high school sucks.

Winter Break Recap

2008-01-24T23:31:00.000-08:00

Well, it seems to be that time again, when school starts back up for another semester. Classes begin on Monday, and I'm unsuccessfully trying to psych myself up for another 15 weeks of studying. It's going to be really difficult to go back to Chico. I have been living for the past few weeks since Christmas in San Francisco at my parent's beautiful new condo in Mission Bay. Every morning I pass three coffee shops on my four block walk to 6AHQ for work. Of course there was all this hooplah over the recent Macworld Conference at Moscone last week - again just three blocks from where I work. I've been able to walk or take public transit all over the city to go out for dinner or drinks. In fact, I find myself in the car just once or twice a week, and even then it's usually just to get out of town. Like today, I made the quick drive down to San Jose to check out the Photonics West conference where one of my former bosses had an exhibit. It seems as if everything I'm interested in is based right here in the city or very near. Yup, it will be a difficult transition back indeed. I almost feel spoiled (okay, besides the condo) being able to spend my 5 weeks off in the city working and playing. I would call San Francisco the Web capital of the nation right now - even more so than NY or Seattle or anywhere else. It seems as if all the cool conferences and companies are all focusing and starting around SF, and it makes for an exciting city right now! I feel as if going back to Chico is like chaining a huge weight back around my ankles in terms of halting the fast-paced lifestyle I've sort of been enjoying - but trying not to get too caught up in. But first things first, I guess. Gotta get that slip of paper, then I can do whatever I want, right?

da Vinci - The Robotic Surgeon

2008-01-07T21:02:00.000-08:00

Well, okay, it's not exactly a robotic surgeon, but with a real-life doctor at the helm it's certainly an incredible tool that makes for better surgeries. I'm talking about the da Vinci Surgical System that I was fortunate enough to check out at El Camino hospital in Mountain View last week. Without getting into too much geeky detail, it is basically a remote controlled robot with 4 arms (each with 7 degrees of freedom) that have interchangeable tools at the end of them. When a person goes in for surgery under da Vinci, instead of a seven or eight inch incision for a prostatectomy the patient receives five much smaller incisions that the arms of the robot can reach into to perform the same task. One of the robot's 8mm diameter arms is equipped with two high-intensity halogen lights fed through fiber optic lines, situated in between two more fiber optic cables that pipe to two high-definition video cameras. From this, the operator has stereo vision of what is going on inside the working area. The operator sits just ten feet away from the patient at the controls of da Vinci, and has control of two of the attached tools at a time by way of hyper-sensitive hand controls and a series of pedals. There is a VR-style headset the surgeon looks into while operating, giving a fully three-dimensional HD stereo view of what's going on. Of course I wasn't about to go performing surgery on anyone, so for my visit the very kind OR tech set up the practice tray for me to play with. It' essentially a miniature rubber playground with tiny rubber bands to play with. I was amazed at the engineering that went into this $1.7M robot - any old simpleton such as myself could sit down and pick it right up. Within a minute and a half I was maneuvering all over the tray, adjusting the camera, and expertly moving the little rubber pieces around. For such a large and involved machine, they had it simplified down to an understandable user interface. Basically, all this comes down to safer surgeries with much faster recovery times - some operations allow the patients to go home the same day of the surgery. Also, instead of having a large scar up the lower abdomen, patients are left with tiny incision marks that can completely heal in just a couple months. Ten years ago, it was a dream to think of a robot aiding in surgeries as da Vinci does several times a day at El Camino. It's hard to imagine what may be capable ten years from now - perhaps the human operator will be cut from the equation leaving just a computer controlling the robot, or perhaps something even more advanced that hasn't been thought up yet. Whatever it may be, it's technology like da Vinci that is enhancing people's lives today, and pushing against the boundaries of what is possible in the future.

