Gibdon Moon

Night Shots

2011-12-02T08:53:00.001-08:00

The camera on my spiffy, new Samsung Galaxy Player may not compare to a dedicated pocket-shooter, but it's incredible compared to the iPod Touch's! Here are some photos I captured using the nightshot scene mode.

Happy Halloween

2011-10-31T19:00:00.000-07:00

Hugh Jackman, meet Gingerine Dream.

Occupy Seattle

2011-10-04T09:47:00.001-07:00

I saw demonstrators with tents setup near Westlake Center holding signs saying, "Occupy Seattle" [1]. This morning I saw "Occupy Wall Street" spray-painted on a pillar by the river trail under 85th Street in Redmond. Tomorrow maybe we'll see something besides our own occupations.

I have to give these people some credit for at least recognizing what it takes to change systems: you don't work within them. Sometimes, though, you don't fix them either ... you just let them fall apart and build something else from the wreckage. I don't know that I've heard of any major system, governments or economics, that has evolved into something better. Things grow, they age, and they die. This is a tide law that everything obeys; "on a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero." [2] That can be depressing or encouraging depending on what side of the system you're on. These people demonstrating; they're probably scared to lose the system they want to reform.

Everyone has some basic panacea to solve our "problems", but these are fantastically superficial; bits of fantasy left-over from Disney (a giant corporation) instilling values we don't live by in cartoon movies we watched as children. Take from the rich and give to the poor! Down with those rich, greedy CEO's! By the way, you're the mountain on which they stand so let's all take a bit of blame and throw some salt over our shoulders. Perhaps we're angry that someone is abusing our own lottery dreams, but they surfed the big waves of our own cultural decadence into tropical shores of avarice.

Why do we need more jobs? Why do we need to earn a living? Are we now entitled to other things besides life itself? The nominal count of jobs is a poor metric. What we need are food, shelter, and love ... not to mention a place to take a shit. What we want is the ability to provide for our families. What we crave is all the new trinkets from the very companies we're vying for employment at. This is a vicious circle. What is the 40 hour workweek or a steady job except consistency, safety, insurance? Freedom as the idealistic American dream is the opposition; our beloved stories trumpet one path and we operate by another. Patriotism may be about getting in line and complaining about cutters.

We're overgrown and clinging to overblown problems of our own design. Every cure heralds a new poison, every progress destroys some previous foundation, and every convenience leads to further atrophy, apathy, and acclimation to a non-existent reality.

Obama Mob

2011-08-20T15:26:00.000-07:00

There are a couple of desperate housewives standing outside the Redmond Post Office holding poster-boards of Obama with a Charlie Chaplain mustache ... or is that supposed to be Hitler? One might be funny and one of them was laughing about some story, but the other and most likely scenario is just sad and stupid. Here let me think, what's the point of any sharply slanted demonstration? You're either going to incite a riotous rabble bent on revolution or piss people off. Granted these are extreme ends of the spectrum, but this is reaction to hateful extremists; doubtless most people (myself included) avoid eye contact, mumble something incoherent, and shamble past. Maybe, maybe one in a thousand people on the proverbial fence fall on your side, but how many apples end up over the fence after you've crashed into the fruit tree?

Picking My Nose in Demand

2011-08-20T15:04:00.000-07:00

regnardrofkcalb has sent you a message:

Blow me
To:flamingweenie

I liked the "Blow Me" video and the nose picking was awesome! I'd pay $10 per minute for short 1 or 1 minute video clips of you picking your nose. If interested, please let me know. If not, it's cool and keep up the great channel! Thanks.

You can reply to this message by visiting your inbox.

Happy Birthday

2011-08-19T11:21:00.000-07:00

Shameless post to myself wishing me many happy returns. Marcel and Frank walked into my office, slapped a funny cake hat on me, threw glitter confetti on me, and sang "¡Feliz cumpleaños a tí!"

Thanks guys!

Adele @ Paramount Seattle

2011-08-12T21:00:00.000-07:00

Sandra and I attended the Adele concert at Paramount in Seattle on August 12th. She reminded me of a cute cross of Boomhower and Bridget Jones, babbling energetically between songs in almost incoherent British English about both the origin of each one and events of the day.

The next day I rented a car so I could take her home and on the way we stopped by dad's place to take him to lunch.

Soundgarden Gorge 2011

2011-08-05T08:12:00.000-07:00

Nearly a week ago I experienced Soundgarden at the Gorge, the final stop on a tour picking up after twelve years of dissolution. Besides the crappy cell phone photos shown here, I recorded some audio clips but they turned out all garbled. At one point Chris Cornell knelt down and asked someone up front, "Does that record video?" When they yelled in the affirmative he told them to start it up, then grabbed it, and paraded around stage introducing the band members to the device. I'm still hoping to find the result on YouTube.

The show ended with a really strange, and quite annoying actually, loud feedback loop that went on for at least ten minutes before the stage lights simply came up and everyone stampeded away. However the performance was quite satisfying, they played a really long set (nearly every track off Superunknown -- even Black Hole Sun), and Cornell's vocals were as powerful as ever.

Abuse and Enlightenment

2011-07-30T10:17:00.000-07:00

The following is one of the 108 stories in Who Ordered This Truckload of Dung? by Ajahn Brahm.

EXPERIENCED MEDITATION TEACHERS often have to deal with disciples who claim to be enlightened. One of the time-honored ways to test if their claims are true is to abuse the disciple so grossly that they end up getting angry. As all Buddhist monks and nuns know, the Buddha clearly stated that one who gets angry is certainly not enlightened.

A young Japanese monk, strenuously intent on reaching nirvana in this very life, was meditating in solitude in a secluded lake-island hermitage near a famous monastery. He wanted to get enlightenment out of the way early on in his life, so he could then attend to other things.

When the monastery attendant arrived in his small rowboat on his weekly visit to deliver supplies, the young monk left a note requesting some expensive parchment, a quill, and some fine-quality ink. He was soon to complete his third year in solitude and wanted to let his abbot know how well he had done.

The parchment, quill, and ink arrived the following week. In the next few days, after much meditating and pondering, the young monk wrote on the fine parchment in the most exquisite of calligraphy the following short poem:

The conscientious young monk
meditating three years alone
can no longer be moved
by the four worldly winds.

Surely, he thought, his wise old abbot would see in these words, and in the care by which they were written, that his disciple was now enlightened. He gently rolled up the parchment, carefully tied it with a ribbon, and then waited for the attendant to deliver it to his teacher. In the days that followed, he imagined his abbot’s pleasure at reading the brilliant poem so meticulously inscribed. He could see it being hung in a costly frame in the monastery’s main hall. No doubt they would press him to be an abbot now, maybe of a famous city monastery. How nice he felt to have made it at last!

When the attendant next rowed the small boat to the island to deliver the weekly supplies, the young monk was waiting for him. The attendant soon handed the monk a parchment similar to the one he had sent, but tied with a different colored ribbon. “From the abbot,” said the attendant tersely.

The monk excitedly tore off the ribbon and unfurled the scroll. As his eyes settled on the parchment, they grew as wide as the moon, and his face went just as white. It was his own parchment, but next to the first line of exquisite calligraphy, the abbot had carelessly scribbled in a red ballpoint pen a single word: “Fart!” To the right of the second line was another ugly smudge of red ink saying, “Fart!” The third line had another irreverent “Fart!” scrawled over it, and so did the fourth line of verse.

This was too much! Not only was the decrepit old abbot so stupid that he couldn’t recognize enlightenment when it was in front of his fat nose, but he was so uncouth and uncivilized that he had vandalized a work of art with indecent graffiti. The abbot was behaving like a punk, not a monk. It was an insult to art, to tradition and to truth.

The young monk’s eyes narrowed with indignation, his face flushed red with righteous anger, and he snorted as he insisted of the attendant, “Take me to the abbot! Immediately!”

It was the first time in three years that the young monk had left his island hermitage. In a rage, he stormed into the abbot’s office, slammed the parchment on the table, and demanded an explanation.

The experienced abbot slowly picked up the parchment, cleared his throat, and read out the poem:

The conscientious young monk
meditating three years alone
can no longer be moved
by the four worldly winds.

The he put down the parchment, stared at the young monk, and continued. “Hmm! So, young monk, you are no longer moved by the four worldly winds. Yet four little farts have blown you right across the lake!”

Found the Sun

2011-07-26T20:01:00.000-07:00

Surprised? I found it within a tent at an on-campus "Product Fair" at Microsoft. It's smaller in person (or I am imaginably gigantic), filled with candy, and has a hole in the back. I'm sure the reasons for hiding had something to do with being prodded in the rear by greedy fingers looking for sticky sweets.

As anyone and everyone in Washington can attest, this has been a dismal year. The previous July must have been hotter, because this one and the leading Spring have been quite gray. It's now especially impossible to tell the difference between people who always complain about the weather and those just justified by reasons referring to recent temporal evidence. Oh yes, it rains here -- didn't you know? Somehow the rain hasn't dampened my immediate mood so, for all I care, the clouds can go fuck their muggy breath and ashy faces; this is Summer's silver lining.

Really, we have no one to complain and no one to blame but ourselves. Seeing as blaming yourself is only worth an immediate punishment per motivational purposes, I suggest we quit flogging the fluffy inverse geography bearing down as our cirrus ceiling. That said, I'm only feeling quite right now so I reserve the right to bitch about the shitty shiftiness tomorrow ... or in an hour. I thought, heck I'd better write something while the lightness remains else my blog will be nothing be pain to endure in a reading.

There isn't anything in particular that's given me such a boost. Nothing has changed in my life, work mostly sucked today, and my activities are almost explicitly boring at the moment from an external point of view. Yet somehow I don't care at the moment and I really see how little it matters. This clarity will pass (this too shall pass) but its brief presence testifies to a subtle healing process from within. The idea that such stretches will get longer is altogether more encouraging than any amount of attention from a random floozy in a tipsy night out. The internalization of loneliness affecting without hurting and the sensation that I can be worth something to myself, even just breath to breath; those are things that matter. These are markers on my path, totems in my sky ... just somewhat concealed by clouds ...

Long to Time Lose

2011-07-23T22:04:00.000-07:00

"It takes a long time to lose it," sings The Wooden Birds on their album Two Matchsticks. Cheers to whoever recommended the song to me, I think it was Scott "Meat Shovel" Happel. It also takes a long time for my poor netbook to render 15 minutes of deshaked, uncompressed 640x480 video. I had the brilliant idea of just appending a bunch of clips together and letting Deshaker hog VirtualDub while I left to go tend tasks. I was gone for nearly three hours and it took about that long for full pixel processing to finish, now it's pumping the results into a 23 gigabyte AVI with an estimated time of an hour and a half. Afterwards I still have to reverse, chop, and filter (for levels, brightness/contrast, and possibly smoothing). Well, then I'll have steel instead of bronze to work with ...

"Hope is a drug (that uses you)," sings Gavin Castleton (thanks sis). On a pedantic note it gets you to see Transformers latest pile of stinking, twisted metal of a movie under the seducing idea it might actually be entertaining rather than garishly boring. Here is every possible theme, scene, and gleam of cinema blockbusters clobbered together into a buffet of deafening badness. I imagine the writer to be an retro-adolescent, MTV-gen adult whose idea of greatness is stringing together every cool YouTube video they ever saw. Gah, and did anyone notice that even the music hopped schizophrenically between Brave Heart and The Dark Knight? This film had no fucking clue what the hell kind of thing it wanted to be. "I want to be everything!" it screams as Shia Labouf screams and the girl screams and the metal against metal screams and the bits of stereotype fall off the lips of bits of characters and my mind screams in defiance of the impossibly explicitness of it all. Now I know what "non-stop action" is (everyone constantly talking, explaining, shooting, screaming, or running) and by golly it is grating to go through. "Retirement is wack," says black guy ... are they stealing lines from Movie Movies? Probably not the best idea. Anyway, I could nitpick practically every scene of this because it doesn't even realize it's a parody (P.S. -- I apologize on behalf of the filmmakers to President Kennedy for giving you "Tron face", you didn't deserve that) ...

"Don't get shy, don't get caught, with the world and its thoughts," sings Peter Murphy. I think it's important to listen to your own internal wisdom. Chances are you've been ignoring it so as to conform to something more amiable to your particular social group. Off of that vein I must protest the typical podcast: a couple of guys with a microphone talking about pop/nerd culture. What are you to find in these banal subjects, some witty criticism you can use in favor for or against the latest trend to raise in the next water-cooler conversation? I've been hearing these "through the wall" from my roommate and they boggle my mind. Who cares what these guys think of anything, what do you think? Neither might matter, given the topics, but at least you're not cloning someone else's silly opinion.

Networking Exodus

2011-07-21T12:47:00.000-07:00

Blogging templates are getting better, I may switch away from my custom one, because I want to write and not mess with HTML. These phases come and go, as with everything; everything passes then returns (Tao and whatnot). I go from tinkering to closing the hood and taking the shell for a ride.

My journal has been getting much love from my own internal pain, supposedly this helps things. Sometimes I want to write in a way that shows up for other people even if no one is listening. How is it that broadcasting ourselves, even to a deaf audience, is such a powerful urge. I think it's less vanity than external confirmation of existence and effect. None the less, I have quit Twitter about a year after quitting Facebook and now I wonder if my email or phone isn't next.

Sometimes you have to really stub the toe for a hangnail to be loosened up enough to pull out. Or rather, blistered up enough. Over a year ago I aggravated two of my piggies enough with blisters beneath the nail that eventually one and then the other spit it out to make room for new growth. There's a metaphor in there, and there's also a lot of gross: puss in boots (e.g. not a kitty cat -- now try reading the title as intended, ever again).

Yesterday I nearly stepped on a tiny rabbit while walking home on the trail. Harrying flies popped on and off, dancing, shimmering chocolate chunks of filth to the beats of Kid Loco's The Graffiti Artist. I grabbed a short piece of wood and squatted down to carefully push him over. While in the process of this, earbuds in and oblivious to my surroundings, I heard a sudden squeak and sharp intake of breath as a girl coming from the opposite direction spotted my focus. "Is that a bunny?" It was, I said, and I was just trying to see how injured it was before moving it off the trail. She continued before I finished, what else could be done?

