Corbett's Ramblings...

Starting this morning: GWRE

2012-01-25T18:01:00.001-06:00

With an initial range of $10-$12, a price set at $13 on Tuesday, things kicked off this AM:

Hiking at Pace Bend: A Bit Turned Around

2012-01-19T20:55:00.000-06:00

Last weekend, Jen and I decided to use the slower-than-normal weekend to set out on a hike in the Austin area. I have had a book sitting on the shelf for a few years, 60 Hikes Within 60 Miles of San Antonio & Austin, that we browsed through to find something close enough and long enough. Most of the hikes were too short (~3 miles), and some were a bit far away.

Pace Bend fit the bill, though: the route there was to be about 5 miles, and Pace Bend is relatively close to us. It is SW of Austin abutting Lake Travis. We're on the SW end of Austin as it is, so it was just a short (20-30 minute) drive west on 71 to get there.

The book includes a map of the intended hike. It did not show the full Pace Bend trail system, but rather a trace of the out-and-back route it wanted us to take. It had us taking Grisham Trail (one of the main park roads once you enter) to the trail head. From there, we memorized the basic left/left/right/left sort of sequence we'd need to take to stay on the path. We drove a bit farther than we expected, but eventually saw a sign that read 'TRAILHEAD' and saw a rough parking lot. It was mostly full of mountain bikers loading and unloading; there looks to be plenty of good singletrack there.

We started hiking, and started encountering trail markers like this:

You can see the number marker on the post. When we drove into the park, the gate guard gave us a trail map. It has waypoints denoted by these numbers, but is pretty sparse otherwise; it doesn't label the trail segments by name (as you can see on this marker: 'Pack Trail' and 'North Quarry'). Jen thought the map must be wrong or out of date in some way, as she thought 'the numbers don't line up with the map'. We pressed on.

The early hiking was pretty rocky, but quickly transitioned into some nice shaded packed singletrack, akin to the easier parts of Walnut Creek. Despite a bit of rain in early winter, it's still pretty dry:

The map's numbers started to make sense, and after we'd hiked a few miles, we headed back for the trail head to get to the car. The trial posts were pretty sparse, but we were able to follow the numbered waypoints to point ourselves back to the Southeast Trailhead.

One problem: we made it to the trail head (going by the numbers)...but our car was not there. In fact, there was no parking lot, and no sign saying 'Southeast Trailhead'. We started to wonder if we'd interpreted the map completely wrong, if we were actually somewhere else on the map, and what direction we should head. After a while, the trails look like a never-ending maze of this:

Pretty, but a bit confusing if you're trying to figure out which direction to point yourself. We soon realized (we were pretty sure) our mistake: we HAD reached the SE Trailhead. However, we had not parked there...we must have passed that on our drive in somehow, and instead parked at the East or North trail head. The park map did not have the parking lot(s) labeled, so we had no way to know which of the two it really was. In any case, we thought our best bet was to head back to the SE Trailhead that we found and had earlier left (not being sure it really was where we should go, in our confusion). Grisham runs right by the SE Trailhead..so if we were where we now thought we were, we should just go to the road and walk along the road north. If we were right, we'd see the same things we saw on our drive in.

Sure enough...we started recognizing landmarks, and eventually the RV/improved campsite area that was shortly before the place we parked (which turned out to be the East Trailhead). The map below is marked up to show where we really entered, followed by all sorts of wandering around the spaghetti in the middle, and finally popping out on the bottom right of the map...only to walk along the road back to where we started.

Oops. Our guess is that we hiked 7 or maybe 8 miles, instead of the 5 we were expecting. Well, now we know for next time. It is somewhat understandable: the SE entrance has no parking lot and no sign of any kind, so I have no idea how we would have found that entrance from the car even if we knew to look for it. The East Trailhead was the first one with a sign and with somewhere to park the car. The trails did look great for biking, so we'll surely be back with our bikes next time...

Too Many Lenses...

2012-01-03T23:03:00.000-06:00

Among my Christmas gifts, I received gift certificates towards some additional camera gear (it is for Adorama). With this money, I plan on picking up a new lens. The gift money would cover all of some of the options and leave me a bit short on some of them. However, if I have to kick in a bit extra to get what I decide is the 'right' choice, it's well worth it (and much cheaper than if I had to pay for the whole thing).

I had a few lenses on my Christmas list already (we have a big shared Google Docs spreadsheet for the whole family), only some of which are even remotely realistic; I don't expect anyone to actually get me the Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM:

The other lenses I looked at are not cheap, but are a good bit less expensive, like the the Canon EF 100mm 2.8L IS USM Macro:

...or the Tamron 18-270mm f/3.5-6.3 Di-II VC PZD:

The rationale:

The 70-200 is a very versatile focal length and the above is a fabulous lens that I'd love to own at some point. I rented (much cheaper, much ligher) the f/4 IS version for our trip to the UK this August from LensRentals. I borrowed Matt's original version of the 70-200 2.8 IS for our honeymoon.
I do not own a macro lens yet, and am interested in macro work. The IS present in the L version is supposed to be stellar, and it seems like it would make handheld shooting much more feasible; it would be nice to avoid having to relegate macro shots almost entirely to the tripod.
The Tamron was picked just to serve as a do-it-all travel lens. It could work for trips on which I don't have the space to pack a few lenses, or if were were out on a day trip without any foreknowledge of what I'd be shooting.

Santa did not bring any lenses (although he did bring some nice photography accessories, like a Vello ShutterBoss and a pan/tilt head for my tripod), but he did bring these gift cards to use for photography equipment. I thought about the macro lens (as well as its 100mm non-IS, non-L little brother) and the Tamron, and the more I looked...the more I decided to nix the Tamron from contention. It seems that (aside from a few "this lens does EVERYTHING!" user reviews) most of the detailed reviews of this lens characterize it as of middling build/durability and good but not great optically. I think the LensRentals commentary best summarized it as a 'compromise lens', and that is probably to be expected in a not-very-expensive super (15x) zoom targeted at crop sensor cameras (of which my 7D is one, admittedly). I may actually end up using it, but I think I'd feel like I was 'being lazy' if I left it on, as opposed to bringing 2 or 3 better-performing lenses.

Somewhere in all of this, I had another thought: what about an ultra-wide? I have really liked landscape photography on our trips, and such lenses are also great for architectural photos during these trips. This complicates the decision greatly, as research suggests 3 contenders:

#1: The Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM. This lens seems to be universally well-reviewed, and seems a bit like my existing 17-55 2.8: L optics/internal construction without an L physical exterior build (or designation); I'm not sure Canon would ever label an EF-S lens an L, in any case.

#2: The Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 ATX Pro DX. A tad less wide than the Canon, but with a constant 2.8 aperture. A full stop better in the best case, with a gap that only grows from there. For landscape photography, the speed is likely irrelevant, but it might be useful for architectural work. The reviews also suggest this thing is built like a tank: optics on par with (some say better) than the 10-22, but with a build more like a Canon L. Its zoom range is so small that it almost feels like buying a prime.

#3: The Sigma 8-16mm f/4.5-5.6 DC HSM. I believe this is the widest rectilinear lens available for crop sensor cameras. It has a bulbous front element (and a fixed hood), so conventional filters aren't usable. This is the slowest, but also the widest.

So....it comes down to 2 decisions, in this order:

Macro, or ultra wide zoom. My existing 17-55 is pretty useful for wide shots as it is...but these options are a lot wider yet. The Canon macro could be used if I moved to full frame one day, whereas all of these ultra wides would only ever pair with crop sensor cameras like my 7D. I'd probably take more shots/would get more use out of an ultra wide than a macro.
If ultra wide, which? I think it's really between the Canon and the Tokina. The 2.8 is attractive, but reviews suggest it's pretty soft at 2.8, and so the aperture advantage is really so great. I have never owned a third party lens, and so also wonder (and see this mentioned in some user reviews) about AF behavior for such lenses versus the genuine Canon. Ken Rockwell raves about the 10-22. Then again, he is sweet on the Tokina, too. I'd welcome any input!

I'm not sure which route I'll go. I am tempted to rent both the Tokina and the Canon ultra wide lenses from LensRentals for a weekend and take a ton of similar shots...and then see if I have any preference for the results after getting them loaded into (and lens corrected) in Lightroom 3. As for the macro, I could rent that as well, picking a different weekend to play around with that.

New Machine, At Long Last

2011-08-22T00:58:00.000-05:00

The geriatric desktop, with various issues (failed onboard PATA ports, periodic lockups, failing DVD trays), is soon to be sent off to the recycler in the sky (Goodwill, actually). While it felt blazing fast when I originally purchased it years ago, it's been too many years (2005 or 2006, probably). It's a 2 GB single core AMD Athlon 64 3000 with a NVIDIA 6600 GT 128 MB. It's slow enough that it really just sits underneath the desk, accessed via VNC now and then, feeding music to Sonos and serving as a file share.

The parts of its replacement came in today, ordered while we were still in the UK. This new rig should remain usable for a while. I expect I'll switch all of my Lightroom work over to it, along with my real work when I'm at home (meaning I'll probably be looking to set up some sort of simple syncing process between it and my work laptop, at least for a few directories). The pieces:

Lian-Li PC-Z60. This is a brand new case; pretty pricey, but very nice.
ASUS P8Z68-V PRO
Intel i7-2600K 3.4 GHz
Zalman CNPS9500 CPU cooler
Corsair Vengeance 16 GB
MSI GeForce GTX 560 Ti Twin Frozer II 1 GB. Cheers for CUDA support in Lightroom and Photoshop.
OCZ Vertex 3 120 GB. I realize there are plenty of issue reports with the new second generation SandForce hardware, but it seems to be much improved with recent firmware..and should be tied up while I have this. The worry did drive me to the cheaper (albeit slower; half the channels) 120 GB version instead of the 240.
Seagate Barracuda XT 3 TB
LG Black Super Multi SATA Blu-Ray Burner
Seasonic 560KM 80Plus Gold power supply
Windows 7 Professional 64

I finished putting it all together since typing the above. It's speedy! The new case is definitely a cut above the Antec Sonata used in the old system; much easier to work on, much lighter (aluminum versus steel), and with better (versus nonexistent) cable management. The Seasonic power supply packaging was hilarious: the unit itself was inside of a velvet bag, sort of like a Crown Royal bottle!

