Archive of 2007 | PolarLava::Blog

December 2007

Permanent link to “Lounging Gnome”
The Death of High…

Yesterday I came across a very good, but sad article about The Death of High Fidelity. Being a longtime music collector I've built up a pretty good collection of vinyl, cassettes, CD's and not MP3's. And I've long said that vinyl is my favorite medium for music. No it's not as convenient as MP3's, and not it's not as durable as CD's, but to my ears, vinyl still sounds the best. You might also find the related Alternate Takes: The MP3 Challenge. See, I'm not alone. Due to space issues at home I dismantled the bulk of my stereo system last year. As such, I've been without my turntable for some time now. But a couple of weeks ago I began cleaning out the attic so I could set a listening room there. It's not ideal, but it's certainly better than not having it available. And I'm very much looking forward to my ritualistic disc cleaning routine. It's what has allowed my vinyl collection to remain in a very playable condition after all these years.

Permanent link to “The Death of High Fidelity”
Such a Slug

I'm really starting to feel like a slug this week. I'm back at work today and tomorrow as I didn't have enough days left this year to avoid working at least two days. This is the first time in roughly 15 years that I've not taken off the entire week between Christmas and New Years. Oh, and I'm not happy about it. So I did enjoy my time off for Christmas even if it was a bit hectic with lots of running around. The down side would be the massive overeating —including the huge portion of leftover shrimp scampi I just inhaled for lunch. I've been off the bike for a week now and although I've been working out less, I need to get my growing mass of chub back on a routine…hopefully starting tomorrow. And this weekend I need to recap 2007 and start looking ahead to the 2008 season and actually set some goals. This was a good year for me even without any goals (not written down anyway), but I'd like to build on that to have an even better one next year. Maybe tomorrow I'll recap…

Permanent link to “Such a Slug”
Permanent link to “Wolaver's Oatmeal Stout”
Permanent link to “Mushroom on a Tree”
Permanent link to “I'm an Animated Builder”
Mission Bicycle #2…

I found this bike picture in a "Flickr Interestingness" feed that I follow. I absolutely love this bike. A very beautiful, clean and simplistic single-speed road machine built by Mission Bicycles for Joi Ito who also seems to love it. I so want a single-speed bike, but I really want a new hardcore road bike more, thus I certainly won't be getting something like this anytime soon. I am considering building one out of an old bike though. Time will tell. In any case, I'm now using this photo as my desktop wallpaper, which is a big deal because I don't change is very often.

Permanent link to “Mission Bicycle #2 - for Joi Ito”
September 10, 1986

So what you're looking at here (click on it for the full size image) is the remains of my 1985 Ford Escort after burying it under a tractor-trailer on my way to work one morning. The car was exactly —to the day, one-year old. Me, I was just 3 days shy of my 22nd birthday. And here's the story of how I nearly didn't make it there… I was still living in Gurnee, IL (map) at the time and on my usual way to work in Mundelein, IL one morning at about 6:30am. It was a typical day, nothing out of the ordinary other that some light misty rain. I left my apartment on Finch Ct., made my way south down Oplaine Road and turned onto Washington Street. I drove about a 1/2 mile or so when I notice a slow moving truck in the right-hand lane. I moved over to the left lane as I crossed the Des Plaines River and began to rapidly approach the truck, a flatbed tractor-trailer that was rolling along at a very slow…

Permanent link to “September 10, 1986”
Permanent link to “RS: Dickheads of the Year”
Permanent link to “Tori Amos Smackdown!”
Permanent link to “Rock Art IPA”
5th Blogversary

So here's to another year —five in total now, of spewing out this pointless, self-serving drivel. And like last year, this past year I've mostly been posting to the PhotoBlog and Beer topics, but occasionally have time to ramble on about other nonsense. I guess the other big diversion this year was Twitter and my brief addiction to it. I might go back, but right now it's just idling and gets automated posts. Here's the obligatory links to previous blogveraries: 4th Blogversary 3rd Blogversary 2nd Blogversary A Year of Blogging

Permanent link to “5th Blogversary”
Permanent link to “Along The Power Lines”
Ron Paul 2008

If you've not already decided to support my Papendick 2008 candidacy, them maybe you should consider the alternatives and know who and what you're voting for… A few weeks back I read libâ€¢erâ€¢tarâ€¢ian, a very interesting article from The Washingtonpost.com. It talks about Ron Paul, his views and the recent success his message has gotten from many —myself included. And although he switched to the Republican party, he's a former Libertarian and it shows in those views. So if you're considering an alternative to the status quo the media and the two-party system's current/latest/next "front runner", you might want to read this and think about supporting Ron. And it that doesn't work for you? Well, yesterday a coworker mentioned the Glassbooth quiz to help you choose the best 2008 presidential candidate. You don't have to share my views, but the least you can do is find those who shares yours. Beats the alternative of just pulling the lever for someone who doesn't share…

Permanent link to “Ron Paul 2008”
Permanent link to “Clipper City Heavy Seas Loose Cannon Hop3”
THRAK 2007 Review

Once again, another SFFL season has come to a bitter end for the mighty THRAK. It was a really wacky season (although not over for some yet), that was unlike anything I've seen in the previous 12 years. I had high expectations —as always, but got off to a slow 1-3 start. At that point things started to click and rolled off a good stretch going 7-1-1. I lead the power rankings and scored more points than any other team. Winning my final regular season game made me the #1 seed in the conference. Things were so tight that had I lost, I would have been the forth and final seed. I stumbled badly and lost 83-52 to the Young Guns in the first round of the playoffs. In the end it really wouldn't have mattered as the other two teams both would have beaten me also. I'm disappointed, but not surprised. Just the week before the playoffs started I said I liked my chances, but it could just as easily be any one of the other three teams. It was a good tough season, but in the end it was a…

Permanent link to “THRAK 2007 Review”
Permanent link to “The Stick Bug”
Error Page Updated

From the "Who really cares besides me" department… I've updated the error page so when one enters a bad URL you can now correct it and redirect to what is hopefully a valid page. And if you try to redirect anywhere but a PolarLava page, you wind up on the error page again. Allowing redirections to outside locations would be ripe for abuse by spammers, phishers and similar treacherous cretins. I'm guessing this is largely useful to me more than others, but basically if you fat finger a URL you can now easily fix it and get to where you were headed in the first place.