I prodded him gently with my fingers, soft fur gave way but the flesh pushed back and quivered yet its overlarge eyes stared at me intently. I picked him up slowly and moved him off into the bushes nearby, laying out a simple mantra and hoping my touch had not forever discouraged its mother (if it was that young) from returning. "Good lucky, little guy." This morning he was gone. I've seen plenty of rabbits, deer and once a young buck, raccoons, and even once a fox. So while he may have recovered his constitution and left by himself, I think rather he became a meal. Those big eyes in a tiny body looking into mine, that memory may be all that truly exists of him anymore.

Somehow, yesterday a level of peace furnished itself in my soul as had not happened in quite some time. Even with everything going on inside and out, within and without, I drank deeply of equilibrium draught, sipped a spirit of spaciousness, and inhaled self-forgiveness without personal identification. Troubles seemed far away, disconnected from my twisted net of emotions in this body and mind. The feeling has left, but the memory remains, staring at me from yesterday with big vulnerable sightless eyes.

I left my phone at home, walked to Marymoor Park, watched Dodgeball into the dark, and laughed unto spilling tears; a waterway so recently reserved only for sadness produced a sprinkle of liquid sunshine. On the walk home, my own figures gathered warmly around and I wrote in my moleskine: "Street lights cast an army of shadows, but they all stand at my feet."

How to Cook Brown Rice

2011-05-14T08:05:00.000-07:00

Here’s how I cook my brown rice; I’m using Lundberg Short Grain Brown Rice from Costco.

Presoak the rice: put it the pot you’ll cook it in with a lot of water (measurement is unnecessary here) and let it sit for about thirty minutes to get rid of excess starch or whatnot.
Drain that water and then add 1.5 cups of water for every 1 cup of rice you had; e.g. ratio of 1.5:1 water to rice.
Put the uncovered pot on the stove and set heat to high; wait for it to boil.
Turn heat to low, cover pot with lid, and wait twenty minutes while it simmers.
Turn off the heat, keep the pot covered, and wait thirty minutes for the rice to soften up.

My rule for remember this is 10,20,30: about ten minutes to boil, twenty to simmer, and then thirty to soften. I still always forget the water/rice ratio though, which is the original impetus for this post.

Afterwards I generally throw the entire pot in the refrigerator and dole out portions over the next couple days when I want to make a meal. One particular favorite of mine is to throw a frozen Morning Star sausage patty on a bowl of rice, top that with cheese, cover the entire thing with a paper towel, and microwave for 2.5 minutes. Quickly remove when done and use a fork to mix it up while turning the bowl in your hands -- don't burn your fingers! The one thing others tend to change in this when I serve it to them is to add soy sauce as well. Yum!

I encourage you to add stuff to the rice/water mixture at the beginning (after presoaking though!) for various flavors. Something that works well is about a teaspoon of diced garlic, cayenne pepper, and a generous squirt of soy sauce or fish sauce. It’s easy to toss in other things, however, and it up with different and interesting tastes. For example, I’ve added teriyaki sauce that I had leftover in one of those tiny plastic cups you get from take-out or olive oil (probably better at the end) or different kinds of hot sauce / spice. My one recommendation would just be to keep it simple and not overload it with two many variants; I’ve made that mistake in the past.

Special thanks to Steve Pavlina’s blog entry How to Cook Brown Rice and Melissa Paul’s pre-soak suggestion.

Seattle Sunset

2011-05-14T07:44:00.000-07:00

The urge to blog has come and gone on multiple occasions, leaving the last post to be made over a month old. I've been writing, of a sort, but I have not, of this sort, been doing it here.

I made the bus trip to Seattle yesterday evening, Friday the 13^th, after a long long work week. It seemed to me that I have neither a night life nor the mental and social muscles to set one about except through a few failures, then being the first. Mood, mind, and meandering did not mix to create any sort of fun only depressing reflection of self-repression.

At any rate I made it to Contour before 8, but for the day they had extended Happy Hour to 9 so it didn't matter. I ate and drank, no alcohol due to a determined drying out after last Saturday's Black Raven Brewery anniversary; thus perhaps any of this could be blamed on withdrawal. I mostly enjoyed the simple atmosphere of people. I left an hour before any DJ would be on and wandered down to the harbor where I watched the sun go down.

And then I left and went to bed.

Modern March

2011-04-05T09:58:00.000-07:00

I'm reading Carl Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections and came upon a striking passage this morning:

Our souls as well as our bodies are composed of individual elements which were all already present in the ranks of our ancestors. The "newness" in the individual psyche is an endlessly varied recombination of age-old components. Body and soul therefore have an intensely historical character and find no proper place in what is new, in things that have just come into being. That is to say, our ancestral components are only partly at home in such things. We are very far from having finished completely with the Middle Ages, classical antiquity, and primitivity, as our modern psyches pretend. Nevertheless, we have plunged down a cataract of progress which sweeps us on into the future with ever wilder violence the farther it takes us from our roots. Once the past has been breached, it is usually annihilated, and there is no stopping the forward motion. But it is precisely the loss of connection with the past, our uprootedness, which has given rise to the "discontents" of civilization and to such a flurry and haste that we live more in the future and its chimerical promises of a golden age than in the present, with which our whole evolutionary background has not yet caught up. We rush impetuously into novelty, driven by a mounting sense of insufficiency, dissatisfaction, and restlessness. We no longer live on what we have, but on promises, no longer in the light of the present day, but in the darkness of the future, which, we expect, will at least bring the proper sunrise. We refuse to recognize that everything better is purchased at the price of something worse; that, for example, the hope of greater freedom is canceled out by increased enslavement to the state, not to speak of the terrible perils to which the most brilliant discoveries of science expose us. The less we understand of what our fathers and forefathers sought, the less we understand ourselves, and thus we help with all our might to rob the individual of his roots and his guiding instincts, so that he becomes a particle in the mass, ruled only by what Nietzsche called the spirit of gravity.

Reforms by advances, that is, by new methods or gadgets, are of course impressive at first, but in the long run they are dubious and in any case dearly paid for. They by no means increase the contentment or happiness of people on the whole. Mostly, they are deceptive sweetenings of existence, like speedier communications which unpleasantly accelerate the tempo of life and leave us with less time than ever before. Omnis festinatio ex parte diaboli est--all haste is of the devil, as the old masters used to say.

Jung, a famous Swiss psychiatrist (though that's only the label of his profession, I'd say he goes far beyond that) wrote this at 81 in 1957. This is by no means an isolated view of the so-called improvement of lifestyle given to us by technology and the clawed conveniences hidden therein. Buddhism and Taoism speak of a person's "root" as well and it is no surprise he brings it up here after having researched those and Chinese and Indian philosophies.

Another book I raced through yesterday, e.g. in a single day, brought the same sort of thing to light:

We live in a world of entertainment. We are always looking for ways to distract ourselves. We try to save time and make everything easier and more productive. Now, we are bored. Work is boring. Home is boring. People are boring. What do we do?

... and ...

I turn around in my lazy, cushioned, roll chair in the place where one reads books (library), and I see four people typing away, working hard. They could be writing books or finishing homework. So much production is being pumped out of the four I witness. I glance at the monitors and see them all on the same web page. It looks like a famous social network. How wasteful are we?

He defines "Social Networks" in his Mini Dictionary section as a way to keep in touch with people you don't care about, except to make sure they're not more successful than you.

That is all from How to Talk to Famous People: and make your grandma laugh which I purchased due to its low price, pleasing easy-to-read style, and the motivation of overcoming my own shyness. Perhaps the parallels I draw between two separate authors and potentially disparate subject matter (Jung may refer more to the military machine, having gone through two world wars) is tenuous but there is a truism and a seriousness to it that I hold to be worth pursuing.

I would like a stronger root, focused attention, and deeper meaning. How about you?

Ode to Buu

2011-03-23T22:23:00.000-07:00

Buu is a big, dumpy, greasy, extremely affectionate kitty cat. I noticed an inordinate amount of pics on my TracFone of our Buu-da belly, as I sought to clear it off (it's cheap and has very little storage), and decided to make him a wee post in lieu of Donkey getting his own video.

STP Dream

2011-03-22T07:11:00.000-07:00

This is probably inspired by my last visit to Palmer's with my first couch surfer ...

Setting: the old Cinebar house I grew up in. It's dim to see but not dark and not night or evening or morning, nor is there bad weather.

I'm supposed to be singing Stone Temple Pilots and am very conscious that I barely know any chords (we're doing it accousticly), but since I'm the lead singer I don't really have to worry about it. There's people wandering about in the yard. Me and another guy move a table and I get Buu out of the way so it doesn't crush him. I pull off one of his bigger clumps of hair and he yowls as it finally tears free. We're already late to do this and someone, I think my sister, makes a comment about the speakers not being setup. There are two big speakers just lying on the ground next to me and I say I'm just supposed to sing and it basically isn't my problem. I say this to another, youngish girl, and my smile feels really fake on my face.

Walking into the house, through the carport. One of my bandmembers, a girl of whom I am obviously long-familiar but who is like family to me, is talking to me about our set which we're supposed to start now. I say that we should stick to songs I know and it's going to be hard without seeing the lyrics anywhere, I'm wondering if I can remember anything. "We should do Vaseline, Lounge Fly, ..." and I name a couple others which I can't remember exactly and nor do I think they exist. "What about Helena?" she asks. "I remember that one." "There's the part where he/you have to be up there and say Helena Helena Helena over and over again for like two minutes." "I'm not worried about that so much as not knowing the words." I wonder how Vaseline will be accoustically since we aren't electric.

I enter the house through the front door and make my way to the kitchen where I deposit Buu's filth in the garbage (by this point it's now actual poop that I was holding) and wash my hands in the sink. My mom is there, doing dishes?, but we don't talk. My other band member is there chatting with someone and eating something. I say something a bit annoyed / urgent that we were supposed to start at 7 and it's 7:17 (seeing the clock on the oven which is obscured by things on the stove and hard to see). He mumbles something of acquiescence and heads outside through the sliding glass door.

Good morning Roland

2011-02-21T07:04:00.000-08:00

Sundown Walking

2011-02-19T18:57:00.000-08:00

I walked to Crossroads with my tiny backpack full of activities and all I did was buy some pepperjack cheese at QFC and bus back.

Bookshelf

2011-02-19T10:57:00.000-08:00

Can you guess my recent hobby?

Dell XPS-B733r Drivers

2011-02-09T09:25:00.000-08:00

I'm looking to get a Dell XPS-B773r machine, potentially with unknown upgrades in it since I got it from a friend, up and running with Windows 95 OSR2 (OEM Service Release 2). Why that particular operating system? Well, firstly I forgot what OSR2 meant and that was the only Win95 stand-alone setup (e.g. "For Computers Without Windows") that I had and secondly I wanted the last Win9X release which didn't have Internet Explorer integrated with the shell by default.

At any rate, this is still a work in progress and I'm currently trying to make progress at work, but I wanted to make a short post in case someone else happens to be doing the same thing. Hopefully this helps you. The drivers you are looking for are not listed under XPS desktops on Dell's site. No no, you're looking for XPS-B___r which is under Dimension desktops.

(I haven't owned a Dell in a while and I didn't write down the service tag number, because I didn't even know what it was when I was looking at the case. You're probably smarter than me and have already figured that part out, thus going directly to the page you needed.)

Still, you'll likely find the possibilities there lacking since the machine was targeted to Windows 98 or NT4. And you may be wondering where the USB drivers are. Well, it turns out that USB didn't appear in Windows 95 until the tail end, OSR2.1 (yes, point one), and so the version I have installed of course does not have it. My CD burner is still on the way so then I had no way of transferring files between my other computers and this one.

So you'll also want to follow USBMan's Guide to USB Support in Windows 95. I'll keep this post updated with the latest developments when I next toink with the computer.

Squirrel!

2011-02-07T17:16:00.000-08:00

Eating old bird food:

Dad scared him off:

GW-BASIC Game Programming

2010-12-30T12:51:00.000-08:00

My first attempts at programming involved "drawing" a level in ASCII text using WordPerfect, renaming the WPS to EXE, and then trying to run it in DR-DOS. The effects were typically pretty unimpressive with the most satisfying being some garbage printed to the screen and the PC speaker issuing scream-like beep patterns. From there I discovered AUTOEXEC.BAT, soon after my friend Aric Catron introduced me to GW-BASIC, and I quickly became enamored and obsessed with the possibilities. Armed only with our combined knowledge as 7th graders and a handful of example programs, we set out to fulfill every kid programmer's dream of becoming bonafide game programmers.

To and extent we succeeded, since several minor and countless unfinished productions issued forth from our zeal. At some point we dabbled deeply in ZZT before I purchased from him a Tandy 1000 and delved into QBasic. Later in High School, I purchased a 75mhz Packard Bell and switched to Visual Basic then Borland C++ 5 and also JavaScript in Netscape 2, 3, and 4. The more technologies I learned and the greater power I held, the less games I made, the more abstract projects became, and tempting architectural perfection eluded me even further.

These days even the cheapest cheap skate has an arsenal of game development kits to make GW-BASIC a speck of dust on a castle flying through the sky. And yet the exciting and addictive aspect of coding them up cannot be found in any of them. Extreme complexity, possibility, and comparability feed a mental ocean of pressure; am I the only one drowning in it? There are many distractions; a peek in the crowd today is a window to hand-held windows into near infinite virtual space and so-called social chatterings. Copies of copies, remakes, critiques, dissertations, philosophies, competition, and multitudes of jewels in the rough to detract as much as inspire. I would simply seek to enjoy the process and to hell with the result so long as there is one.

