Kevin Warnock

My favorite photographer, Irving Penn, died today at age 92. Here’s one of my favorite photographs by Penn.

Monika and I went to visit Noisebridge this afternoon. It was a bright, sunny and brisk day in the City. At Noisebridge, members may host classes. Today, there was a class with about 15 students focused on the intersection of technology and entertainment.

The machine shop has a miniature CNC milling machine. We were looking at it when two members came over and explained the work they are doing. One of the members donated it to Noisebridge.

The other member is reverse engineering the control mechanism, and had its control cable wired to an Archer brand breadboard. He had hooked up what appeared to be a potentiometer to one of the wires, but it was actually a more complicated control. From what I understood of the explanation, the knob was a digital mouse of sorts that sent control pulses to the mill. When the knob was turned the milling head moved up and down. The member who donated the mill said his original cost for the device was $3,000. It looked well made and seemed to be in good condition. One of the things I want to do one day is learn to make handmade custom watches. A CNC mill of this size would be a key tool in that effort. We didn’t catch the names of these two guys, but I saw one of them at the party Friday.

Monika and I had lunch at El Balazo at 2187 Mission Street. We shared the mixed vegetable burrito. This was the best vegetarian burrito I have ever had. It was bursting with interesting flavors. It had sautéed zucchini in it, which I love. The burrito was huge and was only $4.95 – and it was plenty for the two of us. The walls were bright yellow, with a pattern of  blue stenciled figures. This restaurant is a chain, and there are a dozen locations according to their menu. One suggestion I have for them is to list the other locations on the menu. This place has four stars on Yelp.com, but the reviews are variable, so maybe it’s not always as outstanding as it was for us today.

Next on our excursion was a visit to Adobe Books, at 3166 Mission Street. This is partly a used book store and partly an art gallery. The art gallery was quite interesting, with an unusual and creative mountain of used books set afire. No, there were not real flames, but one of those ‘fireplace simulators’ nestled into a quarter pyramid of books tucked into one corner of the tiny gallery space, which is at the very rear of the book store.

The book store itself was warm, cozy and inviting, with all kinds of fascinating books stacked everywhere. Monika bought The Satanic Verses by Salmon Rushdie, as neither of us has read it, and we’ve both been curious about it.

In the cookbook section, I was surprised to see a copy of the Chinese cookbook given to me years ago by my dear late friend Stan Pasternak. There also was a beautifully photographed book about canning fruits and vegetables. The photographs of tasty food in glass bottles reminded me of my long standing project to photograph the hundreds of glass bottles I have been collecting for photography since the mid 1980s. Most of these bottles are in records storage boxes stored under my parents’ house in the crawl space. My father reminds me to come pick them up every so often. They’ve been there for twenty plus years so far, but I maintain that the containers are only getting more rare and interesting with every passing year. The Planters peanuts glass bottles from the 1980s are very distinctive and identifiable. Now that I have a good digital camera, I am particularly looking forward to completing the project, which I started in 1983 while I was studying at Brooks in Santa Barbara, California.

Before we went to Noisebridge, we picked up some vegetables at the farmers market at Divisadero Street and Grove streets. We got there just before closing time at 2pm, and there were few customers. But there was plenty to buy, and the prices are lower than at the 9th Avenue and Irving street farmers market closer to our house, where we usually buy produce. We picked up some chili peppers that were still on the branches. I cut them off when we got home, and we probably ended up with 150 small chili peppers, which I plan to use in my Chinese cooking. We also bought some bitter melon, strawberries, plums and onions. Later in the Mission we bought some beautiful large red tomatoes that were a huge bargain at just $1 for three pounds. I wish I knew where the produce in the Mission comes from. If someone knows, please leave me a comment. The prices are just so attractive that I don’t know how they do it. We love farmers markets, and try to go every weekend during the season. At the Irving street market there is a vendor who sells just fresh dates. They are $7 a pound, but they are the most flavorful dates I’ve ever tasted. Eating them is like eating fantastic candy. Monika and I had a great afternoon.

I spent $25 today and I logged every penny of it in my new favorite Apple iPhone software application called iXpenseIt. This free app lets you quickly log every dollar you spend, and makes it super easy to use the iPhone camera to capture each receipt. Then, you can look at bar and pie charts on the phone to see where your money goes among expense categories. You get the data off the phone by sending yourself a spreadsheet by email. I highly recommended iXpenseIt based on my few days of experience.