Edinburgh

2011-08-16T17:25:00.001-05:00

We drove from the Lake District to Edinburgh on Sunday afternoon and evening, getting here in time for dinner. After spending two full days here, I've taken more pictures than Jen cares to see. We've had a great last few days, and managed to avoid the rain until today. We fly home (TDI-LHR-JFK-AUS) early tomorrow morning, getting back to Austin on Wednesday evening.

Drive into Edinburgh... we even drove through MIDLOTHIAN, Scotland!

He even has a special camera sticker if you look closely. Love him.

The most awesome hotel room everrr!

We decided to get the audio tour for the Edinburgh Castle and it was worth it.

British flag flying over the castle.

We didn't know at the time, but this is apparently the Sir Walter Scott Monument (thanks to Jenna Anderson).

View from a 147-step hike behind the hotel.

A city monument, built and unfinished in late 1800s due to lack of funding.

Holyrood

Beautiful Edinburgh.

Lake District

2011-08-16T03:39:00.000-05:00

Jen here! After Bath, we drove about 4 hours northwest to the Lake District, a national park area with a few very picturesque lakes. The roads were so narrow and lined with ancient stone walls -- we also we rented the biggest car in England -- so parts of the drive were a bit scary. Corbett did a great job though, and only slipped over to the wrong side of the road a few times. We stayed in a B&B in Barrow-in-Furness, leaving from there to ride an old steam train and take a cruise on Lake Windermere.

Hotel in Barrow-in-Furness (There were 2 weddings being held there, so we had good people watching.)

A mini-hike behind our hotel took us to ruins of an old church. This is the entry way.

This is the ruins of the church. They think it was built sometime in the 11th century and it's been in ruins since the 15th century. Pretty old.

Our train to the port.

Our ship over to Bowness, a cute little shopping tourist town. (I fell asleep on this 50 minute boat ride (anyone surprised?) and woke up to Corbett missing and a group of Asians sitting at my table staring at me.)

There were lots of people sailing on this beautiful lake.

A more panoramic view.

Intersection in Bowness.

Many amazing houses and hotels along the coast.

Corbett in his happy place eating gingerbread. It had actual chunks of ginger in it. Delish.

Bath

2011-08-13T17:07:00.002-05:00

For the third day, we took a train (~1.5 hours) over to Bath and picked up the rental car. We immediately drove to Stonehenge to check it out, and returned to Bath afterward to check into the hotel. We went into town and had a fabulous Thai dinner right near the Royal Theatre and a slew of drinks afterward. This morning, we spent a bit more time in Bath before starting the long drive (~4 hours) up to Barrow-in-Furness in the early afternoon.

Stonehenge

The hotel in Bath. Awesome grounds and gardens.

The Holborne Museum down the street from the hotel.

View of Bath across the water. Bath Abbey in the center distance.

Where to go next in Bath?

Cool pub where we had a few drinks.

Park in Bath near Bath Abbey.

Inside of Bath Abbey.

London

2011-08-11T18:38:00.002-05:00

We leave tomorrow by train to Bath, where we'll pick up a car and double back to Stonehenge. We'll stay the night in Bath before heading up to Barrow-in-furness in the Lake District. The Langham here in London was great!

Superman was here

At a pub

At the Victoria and Albert Museum

The Natural History Museum

Outside/right after The Eye, with Parliament in the background

The entrance to Westminster Abbey

The obligatory guard photo outside Buckingham Palace

St. James Park, across from Buckingham

Tower Bridge

Circle C in TdF

2011-07-19T15:44:00.000-05:00

Someone in the neighborhood cycling club was paying closer attention than I when this RoadID commercial played earlier in this year's Tour de France coverage:

If you watch the riders showing proper group riding technique, you'll see our neighborhood. They are clearly riding on Spruce Canyon for part of it (the stone walls) and Escarpment in others (the wood slat fencing). The ride past Nan Clayton Elementary adds a bit of extra confirmation!

Damn This Is Awesome

2011-04-28T12:02:00.001-05:00

This is Russ Roberts' second such video...the first was also good. I love how a totally made up 'economics joke rap' is >= musically a large portion of what passes as hip hop. The video is even better than the majority of videos for non-joke music too:

They Even Eat Veggies

2011-04-26T14:45:00.000-05:00

The dogs (presumably Ethel) were so hungry they went to town on a not-yet-bearing poblano pepper plant last night. They knocked it over and chowed down...

Detroit Decay Pictures

2011-01-06T23:53:00.000-06:00

I came across this link in a Felix Salmon post, I think...but here are a handful of very interesting (sad, but interesting) pictures of once-grand Detroit landmarks. Even for people who have never been to Detroit, the pictures are stellar even just a pure photographic sense: Detroit in Ruins

First Gosu Public Release..

2010-11-08T09:17:00.000-06:00

The Guidewire language, Gosu, was mentioned a few posts ago -- I linked to some material presented at the JVM Languages Summit. Today is the first release of the language to the public at large. At the moment, it's termed a 'community release' -- open for use under an APL-style license, but no source (yet).

It's here: Gosu Community Release

Nick is a Badass

2010-11-03T00:22:00.000-05:00

TechCrunch covers the formation of Tasty Labs, a new startup that Nick has co-founded: Hot Shot Vets From Google, Mozilla, Yahoo Cooking Up Stealth Treats At Tasty Labs

Not much info at TastyLabs yet, though.

Gosu: A Quick Thumbnail

2010-08-05T13:12:00.001-05:00

This post probably only pertains to my fellow dorks. The language I end up writing nearly all of my work stuff in is not Java, but a Guidewire-developed language that is hosted within the JVM. Guidewire has plans to open source it, and just presented it in recent weeks at the JVM Language Summit conference.

The not-too-long slide deck that one of our developers used to present it at the conference is here: Introduction to Gosu

Our Overall Route

2010-07-01T16:02:00.000-05:00

To help visualize where all we went during our trip, Jen threw together this multi-destination map in Google Maps. She originally had in all of the places we stayed at night, but I added in a bunch of the places we hit during the day (to preempt a lot of the 'did you make it to xyz?' questions):

View Larger Map

Zagreb

2010-06-15T16:51:00.000-05:00

Cathedral

Above the main door

Inside

Near the main square in town; trams everywhere

Fužine

2010-06-15T16:48:00.000-05:00

Our new Croatian friend, bought us drinks! Lives in Lic.

Sign entering Fuzine...

..other side of the same sign, entering Lic!

At the Fuzine cemetery

Fuzine cemetery

Fuzine

Inside of St. Anthony in Fuzine

St. George in Lic

At the Lic cemetery

Lic cemetery

Lake adjacent to Fuzine

Our room at the Bitoraj in Fuzine

Breakfast at the Bitoraj; tasty strudels

Taken from a park in Fuzine, towards Lic

"We have problem. You missed the island!"

2010-06-13T17:28:00.000-05:00

That is what the taxi driver decided after showing him the address of our hotel on Hvar. It turns out that we had boarded the wrong ferry (long story, involving the hotel in Dubrovnik having bad information on ferry departure times out of Makarska combined with a radically optimistic bus transit time on their part as well...resulting in one missed ferry, ~5 hours of waiting for the next ferry..and that next ferry being the wrong one, taking us to Brac instead of Hvar)!

At this point, there was no way to get from Brac to Hvar that evening (we are talking about Saturday the 12th at this point). The taxi driver said that our options were to stay on Brac that night or possibly take a ferry to Split. Our next night (the 13th, the night I am typing this) was to be in Split anyway, so we thought we'd take that route. Unfortunately, the port we came into was not the port on Brac that services Split...the one that does (Supetar) is on the opposite side of the island. We had the driver take us all the way over to Supetar. From there, I called the place in Split (Zephyrus) that we were staying the night of the 13th, checking to see if they might have any availability on the 12th for us. They did. We boarded the next ferry out of Supetar (certain that we were headed to the right city this time!), getting into Split about 8:30 PM. We managed to make it to Zephyrus, and have been in Split since. I suppose we'll have to finally see Hvar the next time (there must be a next time!) we are over here..

The below pictures are mostly from Split during the day today, but some are from the long day of transit yesterday (Dubrovnik to Makarska by bus, then ferry to Brac, then ferry from Brac to Split). We have a 7:55 AM train in the morning (the 14th, it is a bit after midnight on the morning of the 14th as I type this) to Zagreb. From there, we immediately grab a rental car and head down to Fuzine, where half of Jen's family hails from.

Killing time at the beach in Makarska after missing the ferry

On the ferry from Brac to Split, trying a Magnum

Tasty octopus salad at dinner tonight

My sea bass at dinner tonight

From our outside seat at dinner at Sperun tonight -- the sister cafe across the street

Plaza in Split near our place

Cafe/bakery we had espresso at this morning

Ruins of Diocletian's Palace in Split

More ruins

Inside the bell tower of the cathedral in Split

More of the ruins; cathedral partially seen on the right

Some hot chick I saw at lunch today

A nearby street in Split

Part of our room in Split

Dubrovnik

2010-06-11T16:48:00.000-05:00

Croatian flag

Abandoned St. Mark's in Ston

View from lookout on Dubrovnik city walls

Jen with tribute to lira players in Ston

Cathedral in Korcula

Taking a dip in Korcula

Ana, our tour guide to Korcula. For Patrick.

Church in downtown Dubrovnik about an hour ago

Dubrovnik walls

Another view while walking the walls

Wall view again

We thought of our maid of honor

Jen bought a bracelet. Also for Patrick.

Rome

2010-06-08T17:07:00.000-05:00

Umbria

2010-06-06T16:30:00.000-05:00

Our residence in Umbertide, called Petrogallo. We were in the 'new' part: 1571

Bedroom at Petrogallo

Petrogallo room

Antonella from Petrogallo bringing Jen some food and wine at the pool

Approaching Assisi

Me taking the above picture. Jen thinks I take too many.