My first naive thought, repeating from past echoes of piqued inspiration, was to define a simple project and then create it. However, the trouble is the plan, the goal, the defined outcome. It ignored while purporting to embrace, the distinct pleasure of incremental improvements towards a hazy but ignorable future. Again, a building requires a blue print to be drawn up and whereas spaghetti only needs a pot of water ... boiling optional. The more brainstorming I did the further back I stepped in time, the smaller the capabilities I envisioned, and perhaps it didn't occur to me then that I was working backwards to find a suitable starting point where no preset arrangement was necessary to begin.

At Value Village I purchased a copy of Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus which was written in 1994 and included the original buyer's receipt from that same year in a California bookstore. It is one I never quite made it through but inspired me to see again and I entertained the fantasy of writing my game in Turbo C to be emulated with DOS. That presented an immediate stepping stone on the staircase into the bottom-most cellar of my mental traversal back through time and knowledge. That is to say I pondered DOSBox as a platform for the most ancient of tools in my dusty, under-used game programming tool-belt: GW-BASIC.

And why not, I never quite absorbed all the nutritious commands, having been educated through examples and given no actual reference. Now all that is available for those who dig deeply enough. Emerging technologies are given more coverage than crusty languages of a disdainful variety to puritans. Good luck, I may hear, in forming anything without the benefit of structure, functions, classes, objects, recursion, abstraction, polymorphism, generics, interfaces, garbage collection (although BASIC does have this for string memory), local variables, debuggers, break points, an IDE, find and replace, or even a decent tome on using it for game development (let me know if you can find one!). All this and I must suffer line numbers and the archaic memory restriction of 64k!

Yet last night I wrote a tiny program to test page flipping and it warmed every fuzzy possible in my body when I saw it work. And on top of that, DOSBox's fantastic video capture functionality allowed me to make a 4-second movie of the output!

Today I figured out how to utilize the built-in functionality for keyboard events, e.g. without polling, and it inspired me to write this post and consider drumming up some guides for the world. Maybe no one else is looking but me, it doesn't matter. The presence of satisfaction is the best peer anyway!

Icy Leary Way

2010-12-30T11:40:00.000-08:00

Final Fantasy 1

2010-12-29T15:40:00.000-08:00

Although I'd already finished Final Fantasy 1 recently using a standard party (Fighter, Thief, Red Mage, White Mage), I decided it would be possible and even advantageous to try one made up entirely of fighters. This run through took me longer, I started in November and didn't take that many screen captures, but you get the idea.

One issue I ran into was resurrection, or a lack thereof. Enemies like the MAGE would RUB out a member of my party and I'd have no recourse except to reload (a handy ability when playing via emulator) or drag his corpse along with (which is something I did on several occasions to feel less like I was cheating).

The BADMAN and EVILMAN foes look an awful lot like batman. Here he's backed up by two Unicorns (aka NITEMARE's)!

Again, I had problems with MAGEs up through the very end in the TEMPLE OF FIENDS.

GAS D[ragon]'s also had a way of wiping my party with multiple POISON attacks.

In order to heal myself between challenging battles (mostly in the end game), I'd whittle a group of enemies down to just one and use the healing staff and helmet. In order to keep the fight going, since I only had two healing items, I'd USE non-usable items on the other characters which would basically be like passing on the turn.

Next time I'd equip the ProRing and Ribbon because the higher levels of my characters would provide them sufficient defense and these items prevent instant death spells like RUB.

I could usually defeat bosses simply by having each character just attack, but in the TEMPLE OF FIENDS you don't get a chance to go back to town afterwards. So, I took advantage of the SAVE/LOAD state of the emulator to try and try again until I had better luck (cheated).

CHAOS wiped my party on my first try. He has some very powerful attacks, but he also is completely random and can end up acting really dumb ...

So the second try I wiped the floor with him easily.

In conclusion, having a party entirely of fighters is totally feasible but I would get both heal helms (only had one, forgot one in the sky castle), use status-preventing armor rather than heavy armor, and grind a bit more to gain levels prior to trying dungeons -- something that's extremely easy with this type of group. One thing you have way too much of is money, because spells are the most expensive thing in the game and most high-level weapons and armor are found in treasure chests.

Christmas Morning Tech Support

2010-12-25T14:00:00.001-08:00

Computers galore

Looking Past 2010

2010-12-18T18:15:00.000-08:00

Today I finally finished and ordered the photobook I've been working on for my mom. It's about a hundred pages, covers the past year, and uses mostly pictures I snapped using my old RAZR cellphone. Exposed to all the images I captured of 2010, it got me thinking about what's in store for 2011; who will I be and what will I do?

It's been said that the more you learn about yourself, the more you --as a self, as an ego-- tends to disappear. This is meant to be inspiring, not frightening. Your person becomes more malleable and potentially much better, happier. It isn't that you cease to be, but rather what you are is no longer tied to who you were or even current and future impressions. After all, we are built for change and paradoxically fear it, striving always to grip and grasp.

A thought popped into my head today, that we tend to pick all the complicated and multi-faceted things to do while ignoring the simple or singular, and yet large items of opposition. A complex task involves countless mini-tasks which get tackled, individually, with gusto. However, there are inevitably too many and we lose our way during the struggle, fogged up by the things we've done as well as those left to do. Once inside the cloud, we're too close to see the point and it's suffocating, but we continue fighting in increasing bitterness. Swatting pests instead of hugging the beast. Whereas we generally prize a great struggle, in reality we busy ourselves with the mundane.

I've been lost, it's no secret. I'm probably like most people in that I can't be told life lessons, I can only be taught them by life. We can't change other people, we can only change ourselves. And the only thing you can truly control is your reaction to the circumstances of your life. Think about it when you're giving someone advice, remember that everyone has their own time and methods and yet we all want happiness.

What I've learned isn't any secret either, but again I don't think it's something you can force someone else to understand. Most of it is a just shocking perspective of my own past life and therefore hopefully a resetting of the future; the concept of my life as a timeline has faded. I'm going to die, whether in this moment or the next, and I'd rather not go out as a selfish prick. Still, becoming instantly generous might be possible, but for me it's a daily duty that requires vigilant attention.

Something incredibly useful to me in finding out more about myself was going on a media fast, which I've kept up to a decent degree since I started it in April. How much you cut out of your information and entertainment diet is of personal discretion, and I didn't go all the way. I stopped reading news (including technology), mindlessly browsing the internet, trolling Facebook, playing video games, and checking my email more than once a day. I'd already quit cable television, but I do download shows, movies, and I enjoy going to the cinema. Anyway, it turns out you can quietly exist without doing and not get bored, go crazy, or feel as though you're wasting time. I think you'll find tangible benefits crop up too like eating better and having a more relaxed and focused mind (usually, of course I'm no sage), so I recommend giving it a sincere go if you're at all stressed or confused.

Anyway, I didn't have much of a concrete idea of what to write in this post, which is probably obvious. I just felt the urge to lay down some text and philosophy before the year ends and give myself a marker as to where my head was at the end of two thousand ten.

Drive home

2010-11-27T10:11:00.000-08:00

Fremont Troll

2010-11-15T13:24:00.000-08:00

Look out behind you!

Hire Me

2010-11-11T19:26:00.000-08:00

Go on, you know you want to!

UPDATE: As per a Volt recruiter's request, I created a new version with a brief work history in list form.

Download resume as PDF or Word document.

Aschenbrenner Road

2010-11-05T16:20:00.000-07:00

It's nearly unrecognizable now that it's logged.

Man in the Mist

2010-10-27T09:58:00.000-07:00

Packing Light

2010-10-26T20:26:00.000-07:00

I can be a bit obsessed about packing, and recently living, light. In fact, every separate little electronic lying around drives me nuts. Having to whip out my netbook, iPod/MuVo, external hard drive, Kindle, and camera along with the three amigos of cables: mini USB, micro USB, and Apple's additional proprietary annoyance which happens to be the one which has started to come apart near the head due to constant rolling up and out (attractive electrical tape bandages its wire neck to keep it properly attached). So obviously I've started to contemplate further reduction of the pile, albeit the tightly fitted collection.

Firstly, I decided not to lug around the silver iPod classic (120gb) anymore and switched it out for the white little toy Creative MuVo (with 2 whole gigabytes). Apple's flagship for porting music from port to port is literally too much for me and the quirks have made it more of a annoyance than useful accessory. The gumpack has drawbacks but it doubles as a USB key, takes a single AAA battery, and the limited storage keeps me from hording every bloody track.

Then there's my equally ancient Canon Powershot SD400 which does a wonderful job for photos and video. Unfortunately for this bad-ass silver bullet, the battery lasts a mere half hour of continuous usage and the charger is mammoth and a nicely-sized replacement is twenty bucks (though, down from fifty when I last looked a couple years ago), but even that only works in the USA whereas the UK versions are funky hunks.

Let's move on to the central hub of my current computing: the Asus EEE 901. Don't get me wrong, it totally rocks and has easily replaced the full-size ThinkPad T400 I bought around the same time. Then again, what do I do with it, particularly when traveling, versus how much space does it take up. Without a netbook what would I be unable to do? I'll get back to that.

Finally, there is the crown jewel: Kindle. It's no secret: I absolutely love it. I can read on this, duh, but more than books: email, blogs, bus schedules, etc. The Kindle 2 browser isn't as capable as the Kindle 3 WebKit-based version, but it reads better because it uses the optimal viewing fonts and fits it within the diminutive screen. Unfortunately, it isn't great for contemporary "app" websites, the 3G only covers the United States, it can't upload anything (pictures, say), and can only download certain file types.

Okay, what to do? Well, I have this radical idea that when I do travel, I won't want to be optically hooked up to any workstation, but variously listen to music (probably to sleep in noisy places) and, of course, read.

Shooting pictures and videos is fun, but I don't have any creative basis for what I'm doing. I'm carrying around my RAZR still and it takes satisfactory pictures plus I can upload them directly from i. My philosophy on photography is the environment has been copied to the point of absurdity (check out Google StreetView which now shows other people's photos) and the lasting importance is in the feeling generated by seeing those of people in that place at that time. Fidelity and power of memories trumps megapixels any day.

Packing a notebook computer entails a lot of accessories for ... what? Google Maps? Okay that's something I'll miss. Videos? If I'm not shooting as much video then I don't need anything to edit it with. Programming? If I'm relying only on my savings then working should be out of the question. Blogging? Great in theory, but I've been writing more in my moleskine (long hand) than I've been putting in this blog and it's no less worthwhile -- just less visible. Games? Hopefully the only playing I'd be doing is with other people and not while walking for sure! With who? I barely get enough email to warrant checking it the three or so times a day that I do.

Alright, so what am I proposing here? Getting rid of everything? Well, yeah, sort of. I'd really want just one device that isn't insanely expensive, uses WiFi, takes fair pictures, and plays music. That isn't the iPhone, something I have an aversion to for various reasons serious to silly. The perfect rugged handheld may not exist, so there must be a contingency. I haven't decided exactly what that is, but I wanted to write this while it was on my mind...

Ah crap, a good point on a thread I've been skimming is the use of the netbook and WiFi to book things safely. Whereas public/cafe computers may be insecure or even have keyloggers/viruses installed. I wonder how often I'd be doing that ...

Rain Walking

2010-10-23T16:30:00.000-07:00

I took a stroll through a drizzly Cinebar afternoon and contemplated the poor efficacy of precipitation protection devices during foot travel. There is the umbrella, the raincoat, and the poncho to name three I own and each of these suffers failures to we who are spoiled enough to desire dryness.

First, the umbrella. Designed presumably to encourage water to fall perfectly vertical, the portable roof on a stick stands guard against your head and little else. Optimal uses included fencing with the wind, waiting for the bus to work, and of course the romantic appeal of squeezing under one with someone else and laughing gaily while you both run and still manage to get soaked. Alternatively umbrellas function as canes, bad luck charms indoors, and inconspicuous tools to poke others in the eye.

Next we come to the staple of schoolchildren, the beloved raincoat in school bus yellow ... or maybe other colors and designs too. Here the engineers have provided a convenient batman-esq. rubber armor and sweat lodge to lug around get wet from the inside rather than out. It's sized to fit so your backpack or satchel remains vulnerable to the elements. On the plus side the attire allows one to feel and act as a plastic android might with limited movement potential and extra sensory deprivation -- particularly in peripheral vision and hearing with the hood up.

Finally, my favorite, the glorified garbage sack with a hood: the poncho. You may have one of these lying around unopened in "emergency poncho packaging". I have a thick, rust-stained one from my late Uncle Joe which resembles a tent tarp, complete with holes along the edges probably to stake me down Gulliver-style. Nothing beats soaking your legs while keeping your top-half dry, at least until you start sweating.

They're all far from ideal so the best bet is to simply allow oneself the pleasure of a drenching and drop pomposity. Sitting still might call for a shelter of sorts, such as one adorned, but moving about for more than a couple miles generates more irritation than utility. That said, I'll keep my poncho on so my moleskine stays dry ...

PHP SVG: preserveAspectRatio

2010-10-18T19:39:00.000-07:00

Riding on the high of finishing the first version of my stand-alone Picasa class for PHP, I decided I needed to at least complete the <image> support for the SVG one I had started months ago. Having waited so long to come back to it, memory and mind had to be beaten into submission to remember what I was going to do, but here is what it came down to.

First, all of this I put into a Blit() method which accepts a reference to the canvas to blit onto and image the to blit (both GD handles) as well as the destination coordinates and dimensions. The last parameter is the raw value of SVG's preserveAspectRatio which is where the real complexity comes from. It has up to three pieces which are space delimited: defer, align, and meetOrSlice.

Defer is a flag which is either present, as the simple string literal "defer"", or not. When set it tells the SVG rasterizer to look at the last preserveAspectRatio value, of a parent / ancestor, and thus causes the remaining pieces of the value (if set) to be ignored. Since my method doesn't have access to state, this is not supported and will trigger a warning. So that's all I'll say about that, let's move on.