Thoughts on �bergeek Immersion

2007-12-09T22:15:00.000-08:00

This post has been a long time in the making, both in my head, and now in type. Many people have written about this subject before, and certainly many people will after me, so this is just my take on things and from my point of view. Take is for what it�s worth. I suffer from what I have best seen defined as N.A.D.D. If you have not read this article, please do so now. (Command + Click the link) I�ll wait. That�s Rands� way of putting things, and it is what resonates most with me. It describes how I can�t sit still on a computer. There are a thousand different things I could be doing, therefore I must do all of them. And the only way to be remotely successful at doing everything is to multitask - do many things simultaneously. This behavior comes in many forms - I browse the mobile version of bloglines on my iPhone with the latest album blaring when I ride the bus for instance - but manifests itself most strikingly when I sit down with my computer at any given point. When I open my computer, I have e-mail, a feed reader, my IDE, tomorrow�s presentation, and at least a half-dozen browser tabs open on any range of completely different topics. I�m at the point where I read both Digg and Slashdot daily, peruse Engadget and TechCrunch and even Valleywag on occassion. I�m subscribed to over 100 feeds - all of which ping me when they�re updated. Not to mention AIM, which I�ve been known to live on for days at a time. It�s information overload. And more and more I�m finding out that none of it matters. Or, I should say, very little of it matters. I was tipped off with my trip to Seattle a few weekends ago. We left on Thursday night and didn�t return until the wee hours of the following Monday morning - a full 3 days away from home - and I didn�t take my laptop. I limited myself to just checking email on my friend�s iMac once per day, something most would consider �normal�. I wanted to see if the world would keep spinning if I left it alone for a few days. It did. When I returned, I had nearly a thousand unread items in my feed reader, pages of digg to catch up on, and scores of forum posts to read and comment on. It was overwhelming to say the least. What I did haunts me to this day: I pressed �mark all as read�. I didn�t open a single one of them. Nope, not a one. I went to class on Monday, as usual, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. I didn�t miss out on any random conversation before class, nor did anyone laugh at me for not knowing that Samsung�s new ZX-8000 had spy pictures leaked in Japan. I didn�t know that Kottke had posted linked a New York Times article about a restaurant owner being sued over his tomato soup and how ridiculous the world is. I had no idea. And I was strangely comfortable with it. I thought about it some, and checked a few things out. I realized that I have a choice in the world I live in. One is a world of A-List bloggers that keep up with the latest Web trends, already talk about Web 4.0, and link to each other with articles from other A-List bloggers until nobody remembers where shit came from anymore. There�s nothing bad about this all-digital world, and I would love to be in it if I had the time. But that�s the most precious resource to this group - time. If you aren�t in the first 10 comments, you might as well pack up and go home. If you link to something half a day late, you�re toast. If you think you have a scoop only to find out that Michael Arrington has had beta access for a month and a half, you fail. There�s something I found out about these people that live. This Lifestyle is their full time job. They literally get paid to live The Lifestyle. From Gruber to Kottke to Arrington to CmdrTaco, it�s the life they live, and we reap the benefits as consumers and they reap the benefits for doing us their respected service. I had the pleasure of spending some time with Anil �LOLCats and Goatse� Dash, who turned out to be an incredibly nice and down to earth guy, but he is just plugged in. He can�t get away from it, or he�d almost be doing a disservice to his cultish following. It sucks you in, this life does, and it�s incredibly hard to escape. Enter Me. I�m a 4th year (going on 5) Computer Science student who doesn�t really care about school more than just graduating and moving on. I�m not an A-List blogger, but I keep up with and read the best of them. I�ve been beta tester on some cool Web Two Dot Oh apps, and had a gmail invite before they hit eBay. My problem is that I don�t have a niche yet. I am a self-proclaimed Jack of All Trades, Master of None. I �sorta-kinda� know a lot of things - most of the major scripting languages, some database stuff, some sysadmin stuff, some embedded systems programming, a bit about hardware; I know how the internet works, and how to make a browser do a bit of DOM magic; I also keep up with all the internet memes. I know all the references in the Internet People YouTube Montage. So where do I fit in? My problem is that I�m not plugged into any of these things, I just know enough to get me by. I can�t focus on any one thing for some reason, and my guess is that it�s for fear of �wasting time�. In this world of N.A.D.D. it doesn�t take any time at all to check a blog. I find myself skimming the long posts because they take too long to read, or I keep marking them unread until I just say fuck it and move on with my life - if the author can�t say something in 2 skimmable paragraphs then it is not worth my time. I browse slashdot at +4 or +5 because anything else just doesn�t matter. It�s the thought that �I�m not wasting time if I check my feeds�, because I can get through them in 2 minutes anyway. Of course it�s only because I just checked them 5 minutes ago, and only one of them has updated. Where does this leave me? I�ve been incredibly unproductive for the last few months. I can�t seem to finish anything, and I can�t focus on school or work or even my own blog (which has been on a near two-month hiatus). I put this all together in my Software Engineering class when my teacher mentioned a thing called Flow. Flow. It�s a mental state that you�ve experienced before. It happens when you line up a shot in golf. You feel it when you drive fast in the rain and your tires slip, putting you in that hyper-aware mental state. Or, in the context of my class, you experience it when you are coding a big project. You are in the zone completely. You know what variables are instantiated in what scope and exactly what they�re doing and why. Every function is in your own human RAM, callable at a moments notice when you need it. You feel Flow. It�s a mental state that is difficult to achieve, and perhaps more difficult to obtain. It can take hours at a time to get to that state, but a single second to snap out of it. It can be the ring of a telephone or the bleep of an email notification that snaps you out of it, but it�s complete programmer�s bliss while you�ve got it. The problem with The Lifestyle is that it doesn�t require Flow to maintain it. In fact, it�s quite the opposite. You live in 15 second blurbs. You read a page while you have 3 more loading in the background because you don�t have time to wait around watching the page take form as the data is transferred from the remote servers. All this is happening, of course, while you�re debugging that 5-line script you are writing - any longer, of course, would require a train of thought that lasts longer than half a minute. When your email beeps, you command-tab-command-1 it, grok it, take action, and move on in mere seconds. The Lifestyle Becomes your Flow. If you can�t use quicksilver to eject a disk image (after calculating the number of milliseconds saved over using expose to view the desktop, select the image, and command-e it) then perhaps you don�t understand where I�m coming from. So what now? I�m addicted... Turns out, it�s a choice. Ask anyone who�s had a company-wide productivity meeting. Set a time - once an hour or twice a day perhaps - to check your email is what they say. Same thing with your feed reader. If you can�t read through all of them in one block of time once a day, then perhaps you have too many. Categorize them into �Must Read� down to �Only read on a Lazy Sunday�. Don�t even visit Digg. Unsubscribe from Engadget - you will thank me later. You have to realize that Life will go on whether you are caught up in the details or not. My grandpa used to let the phone ring (there was no answering machine) while he was watching Wheel of Fortune, lest anyone interrupt his TV time. �If it�s important�, he used to say, �they�ll call back�. It�s true. If the news is really that important, it�ll find you, I promise. Even as I write this, I had to close out everything else. I turned off my wi-fi, and migrated to one Space. I�m even writing in a plain text editor because anything else has too many buttons. As it is, I�m in the window of a coffee shop and am distracted enough by people watching. So I have to ask, did you skim this article? Was it �tl;dr�, or did you go through it line by line? I�m not offended either way, but take a look around, seriously... how many apps you you have open right now? :P