Permanent link to “Error Page Updated”
Evel Knievel…

I was greatly saddened yesterday to hear that Evel Knievel had died. Like millions of others kids tha grew up in the 70's, Evel was an idol. One couldn't wait to find out what he was going to attempt to jump next. And then, would he make it? If not, how bad would he get busted up this time? I recall Evel being a human rag doll in many of those crashes, most notably when he failed badly attempting jump the fountains at Caesars Palace. But no matter how many times he crashed, and no matter badly he got busted up, he always came back for more. I'll alway remember playing with my Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle. I need go dig around in the basement, because I'm pretty sure I still have at least the cycle from that. Hopefully I can find the Evel doll, but I'm not sure I have that. I actually had two of them; the white outfitted one that came with this set and later one dressed in red. I trashed this toy endlessly. Because after all, Evel could always jump everything! Ride on my friend…

Permanent link to “Evel Knievel :: October 17, 1938 â€“ November 30, 2007”

November 2007

Permanent link to “A Sign from the Noodly Saviour”
Permanent link to “Rock Art American Red Ale”
Frisbee Wheels

So I went on a recon Christmas shopping trek today, had some extra time and stopped in at Handlebars Cycle Company. As anyone that spends much time around me knows, I've been pining for a new bike for quite a while. So while discussing options in my price range with the guy at the shop, I walked past a cyclo-cross bike. This wasn't a new bike, but well maintained. We started talking about it, in particular the carbon fiber wheels. Apparently they were custom made and there are only two sets in the world -both for this bike. The shop guy walked around the corner and them came back with the spare front wheel and handed it to me. Literally it weighed virtually nothing for a fully built wheel. I just looked at him and said it felt like a Frisbee. You could easily sail this this through the air a good distance because it was very rigid and lightweight. Pretty much in the one-of-a-kind realm. I know these aren't the most expensive wheels one could buy, but well out of my price…

Permanent link to “Frisbee Wheels”
Aspirin, Liquor and…

Well, it's taken nearly 11 months since I mentioned it when I got my CanoScan 8600F scanner, but here it is. Hugh Downs advocating the medical exploration of LSD in the January 1967 issue of Science Digest. It's not the prettiest thing, but then again this is a scan of a photocopy that I've been toting around since 1989. Enjoy… (Page 1 full-sized image) (Page 2 full-sized image) (Page 3 full-sized image)

Permanent link to “Aspirin, Liquor and LSD”
PolarBlog V1.10.2

PolarBlog V1.10.2 has been released. This is a bug fix and performance improvement release. Enhancements Improved query topic indexing. Improved comment indexing. SafeSQL*.class.php Added released NULL support and fixed PHP5 abstract method declaration error. E_STRICT Compliance: Fix Call-time pass-by-reference errors. E_STRICT Compliance: You need to set your default timezone via date.timezone. See PHP: Date and Time Functions, PHP: Appendix J. List of Supported Timezones and the .htaccess File section of the PolarBlog Documentation. Bug Fixes Entries in deleted topics causing the entry index page to fatal. Search results not being properly sorted, partially due to V1.9.1 change to prevent memory overload. New and updated entries that are post dated shouldn't ping Ping-O-Matic (if enabled). Configuration Changes None New Language Tags None See the PolarBlog Changes file for more information. Please see the PolarBlog Upgrading documentation for information…

Permanent link to “PolarBlog V1.10.2”
Permanent link to “Happy Thanksgiving”
PolarBlog Update…

I've been quite busy as usual the past few months, but with the weather declining that generally means good things for my website and software development. Anyhow, a few weeks back I discovered that the last PolarBlog release broke the "Entry Index" page. And I've been struggling to understand why the search function became so horribly wrong most of the time. Well, I finally got tired of dealing with it -because I search my own blog often, and tracked down the problem last night. It seems some dummy broke it as part of his efforts to fix a poor architectural decision at the very beginning. Thus it actually broke back in V1.9.1. And I've been doing some cleanup work so it now runs without complaint under E_STRICT. So hopefully I will find time over the long weekend to get an update packaged up and released. :)

Permanent link to “PolarBlog Update Coming”
Permanent link to “3G's by Harlan Mack”
Permanent link to “Rock Art Whitetail Ale”
Permanent link to “Rock Art Ridge Runner Ale”
Permanent link to “The Shed”
Resume Page Updated

I'm certainly not looking for a job right now, but I've updated the contents and generation of my Resumé. I didn't particularly like the look of it so I've changed to a layout that (I think) looks more professional. Hopefully you'll agree. It's a substantially modified version of Alex King's HTML Resume Template with a bit of header colorization and positioning CSS poached from Rob's resumé. And as alway, a few extra tweaks were required to get it look the same in Internet Explorer. I'm still hopeful that someday CSS will be "one size fits all." But I'm certainly not holding my breath.

Permanent link to “Resume Page Updated”
Put down the fork!

Dear America, Please put down the fork and step away from the all you can eat buffet trough. The best offensive that any terrorist group could launch would be to just leave us alone. We're killing ourselves at an ever increasing rate with our gluttony and sloth. After all, "Uncle Sam's time is only a greased wheel". Regards, A reasonably fit and intelligent concerned citizen

Permanent link to “Put down the fork!”
Permanent link to “Jesus Christ Super Doll”

October 2007

Permanent link to “Tsingtao”
A New Yearly Record

So with this morning's ride I hit a new personal best yearly mileage total. As of today I've ridden 3,196.55 miles. This tops my previous best from 10 years ago in 1997 when I rode 3173.08 miles. And even more than clipping the mileage mark, I've done it in a lot fewer, but longer rides. In 1997 I rode 73 indoor and 81 outdoor rides for a total of 154. So far this year I've "only" ridden 56 indoor and 59 outdoor rides for a total of 115 rides. And I say only because unless the weather takes a dramatic downturn I plan to keep riding outside which is where I really roll up the miles. I've got a good season in thus far even with the setbacks I've had the past couple of months with my back. It's still not 100%, but it's pretty close most of the time. Now if I can just avoid getting deathly ill in the next month I should wind up with a pretty nice yearly mileage total. Unfortunately, the setbacks I've already had make it highly unlikely that I will make it to the lofty…

Permanent link to “A New Yearly Record”
Permanent link to “Erie Basin Marina”
Permanent link to “Switchback Unfiltered Ale”
Goodbye Twitter…

I've decided to kill off the Twitter Archive topic. My Twittering frenzy has wained somewhat of late and I've been mulling the pointlessness of archiving my posts. I've mostly been using it to log the music I was listening too, but I've grown weary of that also. I don't know how much I will be twittering in the future, but at this point I think "less" is the operative word.

Permanent link to “Goodbye Twitter Archive”
Permanent link to “Wolavers Wit Bier”
Permanent link to “Pissed Off Drug Dealer”
Permanent link to “The Acorn”
Permanent link to “Talking to non-cyclists”
Permanent link to “Driving While Blind”
Permanent link to “Reflection of Stowe”
Permanent link to “Otter Creek Copper Ale”
Permanent link to “Viva la France”
Permanent link to “Purple Wildflowers”
Permanent link to “Sierra Nevada Summerfest”
Vermont

So I went to Vermont on vacation in August and finally sorted out the pictures and got them online. A wonderful time was had by all and we would definitely consider going there again. Hell, I'd move there if I could. We stayed the first night at the Manchester Highlands Inn which was a delightfully cozy small inn. The second day we stopped at French Hollow Alpacas, a working alpaca ranch where we were allowed to wander among them and feed these beautiful docile creatures. After that we stopped at Taylor Farm in Londonderry before continuing on to Stowe. We spent the remainder of the week in Stowe at the Green Mountain Inn. I really can't say enough good things about what a fantastic place to stay that the Green Mountain Inn is. We spent most of our time here just relaxing and mulling around the surrounding area. Some of the other highlight were going to Mecca, er Ben & Jerry's, Rock Art Brewery where I snagged a pint glass and a 12-pack to bring home, Magic Hat Brewing…

Permanent link to “Vermont”

September 2007

Permanent link to “Niagara International Kite Festival (2007)”
Permanent link to “Inflatable Humor”
Permanent link to “Above A Butterfly”
Permanent link to “Ayinger Ur-Weisse”
PolarBlog V1.10.1…

PolarBlog V1.10.1 has been released. This is primarily a minor security update, bug fix and spam reduction release. Enhancements Added support for auto blocking of Akismet flagged messages. Added additional protection against comment spam. New configuration directive RBL_AKISMET_AUTODEL. Bug Fixes Prevent hacking of input variables to eliviate potential path disclosures. Prevent hacking of session cookie to eliviate potential path disclosures. Read more about these two changes in the PolarBlog Potential Path Disclosure entry. User IP detection could return a comma delimited list of addresses instead of just one. RSS feed not updating when multiple entires entered with the TTL. Entries in deleted topic cause fatal errors. Configuration Changes Added RBL_AKISMET_AUTODEL New Language Tags None See the PolarBlog Changes file for more information. Please see the PolarBlog Upgrading documentation for information on upgrading your installation.

