Time for a new Hudin.com
So... you might have noticed things are a bit different. I mean, the colors are kinda the same, but there have been some massive updates due to changes I've made in my blogging habits. Now, in addition to my more personal rants articles here, I'm now pulling in my latest post from Maneno on my Subsaharska blog where I blog more regularly about African tech and travel. I've also put links for the RSS feeds to both sites in plain sight because if you're not using a feed reader, you're nuts. If you are, subscribe to Hudin and Subsaharska. You'll be incredibly stoked that you did, probably.
So, other than getting this to be more of a Hudin portal like I did recently for #1 Fan, there are a ton of technology upgrades that happened here. For those who care, I switched this site over to using jQuery from MooTools (just to give it a try) and I rehashed all the CSS. I also made use of all the PHP classes I've developed for Maneno to make this site hum. It's amazing how only once you really dig in to all your old code you find stuff that is ancient. I think I found something that was like half a decade old, which is ancient in the web. It makes sense though as the last upgrade of this size I pushed out in 2007 from Spain, which undoubtedly missed a lot of bits. I think this is officially version 7 of the site.
Otherwise, I fixed up some things like the tea reviews where I made the interface to find reviews a bit more slick with some AJAX business. The contact page is back for all of peoples' hate mail needs. About got a little bit of a brush up, especially as the section on my Digital Gas was out of date. Photos are exactly the same and still flowing. The blog got a large facelift as I really wasn't in to the old look anymore. I'll probably get bored of this one in six months or so and redesign it yet again.
One of the biggest changes is the Search box you will see at the top of every page. First of all, that's running with AJAX and will populate the body of any page where you run a search. Secondly, it's using the Google API. They have this wanky JavaScript think that anyone can use, but it's crappy as hell to get working. I did a runaround of all that and used the more "hardcore" programming approach to get what's called a JSON back from Google when querying them with search terms. Overall it works quite well, but there is a massive amount of work to be done on that, so it's really basic at the moment. It does indeed work for simple searches though.
I think that's about the meat of it all. There are a lot of things I did for administering the site that once again, came from work on Maneno, but I won't go in to them as this is already probably super boring and you're regretting your new RSS subscription to the feed.
09 09 2009 2 comments
Tags: hudin, updates
Four stages of boredom at The Makeout Room
I was really not in the mood for going out last night. I just wanted to stay home and hide in code somewhere. This is what happens when I go out to events in The Mission in such moods. The last one is just before going home. Thanks for the patience to photograph my annoying-ocity, #1 Fan.
13 06 2009 0 comments
Tags: hudin, san francisco
The burdens of me-ness
I have name issues. I go by Miquel publicly, which is the Catalan spelling of Miguel in Spanish and Michael in English. This is due to being in between a lot of different cultures and I personally like the name Miquel over Miguel, Michael, or the Croatian variant of Mihovil even if Firefox thinks it's a typo. Unfortunately, most every American has no idea about this 'miquel' with a 'q' thing and just assumes it's 'miguel' with a 'g'. To make things even more difficult for myself, I use both family names in my last name. For all purposes, it is just Hudin, but to show some respect to my mother's family who have supported me a great deal over the years. It's also to have some solidarity with #1 Fan who deals with the problems of using both her family names on a regular basis; thankfully not taking my paternal family name once we married.
The upside in all of this is that once people get my name thing straight (and I leave the two family name thing as just an option, but do insist on Miquel, not Miguel Hudin), people remember my name quite well as it's freakin' bizarre. The Catalan/Croatian/Portuguese thing works well in that sense. What it doesn't work well on is name badges. You can see the edits to my pass at this recent Berkeley conference pictured below. Yeah, to a small degree I brought this upon myself, but I've had name issues all my life. This probably would have been 'Mike Hudine' if it hadn't been Miquel Balsa. I just need to get really rich and then hire a Name Representative to go before me wherever I go and handle the part time job of correcting my name.
05 05 2009 1 comment
Tags: hudin, names
Hudin Recap 02-08-2008
My writing here has been a bit hit and miss as far as regularity goes. This is because I've been writing a good deal more at other sites. It's not to say that I'm neglecting Hudin, but more using it as a place to write about my personal shiznit. I'm sure that the next time I go traveling (next month) I'll be putting up more here. But, for those interested who don't follow my Twitter spam feed, here are some of the recent things I've written:
Subsaharska on Maneno:
The Camera is not the Important Part Musing on the crazy equipment people buy when they really need to focus on the basics of photography first.