Missle Silo Mishap

2007-10-17T21:48:00.000-07:00

Where do I begin. How about at the beginning. It started with a spark of interest in Urban Exploring, which is defined as going to places where most people wouldn't think, or dare go. I started doing this before I even knew what it was called, most notably when I went to the abandoned Diamond Matchstick factory outside of my current hometown, Chico CA. It had plenty of old buildings and broken down cars to explore and photograph. Fast forward to last weekend, when I went to Super Happy Dev House 20 with Sean. He is an avid urban explorer, and has the pictures on his flickrset to prove it. We went out to an old lumberyard on Saturday night, reigniting the spark to want to go out and explore closer to home. We discussed an old missile silo just outside Chico that was abandoned in the '60's and rumored to be still around. I'd heard about it, after reading an article in the Chico Beat that Sean also re-linked me to. I had plans to go with another friend who I'd done a bit of urbex (?) with before, but we never got around to it - and winter is upon us so I figured there's no time like the present. I did a bit more research and came across a photoset from a near-identical facility located in Colorado. After seeing the spectacular photo-ops, I was quite determined visit the silo. I even came across an old photo from 1986 that some kids took while on the daring escapade in 1986 - proving that it had been done before with no ill results. By this time, my mind was made up, and I was going no matter what. There was a break in the clouds this afternoon, so I decided to go check it out - even if I had to go alone. I borrowed Stassia's Jetta and drove out to the site. There was a huge rock wall and iron gate on Keefer Road blocking the entrance, just like the article had outlined. This was the place. Just to be cautious, I drove up and down the road a couple times and circled as close as I could get to the facility on Cohasset, finally parking under a tree on Keefer Road a ways from the gated road. I crossed a field the quarter-mile to an empty man-made lake ever so cautiously until I heard what sounded like a construction site. Sure enough there were 3 huge earth movers working at the missile silo site, which is supposed to be abandoned! I decided it would heed me to wait until they left to do my exploring. On the way out, there was a small, dry ravine with - get this - the carcass of a dead cow rotting in it! It reeked of rotting flesh and was surrounded by flies and covered with ants. I snapped a couple pictures and continued on my way out. This was starting to get creepy! A supposedly abandoned missile silo with new construction going on around it, an 8-foot high chain-link fence with barbed wire surrounding it, and now a dead cow in the ravine with no apparent cause of death that hadn't yet been removed by its owner. It may have been just my imagination running, but it felt like a scene from a bad episode of The X Files. I just had to go back to investigate! I waited until just before dark to return, and came better equipped. I had all my camera gear in my backpack with the tripod strapped to the outside, my headlamp with extra batteries, my black fleece and sturdy shoes on. I drove up Keefer Road and parked in the same spot that I had before under the oak tree. The time was 6:15. I told Stassia I'd meet her at a coffee shop to return her car by 8 - plenty of time to explore. I crossed over the field to the empty lake with a bit more confidence this time, as if I owned the place. I leaned up against the bank of the lake and grabbed my camera and 300mm lens. From my vantage point I could clearly see a parked earth mover, a few shipping containers and what looked like a small house - all surrounded by the chain-link fence. No people in sight. With a bit more care I crossed the main road and sat under the only large oak tree in the middle of a field of knee-high grass and grabbed the camera again. From my new position, I clearly saw the house with what looked like either a reflection from the setting sun in the window, or one of the lights was on inside. Parked in front of the house was a huge pickup truck with nobby tires and a significant lift kit - just the kind of truck a construction worker would drive. Was he packing up to leave, or did he leave his truck overnight to return in the morning? I took note and continued. Beyond the shelter of my tree and on the outside border of the fence, I found where the earth-movers had been working. There were huge piles of dirt which had recently been moved around with no rhyme or reason as to what was going on or what was being constructed. This just added to the conspiracy theory brewing inside my head. I took a couple pictures in the setting sun and continued to the chain-link fence separating me from my goal. I paced the border several times and saw where a dozen people before me had cut through the fence to get in, and where the caretaker had meticulously patched each and every hole. There were no open holes, unfortunately, and that should have been my first clue. There was a spot in the corner of the fence where the barbed wire had been mangled and cut in some places; someone had scaled over it before me. I took great care climbing over and landed on the other side safely. Now there was nothing between me and the grand missile silo I'd heard so much about. But there was more than just a missile silo here... there were a half-dozen or so shipping containers placed in a row, and the construction equipment I had seen working earlier parked next to a house-sized aluminum hangar. There was even a semi truck parked outside. Definitely not "abandoned". Much to my surprise, the door to the hangar was open, so I took a peek. Inside, there was another semi truck, an ATV, a golf cart, and a fairly good sized makeshift machine shop complete with a drill press, band saws, and tools. Again, not what I expected at all. Careful not to disturb anything, I went back outside and wiped my prints off the door handle (just in case, right?). I checked one of the shipping containers which had its padlock hanging loose. Inside there was another ATV, what looked like a pile of parachutes or tents in the back, and a huge stack of ammo boxes front and center. The conspiracy theory was all but true in my mind. I was getting pretty freaked out by all this, so I turned my attention to the house in the center of it all. It was about 100 yards away from my position at the shipping containers, and I could now clearly see that there was a light on inside. I watched it for several minutes and - was that a silhouette I just saw? No, couldn't be. Or was it? I took my shaking nerves as a sign that it was time to scram, so I stumbled in the dark back to the fence and made my escape. I started my journey back to the car along the perimeter of the fenced-off area. I grabbed my iPhone which has a decent map of the area, and could determine my position along the fence. I couldn't help but notice on the map that one of the silo doors was just on the other side of the fence from me, calling for me to explore. My nerves had calmed down enough for me to feel confident to scale the fence yet again to have a peek. After all, I was well out of view of the house. I went to the opposite corner of the fence where, again, someone had mangled the barbed wire into a manageable mess. I climbed over with a bit more trouble than before, but on this part of the fence there was a bar about halfway up the fence on the opposite side that I could get a foot on. From it, it was just a few feet to the ground, so I dropped down and evaluated my situation. From the map, I could tell that there was a silo door next to a lone tree in the center of the property. I made my way towards it under the darkness of night. Standing on the door was like nothing I'd done before. Just knowing the history of the place under my feet, that 160 feet below my there used to lie a Titan I nuclear ICBM that could launch at the touch of a button - that's some power! I started getting giddy with excitement, I wanted to find the entrance to the underground silo and control center more than anything now! I took another look at my auto-dimmed screen to find where the next silo door was, and found it a few hundred feet away. Again, I got the same humbling rush standing on the huge concrete and steel doors. On the map, I could clearly see where the house was - smack in the center of the gated-off area. I could also faintly see what must have looked like a concrete subterranean entrance just maybe 50 feet from the house. The only light other than the clouded-over moon and stars was coming from the porch light of the house. I sort of used this to my advantage as I approached the house. Next to the house, right about where the entrance was, there was one of those portable water towers on stilts. It cast a shadow from the porch light that I ducked in while I took carefully placed steps toward the house. I stopped and hid behind a pile of excavated rocks for a minute while I re-evaluated my situation yet again. I was very close to the underground entrance to the silos, plus I was positioned well - behind the shadow of the entrance and the water tower. Taking another look, I saw a ski boat next to the truck parked near the house as well. So this was starting to look more like a family's house, not just a caretaker keeping watch over the construction site. But I was so close to the entrance I could taste it. I left the cover of my pile of rocks and went to the entrance. What I saw was straight out of a game of Half Life. There were two huge concrete doors that opened out of the earth like cellar doors protecting some unknown treasure. Beneath the doors was an elevator that took up the length and width of the opening, surrounded by a chest-high gate. I felt as if I had to first gather the red key, knock out the 2 guards in front and kill all the aliens before I could continue. From my position I could see the elevator, and the blast doors, standing almost 10 feet high, protected my view from the house. But from what I could tell, there was no staircase or ladder to descend to the depths of the unknown. I didn't have the full view, though - there was another side to the elevator that I couldn't see. The far side, however, didn't have the protection of the blast doors for cover, they were in plain sight and lit from the house. I had come too far to give up, so I tiptoed my way around the concrete door, and poked my head around to take a look. I didn't see much before I distinctly heard a sliding glass door open from the house - I was found out! It was not the sound of the sliding glass door that scared me. It was the sound of the dogs. Yes, that was it, dogs. Definitely more than one, definitely aggressive sounding, and I was certain they were moving right towards me, and fast! I didn't bother to stick around and find out - instead I took off as fast as I could the opposite direction under the shadow of my water tower once again, and dove behind the cover of my rock pile. My heart was pounding! I had a few seconds to decide what to do. I heard the dogs still running towards me. I had maybe a 50 foot head start on them - not much - and a chain link fence holding me captive to the place I had worked so hard to get to. I took off running again, moving as fast as I could to the chain-link fence. I was still a few hundred feet from it, and the dogs were right on my tail. They caught up to me after a few seconds, and I could count three of them. A huge dog that better resembled a bear than a household pet was trailing a few feet behind me to the left and growling a deep, throaty growl that scared the shit out of me. To my right, there were two smaller dogs, about rottweiler size or so, each barking their own version of "Let's get this sonnuvabitch!" I should mention at this point that I had just donated two pints of blood just four hours earlier. Of course they discourage any sort of physical activity for a day or so, and recommend a hearty dinner to make up for all the lost fluid, lest you pass out or get lightheaded. Save the 7-up I had at the blood bank, I hadn't eaten since. I could just see the fence now, coming up quick out of the darkness. There was that split-second decision to either stop and climb carefully up and over the barbed wire and hope the dogs aren't the bloodthirsty human flesh-eating type, or just jump and hope for the best. I, of course, chose the latter. In one swift and less than graceful movement, I grabbed the top bar of the 8-foot high fence, braced my foot on the lower bar, and half somersaulted/half fell over the remaining strands of barbed wire to safety. I did not stop there! I ran another 50 feet or so to a cluster of trees where my lack of blood caught up with me. I dropped my backpack as flat as it could go and pressed my body flat against the ground behind the tree. It was when my heart slowed down that I heard the rumble of the truck over the barking of the dogs. Then came the headlights peeking over the hill before the truck parked behind the yapping dogs and brought out the spotlight. I couldn't see much with my face pressed to the ground, but the field behind me lit up in an instant with what must have been a high-powered spotlight. The beam swept the field briefly before it stopped, trained on the tree that I was hiding behind! I held my ground and didn't budge for what seemed like an eternity before the light moved on. Another lifetime later, the light was shut off and the truck moved on past the dogs, still barking at my scent from my upwind position. When the faint glow of the taillights disappeared, I jumped up and made a break for the field. I was halfway to the next grove of trees with a good 5oo feet to go, when the truck's headlights bobbed over the hill again. I threw my bag down and dropped to my face in the middle of the field of knee-high grass. The truck stopped and started its sweeping the field with its sun-like lamp again. I didn't bother looking up this time, I covered myself as best I could and just waited it out. When the beam of light disappeared, I stole a glance and saw just the taillights of the truck. After another second, I saw the back-up lights of the truck. I couldn't tell what the driver was doing, but I wasn't too keen on sticking around to find out, so I grabbed my bag once again and sprinted to the cover of the next cluster of trees. Keeping a safe distance between myself and the road, I made my way through my protective covering of oaks. I passed the dead cow once again, and froze twice as the driver made two passes up and down the road past me, spotlight still searching for an its target - me. I made it to the edge of the woods with one more 500 foot clearing and a stone wall between myself and the safety of the car. I waited another minute to see if the truck would make another pass. When it didn't, I made a healthy jog across the clearing with an eye out behind me for the truck. My heart had caught up with my adrenaline rush, so I was tripping and panting my way across the field which was already cluttered with volcanic rock and cow patties. At long last, I made it to the safety of the Jetta, literally threw my stuff in the passenger seat and chirped the tires as I sped away into the night.

