I'm looking California and feeling Minnesota

[/musings] [permanent link]

Fireside Chat


Tonight I signed up for the Fireside beta. They asked for all my social media accounts to prove I'm a human. The problem is, I don't have a twitter account, a facebook account, instagram, etc. Years ago I took the advice of numerous psychology studies and my own therapist's advice and got off the social media platforms. It was one of the best things I've ever done for my mental health.

So hopefully this blog, though infrequently updated (and slightly broken since the last major perl update), will serve as proof to the people at Fireside that I am human and not a bot.

It was the Astonishing Legends Podcast that led me to Fireside. It would be nice to use it for one of their interactive live chats sometime.

[/musings] [permanent link]

Bill Gates is Satan's Minion
Bill Gates was Satan's minion, is Satan's minion, and always will be Satan's minion.

[/musings] [permanent link]

Take back your privacy
Recent surveys have found that 76% of [the most visited] websites in the world cotain trackers from google and 24% contain trackers from facebook. This has been reported by CNBC, PC World, The Verge, Fortune, and Breitbart.

Almost anywhere you go on the internet, they are following you, building a profile on you, and selling that information, your information, to the highest bidder. Even if you don't have a user account for google or facebook "services," they've built a profile of you using this surreptitiously collected data.

It turns out there are some steps one can take to prevent these companies from following you wherever you go. It's not perfect, but it helps a lot. First, don't use Chrome. Second, install ad-blocker plugins for your browser. Third, use your firewall.

It turns out Google and Facebook are large enough that they have their own Autonomous Systems (AS) composed of numerous subnets. Google owns AS 15169, while Facebook owns AS 32934. Using a little bit of shell, it's relatively easy to look up all the subnets owned by these companies.

whois -h whois.radb.net -- '-i origin AS32934' | grep "^route:" | awk '{print $2;}'
whois -h whois.radb.net -- '-i origin AS15169' | grep "^route:" | awk '{print $2;}'

That's a lot of subnets. Because I have different operating systems on different computers and still want to block traffic to and from all those IP addresses, I've written some simple scripts to add rules to various firewalls. I have scripts for IPFW on FreeBSD, IPTables on Linux, and the Windows Firewall that should work from XP SP3 through Windows 10. I've only tested it on Windows 7 and Windows 10, and it worked in those.

All of these scripts can be found in this directory. The IPFW and IPTables scripts are self-contained. For the Windows command shell batch files, the *ips.txt files are also needed.

I have to say, the internet looks very different with these firewall rules in place. There are noticeably fewer advertisements and pages load faster. Embedded YouTube videos and Instagram photos don't appear. Sometimes the frame disappears, sometimes you get a "failed to connect" page appearing in a frame in the middle of a page. (Yes, these rules block YouTube and Instagram; they are owned by google and facebook and reside in the subnets owned by those companies.) On a relatively rare occasion, I come across a site using some sort of javascript or css or something hosted by a machine in one of those ASs and that will be blocked. Sometimes the site handles that gracefully, sometimes it stops being functional. A small price to take back your life.

Update: Twitter has trackers on a decent amount of sites out there too, so I've added scripts to block Twitter's AS 13414 as well. Those scripts are in the same directories as the others.

[/musings] [permanent link]

St Michael, defend us in battle
Crisis Magazine has a great piece about St Michael and the ongoing spiritual warfare in the world.

[/musings] [permanent link]

New PGP Key!
So apparently Evil32 happened. Approximately 24,000 PGP keys were generated that had collisions with the 32-bit short IDs of existing keys. Then someone decided to use those conflicting keys to generate revocation certificates and upload them to the keyservers. Joy.

Though my old keys still work, they were affected by this mass revocation of collsions. I have created a new key which can be found at http://skinnymf.com/~mforde/mforde.asc.

On a related note, if anyone is interested in Key Signing Party, shoot me an email. I haven't been to one of those since college.

[/musings] [permanent link]

This ends tonight...

[/musings/self] [permanent link]

Sometimes...
Sometimes it's dificult to find a reason to continue.

[/musings/self] [permanent link]

Merry Christmas
While the holidays are supposed to be a joyous time, I know and understand how hard they can be for some people. If you're having a rough time over the next week or so and need someone to talk to, feel free to message me. If you're reading this blog, you likely know my email address or phone number.

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What Year is This?!
So this was my Saturday night....

[/musings] [permanent link]

Megapath sucks
Speakeasy was by far the best ISP I ever dealt with. Freindly, and above all, knowledgeable. Since they have been purchased by Megapath then merged into Global Capacity, their tech support has been, frankly a bunch of idiots. Furthermore, their website routinely has "Service failed" errors that prevent you from logging in, changing passwords, and viewing account information.

Today, after being unable to log in to the website due to "service failed" the tech support rep on the phoned didn't understand what a subnet mask or gateway address were. Eventually I just got her to read me "all three IP addresses" on the screen in front of her.

But at this point my only other option is Verizon. So I'm sticking with Megapath.

[/musings] [permanent link]

Found this sitting in a tarball of my old home directory...

                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                              
              ..,,..  ..ttLLLLtt..  ..;;ii;;,,..;;ttGGLL;;....iiiiiiiiiiii..    ..iijjttttii..                                
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  ..ffWW########WWKK####KKjjttEE####WWGGGGEEGGDDDDGGjjttGGKKWWWWLLGGLLGG##########DDjjttttGG##GGffttiiiiffDDKKDDGGGGGGii      
  ff####GGffffttii;;ttLLiijjtt;;LLtt;;,,,,;;;;;;iittLLtt;;,,iiiiiitt;;;;ffGGGGLLtt;;iiii;;;;DDWW####WWWW####KKDDKKKKWWWWtt    
..EE##LL;;ttttLLttLLLLttff##WWGGjjffGGDDGGKKKKKKWW####WWDDGGDDDDWW##EEEEffttffLLffGGWWWWGG;;;;ttffjjffDDDDff;;;;;;iittKKWWii  
;;KKKKiittKK######WWWW######################################KKKKWW##WW##################WWKKDDffttjjjjiiiiiiLLEEGGDDiittWWLL  
..KK##ttGG######WWDDDDEEKKDDKKWWDDKKEEKKWWEEKKEEWW##WWKKWWEELLLLDDDDDDEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKK##########WW####KKWWKK########KKiiDDEEii
  DD##ffGG######EELLLLLLLLLLGGDDLLDDGGDDDDLLLLEE####WWGGGGLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLDDKK######WW####KKKKKKWWWWKKKKWW####ttLLWWLL
  GG##LLLL##KKKKDDLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLGGWW####WWLLDDLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLGGKKWW######EEEEDDLLLLLLDDEEEELLEE####ffLLWWGG
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  ;;WWWWiiGGKKLLLLLLLLGGLLDDEEDDLLLLLLLLLLLLLLKK####KKDDGGLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLDDWWttEEWWDDDDLLLLLLLLLLLLLLEEKKiiKKWW;;  
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[/musings] [permanent link]

Prince
I'll never forget the day I started liking Prince's music. I was with my friend in his car headed somewhere. We were listening to K-Rock and they had a "listener playlist" where for about an hour, all the music had been selected by a listener and this listener was on the phone, talking with the DJ about his selections and introducing songs.

The guy announced that the next song was from Prince. The DJ questioned this selection and he said, "No, this dude can shred. Just listen."

And we laughed.

And we listened.

And Prince shredded.

[/musings] [permanent link]

It's been a while...
It's been a while since I've had a substantial update here. I've been busy living life leaving little time to be writing about it; at least writing about it here.

Work has been quite busy for a while now. Lots of projects, lots of deadlines, lots of extra hours. But there hasn't been any "mandatory seven day work weeks" like I had at that one job, and there isn't that expectation of "you can work from home so you are always expected to be working" I had at the last job. Plus, the work is a lot more interesting than anything I've done in years.

Bernstein was right: money doesn't motivate me, interesting problems and the ability to tinker do.

Yesterday the DeLorean rolled over to 16,000 miles. That's still about 1,000 miles a year I'm putting on it. I'd like to keep the mileage low, but she's just so much fun to drive. I've been asked by people at work to bring Aisling next week for Bring Your Child to Work Day. Apparently a lot of my co-workers have told their kids about the car and they want to see it.