Finding the Names to Explain Chatting about the myriad of domain names. Honestly, probably not my best work, but it would be weird not to mention it sequentially.
W00t for more Languages! Excitement over Google expanding their African language options for search which is cool stuff.
The 'Web Free' (Web 3.0) Starts in Africa Part of the OLPC debate that went around the web a week or two ago as well as talking about the next iteration of the web (Web Free as I call it). One of the stronger things I've written, although it could be no end of boring for a deal of people out there.
Global Voices:
Croatia: Changing Eminent Domain for a Golfing Gain Maybe it was the cheesy title, but I hoped this would get more play on the site not just because I think it's the best researched article I've written there, but also because some people are really getting screwed in all this corruption happening in the name of golf!
Blue Danube Wine Blog:
A Cold, Wintry Revisit to La Vinyeta Tasty wines in Northern Catalonia.
A Taste of Slovenia at CAV Minor tasting event that was decent of Slovenian wines.
Cantallops, Where the Fruit is Wine From about a month ago, but another great tasting Northern Catalonia.
08 02 2009 0 comments
Tags: croatia, hudin, in to africa, wine, writing
Damn I Hate Moving
No, not moving from my current SF apartment. Rents got jacked up so far in San Francisco that unless a massive recession hits, I'm going to be in this place until I either buy something or leave the country. In this case the moving in question is moving a site, specifically, this one.
The details are boring, but suffice to say pulling down 400 megs of data from one site and then shoving it back up to the new one takes a good deal of time. And something always goes wrong. One site or the others things you're some kind of no-gooder and will chop off the stream of data maybe 80% of the way through forcing you to start all over. It's a blast.
Of course, the big reward in all of this is to be off my crappy old host that loved to go down often and on to a new VPS host, which basically means I spend a helluva lot more (three times as much actually) for a server that only has maybe 100 other sites on it as opposed to thousands. Makes for a faster, more enjoyable Hudin experience. That and it give Maneno (which is coming along quite nicely) a new, solid home that doesn't crash in the middle of the night when I'm sleeping and everyone who could be using it is wanting to use it.
04 12 2008 0 comments
Tags: hudin
Hudin Oil has its First Harvest
My brother recently bought his first home, which is up in my hometown of Oroville. The place is fine and he's done a lot of work to improve it. But what's really great is that he's got about two hectares of land on which about 70 or more olive trees are growing.
It just so happens that while helping him move in last weekend, I took a look at the trees and saw that they were really ready for picking. Thankfully, a short stone's throw from his land is Butte View Olive Oil who, in addition to selling their own oil, also press (or actually "spin" as it's a centrifugal system) others' at a cost of about $0.10 a kilogram. So, steeling myself for the pain that is picking olives, I got a crate, headed out in the truck and spent most of a day picking getting scratched up as well as some color in this first week of November.
In the end this netted only 50 kilos of olives. The owner over at Butte View laughed and asked if I "Got tired". No, I didn't. Because these trees haven't been properly irrigated for god knows how long, the yield per tree was quite sad. Also, I was picking just a bit past the prime point and so a lot of ripe olives had already fallen. Despite all this, that 50kg of olives pressed in to eight liters of oil. This isn't much, but it's an excellent trial of the trees to see if they're a) worth watering for next year and b) worth planting more of.
Most all of the trees are Mission olives which stand the harsh shift from hot, hot summers to cold, freezing winters. While a smaller olive that not ideal for canning, they are great for oil. The oil content is 22% of the olive, which you can see in the ratio of 50kg of olives to eight liters of oil. Well, actually, this is a bit less than 22% though because of the lack of water. But my brother just picked up the oil today and said that it's a super dark green. Much darker than any of the other oils we've seen in the area. We're not sure if this is because of less water that has made a more intense oil or just because these olives go that way. The aroma is bright and crisp, full of woody olive aromas. The taste is deep with a full bouquet of olives to it. My brother says it tastes like grass, but that's because he hasn't had proper oil before. It's good stuff and it will be interesting to see what just a little bit of water next year will do for the crop.
13 11 2008 1 comment
Tags: food, hudin, olives, oroville
It's Time to Ask the Hard Questions
27 07 2008 1 comment
Tags: hudin, internet
I've Been 85% Spoofed
Damn you Onion! I knew that one day you would find me and spoof me up good.