2007-09-19T00:29:00.000-07:00

After returning from the cruise to Alaska, I've managed to keep quite busy. Busy enough indeed to neglect this blog for over a month! Certainly not for lack of anything to write about! I've got a bunch of progress on the autonomous car project (okay, someone think up a good name for this thing, quick!) but I think I'll hold off on that for a bit more until I can do a full write-up. I'll just note that I've got the i2c bus working across the board, which means that the sonar is hooked up and the thing can finally move! Quite exciting indeed. Last Sunday I went on a mountain bike ride with Router Dave on a couple trails I'd never been on before. We Chicoans are so lucky to have such a nice park so close to us. After a ~4 mile trek straight down the canyon, I thought it would be a good idea to cool off by jumping into the creek at Bear Hole. It was nice, but when I was climbing a rock my foot slipped a few inches straight into a pile of broken glass where someone had smashed a bottle. Much blood and pain followed: Sorry for the graphic image, but that's my foot after all! Please note that this happened about a mile above where the gate was locked and across the creek from the road, so there was a fair amount of gunk accumulated in the wound after a nice swim and bike ride down to Dave's waiting parents. (thanks again for the help!) I am also in a fair amount of (non-physical) pain because my trusty MacBook Pro's keyboard and trackpad suddenly stopped working last week. Of course I feel naked without having a computer I can tote anywhere - sans external keyboard and mouse. After a couple phone calls to the Apple store, it was made clear that I'd have to send the computer in and sell my soul to pay for it. Did I mention I was just under 20 days out of warranty? *sigh* I went to the bookstore on campus - our local Apple authorized reseller - and begged the manager to order me the part and let me install it myself. After 2 trips and much pleading on my part he finally gave in and ordered me a new topcase for wholesale price! What a nice guy :) Of course this means that I'm on my own for installation and I can throw any warranty out the window, but I love excitement. I'll keep you posted how the install goes next Thursday or Friday when the part comes in. That's all for now. Until next time, keep on truckin'.