On a slightly-lost walk around and below Assisi

Lunch in Assisi (Jen's in front)

Tuscany

2010-06-04T17:14:00.000-05:00

Inner dome of Duomo, Florence

Hailing thunderstorm in Siena

Sign by road

Podere Spedalone, near Pienza

Newly-rescued Spedalone doggie

Jen journaling in our room; 8th/9th century structure

View from Spedalone

Spedalone from estate next door

Just before dinner at Spedalone

Spedalone hosts: Ayisha, Giancarlo, Nicholetta

Pienza

Gelato in Pienza

Pre-Brunello snack in Montalcino

Dinner in Cortona

Florence

2010-06-02T18:15:00.001-05:00

I Had To Post This

2010-05-28T12:16:00.002-05:00

Seen in a Lifehacker post

Stabilize the Debt: Interactive App

2010-05-21T15:38:00.000-05:00

I ran into this site today:

Stabilize the Debt: An Exercise In Hard Choices

It's pretty cool -- it's basically a big menu of federal budgeting options (some positively affecting debt, others negatively affecting it), with explanations and associated dollar value impacts. The 'goal' in the 'game' is to make choices that would result in a debt of 60% of GDP in 2018.

The numbers associated with the choices make clear how minor the impact of some supposedly horribly expensive things are. For example, you see lots of news coverage on how the F-22's production run has been capped at 1/3rd of the original slate. Cancelling all of the proposed defense programs slated for killing (F-22 is just one of several such programs) only saves $30B. There are individual, much narrower-sounding tax choices on entitlements that have impacts an order of magnitude greater.

Lil' J Has New Wheels

2010-05-07T12:00:00.001-05:00

Jen now has a road bike too! It's a Trek Madone 4.7 WSD, with compact gearing (SRAM Rival). Because she's Lil' J, it's a 50cm.

How Cool Are These?

2010-05-07T11:49:00.002-05:00

Love & Matt Zubiller sent these as a wedding gift. The twist: they bought them several years ago, when they still lived in London. I guess this was pretty obviously a good gift for me:

Wedding Photos

2010-05-03T11:12:00.001-05:00

The stellar Mary Sledd has posted our wedding gallery: Corbett & Jennifer's Wedding.

Zurich

2010-04-14T22:20:00.000-05:00

I meant to write this while still in Zurich, but it didn't get done. I left Austin on 4/4 (Sunday), and went Austin -> Dulles -> Frankfurt -> Zurich, arriving mid-afternoon on Monday (Zurich time, 7 hours ahead of Austin). I was able to roam around a bit some on Monday afternoon, as my coworkers (inbound from Munich) weren't arriving until Tuesday. The hotel seemed to be pretty well located, right next to the opera house, and just a block or two from the lake.

View Larger Map

While roaming that afternoon, I took a few pictures. This was my first out of town trip with my new Canon 7D. I had hoped to bring along the EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 lens that I bought along with the camera, thinking that the wide angle would be useful the many architectural and landscape shots I would take. The lens that came with my original order had some sort of contamination on the lens (like a translucent, sticky drop of something), so I had to return it. Given that Adorama was closed from 3/29 - 4/4 for Passover, there was no shot of getting the replacement in time. I made do with the 28-135 mm f/3.5-5.5 kit lens. I would have brought it anyway, as the nicer lens wouldn't have the range to zoom in on some building details. Here are a few pictures taken that first afternoon:

The lovely balcony from the room

View down the street, from the balcony...

The promenade along the lakeside, about 2 blocks from the hotel

I just thought the sailboat looked cool

The promenade from afar, Alps in the background

The Grossmünster, a 12th century church nearby

There are a ton more such pictures at my Zurich Gallery. Some of the night ones are a bit iffy, but there are a few worthwhile nighttime photos. All of the pictures taken on my last evening in town are in the linked gallery.

The 'Stealth Hitch' Really Is Stealthy

2010-03-24T18:00:00.001-05:00

When I donated the SAAB, I took off the Yakima roof rack and sold it on Craigslist. I really like the rack when I used it, but it wasn't really too often that I did actually use it: if it was just me, I would fold down the back seat and put the whole bike inside the car (safer than locked to the roof rack, and protected from the elements). I usually used the rack if Jen and I were going mountain biking, allowing me to easily throw both bikes on the roof. Sometimes I'd throw my own bike on the roof by itself if the back of the car was full for some reason.

With the 335, I don't have a fold down back seat. The car is available with a fold down back seat as an option...but the one I purchased doesn't have it (one of the few things that still bugs me about it; everything else has been pretty great). Without the ability to put the bike inside the car, I definitely need some sort of external rack. At first, I thought I'd get one of the ubiquitous Saris Bones 2 or 3 bike racks:

Saris released a new one, the Bones RS, that is a bit more secure than the basic one:

With both of these, though...I am pretty paranoid about where it touches with the car. The Yakima rack didn't do anything bad to the roof of the SAAB, as its touch points were clamped in place, totally fixed. When I took the rack off, after almost 10 years on there...there was zero damage to the roof (once I cleaned off some goo from the blackened decay of the rubber pads where the rack met the roof). Looking at the Saris' touch pads where it meets the car...I was a bit leery of it damaging the paint. Unlike the roof rack, there would be a little bit of movement with a rack like this (probably less so with the Bones RS, as it ratchets down a bit more securely).

I don't know anyone who personally has reported any paint damage from a Bones (but then again, I don't know all that many people with trunk racks), but more than a handful of people reporting that in online reviews ended up being enough to drive me to a hitch rack. Hitches are all over the place on trucks here, but it's not too common to find them on passenger cars, and even less so on sportier ones. Searching around, I found a hitch manufacturer, Valley Industries, that makes a hitch specifically targeted at the 2009 335: the Stealth Hitch Receiver.

It's pretty sweet: it has a vertical down tube that is pretty much flush with the underside of the bumper: There is a separate receiver adapter that mates with the down tube when you actually want to hook up something:

This way, it's not even visible that the car has a hitch when nothing is hooked up. This is the car from behind, after the hitch was installed:

Getting up close and underneath a bit, the vertical tube can be seen:

To actually hook something up, the adapter would be slotted in (and yes, it's upside down):

I had all of this done at Spillar Hitches' SoCo location. I'm glad I had them do it in the shop there: it took probably 1.5 hours, and requires dropping the exhaust and trimming the inside of the bumper fascia a bit...not exactly something I would have had much luck with at home. Now I just need to figure out what rack to mate with it. I think the varieties that do avoid contact with the frame and clamp onto the wheels would allow super fast and easy loading, while avoiding any danger of paint damage (of particular worry with the overly-delicate paint on my Trek..it has several spots of bare carbon now).

It's Here: The 7D

2010-03-24T01:38:00.001-05:00

I had long planned to order my first 'real' camera in time for the honeymoon trip. The little Canon SD700 IS I've had for a few years has served me well (although its meeting with Patrick's driveway during a St. Patrick's Day party has left it a bit banged up), as did the S400 prior to that.

A few months ago, I bought a Canon S90. This camera is a level beyond the normal point and click Canons: far more control, very fast, and great low light performance for a compact. We'll bring it on the trip for sure -- this will be what Jen has with her the whole time.

I ended up settling on a Canon 7D (the 28-135mm kit version) for my first 'real' camera for this trip. Several friends are Canon people, and their lenses (and expertise) will surely come in handy. This baby arrived earlier today:

I picked up several other gadgets in the same order (Adorama, this time) that will be of use to me:

The Canon EF-S 17-55mm 2.8 lens
Lens hoods for the kit and the above lens
A little Joby Gorillapod SLR-Zoom mini (travel, in my case) tripod
A remote shutter release for use with the tripod
A B+W UV multi-coated filter for the 17-55
A SanDisk 16GB Extreme CF card
Both Blue Crane instructional DVDs for the 7D, to help me suck less
The Canon 9500mk2 wide (13"x19" capable) inkjet. Normally I'd have a hard time rationalizing this one, but Canon was running a crazy rebate when purchased with a 5Dmk2/7D/1D

I'll probably borrow a 70-200mm and bring the 17-55 on the trip. I've planned on carrying a day pack when Jen and I are out during the day on the trip, and so I'm likely to get one that is also very photography-targeted, but ideally without screaming "I have expensive photo gear within, please mug me". I think it is between the Tenba Shootout Backpack (in a medium), or one of the brand new Kata backpacks (Bumblebee 220, 222, or Beetle 282...not very well differentiated from one another). A friend's fiancée has the Tenba and loves it, whereas I don't know anyone with any of these particular Kata bags: they just went on sale March 1, and would have to be ordered (nobody in town sells them). After getting back from the trip, I'll probably take out the photography packing innards (they are removable with both bags) and use it as a regular daypack, putting the gear packing grid back in on the rare occasions I was taking a lot of gear on a hike of some sort. For 'normal' usage, I think I'd probably just carry some sort of messenger type of bag.

Spring/Summer Experiment: The Garden

2010-03-24T01:13:00.000-05:00

I am not sure why I decided to make a garden this year, but something I read or saw a few months ago must have hooked me on the idea. Rather than digging up and tilling a section of the yard, I decided to build a raised container garden. I've seen some container garden kits in gardeners.com, and they have even had some on display at my local Lowe's. Costco was even stocking a kit (more elaborate than normal, even)!

Not really being sure how large it should be, how deep it should be, if I should buy a kit or build...I went in search of a book to to provide some baseline knowledge. I came across Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening book:

As far as I can tell, this seems to be the bible of raised gardening. I've seen many references to the book on various online forums, and there is even a squarefootgardening.com. Mel lists his preferred soil mix to use in the garden, and the local hippie (and extremely legit) nursery, The Natural Gardener (you might have heard the owner's weekend radio show on KLBJ), sells soil conforming to this mix. For some reason (maybe because these gardens tend to be small), The Natural Gardener does not sell the SFG mix in bulk; they only sell it prebagged. It turns out to be far cheaper to buy soil in bulk than prebagged. There is actually a nearly-as-cheap-as-bulk option at The Natural Gardener: bagging it yourself. Check out the per-yard cost of buying Hill Country Garden Soil (what I ended up using):

Delivered, by the yard: $41.50 / yard
Bagging yourself: $3.50 per 10 gallon bag (bags are $0.50 each): (1 cubic yard = 202 gallons) ~$70
Buying bags: 2 cubic feet per bag, I think $7 / bag. (1 cubic yard = 27 cubic feet) ~$95

Laura and I had to rent a Home Depot truck to get the materials for the box (more on that later) to the house, and so stopped by the nursery on the way home and bagged up the soil we needed.