I ran my 29th half-marathon this past weekend. I'd like to get up to 32 this year. I'm also signed up for my 13th marathon this Autumn. I'm considering running number 14 a few weeks later.

In addition to all of that taking up my time, I've also been volunteering with the Youth Ministry at a church in my diocese. That's been quite an amazing adventure. It's had a profound impact on my life and has certainly helped at least a few teens. It's been an honor to do the Lord's work. Maybe someday I'll publish some of the talks I've given. The In His Image talk seems to have resonated with a lot of people, certainly more so than some of the other talks.

I guess that sums things up for now.

[/musings] [permanent link]

On Content "Management" Systems
Wordpress is the new Typo3.

Discuss amongst yourselves.

[/musings] [permanent link]

It was a good day...
So today I woke up and watched an episode of Star Trek while I did some weight training and core work. Then I met my friend and her 5-month old baby for breakfast. That baby is so cute, and so happy too.

After that I met another friend for a run in the Tourne where we met a fox on the Red Trail. When I got home from the run, I turned my lawn into an avant garde art installation and then took a shower.

I took Ailsing out for a drive and on the way home she rolled over to 15,000 miles. I've had the DeLorean for about five years now, so I'm still averaging 1,000 miles per year. Not bad.

A large part of a tree fell and missed my house by about 18 inches. So then I went and ran another Six miles during a National Weather Service tornado watch.

Now I'm finishing up the day with a good movie and a glass of Monk's Blood.

Today, I didn't even have to use my AK. It was a good day.

[/musings] [permanent link]

Cast Yourself

"Cast yourself upon Him and be not afraid; He will not draw away and let you fall. Cast yourself without fear, He will receive you and heal you."

-- Saint Augustine, Confessions: Book 8, Chapter 11

[/musings] [permanent link]

It's not stupid, it's advanced
I opened the Windows 10 settings app, not to be confused with the control panel, and I selected "Windows Update." Next, I chose the "Advanced Options" and was greeted with this mess. I hope the next build fixes this problem, as well as the myriad of other issues plaguing the current Windows 10 preview release.

[/musings] [permanent link]

Initial Thoughts on Windows 10 -- UPDATED!
I'm done with Microsoft for any platform that is not a telephone. Windows 10 attempts to "fix" the abomination that was windows 8 on the desktop, but just makes things worse.

The "search" "app" that replaces the previous existing search feature really only sends a query to bing. I'm looking for a file somewhere in a subdirectory on my hard drive. I didn't want to search the web for 20141020*.txt. The UI looks like crap. Slapping a titlebar on top of the "modern" "apps" does not make them usable on the desktop. The start menu has returned, but it has never been this useless. And the ability to revert to the "classic" start menu, the behavior introduced in windows 95, and refined in win98 and Windows 2000, has been removed. I shouldn't be surprised by that given that Windows 7 also lacked the "classic" start menu. At least Windows 7 allowed a "Windows Classic" theme for the rest of the UI.

Ever since Service Pack 3 for Windows XP, MS has been slowly and surely trying to make things "easier." However, what they deem "easier" often means removing features and behaviors I relied on to get work done. Windows 10 continues this tradition.

I never really had a problem with Microsoft, I never avoided their software for ideological reasons. I believe in using the right tool for the job. Windows 10 is the wrong tool for any job.

UPDATE!!!

Using the Windows Update mechanism, MS pushed out a new build of Windows 10. This upgraded the installation from build 9841 to build 9860. After a lengthy download, installation, and a very long reboot, I was able to log in again, Only to be greeted by this:



And this lovely error when I tried to open the new "Notification Center":



Now isn't that special?

[/musings] [permanent link]

The Truth is Out There
Tonight, I had the great fortune of joining a person who means the world to me at a book signing by Gillian Anderson and her co-author Jeff Rovin. Jeff has ghost-written/co-written several novels for and with Tom Clancy, and Gillian is AGENT DANA SCULLY!!!

Gillian indicated that she modeled the main character as someone she would play in a cinematic version of the story, and Jeff mentions that, while not required reading, the novel is a spiritual sequel to Edgar Allan Poe's only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.

I'm going to put The Crytptonomicon on the back burner and put Poe's work and this new novel, A Vision of Fire at the front of my priority queue.

[/musings] [permanent link]

[/musings] [permanent link]

Windows 8.1 in Virtual Box
I was attempting to run the Windows 8.1 Preview in a VM using Sun's Oracle's Virtual Box on a Windows 7 host. I ran into a minor problem.

The OS wouldn't boot. I received an error stating:

Your computer needs to restart. Please hold down the power button. Error Code: 0x000000C4 Parameters: [redacted]

Looking for the error code online led me to this article describing the issue and a fix. The key to fixing this was running the command:

"c:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox\VBoxManage.exe" setextradata "" VBoxInternal/CPUM/CMPXCHG16B 1

The CMPXCHG16B is an instruction in 64-bit X86 processors that allows for atomic operations on octal words.

[/musings] [permanent link]

World Autism Day

[/musings] [permanent link]

Happy Birthday

I'm starting to get used to celebrating my birthday at TBM concerts. This year it was about a week prior to my birthday at a show on December 1 held at New York's Gramercy Theatre.

Along with the tickets, I had also purchased the "VIP package." This package included an autographed poster signed by all members of the band, a "VIP" laminate on a lanyard, and... the opportunity to meet the band prior to the show!

You may be thinking, "But they stick around after shows and mingle with their fans anyway," and "You've already met them a few times!" Both are true. And even with this "VIP" package meet-and-greet, they still make time for all their fans after the show. What this provided was a somewhat quieter meeting in a more intimate setting.

In fact the meeting was in a small lounge beneath the concert hall. Dim mood lighting, mirrors, and couches set the atmosphere. I spoke with Rainbow, Michael, and Nate first. Rainbow informed me his name was Michael also and made a joke about the "power of the three Mikes lighting the room." After a bit, they started moving me to Chibi who was sitting on a couch after injuring her knee during a show two nights prior. She tried to walk to me, but I told her not to. She said, "I'll meet you half way then."

I gave her a get well card, knowing she had had surgery on her vocal chords about 8 weeks prior and recently injured her knee. Someone decided we needed a photo of that and she gave me the card back so I could give it back to her. I believe it was Owen who said, "Act natural and hold it for 30 seconds!"

I asked Rainbow about writing "Unfamiliar" because both he and OE were given credit in the liner notes. He said it was mostly OE; OE started it and Rainbow had finished it. I said I wanted to thank them because it was a song that had taken on some greater meaning to me and I relayed a brief version of the story of the moment I recognized that. It turns out "Unfamiliar" is one of Chibi's favorite songs too.

Every one of the bands that night were amazing. All, remarkably, were performing as duos. Creature Feature was a real fun band to see. Their music is heavily influenced by old horror movies which gives them a dark yet fun sound.

Aesthetic Perfection put on a good performance. Their drummer is amazing and fun to watch. They heavily synth-based and while there was a dark tone to most of their songs, they still had fun and lightened things up with a Fine Young Cannibals cover.

William Control was the only other act I had heard before the show (Thanks Last.fm!). He was great live and I'd love to see him again. He reminded me a little of Dommin in that Dean Martin meets Glen Danzig sort of way.

The Birthday Massacre was great. They played a good mix including songs from every album. For most of the set Chibi was sitting on a speaker placed near center at the front of the stage, wearing a knee brace. She stood up and moved around occasionally, but not much. At one point Rainbow sat down on another speaker and stuck out one leg in a similar fashion to how Chibi was seated and laughed a little. It was easy to tell by their interaction here that Chibi and Rainbow are close.

If you care (or even if you don't), their set list follows:

• Night Shift
• Down
• Control
• Always
• Red Stars
• Video kid
• Lover's End
• Forever
• Pins and Needles
• Happy Birthday
• Alibis
• Calling
• In the Dark
• Sleep Walking
• Midnight
-- Encore --
• Leaving Tonight
• The Long Way Home
• Blue

The band did not leave the stage prior to the encore as they normally would. Chibi said, "This is the part of the show where we say thank you and leave and you clap and we come back out and play some more. But I'm not going to walk down those stairs anymore than I have to, so do you want to hear three more songs?"