It pretty much all revolves around the article about a fellow they call "Fancy Man". You can read it and if you know me, you're bound to see some similarities. The most poignant being that the guy in the article is a web designer and he likes tea. Oh yeah, he also happens to be 29, when I'm 30. Oh yeah, there's also the "hoity-toity copper-bottomed tea kettle" that he uses and I admit, I'm rather in to the one I've got since yes, it does make a difference to nuke it or boil it. Microwaves do strange things to food and beverage. It's the last bits in the article that stray from me. Oh yeah, they also make no mention of a blog, although I'm guessing that would be implied.
I suppose that the really disturbing thing about this is not that I feel someone who knows me, spoofed me. I'm just not that cool. It's more the fact that there are apparently more of me out there in such great numbers that The Onion could write a whole article about. That my friends, is by far more disturbing.
27 11 2007 0 comments
Tags: hudin, tea
Hudin Hits 1,000--Crowds Largely Uncommential
Well, the moment that was bound to happen has finally happened. This, right here and now, is the site's 1,000th article. Yeah, I know, some might say, "Astounding!", "How'd you do it?", "Zads!", or "Where's the the naked pictures?" Obviously the most important thing to say at moments like these are that the naked pictures are in the Bay to Breakers sections: 2006 and 2007, as well as the Folsom Street Fair.
With cheap thrills out of the way, it's probably time to look at where the site is now, which is what I feel to be in a good shape. As mentioned before and probably will be mentioned again, there are 1,000 articles. I'm guessing that there are about 10% that are really good, 20% that are decent, 30% that are something to read if you're bored, and then 40% that are pretty bad. I tip my hat to those that have been with me the whole time. I looked back at some of the older articles and they're nothing more than my blatherings. In fact, I have been going back to re-tag older articles, and have been adding in ramblings as a tag. I might even make it so that some point in the future, if you prefer to only read the writings that I feel are prime, you could stop seeing these. And yes, I know that reading posts about the Academy of Art or how much I don't like certain haircuts can get old.
Despite all this, there were a few articles that I really liked, which if you are in an office somewhere, stuck in middle management, you might enjoy wasting some time to read:
Dubrovnik, Dubrovnik Re-Visited, and Dubrovnik Re-Re-Visited
Everything on Praving
How Do Budget Airlines Make Money?
Seven Rules for Contract Web Developers
That's probably enough to choke anyone. As you'll see in this list, most of these articles are relatively recent. There is a reason for this and it is my Number 1 Fan who challenges me to write articles that are more substantive and interesting. Without her, there would undoubtedly be more "80 Year Old Man" posts and really, the world of the blog needs no more of those.
Beyond the articles though, it appears that I've posted 1630 photos to the site. This is something of a bigger deal than the articles because a) I think my photos are a lot better and b) I've only been putting them up for the last two years with most of that focused on the last year and a half when I made the switch to a proper SLR.
Much like the articles, my shots have been readily improving with time. I must admit that while the vast bulk of these shots are mine, there are some from Number 1 Fan in there as well, since we travel and do just about everything together. So, if you see a wide shot that's particularly cool, that's most likely going to be hers. But, looking over all of these, I originally thought that my favorite gallery as of late was going to be Sarajevo. I do like that gallery a lot, but the one that I think is the most interesting is Belgrade. Both are wild places, but the haphazard collision of multiple empires in Belgrade really made for some interesting shots.
Well, enough of all this. Back to my day job that allows the stories to unfold. (That happens to be recounted in The Sometimes Office from time to time...) Oh, and leave a comment, so I know who is out there! People hardly ever comment and that makes me feel sad.
14 11 2007 3 comments
Tags: blogs, hudin, site update
Enter the Uncle
Almost two weeks ago, my brother had my family's first grandchild, this making me officially an uncle. Of course he and his girlfriend were taking care of three other kids from a previous relationship of hers, so this little guy rounds it out for an even four, if four is an even kind of thing.
Dylan Christopher Cole Hudin is a cute little guy, but at just a few days old when I saw him, who knows where he's headed. Will he get his mother's red hair, or my brother's generally clueless look? Sorry Chris, cheap shot, but I am the older brother.
The thing is, little babies just sleep I found out. And here the whole family came up to see him, when all he really is, is a little poo machine at this point. Man can those kids pump it out. But, that's about it: eat, poo, cry sometimes, pee on someone sometimes, and then sleep a lot.
I have a feeling that the uncle duties really start to kick in once they can walk and they want someone to watch the little guy or take him to the park or go hiking or something. We'll see. Thankfully he has three older siblings than I can test these things out on first to see how I stack up as an uncle.
26 10 2007 0 comments
Tags: hudin