Permanent link to “PolarBlog V1.10.1 Released”
Permanent link to “Southern Tier Hop Sun”
Carvings For A Cause

So as some of you may recall, we had an early surprise October Snowstorm last year. The biggest lasting effect from this freak storm was the massive damage to thousands of trees around the area. Unfortunately many of these trees —some of the oldest in the area, have had to be cut down because the damage is so extensive that they cannot be saved. Many areas that were very heavily treed are new virtually treeless. So besides generating a lot of mulch from ground up limbs and branches, there were also a lot of very large tree trunks. Fortunately some of them have found a new life thanks to Carvings For A Cause, an effort to help support Re-TreeWNY. The basic idea is to raise money to plant some new trees to replace the old ones. So from the sad ruins of thousands of destroyed trees comes something wonderful. Currently a few of these are located at the Erie Basin Marina just outside my office. Thus here is, what these start out as…

Permanent link to “Carvings For A Cause”
Permanent link to “Long Trail Hefeweizen”
Permanent link to “Above Chippewa St. (panorama)”
Permanent link to “Long Trail Ale”
Permanent link to “Stream Under Rail Bridge”
Dropping the Spam

As of today I've changed the configuration of my blog to drop all trackbacks and comments that are flagged as spam by the RBL system. Since adding the RBL feature I've had it setup to save it, but not display it. Being I really don't get that many comments (i.e. I'm talking to myself!) I routinely have to delete a bunch of spam comments that are never displayed. So if you have a legitimate comment and you get blocked, sorry. You can contact me and I can make sure you're whitelisted in the RBL. If you want to quickly check if you OK or not, just comment on this entry. As a side note, if you're a PolarBlog user, the next update that should be out soon (?) has additional comment spam protection.

Permanent link to “Dropping the Spam”
In a Van Down by…

A couple of days ago I came across In a Van Down by the River via Boing Boing. I've added this to my blogroll as I think this might be quite an interesting adventure. That is, assuming that they actually follow through with doing it. The premise being they are selling off and/or storing most of their worldly possessions and hitting the road in a van. Go check it out.

Permanent link to “In a Van Down by the River”
Permanent link to “Magic Hat Circus Boy”
Permanent link to “Long Trail Blackbeary Wheat”

August 2007

Permanent link to “Smuttynose Robust Porter”
Permanent link to “Iced Trees”
PolarLava CycleLog…

This update adds the additional data points that are now collected by my new Blackburn Delphi 6.0 cyclocomputer. That being, average and maximum cadence and heart rate as well as the total number of feet climbed on a ride. I've also added some units to the ride display pages (i.e. mph, rpm, ft, etc.) as these previously weren't there. There was a so a bug in the CycleLog Calendar where by multiple weekly summaries were being displayed under various circumstances. Thus the weekly summaries now display a single entry for each week as it should.

Permanent link to “PolarLava CycleLog V2.4.3”
Permanent link to “Leffe Blonde”
Permanent link to “Negra Modelo”
Permanent link to “Meltdown”
In A Jar On A Shelf

In A Jar On A Shelf Where are you now? How's your day been? I saw you in the crowd But I…I didn't get a chance then And I don't know if now is right It's about the other night I was on the run (gotta get that job done) If Only then I could have the knowledge spent To find out who you are…now is then Just if I knew so far back then If only I knew what was right It comes and goes Go to every picture show I t was so different then Rembemer the time we spent? Bt only tomorrow hos what will be foretold 8/28/1983

Permanent link to “In A Jar On A Shelf”
Blackburn Delphi 6.0

Over the past year I've been trying to find a new heart rate monitor. My current one —an older Nashbar model, is well used and abused. The elastic strap had very little stretch left and the straps on the wristwatch unit have long since disappeared. I kept trying to find a unit I could live with, but so many of then now auto-calculate a single target zone without the ability to override it. I even ordered one almost a year ago, but after getting it found that it too was not adjustable. Apparently my needs and desires are not typical. For starters I wanted one with at least 3 zones that it records the time for and would like a forth zone. And most of then now have an average heart rate feature, something my current unit lacked and that I desired. So the quest continued… A few weeks back I headed out one morning and after about a half mile realized my cyclocomputer —an Avocet 45tt, wasn't registering a speed. Not terribly uncommon as sometime the sensor needs an adjustment or…

Permanent link to “Blackburn Delphi 6.0”
Permanent link to “Old Lockport Rail Bridge”
Permanent link to “Einbecker Mai-Ur-Bock”
Permanent link to “My Software Certification”
Permanent link to “Mommy Wants Your Sled”

July 2007

Permanent link to “Up The Canal (S. Lockport)”
Permanent link to “Down The Canal (S. Lockport)”
Permanent link to “Franziskaner Hefe-Weisse”
A Century at Last

So this past Sunday I finally, finally rode another century. (For those not familiar with the cycling term, that's 100 miles.) I can't believe that it's been over nine years since I last rode that far. This makes me sad. But hopefully if things keep progressing I'll eventually do at least one and hopefully two more this season. And I still haven't given up hope of eclipsing my longest ride ever and actually doing a double century. In any case, I'm have a fabulous cycling season and loving every minute of it. I'm currently on pace to top my previous yearly mileage total of 3,173 miles in 1997. I'm currently about 25% beyond where I was at this time that year. If that holds true this would put me at nearly 4000 miles for the year. I might just have a new goal at hand… :)

Permanent link to “A Century at Last”
Permanent link to “Great Lakes Holy Moses White Ale”
Back Stabbing

Back Stabbing I've told yo a thousand times Not to play any games You're messin' with dynamite It explodes in your face You're screwing with my life Someday you will pay You got my mind paralyzed I won't take your disgrace Now you're just buying time The dominoes are placed And you're setting me up Just to tear me down One of these days I'll turn it around (to you) 'Cause your taxes are due And now it's my turn to screw you You've played your every part Right up to the cue You're pulling my mind apart Insaniity looms I'm sick of your silly games My turn to reverse the play Just you wait for the day Back stabbing in your face You're such a disgrace. 8/16/1983