[/musings] [permanent link]

Signs of the Apocalypse
A friend told me this was from Glee. I found it amusing; thought I'd share.

It's a fact that the book of Revelations predicted Twitter. It's one of the seven signs of the apocalypse; Along with porn, unexplainable weather anomalies, martian rovers, Barney Frank, the middle east and MSNBC. It's like Kirk Cameron said, "It's never too late, until it's too late."

[/musings] [permanent link]

TBMChicago
TBMChicago has some live footage of The Birthday Massacre as well as galleries of photographs taken during performances and after shows hanging out with fans.

I'm a little shocked that it's taken me this long to find this site. But then again, I'm usually out of the loop on things so maybe it shouldn't be too surprising.

I'm waiting for the DVD release of Show and Tell. I haven't found a release date yet, but I could just be out of the loop yet again.

[/musings] [permanent link]

Can't you trip like I do?
I got home a little early (read: on time) from work today so I was able to start running a little earlier than I have been lately. I just kept running until the runner's high kicked in, then I kept running until it started to wear off, then I ran another two miles back home.

I ended up doing about twelve miles tonight and it felt so good. I had almost forgotten what that high felt like. Between the weather and work, my runs were averaging 3 to 5 miles and that doesn't do much for me anymore. But tonight I was able to get that feeling again.

Oh my God, it's the best.

[/running] [permanent link]

Can't you trip like I do?
I got home a little early (read: on time) from work today so I was able to start running a little earlier than I have been lately. I just kept running until the runner's high kicked in, then I kept running until it started to wear off, then I ran another two miles back home.

I ended up doing about twelve miles tonight and it felt so good. I had almost forgotten what that high felt like. Between the weather and work, my runs were averaging 3 to 5 miles and that doesn't do much for me anymore. But tonight I was able to get that feeling again.

Oh my God, it's the best.

[/running] [permanent link]

Can't you trip like I do?
I got home a little early (read: on time) from work today so I was able to start running a little earlier than I have been lately. I just kept running until the runner's high kicked in, then I kept running until it started to wear off, then I ran another two miles back home.

I ended up doing about twelve miles tonight and it felt so good. I had almost forgotten what that high felt like. Between the weather and work, my runs were averaging 3 to 5 miles and that doesn't do much for me anymore. But tonight I was able to get that feeling again.

Oh my God, it's the best.

[/running] [permanent link]

2010 NYC Half Marathon
Yesterday was my best half marathon yet. As I stood in the corral waiting for the race to start, the chill in the air was a welcome change from the heat and humidity of last year's race. The decision to move the race from August to March was a good one. The course is definitely a fun one. It starts with an 8 mile loop around Central Park before exiting onto 7th Avenue. From there, the route goes to 42nd street, through Times Square, and out to the West Side Highway where the course finishes near Battery Park.

I started out with the goal of beating my time from last year. As long as I did better than 1:51:49, I'd be happy. I was hoping I'd finish within a minute or two of the half marathon PR I set back in January, but I wasn't counting on it.

As I ran I looked at the split times, and roughly gauged how I was doing, trying to stay on target for something close to 1:37 finish, but primarily making sure I was doing better than last year's 1:51. At mile 8, just before exiting Central Park to head to Times Square, the clock time was about 59 minutes. I realized that the winner of the race was about to finish, if he hadn't already, and I hadn't even made it out of the park.

This year's splits were much better than last year's.

split	2009	2010
5K	0:23:42	0:23:22
10K	0:47:32	0:46:09
15K	1:14:45	1:07:59
20K	1:46:09	1:29:28
final	1:51:49	1:33:26

This is the first time I've run negative splits. What really amazes me is that not only was the second half faster, but every 5K split was faster than the previous. There was an excitement exiting the park. There was an amazing rush turning the corner onto 42nd street. The crowds were great, cheering every runner as we passed by.I remember around the mile 11 marker realizing I had a chance to PR, estimating my time at about 1:36, and picking up the pace a bit. I started passing people left and right. One runner saw me and yelled, "Go, man! Go!"

Out of about 15 to 16 thousand people that signed up, 11,493 finished. I finished in 895th place; far, far, behind the winner who took home $20,000.

Universal Sports had a live telecast of the event. I set the DVR to record it before I left, but I haven't had a chance to watch it yet. It likely focused primarily on the professionals who ran, including the Marathon world record holder, Haile Gebrselassie.

This was a great race on a great day.

[/running] [permanent link]

I'm looking California and feeling Minnesota

[/musings] [permanent link]

1443142404
This is only a test. Had this been an actual post, there would be actual content. Or not.

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[/mobile] [permanent link]

Signs of the Apocalypse
A friend told me this was from Glee. I found it amusing; thought I'd share.

It's a fact that the book of Revelations predicted Twitter. It's one of the seven signs of the apocalypse; Along with porn, unexplainable weather anomalies, martian rovers, Barney Frank, the middle east and MSNBC. It's like Kirk Cameron said, "It's never too late, until it's too late."

[/musings] [permanent link]

On Content "Management" Systems
Wordpress is the new Typo3.

Discuss amongst yourselves.

[/musings] [permanent link]

1454815466
Beautiful https://www.instagram.com/p/BBeDsOSrXEk/

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[/mobile] [permanent link]

Optical Illusion
I saw this today. I thought it was interesting.

[/musings] [permanent link]

1449069975
https://www.instagram.com/p/-ywsdLrXFZ/

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[/mobile] [permanent link]

1443142404
This is only a test. Had this been an actual post, there would be actual content. Or not.

==================================================================
This mobile text message is brought to you by AT&T

[/mobile] [permanent link]

National Running Day ... part 5
This evening on my second run, I met up with one of the middle school kids I had coached on the cross country team. He was driving (because he's not in middle school anymore) and stopped at an intersection waiting for me to cross. He called out to me, I stopped, and we chatted briefly.

Although the conversation was brief, I realized that I had left an impression on him, I had made a difference, however small, in his life. And no matter what else happens, nothing can change that.

Happy National Running Day!

[/running] [permanent link]

It was a good day...
So today I woke up and watched an episode of Star Trek while I did some weight training and core work. Then I met my friend and her 5-month old baby for breakfast. That baby is so cute, and so happy too.

After that I met another friend for a run in the Tourne where we met a fox on the Red Trail. When I got home from the run, I turned my lawn into an avant garde art installation and then took a shower.

I took Ailsing out for a drive and on the way home she rolled over to 15,000 miles. I've had the DeLorean for about five years now, so I'm still averaging 1,000 miles per year. Not bad.

A large part of a tree fell and missed my house by about 18 inches. So then I went and ran another Six miles during a National Weather Service tornado watch.

Now I'm finishing up the day with a good movie and a glass of Monk's Blood.

Today, I didn't even have to use my AK. It was a good day.

[/musings] [permanent link]

Cast Yourself

"Cast yourself upon Him and be not afraid; He will not draw away and let you fall. Cast yourself without fear, He will receive you and heal you."

-- Saint Augustine, Confessions: Book 8, Chapter 11

[/musings] [permanent link]

It's not stupid, it's advanced
I opened the Windows 10 settings app, not to be confused with the control panel, and I selected "Windows Update." Next, I chose the "Advanced Options" and was greeted with this mess. I hope the next build fixes this problem, as well as the myriad of other issues plaguing the current Windows 10 preview release.

[/musings] [permanent link]

1423064732
http://elitedaily.com/money/entrepreneurship/psychology-behind-messy-rooms-messy-room-may-necessarily-bad-thing/708046/

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[/mobile] [permanent link]

1420590331
Castle of Dr. Brain : Sierra On-Line, Inc. : Free Streaming : Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/msdos_Castle_of_Dr._Brain_1991

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[/mobile] [permanent link]

Why does tomorrow have to be Monday?
Today I decided to be awesome. My friends decided to be awesome too. It was awesome.

We packed up and drove down to Westfield and ran the CJRRC Hangover 5K. It was supposed to be held January 1, but was rescheduled multiple times due to the weather.

I ran a PR today finishing in 19:22. I was 4th in my age group and 15th over all.