As for the box: the 'standard' box in the SFG book is a 4'x4' box, 6" deep. That is the most basic configuration. You can build it larger and/or deeper. The idea is to subdivide it using a grid on top into 16 individual square foot parcels, each potentially having a different thing growing in it. Going deeper than 6" allows for some additional possibilities (some vegetables need more depth, and all will apparently grow more vigorously in more soil). Mel's standard boxes are just cedar 4' boards, nailed together at the corners. He details several ways to trick out the box:

Lining the bottom with chicken wire (to keep out burrowing rodents)
Lining the bottom with landscape cloth (to keep out weeds)
Covering the top with a chicken wire cap (to keep out birds, deer, dogs, cats, etc.)
Building a PVC pipe 'covered wagon' top (to provide support for insulating cloth or netting)
Building a rebar-anchored metal conduit pipe frame to anchor trellis netting (to provide support for vine plants, like tomatoes)

I needed some of these: some sort of netting or cap (to keep out Lucy & Ethel, as well as all of the birds that ate every one of the tomatoes I grew last summer in a Topsy Turvy) and the landscape cloth (to keep weeds in the lawn underneath from getting into the garden from beneath). I also wanted it to be more than 6" deep to give versatility on what could be planted. I thought I would go somewhat larger than the standard 4'x4': perhaps 4'x8'. I thought that I'd go through the effort of assembling/building this once, and so I'd rather build big and potentially leave some lie fallow, rather than build a box that I wished was larger.

As far as buying a kit versus building my own: a quick look at the gardeners.com listings revealed that nearly all kits (and definitely all of the ones I saw at Lowe's, and most of the Costco kit) were 6" deep. Going taller quickly ramped the cost such that it seemed building it myself would surely be cheaper. My favorite kit during my research was this one from Naturalyards. It is pretty nice: easy assembly via pins at the corners, stackable to reach great depths (up to 33"), and with precut Port Orford Cedar boards. It seems that 'Port Orford Cedar' is a bit of a misnomer: Port Orford Cedar is not cedar at all, but actually a type of cypress. It seems that this would be even more rot and water tolerant than the standard Western Red Cedar boards that most everything else is made of. However, a 4'x8'x11" offering is $265...and that's just for the box (wood and corner pins).

In the end, I decided to build, but fancy it up a bit (and make construction easier) by buying aluminum box corners from gardeners.com: 12" Raised Bed Corners. I was then able to go to Lowe's and buy lumber to slot right into the corners' sleeves. Some kits use composite lumber (like the Trex decking composite lumber) to avoid rot issues entirely, but this turned out to cost a lot more than cedar...so I stuck with cedar. Because a box full of soil weighs a lot (the Hill Country Garden Soil I use was listed as ~1400 lbs / yard, and I had ~1.2 cubic yards in my box, so ~1700 lbs of soil), the information on the raised bed corners suggested using in-line connectors to build a crossbar to keep the box edges from bowing out. I bought a pair of these 12" connectors to go with the 2 sets of 12" corners. I went to Lowe's and bought 7 2" (thick) x8' (long) x 6" (wide) cedar boards, and had them cut (they will do this in the store) all three boards in half: 4 segments to make the 8' runs on the long side of each box, and 3 to make the short ends of the box and the middle connector...and all of this times 2, as I need all of this over again (stacked) to make the box 12" deep. So: 14 4' segments in total, which we can get by cutting 7 8' boards in half.

I screwed all this together in the garage, building the overall box. It is possible to stain the wood to provide an additional measure of water resistance (and forestall the eventual decay of the wood by a bit longer...especially in a backyard with a sprinkler system like mine), but people generally just stain the outward-facing wood: it is what people see, and the (mostly-crunchy) people who build these boxes don't want any 'chemicals' on the inner (garden) facing wood (which would be in contact with their surely-organically-managed garden). The Naturalyards site actually lists several stain options that are known to be non-toxic in their FAQ. I didn't stain mine at all. After assembling the box, I unrolled landscape fabric and had Jen and and Laura hold it in place while I stapled it to the frame, with a regular PowerShot stapler. We then carried it to the back yard and put it in its resting spot: somewhere with full sun and in close proximity to the water faucet.

After building it and filling it with soil:

I actually needed slightly more than 4'x8'x1' (1.18 cubic feet, ~24 10 gallon bags), as the aluminum connectors made the overall length a few inches more than 8' (and the width a bit more than 4'). I ended up topping it off by buying three SFG mix bags at the store.

I bought the narrowest cedar boards that I could find and cut them to make the permanent square foot grid on the top. This is what happens when you are and idiot and don't drill a pilot hole first:

If you drill pilot holes, everything looks nice and clean, like this:

A closer look at the aluminum corners:

I used regular coated deck screws for all of the assembly. After finishing the grid, I started to lay out what plants would go where (with some help from Ethel). Most of the 32 squares were stocked with seedlings I purchased at The Natural Gardener or at Lowes, although a few (about 10 squares) were started from seed. Those are the 4 tomato plants I'm starting with:

After planting everything, it looked like this:

Now, to protect these things, I build a covered wagon style canopy. I bought 1/2" 10 foot long PVC pipe. It's quite flexible: I just put one end in a corner and bent it to the opposite corner. I did this for each end, and then one along the crossbar. I cut one additional 10' run of pipe and trimmed it so as to run along the top, lengthwise, joining the 3 curved pipes. I drilled small holes in each pipe to allow me to join the lengthwise pipe to the curve pipes with a short stainless steel bolt and stainless steel wing nut.

With the canopy in place, I needed to actually drape it with some sort of protective netting. I found a 14'x14' plastic web netting marketed as bird netting at Lowe's for about $5. I couldn't just drape it across the canopy and expect it to stay, so I bought several small stainless steel screw eyes. I put 2 per 4' segment along the perimeter. The screw eye almost completely circles back onto itself, but not quite: a small gap is left. I used this to hook the netting through the screw eyes, securing the net to the box's perimeter in this way. It is pretty easy to hook and unhook, which really is a must: I had to be able to get back into the garden later to harvest vegetables or weed squares without destroying the net. The net is pretty cheap and fragile, though, so I bought an extra. If enough squares on this one end up breaking so as to make it hard to keep it hooked on, I will just swap to a new net. After several weeks, it's holding tight. With the netting (which is hard to see, being very thin and black) on, the garden looks like this:

Here is a closer shot of one of the screw eyes:

That is pretty much how things stand as of today. Since the garden was planted early this month, the items (which I will probably detail in a later post) are definitely growing. I really wanted to plant mint (mojitos and such), but I'd heard it grows like crazy and might take over adjacent squares. I ended up buying a self-watering pot and planted Kentucky Colonel Mint:

I later bought another of the exact same pot and planted a serrano (Jen loves her spice!).

I'm not done just yet: I also purchased a drip irrigation kit and associated timer to allow me to automate the watering of the garden. I picked up a starter kit at Home Depot for pretty cheap (~$25), and then purchased a few extras a la carte (I needed more drip nozzles to handle all 32 squares). I hope to install it soon; if not this week, next. I'll have a post about that experience for certain! I'm hoping that once I get that set up and totally dialed in as far as the dripper positioning and the timer settings, I will be able to worry much less about watering (especially when traveling for work) and spend any garden time focused on the actual vegetables and herbs.

Overdue Post: San Juan

2010-03-23T22:33:00.002-05:00

I hadn't posted since my late November trip to Helsinki. I should have have posted during last month's trip to San Juan, Puerto Rico. As for where in San Juan, we (I was with several coworkers) were here:

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The customer was a 15 minute drive inland, in Guaynabo:

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It was a pretty good week, and the first time I've really been to San Juan. I'd been once before, but it doesn't really count: it was riding in a cab from the airport to the pier to leave on a cruise in 2001.

I've posted Puerto Rico pictures at the gallery. I should really put a few of them here and add commentary...but I'm behind the ball. Most of the pictures were taken during a several mile walk that I took with Mary (a coworker) from the hotel to El Morro, an old (San Juan is the oldest continually inhabited city in the hemisphere, I believe) castle/fort at the northwest corner of Old San Juan. We then walked into Old San Juan for dinner, and then took a cab back home. This Google Map shows the path between the hotel and El Morro, although we walked literally along the northern coast on sidewalks along PR-25 (rather than slightly inland):

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There is an upcoming work trip to Zurich in early April -- I'll try to be more complete with that post.

I Ate Rudolph

2009-11-19T22:00:00.000-06:00

I head back to the aiport in a few minutes, but I did manage to eat reindeer for dinner before leaving! Where I've been staying all week:

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The Wire's Best Quotes

2009-11-18T19:23:00.000-06:00

This is awesome:

Where I've Been Holed Up

2009-09-20T19:19:00.004-05:00

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It's Good To Be King

2009-09-20T17:08:00.000-05:00

One more day

2009-08-20T10:28:00.000-05:00

I am here all day every day this week. One more day...

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Most of Today

2009-08-16T17:50:00.000-05:00

Obligatory beach photos. We were at Nova Icaria, right next to Bogatell.

Plenty of Jokes Here..

2009-08-16T17:44:00.000-05:00

This is a giant sign atop an office building I just walked by (somewhere near the Espanya metro station):

Disabled person with a cane? Asian man urinating?

Brush With Greatness

2009-08-14T12:21:00.001-05:00

Mohand told me earlier today how -- less than 2 weeks ago, when returning to Paris from our sales consulting meeting in San Mateo -- he sat next to a girl on a leg of his flight that had quite the story. He said she used to be a star tennis player, and then went to work on Wall Street. She picked up biking kind of out of the blue...and has done quite well very quickly. We did some Googling: it is Evelyn Stevens. She got second at the Route de France today, with a stage win yesterday!

The WSJ apparently covered her a few days ago: Evelyn Stevens, American's Next Great Female Cyclist

It looks like she didn't even buy a bike until early 2008. (!!!)

These Signs Really Exist(ed)

2009-06-23T15:47:00.003-05:00

I saw a post on Mark Perry's (a UM-Flint professor) blog a few days ago. It includes a sign up in the parking lot of the now-demolished Buick City plant in Flint. Buick City is the one full car production plant that I've been on a tour of (other tours were AC Spark Plug and Delphi parts plants):

Caffeine Deficit

2009-06-21T01:28:00.001-05:00

When flying to Winnipeg last week, I read this in the the WSJ I brought along:

And Starbucks Corp., famous for saturating U.S. cities with its storefronts, has only four left in this city of 900,000 after closures last summer.