Permanent link to “Back Stabbing”
Lines (Three…

Lines (Three Different Kinds) Following the lines on the road The yellow one tells you where to go White lines on the side say you're out of bounds These are the lines your car ought to know Little mounds of fluffy white snow Cut across the glass, a Hollywood show The're a hundred miles long These are the lines you put up your nose Really like a crack You look into a mirror Thes are the lines we feared would appear DIfferent types of lines Day to day life Got to be careful They are all of a dangerous type Here they are The lines Three different kinds 7/6/1983

Permanent link to “Lines (Three Different Kinds)”
PolarLava CycleLog…

I've made some additional display changes to the CycleLog Calendar. This consisted of fixing the ride entries to display using the same fonts as the weekly summaries. For months that have no rides on a particular day of the week, when displayed in low resolution or in a narrow view, the day would get squeezed to a narrow size. A spacer in now placed in one of those empty days of the month that is not used to maintain the cell width. From the previous PolarLava CycleLog V2.4.1 update, I fixed a stray table row that was causing the XHTML validation to fail. Not specific to the CycleLog, but more of a site wide issue, I've fixed a Google Analytics javascript loading problem that would cause errors to appear in some versions of IE. Some day I wonder if I end up breaking more things that I actually fix. "Good grief, Charlie Brown."

Permanent link to “PolarLava CycleLog V2.4.2”
Permanent link to “Irish Road Barn (B & W)”
Permanent link to “Budweiser Budvar (Czechvar) 12°”
Permanent link to “Irish Road Barn”
Permanent link to “Menabrea 1846”
Permanent link to “Sexy Carrot”
Permanent link to “Effluent”
Zero

Zero I'm asking you Do you take life light? Do you live the way you like? Nothing really changes I grow older by the day Seems that nothing gets accomplished I'm standing in one place Frozen like a lake Will progress come with change? I can't take standing in one place Wanna get out of this state If only for a little while It's the same, morning to night Just stand your bitter trial Take what's coming just like a little child I could stand up and scream But it would still be the same A futile attempt to erase the dreams It's behind me, surrounds me, all around me Unknown destiny So afraid of what it might be Will I float on the top or drown in its sea? Can only tell when the futures released When will its lifeblood pump through me? 7/6/1983

Permanent link to “Zero”
Permanent link to “Victory Golden Monkey”
Twit Script out of…

So as part of the fixing the Twitter ate my Blog! problem, I rewrote the script that handles this task to reliable deal with a weeks worth of data. The problem being, Twitter only gives you the last 20 posts in the RSS feed. Thus if you twit more that that amount in a week (which is very easy to do), the bulk of them would be missing. This was a concern from the start, but when I was handling them daily I felt it was unlikely that I would post more than that on a daily basis. Anyhow, I rewrote it such that it now stores all of the posts for the week until they are posted to the blog. A simple enough solution. So the first week it ran well except some of the entries were not in chronological order. Thus I had to modify it to keep better track of the date and time so I could maintain the order. Again, a simple fix. But in sorting this list of data I failed to keep track of the original array key. Thus the sorting process made a huge mess by posting multiple, multiple copies of…

Permanent link to “Twit Script out of Control”
Permanent link to “Fun with Radiation”
Permanent link to “Chimay Bleue Grande Reserve”
LinkedIn Or…

I came across Avoiding Walled Gardens on the Internet yesterday and his comments struck a chord with me. Not so much for his reasons —although I do agree somewhat with them, but more so that "I don't get it." I've been getting lots of invites on LinkedIn and I typically accept them if I know you. But that's all I've ever done on on LinkedIn. I really don't see a need for it. Heck, I'm not even sure how I got an account there! I'm guessing somebody sent me an invite, so I signed up. Maybe someday I may need a job and it will prove useful. But for the most part I don't see it really being of any real use to me. If I need to network for a job there's plenty of people who I speak to regularly that would help me out. Plus anyone of the countless headhunters that call or email me regularly surely would be happy to help me in my quest…which I'm certainly not up for at this time because I like my job. Am I missing something here? I'm quite happy being LinkedOut.

Permanent link to “LinkedIn Or LinkedOut?”
Permanent link to “Great Lakes Burning River Pale Ale”

June 2007

Software…

I was reading something earlier today about software development and it linked to this article on The Next Big Thing in software development. This is a couple of years old, but it's still very relevant today. Having worked for both big and small software organizations, I can tell you that regardless of size, all of them are capable of churning out some pretty shitty work. As this article points out, "What other industry ships the kind of crap to their customers that we so regularly do?". Welcome to the truth ladies and gentlemen. I know this firsthand from my projects. There are times when I wonder if I'm nothing more than a one-man open source wrecking machine! ;) But I've seen the silly mistakes I've made happen to much larger groups than my group of one. Groups that have dozens of developers , QA people and even user (customer) acceptance testing! It's pretty astounding that regardless, sloppy things slip through. The only real answer —as the article states, it…

Permanent link to “Software Craftsmanship”
Permanent link to “The Duck Armada”
EULA's Are Pointless

I came across this yesterday and have to agree, Does Anyone Actually Read Software EULAs? I know I don't and I'm guessing you don't either. Personally I find them rather pointless as regardless of what you put in there, I'm going to do what I'm going to do. If your EULA says I can criticize your product publically and your product sucks, guess what? I don't care about your EULA and I'm going to tell anyone that listens that your product sucks and why I think so. You'll just have to get over it or sue me, OK? Companies feel compelled to fill these things with lots of silly bullshit. I know, you're just protecting your interests. So why can't we simplify this? You make your EULA's say we can't give copies of your proprietary product away to others and build the best product you can. We the slugs that use it will agree not to pirate your wares and provide feedback to you on what's right and wrong with it. In turn you'll use this information to make your product better and we'll…

Permanent link to “EULA's Are Pointless”
Die Salt Lake City…

Well, if it's not a joke it should be. Apparently out in socially progressive Salt Lake City, UT there's a group that calls itself the "Citizens for Decent Public Attire" (CDPA) that wants to ban bicycle short. And from this article it appears there is legislation pending to do just that. Spare me. Maybe if these slugs actually got on a bike and rode further than to the coroner coffee shop they might actually see the point in bike shorts. The're a functional requirement if you're going to ride more than a couple of casual miles folks. And if you find them offensive, look the other way. They're not terribly revealing and if anything look pretty goofy when you're not on a bike. Thus the ones who should be concerned would be those who need to ride more and spend less time eating doughnuts. SO CDPA, why don't you refocus your outrage on truly indecent revealing clothing if you're really that concerned. You people really need to get a life. Hey, maybe you need a…

Permanent link to “Die Salt Lake City CDPA!”
Sushi

This is sort of quick two for one entry… I ran across this very interesting If You Knew Sushi article a couple of days ago. If you have anything more than a casual interest in sushi you'll likely find this to be a very interesting (and very long) article. And from the article, it makes me really want a copy of The Sushi Economy: Globalization and the Making of a Modern Delicacy…you should buy this for me…and/or something else from my Amazon Wish List. ;) And on a sushi related note, my wife and I went to dinner last weekend at the very good Japanese restaurant Wasabi in Williamsville. Prices are reasonable and the food was fantastic. Check it out if you're in the mood.

Permanent link to “Sushi”
Twitter ate my Blog!