My friends ran the race too, all except one who has a broken toe. Everyone was happy with their time and met their goals for the day, ranging from sub-25 to "eh, taking it easy, seeing how it goes..."

After the race we went cycling. This was my first bike ride outside. I've been working with an indoor trainer for the last few weeks and this was the first time I had been on a bicycle, outside, actually moving, in about 16 or 17 years. My friends have been cycling longer and more recently than I have, so today's 17 mile ride was rather easy for them.

I was freaking out quite a bit, but they calmed me down, gave me pointers, and just helped me out in general.

As we rode, I got more comfortable with the bike and I realized comparing this bicycle to my last bicycle is like comparing my DeLorean to my old Mercury Sable. It takes a while to get used to the differences, but once you do it handles far better and offers more control.

[/running] [permanent link]

Why does tomorrow have to be Monday?
Today I decided to be awesome. My friends decided to be awesome too. It was awesome.

We packed up and drove down to Westfield and ran the CJRRC Hangover 5K. It was supposed to be held January 1, but was rescheduled multiple times due to the weather.

I ran a PR today finishing in 19:22. I was 4th in my age group and 15th over all.

My friends ran the race too, all except one who has a broken toe. Everyone was happy with their time and met their goals for the day, ranging from sub-25 to "eh, taking it easy, seeing how it goes..."

After the race we went cycling. This was my first bike ride outside. I've been working with an indoor trainer for the last few weeks and this was the first time I had been on a bicycle, outside, actually moving, in about 16 or 17 years. My friends have been cycling longer and more recently than I have, so today's 17 mile ride was rather easy for them.

I was freaking out quite a bit, but they calmed me down, gave me pointers, and just helped me out in general.

As we rode, I got more comfortable with the bike and I realized comparing this bicycle to my last bicycle is like comparing my DeLorean to my old Mercury Sable. It takes a while to get used to the differences, but once you do it handles far better and offers more control.

[/running] [permanent link]

Fireside Chat


Tonight I signed up for the Fireside beta. They asked for all my social media accounts to prove I'm a human. The problem is, I don't have a twitter account, a facebook account, instagram, etc. Years ago I took the advice of numerous psychology studies and my own therapist's advice and got off the social media platforms. It was one of the best things I've ever done for my mental health.

So hopefully this blog, though infrequently updated (and slightly broken since the last major perl update), will serve as proof to the people at Fireside that I am human and not a bot.

It was the Astonishing Legends Podcast that led me to Fireside. It would be nice to use it for one of their interactive live chats sometime.

[/musings] [permanent link]

A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.

[/musings] [permanent link]

This makes me sick...
This is why I was fat. I can't believe I used to eat this way... Although the Guinness Chocolate Pudding does sound good.

[/musings/self] [permanent link]

Merry Christmas
While the holidays are supposed to be a joyous time, I know and understand how hard they can be for some people. If you're having a rough time over the next week or so and need someone to talk to, feel free to message me. If you're reading this blog, you likely know my email address or phone number.

[/musings] [permanent link]

Fireside Chat


Tonight I signed up for the Fireside beta. They asked for all my social media accounts to prove I'm a human. The problem is, I don't have a twitter account, a facebook account, instagram, etc. Years ago I took the advice of numerous psychology studies and my own therapist's advice and got off the social media platforms. It was one of the best things I've ever done for my mental health.

So hopefully this blog, though infrequently updated (and slightly broken since the last major perl update), will serve as proof to the people at Fireside that I am human and not a bot.

It was the Astonishing Legends Podcast that led me to Fireside. It would be nice to use it for one of their interactive live chats sometime.

[/musings] [permanent link]

It's been a while...
I haven't updated this blog in quite some time. A lot has happened since the last post.

First and foremost, I spent about two months volunteering as the Cross Country team's coach for the local Middle School. Due to budget cuts, all athletics programs were cut. The local Police Athletic League stepped up and volunteered to take over the programs. Many of the teachers who have coached in previous years did not want to do so now, so the PAL went looking for volunteers within the community.

A friend of mine with whom I train put me in contact with the PAL and after an application and vetting process, I became a Rutgers Certified coach and began my duties.

The team was relatively small, seventeen boys and six girls. Having never really worked with kids before, I was glad that this year's team was half the size of last year's; however I was still apprehensive about working twenty-three middle-schoolers. Thankfully, several parents helped me throughout the season. One in particular was there with me for almost every practice and every meet.

I tried to emulate the aspects of my middle and high school coaches that I thought worked, and tried different approaches in an attempt to avoid the aspects I had never liked. I wanted to motivate and inspire these kids.

I told them about my history as a runner: my experience in 8th, 9th, and 10th grade, my first 53-minute 5K on the treadmill in March of 2008, my marathons, my personal records, and my improvements over the last two years. I told them I would never make them do any thing I wouldn't do myself in training. And I ran with them. Whether the day's training was 100 and 200 meter repeats, running the course, "time on feet" running, or fartlek's, I ran along side them.

During one session I was catching up to the lead group, the fastest of the 7th and 8th graders, and asked, "Are you really going to let an old man with bruised ribs keep up with you?" One of them turned and said, without breaking pace, "You're not that old and you run marathons."

During the Cross Country season, in the last six weeks or so I've run a few races and set a few PRs. On September 19, I ran the Marathon Tune-Up 18 mile in Central Park. I set a new 18-mile PR at 2:27:34, taking 18:56 off my time from last year. Also of note, I didn't end up in medical being treated for hypothermia this year.

The following week I ran the 5th Ave Mile. I shaved 9 seconds off from last year's race and 3 seconds off my previous best in training. My new mile PR is 5:25.

About 2 weeks later I ran the Hartford Marathon. My friend and I got there very late the night before the race. Because we were stuck in traffic for about four and a half hours, my friend missed the on-site registration. He debated what to do while we went to dinner at a local tavern. I promptly felt sick after eating.

The next morning we got and got ready to run. I still felt sick from the night before and threw up the previous night's meal shortly before we went to the registration packet pickup. I got my bib and timing chip and my friend failed to convince the race officials to let him enter. When he asked, "can I run unsanctioned?" the response of the somewhat sympathetic official was, "I can't tell you that you can." So my friend decided to run unsanctioned. After all, no one said he couldn't.

We lined up in the corral. Despite the way I felt, I knew I had to go out there and run my best marathon. I had told the Cross Country team what Prefontaine had said, "To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift." I had to go out there and try to PR. But as Yoda said, "Do or do not; there is no try."

I started the race keeping the 3:45 pace group in my sights. My friend kept along side me for the first three miles then fell back a bit. I had some conversations with two runners in the pace group, Gavasker, the pacer, and Jen, a woman who was looking to BQ. I kept with them the whole way and finished in 3:43:32.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, my friend dropped out at mile 8 and made his way back to the start/finish area. He was there at the finish line, waiting for me as I crossed the line just ahead of Jen who BQ'd with 2 minutes to spare.

The next morning I went out with some other friends and ended up running another 24 miles putting me at 50 miles for the weekend. Monday evening I ran in a charity 5K with another friend, and then took a few days off.

Since then, the Cross Country season has ended. They had their last meet, a few more days of practice, and then this past Wednesday they had team photos followed by an end-of-season pizza party.

At the party the kids presented me with a plaque to say "thank you." I damn near cried when I unwrapped it and saw the photo taken at one of our practices. But if anyone asks, I'll deny that part.

The 6th and 7th graders also asked me to come back and coach next year. During and since the season, I've run across some of the kids in town. Every time, they come up to me and say, "Hey coach!" And that means the world to me. It makes me think I've succeeded, that there's a possibility I've inspired them to keep running. Hopefully they'll love running as much as I do, if not more.

I've encouraged the kids to enter our town's annual 5K next weekend and several of them have signed up. I'm looking forward to running with them again.

[/running] [permanent link]

It's been a while...
It's been a while since I've had a substantial update here. I've been busy living life leaving little time to be writing about it; at least writing about it here.

Work has been quite busy for a while now. Lots of projects, lots of deadlines, lots of extra hours. But there hasn't been any "mandatory seven day work weeks" like I had at that one job, and there isn't that expectation of "you can work from home so you are always expected to be working" I had at the last job. Plus, the work is a lot more interesting than anything I've done in years.