The full story is called Retailers Head for Exits in Detroit, and it details how it is kind of hard to make a city attractive to live in when there is a very small (and getting smaller) set of retailers actually still doing business. There is a good slide show (including one of the now-abandoned Starbucks) associated with the article: Detroit's Retail Exodus

Going to starbucks.com, it looks like Austin has nearly 50 locations (in a city of 650k).

Stanky Leg Makes NPR

2009-06-04T16:40:00.000-05:00

NPR is catching up to last year! Minutes ago, I heard All Things Considered doing some follow-up (in response to listener mail) about a piece they did yesterday ('Is YouTube The New MTV?') on how YouTube is changing the music industry. The example they used?

The Stanky Leg!

Jen and her girls heard this song last summer when driving up to Dallas to Patrick's lake house. We've watched the video on YouTube many many times, along with a bunch of the resulting fan videos. They must have heard it shortly after it came out: the G-Spot Boyz are out of Dallas, and we heard it billed as a 'brand new song' in other parts of the country months later.

I found it on Rhapsody months after the girls heard it, although it seems to be listed as the 'Stanky Legg' there.

Real Ale Mishaps

2009-06-02T00:04:00.000-05:00

This past weekend was the annual Real Ale Ride, sponsored by (and leaving from) the Real Ale brewery in Blanco, TX. I rode this last year for the first time, and really like it: it's very scenic and probably the most challenging ride in the area (at least that I have done) due to the hills. There are plenty of them, and some nasty (short and steep grades, as well as multi-mile steady climbs). Plus, the ride ends with catered BBQ and two Real Ale beers back at the brewery.

The problems started before the ride itself. I tried let myself sleep in later on Saturday (it is nearly an hour drive to get there, and we were supposed to arrive by 7 AM) by loading up the car Friday night. As I started to take off the front wheel, I heard some metal on metal clinking noise. Looking down, I saw that one of my front wheel spokes was dangling free, totally unhooked from the hub. I worried that it was broken (I wouldn't want to ride on it then), but it looked fine. I thought maybe the spoke had loosened up enough to come unhooked, and that I could re-hook it, tighten it back down, and be all set. Nope. It turns out that it was unhooked because a whole chunk of the hub flange that the spoke hooks into was broken off.

I have no idea how or when this happened. I hadn't ridden the bike at all since the Austin Cycling Association Armadillo Classic a few weeks ago, and it definitely wasn't this way then. I assume it had fatigued to the point of almost breaking, and the actual break must have happened when I was loading or unloading it after the ACA ride. This makes me wonder about these Rolf Sestriere wheels, as I had to replace the back wheel 2 summers ago because of a crack in that hub flange, as discussed in this post from August 2007.

I considered bailing on the ride entirely, but Jen talked me in to still going, but riding my mountain bike. Rather than doing the 85 mile route that I planned, I thought I'd step down to the 50 mile route. I did the 65 mile route last year. Jane was riding with a bunch of T3 friends, and they were planning on doing the 85. The ride organizers published the routes on MapMyRide. The 50 mile route looks like this:

Real Ale Ride 48 Mile Route
Find more Bike Rides in Blanco, Texas

The plan was to ride with Jane until the 50 mile route diverged from the 85 mile route, and then be off on my own. Last year, the ride started markedly late -- late enough that the delay plus my slow riding forced me to do the 65 mile route, not clearing a checkpoint in time. The 85 mile route was to start at 7:30, with each shorter distance forming its own wave, staggered by 15 minutes per interval (7:45 for 65 miles, 8:00 for 50 miles, etc.). At 7:30, no waves had yet been sent. It looked like the organizers were running a few minutes behind, as last year. A bunch of people decided to go ahead and just go at 7:30 anyway, and we tagged along. We cruised right along, making pretty good time. The 50 mile route broke away from the 65 and 85 (Jane & Co. had decided to back down to the 65 mile route during this time) about 1 hour into the ride. I bid them adieu and was off on my own.

I expected to be riding pretty solo for quite a while: I had left with 85 milers (so ahead of the 50 mile wave), in and 85 mile group that left ahead of when the 85 milers were officially sent, and the real 50 mile group would probably ride somewhat slower than people who do the 85. Given this, I thought it might be a while before the fastest 50 milers caught up to me. I rode...and rode...and rode....and then started to wonder if something was amiss. I hadn't seen another rider in a long time (aside from a few individual riders that seemed to be random locals lacking numbers, rather than fellow Real Ale riders), and I also hadn't seen any Real Ale signs along the road. I had been riding on the same road for a long time, and so thought that maybe there were no signs because we were just supposed to keep trucking along on this road out a long ways before being sent on some sort of loop back around.

After about an hour of riding like this, I concluded I had screwed up somewhere. I pulled over at the next cross road and called Jen, who was still back at my house. I asked her to grab the route map included in the ride packet (it was still sitting out in the kitchen), and and we tried to figure out where I was. I could see that the cross street was West Ammann Road, but the road I had been riding on was not labeled. Without being able to tell her an intersection, she was having a hard time finding me on the printed map or by playing on Google Maps. I didn't even know what town I was in. I asked a passing solo biker (not a Real Ale rider) if he knew what the main road was that we were on, and he wasn't sure if its name either. By telling Jen roads I did remember seeing in the past, though, she concluded that I was well south of the official route. I started back the way I came, thinking that -- worst case -- I would get back to where the 50 diverged from the 65 and 85 and find the real route that way. Sure enough, several miles on the way back, I found the 50 mile route looping back onto the road was on, joining me up with the actual 50 mile route and other 50 mile bikers.

One downside to riding off route for so long was that there were no rest stops. I didn't stop at a rest stop until I rejoined the 50 mile route, and this was probably 3.5 hours into the ride. That was the only one I stopped at the whole ride, as I didn't want to waste any more time; I had no idea how far off route I had gone. I eventually finished (3912 calories later, or so the HRM watch said), loaded my bike into the car, and made my way back to the food. I had some brisket, sausage, potato salad, ice cream (given away free by some separate stand), some Sweat Leaf peach tea, and two Real Ale beers. They produce several beers, including a few that I had never seen (as they are not available in bottles). Their Rio Blanco Pale Ale is probably Jen's favorite beer, and they had plenty of that. I tried two of the draught-only selections that I hadn't seen before: the Roggenbier and the Dunkelroggen. Both were pretty good, or at least seemed to be after that ride! They also had a small keg of Ginger Soda, from which I pumped a glass. Pretty good drink for a sunny, warm (mid 90s, at this point) day.

When I got home, I messed around on Google Maps to figure out what I had done and how far off route I had gone. When I doubled back, I never did see (for certain) the turn that I originally missed. Looking at the route map back at home, I think that I messed up right where the 50 mile route diverged from the others in Kendalia: I took 3351, and it looks like I was supposed to take a turn for Edge Falls Road at roughly the same spot. The route map shows riders taking Edge Falls in Kendalia, which loops back onto 3351 several miles later, which riders then take north to head back to Kendalia. In my case, I never took Edge Falls at all, heading south on 3351 from Kendalia. I rode past where Edge Falls joined up with 3351, but being so early, there were no riders around to see at that intersection; it was pretty much a ghost town when I rode by the first time. On this map, I marked the excess south riding I must have done: from the 3351/Edge Falls intersection down to where I actually made it. It is 8.1 miles farther south than the southmost spot of the real route. Taking 3351 south looks to be slightly longer than Edge Falls, so I must have tacked on 17 or 18 extra miles beyond the slated 50...making my route longer than the next higher bracket (65). Oops.

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The next day, I took my busted front wheel by Bicycle Sport Shop to see what (if anything) could be done about the front wheel. A guy in service said that it would (in theory) be possible to replace the busted hub and respoke it...but that it didn't make much sense in this case, given that this wheel had been out of production for years, and so a replacement hub would be hard to find. Plus, this is an 8 year old wheel with thousands of miles on it -- probably not worth going to heroic lengths to save. So, I resigned myself to having to replace it, just as I had to when the rear cracked 2 years ago. When the rear cracked, I replaced it with a Bontrager X-Lite. I expected to replace the front with another X-Lite, bringing me back to finally having a matching wheel set again. As it turns out, the X-Lite was redesigned (and improved) in 2008, so the new front will be a generation newer than the back one...but unfortunately also a different color. The 2007 model on the back is black. The current generation X-Lite is an anodized pewter color.

One thing that totally sucks: in searching for information on the X-Lite, I found an eBay listing for a previous generation (2007) Bontrager X-Lite clincher...being sold by Bicycle Sport Shop! They were liquidating back inventory, presumably trying to rid themselves of the previous generation model. Too bad; it was cheaper ($230) and still new, whereas the current generation has an MSRP of $400. The coupon included in the Real Ale Ride packet for 20% off at Bicycle Sport Shop is going to come in handy...

At Least One Right Answer

2009-05-21T14:00:00.001-05:00

I Do Eat Pretty Fast...

2009-05-06T11:17:00.004-05:00

I Hit The Trifecta

2009-04-30T17:07:00.003-05:00

I noticed this post from mid-March on Stuff White People Like. The post talks about how white people love the show Mad Men. Check out this section:

A proper reference to Arrested Development or the lending of a Wire Season on DVD are considered two of the easiest and most cost effective ways of getting a white person to like you.

Almost Stepped On..

2009-04-24T17:55:00.000-05:00

This is getting posted later than I planned, as I procrastinated in getting the pictures off the camera. Check out what Joe almost stepped on when we were hiking in Buescher State Park last weekend:

That is a coral snake . Check out this portion from the Wikipedia entry:

New World coral snakes possess the second most potent venom of any North American snake

Unfortunately, it also says:

The sole manufacturer of Eastern and Texas Coral Snake Antivenom, Wyeth, has ceased production of this product and it is estimated that all remaining in-date stocks of Coral Snake Antivenom in the United States will be exhausted between October and December, 2008

Absent the antivenom (emphasis mine),

Victims of Eastern and Texas Coral snakebite should be transported as soon as possible to a tertiary level hospital which can provide constant monitoring of neurological and respiratory symptoms for 24 hours or more and if these symptoms occur be ready and able to sedate, endotracheally intubate and mechanically ventilate such patients for up to a week or until neurological and respiratory paralysis resolves.