Oh Canada!

2007-08-17T22:16:00.000-07:00

I have this idea for a huge blog post all about my cruise to Alaska this last week and how I got stuck spending then night in Canada tonight on the airlines dime, but I'm really tired and haven't even thought about going through pictures yet, so it's going to have to wait until tomorrow. This is essentially a utility post to tell my family that I'm alive and well in Vancouver and flying out tomorrow at 1pm. Keep an eye on my flickr tomorrow.

lazy with linux

2007-07-21T14:02:00.000-07:00

I had big plans this weekend to go down to Fresno State for the Summer Arts program for a day or two, then come back up to have a tour of Pixar. All this was abandoned upon hearing from Johnny that the Pixar trip was canceled for one reason or another. The bear of it is that I had already taken Friday off of work. I was left with a free day to do whatever I wanted! So naturally I went to Linux. I have gotten the cross-compiling toolchain working on my Macbook Pro to get my own code on the gumstix board I've been working on - but there's a snag. The version I'm using is too new for the OS that came pre-installed on the Gumstix, so I had to upgrade it. After practicing flashing the file-system image on the gumstix with some pre-built images from Dave Hylands, I was finally confident enough to use my own home-compiled image, but the OSX version of Buildroot for the gumstix doesn't support the Verdex motherboard that I have. Long story short, I was in a major bind. Linux to save the day! I went to the Apple store (where I find myself at least once a week these days - even if I'm not buying anything) and picked up a LaCie pocket external hard drive. Using rEFIt which is an amazing EFI replacement for OSX, I installed Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn (who comes up with these names?) to the hard drive, and left a partition of free space to allow a future installation of another OS should I need to later. I can triple boot with no need to partition my meager 100 gig MBP hard drive! Plus I found that I don't even have to kill my uptime! I now have the current version of Buildroot - which does support the verdex motherboard that I have - up and compiling on Ubuntu. I just finished flashing the file-system image and kernel with my own build... I don't think I've ever been so happy to see "Hello World!" in my life! And mad props to Michael for letting me take over his kitchen table this weekend ;)

my $600 brick

2007-07-11T18:02:00.000-07:00

After hacking non-stop on my iPhone for a whole weekend, I was quite pleased to be an iPhone owner. Two days ago, however, something horrible happened... I somehow managed to brick my iPhone. I was watching a youtube video on the BART, when I switched to Safari to check a web page when the unit froze solid. I held the home button for 8 seconds, which is the equivalent of force quitting whatever app is open, to no avail. I did my first hard reset by holding the power switch and home button together for ~10 seconds, which managed to turn the phone off, but it stalled at the metallic apple logo screen when I tried to start it again. I waited a good minute before I did another hard reset to turn it off. I put it away and waited until I got home before running my full line-up of diagnostics on it, including holding every button combo for 30 seconds. Nothing worked. I could not get the phone past the apple logo screen. I made an appointment with a "genius" at the SF Apple store, for which I arrived 10 minutes early. The genius tried a few things, including syncing the phone with my MBP and the MB they have in-store. He managed to pull up an error he'd seen before, so things were looking up. Then we got this little gem: Oh, yeah, error 0xE8000025. Huh? I quickly googled it which turned up a few results for users syncing with non-standard characters in their usernames on windows. Clearly not for me. We both tried for another 40 minutes or so everything in our book, including creating a new user, re-installing iTunes, and deleting a bunch of .kext and .plist files in the System Library. We never made it past that screen. So, in good faith, Apple gave me a brand new replacement phone with no further questions asked, even though the guy was convinced it was a software error that could be fixed. How sweet of them. I did notice this pop up when I synced just now: Hrm. I sent it because I'm a good apple citizen. We'll see what happens to this one.

easy come easy go at iPhoneDevCamp

2007-07-07T21:06:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting here at a now-empty table at the iPhoneDevCamp, pretty tired. I've been here for just over 8 hours now, a latecomer to the game, and a lot has happened since I arrived! When I first walked in at 1pm or so I perused the tables of people working on various iPhone web apps. I found a group of guys working on the next "killer app", so I pulled up a chair and offered myself to the group. It's pretty amazing, really, how quick it all happened. The guy who was taking the lead for the group explained what the app was, how it was going to work, etc... to me, and I was right on board. We had him doing backend development, a graphics guy, a logistics guy, me doing frontend stuff, and - get this - not one but two venture capitalists sitting with us going over the business model with checkbooks in hand. We worked for a few hours, throwing ideas and functionality back and forth at each other, going over every aspect of the app and how cool it was going to be. It was quite exciting! But ... there is a reason I'm writing in past tense. Right when we were getting into the meat of it, a group of four guys walked up and demoed the exact app we were working on that they started building 2 weeks ago. We were all a bit dumbfounded - not angry - when the VCs gave the other guys their cards and walked away. We had a company in the making and it was disbanded before it even came together. We spent the rest of the afternoon hacking on the iPhone and discussing the next steps for ourselves. I wound up working with a guy from Yelp getting their mobile site blinged out for the iPhone. All in all, a busy day!

iPhone Developer Camp

2007-07-02T09:55:00.000-07:00

At the risk of having my 3rd iPhone post in a row, I'm giving a shout to the iPhone developer camp that's happening this weekend at the Adobe building in San Francisco. It should be a fun place to get together with other like-minded developers of iPhone optimized software. I'm thinking about making a web based SSH client, so if you want to collaborate, holla' at ya boy. (?) I'll be there on Friday at 6 when the thing kicks off, and hopefully all day Saturday and Sunday as well. Hope to see you there!