Bernstein was right: money doesn't motivate me, interesting problems and the ability to tinker do.

Yesterday the DeLorean rolled over to 16,000 miles. That's still about 1,000 miles a year I'm putting on it. I'd like to keep the mileage low, but she's just so much fun to drive. I've been asked by people at work to bring Aisling next week for Bring Your Child to Work Day. Apparently a lot of my co-workers have told their kids about the car and they want to see it.

I ran my 29th half-marathon this past weekend. I'd like to get up to 32 this year. I'm also signed up for my 13th marathon this Autumn. I'm considering running number 14 a few weeks later.

In addition to all of that taking up my time, I've also been volunteering with the Youth Ministry at a church in my diocese. That's been quite an amazing adventure. It's had a profound impact on my life and has certainly helped at least a few teens. It's been an honor to do the Lord's work. Maybe someday I'll publish some of the talks I've given. The In His Image talk seems to have resonated with a lot of people, certainly more so than some of the other talks.

I guess that sums things up for now.

[/musings] [permanent link]

Tenth Runniversary
Today is my tenth runniversary. It's been a decade since I first stepped on that treadmill. Like my first day running, I ran on the treadmill while listening to br\oken. I've had some set backs in my recovery. Not properly rehabilitating the atrophy in the left leg has caused some problems with the muscles around my hip. Listening to my trainer only made it worse. But now I'm taking care of it properly. Like that first day ten years ago, I have a goal I am working toward. This time it is the Dublin Marathon in October. This will be marathon number 13. I don't expect to PR. I think 10 minute miles are a much more reasonable goal at this point, but frankly I'll be happy just to cross that finish line. It's been a long, hard road out of Hell, but God has been by my side and put some amazing people in my life to help me along the way. I have to thank the Giraffes for today. I have to thank the Giraffes for much of my life this last decade. I was heading for an early grave, and they changed that. Giraffes, I thank you from the bottom of my heart and I look forward to running the LTC and many other races with you in the next decade.

[/running] [permanent link]

Optical Illusion
I saw this today. I thought it was interesting.

[/musings] [permanent link]

WTF?
I'm used to guitarists mocking the bass and bassists. It doesn't bother me too much. But this... This irritated me. A lot.
Today at work there was a group of people talking about Rock Band and Guitar Hero 3. None of them actually know how to play intstruments but they claim to be great at these games. They seem to believe this entitles them mock bassists.

• "Oh man, bass is so easy. It's the guitar that's the hard part. Yeah, I'm on expert on the guitar."
• "Yeah, bass is so stupid."
• "So It's me, my brother, and my sister. I play guitar, he's on drums, and my sister sings."
  "what about bass?"
  "My friend just got Guitar Hero 3. I'll make him play bass."
  [Both laugh]
• After making statements indicating this person believes he actually is better than Tom Morello, "After you make Tom Morello or Slash your bitch, they play bass for you."

[/musings] [permanent link]

chdir(2)
So today at work another developer many years my senior, with many more years experience than I, came to me with a Unixy problem.
"When I have a program, how can I have it so the current working directory for all processes it starts isn't the one that it started in?"
"chdir."
"No, I want so that if this process starts something like ls, when ls stats 'dot' I want 'dot' to be the directory that process wants it to be, not the directory that process was started from."
After about 15 minutes of me suggesting chdir while he said that's not what he wanted but then describing chdir, I finally wrote something along the lines of the following

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>

int
main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
  system("/bin/pwd");
  system("/bin/ls");
  chdir("/tmp");
  system("/bin/pwd");
  system("/bin/ls");
  chdir("/etc");
  system("/bin/pwd");
  system("/bin/ls");
  chdir("/");
  system("/bin/pwd");
  system("/bin/ls");
  return 0;
}

I compiled that, ran it, showed him the output. He said, "Yeah, that's what I want to do."
I showed him the code.
"chdir does that?"

[/unix] [permanent link]

Alpha
Due to the power failure, there was the loss of several hours of work. Last night I installed FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE on an old DEC AlphaStation 200 I have. I had started building a new, smaller kernel for it around 23:30 last night. It had not completed by the time of the power outage. I have restarted that build.
Any one reading this would reasonably ask, "Why are you not as confused/angry/annoyed with a compile that was not finished in 7 hours as you were about one that took 3 hours?"
The answer is simple. This AlphaStation is powered by a 100MHz DEC Alpha EV4 CPU and has 64MB of RAM. To the best of my knowledge, DEC made this machine around 1994 or 1995. I expected the build to take a long time; the machine is around a dozen years old.

[/unix] [permanent link]

How long does it take to build a linux kernel?
It has been a number of years since I built a linux kernel. Slackware 9.1 was the last GNU/Linux distro I used before switching back to BSD. Tonight I put together a machine from some old parts (1.2GHz celeron with 256KB cache, 256MB RAM, 20GB hard drive) and installed Slackware 12. I customized a kernel configuration and attempted to build it. I don't remember the 2.4 kernel taking as long to build as this 2.6 kernel. It took nearly two hours. Granted, this machine is fairly old, but 2 hours? After I complete the tasks for which I needed this setup, I'm going to install an older Slackware with the 2.4 kernel and build that. I may also install FreeBSD and NetBSD and build their kernels. I'd like to get an idea how long it takes to compile other kernels on this rig.

[/unix] [permanent link]

If all goes according to plan...
This time tomorrow, my car should be on its way to Texas.

[/dmc] [permanent link]

2010 New Jersey Marathon
I was registered for today's NJ Marathon in Long Branch. I lost a few weeks in training due to some IT-band issues, and earlier this week was stricken with a bout of bronchitis.

I got down there today, and 30 minutes before the race start I did a quick quarter mile and decided I wasn't over the bronchitis enough to run a marathon today. It was difficult for me to be there as the race started, watching my chance at reaching my goals disappear. As the morning went on and clouds disappeared and the temperature rose, my thoughts changed.

Not running today was probably the best and hardest decision I've made in a while. Often the right choices in life are not the easiest to choose, no matter the circumstances.

[/running] [permanent link]

A couple of things....
First, am I the only one who gets freaked out when seeing a Toyota in my rear-view mirror?

Second, google calculator has failed me. I keep trying to do conversions using Joules and it keeps giving me search results for physics forums with no calculator results. WTF google? WTF?

[/musings] [permanent link]

Yet Another Charity 5K
On August 4th I will be participating in Hoboken's 17th Annual 5K Run/Walk Against Crime & Drugs.

Some police officers told me about the run on Tuesday after I finished the Party With Purpose run. They said the money raised would be donated to various Veterans' organizations.

This run in August will be the same course as this week's, a map of which can be found here. I enjoyed the course. It was rather flat (especially compared to the Lincoln Tunnel Run) and there was a nice breeze coming off the Hudson.

I urge any and all of you who will be in the area to participate in the event. More information can be found at Active.com.

[/musings] [permanent link]

Optical Illusion
I saw this today. I thought it was interesting.

[/musings] [permanent link]

WTF?
I'm used to guitarists mocking the bass and bassists. It doesn't bother me too much. But this... This irritated me. A lot.
Today at work there was a group of people talking about Rock Band and Guitar Hero 3. None of them actually know how to play intstruments but they claim to be great at these games. They seem to believe this entitles them mock bassists.

• "Oh man, bass is so easy. It's the guitar that's the hard part. Yeah, I'm on expert on the guitar."
• "Yeah, bass is so stupid."
• "So It's me, my brother, and my sister. I play guitar, he's on drums, and my sister sings."
  "what about bass?"
  "My friend just got Guitar Hero 3. I'll make him play bass."
  [Both laugh]
• After making statements indicating this person believes he actually is better than Tom Morello, "After you make Tom Morello or Slash your bitch, they play bass for you."

