Fred Sandsmark's Blog

Today's the day when we celebrate Heidi, Olav, and Lief-Martin Henriksen, the only living set of siblings all born on Leap Day. Norwegian folks, the Henriksens. Their birth years are 1960 (Heidi), 1964 (Olav) and 1968 (Lief-Martin). Gratulerer med dagen!

Labels: fun, Norway

I'm swamped with work and stuff, and have been unable to post for some time. But wanted to add a link to a fun Wikipedia article I found via The Morning News on the World's Most Northern Things.

Norway checks in with the most northern movie theater, church, ATM, airport, brewery, and much more.

Labels: fun, Norway, world

Ha! Joanna Sandsmark has called me out in the current installment of the hilarious blog Comic Books Revisited.

(I realize I'm not using the expression "call out" quite accurately, but somehow it feels like it fits anyway.)

Labels: blogs, friends, language

My pal Cary Nasatir has a new article on the Vic Firth website entitled Taming the Volume Beast in the Percussion Section. He talks about drumstick selection, drum stands and hardware, the angle of the drum itself, and tuning up drums. He also addresses player confidence and motivation. Good reading.

But it's funny: Cary doesn't explain how to get drummers to stop talking between pieces. That's the real volume beast! (Just kidding, buddy ...)

Labels: friends, music, writing

There's a funny essay by Giles Turnbull in The Morning News today, discussing author bios -- those little one- or two-sentence blurbs in books and at the end of magazine articles that tell the reader something about the writer. Well worth reading.

I've had a rough time with author bios, but not for the reasons that Turnbull mentions. My biggest problem has been with bios that embarrass me because they list the many defunct publications that I've worked for. Somehow -- I suppose because of cuts-and-pastes from old articles -- Silicon Valley TechWeek still appears in my author bio sometimes. TechWeek hasn't been published for years and years.

My favorite version of my own author bio is the one that appeared in How to Organize (Just About) Everything:

Fred Sandsmark is a freelance writer in the San Francisco Bay Area, covering technology and home-related subjects. Working on this book inspired him to organize his garage, a task that should be completed sometime next week.

Labels: clips, writing

He tells the why and how better than I could recap it here.

Labels: brain tumor, faith, health, politics, world

I dropped my Palm Zire 72 and now it's dead. Calendar and Contacts are recently backed up; other stuff may be gone, but that's not a huge deal. (Maybe the password database is a huge deal, but a surmountable one.)

So now I'm tempted to get an iPhone. I'm pretending that I can justify it by not having to buy another Palm and because my Nokia phone is aging and will need replacing soon. Somebody please stop me before I spend a bunch of money on a gadget.

Labels: Apple, budget, gadgets, technology

An article in today's San Francisco Chronicle tells of a vaccine trial for glioblastoma multiforme brain tumors going on at Stanford (and other medical centers) and an Indian fellow named Harakhchand Savla who is participating in the trial.

There's been talk of BT vaccines in development for years, and it's good to hear that another one is entering clinical trials.

The Chronicle article focuses quite a bit on Mr. Savla's positive attitude toward his illness and treatment. (He refers to his tumor as a "happiness tumor.") But he's also not in denial about the challenges he faces; at one point he says "If you live long enough, you're going to die." That's not far from one of Jane's catchphrases: "It's my ambition to grow old."

The full article is here. There's one mistake in the article, to which I've alerted the author: it refers to "epidural growth" factor, when what's meant is "epidermal growth" factor. Still, the article's well worth reading for some insight into aggressive brain tumor treatment.

Labels: brain tumor, Jane, science

The gallery show of Searching for True North at ModernBook has received a very positive review from Ben Marks on KQED.org. A snippet:

What's refreshing about Jordahl's work is that, in an age when we've become numb to the guilty pleasures of Photoshop, there's nothing inherently fake about these pictures. Yes, the artist's bag of tricks includes infrared film and panoramic cameras, but what we see is precisely what those tools and materials deliver, no more, no less.

The full review is here.