I went to the Noisebridge first anniversary party last night, October 2nd. Noisebridge is a so-called hacker space. There probably were 200 people there last night. The vibe was very good, and I really enjoyed myself. I talked to the people I recognized from my first visit to Noisebridge the day before, including Ruben, Josh and Veronica. I also met Bill and several more people whose names escape me.

I have to admit I was a bit of a geek, as I brought my camera and took some stills and video of the event. I walked through the space with the video camera to show the variety of people and exhibits. They lights were dimmed and there was a DJ with video projectors. The raw warehouse space came alive, and were it a nightclub, it would have been acceptable.

This place has so much potential, and I’m even more excited about Noisebridge than I am about Hacker Dojo, another hacker space I’m already a member of in Mountain View, California. What I find more compelling about Noisebridge is its location, right in the center of the action on Mission Street, which is the main drag in San Francisco’s primary latino neighborhood. The Mission is just such a vibrant and compelling place to put a hacker space. There are dozens of restaurants and bars within walking distance. The public transportation is fantastic. Both the San Francisco Municipal Transit system busses and the Bay Area Rapid Transit trains stop within two blocks of Noisebridge. One can thus get to Noisebridge from anywhere by flying into San Francisco International Airport and hopping on a Bart train, which will drop them off a block and a half from the front door.

I’m sitting in a fantastic new hacker space in San Francisco, California. It’s called Noisebridge. This is a space for computer programmers, hardware hackers, artists and others. The space is on the third floor of a non descript building in the colorful Mission District. It’s on the top floor, and there are skylights, so it’s bright and airy.

There are large windows at both ends of the building, and the space fills the entire top floor, so there is a comfortable breeze, even though it’s a warm day in the City.

There are about a dozen people here working hard to prepare for the first year anniversary party to celebrate the formation of Noisebridge, scheduled for tomorrow evening.

There is stuff everywhere: machine tools, computers, oscilloscopes, books, kitchen appliances, workbenches, couches, bikes and lumber. This is an ambitious project, and the people I’ve met so far are friendly and interesting.

I’m going to come to the party tomorrow, and I’m looking forward to many more visits to Noisebridge.

My friends Shelley Leatherman and Jonathan Lott welcomed their first child into the world today, Olivia Lott. Olivia was born around 6 pm at Kaiser hospital in San Jose, California. My wife and I attended Shelley and Jonathan’s marriage in 2007. My wife and I will always be able to remember Olivia’s birthday because today is the first anniversary of our own marriage. Instead of having dinner together, we went to see the new baby in the hospital.

I shot this video on October 3rd, at the home of Jon and Shelley.

I spent September 17th through the 20th in Tigard, Oregon, a suburb of Portland. My grandmother Elsie lives in Tigard. My father and my brother with his family gathered at grandma’s house for four days. Elsie is 98 years old. She’s having trouble with her vision, but generally is in good health. She detailed her plans to attend her sorority convention when she is 99 and 100 years old.

My father, my brother and his family and I took a day trip to Newport, OR on Saturday the 19th. Grandma used to own a house near there about 30 years ago. We tried to find her old house, since my brother and I enjoyed our visits there when we were children. We think we found the house, but we couldn’t be certain. But we know we were within 20 feet of where her house was, as we walked the street where the house is or was. We also walked down to the beach from the cliff where her house was. The beach was beautiful, and I got some great video of my brother’s kids playing on the beach and wading in the Pacific ocean.

Here is a video of the waterfront in Newport, OR.

Here is a video of the historic Timberline Lodge at the base of Mt. Hood about an hour outside of Portland, OR.

Here is a video of a forest fire on Interstate 5.

Here is a video of my niece and nephew making a souvenir by squishing a penny.

Here is a video of my brother and his family hiking down to the beach near my grandmother’s house she lived in in the 1970s.

Here is a video of my brother and his family playing on the beach of the Pacific ocean in Oregon, right below where my grandmother had her house 30 years ago.

Here is a video of my father and my brother and his family enjoying corndogs at the very same restaurant where my father ate corndogs in the late 1940s.

In 1999 I competed in the first annual business plan competition at the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley. This competition was the brainchild of my friends Keval Desai and Melissa Daniels. Keval had to convince Jerry Engel, then the Executive Director for the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, which is housed at Haas. I am grateful that Keval succeeded in convincing Jerry, since the competition helped me raise money for my first Internet company, Hotpaper.com. Had there not been a competition, I wouldn’t have been able to sell Hotpaper when I did, in August of 2000. So in a very real sense, my success in life, limited though it may be, is tied directly to the Haas business plan competition.