Next is the alignment value which is either "none" meaning to squish the image to fit within the box defined by the destination coordinates (x,y) and dimensions (w,h) or one of nine other options which cause the image to be scaled uniformly to preserve its aspect ratio. These represent the two axis coordinates, x and y, in one of three settings each: min (left/top), mid (center), or max (right/bottom). The exact tokens are xMinYMin, xMidYMin, xMaxYMin, xMinYMid, xMidYMid, xMaxYMid, xMinYMax, xMidYMax, and xMaxYMax. If you've worked with any GUI toolkits (WinForms, Swing, etc.), these probably make sense to you.

The final piece in preserveAspectRatio is either "meet" or "slice" which only comes into play if the alignment is something besides none. What this does is tell us what to do with an image if it does not fit snuggly when scaling uniformly. Either option is for scaling but meet means to make sure the whole image is viewable (translate) and slice means to fill the entire destination box (crop). How the alignment value is set determines where to anchor the image. Note that meet'ing will not set all pixels if the image does not scale perfectly into the destination area whereas slice'ing will chop parts of the source off completely.

Slice

In terms of code, and how it uses the GD imagecopyresampled(), slice modifies only the source coordinates and dimensions; the destination box is not changed at all and will be filled entirely. The first thing we need to determine is the ratio of source to destination in both width (horizontal) and height (vertical) dimensions:

$ws = $w / $sw; // width scaler
$hs = $h / $sh; // height scaler

If they're equal then the source and destination have the exact same aspect ratio and no cropping is needed at all. Otherwise the larger of these two is the dimension that fits best and thus the opposite will be cropped. The coordinate of the best-fitting dimension is not modified at all whereas its opposite, and recall that we're talking about the source x/width (sx/sw) or y/height (sy/sh), must be.

I think it might be easier to step through it if we have some code to look at, so here's what happens when the width fits best and thus the height and vertical coordinate need to be modified:

$mx = 0;
$my = $sh;
$my -= ($sh = round($h * ($sw / $w)));

The $my variable represents movement along the source Y ($sy). Let's look at this in reverse and figure out what is happening to the source height ($sh) first. What we do is take the destination height ($h) and scale it up to the perfect source height (e.g. if the ratios were the same) by reversing the width scaler. Note that the source height is kept at this value when it comes to calling imagecopyresampled(). This new value is then subtracted from the old height to get the difference: what must be cropped off.

Okay, your head is spinning ... you might need to run through a few example numbers to see how this works. I have to slam my forehead against math like this and it took me a while to come up with this and then even longer to convince myself that it works. However, we're not done. If we leave the values as they are, given the example of cropping height, then the top is always cropped and the bottom always shown. That is known as YMax in terms of the alignment option.

So now it's time to take into account that list of nine alignments and thankfully it's not too complicated. Here's what I put together:

switch ($align) {
case 'xMinYMin': $mx = 0; $my = 0; break;
case 'xMidYMin': $mx *= 0.5; $my = 0; break;
case 'xMaxYMin': $my = 0; break;
case 'xMinYMid': $mx = 0; $my *= 0.5; break;
case 'xMidYMid': $mx *= 0.5; $my *= 0.5; break;
case 'xMaxYMid': $my *= 0.5; break;
case 'xMinYMax': $mx = 0; break;
case 'xMidYMax': $mx *= 0.5; break;
case 'xMaxYMax': break;
}

To the purists out there: yes, this could fit into a look-up table or separate function (it's inline in Blit()), but I find it more instructive to leave as-is. Now, all we're doing here is chopping the movements along the x/y axis: 'min' sets that axis movement to zero (keep the top/left, crop bottom/right), 'mid' centers the axis movement (top-bottom and left-right cropping made equal), and 'max' keeps the movement at full value (crop top/left, keep bottom/right).

Finally, the source coordinates are translated by these movement values and then blitting happens using imagecopyresampled():

$sx = round($sx + $mx);
$sy = round($sy + $my);

Voila!

Meet

Alright now that you've enjoyed a slice, we can meet the other option. This one modifies the destination coordinates and dimensions to make sure that the entire source image is displayed within the destination box. The changes, then, are to do with translation and they only ever cause the box to shrink in order to display the source image with the correct aspect ratio. Think of shrinking a wide-screen video (16:9) into a full-screen (4:3) television where you get black "bars" on the top and bottom. That would be an example of "meet" blitting the widescreen source image to the fullscreen destination box.

Let's jump into the code, we still want the dimension-specific scaling values as before:

$ws = $w / $sw; // width scaler
$hs = $h / $sh; // height scaler

However, now the "best fitting" dimension is the one with the smaller of the two values rather than the larger. Going back to our widescreen to fullscreen television example, the width fits snuggly and its scaler will be 0.25 (4 / 16) whereas height scaler would be 0.33 (3 / 9). And we want black bars on the top and bottom, not on the sides (that would be the reverse, going 4:3 to 16:9).

Okay so width fits best, here's the code for translating the vertical properties:

$mx = 0;
$my = $h;
$my -= ($h = intval($sh * $ws));

Again we're using movement variables to store the translation along particular axis. Working in reverse, the first thing that's done is to set the destination height to the source height scaled by the width scaler ratio. The difference between this new destination height and the old one is going to be how far we can move along that axis, e.g. the total vertical size of those bars.

Next as before we take into account the alignment variable to modify the movement translations. Not much to say here as the code is literally exactly the same as in the slice scenario.

Finally, the destination coordinates are modified by those movement translations and then blitting happens as normal. The code looks remarkably similar to slice, but remember that it's modifying destination values rather than source and the effect is to leave some pixels untouched rather than chopping off parts of the image.

So...what?

I might not need this class anytime soon, but figuring this problem out on my own was educational none the less. I encourage you to take a look at my code and point out any problems you find, but only in this particular function (Blit()). The rest of it is basically an empty shell. Still, I'm proud of it and I think there's a place for a static PHP-based rasterizer for SVG, don't you?

Shower Day

2010-10-17T09:37:00.000-07:00

Debating whether or not to take a shower today by deciding whether or not I feel too annoyingly greasy. Would simply scrubbing my face with rainwater from a barrel suffice or is it more than my hair? Dad's plumping structure is all set to go for a bath, but I need the exercise and the vibrant blue skies may not last. Yes, queue the five mile walk to Ike Kinswa's year-round campground facilities ... today is shower day!

Living without running water, as with any former necessity, generates much appreciation for its previous convenience. Standing in a shop bathroom a split-second observation determines whether or not the cleanliness of it and me is impetus enough to wash my face, warm water spewing from a faucet a godsend. Boy, we sure are spoiled, taking the turn of a knob giving life and providing bathing for granted.

Bottled water at Starbucks attempts a guilty conscience buy by telling you how something like one in seven are without fresh water and dying because of it. Then here we are in America throwing gallons around at menial things. I don't belong preaching down when I'm in the same mud pit. Whether it's running a dishwasher of a handful of plates and utensils to rinsing our trash for recycling or smell-free disposal, it must be added to the list of things we waste.

And then in preparing to travel the world, one commonality in the advice is: drink bottled water. Here, there, everywhere it seems we can't stomach anything beyond our own chemically enforced crystal clear liquid. Let's add to the expense of our adventures by buying more trash, staying a step above the filthy locals. Yes, I'll probably buy bottled water where recommended too, but am I the only one who already feels guilty about it?

Anyway, it's 50 cents for a token that theoretically gets you 3 minutes of a hot water shower, but I found out the chilly hard way that it may take that long just for it to warm up. Last time I ended up spending a buck fifty (three tokens for nine minutes) in discovering that under shivery circumstances. At least then it was close to seventy degrees out; the temperature has cooled significantly since.

cURL in PHP and CURLOPT_READFUNCTION

2010-10-10T14:55:00.000-07:00

After spending a couple hours figuring out the entitled topic (for the purpose of a simple, stand-alone Picasa module), I decided others should benefit from the fruits of my labor.

Firstly, the official PHP documentation for curl_setopt() and CURLOPT_READFUNCTION is wrong. As of the moment it reads as follows:

The name of a callback function where the callback function takes two parameters. The first is the cURL resource, and the second is a string with the data to be read. The data must be read by using this callback function. Return the number of bytes read. Return 0 to signal EOF.

Given that the purpose is for reading from a local file to send wherever the HTTP request is going, this explanation makes little sense. And as for the parameters, how would the second have the data to be read if the point of the method --as it then says-- is to read it?

Thankfully after many fruitless Google (and even Bing) searches, I dug into a page with source actually making use of this option (S3 Streaming with PHP). What I found is the following function syntax ...

function readcallback(curlHandle, fileHandle, lengthToRead)

What it should do is read from wherever you're getting data from, up to but not over the amount of bytes specified by lengthToRead, and then return that result buffer. Returning blank or FALSE will cause cURL to stop asking it for data. I repeat: it doesn't matter what you set the Content-Length to, cURL treats this option as an arbitrary stream and will continue calling it until it returns false.

Why would you use this? In my particular case I wanted to support uploading photos to Picasa Web with metadata but without loading the entire image in memory before POST'ing it. With a file size cap of 20mb and most PHP hosting limiting runtime memory to 5mb, you can understand the reasoning.

Also, a note on Google Picasa API (GData): If you receive a HTTP 400 status with "Premature end of file" response then there are one of two issues: Content-Length is wrong (easy to spot) or you are building the MIME parts in a string and are missing a new-line character. Let's say you are sending this ...

--END_OF_PART
Content-Type: application/atom+xml
<?xml version="1.0"?>
...

Their server continues to read everything following the Content-Type as additional header information and quickly blows up or you get that funky Premature end of file error because it starts reading the body later and never satisfies the Content-Length before cURL is finished.

Where is Neil C. Obremski

2010-10-06T15:38:00.000-07:00

In the light of usefulness, the interest of vanity, or the shadow of boredom I have filled out a fairly complete Google profile page:

http://google.com/profiles/weenie

Of course, if you're on Buzz then you'll be inundated with the same information about me anyway. Otherwise you can use it to stalk me without my knowledge and if I've somehow lost contact with you then there is a link to send me a message. And finally if you're in my address book, and signed in with a Google account, then there is a tab showing my latest postal address and phone number.

World of Water

2010-10-01T17:34:00.000-07:00

Life is liquid; spend the days treading when trapped within the churning waves. Grab a stick, raft, boat, dock, safe harbor and stand up firmer to see further beyond the horizon. Distant dreams can only be reached by a swim, perhaps under water, and risk drowning to sink into their discovery. Up top, secure on floating insurances, walls rise to block the sight; blissful ignorance of the sunset as well as the sunrise, off at the edge of reality. Wondering what ails but unable to see, outside, the swells of dangerous, liquid life.

Moving Out

2010-09-24T21:07:00.000-07:00

The last few days at my apartment were hectic, but the cats didn't seem to mind.

Then they got put in a cage ...

Donkey doesn't look to pleased, but I sure was at how well they behaved. My dad had given me a large carrier intended for dogs from a guy named Hank who is now resting in peace. I put a blanket they like and their catnip scratch pad inside. Despite a few howls, they appeared to sleep for most of the drive.

Afterwards Buu must have had to pee because as soon as I showed him the litter box, he did his business ...

Yes, that's a giant bag of popcorn in the background. My sister (pictured) works at a theater and takes it home when it would otherwise be thrown out at the end of the night. I hear the cats are doing well in their new home; Donkey has a window to stare out of and Buu has been found napping in the closet.

Congratulations

2010-09-23T14:10:00.000-07:00

Enthused owl wishes to say congrats

Vegan Voodoo

2010-09-21T15:56:00.000-07:00

I find this hilarious ...

... and it's definitely funnier than Scott Pilgrim's attempt to stretch "vegan's are pretentious" into an entire scene (tastier too).

Feast of Chips

2010-09-16T17:23:00.000-07:00

And Guinness!

jQuery Test: Tile Map

2010-09-12T20:35:00.000-07:00

So the idea is that I'm creating a jQuery-based game for that contest, using some assets from my original Metrosynth project. However, I don't think that latter part may happen, not insignificantly due to malaise about the entire thing and life in general at the moment. I still intend, though, to make something and today I actually got some basic stuff done.

I made these graphics many many years ago using Photoshop and Improces 4.2. They were to be for a simple maze game called Goblin's Knobb based on the name of the hill behind the property where I grew up in Cinebar. It was an easy thing to consider as a first try at a jQuery browser game and I already have a few goblin animations created by my brother.

Wish me luck.

Pepsi Generation

2010-09-10T14:08:00.000-07:00

That's two 2 liter bottles.

Hidden treasures of the tracks. Railroad trains have left but strong ties remain.

Broken Bells: The High Road

2010-09-06T11:52:00.000-07:00

The whole self-titled album is great, but everyone's probably heard at least this song on the radio. I recently became curious about the lyrical content and it did not disappoint.

We're bound to wait all night
She's bound to run amok
Invested enough in it anyhow,
To each his own
The Garden is sorting out
She curls her lips on a bow
I don't know if you're dead or not
To anyone

Come on and get the minimum
Before you open up your eyes,
This army has so many heads
To analyze...
Come on and get your overdose
Collect it at the borderline
They want to get up in your head...

Cause they know and so do I
The high road is hard to find
A detour in your new life
Tell all of your friends goodbye

The dawn to end all nights
That's all we hoped it was
A break from the warfare in your house
To each his own...
A soldier is bailing out
And curled his lips on the barrel
And I don't know if the dead can talk
To anyone...

Come on and get the minimum
Before you open up your eyes
This army has so many hands
Are you one of us?
Come on and get your overdose
Collect it at the borderline
And they want to get up in your head

Cause they know and so do I
The high road is hard to find
A detour to your new life
Tell all of your friends goodbye

It's too late to change your mind
You let loss be your guide...

It's too late to change your mind
You let loss be your guide...

It's too late to change your mind
You let loss be your guide...

It's too late to change your mind
You let loss be your guide...

Labor Day Morning

2010-09-06T06:39:00.000-07:00

The glistening parking lot, groggy in pervasive quiet.

Dear You

2010-09-05T16:37:00.000-07:00

Are you lonely, like to write, and just want someone to correspond with? Here's an idea spawned during my walk home: pen letters for money. I love stationary and pushing a pencil and desire to travel the world more. In exchange for one of two sums I'll either send you a snail mail once a week (495/yr) or once a month (199/yr) --birthday card included with both-- regardless of whether you respond. Those estimated price come from the time commitment and uniqueness of the product: you get me (ego included) handwriting you.