So as you've likely seem over the past several weeks, I had been using Twitter quite a bit since signing up. And one of the things I did in conjunction with that was write a little script to archive my Twittering to my blog. Unfortunately, that's all that has been on my blog of late. I've been rather busy with work, home and riding my bike like crazy. Thus I've not been spending much time blogging. What time I've had has been spent working on fixing various things as well as a recent and fairly urgent bug fix for MyClient. So now what? Well, I'm going to try to get back to the blogging a bit. Honestly though, with the weather being wonderful right now, I prefer to spend as much time outside as I can. But to alleviate Twitter from killing my blog any further, I've rewritten the archive script such that it will now (hopefully) archive things a week at a time. And if still is too much, I'll back it off to a month. And if at that point I still don't like the percentage of…

Permanent link to “Twitter ate my Blog!”
MyClient V3.1.4…

MyClient V3.1.4 has been released. This is strictly a bug fix release so you only need to update your files. There are no configuration changes to be made. Enhancements None Bug Fixes Saving queries or query results via download includes the interface HTML after the data. Configuration Changes None New Language Tags None See the MyClient History file for more information. Please see the MyClient Upgrading documentation for information on upgrading your installation.

Permanent link to “MyClient V3.1.4 Released”
PolarLava CycleLog…

I've made a few display changes to the CycleLog Calendar. A while back I had update the summary displays to colorize the results and adjusted the fonts. I've now done similarly to the calendar which was kind in a rather confusing and sad state. I've updated the font, added the ride location (Indoor/Outdoor), colorize the text based on that and changed the entry and summary background colors. So this much needed improvement seems reasonable for now, but I may need to tweak it a bit in the coming days. Another item I will likely need to address is entries for "today". Right now I'm guessing those might still be a bit wacky. I need to wait until I have a ride and time to fix the display for today though. Otherwise it's just a guessing game.

Permanent link to “PolarLava CycleLog V2.4.1”
Permanent link to “Butterfly Above Flower”
Permanent link to “Rail Bridge Over Canal”
Permanent link to “Cardinal on the Feeder”
Permanent link to “Great Lakes Dortmunder Gold”

May 2007

Permanent link to “Erie Canal Floodgate”
Permanent link to “Sailing Past a Tree”
Permanent link to “Blue Sail in the Sun”
Permanent link to “Samuel Adams Old Fezziwig Ale”
Permanent link to “Goose Island Oatmeal Stout”
Permanent link to “Chainsaw Suicide”
PolarBlog Potential…

Yesterday a friend at work found that he could force a path disclosure leak on some sites running PolarBlog (and many other application also I would think). This does not pose a danger to your PolarBlog installation, but can provide information which might be helpful if someone were to find a way into your site via a different application. The quickest and easiest way to prevent this from occurring is to stop PHP from displaying errors to the screen and saving them to a log file instead. This is a very good standard security practice that I've followed for a very long time, and you should too. If you are running your own server and have access to your php.ini file you likely either are already doing this or should easily be able to make the appropriate changes there. But most people run in a shared hosting environment and will need to do this via a .htaccess file. Information for how to do this has long been in the PolarBlog documentation. It is highly recommended that you read…

Permanent link to “PolarBlog Potential Path Disclosure”
Permanent link to “Samuel Adams Cranberry Lambic”
Twitteresce

So late yesterday I came across Twitteresce, a Java app for your phone that allows you to access Twitter. It's simple, it's easy and it seems to work. In a quick test yesterday I was able to access the Twitter Public Timeline, my feed as well as post a quick message. All of this is via HTTP and not SMS so there are no messaging charges…which works for me as I have a data package on my phone, but it doesn't include SMS message. Not sure how SMS is not "data" other than it's just a way for them to charge you $0.15 per message. Scam anyone? But that's an entirely different story and not the point of this post… Anyhow, this now gives me a viable option to use Twitter via my phone that previously I didn't have. Will I use it? Time will tell. I've continued to us it from my PC, but in the past week my posts have declined in frequency although there are other factor involved also. One other thing that I have done though is to modify my CycleLog so that it posts ride…

Permanent link to “Twitteresce”

April 2007

25,000 Miles

So this morning's 35.60 mile ride puts me over 25,000 miles —25,031.23 to be exact, since I started keeping a cycling log in 1995. At the same time this also puts me over 20,000 miles riding outdoors. It was in July of 2004 that I hit 20,000 Miles and predicted that I would hit 25K at the end of 2006. I've ridden a lot indoors this year or I would have likely been far closer to being off by a half-a-year otherwise. But looking back, now is about right as I've been pretty much averaging 2,000 mile per year of late. I'm hoping to be more in the 3,000 range this year, but we'll see. So 2K per year should put 30K on the calendar somewhere around early 2009 if I can work on increasing my yearly mileage…which —as I mentioned, is something I hope to do this year.

Permanent link to “25,000 Miles”
Permanent link to “Bye Bye PolarBlog Users Page”
Permanent link to “Blue & White Stripped Sail (2)”
Permanent link to “Blue & White Stripped Sail (1)”
Ameritopia: Mission…

Once again our government has saved us from dangerous, drug addled Canadians! Living only minutes from the border this comes as a great relieve to me. I spend many a night lying awake worrying that my government could allow such miscreants to wander our holier than thou streets. After all, this guy obviously is a major risk to our security. And do you realize he's been in our country many times before? gasp Good thing they caught him before he could come in again and do something terrible like hug his grandchildren who live here. Actually, maybe we should deport them as well. We should all be relieved that this villain was stopped in time. After all, we must "think of the children"! Congratulations America, we are now only mere steps away from completing our wondrous totalitarian utopia. Now we must spread "the faith" and convert the other "evil-doers" in places like Iran. Shouldn't be that big of deal being we are in the neighborhood and just…

Permanent link to “Ameritopia: Mission Accomplished”
Permanent link to “Don't mess with crocs”
Permanent link to “Hibiscus”
Permanent link to “Great Lakes Eliot Ness”
New Pedals and…

So being a cycling junkie, it's always fun to get new toys. But these days my cycling budget is generally limited to a splurge or two a year. Last year it was my new wheels so this year I've opted for new shoes. My current pair of shoes -Shimano's, are about 8 years old and were purchased new at swap meet. They've been pretty good, but it was time for something new and better. And being I was going to switch shoes, it was a good time to swap out my pedals. I'm currently using Shimano SPD pedals that I got with my bike. These weren't on the bike until I got the Shimano shoes which were compatible with the SPD cleats. They were and upgrade, but I always like the entry level Time pedals I started with when I went to clipless pedals on my LeTour many years ago. And those "cheap" pedals? The have actually made there way back to the LeTour and are what I use when riding it…primarily indoors these days. So on to the new and exciting stuff. I'm big on buying closeout…

Permanent link to “New Pedals and Shoes!”
Permanent link to “Red Dianthus”
Permanent link to “Echinacea”
When The Big…

When The Big Numbers Run When the big numbers run The catman dreams… "He turned on to, too much to soon You'll never see blue skies It's your final frontier Your time is here" When the big numbers run You have to stay on top When your runnin' hot You know you're not gonna stop! And all the things that you know Well they start taking their toll And you know that it's time to go You're at your wits end No time to pretend The big numbers grow And on they go When the big numbers run 6/14/1983