[/musings] [permanent link]

chdir(2)
So today at work another developer many years my senior, with many more years experience than I, came to me with a Unixy problem.
"When I have a program, how can I have it so the current working directory for all processes it starts isn't the one that it started in?"
"chdir."
"No, I want so that if this process starts something like ls, when ls stats 'dot' I want 'dot' to be the directory that process wants it to be, not the directory that process was started from."
After about 15 minutes of me suggesting chdir while he said that's not what he wanted but then describing chdir, I finally wrote something along the lines of the following

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>

int
main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
  system("/bin/pwd");
  system("/bin/ls");
  chdir("/tmp");
  system("/bin/pwd");
  system("/bin/ls");
  chdir("/etc");
  system("/bin/pwd");
  system("/bin/ls");
  chdir("/");
  system("/bin/pwd");
  system("/bin/ls");
  return 0;
}

I compiled that, ran it, showed him the output. He said, "Yeah, that's what I want to do."
I showed him the code.
"chdir does that?"

[/unix] [permanent link]

Alpha
Due to the power failure, there was the loss of several hours of work. Last night I installed FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE on an old DEC AlphaStation 200 I have. I had started building a new, smaller kernel for it around 23:30 last night. It had not completed by the time of the power outage. I have restarted that build.
Any one reading this would reasonably ask, "Why are you not as confused/angry/annoyed with a compile that was not finished in 7 hours as you were about one that took 3 hours?"
The answer is simple. This AlphaStation is powered by a 100MHz DEC Alpha EV4 CPU and has 64MB of RAM. To the best of my knowledge, DEC made this machine around 1994 or 1995. I expected the build to take a long time; the machine is around a dozen years old.

[/unix] [permanent link]

How long does it take to build a linux kernel?
It has been a number of years since I built a linux kernel. Slackware 9.1 was the last GNU/Linux distro I used before switching back to BSD. Tonight I put together a machine from some old parts (1.2GHz celeron with 256KB cache, 256MB RAM, 20GB hard drive) and installed Slackware 12. I customized a kernel configuration and attempted to build it. I don't remember the 2.4 kernel taking as long to build as this 2.6 kernel. It took nearly two hours. Granted, this machine is fairly old, but 2 hours? After I complete the tasks for which I needed this setup, I'm going to install an older Slackware with the 2.4 kernel and build that. I may also install FreeBSD and NetBSD and build their kernels. I'd like to get an idea how long it takes to compile other kernels on this rig.

[/unix] [permanent link]

Disgusted
With the Goofy Challenge just 3 days away, I should be carb-loading. And I am. And with each bite of my lunch I hate myself more. Every time I eat, I feel fat. And every time I ingest anything that isn't ultra-lean protein or high-fiber, I disgust myself. But I sit here, shoving food down my gullet.

[/musings/self] [permanent link]

Ninth Runniversary
Yesterday was my ninth runniversary. Like my first day running, I ran on the treadmill while listening to Broken. Unlike the first time, I only listened to it once, and covered 4.48 miles during the duration of the EP, thanking God every step of the way.

I'm confident in knowing that the bone in my ankle has healed completely now; however, I'm still rebuilding the muscle in that ankle and the rest of that leg. There was significant atrophy during the early phases of recovery. Slowly as it may be, I am making progress, and I am thankful for that.

[/running] [permanent link]

Writing

"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case." -- Daniel Ash

Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent. I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I produce sounds right.

I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that I am able to write.

I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails. Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.

I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do anything.

In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will make things easier.

[/album] [permanent link]

NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.

I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.

As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be best to get there early.

My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the arena.

We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.

We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in line.

After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading "NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the procedure to me.

I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.

A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor tickets remained on the line.

Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.

It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing away from us).

After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite a while until the openers started.

I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did. I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.

At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you to all the people who cheered because they like us."

I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit longer, maybe another song or two.

At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd exploded.

The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which included a new rendition of Piggy.

After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song, which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise in the shape of a person's face.

At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.

The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather than distracting from it.

I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone. There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent during Hurt.

Setlist:

• 999,999
• 1,000,000
• Letting You
• Discipline
• March of the Pigs
• Head Down
• The Frail
• Reptile
• Closer
• Gave Up
• The Warning
• Vessel
• 5 Ghosts I
• 17 Ghosts II
• 19 Ghosts III
• Ghosts Piggy
• The Greater Good
• Pinion
• Wish
• Terrible Lie
• Survivalism
• The Big Come Down
• 31 Ghosts IV
• Only
• The Hand That Feeds
• Head Like a Hole
- Encore -
• Echoplex
• God Given
• The Good Soldier
• Hurt
• In This Twilight

[/musings] [permanent link]

JTHM

There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment, perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't help but look forward to where it's going.

-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"

[/musings] [permanent link]

The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script, it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin. Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively complete list of supported platforms can be found here.

Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC still decided this was the best solution.

I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash. While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is supported in Unix.

[/politics] [permanent link]

The DNC Hates Unix Users
Just confirming the Slashdot story (http://news.slashdot.org/news/08/08/25/229210.shtml):

We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following: Compatible operating systems: Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5). Compatible browsers: Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.

My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"

So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining information.

[/politics] [permanent link]

FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my liking yet, but almost everything works.

The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the BIOS and none work.

If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner available.

I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me some insight into this issue. Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title for this either. I'm going to change that.

[/unix] [permanent link]

A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.

[/musings] [permanent link]

Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned by Google) removed the video immediately.

The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.

Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.

[/musings] [permanent link]

Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in Montclair.

We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.

We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our drinks.

We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25 minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant a little over an hour prior.

As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this point and starting to run short on time as well.

The food was all quite good. One friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak. The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it was the first steak I've had in several months.

As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.

Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly. The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay. I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd like to try it.

[/musings] [permanent link]

Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent Versions System.

Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several key points.

First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to be the first track on the album.

Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the album, and merge our changes.

Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.

The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had time.

Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.

It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?

Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction of the album.

If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is on this page.

[/album] [permanent link]

Another Demo Update
Two weeks! Ha! It's been closer to two months.

A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June. The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.

So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix. This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now, I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.

Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental mix found here.

If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments and criticism.

[/album] [permanent link]

CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one student made some recordings of the lectures.

Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present to you The Bloom MP3s.

[/musings] [permanent link]

Writing

"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case." -- Daniel Ash

Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent. I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I produce sounds right.

I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that I am able to write.

I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails. Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.

I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do anything.

In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will make things easier.

[/album] [permanent link]

NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.

I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.

As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be best to get there early.

My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the arena.

We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.

We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in line.

After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading "NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the procedure to me.

I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.

A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor tickets remained on the line.

Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.

It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing away from us).

After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite a while until the openers started.

I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did. I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.

At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you to all the people who cheered because they like us."

I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit longer, maybe another song or two.

At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd exploded.

The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which included a new rendition of Piggy.

After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song, which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise in the shape of a person's face.

At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.

The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather than distracting from it.

I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone. There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent during Hurt.

Setlist:

• 999,999
• 1,000,000
• Letting You
• Discipline
• March of the Pigs
• Head Down
• The Frail
• Reptile
• Closer
• Gave Up
• The Warning
• Vessel
• 5 Ghosts I
• 17 Ghosts II
• 19 Ghosts III
• Ghosts Piggy
• The Greater Good
• Pinion
• Wish
• Terrible Lie
• Survivalism
• The Big Come Down
• 31 Ghosts IV
• Only
• The Hand That Feeds
• Head Like a Hole
- Encore -
• Echoplex
• God Given
• The Good Soldier
• Hurt
• In This Twilight

[/musings] [permanent link]

JTHM

There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment, perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't help but look forward to where it's going.

-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"

[/musings] [permanent link]

The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script, it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin. Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively complete list of supported platforms can be found here.

Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC still decided this was the best solution.

I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash. While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is supported in Unix.

[/politics] [permanent link]

The DNC Hates Unix Users
Just confirming the Slashdot story (http://news.slashdot.org/news/08/08/25/229210.shtml):

We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following: Compatible operating systems: Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5). Compatible browsers: Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.

My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"

So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining information.

[/politics] [permanent link]

FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my liking yet, but almost everything works.

The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the BIOS and none work.

If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner available.

I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me some insight into this issue. Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title for this either. I'm going to change that.

[/unix] [permanent link]

A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.

[/musings] [permanent link]

Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned by Google) removed the video immediately.

The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.

Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.

[/musings] [permanent link]

Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in Montclair.

We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.

We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our drinks.

We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25 minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant a little over an hour prior.

As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this point and starting to run short on time as well.

The food was all quite good. One friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak. The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it was the first steak I've had in several months.