Details about refunds, content, length, pictures (as in: drawings, doodles, or photos of places I've been to), privacy, etc. on a person by person basis. Given an well intentioned, honest request, I'll generally honor it. I'll fill in stories of my Gulliver-esq Travels, books being read, movies watched, and anything else popping out of my mind in between answering your questions or adding to threads we've started together. You can treat me as a distant relative, long lost friend, or bitter enemy - all confidentially.

The only solid requirement is your name and address; we'll figure out the rest in the letters!

Who would be interested? I certainly think it'd be a great gift idea for the loved ones of someone busy in a career: grandma, nephew, etc. Anyone who enjoys letters, desires some consistency, and perhaps wants to experience the journeys vicariously.

Where does the money go? Nothing superfluous, only the essentials of keeping me alive and ongoing, as well as supplies for stationary to use and postage. The funds will not, unless agreed, be used for video games, alcoholic drinks, television, prostitutes, or anything of the sort.

Thoughts? I've just about run out of things to say on this, it isn't that complicated!

PAX

2010-09-04T18:28:00.000-07:00

One sexy daddy

2010-09-02T12:08:00.000-07:00

One sexy daddy

Real Ginger

2010-08-29T18:16:00.000-07:00

Saw Scott Pilgrim, these are better:

Christmas Ornaments

2010-08-29T12:52:00.000-07:00

Edward and Bella:

Buzz and Woody

Computing Power

2010-08-28T14:53:00.000-07:00

I recently overheard one side of a nerdily amusing conversation, sitting here at the Redmond Public Library.

Let me tell you the tale (worry not, it's short).

Imagine a small, skinny young guy with something of an English accent. He's talking on the phone, probably to a salesperson. He starts by asking about upgrading the processor in "that unit". Then he goes on to explain that he needs a really powerful computer because he's a "programmer" and will be using the machine for "intense" work.

Only hearing one side besides a garbled spew squeaking out from his cellphone, the dialog moves on to specifications. Statements punctuate my attention: "I was looking to spend about four thousand dollars so this is cheap in comparison" (he drops the 4k statement multiple times too), "It'll need at least eight gigabytes of RAM and probably a solid state drive", "A slower processor is okay, that will probably drop the price a couple hundred, right?", and "So the SSD is 250gb, can I get it any bigger?".

Finally, he starts giving his contact information after asking for the machine information to be sent to him. His email address includes an underscore and is @hotmail. "Are you going to get a commission for this? Will you get it if you send me a link in the email? Okay, well call me on Monday -- I should have the money transferred to my bank by then -- otherwise I will just buy it online."

So many little things tickled my funny bone throughout this. Most programmers do not need a super computer, nor anything close; especially if it's web development. Sure, Visual Studio and other development tools tend to be resource pigs, but to necessitate top components for a home desktop? Actually, I kinda think he was ordering a laptop by something else he said about size. Anyway, these are the specs geared towards video games. Then again, maybe he's such a developer. If that's the case, I'm surprised he doesn't know what he wants and had to talk to a probable-no-knowing marketing/support person.

Donkey on a Shelf

2010-08-27T10:41:00.000-07:00

No idea how he got in and up there (doors were folded shut)

XSLT Forsaken

2010-08-26T13:13:00.000-07:00

I had an idea to make a simple HTML website based around XHTML and client-side XSL. Today I decided to forge ahead and do this for a particular small site and failed miserably as I encountered obstacle after obstacle. After waves of workarounds, concessions, and tiny migraines I am throwing in the towel. Despite my motivation, strong knowledge of XML templates, and the ubiquity of XML processors embedded within modern browsers ... the damn thing is just not feasible.

XPath didn't even enter into it. After three hours I haven't even begun to figure out how to get the transformation done and the results to replace the original HTML document.

My initial concept was to have a HTML document (.html extension) that had an XML version header and additionally specified a meta tag indicating it was a XML document. That didn't work unless I changed the extension to xhtml which meant most hosts would serve it as application/octet-stream and thus the browser would prompt to download. What I wanted to do was keep the existing URL's the same so I opted to use JavaScript to do the transformation rather than break all the URL's (and possibly fubar the SEO) by changing the files to end with xml (something that worked semi-reliably).

That led me down the deep dark hole of translating between the HTML and XML document types and all the snares set therein by different browser implementations of XSLT processors, loading XML documents, and getting/setting the element data. I won't go into all the hairy details simply because I'm exhausted by it all. Suffice to say Chrome has some unfortunate inabilities to deal with XML HTTP requests made for a file:/// resource (from another local resource), Internet Explorer is basically untestable on Linux, and Firefox gave me a nice blank document with no errors whatsoever. The best I could achieve was adding some elements dribbling down the end of the page whereas I needed to replace all the content in order to achieve the layout I wanted.

Then again it's 2010 and XSLT has only been standardized for a decade. I happen to think the entire technology has been relegated to the backend, on the server-side, and that is an unfortunate consequence for a XML technology that --while gnarly looking-- is a well-defined, functional language and could have made small, hand-crafted websites much easier to maintain.

My Sister Is Awesome

2010-08-20T08:53:00.000-07:00

Well, if you know Sandra then the title of this post is no surprise. She and I viewed the time-lapses of Oregon State University the last time I saw her and we talked about taking advantage of their schedule to "fake" a slow-walk while all surrounding people flew by.

Lo and behold, she did the very thing for my birthday!

The webcam is stationed outside the OSU campus library; you can view/download the original footage at http://webcam.oregonstate.edu/timelapse/library20100818.mpg. Her sign says "Happy Birthday Broham!".

Now 31

2010-08-19T08:10:00.000-07:00

And my back aches already!

Black Raven Brewery

2010-08-18T18:56:00.000-07:00

Mmm

Neil by Sandra

2010-08-12T11:54:00.000-07:00

Here's a couple pictures of myself taken by my sister Sandra on our visit to Onion Creek a few weeks ago.

And here's a selfshot of her!

Wave of Organization

2010-08-10T10:17:00.000-07:00

Last night I made chamomile tea and stayed up into the wee wee hours pouring over my computer.

I spent the time not coding or looking at porn. Neither did I read blogs, download videos, or anything much of the sort. No, I burned over four straight hours pulling tracks off my iPod and beginning to organize them more suitably to my methods.

You see, music is an obsession of mine, although I hardly play anything but a little guitar. My taste ranges wildly and has concentrated mightily in the past year on atmospheric. It follows then that playing everything on shuffle with a source of nearly five thousand songs would yield an unsatisfying experience and necessitate incessant skipping, something the iPod interface is poorly capable of.

In fact, the idea of merely dumping your entire collection into this device turned out, for myself, to be a massive waste of time. Partially it comes down to tags on the files themselves, but also I lament the lack of playback and pruning features on Apple's portable product. For example: playing a selection of recently added tracks or those with a particular rating. And who hasn't wondered why that one song is still on there when they can't stand it and if only they could delete it here and now when it's irritating their ears and likely to be forgotten before removal later at home in iTunes. See, you can do these things in iTunes but you have to make a direct effort while you're using that software (and I can only use Rhythmbox since iTunes doesn't work --even in WINE-- on Linux) rather than when you're out and about, which is what the thing is supposed to be for.

The solution I came up with, then, is an unorthodox and potentially "eccentric" style of labeling. A driving force behind it is not explicit (and correct?) details on each song, but rather how I tend to listen to it. When original score, atmospheric, or some electronic tracks pop up in shuffle I inevitably skip them. It's because they're the ones I enjoy in order as part of one album whole. For example, the Lord of the Rings score is three albums which sort wrong due to their first letters (F, T, R) and of multiple arists, so I homogenized the artist to simply "LOTR" and numbered the albums so they appear in order.

Additionally, I made a genre called "Radio" which is for tunes I like in a big shuffle. Further, I created psuedo albums prefixed with a zero that represent sub-genres so I can quickly zero in on the type of shuffled music: 0Radio (misc), 0Karaoke (sing-along), 0Pump (energetic), 0Score (from when I kept only pieces of a score), 0Electronica. Of course, albums that I'm still listening to contiguously did not get butchered in this way (i.e. Broken Bells). All other genres have been simplified as well, down to: Folk, Rock (includes metal, grunge, and alternative), Electronica, Atmospheric, Audiobook (also used for comedy or podcasts), Soundtrack, and Score.

What I label Electronica is anything not too heavy such as Orbital's "Diversions", Trentemoller's "Last Resort", and Fluke's "Risotto". These, again, are albums I enjoy in sessions by themselves and not shuffled into the rest of my music. The "0Electronica" faux album is a collection of those types of songs which have no particular order preference, usually because I've kept very few tracks off the source collection.

In conclusion, you can see I'm a big music nerd! I haven't finished all the tagging but I did get all of the files off the pod and onto my external drive (pictured above). Today I'll see about getting the latest firmware update before reloading.

Redmond Shopping Square

2010-08-09T17:01:00.000-07:00

Munched down to debris by cats!

Stairway to Heaven

2010-08-07T19:42:00.000-07:00

Ball games and boys

Netbook Outdoors

2010-08-07T13:28:00.000-07:00

It beats a cubicle and flourescent lighting. The screen is visible since it's raining and there's no bright sunshine.

Man, I am zonked after flying through some work items I wrote out for myself along with solving unexpected problems. After a while you sensibly come to expect the unexpected, but it never prepares you for the audacity of the idiotic issues you encounter.
Expected:

Simple AdSense bar placed underneath pages on FanSiter.com
Added a new post by directly editing the site.xml
Figured out how to implement a post break (<-- more -->) in XSL, but haven't yet integrated that into FanSiter.com. See post-more.xsl at Google Code.
Fixed broken links caused by appending ".html" to them while making them relative. I also removed the relative-making altogether since I realized I wasn't really testing it locally (the only reason I had it in there) and it was probably devaluing links by pointing them to index.html.
Fixed the data copy in posts; the literal data node was being copied in.

Unexpected:

FanSiter.com was resolving to its old IP at the library where I came to work. The first blaming thought that arose was for eNom, but it actually turned out to be OpenDNS. Why it was still caching a weeks-old host record is beyond me, but thankfully they have a page to manually refresh their cache for an individual domain.

Whew, I've earned myself a beer at the garden tonight.

Legend of Cougar Mountain

2010-08-04T18:17:00.000-07:00

Frightened and alone, two boys fight for their lives ...

Dad's Kitchen

2010-07-31T11:40:00.000-07:00

Morning star sausage, hard-cooked egg, bread with butter, and a banana.

Oats Apples and Coffee

2010-07-26T08:46:00.000-07:00

Samsara has its perks.

Ferry Sunset

2010-07-24T20:42:00.000-07:00

Tap House

2010-07-23T17:59:00.000-07:00

Yes, I am that guy with the Kindle at a bar.

Lost Kayak

2010-07-23T11:44:00.000-07:00

I haven't seen it, why did it run off?

Shantideva

2010-07-22T12:12:00.000-07:00

Whatever joy there is in this world
All comes from desiring others to be happy,
And whatever suffering there is in this world
All comes from desiring myself to be happy.

Black Raven Hefe

2010-07-21T18:26:00.000-07:00

The best asteroids in the galaxy!

Gorge-ous

2010-07-19T15:11:00.000-07:00

Columbia River

Rustic Sunset

2010-07-16T20:58:00.000-07:00

Switching drivers in Ritzville

Sandra crunching in the fields of gold.

When you are the moon...

And now, a video:

Cinebar Huckleberries

2010-07-16T00:45:00.001-07:00

Photos I took the last time I visited my dad.

Another day in paradise.

My tent resembles a shoe. Dad laughed at its diminutive size, barely containing me it seems.

We take strolls through the Christmas trees; here underneath a pinkening summer sky.

Woke up to a morning sun in the mesh.

Country road take me home...

It goes on and on, but there is no trespassing.

Well that's all for now. It sure takes some time to make a blog post via a RAZR and no qwerty!

Clover patch

2010-07-16T00:15:00.001-07:00

Green goodness in Cinebar

This is another test blog

2010-07-15T18:39:00.000-07:00

This is another test blog post created via a snazzy PHP cron job that polls a POP3 mailbox.

Delicious lunch at The Commons on a Microsoft campus

Virginia Inn Seattle

2010-07-15T15:24:00.003-07:00

Virginia Inn on a summer evening.

This is a text message.

Letter From My Boy

2010-07-09T10:03:00.001-07:00

Delete Facebook Account

2010-07-06T10:01:00.000-07:00

Last night saw a decision in me to finally bid Facebook farewell. I searched in vain for a way to export photos from Facebook with captions/comments intact to my computer or Picasa or anywhere. Lots of ways in, few out. This necessitated the spontaneous creation of a PHP script, cli-fbalbum.php, that parses and downloads all the data in an album that can be seen when access is set to Everyone.

This morning saw little surprise to discover you can't immediately delete your account. Forget a simple switch, welcome the third degree. The only method is to deactivate and wait 14 days before it finally expires. To get even here you must suffer a form of guilt presented in a short list of photos tagged by friends, argue your case depending on the reason you tell Facebook for leaving, enter your password, and finally type in a CAPTCHA. I selected Other for simplicity but received an error with the text field left blank; so instead I put "No" there to continue.

Now begins two weeks of waiting for the account to truly perish and in the time I can ponder the decision to do so, a possible action I came upon only recently. The site does nothing for personal contact, rather it allows an infinite collection of psuedo pals and turns actual friendships into a News Feed. I don't know what benefit is left beyond casual gaming and a steady drip for addicts.

PHP: DOMDocument and XML

2010-06-18T11:09:00.000-07:00

I've been working with PHP's DOMDocument a lot lately, so here's some random notes from that experience for future reference or to help others.

