The Personal Blog of Michael Whalen
Michael Whalen is a 19-year-old web developer working in beautiful Honolulu, Hawaii. He is currently lusting after Django, Javascript, and fixed-gear track bikes. More »
The views I express here are not
necessarily those of my employer.
whalesalad: jquery isnt that nice actually
whalesalad: it has powerful selectors but thats about it
obeattie: It’s syntactic sugar
whalesalad: quote of the day
obeattie: Yeah exactamundo
My buddies Oliver and Katharine did a fun photo-shoot with me last night all around Waikiki during the wee hours of the morning. This is one of the few shots that I took, it’s not too great but a teaser of what is to come from beetle mc beat and Kaos.
This is simply the most amazing thing ever. Jailbait mixed with athleticism mixed with prom pictures. If this were a magazine, it’s pages would be stuck together indefinitely. Holy pole vaulting jesus is RIGHT. Check out these photos of Allison Stokke all aggregated on COED Magazine. I’ll let her stokke my pole any day.
Update: The BEST PHOTO ON THE PAGE is not clickable. I’m seriously in tears at the moment.
Get it while it’s hot. Finally released and out the door. Big ass pretty green button on the website now.
As Martian mogtard himself said, so much for Hawaii havin’ no concerts. I just got an email on my mobile telephone, an iPhone to be exact, while squeezin’ one out on the crapper next to some guy who looked like he ate something other than Special K Smart Start for breakfast. He was hurtin’, I could tell. Anyway, an email found its way into my inbox from the gentlemen at Bamp project, a local group of guys here in Hawaii workin’ hard to bring good artists to Hawaii.
Thanks to the guys at Bamp, I’ve seen Brand New (AMAZING show, they played essentially every song starting around 9 and playing till 11:30 or so), Say Anything (another great show), Incubus (yuck) and Vampire Weekend (hipster crap, but was cool I s’pose) down here on this little rock in the Pacific. I was really excited to see that The Kooks are going to be here on October 31st for “A Hipster Halloween”. Yes, I ride a fixie, no, I am not a hipster. But! There are some pretty cute hipster girlies out there, the non-dirty kind :)
I really like The Kooks and will definitely be buying some tickets to the halloween show. Also in this lovely little email that Bamp sent out was a list of their other upcoming shows which includes Underoath on October 4th, and Dragonforce on November 1st. Some good stuff coming down here in the next few months :)
I can’t remember the last time that I slept. The iLovePhotos team and I have been staying at an awesome beach house here in San Diego for the last few days in preparation for what just happened moments ago: our official presentation at Demo Fall 2008. We’re launched, but the fat lady hasn’t started to sing yet, she’s just clearing her throat.
Lorenz rocked the house with his presentation, and so far people seem to really like the concept. Our website is coming very, very very soon. In a few hours soon. I’m prepping some pages to throw up live until things are 100% peachy keen. Right now all of our servers in Honolulu are completely offline, and subsequently our SVN repository and testing boxes cannot be accessed. Production servers are still up, but we can’t get any code to them =(. Apparently a technician is running all over HNL trying to figure things out. Until he figures things out, however, we’re stuck throwing tarballs back and forth and trying to get this site entirely ready to go wild.
In the meantime, won’t you enjoy this rad video that Cory created. He did an amazing job showcasing the features of the app, I truly love the vid. See you all on the other side :) kthxbai
Parts have been steadily arriving all this week here at Whalesalad headquarters (a shanty little crap apartment in the heart of Waikiki). I’ve got an 80’s vintage Bianchi road conversion hanging in front of me missing a ton of parts, my beloved Pista Concept hanging from the ceiling behind me, and my good ol’ trusty Cayne Uno resting to my side ready to spring into action at the slightest thought of grub or coffee.
Earlier this week my 17T Soma cog and black Izumi chain arrived, along with my 120mm Thomsen Elite stem. I’m not entirely sure if 120mm is going to work… it feels awfully long (yes, that’s what she said) but I guess I will just need to give it a good rub and take a shot!
A few parts more parts arrived today (the exciting ones!) including a Sugino75 black 170mm crankset and matching Sugino75 109mm bottom bracket. It might be the right size, it might not. Who knows! I think its safe to say though that no matter what all I would need to do is buy a new spindle for the BB and i’d be good to go in terms of chainline.
Some parts in the mail and soon to arrive are a 48T FSA chainring, a nice set of black Nitto bullhorns, and some matching MKS GR-9 pedals and dual toe straps. Yes I suppose I skimped on the chainring as it doesn’t really match the $200 crank set, however I really love the look of it and I trust it in terms of its ability to take an ass whooping from my 50mph legs of titanium alloy.
I already have a fairly nice old school Selle Italia celeste seat from the vintage Bianchi, which I will be throwing onto a gloss black Dimension seatpost. That still leaves a nice wheelset, a brake on the front as well as a lever (which I will be stealing from my current bike). Since my Bianchi fork isn’t drilled for a brake, I think I’ll end up buying one that is drilled on ebay and keep my Bianchi one in a nice safe place for a rainy day. Maybe I can keep it under my pillow and use it to bludgeon invaders of my abode. We’ll see.
Hopefully I can get a wheelset sorted and have this sucker put together by the end of next week!
Oliver Beattie: >>> english_number(504895458599549865458)
‘five hundred four quintillion, eight hundred ninety-five quadrillion, four hundred fifty-eight trillion, five hundred ninety-nine billion, five hundred forty-nine million, eight hundred sixty-five thousand, four hundred fifty-eight’
Michael Whalen: hahahahahaahahahahahaha
Michael Whalen: thats awesome
Oliver Beattie: yeah something i put in there for browser versions… guess a little carried away
Michael Whalen: hahahahaha
Michael Whalen: a little carried away… lmao
DO NOT accidentally convert your com.apple.iTunes.plist file to an *unusable* XML file (from a binary) while you’re updating your iPhone to the latest firmware. It doesn’t really end pretty.
Note: iPhones were harmed in the making of this post.
Update: So far my phone (a 3G Black 8GB for the record) is much much more responsive after updating to the new firmware (2.0.1). Feels almost like night and day. I will have to wait though, for one of those moments where no matter what it feels like resistance is futile and a reboot is the only way to regain my sanity. Right now though, Mail, Contacts, and SMS all seem to be on the ball.
I finally got my fingers on a 2005 Bianchi Pista Concept. It’s a 53cm which might be a little too small, but according to my calculations… it’s got the exact same dimensions as my current frame! Hopefully it will be a pretty simple transition. I’m utterly shocked at how incredibly light it is.
I scored it for a real good price too, so if I do decide that it’s not exactly the right size I should be able to flip it on ebay pretty quick and not lose any money.
I’m excited to get started with this build. I want to keep my other bike fully operational while I build this one up, and want to give it some love with all new parts across the board. Originally I wanted to powdercoat it all pink, and replace all of the stickers with white duplicates. Not too sure if I’ll keep with that idea or not, but I’ll keep you guys posted!