iPhone

2007-06-29T21:11:00.001-07:00

Yes. It's true. I'm the proud new owner of an 8Gb iPhone. And I love it. I'm not going to write a full review tonight, but my first impressions are that it's utterly awesome and amazing and everything it's cracked up to be [/fanboy]. Even the EDGE network is somewhat bearable. Anyway, I'm off to dive into the thing full bore tonight, so I'll let you know if I sleep at all, but my first impression is going to be a big fat "no".

iPhone hype

2007-06-29T06:25:00.000-07:00

I hope it's worth it! I'm sitting in line about a block away from the entrance of the Apple store on Stockton and Market and am going to try to stay here all day if I can convince my boss it's a worthwhile effort... Follow my status through updates to this blog, or check out my twitter account. iPhone here I come! *** UPDATE *** Here are some pics I snagged from a guy in line: *** Update*** (9:35 am) *** Update *** (11:00 am) Not much new to report. The line has wrapped around and is moving towards Powell. I'm #87 on the community list, and last I checked it has well over 120 people on it. Power is a scarce commodity, so I'm at starbucks recharging for a bit. 3 cheers for corporate T Mobile accounts :) A guy came around and gave out free bottles of smart water to all people waiting in line. How thoughtful of Apple! BTW, if you're reading this from line and need to go to the bathroom, starbucks on Powell and O'Farrell bathroom code is "5567". *edit* crate and barrel is 40141 *** Update *** (3pm) 3 hours to go, and the black screen is up! *** Update *** (4:30) The line is now going around the block down Powell, I overheard there's 230 people behind us in line now. The clowns are selling their 4 spots for about $200 apiece. No word on if they've sold any yet. An hour and a half to go!

Summiting Mt. Shasta

2007-06-26T17:38:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, my friend Paul, most of his family, and myself went on a trek to climb Mt. Shasta. After living in Redding and seeing the mountain every day for about 16 years, I've been itching to climb it - and jumped at the chance! The chance finally came, and we wound up making the trip. I have plenty of stories to share - too much to write right now, but in the meantime check out my flickr set of the trip. All I can say is that it was very very cold! The route up was under 20 degrees Fahrenheit, before you calculate the wind chill of the 35-40mph wind! That's cold! We departed at 3am for the climb starting from our camp at Helen Lake (about 10,000 ft.) and summited around 8:30am. Ice axes and crampons and Clif bars, oh my!

I'm famous (sort of)

2007-06-25T17:15:00.000-07:00

I was waiting in line for the Apple Store on Stockton to open last Friday when a nice young woman approached me and asked if I would be open to be interviewed. Never one to be shy, I agreed and divulged some personal details such as my name, job, etc... and some thoughts about the iPhone I had. She was doing some interviewing to help out a colleague from New York from the AP, and the story got published today. You can check it out all over the net: CNN.com WTOP News Courant The Washington Post I haven't seen a printed copy, but I'll keep my eye on the local papers. Kinda fun :) Even if I am a "Oakland Web Programmer, 21..."

GPS on the table

2007-06-21T11:51:00.000-07:00

Another update for my linux powered autonomous car project :) After I successfully bj�rked the USB and bluetooth connections for the gumstix motherboard with one config file write, I've had no way to connect to the gumstix motherboard. I bought a few of the 60 pin headers to try to make my own breakout board, but realized quickly that unless there is a custom-made PCB to go along with it, it was an effort in vain. Meanwhile, the GPSStix boards were back in stock at the 'ol gumstix warehouse, so I snatched one of those up as quickly as I could. I also bought a few more toys from Acroname (which I'll get into later) but most importantly a TTL level RS-232 to USB adapter, as well as an active GPS antenna from Spark Fun Electronics for just $14. Phew, what a mess of wires this is going to be! The USB adapter lets me connect the FFUART of the Verdex to my macbook pro. This is crucial because the motherboard uses this UART as the default linux console when all else fails (or is messed up due to my linux n00bness). Put it together with a wire-wrapping tool, and it will come out something like this: Needless to say it took a while, but I got everything working before midnight last night, as well as a shell script to log the GPS coordinates of wherever you are. Plugging these into google maps (because I'm so sophisticated) the GPS unit was accurate to within several feet, inside. I'm going to do some more testing, but it looks like it's going to be about perfect! There's nothing like loggin in via SSH over a bluetooth connection to a linux box the size of a stick of gum (that's powered with my cell phone charger :P). *** Update *** I whipped up a shellscript to take a GPS coordinate every 30 seconds and log it to a text file. I put it all in my backpack on the way home from work, and logged my journey home to Oakland from the Six Apart office in San Francisco. If you have Google Earth, you can follow my journey from a KML File I created. Note the jaggedy (?) edges at some points; this is because I was only capturing every 30 seconds. Also, you can see when I went in the tunnel under the bay because I didn't get any readings until I popped up on the other side. I might do the same thing on the way to Chico on Amtrak tomorrow, and have been contemplating taking it up with me to Mt. Shasta when I climb it this weekend. :) From what it looks like, it is getting between 1 and 3 meter accuracy, 5 at some points. Again, this is perfect! I can't wait to get going with the software for this thing. Before I go, I'm going to leave you with a video of the commercial we helped shoot in roseville a couple weeks ago:

viva las vegas

2007-06-10T08:13:00.000-07:00

After a successful beta launch of Movable Type 4 (which garnered 16,000 downloads in its first 24 hours), I hopped on a plane on last Friday with a final destination of Las Vegas. I came out here for the weekend to help celebrate Stassia's 21'st birthday because if it's worth doing, it's worth doing right! The first thing I noticed about Las Vegas was that there's neon bling everywhere. Just getting off the plane at McCarran International, travelers are instantly bombarded with a plethora of advertisements in the form of billboards, jumbo-trons, and flashing signs with half-naked women (and men) on them. The space between the luggage return carousels is lined with nickel and quarter slot machines. All this is a bit overwhelming after a day of work, missing a flight, waiting on standby, and being in s state of semi-conciousness at 2am. The bling escalated all the way down the strip, until I had just about enough. I think it is meant to keep you at a sanity level just above legally insane, but low enough to where you are just a money-spending zombie who needs no sleep. It's no wonder kids are having such problems with ADHD these days, it's hard not to have it! Anyway, I stayed with Jessica, Stass and her family in the Luxor - the one that looks like a pyramid. We had a blast gambling our monies away, riding 1,000 feet up into the stratoshpere, staying up all night drinking (because we can) and general debauchery in Sin City. Anyway, I'm in the airport on my way back to SF now, and dead tired. I think it's a given that if you are in Las Vegas, especially for just one weekend, there isn't much sleep to be had. 3 cheers for free WiFi at LAS.

