Aside

Apologies for not updating the blog super often. Usually I’m more active on Facebook/Twitter, so follow me there if you so desire. In any case, lately I’ve gotten back into baking. I’ve been on a potato bread kick lately (just finished my fifth tonight), but have also made apple scones, and experimental speculoos paste/stroopwaffel cookies. The recipe I’ve been using for potato bread is derived from The Cheese Board Collective Works, which is published by The Cheese Board Collective, a…

I first encountered Marie Javins (@mariejavins) online sometime back in December of 2005. I was totally impressed by her 2001 solo trip by land and sea around the globe. We met up for breakfast in New York once, and have traded messages as we’ve moved on to live in Europe (me) and the Middle East (her). As she describes herself on her site: Marie Javins is an award-winning writer, comic book creator, traveler, and blogger who alternates between roaming the…

So in the wake of this iPhone tracking data scandal I did what a lot of people did — download the app and track my own data. My map is plotted here: Now, I got my iPhone in February 2011 in California. I have no data for the two weeks I was in California, nor the layover in Dallas/Forth Worth airport. Nor do I have any data showing my trips earlier this year to Hannover, Budapest, and two weekends ago…

I wrote an article about the Comodo hack for Deutsche Welle here. The following is an introduction to the full interview (further below) with Comodohacker. On March 15, 2011, a major Internet-security company, Comodo, said that it sustained a major security breach, by allowing nine “SSL certificates,” to be issued in their name. These certificates are used to digitally authenticate a secure connection to websites like Gmail, Hotmail and Skype. The hacker acquired fake certificates for Gmail, Hotmail, Google, Yahoo,…

Crazy to believe. Our one-year anniversary of arriving in Bonn was on Friday. I’m trying to run through a mental list of all of the things that we’ve done, seen, eaten, traveled to, and people we’ve met since we first set foot in Bonn on March 25, 2010. (Reviewing my Twitter posts helps too.) Departed Oakland. Arrived, bags in hand. First stayed: Hotel Ibis. First dinner: Mediterraneo. Bonn puns. First apartment (danke, Thomas and Couchsurfing!) in the Bonn Altstadt. Cherry…

The following message was sent to the Gulf2000 email list on December 19, 2010 and is re-printed here below with his permission. Henry Precht is a retired Foreign Service officer who was country director for Iran during the Iranian Revolution and subsequent hostage crisis. -CF As I understand it, Wikileaks has captured a huge half of State Department cable reports — the less interesting half. As Frank Rettenberg has written, the really good stuff is sent under captions (EXDIS, NODIS,…

I just filed this latest update to the ongoing Hoder saga. Iranian-Canadian blogger Hossein Derakhshan was temporarily released from a Tehran prison, after having been incarcerated for 26 months, according to a report Thursday on Mashregh News, a conservative Iranian news website. The site was among the first to report Derakhshan’s conviction at the end of September on charges of “conspiring with hostile governments, disseminating anti-Islamic propaganda, disseminating anti-revolutionary propaganda, blasphemy, and operating and managing obscene pornography websites.” The account…

Joint Declaration by Canada and France (No. 341 – October 20, 2010 – 1:15 p.m. ET) The Honourable Lawrence Cannon, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Canada, and Bernard Kouchner (pictured), Minister of Foreign and European Affairs of France, made the following statement today concerning Canadian-Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan, who is detained in Iran. Mr. Derakhshan is a Canadian citizen and his companion is a French national. “We are jointly requesting that the Iranian authorities release Canadian-Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan, who…

My beautiful and brilliant wife, Rebecca Farivar, is getting her first book of poetry — tentatively titled Conception — published by Octopus Books in 2011. That means both of our books will be coming out next year! Hooray! Discounts will surely be in effect for the Double Farivar Pack!

As per the , David Lidington has spoken out against the arrest of Hossein Derakhshan.