As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.

Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly. The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay. I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd like to try it.

[/musings] [permanent link]

Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent Versions System.

Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several key points.

First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to be the first track on the album.

Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the album, and merge our changes.

Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.

The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had time.

Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.

It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?

Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction of the album.

If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is on this page.

[/album] [permanent link]

Another Demo Update
Two weeks! Ha! It's been closer to two months.

A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June. The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.

So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix. This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now, I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.

Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental mix found here.

If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments and criticism.

[/album] [permanent link]

CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one student made some recordings of the lectures.

Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present to you The Bloom MP3s.

[/musings] [permanent link]

Writing

"You need strong emotion, whether it's fiery or depressed, an extreme state of mind. I think in any art form it's the case." -- Daniel Ash

Maybe it's my lack of experience. Maybe it's my lack of talent. I tried to sit down and write music for the song known as Ravage in the new naming scheme, but I failed miserably. When I try to force it, like I did tonight, nothing comes out right. I have ideas, I can hear them in my head, but without that inspiration, without that emotion, nothing I produce sounds right.

I've been too happy recently and it's destroyed my creativity. I get the urge, I have the inspiration, to write when I feel negative emotions. I need anger; I need depression. It is in dealing with these emotions that I am able to write.

I have tried several times to force myself to feel this way. This usually buys me a few minutes in which I can write, but it often fails. Because the emotions are artificial, the results are mediocre at best.

I find this situation to be quite frustrating. I want to move forward with this album, but without that inspiration I am unable to do anything.

In the meantime, I'm slowly teaching myself to play guitar and, to a much lesser extent, a keyboard-style synthesizer. I've also been going through materials my music teacher friend gave me to learn some basic music theory. Hopefully once I find that needed inspiration, or find a way to work without being angry or depressed, this new knowledge will make things easier.

[/album] [permanent link]

NIN
On August 27th, I attended the Nine Inch Nails concert in East Rutherford, NJ held at the arena. I think I enjoyed it.

I ordered a pair of tickets through nin.com during the presale. Tickets went on sale at 5:00PM, I managed to get through by 5:05 and ended up with two tickets for Section 121, Row 8, opting not to purchase floor seats. I went with a friend with whom I've attended a number of concerts, including the Bauhaus/NIN show at PNC Arts Center in 2006.

As per the terms of the nin.com presale, we had to pick up the tickets at the venue. Because of this fact, and the massive amount of pointless and unnecessary construction at the Meadowlands, we decided it would be best to get there early.

My friend took the night off from work and I picked him up at his apartment after I got out of work. We grabbed a quick meal at a nearby Wendy's (which I'm still paying for...) and then headed over to the arena.

We arrived around 5:30PM, about two hours before the show. We asked one of the security staff if the box office was open because we had tickets waiting at Will Call. He informed us that the box office opened several hours prior and we could pick up our tickets.

We headed toward the box office and found a long line. We waited for a few minutes and noticed that the line had not moved at all. Figuring that a line for Will Call would be moving slightly faster than not-at-all, I went to investigate while my friend saved our place in line.

After a short walk I found another line marked by a sign reading "NIN.COM PRESALE TICKET HOLDERS." I asked the event staff member near the line if that was the line to pick up the tickets. He explained the procedure to me.

I went and got my friend from the other line and explained to him what the staff had just told me. He then waited outside while I walked into the box office, passing event staff who asked if I was picking up the presale tickets. Inside, another staff member indicated I could pick up the tickets on line 13 or 14. I picked up the tickets, went back outside and we got on line. The staff member who had explained the procedure to me came over to us, checked our tickets, and gave us wrist bands.

A little while later, just before the gates were set to open, another staff member came down the line checking people's tickets. He looked at ours, cut off our wrist bands, and told us to skip the line and enter the arena through the box office lobby. It seems people with lower section tickets were let in while people with General Admission floor tickets remained on the line.

Once inside the door, we waited on another line for about 30 seconds to have our tickets scanned for entry into the arena. On the other side of the turnstile, an escalator brought us up to the main floor. We walked around realizing we came in almost directly opposite our section. We stopped at one of the entry ways to have a look at the stage. The staff member at the entry asked to see our tickets. We told him we were on the other side but just wanted to take a quick look at the stage. He had no problem with this. I asked him if he new what time the opening act would be start and he replied, "7:30." I then asked if he knew what time Nine Inch Nails would go on. He took a piece of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, then said, "They'll be on from 8:40 to 10:55." I thanked him and we moved on. We found our section and went down to our seats.

It turns out that row 8 is actually row 3. We were at the level of the stage and about a hundred feet away. We were angled enough to have a view of almost the entire stage (the lights on the stage right we facing away from us).

After that we then decided to walk around for a while since we had quite a while until the openers started.

I stopped and purchased an overpriced souvenir t-shirt at one of the merchandise stands. I should have gotten it a size smaller than I did. I'm still not used to not being overweight. We stopped at a concession stand and payed way too much for water, then did a few more laps around the arena. Finally we went back to our seats.

At 7:30 the opening act, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, took the stage. They were pretty good. I enjoyed their music despite having heard only one song prior to that evening. It was hard to hear their vocals because the gain on the microphones seemed to be a lot lower than it should have been, especially while they were playing. They thanked the crowd for not booing. When the announced that their next song would be their last for the evening, people cheered. The guitarist quickly replied, "Thank you to all the people who cheered because they like us."

I was fairly impressed by their set and wish it had been a little bit longer, maybe another song or two.

At 8:45 Nine Inch Nails took the stage as 999,999 played. As soon as it ended, 1,000,000 started. The continued with a few more songs from The Slip. After Discipline, the band tore into March of the Pigs. The crowd exploded.

The band made extensive use of three screens, which could be raised and lowered, throughout the night. During The Warning and Vessel, the screen to the front of the stage obscured most of the stage as the instruments used for the almost-acoustic Ghosts set were set up. Justin Meldal-Johnsen played a bass violin during the Ghosts set, which included a new rendition of Piggy.

After that part of the evening's set, the front screen was used again to hide the stage as the instruments were removed during the next song, which featured an animation set to the music and live video of Trent Reznor being processed on-the-fly to distort his image. I think the only way to describe the processed video is to say it looked like white noise in the shape of a person's face.

At the end of that song the screen turned completely blue. As Pinion played, the screen's lights were turned off in a rather unique way until the screen did little to obscure the band. The screen was raised quickly as the band tore into Wish, followed quickly by the classic Terrible Lie.

The entire 31 song set, including the five song obligatory encore was about 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was an amazing show. The set highlighted the musical ability and range of the performers and featured songs from all of NIN's major releases. The visual element of the show was well thought out and very well executed, adding to the music rather than distracting from it.

I took a few pictures using the low-res camera built into my phone. There is one of the stage, the foremost screen, and Trent during Hurt.

Setlist:

• 999,999
• 1,000,000
• Letting You
• Discipline
• March of the Pigs
• Head Down
• The Frail
• Reptile
• Closer
• Gave Up
• The Warning
• Vessel
• 5 Ghosts I
• 17 Ghosts II
• 19 Ghosts III
• Ghosts Piggy
• The Greater Good
• Pinion
• Wish
• Terrible Lie
• Survivalism
• The Big Come Down
• 31 Ghosts IV
• Only
• The Hand That Feeds
• Head Like a Hole
- Encore -
• Echoplex
• God Given
• The Good Soldier
• Hurt
• In This Twilight

[/musings] [permanent link]

JTHM

There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment, perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt. I can't say that I'm very pleased with where my life is just now... But I can't help but look forward to where it's going.

-- Jhonen Vasquez, "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut"

[/musings] [permanent link]

The DNC Hates Unix Users Pt 2
Looking through this script, it appears that DNC is relying on Microsoft's Silverlight plugin. Currently, this browser plugin is supported for a limited selection of browsers on a limited selection of operating systems. A relatively complete list of supported platforms can be found here.

Knowing full well how limited the support for this technology, the DNC still decided this was the best solution.

I hope the RNC will use technologies that are more cross-platform than this. Currently the video available at their site is based on Flash. While Flash support is a bit shaky outside of Windows and Mac OS, it is supported in Unix.