Labels: art, friends, Norway, poetry

Anybody else in the Castro Valley / Hayward area having problems with Comcast high-speed Internet service? My connection has been awful today, and has been spotty for weeks and weeks. The symptoms are always the same: the service cuts in and out. Calls to service result in them pinging the modem from the network end and telling me it's fine -- which it is, for a little while. Then it cuts out again. One technician who came out let on that Comcast is doing "network upgrades" in the area. (That explains those shabby no-name contractor trucks I've seen around the telephone poles.) If this is an upgrade, I'd hate to see a downgrade.

I'm truly weighing whether the extra speed of Cable over DSL is worth it for my needs. By contrast with this ongoing mess with Comcast, I had a landline phone problem last week and AT&T was out within a day; the service technician was smart, professional, and communicative -- a far cry from the "service" I'm getting from Comcast right now. Plus, I could bundle DSL with my landline and mobile phone bill and maybe save some money. (I'm sure not going to choose Comcast for landline phone service with a lousy connection like I've got.) An AT&T bundle is looking mighty tempting.

BTW, in the course of typing this post, Blogger has tried to autosave four times and failed. Each time the connection has returned and autosave has worked. Cross your fingers; I'm about to click "Publish Post."

Labels: email, technology

Just read a made-my-day blog post by James Forsyth on ForeignPolicy.com, titled How the 2008 campaign made the world love America again. A snippet:

The 2008 campaign has reminded the public overseas, and especially in allied countries, of the diversity and vibrancy of American democracy. It is hard for even the most hardened anti-American not to be impressed by the fact that the Democrats will nominate either an African-American or a women [sic] as their candidate, while watching this twisting and turning campaign play out gives the lie to the view that United States is some kind of corporate oligarchy.

It would be nice to have friends again.

Labels: politics, world

Sam Whiting's article in this weekend's San Francisco Chronicle Magazine about long-distance commuters on Amtrak's Capitol Corridor reminded me of a couple of similar articles I wrote nearly a decade ago. Both of mine were for computer magazines (CCN and Silicon Valley TechWeek) so they focused on the wired road warriors; Whiting's article does, somewhat, too, but has a wider focus. The technology part of the story has changed dramatically in the intervening years, of course; back in the 1990s, simple cell phone service was spotty along much of the Capitol Corridor, but now the trains have wireless Internet access. The computers have changed, too; here's a snippet from my CCN article, talking about the 110v electric outlets on the train. (The "Yard Dog" quoted in the article is one of the colorful conductors.)

Those outlets are important, because not every computer can run on batteries. "A while back, we had a rider who brought along a whole computer on a cart," recalled Yard Dog. "Computer, monitor, keyboard, mouse — he'd hook it all up and go to work," he recalls with a chuckle. "He didn't last for long."

The CCN article can be found here. I'll try to get the TechWeek article up and linked soon. (The magazine is long gone.)

Labels: clips, technology

I don't know how, but yesterday's post about daffodils made it onto the radar of the folks who run the First Daffodils blog. With a photo, no less! I'm so proud ...

Labels: technology

I missed the opportunity last fall to do much in the garden -- my attention was elsewhere -- so I'm now playing catchup in winter. The endless rain hasn't helped, but I got out to do some cleanup today and found a few Supersweet 100 tomatoes lingering on an overwintered plant, as well as the first daffodils opening up. I also pulled some carrots.





At this point Cousin Jim in Minnesota is checking the date on this post. Yes, on February 3, I found some edible tomatoes outdoors. They're not going to win any beauty or flavor contests, but it's fun to have them.

Labels: food, garden, weather

Now that I sport a healthy Body Mass Index of 23, I'm more relaxed reading stories about obesity and related health challenges. I sense (but can't document with multiple examples) some pushback against the very concept of an obesity epidemic. I also sense (but again can't document) that science writers stories on this topic to have some fun with language. For example, this paragraph from a story found on PhysOrg.com, discussing a British Medical Journal article on debate about an obesity epidemic:

In summary, a large body of evidence documents that over-nutrition and obesity are a major global health problem, say the authors [emphasis mine].

Cheap joke, but it made me chuckle.

Labels: health, science, writing