Permanent link to “When The Big Numbers Run”
Hold On

Hold On Hey, will you remember me? We've been good friends since about `73 You'll make it big, better than me We read about you in books and magazines Just one thing on which you must agree Our generation has no concept of reality At least not without drugs and TV screens You, "The Beaver" and me Look at the cloud, the trees Reflecting the years when life was easy Not a care to be seen What does the future hold for me? Take it as it is, take it as it comes It's more than just surviving Answers will be told To the questions that we hold No one said it's easy to believe So hold on to your dreams Hold on to your friends They will be with you When you reach your wits end 6/1/1983

Permanent link to “Hold On”
Permanent link to “The Sake Factory”
Permanent link to “Earthquake”
If You Don't Get It…

If You Don't Get It Together I know I told you before And I've known that you wouldn't listen So listen now friend…while you still can If you don't get it together I'm gonna bust your head! And you don't know the feeling That you're leaving behind No you don't! Just got to learn the way it is, no way out You take the good with the bad Even if it doesn't fit your your plans 'Cause If you don't get it together I'm gonna bust your head Bust your head And… Only a fool plays out his hand Before it's time to cash them in Bu you don't know better You throw them away And it's all because you never read the rules No you've pushed my too far and it's over… 4/29/1983

Permanent link to “If You Don't Get It Together”
Permanent link to “Crocus Group”
Permanent link to “Elks Lodge 860”
Permanent link to “Flowering Cactus”
Permanent link to “Summit Great Northern Porter”
PolarLava Project…

Being that I haven't been getting any serious development work done on any of my main projects lately, I thought I'd try to do a rundown of what the future holds for each of them… CycleLog Part of me would like to expand the CycleLog to support multiple riders and package it for release. Of all my projects this one is probably the most unique and might be of use to someone else as there are few alternatives available. But alas I already have too many projects going on to keep up with thus I've resisted the temptation. Besides, it meets my needs and I keep adding feature each year that interest me. Maybe someday. For now I'll have to be happy with the updates done in January. The next additions likely will be a bike maintenance log and ideally some ride results graphing. Again, someday. MyClient A bug fix release for MyClient was issued in January. The plan is still to eventually add support for simultaneous connections to PostgreSQL databases along with MySQL. Not sure when…

Permanent link to “PolarLava Project Roadmap”
Permanent link to “Fullers ESB”
Midnight Scene…

Midnight Scene (What can it be?) Flash of light shines so bright In the dark of night On the way home you sight This strange streak of white What can it be? What can it be? This midnight scene In the fog of a summer eve Don't think I'm crazy It's the same from my passenger's seat Asked if I was what he'd seen — I just had to agree What can it be? This midnight scene Seems so strange to me Just that plain streak of light Shining bright In this midnight scene Don't ask me Oh! What can it be? 4/25/1982

Permanent link to “Midnight Scene (What can it be?)”
Brian's Theme

Brian's Theme The chicken breeder and the sucking wound from New Jersey Surrounded by sine waves Severe brain decay And no escape from a poor education Flippin' chicken Got him infected with this Sucking wound (oooh, ah, oooh, ooh) Ah! From New Jersey (Atlantic City baby!) Eating all the garbage Feeding the disease What is the meaning Of this superficial allergy Anybody listening that can cure him of this misfortune Should call —Toll Free! And donate your time to help this poor man Regain his sanity "Drop Dead" "Tickle his throat with a plastic spork, then seal him with Wisconsin cabbage." 4/25/1983

Permanent link to “Brian's Theme”
To Twitter or Not…

It's been about a couple of weeks now that I signed up for a Twitter account. And only this morning was the first time I posted to it. If you're plugged into Tech to any great degree you quite likely have already heard about Twitter. It's the hottest new thing on the web these days. It's another of those cases like Facebook or the god awful MySpace. Something that has come out of nowhere and is destined to make somebody a shit load cash when they get bought up. In short, just another example that make you go "Damn, why didn't I think of that?" So for me it's more of a matter of whether it's something that I can utilize to complement my blog. After all, Twitter really is simply a micro-blog that allows you to spit out random thoughts quickly. And you can do so via SMS (not that I would even if it didn't cost $0.15 a pop), a web interface and theoretically IM…although to this point I've been unable to get that to work. But if I do that might make this workable for me…

Permanent link to “To Twitter or Not to Twitter”

March 2007

Status Update: A…

So, as you may have noticed, I haven't been posing much lately. It's certainly not for a lack of wanting too. Even when I am posting often I come across things I would like to comment on, but simply don't have the time to do so. I may have an answer to that, but I'll cover that possibility in a separate post as that's not really what this post is about… I've become rather busy with work again which in turn tends to cut into my personal life and time. This tends to also lead to a bit of computer burnout so I generally feel less inclined to work on my personal projects. Thus why Yapter hasn't seen much activity of late; that and I ran into a problem that was stumping me. So as a diversion I managed to package up my weather project and get it released as I had been planning on for quite some time. So in the end I guess that's sort of a lose/win situation as at least something worthwhile got done. My family life has also required a good deal of attention in the past couple of…

Permanent link to “Status Update: A long couple of months”
Permanent link to “Ommegang Hennepin”
Permanent link to “PolarLava Weather V1.0.2 Released”
Permanent link to “50 States in a Week's Vacation”
Gumby's Going Online

I just read over at TechCrunch that Gumby's going online! I loved watching Gumby as a kid and later when I was working a night shift factory job while I ate breakfast/dinner in the morning. Hell, I still love watching it! A number of years ago my brother bought me a Gumby and Pokey for Christmas…you can see it sitting on my office window sill. This is truly the bestest. :)

Permanent link to “Gumby's Going Online”
Permanent link to “Magic Hat Jinx”
Permanent link to “What Did You Say?”
Permanent link to “Likeable”
Permanent link to “Trampled”
All The Things That…

All The Things That You Do I really don't know, what I'm supposed to do It never before appeared to be so Buti it's true —It's all the things that you do You've got a hold, got a hold on me Steal the show, capturing me And you don't really see… All the things you do —to me Said hey! What's the story? You got me tied up in knots And feeling like exploding Now I'm taking my time, I'm waiting in line Te me the words, does it fit poorly? Oh! All the things that you do I'm waiting for you to inform me… 10/7/1982

Permanent link to “All The Things That You Do”
Permanent link to “Summit Extra Special Bitter”

February 2007

Buffalo Main Street…

That's would be the name of the lovely framed and matted black and white photo that my coworker(/friend?) Allan just delivered to me a short while ago. I believe he's just trying to grease the code review wheels for his work, but hey I'm alright with that! ;) Allan is an avid (rabid?) photographer and you can see more of his work on his photoblog. All I could say was "Wow, thank you Allan." —3/1/2007— And here's a bad phone camera picture of it hanging on my office wall:

Permanent link to “Buffalo Main Street Archway”
Permanent link to “Uptight”
Lost Dog

Lost Dog Feelings moaning, people phoning Going home? Please. Eating plastic meals on trays Scrape your face on street pavement Chasing planes of existence Fee the dog, he's getting lonely No one's there, scratching doors Paws are bleeding, going crazy Tears in his eyes, laying on the floor This poor dog's about to die Being told how, never sure now Having trouble? Playing for keeps. What's the news then? You will see. Will it be long? Keeping you guessing. Won't you show me? The animal's growing. Magnetism showing Are you changing? To for the best. 9/27/1982

Permanent link to “Lost Dog”
Permanent link to “Strange Individuals #2”
Permanent link to “Go Fly a Kite”
Permanent link to “Victory Storm King Imperial Stout”
Permanent link to “The Beer Launcher”
Finally! Yapter…

So after clearing numerous other things off my plate and avoiding being derailed to work on Papendick.us, I've finally started work on the Yapter templating engine. Nothing too exciting yet, but I have done the first round of code cleanup and internal documentation. But before this sees the light of day I have a number things I'd like to do… Fix the error reporting so it doesn't spew errors to the screen unless you want it too. Debug and hopefully fix a couple of reported bugs. Add the ability to parse included templates. (Currently it only allows static content in includes.) Build out the new project homepage. Rewrite the tutorial/example/documentation. Likely many other things I haven't thought of. If there is something you would like to see happen with this project, a bug you know of, etc. please contact me and I'll add it to the TODO list.