Imagine If This Were Population Weighted

2009-04-07T21:43:00.000-05:00

U-Haul's list of top destinations (based on the number of inbound U-Haul rentals) for 2008:

Austin is #9..and if you notice, it's a hell of a lot smaller than pretty much every other city on the list. Austin is slightly larger than Portland within city limits, but Portland's metro area has a significantly higher population. Kansas City is the same story (smaller city, bigger metro population). I'm actually typing this from #13.

The Pieces Come Together

2009-03-20T18:17:00.000-05:00

I have plans to hop up in the attic (only when Jen is here, lest I fall and can't get up -- she made me promise!) at some point and wire a few rooms for networking. Brandon did this a good while back, and had plenty of advice on what to do and not do. I think my job would be somewhat easier, as my house is just 1 storey, whereas his is two. I ordered a ton (1000') of Cat6 cable from Monoprice (cheap!), along with a bunch of 4-up plates and jacks from Firefold. They arrived yesterday:

There is also a 100' spool of 12 gauge speaker cable that came with part of the order. That is another project that would happen somewhat in parallel: I am going to add a pair of outdoor speakers on the patio, driven by my Sonos ZonePlayer 100 (it has an integrated 55 watt amp). Crawling around in the attic is going to be unpleasant enough that I'll probably try to get all of this (wiring the network cable, wiring the speakers) in one major effort.

Sonos, by the way, is awesome. Jen got me the first generation (ZP 80, ZP 100, CR 100) bundle for Christmas. It works like a charm, and when it didn't -- the ZP 80 hooked up to my stereo amp kept disappearing off of the network after 1-3 days -- I filed a trouble ticket on the Sonos support site. They said online tickets would be responded to within 24 hours. They responded to mine in probably closer to 30 minutes. They provided detailed instructions on how to run a particular diagnostic procedure, asking for the results (a simple blinking or non-blinking of the ZP 80's light after a sequence of button presses). They said that if the result went a particular way (non-blinking, in this case), I should call the support number to continue. I called, and was speaking to a human after a wait time of literally 5 seconds (maybe less!). He asked me to run another test, and upon hearing the result, asked for the serial off of the bottom of the unit. He said the test confirmed that it was a hardware issue, and they would send me a prepaid shipping label via email. Once my unit was received, a new unit would be shipped to me. The trouble ticketing system sent me an update when my unit was received at their returns site, and a replacement was shipped that day or the next. I was without the ZP 80 for probably just a week, and the unit they sent is working fine (no issues at all).

Now, I just need to get an iTouch to use as an additional controller. The Sonos controller application for the iPhone/iTouch:

...is slicker than the CR 100 unit itself!

AeroGarden First Use

2009-03-20T17:51:00.000-05:00

A few posts ago, I put up a picture of the AeroGarden and all of the herbs growing like crazy in it. As of now, it looks like this -- note the center back row:

The herb that has been radically trimmed down is the basil. Jen harvested 2 cups of leaves off of it to make a recipe for 'sweet basil noodles'. Here is Jen, kneading the dough. Note the use of a step stool just to work at the kitchen island!

They are laid out to dry and harden before being used. We let them dry last night like this:

To see if they worked at all, we boiled a few of them last night after about an hour of drying. Not bad! They are all sealed away in a plastic bin at the moment, waiting to be used...

Getting Dumber By The Day..

2009-03-20T17:30:00.000-05:00

I had no idea I was already a decade past my mental peak! :( From Open Education :

According to the research of Professor Timothy Salthouse of Virginia University, the slide towards old age intellectually begins as we reach our late 20s. Salthouse found that our mental powers actually peaked at age 22 and that both speed of thought and spatial visualization skills begin declining at age 27.

At least Jen is just barely on the down slope!

Elvis' Vicar

2009-03-18T14:15:00.000-05:00

I had the pleasure of having dinner on Monday night with my old college roommate, 'the' Mike Cavino. He is well.

Mike has also been indulging his love for another artist (Bruce Springsteen) via membership in a Springsteen tribute band: Lost In The Flood

Chocolate Doggies

2009-03-11T00:00:00.000-05:00

Jen picked up chocolate version of Lucy & Ethel at a new chocolatier on 2nd Street, Teuscher .

I haven't been in there yet myself, but looking over their website, I am curious to finally try somewhere with the Clover . I read a while back about Starbucks experimenting with the machine, but it seems they only have it in a handful of shops in 4 cities (Austin not among them).

Green Thumb (Hopefully)

2009-03-10T22:28:00.000-05:00

I haven't ever grown anything edible at home until quite recently. I almost bought Laura an AeroGarden as part of Christmas: I had seen it at Costco for $170, but including some extras (an extra seed pod pack and an extra set of bulbs) that were not included with the same model when I saw it at Bed Bath & Beyond for basically the same price. I didn't end up buying it then. Shortly after the holidays, though, I saw it at Costco again...for $99! This is the AeroGarden 6 Elite . It has been in my kitchen, stocked with the 'Gourmet Herb Seed Kit ' since probably the middle of January. Here is it as of now:

A few days ago, Jen and I saw a TV commercial for the Topsy Turvy . It's basically an flexible cylinder in which you can grow tomatoes (or several other things) upside down, hanging from a normal hanging flower basket hook. It was being offered for the standard '2 for $19.99', but the As Seen On TV section of my local Walgreens had it as well (a single for $11). I now have two tomato seedlings (a Big Boy and a Bonnie Select Hybrid) growing (hopefully) on my back porch:

I was on an infomercial rampage: I even picked up Aqua Globes !

Spring is Nearly Here...

2009-03-10T02:06:00.000-05:00

My Bradford Pear tree is starting to flower...

During this past Saturday's Pedal Thru The Pines ride, Jen and I spotted our first bluebonnets of the season as well..

Austin Grand Prix

2009-03-04T18:18:00.003-06:00

I'm trying to volunteer to time in the Friday AM session of the Austin Grand Prix. This meet is part of a series put on by USA Swimming to:

The USA Swimming Grand Prix Series serves as an opportunity for athletes to race against top-notch competition as they continue their preparation for the 2009 ConocoPhillips USA Swimming National Championships in Indianapolis and the 2009 FINA World Championships in Rome. The last two stops of the Grand Prix series are in Charlotte, N.C., and Santa Clara, Calif.

The prelims are SCY, with finals LCM. Even though it would be nice to see 'who wins' each event in the finals, the prelims would be a lot more interesting for me to watch, given that I have so little LCM experience. Short course yards (SCY) is the format (25 yard lengths) that is used in high school and college; long course meters (LCM, 50 meter lengths) is used for international competition and part of the year for USS club competition. Watching people this fast swim long course is really cool, and it's crazy how fast they are going...but it's nice to be able to directly compare how crazy fast they are when they are doing SCY.

A bunch of big names (no Phelps, though) will be there. Several are mentioned in the press release: Torres, Piersol to Compete at Austin Grand Prix

Knowing I wasn't going to be able to make evening practice today, I went to the noon session instead. We were in the diving well, and swimmers in town for the Grand Prix were getting some warm up in over in half of the main pool. Towards the end of workout, I spotted Bob Bowman giving direction to Katie Hoff...

The Middle Ages Return!

2009-03-04T17:59:00.000-06:00

From the 'it would be funny if it was an Onion story', I meant to refer to this a few weeks ago when I first saw this. I kept procrastinating, and now find myself in sitting in Pacha with a few minutes to kill before a 6:30 happy hour. Apparently, indulgences are making a comeback: For Catholics, A Door to Absolution is Reopened

Check out this awesome circular rationale:

“Why are we bringing it back?” asked Bishop Nicholas A. DiMarzio of Brooklyn, who has embraced the move. “Because there is sin in the world.”

I hadn't realized that it was actually John Paul II that brought them back (in 2000), but it is Benedict who is really opening the gate further. I suppose this is no surprise, given Cardinal Ratzinger's rep as a conservative traditionalist, and his pre-papacy role being something akin to a 'doctrine whip '.

Bad Company To Be In

2009-02-22T01:23:00.003-06:00

I saw this interesting link on Secular Right about a group challenging some Arkansas law still on the books (not generally enforced) barring nonbelievers from holding elected office.

I thought to myself 'well, it is Arkansas!' Unfortunately, the same link mentions that similar laws are also on the books in Tennessee and...Texas. Ouch! Volokh has a deeper dive on the same topic. There, I learned a bit more about the Texas case: it's in the state constitution! The official link for the Texas Constitution shows Article I (Bill of Rights), Section 4 (Religious Tests) as:

Sec. 4. RELIGIOUS TESTS. No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office, or public trust, in this State; nor shall any one be excluded from holding office on account of his religious sentiments, provided he acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being.

Whack. I had no idea it was enshrined in our state constitution!

I Don't Think This Is The Start Of A Resurrection...

2009-02-17T00:26:00.001-06:00

From Carpe Diem ...

Snuggie Pub Crawl

2009-02-13T16:32:00.001-06:00

If we're lucky, maybe the concept will come to Austin as well. Laura sent me this link from Chicago (a fellow Lincoln Park resident, no less!): Snuggie Pub Crawl Coming

This quote in the story is right on the money:

"This is so wrong, but it feels so right," one commenter gushed on the Web site.

More at the official pub crawl site...In other As Seen On TV news, I just saw a box (8 large, 8 small) of ShamWow! at my local Costco ($27.99, for the curious). Wikipedia even has an entry on Vince from the commercials!

Women Get Bigger, Playmates Get Trimmer

2009-02-12T12:30:00.010-06:00

FlowingData had a reference to a Wired graphic that shows the trends (1954-2008) in the body mass index (BMI) of 20-29 year old women in the general US population versus the trending of the BMI of Playboy Playmates over the same span.

This small image is a bit hard to read, so the full Wired story has it as a Flash graphic that supports zooming.

Glad Jen Isn't One!

2009-02-10T11:40:00.014-06:00

A NYT story called It's The Economy, Girlfriend is both entertaining and revolting reading. I'm not sure if I should feel sorry for the guys or not, as they would have known what they were getting themselves into with these women.

A brief few lines from the NYT story, to give an idea of the content:

In addition to meeting once or twice weekly for brunch or drinks at a bar or restaurant, the group has a blog, billed as “free from the scrutiny of feminists,” that invites women to join “if your monthly Bergdorf’s allowance has been halved and bottle service has all but disappeared from your life.”
Theirs is not the typical 12-step program.
Step 1: Slip into a dress and heels. Step 2: Sip a cocktail and wait your turn to talk. Step 3: Pour your heart out. Repeat as needed.
About 30 women, generally in their mid- to late-20s, regularly post to the Web site or attend meetings.