down by the bay

2007-06-04T22:35:00.000-07:00

What a whirlwind week! After I turned 21 last Tuesday, I've been going non-stop as usual. Of course I got a call at 11am on Wednesday from my boss making sure I "really was going to make it into work". I did - just barely - but I did. That was my last day as an employee of the IMC at CSU, Chico; I'm not returning this fall for a number of reasons, the least of which just that I'm bored with it and need to move on with my life. I put in my 3 years as a state employee, now I can move on to other things - although I'll still drop by the basement and say hi every now and again :) I jumped in the car after packing my stuff up to make sure I got to my new job in San Francisco. I'm interning for the summer at Six Apart where I'm helping out with a few things, basically whatever they need me for. I'm actually at work right now scrambling to get the new beta release of Movable Type 4.0 ready to launch at midnight. It's quite exciting! I've been here 3 days now and have already learned so much it makes me shudder! Either that or it's the mad hangover that's been going on since Tuesday... Finally, I got my GPSStix in the mail after it's been on backorder more than a month. I hooked it up to the gumstix and everything works swimmingly - or at least until I messed up the bluetooth settings AND the USB settings in one fell swoop! I'm waiting until I have enough money to place an order to Acroname for a TTL to RS232 voltage converter and a few I²C serial converters and the such.

zomg twenty one at last!

2007-05-30T20:36:00.000-07:00

I'm still kinda hungover, but that's the news: I'm now legal to go into bars :) Check the madness on RMFD's Flickrset. That look in my eye about halfway through... yeah, that's the look of "I'm not going to remember this tomorrow, but am okay with that."

cablecam goes live and new internship

2007-05-26T20:18:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, Johnny, Rick, B and I went to Roseville to set up our newly built cablecam over a waterslide at Golfland SunSplash for a commercial shoot they were doing. It was a 2-day event for us, the first day setting everything up and testing out the equipment, the second day doing the actual shoot. It was a lot of fun working in a "real" Hollywood environment. We worked together with the director, grips, lighting guys, and the whole bit; it reminded me of working with the community access TV guys in Redding a few years ago: always yelling at the camera people to tighten the shot or at the talent to scream louder :P We had two successful days of shooting with very few hiccups - in fact, nothing a little duct tape couldn't solve on the spot! As usual, there are plenty more pictures at the associated flickr photoset. I'm turning into a bit of a flickr whore, but that's okay :) We have a bit of video footage I'll try to grab from Johnny before I skip town, plus we're supposed to get a copy of the final :30s spot eventually. Also, I just signed on with Six Apart to work as an intern for the summer on their professional line of products, namely TypePad and Movable Type. I'm quite excited to live in San Francisco for a few months and code perl all day long :) I start next Thursday - after, of course, the fun-filled day of bar hopping and general mayhem that is my 21st birthday next Tuesday.

Maker Faire 2007

2007-05-19T23:25:00.000-07:00

I'm exhausted, but I went to the Maker Faire today in San Mateo, check out my Flickr Photoset. I'm working at a wine auction/fundraiser all day tomorrow, so I won't be returning, but it was so much fun, and I learned so much just from going from booth to booth today. Also have a bit of news to share, but I'm going to wait until Monday to spill it :P

pillow fight downtown?

2007-05-10T23:12:00.000-07:00

I heard about a Pillow Fight Flash Mob happening downtown tonight, so I thought I'd show up with a camera and see what it was all about. Next time I know to bring a pillow instead! The Flash Mob was pretty successful, with a bunch of people stealthily bringing pillows into the downtown Thursday Night Market and erupting in a flurry of feathers at precisely 7pm. There was even a news crew that got in on it after seeing the mayhem from afar. The cops didn't even seem to mind; they just laughed from the sidelines. Plenty more from me on the flickr photoset. I hope there's more of these spontaneous things that happen in Chico, I liked this :) Also, thanks to Quinn for letting me use his 10-20mm lens!

cablecam and gumstix

2007-05-05T15:16:00.000-07:00

First off, we did a test run of the cable cam last night with a tape in the camera. Of course _someone_ left the night vision setting "on", so the video looks like crap. Take a peek: We used a jalopy of a camera - an old Digital8 Sony HandyCam - but it did the trick for our testing purposes. All in all, we're excited about the shoot on Tuesday! Also, I I got my gumstix in the mail on Friday and I've been dying to test them out since. I don't have a breakout board for the 60-pin connector yet, (parts pending from digikey) so it's just sitting there looking pretty for now. Brendan had the studio set up for another shoot, so after much begging, he snapped a couple pics of the board for me when he was done. (thanks again!) They turned out beautifully! Front: Back: With any luck, I should have the thing up and running by mid week!