Permanent link to “Finally! Yapter Development”
Permanent link to “The Stick of Pain”
Ice Fishing 2007

So I trekked off to Michigan last Friday to go sit on a frozen lake and freeze my ass off. Which is probably the best assessment of my trip being we all got shutout again this year. I've got some pictures, but not as many as last year. Less putzing around with the camera this time as it was cold, windy and somewhat snowy. In any case I'll post them when I get a chance.

Permanent link to “Ice Fishing 2007”
Dannielynn is my…

Yep, it's true. Anna Nicole's baby was fathered by me. I'd first like to apologize to my wife and family for this embarrassing event. But I'd also like to thank you for sticking by me in these difficult days…what's that? You're leaving? What do you mean I'm leaving? But honey… Hey what the heck, I figured I got nothing to lose by throwing my hat in to this great lottery sweepstakes!

Permanent link to “Dannielynn is my baby!”
Permanent link to “Harpoon UFO Hefeweizen”
Permanent link to “Long Trail Unfiltered IPA”
jpcache Single Page…

A long time ago I sent a version of this single page flush modification to Jean-Pierre Deckers the author of jpcache. He replied that he would incorporate this change in a future version. Unfortunately this project has not been updated in a very long time. Thus I've opted to release this modification directly. At the time I sent this to JP, he had a concern regarding the flush value being fixed for all installations. That issue has been corrected in this modification. So what does it do? If you use jpcache, you likely know one of the downsides is when you update a page, your changes won't be seen until the cache expires. That might be alright in some cases, but what if you want it flushed immediately or worse, what if it's a non-expiring page? Enter the single page flush. The single page flush option allows you to pass a GET parameter (?flush=1 by default) to a cached page which then forces it to be flushed from the cache immediately and allows a modified page to be quickly…

Permanent link to “jpcache Single Page Flush Mod”
PolarBlog V1.10.0…

PolarBlog V1.10.0 has been released. This release provides additional comment and trackback spam protection and miscellaneous bug fixes. Enhancements Added support for Akismet via PHP5Akismet. This requires a WordPress.com API key and will only work if you are running PHP5. More information regarding this feature can be found in the Akismet for PolarBlog entry. Added support for autolinking to topics in entries via "[T:tid:optional link text]" format similar to which currently exists for entries or comments. Add RBL Admin table entry counts. Added session for all visits and IP logging within session. Bug Fixes Validation fails on some foreign characters in title, post_by and name. Stray "]" left after auto linking text on every 4th autolink in an entry. When using only images for prev/next, they are locked to 16x16. Change RBL IP lookup to robtex.com because samspade.org disappeared! Sometimes the session cookie appears to not set and actions…

Permanent link to “PolarBlog V1.10.0 (Wolverine)”
Permanent link to “The Office Gecko”
Technology

Technology Perfect isolation is where study forms Paperclips bent in shape stand alone Standing high upon the land plateau Pointing down to the rocks below, below, below… Below the water on the ocean floor Build a lab wher3 ideas can form A place where little microchips are born Can you build a world, a world of… Technology A world run by electricity Technology Governed by the people who gave us trees 3/16/1983

Permanent link to “Technology”
The Days of the Week

The Days of the Week Here we go the beginning of the week It's only Monday and I'm ready to sleep Starts so fast but it really is slow You know the story and how it goes "Like the things you keep and throw away later." There' something about the days of the week Take them in they bore you to sleep Keep on chugging them piece by piece "It's just so, so…It's so…" What is it you say, when you can't find a way? A way to explain —words can't convey Enough of this silliness of talking to the walls Waiting for the paint blisters to answer your calls They're thinking "My what strange ranger he is." If the even think at all, about the world they're in There is something about the days of the week Nothing for real to believe 3/14/1983

Permanent link to “The Days of the Week”
Waiting Time

Waiting Time Carrier ship with bus wheels Moving motion, loading phonies Ghetto bound, vegetable love Lines now forming at the curb Waiting time, dancing fools Went out for snowing Spent minds corroding Numbed upstairs The day is boring No laughs, just doorways What to do? Who really cares? Suns exploding, planets forming Culture erroding, machines controlling Timex quit ticking, any significance? 3/4/1983

Permanent link to “Waiting Time”
Repeat

Repeat I'll see you, see you in the summertime And I will be riding, riding in the sunshine To see you smiling when I arrive Stargazed blue eyes mirrored in mine Reach out and touch me, let me know that I am here It's the moment, static fills the air Move in closer or turn the day to grey Can you feel it, is there still something there? Let you lips say hello or goodbye I can't say, so what's your emotions? Are they…tongue tied with hate or fear? Or love lost…up in the air Last time, got nearer to you Remember the last time we were alone? Moving slowly, I had to go Didn't want to leave you, it just felt right The will come, sun sets us free What do you say? I say I'll see you, you, you, you, you —Repeat 2/16/1983

Permanent link to “Repeat”
Permanent link to “Ellicottville Two Brothers Pale Ale”

January 2007

Papendick.us

For some unknown reason I was looking up random domain names when I came across something interesting. The Papendick.us domain was still available. I guess I knew this as I've looked up numerous Papendick domains in the past. Apparently today was the day that it became important for me as I now own it! Nothing too exciting at this point as it's currently parked to the PolarLava site. Maybe at some point I'll do something useful with it. —2/5/2007— OK, it's no longer parked here. But then again, it's still nothing special. Over the weekend I built it into its own site, that is basically a clone of my wife's site. I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with it, although I have considered splitting off the personal aspects of this site and putting them there. —10/23/2007— Part of me still wants to split my site, but I just don't have the time to dedicate to it as I have a lot of other things I'd also like to do. So it's either going to expire and get gobbled up by a squatter…

Permanent link to “Papendick.us”
Permanent link to “My Life As An RSS Junkie”
MyClient V3.1.3…