XPath is a separate module entirely and thus it shows how much you miss it when it's not there. Without the golden oldies selectSingleNode and selectNodes, you find yourself falling back on getElementsByTagName which has no concept of parent/child relationships or boundaries. The benefit, on the other hand, is speed; and you can always initialize an XPath object if such a query is needed.

XML Namespaces do not get handled at all, it merely deals with prefixed tag names. This means you need to know the prefix assigned to a XML namespace in order to grab such a tag. For reading documents, this is a huge pain, but for creating them it is a simplification that provides greater control over the output (you can designate exactly where the xmlns attributes appear). And I would recommend avoiding the createElementNS and setAttributeNS methods entirely as they appear without benefit other than as a short-hand to combine two calls.

Inner XML and Outer XML setting and getting is not particularly intuitive. Don't try grabbing textContent because you just end up with the text nodes of all children concatenated together, and escaped. Rather what you need to do to get the value is use the saveXML function; it returns the XML, not persists it to a file as the name would suggest. Of course this only works for "outerXML" because it includes the element tag you pass in. To get the "innerXML", try this:

function getInnerXML($ele)
{
  $dom = $ele->ownerDocument;
  $innerXml = '';
  for ($i = 0; $i < $ele->childNodes->length; $i++) {
    $innerXml .= $dom->saveXML($ele->childNodes->item($i));
  }
  return $innerXml;
}

Setting the inner XML requires something completely different. My preferred method is to create a new DOMDocument, load the XML, and then import that into the original document:

function setInnerXML($ele, $xml)
{
  $idom = new DOMDocument();
  if (!$idom->loadXML("<x>{$xml}</x>")) {
    return false;
  }
  $import = $ele->ownerDocument->importNode(
    $idom->documentElement, true);
  while ($import->childNodes->length) {
    $ele->appendChild($import->firstChild);
  }
  return true;
}

When you append an imported child that is not yet in the document anywhere, it disappears from that nodeset, which is why the while loop merely checks length and adds firstChild. Surrounding the XML in any tag, <x> in this case, is necessary so that arbitrary tree fragments can be handled.

UPDATE (2010-06-19): Okay so the one issue with that previous code segment, for setting inner XML, is that it becomes an infinite loop if you pass in a text node instead of an element. Here's a safer version:

function setInnerXML($ele, $xml)
{
  $idom = new DOMDocument();
  if (!$idom->loadXML("<x>{$xml}</x>")) {
    return false;
  }
  $import = $ele->ownerDocument->importNode(
    $idom->documentElement, true);
  $i = 0;
  while ($i < ($len = $import->childNodes->length)) {
    $ele->appendChild($import->childNodes->item($i));
    if ($len == $import->childNodes->length) {
      $i++;
    }
  }
  return true;
}

The fix is just to see if the length changed after appending and to move to the next node if it didn't. Honestly I don't think this is much better, because the caller doesn't know they messed up. Probably the best solution would be a brittle one: return false right away.

LIBXML_NOEMPTYTAG is something that deserves mentioning, especially in relation to getting the inner/outer XML of an element. This is the only flag supported by the saveXML method and what it does is prevent it from changing an open/close pair of tags containing nothing into a single, self-closed tag. I recommend passing this in, otherwise your <script src="blah.js"></script> will become the invalid and impotent <script src="blah.js" />.

The Art of Learning

2010-05-22T20:41:00.000-07:00

Today I finished reading Josh Waitzkin's The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance. His amazing life and the autobiographical parts certainly deserve publication but tend to cast an ego shadow on the helpful nuggets purported to center the text. Also, I mistakenly gathered from the title, a guide to educating oneself throughout life. However it's really more about taking a currently focused pursuit and pushing it to the edge; implying you already have the self-motivation and ethic to develop the required habits.

Still, as mentioned, many gems sparkle in its bedrock and tie into themes I read in Blink, Brain Rules, and The 4-Hour Workweek. Ones that come to mind are:

Exercise and diet effect our minds as much as our bodies.
Find joy in every moment; waiting is not waiting - it's life.
Meditate and/or media fast to reduce mental clutter and increase attention.

Beyond that, I'll paraphrase some of my favorite points contained in this book:

Two types of learners: "entity" (I am good/bad at this) and "process" (I can be good at this through hard work). Josh sides with nurture over nature on how we end up this way and I have to agree. I am definitely striving, with difficulty, to overcome my childhood entity learning habits; mostly in terms of avoiding activities I'm "bad" at.
Investment in Loss. I absolutely love this point: you have to lose a lot in order to really learn something well, otherwise you just scratch the surface. The point is opening yourself completely to the subject and failure and using it to fuel your determination rather than stop you.
The Soft Zone versus The Hard Zone. Anyone who's read Joel on Software knows what the zone is: when you're in it, everything just flows. The point Josh makes is you can develop your zone to be soft and flexible or hard and brittle, and favoring the former allows you to stay in longer and stronger.
Smaller Circles. Start largely and exaggeratedly and compress as you internalize. He mostly speaks about this in terms of physical activities, Tai Chi / Push Hands, but I think it goes for a lot of things and fits with "If something is worth doing, it's worth doing badly". Simplifying even further to the adage we all know: "practice makes perfect".
Try to flow with distractions and emotions, using them to flavor your own creativity rather than vainly attempting to block them out. Work to recognize both and put yourself in their way until their presence provides fuel to you.
Interval Work. Give yourself intermittent breaks. Specifically he talks about physical training where you learn to enter both relaxed and active states as quickly as possible.
Create a Trigger (to get you into the zone). Rather than finding a pre-existing trigger, he talks about creating a personalized set of steps to practice. This part is covered more practically than anything else and is something I intend to try. What you do is pick something which brings you peace of mind and make this your last step. Then add four or so steps before it such as eat light/snack, meditate, exercise, listen to music. Each step and the entire routine prior to the activity is given a specific time to complete. Eventually a physiological trigger will be created and the steps can be compressed and/or done separately to make the act more portable. You may even get to the point of being able to enter the state simply by visualizing those things.

I am not sure what my activity is that helps center me, but I'll work on identifying something. I do plan on practice a simple breathing self-meditation more often and see if I can get to a point where my mind wanders less. Then I can really begin learning!

mod_rewrite: Subdomain to Subdirectory

2010-05-18T08:51:00.000-07:00

Following the theme of a previous post on the subject, here's the code you can drop into .htaccess for doing an internal redirect to load sub-domain content from a sub-directory:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^([a-z])([a-z]+)\.example\.com$
RewriteRule ^(?!cache)[^\.].*$ cache/%1/%1%2/$0 [L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^([a-z])([a-z]+)\.example\.com$
RewriteRule ^$ cache/%1/%1%2/index.html [L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^([a-z])([a-z]+)\.example\.com$
RewriteRule (.*) - [L]

For example, if the URL is http://apple.example.com/ then this will cause cache/a/apple/index.html to be loaded. If the URL is http://apple.example.com/foo/bar.html then this will map to cache/a/apple/foo/bar.html. The final rule of the three tells mod_rewrite to stop rather than processing further rules, since a match on the above two rules will probably cause it to run again.

wget: Clone Website

2010-05-17T17:33:00.000-07:00

Here's a post to help me save time in the future when I need, yet again, to mirror a website locally for backup or static-generation purposes. Using wget an entire web site may be recursively downloaded via the following command:

wget --mirror -w 2 http://www.example.com

This will create a directory of the same name as the domain being mirrored, e.g. www.example.com, which will be placed under the current directory. If you don't have wget, Ubuntu makes it as simple as:

sudo apt-get install wget

Directory indexes will be saved as index.html and links will not be followed off the SLD+TLD specified (however, a differing third-level will be followed). There's a zillion other options, but this works for me most of the time.

For more information check out the GNU or Wikipedia pages.

mod_rewrite: Stop Rules

2010-05-15T14:13:00.000-07:00

I just spent at least an hour on a problem with .htaccess and mod_rewrite (and I'm not alone). Each time I come back to this little monster I make the poor assumption that the [L] flag for last rule will actually stop rewrite processing if matched. What actually occurs is it stops trying to match any rules in the set, performs an internal rewrite, and then starts all over again!

Okay so you're back in those rewrite rules but now you have a URL which is what you want, it isn't something to be modified. What you can do to break out of processing without anything changed is (found on StackOverflow):

RewriteRule (.*) - [L]

In my case I started a static cache which I wanted to use instead of all-dynamic processing. Thus I wanted to internally redirect to the cache files, but only for a single site so that I didn't have to break everything in production while testing. Here's what I ended up with:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On

# test new htaccess
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} testdomain
RewriteRule ^(?!cache)[^\.].*$ cache/t/testdomain/$0 [L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} testdomain
RewriteRule ^$ cache/t/testdomain/index.html [L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} testdomain
RewriteRule (.*) - [L]

# production
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} \.(net|org|com)$
RewriteRule ^.*\.(?!php)[a-z]+$ index3.php?u=$0 [L,QSA,NS]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} \.(net|org|com)$
RewriteRule ^[^\.]*$ index3.php?u=$0 [L,QSA,NS]

# localhost: 
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^localhost$
RewriteRule ^.*\.(?!php)[a-z]+$ index3.php?u=fansiter3/$0 [L,QSA]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^localhost$
RewriteRule ^[^\.]*$ index3.php?u=fansiter3/$0 [L,QSA]

AddHandler php5-script .php

When rewrite engine is first invoked, the URL's are internally redirected to a cache sub-directory which the rules are then re-processed on. On the second run-through the final testdomain rule is hit which essentially breaks out without making any changes to the cache path.

All of this is transparent to the browser which never sees the cache paths or knows that any redirection is occurring.

Don't Follow

2010-05-13T14:53:00.000-07:00

Looking up the lyrics to Alice in Chain's Don't Follow (from Jar of Flies) provided inconsistent results. Here's my best guess at the lyrics with various vocal punctuations in parenthesis.

hey I, ain't never coming home
hey I'll, just wander my own road
hey I, can't you meet you here tomorrow
(no no...)
say goodbye, don't follow
misery so hollow

hey you, you're living life full throttle
hey you, pass me down that bottle (yeah...)
hey you, you can't shake me round now
I get so lost and don't know how (yeah...)
it hurts to care, I know it now

(mmm) forgot my woman, lost my friends
things I'd done and where I've been
sleep in sweat the mirror's cold
and see my face it's growin' old
scared to death no reason why
do whatever to get me by
think about the things I've said
read the page it's cold and dead

and take me home
yeah take me home (oh home)
take me home
take me home (yeah)
take me home...

say goodbye don't follow

The big point of contention is the line beginning with "it hurts to care". What I've been hearing all along is "I know it now" but other interpretations are "so I won't now", "I'm goin' now", and "I'm going down".

I am using this song's opening tabs for my novice guitar practice. Next I'll need a harmonica ...

Blogger: Custom favicon

2010-04-25T12:30:00.000-07:00

I finally got the custom favicon working in Chrome, IE8, and Firefox for this Blogger-powered blog (and others that will use my "TopHeavy" template).

I'm using htaccess redirection so the template XML can use relative URL's and the first thing I learned is that /favicon.ico doesn't use the Missing Files Host you've selected. Blogger actually returns that so no blog goes without a favicon, e.g. theirs. So step one is to use location besides that one, I went with the very imaginative /favicon2.ico.

The second thing you need to do is make sure the type attribute is in your link lines for the images. Add these two lines just before </head>:

<link href='/favicon2.ico' rel='shortcut icon' type='image/x-icon'/>
<link href='/favicon2.ico' rel='icon' type='image/x-icon'/>

Replace the href value with whatever URL points to your favicon and you're good to go! Modern browsers are pretty good about seeing a changed favicon location and updating quickly, but you may need to clear your cache if that doesn't happen.

Walk to Centralia: Post-mortem

2010-04-24T10:32:00.000-07:00

Attempting to walk to Centralia from Redmond ended in failure, but certainly gave me ideas for the next time. I am stubborn and being defeated is sometimes the only way I will learn what is necessary. Also, I like to think that winging it and going in with minimal planning allowed me to learn quicker and better than basic practice or principal would allow.

Here are the posts I made to journal the event ...

The route depicted by Google Maps is only mostly accurate, but you get the idea. Some places I cut corners or ended up going a longer way (like the winding trail to Green River) so I figure it evens out. According to that it is 37.5 miles and adding in the 3.1 extra I did the first day (going to Fairwood) it brings the total to 40.6, not counting the wandering in Tacoma between Freighthouse Square and Amtrak. Not bad, but over half shy of the 90+ miles I intended.

Things that worked ...

No video camera reduced the distraction it would have created and the number of things I'd be lugging around.
Miguel was a great companion and early on, when I had the stamina to spare, provided goofy entertainment in posing for pictures.
My endurance panned out. Sitting here now I feel okay besides my feet and if they weren't hurting then I'd probably still be going. Actually, that kind of pisses me off too.

Things that sucked ...

Socks and blisters. They (socks) are simply not made for athletic activity, something I ignore time and time again. I need to buy ones which are not so squishy and slippery, ones which don't produce friction and contain moisture, ones which aren't blister factories!
Spread out destinations. I would go too far and not rest long enough in between which resulted in quicker-than-usual exhaustion. In a normal day I'll walk over seven miles anyway, but that's split in half and there's a lot of lingering in between.
M&M's. Weird, right? I brought a bag of peanut butter M&M's as a sort of reward or encouragement, but munching down on them didn't produce the euphoria I sought. In fact, they seemed bland at the time and I couldn't figure out why. So that was a let down and extra weight!

What I'll do different ...

Clothing needs a slight upgrade. Besides socks, my underwear is falling apart from being strained so much (laugh it up!) and cotton boxer briefs are just not amenable to marathon distances or sweat. Unfortunately I tossed the spandex I used to wear when my flabby thighs kept rubbing against each other so I'll need to buy more (boo!).
Alternate shelter: couch surfing, friends, camping, hotels, etc. I kind of hate planning, so this is a real challenge for me. However, last minute couch surfing requests netted only two of four places to stay under the hasty circumstances and I had no idea what I'd do in between.
Walk an hour rest an hour, or something along those lines. Giving my feet and body a break would have allowed me to keep going longer, but on the flip side I may have to walk in the early morning and evening to stay on schedule. More leisure in between will keep my mood elevated.
Bus past familiar grounds. I might have pushed myself to much in the beginning because I wanted to get out of Redmond and Bellevue. Perhaps I'll even start from Auburn!

