Damien and I biked along with Critical Mass San Diego again last Friday. This was my third outing and Damien’s second. This was a large Mass. My guess is that there were 1,000 cyclists the route took us just over 30 miles. Our route:

08/03/2009 Route
Find more Runs in San Diego, California

I’m often asked the same questions about Critical Mass. Who determines the route? Is there a prescribed route? Whoever is in the front determines the route and no there is not a prescribed route. In fact, this last Critical Mass Damien and I led it for the last eight miles out of Pacific Beach and up to Mission Hills. We were ready to go home. 🙂

Like a band of gypsies we go down the highway
We’re the best of friends
Insisting that the world be turnin’ our way

Tara and I took the family on the road to San Jose for an open source software conference where I was speaking and my employer was exhibiting.

We took highway 5 North to my hometown Morgan Hill. From San Diego it took 6 hours and 45 minutes. Not bad. We spent most of the week at my sister’s place. Ashby was ecstatic to see her cousins Skyler and Owen. Who also were pleased to have Ashby there to paint with make up and play with.

Because my employer was making a product announcement I was very much heads-down on work items through the week and then busy during the conference. Friday morning we headed South again, but we took Pacific Coast Highway 1 this time.

We stopped in Monterey and visited the aquarium. I have many fond childhood memories of Monterey Bay and the aquarium. We had a wonderful time. We only managed to take in about a third of the aquarium in the nearly two hours we spent there. The place is huge and it has gown significantly since I was last there over fifteen years ago.   

In Monterey there is also one of the most amazing children’s playgrounds that I have ever visited. This is on the North side of the city and is well worth stopping by if you have little ones.

After Monterey we stopped at Carmel by the Sea. Tara had never been and we took lunch there. Yelp led us to Hog’s Breath Inn, which was once owned by Clint Eastwood. Over lunch Tara used the retro Bluetooth handset I won by answering a trivia question correctly at the Sourceforge.net Community Choice Awards party the previous evening. Needless to say Tara got some curious looks. The trivia question: what are the most commonly used colors in flags? I’ll provide the answer at the bottom of this post.

The above photo of Tara talking on the aforementioned Bluetooth handset was taken from my iPhone while she speaking on my iPhone using the handset. Isn’t technology wonderful?

After Carmel we spent a night in Big Sur. Big Sur has it all: giant redwoods, mountains, the pacific ocean, beach, waterfalls and a fantastic trail system. Alas, with two little ones we did little more than hole up in a modest cabin. It was a bit too cold to camp with Roesevelt as we had intended. 

The next day we headed further south to Morro Bay. Yet another town that indelibly charmed my psyche during my adolescence.

Unfortunately, we returned home the following day. Tara and I both ached for another week of vacation road trip. In a couple of weeks from now we fly to Florida to visit my family. This will have to do. I’m most excited about being able to get back on my father’s 1700 cc Victory (that’s a big ass motorcycle). Some day perhaps I’ll own my own motorcycle and sidecar for the kids. 🙂

The complete photo set of our road trip can be found at Flickr. So too can the OSCON (open source conference) photos set.

The trivia question: what are the most commonly used colors in flags? Red, white and blue.

I have no idea where Steve found this drawing. He used it at the MindTouch developer blog and I love it.

While it’s still not even close to being significant relative to Google’s search traffic the traffic from Bing.com continues to grow. What is the most shocking to me is that Bing drives 364% more traffic to MindTouch.com and 10% more traffic ObLOGN.com than Yahoo! search. You read correctly, Bing drives more than three times more traffic than Yahoo! search.

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During an interview today….

I drew a robot. I’m not sure what the interviewee thought about it, but I think it’s pretty good. Back to work….

I recently was tasked with writing an article reviewing noise canceling head phones for Fortune Magazine. I reviewed Creative Aurvana X-Fi, Bose QuietComfort 3, Genius GHP-04NC, JVC HA-NCX78 and Sennheiser PXC 450.

Read the full article, you can find the PDF here.

Being a nineteen year fan of Nine Inch Nails I was thoroughly pleased to read MindTouch, the company I CEO for, included in a C|Net article about Trent Reznor’s use of an Open Core business model.

The article cites a recent post I wrote at the MindTouch blog about the MindTouch Community. The Open Core business model works well in yielding exponential growth by building and engaging community. I write about this too in an article titled: “Open Source Magic Carpet Defies Recession”.

I went camping with the family this weekend at in the Laguna Mountains in the Cleveland National Forest. We stayed at the El Prado Campground. This is about an hour drive from downtown San Diego just past Alpine, CA. I often use Recreation.gov for booking our campsites; however, I just figured out ReserveAmerica.com includes both federal and state parks. Both sites would benefit greatly from a Collaborative Network that would allow visitors to share information, video and images of sites. For me it is always difficult to decide on a campground because I just don’t know what to expect without speaking with someone that has been there. I once took the family to a campsite north of Morro Bay after booking it at Reserve America only to discover it was not more than a parking lot near a coal burning power plant. Granted it was near the beach and you could see Morro Rock, but the campsite was really awful.

Ashby loves camping and this was Roesevelt’s first camping trip. We had a nice shaded campsite, but it was 98 F when arrived. It really didn’t seem that hot though. In the evening the temperature dropped to a pleasant high 60s F.

The Laguna Mountains are gorgeous. I am told there is a really nice trail that runs through some mountain meadows that starts at the El Prado campground. If it were not so hot we could have gone on some hikes, but with Roesevelt being so young and the trails near our campsite having so little shade it was not feasible. 

Friends Tara knows from Stroller Strides, Christy and Steve, joined us and brought their children, Wade and Olivia. Wade, who is almost two, apparently enjoys running on streets as he would frequently make a run for it down the road. The kids had a great time and so too did we adults after the kids retired for the evening.

Christy and Steve have a pop up camper that sports three beds, a sink and stove.  It is fantastic. They tow it behind. Park it. Crank up the pop-up and VOILA they have a comfortable camp home for them and their kids. Tara assures me she would be willing to camp more frequently with such a contraption. I think we need to get one.

I find it amusing to reminiscent on my years of camping in Northern Minnesota with a canvas sack, sleeping bag and a tarp. How we change after children….

Complete photoset.