MyClient V3.1.3 has been released. This is strictly a bug fix release so you only need to update your files. There are not configuration changes to be made. Enhancements None Bug Fixes Saving query results in any manner now functions. HTML entities in the query window are now properly handled on page reload. Two new language strings were added for text translations that were previously missed. Database class files have been updated with several miscellaneous bug fixes. Configuration Changes None New Language Tags These new tags that have been added to the language files were machine translated —with the exception of the Japanese files. If you are utilizing a language other than English, your feedback and corrections are most welcome. (kevinp ~AT~ polarlava.com) ERROR_O_NOWRITE ERROR_O_NOSAVEFILE EMAIL_BODY_RESULTS See the MyClient History file for more information. Please see the MyClient Upgrading documentation for information on upgrading your…

Permanent link to “MyClient V3.1.3 Released”
Using TrueCrypt

For quite a while now I've been going to look into so way of encrypting the data I store on my USB Flash Drive. At one point I had looked at using GPG, but never really got very far with making easy and work able. Thus I did the appropriate thing and gave up. Earlier this week I came across a "data swiped from a flash drive horror story" which got me thinking about it again. So after a few minutes of searching I came up with TrueCrypt. After a couple of missteps I successfully configured "Traveller Mode" on my 256MB flash drive. At this point I have a 230MB encrypted drive with the remainder unencrypted. This allows space to store the application and also functions as some portable scratch space if I need it. Very easy, very convenient. Now all I need to do is buy a 1GB drive and life will be good. Then I will probably convert the 256MB back to an unencrypted scratch drive.

Permanent link to “Using TrueCrypt”
Permanent link to “Southern Tier Harvest Ale”
CSS Restructuring

I've pared down the base CSS file to no longer include the section specific (Cycling, Weather, etc.) CSS data. These sections now load the base file and a section specific CSS file. So pages that don't require the section specific CSS no longer download this unnecessary data. The net result being that things should be microscopically faster and less bandwidth will be utilized. It also makes managing the site layout a bit simpler.

Permanent link to “CSS Restructuring”
Permanent link to “The Mountain Goat”
Permanent link to “The Mole Killer”
PolarLava CycleLog…

A couple of slick changes —well at least I think they are slick, to the CycleLog. I've now added "Previous" and "Next" to the Latest Ride, Random Ride and Search when individual rides are displayed. Additionally these same pages now also include a "Other rides on this dateâ€¦" section if other rides are found on the same (month and) day. This is a handy way —again, for me anyway, to quickly find and compare rides at the same point in the season in previous years. Additional changes are also planned and this entry will be updated as appropriate when necessary. —— 1/13/07 Some dummy had this under the "Beer!" topic. ;) I've now changed the data display font to a fixed width font and data is now colorized. Blue=indoors, green=outdoors and red=total in most summary displays. On individual rides I've opted to use red. Probably not completely done playing with the layout/color/font thing, but it's pretty close I think. —— 1/21/07 I've finally…

Permanent link to “PolarLava CycleLog V2.4.0”
Accent? What accent?

Apparently I can't escape my Midwest upbringing! What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Inland North You may think you speak "Standard English straight out of the dictionary" but when you step away from the Great Lakes you get asked annoying questions like "Are you from Wisconsin?" or "Are you from Chicago?" Chances are you call carbonated drinks "pop."The Midland The Northeast Philadelphia The South The West Boston North Central What American accent do you have?Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Permanent link to “Accent? What accent?”
Permanent link to “Blue Point Toasted Lager”
Permanent link to “Baby, that's silly!”
Permanent link to “3 More Sailboats on Lake Ontario”
Permanent link to “3 Sailboats on Lake Ontario”
Akismet for…

In my continuing effort to battle (mostly trackback) spam, I've implemented Akismet spam blocking using PHP5Akismet. This is now running on this blog and will be in the next PolarBlog release as a configurable option. —2/7/2007— OK, Apparently I lied. PolarBlog hasn't really been on a serious hiatus as I've managed to do a few things in tandem the past few weeks. As such, I will be releasing PolarBlog V1.10.0 in the coming weeks. One of the key features is the additional spam blocking of Akismet in addition to the recently added RBL system. Since this addition and building up a reasonable RBL keyword block list, I get virtually no spam posted to the blog. There are two caveats to this new feature; 1) You must be running PHP5 and 2) You must sign-up with WordPress.com to get an API key. So if you meet the PHP5 qualification, want to get a head start and only intend to use it with PolarBlog, select the "Just a username, please." option. Additionally I've added another…

Permanent link to “Akismet for PolarBlog”
Mushroom Men and…

Mushroom Men and the Chemical Dream Walk on down, on down the street look Where you're at, what can it be? Mushroom men strapped into their seats Tell me where, you have reached "We have feet like roots of a tree,from the ground is where we feed." Organical seed, bassis for dreams C17H21C17NO4, nose bleed Shaking leaf to hold the ground Mushroom men and the chemical dream Mirror, mirror on the floor Don't look now there isn't no more Mushroom men you look kind of scared The broke mirror reflecting your fear 1/28/1983

Permanent link to “Mushroom Men and the Chemical Dream”
Permanent link to “The Bullet”
Insanity

Insanity The operator informs me "The number you have reachedâ€¦" Doesn't suprise me Try the other, I get your mother She informs me It's nothing important Coming home soon though It's OK talk to you then Talking to you Can I see you? Conflicting days, conflicting times Nice to talk Maybe next time Thinking later It's still there Like to touch you If only you were near Needn't be long, just sincere What's your feeling? Am I insane orâ€¦ If there's an answer let me know Captivation has begun to show 1/13/1983

Permanent link to “Insanity”
CanoScan 8600F

For Christmas my parents were kind enough to buy me the Canon CanoScanÂ® 8600F that I have been lusting after for several months now. Happy, Happy. Like most scanners, this thing will scan most anything. But its forte is scanning film and negatives. So what does this mean to you? It means at some point you'll get to gaze upon the glory of my early 90's permed mullet head via my collection of photos from Japan. But another bonus for you is that I'll be able to scan then late 60's magazine article where Hugh Downs advocates medical exploration of LSD. All this and more my friend.

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PolarBlog V1.9.1…

PolarBlog V1.9.1 has been released. The primary purpose of this release is to address some issues when performing a new installation and update some ambiguoities in the documentation. Enhancements Added prevention of deleting topic when there is only one defined. Updated documentation to better explain $config['blogs'] section. Limit search to 50 matches. Bug Fixes RBL keyword check occassionally throws warning while searching. Syntax error in config.php.dist due to missing comma!!! New installs fail under PHP5 because of no topics. Configuration Changes None See the PolarBlog Changes file for more information. Please see the PolarBlog Upgrading documentation for information on upgrading your installation.

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The Lava Lite

If you don't really know me it would probably be a safe bet to guess I'm somewhat addicted to Lava Lites. At least 20 years ago now, my older brother gave me his old lava lamp that he no longer wanted. It's a true classic, a Lava Lite Century with red lava in yellow liquid and a gold base. It pretty much looks like what used be on the front page of my site: Anyhow, he got it back in the early 70's and it had spent many years both in our shared bedroom and his dorm room at college. When he left for good he left it with me. I was thrilled because I had always liked it and wanted one of my own. So it has traveled with me through life and spent a good deal of time in a number of places I've lived. A few years back I took it to work because my wife denied it entry into the living room. (Her loss!) And so it has sat on my desk through several job changes over the past half dozen years. Life was good. But in my most recent (office, not job) move early last summer brought ill upon…

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