Though in conclusion I had fun and learning is living, as they say. My friends encouraged me and I felt I carried some kind of adventurous banner in their honor, uplifted each time I read a comment or received a text. Thank you everyone for your support!

[ LTOC Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 ]

Auburn

2010-04-24T10:02:00.000-07:00

Woke up to slight stiffness and stingy feet with sticky blisters on Friday morning, but soon overcame any doubts via a fun conversation with Tim Stevens and a delicious breakfast. Such things got me on my way, but ended up not being enough to finish with optimism.

I knew the day would be difficult but didn't realize the consequence of forcing myself to walk on blistered feet all day. Mentally arranging the movement of each limb to prevent limping ended up completely draining me. Muscles got sore that normally did not do so and by the end of the day I was struggling to maintain composure at a snail's pace of about two and a half miles per hour.

This is down Maple Valley Highway which Tim leaves off of and right about where I remembered to turn on my pedometer watch. Unfortunately I forgot to turn it on multiple times after it would go off (either manually or automatically) and thus I have no watch stats to report! It had 22,000 steps by the time I gave up and reset it.

Looking at the battery level on my phone, I decided to stop in to Fairwood (after climbing that damn hill again) and charge up. I also used the opportunity to figure out directions as to where the heck I was going.

The apartment advertising is against me!

It took me longer to reach this point than I wanted because I took a wrong turn that extended my time (or rather, I didn't turn when I was supposed to -- misread a road sign or something). Starting back up from a break here turned out to be really hard and started the contingency ruminations.

Llamas tied up right next to the road in Renton. Luckily they couldn't spit as far away as I was.

In going to Green River Road I came up to a trail which I decided to take that rose up while the road dipped down. That made me a little nervous but I figured it would be too much to backtrack ...

Then the results of the height make themselves known as the trail, through a beautiful forested area, gets exceedingly winding. If you squint hard at this pic you'll see where I'm supposed to be going far below, but the trail takes a super round-about way to get there since it has to go down too.

I am not amused by my choice.

Finally after stumbling along the Green River Road I come to this sign which gave me some hope but no smiles.

I'd already decided by this point that I would need at least a day to recover and thus figure out some vehicular method to recover the distance. Soon after, at a park just beyond, I made the decision to throw in the towel rather than risk worse injury. I dealt with pain for the entire day and it afforded me no leisurely thoughts or daydreams; plus my speed was reduced to a crawl which pissed me off.

On my way to the sounder station I saw this and it did make me smile, a little.

Information on our state's transit system is really disorganized and poorly laid out, but I found out about the sounder through some round-about method (I think I saw it on Google Maps) and decided to take it to Tacoma.

Sitting and waiting for the commuter train.

The last Amtrak train to Centralia was full so I had the choice of dropping a big buck on a hotel or three dollars to get home. I chose the latter with the intent of going back to the train on Monday.

[ LTOC Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 ]

Renton

2010-04-24T09:28:00.000-07:00

Walking from Redmond to Renton on the first day of my so-called Leather Tramp Odyssey Centralia (I just like the way that sounds!) went by almost too fast. My aggressive pace pushed me from ecstatic to exhausted and I gained a few injuries, mostly blisters, that could have been avoided with better gear and pacing. However, I made my goal to get to Tim Stevens' house and even ended up walking mostly uphill for an extra 3.1 miles.

I decided to take Miguel the Sheep to share in my adventure and squished him in at the top of my backpack. His legs were additionally shortened by this.

Starting up 520 after walking for an hour already.

Is that you, Ewan?

Miguel hanging out with the beary clean bears.

I broke off of 148th at one point and ended up walking down this trail by Bellevue College. Two dogs, fluffy and harmless-looking, tried to chew my hands off just after this as I approached and passed a lady walking them.

Going under I-90 overpass into Factoria.

The sun beat down beautifully as I trekked up Coal Creek Parkway; later this would give me a sunburn (if it hadn't already).

Miguel wanted to pose by the sign and I couldn't stop him.

Really cool bridge high above some forested area further down Coal Creek Parkway; it may even be Duvall Avenue by this point. I'll check later.

Can you spot the deer? It stood stock-still, starring forward as if merely stuffed. Maybe it wasn't even real. I took this from the bridge with the red arches and it was way too high and far off to catch any detail.

Taking a break in a city park only a couple miles north of my final destination. I had been blissfully ignorant of the fact that I was limping and stopped here to inspect the damage. Miguel probably does not appreciate the smell of my tootsies.

Who's that trip trapping over my bridge?

Between the Fairwood AM/PM and Safeway is this giant antenna tower; not sure what for, but it looked interesting.

Miguel reads up on secrets of timeless elegance.

The sunburn was just starting to really show up and I tried to capture it.

Finally, I crashed in this cute little bed provided by Tim Stevens. No, it's not for him but rather one of his daughters; they weren't there at the time.

[ LTOC Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 ]

Fairwood

2010-04-22T17:38:00.000-07:00

I'm at the Subway in a Fairwood stripmall near Safeway. It is up a huge frickin' hill behind Maple Valley Road (Renton) where my host happens to live; so thankfully I only have to walk back down later. Still, did I mention it's three miles beyond my target destination and therefore six total wasted?

Feet feel like puddles of fire and its work to keep a semi-normal gait. I don't want to limp and end up favoring some muscles while under-using others and blisters are merely pain. My mistake was left shoe not being tight enough and forming a big nasty blister on the pad. Not paying attention to my limping until later was also bad. Anyway, Tim is coming over to pick me up in a bit, so looks like I won't have to walk back down after all! Yay!

Watch stats:

19,919 steps
12.323 miles
3.61 mph
1955.8 calories
3:24:35

Note I stopped the watch when I first reached the host's housing area and also once before that at a park where I stripped off my socks to inspect the damage.

[ LTOC Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 ]

Factoria

2010-04-22T11:53:00.000-07:00

I didn't write down any directions, deciding instead to stop in Factoria and look them up then. It turns out that worked out fine as I'm sitting here at Taco Bell with Miguel and only 9.4 miles remaining according to Google.

Pedometer watch, which I neglected to turn on for the first half-mile or so (doh!), reports:

2:55:15
19,448 steps
12.213 miles
4.18 mph
2,223 calories

Reminder that the miles are based on steps and average step length, so it's very much an approximation. However, sometimes it's more accurate than Google maps because it isn't based on general topography.

The front pads of my feet burn, blisters undoubtedly forthcoming but not particularly unwelcome. I had to tuck the water bottle inside the pack and also left the camcorder at home at the last minute since there was no comfy place to carry it -- plus a possible security risk to have in my hand while walking through some of these urban areas (at least I'm not going over Hilltop!). Still feeling good all in all.

[ LTOC Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 ]

Avondale to Renton

2010-04-21T22:10:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow I'm starting on the first of my five day foot odyssey, from Redmond to Renton. I sent out three couch surfing requests and got a hook just a couple hours ago to my extreme relief. Completely coincidentally this savior happens to work where I used to at Demand Media!

The route length according to Google Maps is 20.5 miles and estimated to take 6 hours and 50 minutes; we shall see how accurate that is. I also normally take a different route up to the Crossroads area mainly just to avoid road noise, but I'll stick to this plan for simplicity.

My gear is simply the waterproof backpack I bought at Costco with ...

Two changes of underwear, socks, and shirts.
One spare pair of pants.
Fleece, gloves, hat, and umbrella for adverse weather.
Sunglasses (case also contains chapstick and nail clippers).
Small case of first-aid and toiletries; deodorant separate because it doesn't fit but is certainly necessary!
32oz water bottle and 16 food bars.
Sunflower seeds.
Maps and compass.
Tech: Asus EEE 901 Netbook, Kindle, MiFi 2200, and Canon FS100 Camcorder.
Assorted wires (USB, mini USB, iPod USB) and power adapters for tech.
Moleskine journal.

On my person I'll be wearing the usual coat as well as carrying my keys, which contain a mini leatherman and flashlight, iPod, RAZR V3m, and reporter Moleskine.

It shouldn't sound like a lot because it doesn't look like much. If my pack is light enough I may end up stuffing extra clothing in there. On the third day (Tacoma) I will find a laundromat since they may be more sparse after that.

Depending on whether my hosts are amiable to showers I may end up finding public pools, because I don't intend to go stinky the whole time and prefer not to take cowboy showers.

The itinerary is currently as follows with estimated distance to reach the places in parenthesis:

Thursday 4/22: Renton (20 miles)
Friday 4/23: Federal Way (15 miles)
Saturday 4/24: Tacoma (15 miles)
Sunday 4/25: Yelm (25 miles)
Monday 4/26: Centralia (25 miles)

So far I only have hosts at Renton and Yelm; once I've asked them if it's okay, I will reveal them. For now you can make your conjectures by doing your own searches at CouchSurfing.org. Now I'm going to pack in a late dinner and try to get some needed sleep. Tomorrow is a big day!

[ LTOC Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 ]

Leather Tramp Odyssey

2010-04-20T20:15:00.000-07:00

Any reason to wait is merely fear talking. I have a block of time up until May 1st with nothing planned in between except the wine and cheese tasting at my apartment complex on Friday and maybe fitting in some more karaoke with strangers. I am now a verified CouchSurfer with, on the site, no friends or references. And thus, now is the time to take advantage of the mild weather and waterproof backpack: I'm going to walk to Centralia.

My first couch request has been sent off to a nice lady in Renton and if that doesn't work out I'll fire off a couple more before falling back on a motel (or passing out in the bushes -- not preferable). Packing light will merely include food in bar form (not bar food), video camera for documenting the experience, netbook, and a couple changes of clothes. Washing clothes at a laundromat may be difficult to do, depending on how far out of my way they are, and I could just end up very stinky.

This is a test trip for future foot trekking. Thus far I have only walked between nearby towns from Redmond: Woodinville and Bellevue. Nearly two years ago I started a jog which ended as a lap around Lake Sammammish, netting me 25 miles total. I'm in better general condition now but that distance is time consuming, not to mention exhausting, and I'll try to keep distances in the twenty mile range.

The goal is practice, but I am intrigued by the idea of hitch hiking to Colville to visit my mom. Besides pushing myself physically, the couch surfing aspect will force me to expand social skills which I hope to use later in a larger trip, such as Ireland. Internally excitement battles anxiety, but I'd rather regret being stranded somewhere than not starting at all!

[ LTOC Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 ]

What would you physically change about yourself?

2010-04-19T06:35:00.000-07:00

Here is a quick survey I created on Mechanical Turk: Explain something you'd change about yourself physically that DOES NOT relate to beauty.

I would not be a plane crash. And do not be afraid of mice.
I would like to not have to wear diapers all my life, on long car rides, due to a weak bladder.
I would like to not be so sensitive to everything, like I am allergic to everything. Every thing that bites me takes weeks to heel even a nat or mosquitoe. If I don't use a certain type of detergent, deodorant, soap, shampoo, and other things I will get a rash its really really irritating and stressful living like this.
I would like to have more stamina to keep up with my kids.
I would like to get rid of fibromyalgia and have more energy and desire to move around.
I'd make my lower back stronger so that I wouldn't keep injuring it.
I would change myself so I wouldn't be afraid of high heights.
I would like to be able to eat mexican food without feeling sick to my stomach.
I would not like to be sensitive. I literally burst into tears if someone even says something mean to me. It's sad.
I would change how easily I get dizzy.
I wish I had more willpower. I tend to get great ideas, but not follow through on implementation.
wish i wasnt so emotional
I would like to feel refreshed when I wake up in the morning, rather than groggy & sniffly, because I feel that way regardless of whether I've had 4 hours of sleep or 10 hours of sleep!
I would like not to be obese. How I might look in a bikini is ENTIRELY secondary to how I feel at the moment-- fat, slow and older than I am.
I wish I could run faster and farther without getting tired.
I would like to be able to run for three miles straight without having to stop and take walking breaks.
I would like to learn to swim so I would not be afraid of the water.
My ears.. they stick out way too much. I have alway wanted them taken is. They make me look like a sugar bowl.
I would like to not get sick everytime I eat or smell shrimp.
I would like to sleep without my CPAP mask from sleep apnea.
My weight
I would like to finish my gender change so that I can finally be comfortable in my own skin where ever I go.
That I can't seem to finish most of what I start.
I would give myself 20/20 vision.
I would like to be able to play with my kids more and not run out of energy.
I would like to have a bone spur hurt less when i walk a lot.
I get tired very easily, and I would like to be able to feel well rested all of the time.
I would like to have 20/20 vision so I could see properly without the aide of glasses or contacts.
I would like to get less nervous when waiting in traffic-jam.
I would like not to be as shy and to be able to tell people exactly what I think
I would like not have to wake up three times a night to go to the bathroom with diarhea
I would like to be more outgoing in a group full of new people
More muscles
I wish I could be cured of celiac disease. I really miss eating gluten foods. Gluten free stuff just doesn't taste as good.
I would like to not be diabetic anymore.
I would like to not open my mouth when applying eyeliner and mascara, but no matter how hard I try it always opens and I look like a dork!
I would like to be more athletic/physically coordinated so I could be good at at least one sport.
I would like to be able to stick to a diet and lose weight
I would like to not be so timid in dealing with people.
I would like to can control my emotion better when I am angry.
i would like to not have any lung/breathing problems
I would like to not snap back at someone and get defensive when asked a question.
I wish I was more coordinated.
I would like to be more gifted athletically.
I wish I didn't feel anxiety when dealing with the public.
I'd like to lose about 30 pounds. If I could get down to a normal weight, my blood pressure and cholesterol would improve without medications, and it would be easier to climb hills on my bicycle.
To not have asthma.
I wish i had better endurance
I would change my knees. They bow in and I get pain in them quite regularly. I wish I didn't have this pain since I'm only 24 years old.
I wish that I would not get seasonal allergies each spring.

