Brendan Nee

Author Archives: admin

Freshbooks takes me out to dinner

Preston and I had the opportunity to have dinner with two members of the freshbooks team. We both use freshbooks.com for tracking our work and billing our clients, and it happens to be one of my very favorite web applications. Now we’re both pictured on the freshbooks blog. Preston and I ended up taking Mike [...]

Preston Theler – In the right place at the right time

Back when my friend Preston Theler worked at Mesaba Airlines, he was first on the scene when a DC-9 ended up on top of a pushback tug. He snapped a picture (and got cited by the TSA for it). Its now one of the most popular pictures on airliners.net, which I hear is the most [...]

Firefox Extensions you Can’t Live Without

Firefox is fantastic, but you can make it better. Add some of these extensions by visiting the site & clicking the install link. If you are using firefox, the extension will automatically install and be ready to use after you restart your browser. Tab Mix Plus: Allows you to control how you browse by opening [...]

Hour 64: Thoughts on Amtrak

This has been a very interesting trip. Some things I’d reccomend for your cross country train trip: An extension cord- There seem to be only 3 outlets on the train and they are not placed in areas where you could sit and work. Also, one with multiple ends will allow you to make friends by [...]

Amtrak + iPhone = Crazy Delicious

Hour 51: Just hit Omaha, NB, 5.5 hours behind schedule. Lots of people got on in Denver so the train was full, now a lot of people are leaving. Having the iPhone has made this trip much more tolerable. During the trip, both facebook and netvibes launched iPhone versions of their sites, both of which [...]

Mountian pass closed

Hour 41: We just spent 5 hours waiting for some trackwork to be finished in the rocky mountians. We got into Denver 5+ hours late. This doesn’t look good for an ontime arrival in chicago.

Grand Junction: Not so grand

Hour 29: I’m starting to think I should have brought some food with me on this trip. The cafe food is maybe on par with gas station food at triple the price. The dining car food isn’t much more but the menu is remarkably similar to the cafe: hot dogs, hamburgers, and pizza. We stopped [...]

Nothing to eat in Winnemucca

Hour 10.5: We had a long stop in the middle of nowhere, now a 40 minute stop in Winnemucca, NV. There was actually a basque restaurant across the street from the station (read: gravel lot) which gave me 4 beers for $8. Train food has not impressed me yet, I think that was the worst [...]

Hour 5: Truckee

Its interesting being on the other side of Donner pass looking at the interstate. we already passed the highest point of the trip, I guess its all downhill from here for the next 52 hours. The scenery is good, but Ive seen much of it before on trips to Reno/Tahoe.

Internet in the sierras

Hour 3 outside of colfax, ca. I’ve gotten pretty constant Internet thus far. There are announcements about every 10 minutes with history and sights. Colfax is quaint mountian town. Almost time for lunch.

Old & new school: San Francisco to Chicago via train with an iphone

I’m en route to Chicago from San Francisco (well, really Emeryville) to visit my brother. I’ve got my iphone which I hacked last night to allow my laptop to use the Internet via ad hoc wireless. I’ve got 3 full batteries, so we’ll see how long I can keep the trainblog going. Hour 1: Left [...]

Geni.com – Some good reasons to check it out

Less than three weeks ago I read about geni.com on techcrunch. It sounded interesting so I added my parents and a few relatives to geni.com, typed in 3 or 4 email addresses and now I have 339 relatives connected to me going back 6 generations to 1762. Some of my relatives have scanned and uploaded [...]

Mr T Doll Show

I went to the I pity the dolls show last month, Preston took this great shot of Lisa and I with a wall of handmade Mr T Dolls.

Backing up my stuff

I’ve started to back up my important files using Mozy. Its cheap, automatic and claims to have unlimited storage space. We’ll see how that goes when I start to back up my raw photo collection.

Save some money – Useful Websites for Deals

I like using the web to save money. I use all of these sites to find the best deals. istockphoto.com: A great source for really cheap stock photography. They have a huge selection of high resolution images sold for $1-$3. I’ve found this useful for all sorts of projects. Its an easy way to make [...]

Graduated

I graduated this month. My parents & grandmother came out and went to three different ceremonies: Berkeley department of City & Regional Planning, Berkeley College of Environmental Design, and Berkeley College of Engineering. I actually had the wrong color hood at the engineering ceremony, it was supposed to be gold but I was given Orange [...]

Collaborate Online – Tools I Use

Starting when I moved to New Orleans and began working with Jedidiah Horne on disaster recovery research, I’ve been trying out the latest in free online collaboration tools. Here are links to some that I like: Google Documents – This is a google product which can replace Microsoft Word and Excel. It is perfect for [...]

Memorial site for Kaye Bock

I set up a basic site for members of the Berkeley DCRP community to post their thoughts and memories about Kaye Bock who passed away on Monday, January 15, 2007.

Art Show & Carsharing

I’m presenting (or will at least be present) at the Transportation Research Board Annual meeting in Washington DC on the carsharing research I did last year with Robert Cervero and Aaron Golub.  I’ll be at Session 334 on Worldwide Carsharing Strategies and Evaluation on Monday, January 22, 2007, 1:30 PM – 3:15 PM at the [...]

My New Orleans planning website

Jed and I have found, through attending meetings and conducting interviews, that most people, not surprisingly, are confused by the four planning processes which have occurred or are currently underway in New Orleans since hurricane Katrina.  Also, most people don’t know where they can go to get the final versions of the completed plans, and [...]