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	<title>scot hacker&#039;s foobar blog</title>
	<link>http://birdhouse.org/blog</link>
	<description>Like a chicken with a jewel in its beak.</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Mon, 08 Mar 2010 22:26:08 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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	<language>en</language>
	
	<item>
		<title>zip vs. tar + gzip</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Just had the need to create an archive of a folder containing 91  large text files, totaling 370MBs. Decided to pit zip against tar + gzip in a little speed test, using these commands:
tar cvzf awstats.tgz awstats
zip -9ry awstats.zip awstats
On the server in question, these were the elapsed times to accomplish this very similar [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://birdhouse.org/blog/2010/03/08/zip-vs-tar-gzip/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Four Eyes</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;m in alien territory here. Over the past few months my vision has become increasingly blurry, both when reading and when reading signs at a distance. I&#8217;ve been lucky enough to have enjoyed a life of perfect vision so far, but those days are gone. I&#8217;m officially old. Had my first encounter with an optometrist [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://birdhouse.org/blog/2010/03/03/glasses/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Home Backup to the Cloud</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Four years ago, long before Time Machine and the wide availability of cloud storage, I purchased a RAID/NAS for home backups. It&#8217;s done its job admirably, and has given us the confidence to back up the whole family without fear of drive failure. Even went as far as drilling holes in the floor and threading [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://birdhouse.org/blog/2010/03/01/backblaze/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Beyond the Bayou Auction and Soiree</title>
		<description><![CDATA[ Miles attends the most excellent co-op elementary in Richmond, CA. Very strong parent participation, rich involvement in music and the arts, strong emphasis on science and the environment, loving teachers, etc. But the school struggles to make ends meet. Every year we host a public auction/soiree&#8217;. Local businesses donate products and services, great food [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://birdhouse.org/blog/2010/02/26/beyond-the-bayou-auction-and-soiree/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>delicious word cloud</title>
		<description><![CDATA[wordle.net not only lets you generate tag clouds out of any chunk of text (which can be great for doing things like figuring out which keywords a politician emphasizes the most in a speech), it can also scan your delicious bookmarks to give you a weighted view of the kinds of things you keep track [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://birdhouse.org/blog/2010/02/23/delicious-word-cloud/</link>
			</item>
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		<title>Sundry Images, Feb 2010</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Just returned from the most amazing rain walk with Miles. Two full hours in the drizzle, revisiting haunts and trails we&#8217;ve enjoyed since he was three. Came to grab some of the images from the day and realized I hadn&#8217;t downloaded images from the iPhone for a very long time. Here&#8217;s a sundry collection of [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://birdhouse.org/blog/2010/02/21/sundry-images-feb-2010/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Miles&#8217; Umbrella Ad</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Miles had the idea to make his own TV commercial. This is what he came up with.

Miles&#8217; Umbrella Ad from Scot Hacker on Vimeo.
]]></description>
		<link>http://birdhouse.org/blog/2010/02/15/miles-umbrella-ad/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Mundus Journalism and More</title>
		<description><![CDATA[A ton of excellent new sites maintained by journalists and artists have been added to the Birdhouse Hosting roster over the past couple of months, including:
angelajbass.com
Angela highlights issues related to women, girls and people of color in the Bay Area and abroad, and groups that have been historically misrepresented by the media.
annavictoriabloom.com
Bloom began working in [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://birdhouse.org/blog/2010/02/10/mundus-journalism-and-more/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Africa Bike Drive</title>
		<description><![CDATA[For the last 12 years, I&#8217;ve been riding this 1996 Gary Fisher Kaitai &#8211; a bike I bought from my editor during the BeOS Bible project. We&#8217;ve been through thick and thin together:  A lot of rain and mud, a bunch of repairs, and countless daily commutes from El Cerrito to UC Berkeley and [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://birdhouse.org/blog/2010/01/16/africa-bike-drive/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>NuForce uDAC</title>
		<description><![CDATA[A few weeks ago, during a spell of unusually dry winter weather, I went to unplug a pair of Grado SR-80 headphones from my iMac. A spark of static electricity leapt from my fingers, I heard a brief crackling sound, and then&#8230; [silence]. From that moment forward, the headphone/speaker jack on the back of the [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://birdhouse.org/blog/2010/01/07/nuforce-udac/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>DC&#8217;s Plastic Bag Tax</title>
		<description><![CDATA[ Residents of Washington D.C. started the new year with a shiny &#8212; albeit tiny &#8212; new tax. Shoppers who show up at stores without their own bags or boxes will need to start paying 5 cents each for them. In my view, this is an excellent idea, and long overdue. I&#8217;d love to see [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://birdhouse.org/blog/2010/01/03/dcs-plastic-bag-tax/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Playing With Light</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Amy, Miles and I did some experiments with flashlights and a laser pen recently, drawing in the air in the kitchen with 6-second timed exposures. Unfortunately Amy&#8217;s camera didn&#8217;t have a CF card inserted, so we were able to save only a few of them done with my dinky point-and-shoot (I actually didn&#8217;t realize my [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://birdhouse.org/blog/2010/01/01/playing-with-light/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>(I Don&#8217;t Care About) Facebook and Privacy</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;m puzzling over the recent brouhaha regarding Facebook&#8217;s changes to their privacy policy. To be clear: I&#8217;m not puzzling over the changes (though they are confusing to the user who just wants to use the service instead of thinking about its internal minutia)  &#8211; I&#8217;m puzzling over the concern about them.
 Blogs are 100% [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://birdhouse.org/blog/2009/12/22/facebook-and-privacy/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Please Remember Victor Jara</title>
		<description><![CDATA[For Stuck Between Stations, Roger Moore has an excellent new post:
Please Remember Victor Jara, &#8220;the Chilean singer-songwriter and pioneer of the nueva cancion movement, who was tortured and murdered with many others following Pinochet’s CIA-supported 1973 military coup on September 11, 1973.&#8221;  Jara&#8217;s name is little-known in the U.S., but he was canonized in [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://birdhouse.org/blog/2009/12/21/please-remember-victor-jara/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Silver Balls</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Accidental team effort: A while ago, we ordered a set of super-magnetic BuckyBalls from ThinkGeek. Miles soon discovered he could stick them to the nails in our wooden floor, and stack them up in delicate little towers. Amy, with her amazing eye for detail, saw something beautiful in the scene and started taking pictures &#8211; [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://birdhouse.org/blog/2009/12/19/silver-balls/</link>
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