What are you afraid of?

2010-04-17T11:01:00.000-07:00

This was a quick survey I created on Mechanical Turk: Describe something you fear; think about ones that hold you back from doing what you want.

The conservative mindset--ZIKES!!!
dying alone
I would say that I am afraid of getting old and losing my memory and bodily functions.
I suffer from OCD, so I am afraid of germs and filth.
Nothing - whatever life throws my way I can get through - sometimes better than others.
I am terrified of vomiting.
death
I am afraid of drowning.
Not having enough money to pay my bills!!!!
I am afraid that I will end up alone and all of my family will end up hating me and that I will never lose all this fat and just keep getting fatter.
I am afraid that the politicians and corporate America will ruin this country.
I am afraid of being eaten alive by zombies. And Bears.
Losing the people I care about.
I do not like arachnids, I shiver at the sight of spiders.
spiders
being dependent on other people who are not trustworthy.
Spiders of all sizes.
I'm afraid that I will be too old to have children by the time I am actually ready to have them!
I am afraid of my boyfriend leaving me-I've always had a fear of abandonment and usually leave before someone can do it to me.
I am totally afraid of thunderstorms at night after it is dark out.
I'm afraid of going broke
Big Dogs
i am afraid of being pushed off a subway platform.
growing old alone
I am afraid of driving next to, in front of, or in back of SUVs with dark tinted windows whose drivers tend almost always run red lights & disregard most traffic laws.
Dying from a long, slow, painful, degenerative disease.
The year 2012 now.
Snakes
I am afraid of things that are beyond my control.
Bees.
I am afraid of snakes, spiders, dying at a young age, loosing a loved one, sharks and drowning
I am afraid of something happening to my grandchild,health- wise.
water
I am afraid of failing.
I am afraid of dying.
I am afraid of someone attacking me in a parking lot/deck.
I am afraid of divorce lawyers and family court judges.
Gettin shot with a gun. It totally scares me to death.
snakes
Cancer
insects
The death of either a child or my husband.
Having my heartbroken.
I am afraid of being homeless.
I'm afraid of dying young. I hope I live a long, long life.
I am afraid of sirens.
i am afraid of heights.
Alzheimer's disease
Drowning
spiders

Check out Amazon's Mechanical Turk if you'd like to participate in future surveys.

Blogger: Redirect to Preserve URL's

2010-04-16T15:34:00.000-07:00

One of my pet peeves is broken links and it is an easy consequence of moving between blogging platforms. For example, WordPress and Google Sites are all about directory-based URL's (/2010/04/16/title) whereas Blogger goes for the traditional HTML page (/2010/04/title.html) and none I have found provide redirection to preserve these differences after migrating. It isn't, however, impossible if you're using Blogger because of their "Missing Files Host" feature.

First, though, you'll need to be able to create your own redirector elsewhere on a more supportive web host. For my test I made a simple one hosted on MediaTemple using a single .htaccess file. I set my missing files host to find.gibdon.com and pointed that sub-domain to the MediaTemple redirect script I created. The contents of this is merely a translation from a HTML page name to a label search:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On

# redirector script for find.gibdon.com
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} \.gibdon\.com$
RewriteRule ^([a-z0-9]+).html$ http://www.gibdon.com/search?label=$1 [L,QSA]

What this will do is translate any alphanumeric page name like videos.html into a label search on my blog. Thus, when you visit http://www.gibdon.com/video.html Blogger will issue a 302 redirect to the same URL on find.gibdon.com. The hypertext access file there will then match the one regular expression I have there and tell the browser to go http://www.gibdon.com/search?label=video.

There is a speed penalty to the user since their browser will be forced to connect to a separate server, but any links pointing to the URL's can be preserved and that's worth it in the end.

Two oddities I encountered while messing with this:

wget -S --spider doesn't always show the Location header for some reason.
eNom's free redirector (e.g. "WWW Redirect" option in Host Records) will redirect the browser to a special URL first to count that client's particular request, probably for analytics. This is annoying and can be slow, but that's what you get for free.

Coffee Karma

2010-04-16T13:39:00.000-07:00

Things even out when it comes to caffeinated bean-based beverages for me.

Last time I visited the Starbucks by PCC, a pencil-sized hole in the lip of the lid caused the brown liquid to leave a beautiful skid mark on the front of my shirt. This time they saw me coming and made my usual drink only to find out I wanted a Chocolate Banana Vivano (smoothie) instead ... and gave me both.

Karma.

Yesterday at Tully's, they overcharged me just over a dime on a grande lemonade and thus had to dig up a quarter in addition to forking over more than the two bills I had handy. I was confused, tried to argue to no avail, and gave in with the utterance of "30 cents tax?! That sucks." Later it angered me to find out she had charged me for a vente (20oz). It shouldn't have made me so mad, but it did, especially choking it down while realizing the only recourse would be to be a complete dick about a mere ten cents fifteen minutes later and with no receipt.

Karma?

Well, I suppose it evens out when Victor's usually gives me "regular customer" pricing, so long as people I know are there. I always tip them well so it generally evens out there already. What did I do to Tully's besides complain about the taste of their beans?

Doh!

What do you want to do?

2010-04-16T07:24:00.000-07:00

This was a quick survey I created on Mechanical Turk: What is it that you look forward to doing or wish you could do?

I want to finish school or at least get my certificate so I can show some type of degree to potential employers.
I want to made enough money to make ends meet.
I want to become financially independent so that I do not have to rely on an employer for income.
I want to be more helpful.
I want to become very successful.
Run my own small business.
Buy a new sofa
I want to make enough money to be wealthy for life then I want to travel the world and pick up a wife in some exotic country while exploring! Hey why not?
to never have to work ever again but have lots of money and freedom to do whatever i want
I want to graduate college and move on to get a job in the computer industry.
I want to earn my yearly income solely through art!
I want to fnd my passion!
I want to argue with the people in charge of the AddRan Festival because their instructions were vague bordering on inaccurate.
I want to be a college professor.
As soon as possible a world traveling for 2-3 years.
I want to see the world and know all of it's corners. To meet all of it's people and truly appreciate them for who they are and what they love. I want to make a difference. I want to matter.
get a job and off of unemployment. I want to be someone. Life is stale.
I want to have a snack and then go to bed, i'm so tired right now.
Get up off this couch and start moving my life forward.
I look forward to tent camping in Northern Wisconsin this summer, by the state's tallest waterfall.
I want to work even harder than ever to save up enough money to be able to pay off my credit card debts and be able to go out and eat, shop and travel more often again!
Travel to all the Ancient land's and study the culture and history of ancient civalization's.
Just going out, enjoying nice weather today.
I want to go to Egypt and see the pyramids and sphinx.
go to bed, i'm tired
I want to finish my degree, get a good job, and live a happy life.
close on my brand new house
Walk my dog and get it over with already.
I want to contribute something positive to the world.
Find a job.
I want to go to sleep.
Eat a hamburger.
I want to be part of the crew on the final NASA Space Shuttle launch
Travel the world with the love of my life.
I want to transform my physical body into a body of light in order to be able to leave the planet. I want to be an ascended master through consciousness and the power of intent. Please know my sincere appreciation of you for being a quantum observer by providing this HIT.
play tennis instead of studying for finals
Go for a walk, then eat some deep dish pizza and surf the internet.
I want to continue to lose weight and get in shape so that I will feel better and live a peaceful, healthy, productive life. I have already lost 35 pounds by eating better, riding my stationary bike every other day and walking every day for 30 minutes. I'm about halfway to my goal!
To not have to work every day for my survival--I want to be independently wealthy.
I'd like to get some sleep. I sit up too late every night messing around on the turk. It's time wasted, for the most part.
go to the gym!
I want to earn lost of money.
I want to climb a mountain. A tall one. I want to get out there with nothing but a backpack loaded with survival necessities and conquer a giant hunk of rock, to be one with the majesty of nature.
I want to refurbish my classic R.V. and take it on a road trip.
I want to better my education and get a career!
I would love to open up a doggy daycare in my area. I think this would be the best job ever because I love dogs.
I want to be able to pay off all of my debt.
I want to be an editor when I graduate.
Get started with my life.
Paint, draw, work on my art.

Americano Mocha

2010-04-11T12:32:00.000-07:00

Before a friend introduced me to this drink a couple summers ago, I ingested massive quantities of calories in creamier concoctions. It's a simple mixture for those who enjoy the core chocolatey coffee taste of a mocha. Some complexity enters with different titles and instructions for ordering depending on which shop you attend. The benefit is lower price and less all the calories and thickness of milk. It's my favorite as a frequent frugal cafe patron, and there's a fantastic iced version as well!

I started with sweet iced versions prior to truly embracing the taste of coffee. Back then the little espresso stand outside Yard Birds called these "Iced Mochas" but we just called them "coffee drinks" and being blended they resembled Starbucks' Frappuccino. These days having something so sugary and caffeinated will send me buzzing into a crash. When I indulge beyond black coffee, I go for this drink: the Americano Mocha.

The ingredients are simply espresso shots, water, and pumps of regular (not white) mocha chocolate. An americano is just shots and water versus steamed milk in a mocha (previously known as a mocha latte). In order to come out right the order to add these is chocolate, water, and then shots. If the chocolate is added second it doesn't mix right and you end up with what tastes like a normal americano and thus very bitter. I always grab a stir-stick or straw when an unfamiliar barista constructs one for me, because they may have never dealt with it before.

Depending on where you go the drink may be called something else. At Starbucks I order as "americano with mocha" but often they'll reflect this back as "mocha americano" to me and the barista. Victor's, in Redmond, calls this an "americano with chocolate" as will probably many small cafes who use essentially just chocolate in their normal mocha's. It's not worth arguing over, but one cashier at Tully's tried to impress upon me the importance of using "chocolate" when I tried to argue "mocha pumps" was sufficient. The amount of chocolate pumps is really important to the mixture coming out correctly, but you can usually say "however much is in a normal mocha". Unfortunately Tully's is bad at making these drinks and, even when my sister worked there (and we experimented with the measurements), I've never had one taste right. Also, an americano has one more shot per cup-size (2 for tall/12oz, 3 for grande/16oz, and 4 for vente/20oz) than an equivalently sized latte/mocha, so make sure the amount of chocolate you're getting is based on the cup and not the number of shots.

The price of an americano with mocha chocolate added is typically significantly less than a full-blown mocha simply because you're cutting out the cost of the milk and the labor to steam it. And since you're only consuming shots and chocolate, the calorie content is a lot less. My friend estimates each pump of chocolate at Starbucks to be 25 calories and so less anything the shots add, a 3pm (three pumps of chocolate) grande Americano Mocha is a measly 75 calories! What I've done in the past is subtract the calorie count of a latte from a mocha and come up with a somewhat higher number (like 50 per pump) which is still very low.

In conclusion, if you're looking to save calories and spare your wallet while sipping something more than the average Joe, I recommend you try an Americano Mocha! On hot summer days you can have them ice it. Alternatively you may get more bang for your buck and a better consistency if you simply order the espresso shots "on ice" and with the pumps on top; you'll have to specify the cup size separately (it's not implicit). For example, Starbucks currently charges 65 cents a shot and 50 cents for "any" amount of mocha. Thus "three shots of espresso on ice with three pumps mocha in a grande cup" should run you about 2.45 before tax. Woohoo, that's hardly more than the cost of a grande cup of coffee!

Easter Weekend

2010-04-07T17:55:00.000-07:00

I didn't hunt for eggs at all, regardless of chicken or rabbit involvement. Bunnies popping out chocolate embryos ... mmm, my favorite! I spent Easter weekend with my pa in Cinebar and also visited a classmate from High School. Here's some pics and a video from those days.

Are those vomit spots on the seatbelt? These could be related to other splotches I saw on the dash, passenger seat, and inside the front doors.

The weather decided to go batshit crazy and thrash me with intermittent torrents of water and air on the drive down. Economy car provided minimal shielding against the buffeting, a veritable windsurfing experience down the freeway. This particular shot came from the back roads I escaped to for more scenic, longer, and safer passage.

You can make out me, my phone, and the Yard Birds parking lot in the reflection of the kiosk containing this pixelated (impossible to tell from my camera's lack of focus and resolution) movie cover. I just watched Lord of War recently and have come to the conclusion that Nick thinks he is way cooler than he actually is.

It could be an original piece of art, but the wrong message may be implied by using it for apartment decoration. Surely the creator meant only the best for the depicted people, but ... yeah ... only $15!

Nature continued bizarreness with a snow white awakening on Saturday morning. I took this shot as soon as I gained full consciousness out the window from my room at the back of dad's place.

Coming into the wood stove room I snapped a nice blurry photo to capture the homey teapot and mug before the chilled Spring outside.

"Is this what you drive here, these toys?" -Tokyo Drift

It stayed stuck well past 9:30.

We "braved" the roads around 1pm (now completely clear) to hit my favorite little cafe in Mossyrock: Kameo's. The lady who runs it knows us well enough now to simply ask, "The usual?", and then bring us the usual ... coffee for me and hot chocolate for pa.

Look close ... still don't see? All that black and red is a mass of ants on their hill.

It turns out what we always called goulash (just a fun food word) isn't accurate, but this is what dad made on Easter. A mix of eggs (turned out over easy), soft American cheese, red skin potatoes, and I believe some rice on a nice burnt underbelly. Garnished with ketchup and cottage cheese on the side. Yum!

Dad left it too close to a bonfire. The bucket is such a lively green that it totally messed up whatever color calibration my RAZR phone camera does. Thus his hand turned pinkish and the bucket's colors got less vibrant.

For dessert on Easter Sunday we drove up Highway 12 to Stanley's Gas Station and got junk food.

Massive cat.

What up G?

Finally, here's a video compiled from clips I shot at 320x240x25 (PAL) on the ol' Canon Digital Elph (SD400). Besides concatenating all the clips and adding the fade in/out in VirtualDub, I did no editing on it:

Happy Easter 2010!