[/politics] [permanent link]

The DNC Hates Unix Users
Just confirming the Slashdot story (http://news.slashdot.org/news/08/08/25/229210.shtml):

We're sorry, but the Democratic Convention video web site isn't compatible with your operating system and/or browser. Please try again on a computer with the following: Compatible operating systems: Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, or a Mac with Tiger (OS 10.4) or Leopard (OS 10.5). Compatible browsers: Internet Explorer (version 6 or later), Firefox (version 2), or, if you are on a Mac, Safari (version 3.1) also works.

My User Agent string is currently "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070527 Firefox/2.0.0.3"

So not only does the Vice Presidential nominee want to expand the powers of the DMCA, the entire party wants to prevent Unix users from obtaining information.

[/politics] [permanent link]

FreeBSD 7 SATA Weirdness
Over the weekend I installed the x86-64 build of FreeBSD 7 on my workstation, dib. I haven't had time yet to configure everything to my liking yet, but almost everything works.

The one really annoying issue centers around a SATA DVD burner. When this device is attached to the primary SATA controller (ICH7), the system refuses to boot from the hard drive. It reports that no system disk has been found. I've tried all of the SATA settings options in the BIOS and none work.

If I connect the SATA burner to the secondary Marvell "RAID" controller the system boots from the hard drive without issue. In Windows, this requires another driver (which for some reason installed a copy of apache along with it). Under FreeBSD 7; however, this second controller seems to be currently unsupported, leaving me with only the IDE burner available.

I may spend the $20 and get another IDE burner and just forget about the SATA issue, but I really would like to know what the problem is. If any one has any idea why the system would fail to boot from a SATA hard drive when a SATA optical drive is attached, please email me and give me some insight into this issue. Maybe the Unix category wasn't the best for this. I spent more time discussing the hardware/BIOS weirdness than the installation or configuration of FreeBSD7. In fact, FreeBSD 7 isn't a very good title for this either. I'm going to change that.

[/unix] [permanent link]

A little less evil
Another posting on Slashdot reports that YouTube (owned by Google) contacted the IOC concerning the take down notice recently filed. After being contacted, the IOC backed down. YouTube (owned by Google) restored the video.

[/musings] [permanent link]

Don't be evil?
There's a story over on slashdot about the International Olympic Committee demanding YouTube (owned by Google) remove a video of a Free Tibet protest. Of course YouTube (owned by Google) removed the video immediately.

The video of the protest was filmed in New York, because the protest was in New York near the Chinese Consulate. Last time I checked, which granted was a while ago, New York was in the United States. Also the last time I checked, we had the right to free speech in this country.

Maybe I'm ignorant. Maybe I'm just dumb. To me, this sounds like the IOC and Google denying the protesters their freedom of speech.

[/musings] [permanent link]

Cuban Pete's
Last night I went to dinner with some friends. After debating for a while, we finally decided on Cuban Pete's on Bloomfield Ave. in Montclair.

We arrived and the restaurant was a little crowded, but the three of us were seated in the outdoor dining area rather quickly. The weather at the time was nice, with clear skies and a comfortable temperature in the mid- to upper-seventies; beautiful Autumn weather.

We looked over the menus and made our decisions and then waited. And waited. And waited a little more. Eventually our waiter, Miguel, came over to the table and took our order. My one friend attempted to order the breaded steak. Miguel quickly said, "You don't want that. It's not very good." My friend took his advise and ordered something else instead. After Miguel took our order he quickly came back with our drinks.

We then waited. And waited. And waited some more. After about 25 minutes, the tapas we had ordered as appetizers finally came out. We split orders of chicken empanadas, beef empanadas, fish fritatas, and goat cheese fritters. All of these were quite tasty in my opinion and only to make us hungrier. At this point we had arrived at the restaurant a little over an hour prior.

As we waited for our entrees, the sun set and the air became rather cold for August. Eventually our food arrived. We were all very hungry at this point and starting to run short on time as well.

The food was all quite good. One friend had a Cuban burger made from beef and pork served with potato sticks. He said he liked the burger a lot, but the roll left a lot to be desired. My other friend and I both ordered the marinated skirt steak. The steaks were served with rice, black beans, and fried plantains. All of the side dishes were good. I was less than thrilled with the plantains, but then again, I've never really liked plantains. My friend liked her plantains even less than I did. The steak was quite good and the best I've had in a very long time; however, it was the first steak I've had in several months.

As we were finishing our meals, it began to rain. Apparently some clouds rolled in as the sun was setting. We quickly finished the last few bites and we ran inside. We got our bill from Miguel, paid, and headed back to the car while the rain was still just a drizzle.

Overall, I enjoyed the evening. The food was good. Miguel was friendly. The service was a little slow. We were there for a good two hours, an hour and a half of that waiting for our meals. On yelp.com there's more details of other people's experiences at Cuban Pete's; a lot of them more opinionated than mine. Some people loved it, others hated it. I thought it was okay. I'd like to go there again, when I have three or four hours to sit and wait for food. I've heard good things about the paella there and I'd like to try it.

[/musings] [permanent link]

Revision Control
One could argue that this should be filed under the Unix category, but this post is more about the album than it is about the Concurrent Versions System.

Friday night I created a CVS repository on this server to manage album related files. After discussing it with rskutins, we agreed on several key points.

First, with changes being made a little more frequently than before, it would be best to have some way to track what was going on, and to be able to roll back to a previous version if the changes don't quite work out. Second, we wanted to have a way to organize several files for each song, for instance, lyrics, notes, bass tabs, drum tabs, etc. Last, and maybe the most important reason for the reorganization, we wanted to move away from the numbering scheme that was in place. Each song was numbered from 0 to 17. This was fine until we realized 11 was likely to be the first track on the album.

Now the album is stored in a CVS repository. This will keep a version history of each file, allow us to simultaneously work on parts of the album, and merge our changes.

Within this repository we now have a tree structure where each song has its own directory. The directory will hold any and all files related to that song. In an effort to move away from the numbering scheme, an arbitrary naming convention was mutually agreed upon. The songs are now known by names such as Soundwave, Ravage, Frenzy, and Rumble.

The album is starting to come together. I feel motivated to work on it and recently I've found myself inspired to write. Now if only I had time.

Omlette listened to the Accidental Mix I posted (of the song now known as Soundwave) and gave me some feedback.

It sounded ominous. I don't know how else to describe it since I'm not familiar w/ either artist. Oh wait. Were you mixing your own stuff?

Ominous seems like it could be a good thing given the current direction of the album.

If anyone else takes the time to listen to it, I'd appreciate any comments or suggestions. If you don't have it, my contact information is on this page.

[/album] [permanent link]

Another Demo Update
Two weeks! Ha! It's been closer to two months.

A few days ago I had some time so I sat down with the ProTools set up again. After considering some advice from jlight, I decided to record a second track of the bass line. I decided to use my Yamaha for the second track, as I had used my Fender for the original recording back in June. The two instruments have different characteristics in their sounds and the two playing together seems to add a "fullness" to the sound.

So all I had to do was record 24 seconds of bass and put together a mix. This should take, what, 15 minutes? It took 45 just to record. Once again ProTools repeatedly crashed. When it wasn't crashing, it would report an error and stop recording. Does anyone know if there are updates for ProTools LE 7.1 that will fix this issue? As it stands now, I can't run ProTools for more than a few seconds without disabling multi-core support on my CPU. I have multiple processors. It is a multi-threaded application. It should run better... But I'll save this for that upcoming ProTools rant I keep promising.

Anyway, after about an hour and fifteen minutes, I got two mixes complete. One of them was accidental and sounds, "interesting." The other is closer to what I had in mind. While I wait for feedback on the actual mix from certain people, everyone is free to enjoy the accidental mix found here.

If anyone actually listens to it, I'd be happy to accept any comments and criticism.

[/album] [permanent link]

CS115
A number of years ago, Stephen Bloom taught CS115 at Stevens Institute of Technology. Any one familiar with his teaching style is well aware of how "animated" he can be in class. In this particular course, one student made some recordings of the lectures.

Copies circulated around campus, but over time these recordings became harder to find. In an effort to preserve a piece of history, I present to you The Bloom MP3s.

[/musings] [permanent link]