It's a quick 2 page read, go check it out and barf.

The Snuggie is a Hit

2009-02-03T12:28:00.010-06:00

We first saw ads for this shortly before Thanksgiving. It was in heavy rotation on Thanksgiving itself -- we saw it many times while at Jen's parents. The Snuggie is basically a fleece blanket with arms, one size fits all. The infomercial has plenty of images of whole families sitting around in Snuggies, looking very much like a cult.

USA Today has a piece on it: Snuggie Gets A Warm Embrace From Pop Culture

I should order one for Jen (which means ordering one for me too, since you get 'one for free'!)

Screws Galore

2009-01-13T16:22:00.003-06:00

In trying to look for an obscure screw online (I think a stainless #6, 1/4", beveled Phillips head; I need it to replace the one I stripped at the bottom of my shower door), I came across a page detailing all of the different types of screw heads. I though Phillips was Phillips. Wrong, apparently. There are a ton of variations, along with some exotic ones that I've never seen or heard of.

When A Phillips Is Not A Phillips

I would have guessed pretty different precentages..

2009-01-13T16:16:00.000-06:00

I came across this Microsoft-supplied graphic in a Lifehacker story yesterday:

Microsoft says that the above is the relative proportion of power sucked up on the typical Windows laptop. I think I would have guessed that the panel uses the most (I wonder how much LED backlighting changes this?), but I wouldn't have guessed the chipset would use more than twice what the CPU uses. Perhaps this is due to the SpeedStep (Intel)/PowerNow (AMD) CPU throttling? I also would definitely not guessed that the chipset sucks up 4x the power of the hard drive (I might have put that 2nd or 3rd when guessing)..

Year In Review

2008-12-27T21:43:00.000-06:00

This longish Dave Barry piece at the WaPo today is hilarious (and probably more true than satirical): The Year In Review

Prop 8: The Musical

2008-12-04T10:01:00.000-06:00

This is awesome. Jack Black as Jesus...and it even has Doogie. It has a lot of people, actually!

Python 3.0 Has Arrived!

2008-12-04T09:47:00.000-06:00

I hadn't noticed this myself; it was from a post shared (via Google Reader) from Brandon that I learned of it. Python 3.0 ('Python 3000') was first talked about (2000) not long after I was still using Python a lot (1999)...and it's finally here. This is the long awaited release that is intentionally not backward compatible with previous releases, meant to clean up some language cruft. Guido's summary of the changes: What's New In Python 3.0

Human Evolution: Slowing Down?

2008-10-10T14:14:00.000-05:00

I saw this a day or two late, but the geneticist Steve Jones asserts that human evolution has pretty much ground to a halt. The Times (UK) has the story . The summary of why he thinks this is the case: a big drop in the 'old guy with much younger girl' case. Fathers in their 20s have accumulated far fewer genetic mutations than fathers in their 50s..and so fewer mutations are conferred to the child. The lower mutation rate (on average) would ostensibly lead to a slower pace of evolution.

Steve Jones is the author of a pretty good evolution-focused book that I read several years ago and would recommend: Almost Like A Whale. That is the title of the UK version of the book (the version I have), but the US version is instead called Darwin's Ghost: The Origin of Species Updated .

Large Hadron Rap

2008-09-25T09:49:00.001-05:00

I just came across this rap about the Large Hadron Collider. I've seen 'nerdcore' rap before (see MC Plus Plus), but this is the first such rap I've seen by a woman. It is awesome. You can bask in lyrics like (from about 2:40)

The Higgs boson, that's the one
that everybody talks about,
and it's the one sure thing
that this machine will sort out.

If the Higgs exists
they ought to see it right away.
And if it doesn't,
the scientists will finally say,

"There is no Higgs!
We need new physics
to account for why
things have mass.
Something in our Standard
Model went awry!"

State GDP Equivalency

2008-09-22T13:26:00.000-05:00

From Christian Broda: a US map, with state names replaced by countries of roughly equivalent GDP. We're about equal to Canada.

More Than a Grain Of Truth Here

2008-09-19T14:25:00.004-05:00

The Onion has some fake (albeit sadly largely true) new coverage of the more protectionist candidate in the election:

Obama Promises To Stop America's Shitty Jobs From Going Overseas

FP's '10 Dumbest Policy Ideas'

2008-09-17T22:25:00.000-05:00

Foreign Policy magazine compiled (in their opinion...there are plenty of statements on both sides to choose from!) what they view as the 10 stupidest ideas publicly put forth by each candidate.

Obama's 10 Dumbest Policy Ideas

McCain's 10 Dumbest Policy Ideas

Probably the only one I would potentially challenge is the nuclear item on the McCain list. Sure, 45 plants sounds like a pretty arbitrary number, but the assertion that they would take too long to come online to 'matter' as far as climate change is concerned sounds dubious to me. If the even 50 years is 'too long to matter' (and I don't think people are asserting it would take 50 years to bring 45 plants online; we have 104 plants today, and a good chunk of those would have been end of lifed by the time these 45 are all up), we're pretty screwed: no way the developing world will have gone all the way from where they are, zipping right through developed economy status, and magically ending up in some ultra low emissions future state within that time frame. Given that, even if we could get to zero emissions tomorrow, those savings would be negated by rest of world growth within that time frame.

In a sense, I think the FP summary actually sort of mis-summarized the Ferguson/Squassoni article (in FP itself!). The article did not really so much argue that 45 plants would be 'too late to matter,' but rather that even if we built 45 plants, the growth of demand in China and India alone -- and given that nearly all of that will be coal-based -- will more than cancel out 45 zero-emission nukes.

Ike from the ISS

2008-09-13T00:50:00.003-05:00

I found this in a very interesting blog post on Weather Underground. The post talks about how even though Ike is a category 2 (as of the blog post), it was actually more powerful (in total) than Rita (5) or Katrina (5) in terms of aggregate kinetic energy. Interesting reading: Ike Closes In On Galveston

Detroit: Houses Cheaper Than Cars

2008-09-12T18:01:00.001-05:00

No joke: the average sale price for homes in Detroit during the past year fell below the national average for a new car ($22,650).

I found this on this post on Carpe Diem, an econ blog run by a UM-Flint professor.

Lance's Back

2008-09-08T15:27:00.000-05:00

Hopefully he can return to old form (the guy is almost 37, though!) and won't end up regretting the return: VeloNews: Lance Is Coming Back

Stormpulse

2008-09-05T14:01:00.002-05:00

I saw this mentioned on TechCrunch and just messed around with it: Stormpulse

It's one of the sweeter mashups I've seen; it provides great visualization of hurricane and tropical storm activity and forecasts. It has toggleable overlays to include clouds, projected storm routes by various computer models, etc. It's akin to having one of the visualization systems that the major network forecasters use to show expected storm routes (as seen with Gustav).

Day 1 With Chrome

2008-09-02T22:31:00.000-05:00

I've now spent a day with Google Chrome (or at least since it came out early this afternoon). Conclusions thus far:

It is really fast. I'm not talking about 'yeah, I think it seems a bit faster than Firefox and IE,' I'm talking about a very obvious, very marked difference in performance. The first visit to a busy page like cnn.com and it's very apparent that it renders much faster than my normal browser (Firefox 3). The one process per tab approach is going to be a welcome change, as well.
It seems stable, despite the 0.2.x version label. I haven't had any crashes yet so far. I suppose this makes sense, as Brandon tells me that they internally eat dog food like this for a long time before it's even released in a beta form like this.
Rendering incompatibility seems very rare. I know that Guidewire applications won't render perfectly in Chrome as of yet (people were quick to satisfy that curiosity), but I have yet to come across any of my normal daily sites that showed obvious rendering issues. I suppose this shouldn't be a huge surprise either, being based on an established engine (WebKit). I'd think that it's site compatibility would be roughly equal to (or if they've done extra work, better than) what is seen in Apple Safari (also WebKit based). I read on a site earlier today that Google has internally built a site compatibility test harness that runs against the top several thousand most popular sites (and if anyone would have that data, it'd be Google!) and farms this testing out across Google machine clusters, allowing them to test on the order of 10,000 sites on a brand new build within 20-30 minutes. Pretty sweet.

I think I'll keep using this until I run into something that is too broken to keep going with it; I'm not sure I'm going to bump into any such thing!

I also see that Picasa 3.0 beta came out today, with automated facial recognition (meant to help auto-tag people). Big release day at GOOG!

Genetic Predisposition to Stray?

2008-09-02T15:56:00.000-05:00

I've seen several other mentions of this study (all linking to the Washington Post article I am about to link to), but it's interesting enough to merit all of these mentions: Study Links Gene Variant in Men to Marital Discord

Basically, they found:

The finding is striking because it not only links the gene variant -- which is present in two of every five men -- with the risk of marital discord and divorce, but also appears to predict whether women involved with these men are likely to say their partners are emotionally close and available, or distant and disagreeable. The presence of the gene variant, or allele, also seems predictive of whether men get married or live with women without getting married.

"Men with two copies of the allele had twice the risk of experiencing marital dysfunction, with a threat of divorce during the last year, compared to men carrying one or no copies," said Hasse Walum, a behavioral geneticist at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm who led the study. "Women married to men with one or two copies of the allele scored lower on average on how satisfied they were with the relationship compared to women married to men with no copies."

Interesting! Biology is not destiny, but I smell a new bullet point in the list of mitigating circumstances in future divorce court proceedings!

Nike Human Race 10K

2008-09-02T12:42:00.001-05:00

Jen and I signed up for the Nike Human Race 10K held this past Sunday. I had never run 10K (6.2 miles) before. I think my previous high water mark was the roughly 5 miles we ran with one of Carie's training groups sometime last year. An Austin360.com story about the race (before it took place) is here: 'Austin runners and celeb athletes join the world in Nike+ Human Race 10K'

I didn't have any way to bring my camera along, but Patrick, Bethany, and Carie were hanging out on the outside bar at the Stephen F. Austin. Bethany had a camera, and snapped a few pictures.

