now. It’s really hard to get a lot of this stuff working! I have resources like Harper and Dylan who have more knowledge than I do, and I have access to the inner working of several websites that Harper and I work on together, and it was still hard for me to get this together. I’m working on a graphic for the top, and a few other things, but the site is up and running now. The community aspect will expand as time goes by, but for the moment we will have a few contributors writing articles that people can comment on if they want.