As a result, I am a fervent supporter of the competition. I’ve sponsored it annually since I participated, and I’ve been a semi-final judge since about 2005. Earlier today, the finalist teams for the 11th annual business plan competition presented their plans in a public event at the Haas School of Business. The school published its video on YouTube, which I’ve embedded below. It’s a long video, but very worthwhile. I was one of the judges that advanced the first and third place teams to the finals, so I saw the more detailed presentations the teams make in private to the judges.

The AutoTB presentation in particular really is moving. They propose to make an automated device that will allow a lay person to diagnose in twenty minutes whether a person has tuberculosis. The current way this disease is diagnosed requires a trained specialist, and the diagnosis takes days to make. Many people in the developing world can’t get to clinics easily, so many people that are tested never pick up their results. Tuberculosis is one of the biggest killers on earth, so Auto TB really has the potential to change the world. Amazingly, their device has a target price of just $500 – not thousands or tens of thousands like many medical devices.

TMC T80206 engine bay showing Detroit Diesel Series 50 engine

This is a picture of the engine compartment of my TMC T80206 bus conversion.

This vehicle is commonly called an RTS, in honor of General Motors, who designed the vehicle before getting out of the commercial bus business. RTS is short for Rapid Transit Series.

Transportation Manufacturing Corporation bought the RTS line in 1987 and dropped the RTS moniker. But almost all bus nuts refer to my bus conversion as an RTS.

My RTS has a Detroit Diesel Series 50 four cylinder diesel engine. The drive shaft is parallel to the bumper, and the automatic transmission is barely visible in the lower right of the picture.

The 260 amp 24 volt alternator is the large gray component in the upper left of the picture. One day that alternator will power my Trace SW4024 inverter and charge the ‘house’ batteries.

My engine has about 368,000 miles on it, but these engines are known as million mile engines, so with proper care, I’ll never wear it out from driving.

The engine displaces 8.5 liters and produces 275 horsepower at 2100 RPM. This is enough to cruise all day at 75 miles per hour, and to go 50 miles an hour up the Marin side approach to the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge. That might not seem fast, but less capable engines might only push a vehicle this size up that incline at 30 miles per hour. I was smiling when I first learned I could go 50 miles an hour up a long hill.

275 horsepower might not seem like much, but the torque this engine produces dwarfs that from an engine in a pickup truck, which is why this engine can propel a vehicle that weighs nearly 14 tons with relative ease.

I get 10.75 miles to the US gallon of diesel on the freeway with my bus conversion, which, on a per pound basis, is much better than a Toyota Prius gas-electric hybrid automobile, popular in the United States.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

Watercolor of heart painted by Kevin Warnock, 2008.

I am a painter.

These 50 paintings are the wedding invitations I painted for my own wedding.

Each envelope contained an original watercolor painting. I scanned them at high resolution before I mailed them.

Click on the paintings to see them at much higher resolution — so high you can see the brush strokes and the texture of the paper.

I attended the 2008 Intel Capital CEO Summit at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco over the last four days. It was a whirlwind of energy and activity, and I really enjoyed myself.

I got to meet and talk with Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini and Intel Capital President Arvind Sodhani.

I also got to meet and talk with musician and entrepreneur MC Hammer, who provided the evening entertainment on one evening. The next day he introduced himself to me while I was getting a glass of water during a session. We talked for about ten minutes. He’s an interesting guy, and is very well spoken. His current company, Dance Jam, is in part funded by Ron Conway, who also invested in my first Internet startup, Hotpaper.com. Ron was at the conference as MC’s guest, and I got to say hi to Ron. I haven’t seen him in a while.

Intel CEO Paul Otellini with MC Hammer and Intel Capital President Arvind Sodhani

Representative from CheckPoint learns about gOffice.com from Silveroffice, Inc. founder and CEO Kevin Warnock at Intel Capital CEO Summit in June 2008 in San Francisco. Note other matchmaking sessions taking place in the background.

My company Silveroffice, Inc. is an Intel Capital Portfolio Company, which is why I was able to attend this summit. I definitely plan to attend the summit again next year.

The pictures in this post were taken by Intel’s photographer, and I downloaded them from Intel Capital’s website.