This is what it looked like on Congress at the start of the run. The shirts they issued in our race packets were pretty nice; they were all Nike Dri-Fit shirts with the number printed on the shirt (on the front) and the list of the 25 cities on the back.

Patrick and Carie, chilling with drinks while we sweltered below.

Patrick and Bethany, with more drinks. Patrick looks to be doing his best Samantha Ronson.

The view towards the start.

Matt McConaughey crossing the finish. Lance was running too.

Jen and I, waiting for the start.

The race started in the evening (6:30 PM), but it was still pretty warm. My watch said 94, but I don't know how accurate that reading is, being so close to the body. It was very humid and there was zero breeze, making the first half (also the half with hills) kind of brutal. Things got much easier once we hit The Drag, with the sun having gone down somewhat, a slightly cooler temperature, and an occasional (very occasional!) breeze. It ended up being not too bad, although the massage I had last night sure hurt a bit!

Hotter 'N Hell Hundred 2008

2008-08-24T21:42:00.001-05:00

This past Saturday was this year's Hotter 'N Hell Hundred. It claims to be the largest organized century ride in the US. This year's rider total was 11,260.

I used to ride the shorter distances (10 and 25) when I lived in Wichita Falls in elementary school. Since living in Austin, I've been going back and doing the full hundred. I think that this weekend was probably my fifth (maybe fourth?) time doing the hundred. It was probably typical as far as elapsed time: 5:44 (17.6 mph average). Much slower than my best there (5:01, 20.1 mph average), although it was unusually cool that year (80s). This year was pretty standard temperature wise (upper 90s), with perhaps a bit more wind than normal (or at least than I remember). The local Wichita Falls paper has a story with much better pictures than I'll paste below: Helluva race

Looking back, at the start on Scott Street.

Colleen and I stopped on the bridge right after the start, keeping an eye out for Austin on his handbike.

Colleen's friend Austin, who rode this handbike (!). Jen and I met him a few months ago, when Austin was in Austin for a wheelchair rugby tournament that Colleen brought us to. He was playing on Mark Zupan's team!

It is probably a bit hard to see in this grainy Blackberry camera picture, but this is showing a group of T-38s from Sheppard AFB that fly right over the column of riders along Scott Street to kick off the ride. A cannon is fired off somewhere, the jets buzz the crowd, and off we go!

Another Theory On Dudes Into Dudes

2008-08-22T11:52:00.000-05:00

A neuroscience seminar in college was the first place I heard a few angles on answering 'if homosexuality is non-procreative, what is the evolutionary reason for its existence?' I think the most popular or frequently mentioned theory I had heard was that gay men would not have children of their own, so they served as a family (and particularly childcare) buffer in the event that one or more of their siblings were to be killed or otherwise unable to care for their family.

A university study in Italy has another angle: 'hyper-sexual' women. Apparently, the same gene that causes men to like men also causes women to like men, leading to more children. Full story here: Bisexuality passed on by 'hyper-heterosexuals'

The Other Side of the Coin..

2008-08-22T11:37:00.000-05:00

As a follow-on to the Obama post the other day (the worshipful one), I came across this Hubbard piece in the WSJ yesterday: We Can't Tax Our Way Out Of the Entitlement Crisis. His applauds Obama for moderating the degree of some of his planned tax increases (particularly the retreat from a fully-uncapped payroll tax), but points out that the revenue that would be brought in by his current tax increase planns, when combined with his unwillingness to consider benefit cuts, leaves us only someone less screwed then our current path.

In other words, he has not put forward any plan to address Medicare (and its less-challenging fellow traveler, SS) growth explosion. (Then again, I don't think anyone thinks McCain has any plan where the numbers add up, either.)

Staying Warm?

2008-08-20T18:26:00.001-05:00

For some reason, Lucy & Ethel have taken to sleeping underneath their bed in recent weeks. Usually, they are entirely hidden. Today, they seemed to want to keep tabs on things.

Free-Market Loving, Big Spending, Fiscally Conservative Wealth Redistributionist

2008-08-20T18:07:00.002-05:00

That is the title (the browser title, at least) of a forthcoming New York Times Magazine story actually titled How Obama Reconciles Dueling Views on the Economy. It's a pretty long piece (I've linked to the single page version) and tries to tell an interesting tale of Obama's economic evolution from his teaching days to the present day.

It's worth reading. The weak point: the author's barely veiled adulation for his subject. The critical statements he makes are about as aggressive as a Larry King interview (made worse yet by omitting large swathes of well-known policy critiques made by others).

Lezak is a Stud

2008-08-11T08:57:00.004-05:00

The men's 4x100 free relay was pretty much completely insane. Jason Lezak kicked more ass than a donkey: Lezak lifts U.S. in 'best ever' relay Watch it on the NBC Olympics site, if you haven't seen it..

NewTalk

2008-08-08T16:21:00.002-05:00

This looks like it has been running for a while, but I didn't see it until today: NewTalk. It bills itself as a site where 'experts discuss America's toughest issues.' They take one topic at a time, letting a discussion take place amongst a set of experts spanning the political spectrum as well as the vested interests for the topic at hand (an AARP spokesman on entitlements, etc.). After the discussion period has ended, the discussion closes, and they move to the next topic (and a new mix of experts).

I found it by hitting upon a discussion on addressing entitlement spending that ended in late July: 'Can we afford our entitlement promises? How close is the cliff?' It seems like a pretty worthwhile site with a good mix of participants...

We Bring Economic Decline

2008-08-07T18:54:00.002-05:00

Or so you might think, looking at Forbes' new list: America's Fastest Dying Cities. Of the 10 cities on the list, we have ties to several: Flint (Grand Blanc is a suburb of Flint), Detroit (nearby), Canton, OH (mom is from North Canton), Youngstown, OH (dad is from Canfield). Some of the statistics in the slide show are pretty amazing: about 175,000 people have moved out out Detroit just since 2000!

Flint In the News Again

2008-08-07T18:53:00.001-05:00

After the 'no crack' policing from a few posts ago, I hit upon this story: Wandering prostitutes prompt 'No Ho Zone' sign

In Praise Of....Houston?

2008-08-06T16:31:00.002-05:00

I came across this Ed Glaeser piece Houston, New York Has a Problem in the NY Sun praising Houston, of all places. He compares and contrasts NYC and Houston, and (more specifically) the growth the two cities have seen. The whole thing is worth reading, but the essence of what he thinks Houston brings to the table is this:

Houston's great advantage, it turns out, is its ability to provide affordable living for middle-income Americans, something that is increasingly hard to achieve in the Big Apple. That Houston is a middle-class city is mirrored in the nature of its economy. Both greater Houston and Manhattan have about 2 million employees.

Basically: unless you are extremely wealthy, you can't live too big in NYC. Recent immigrants in NYC have a very low standard of living by American standards, but generally still well above what it was where they emigrated from. If you're a run of the mill native American with a 'normal' middle class job, your dollar stretches much farther in the home of The Geto Boys.

The Smile Capital

2008-08-06T15:43:00.008-05:00

That is apparently what Pocatello, ID bills itself as: the US Smile Capital!

I'm typing this from the airport in Idaho Falls (about to fly back home), but it is my first time in either place.

The landscape was a good bit hillier than I expected. This is the view from the customer's parking lot:
The people were all very friendly. The housekeeping staff at the hotel left messages like this:
We finished early, so I also drove into town to see Idaho State. I took these quick pictures there as well:

Proudly from an un-PC major..

2008-08-01T13:45:00.002-05:00

Mankiw links to this piece in Inside Higher Ed, ranking majors by the prevalence of PC-ness (definition within). The conclusions are pretty non-shocking, like:

Humanities and social science fields tend to have higher politically correct rankings, while professional and science disciplines do not.

Mankiw summarized some of the most-PC and least-PC majors as follows (yay CS):

The most PC: Psychology, Sociology, English, History, Elementary education

The least PC: Criminal justice, Economics, Marketing, Accounting, Computer science, Biology, Finance, Management information, Mechanical engineering, Electrical engineering

471 Miles Later

2008-07-30T14:10:00.003-05:00

I'll flesh this out later (when I'm not out of town for work; typing this from Philadelphia), but here is the link to pictures from the RAGBRAI ride across Iowa last week (July 20-26): RAGBRAI 2008.

Flint, MI In The News

2008-07-10T09:23:00.003-05:00

I saw this at Reason's Hit & Run: Flint Battles Crack Epidemic (now they have both types!).

The article also links to a study listing Flint as the third most violent city in the US. Go Flint! Edged out by Detroit (#1) and Saint Louis (#2) this time..

Python Code History, Visually

2008-07-09T23:02:00.002-05:00

Brandon sent this to me tonight. It's pretty cool -- basically a moving histogram of Python source commits over time, with some added visual flair as developers fade in and out of the scene. It's crazy to see the explosion of activity when it began to become widely used (1999/2000).

code_swarm - Python from Michael Ogawa on Vimeo.

Civil War Slavery (Some Surprises)..

2008-07-07T17:05:00.002-05:00

A few days ago, Megan McArdle had a much larger list of (potentially) surprising statements about the nature of slavery in the US at the time of the Civil War. The full list in her post is worth reading, but here are a few that struck me as particularly counter to the connotation given it all when it was covered in school:

4. Slave agriculture was not inefficient compared with free agriculture. Economies of large-scale operation, effective management, and intensive utilization of labor and capital made southern slave agriculture 35 percent more efficient than the northern system of factory farming.

6. The course of slavery in the cities does not prove that slavery was incompatible with an industrial system or that slaves were unable to cope with an industrial regimen. Slaves employed in industry compared favorably with free workers in diligence and efficiency. Far from declining, the demand for slaves was actually increasing more rapidly in urban areas than in the countryside.

8. The material (not psychological) conditions of the lives of slaves compared favorably with those of free industrial workers. This is not to say that they were good by modern standards. It merely emphasizes the hard lot of all workers, free or slave, during the first half of the nineteenth century.

More Knuth Wisdom

2008-06-27T00:07:00.003-05:00

I somehow hadn't noticed that Knuth recently released another book in his Art of Computer Programming series. Actually, it's not a book -- it's a fascicle (something I had to go look up on m-w.com). This one is part of what will be a multivolume series on combinatorics.

The full title is The Art of Computer Programming, Volume 4, Fascicle 0: Introduction to Combinatorial Algorithms and Boolean Functions. Another cool book to buy and only partially comprehend...