Sep 13, 2016Dr. Voronoy and the Bell SystemLet me start this off: I’m not really good at math. This is a post about math. Cool? Cool. There’s a thing called Voronoi diagrams. You take a plane, define points onto it, and map regions onto it to ensure the most efficient coverage or… something like that. …Data Visualization3 min readData Visualization3 min read
Mar 11, 2016Dissecting the transphobic initiative in Washington StateOr, did you even bother to ask a lawyer to proofread your vomit? — Yeah, as expected, FPIW et al went and synthesized the failed bathroom bills into an intiative. Or “Just Want Privacy” as their newest front group is called. Anyway here’s the text of the initiative. It’s actually kind of hilarious when you rip it apart, if not for the violence that…Transgender5 min readTransgender5 min read
Feb 14, 20162-out-of-5 Encodingand Multi-Frequency Trunk Signaling — Consider this a followup to my previous doc on Revertive Pulsing. I wrote this up for the Museum of Communications in Seattle, WA, and a teletyped (y’know, for authenticity) copy lives on the No. …Telephony1 min readTelephony1 min read
Jan 26, 2016A brief overview of Washington’s “bathroom” billsIn 2006, the state legislature expanded the Washington State Law Against Discrimination (WLAD — RCW 49.60) to protect transgender people. Then nothing happened for a while. Now, I say nothing, but there were minor incidents — Evergreen State College famously stood behind a transgender student against some kids who tried…Politics3 min readPolitics3 min read
Jan 3, 2016How Revertive Pulsing WorksOr, how to think like your great-grandparent the electrical engineer — I went looking for this information before writing this. There are plenty of sites that will tell you revertive pulsing is a method of trunk signaling where the terminating office sends pulses to the originating office rather than the originating office sending pulses the other way. …Panel4 min readPanel4 min read
Jul 6, 2015Cisco wants to acquire whom?Stop me if you’ve heard this one: what do you get when you add Cisco and OpenDNS? — It’s a weird acquisition. Cisco is in the DNS space, to be buzzwordy. They already sell DNS products, but they’re really not Cisco’s core business. It’s not like they’re getting any new “put this thing in your network to make it better” product out of OpenDNS. What you get is…Cisco3 min readCisco3 min read
Jun 26, 2015The helpful guide to know where addresses are in Seattle without a map(usefulness not guaranteed) — Seattle, being a relatively young city, has a layout that was at least moderately engineered (sort of), so we’re on a grid system. This makes it pretty easy to locate addresses if you have an idea of where the grid boundaries (like a meridian) are. Also, all streets run east…3 min read3 min read
Feb 25, 2015Meaningless Void Goes Round and RoundA poem for Poetry on Buses (not really) in the style of Werner Herzog, sort of. — The wheels on the bus are Without significance. Flat black, no start or end; Void. They are metaphor; The circle of life Birth and death, Youth and middle age, Meaningless.Poetry1 min readPoetry1 min read
Jan 8, 2015‘Til Death Do Us PartI know a number of people getting married in the near future (including a couple friends who I’ll be officiating for), and a couple being literally forced to divorce or die. So I’ve been thinking about the concept a lot, and I wanted to get it down on paper. There’s…3 min read3 min read
Jan 2, 2015Pressure Cooker RisottoUpdated late 2019: default version is now vegetarian because I don’t think using chicken stock adds anything. This is one of my favorite recipes to make. It’s low-effort, fast, and so far people seem to like it. I’ve made a vegan version too, that’ll be at the end. What I…3 min read3 min read