hosting issues

2007-05-03T14:48:00.000-07:00

This site's been around a few years, mostly as my personal playground and as a way to update my friends and family with what's going on in my life via my blog. I bought my domain name (stilldavid.com) from godaddy, who've been easy enough to use, and selected network eleven as my hosting provider simply because they were cheap and offered lots of storage. I've never had issues with them until recently. I've had a few support requests over my years at networkeleven, all of which were closed within 24 hours by their support staff. Last week I as having trouble creating a new subdomain on my account, a problem that I could not fix myself. I shot an email to their support address and awaited a response. And waited. After a couple days, I manually created a support request in their online database. And still waited. A week and a half later, I still hadn't heard back which made me nervous, because it was a bit of a pressing matter on my end. But this is where it gets interesting. Doing some generic research, I came across another hosting provider called Network Redux. A similar enough name to Network Eleven to raise an orange flag, but I didn't think twice until I saw this page on their website: I'd seen that before... on Network Eleven's site! Here's a screenshot of Network Eleven's site: The similarities were striking. I ran a traceroute on each address:

traceroute to networkeleven.com (66.162.134.135), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
 1  132.241.253.129 (132.241.253.129)  2.022 ms  1.960 ms  1.781 ms
 2  chi-misto-gig2.net.csuchico.edu (132.241.95.3)  2.433 ms  1.940 ms  1.957 ms
 3  dc-cor-dc2--csuchico-egm.cenic.net (137.164.41.25)  3.793 ms  4.104 ms  3.669 ms
 4  dc-sac-dc2--cor-dc2ge.cenic.net (137.164.22.154)  6.113 ms  6.506 ms  5.672 ms
 5  dc-sac-dc1--dc2-p2p-1.cenic.net (137.164.40.100)  6.479 ms  6.503 ms  7.489 ms
 6  dc-oak-dc1--csac-dc1-ge.cenic.net (137.164.22.110)  8.156 ms  7.884 ms  7.707 ms
 7  dc-sfo-px1--oak-dc1-ge.cenic.net (137.164.22.203)  9.270 ms  8.174 ms  8.492 ms
 8  peer-02.palo.twtelecom.net (198.32.175.111)  8.977 ms  9.120 ms  9.414 ms
 9  core-01-so-1-0-0-0.okld.twtelecom.net (64.129.248.18)  10.200 ms  10.639 ms  10.120 ms
10  core-02-so-0-0-0-0.ptld.twtelecom.net (66.192.250.1)  37.084 ms  50.111 ms  24.478 ms
11  64-129-224-146.static.twtelecom.net (64.129.224.146)  26.002 ms  24.573 ms  24.565 ms
12  networkeleven.com (66.162.134.135)  24.250 ms  23.863 ms  24.381 ms

And:

traceroute to networkredux.com (64.128.80.35), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
 1  132.241.253.129 (132.241.253.129)  3.580 ms  1.932 ms  1.560 ms
 2  chi-misto-gig2.net.csuchico.edu (132.241.95.3)  2.396 ms  2.305 ms  1.650 ms
 3  dc-cor-dc2--csuchico-egm.cenic.net (137.164.41.25)  3.516 ms  3.514 ms  3.474 ms
 4  dc-sac-dc2--cor-dc2ge.cenic.net (137.164.22.154)  5.685 ms  5.625 ms  5.830 ms
 5  dc-sac-dc1--dc2-p2p-1.cenic.net (137.164.40.100)  115.363 ms  202.512 ms  204.504 ms
 6  dc-oak-dc1--csac-dc1-ge.cenic.net (137.164.22.110)  7.620 ms  7.750 ms  7.846 ms
 7  sfo-px1--oak-dc1-ge.cenic.net (198.32.251.227)  8.146 ms  8.676 ms  8.228 ms
 8  peer-02.palo.twtelecom.net (198.32.175.111)  9.482 ms  9.180 ms  24.519 ms
 9  core-01-so-1-0-0-0.okld.twtelecom.net (64.129.248.18)  10.212 ms  12.336 ms  10.955 ms
10  core-02-so-0-0-0-0.ptld.twtelecom.net (66.192.250.1)  24.324 ms  23.694 ms  24.639 ms
11  64-129-224-178.static.twtelecom.net (64.129.224.178)  24.271 ms  29.666 ms  26.148 ms
12  redux.networkredux.com (64.128.80.35)  25.663 ms  26.147 ms  26.205 ms

It looks like they're in the same datacenter (on Time Warner Telcom's network) in Portland, OR, and maybe even on the same rack. Something fishy indeed. The only difference I saw was that Network Redux had a phone number listed on their website. I called and talked to the owner of the company who said that he used to be a 50% owner of Network Eleven but branched out his own company in 2004 (he didn't say why). I told him about my issues with Network Eleven, and he said that he's had a lot of customers switch over for the same reasons. He went further to say that if I had any legal trouble to be sure to let him know because the Attorney General in Oregon is building a case against Network Eleven. Whoah. Time to change hosts! So I spent a good part of yesterday evening moving all my stuff over to my MediaTemple account. I cleaned out a lot of stale files and deleted 21,929 SPAM comments from my database (about 17 megs of SQL data) in the move as well. So I guess I learned my lesson through all this, whatever that may be. Now lets see if there's anyone at Network Eleven to cancel my account...

Rocket Car

2007-04-23T10:19:00.000-07:00

In working on the autonomous car project, my friend "Router" Dave and I decided that the R/C Car was not going nearly fast enough (even with the upgraded motor and gearing). How on earth would we fix this? Luckily, I had a few "A" size Estes rocket engines in a box in my closet. After a bit of duct tape and some quick and dirty wiring, we had a genuine rocket car. It went pretty fast, but ... there was still something lacking. Router went to our local Hobbytown USA and picked up a pack of "D" rocket engines. Estes engine sizes are like the Richter scale, that is B's are twice as powerful as A's, C's twice that of B's, etc..., so we're looking at a significant performance increase. We took everything out to the airport to find a long, straight, wide and preferably empty road. Duct tape in hand, we fixed the first D engine to the bottom of the car with high hopes. Everything went off without a hitch, except it still didn't go nearly fast enough! That and we had 2 more engines and a still-intact RC car. With more duct tape, we put the 2 remaining engines on the bottom of the car. Hilarity Ensued. Take a look at the youtube video that highlights the first and second attempts: See the smile? Not a bad Sunday afternoon if I may say so! As always, more pics at the Autonomous Car Photoset on flickr.

banksy in chico?

2007-04-18T09:07:00.000-07:00

This morning I was walking through the breezway at the Meriam Library, and saw this tagged on the ground next to one of the trash cans: It was a striking resemblance of popular British graffiti artist Banksy, namely something like this photo from hometownzero's flickr page. I was walking through the parking structure and saw this on one of the posts: So now I'm convinced we have a Banksy prot�g� running around Chico State. If anybody finds any more banksy-esque graffiti on campus, post a comment or tag it on flickr! Update! Right you are, Stassia. Here's two more pandas found on campus. Anyone else?