A Reminder
It's been 4 years now since my friend Justin passed away. Though time has tempered the magnitude of the loss, his absence still enters my consciousness on a regular basis. So much has changed since then... uprooting from CA to MI, home ownership, birth of a child, my oldest child entering the educational system, the deaths of two (in-law) grandparents... the list goes on. Each milestone and major event is a reminder of the passage of time. In idle moments when my mind wanders I often begin to dwell on my own mortality and whether I'm making the most of my time here on Earth. Justin's passing is a regular reminder that there are no guarantees in life and that I should make the most of it while I have the opportunity. So, while I have to say I'd much rather he was still around, I'm thankful for the intangible gift he left behind. Thank you, Justin.
Site Redesigned
In an effort to get myself interested in blogging again, I've made some tweaks to the design of this site. I stuck with the lonely cloud image in the header, as there's something about it that resonates with me, even nearly 5 years after I took it. I've also become a fan of blog designs that have a wallpaper-like background, so I modified one that I came across a few months ago on a tiling image creation site to fit what I had envisioned for this redesign.
I've also fixed a few things that have bugging me:
- Styling of my recent Twitter feeds
- The banner/background "seam" when the browser window was extended
- Everything is now centered in the browser window rather than fixed to the left.
- Upgraded to most recent version of Movable Type
There are a still a few "smells" that I need to take care of, including:
- Using a proper tabber for the right-hand column
- Re-evaluating the contents of the right-hand column
- Re-enabling comments
End of Summer
Wow. Eight months have flown by since my last update. I think that's a record for me.
Just wanted to stop in to say I'm still around. This summer has flown by. I was just getting into the swing of things, now our first child has started Kindergarten. Yikes!
Back in May I participated in the Bayshore Half Marathon up in Traverse City, MI. The weather was beautiful and cool, which contributed to me setting a PR of 1:48:36. Hopefully I'll be able to beat that at my next half marathon.
In June I had my hike up Half Dome in Yosemite National Park for which I was training through the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Hike For Discovery program.
I combined that trip out to Yosemite with a 5-day backpacking trip with my friend Rob Totte. We started at the White Wolf campground, hiked down to the Tuolumne River and then followed it up, through Tuolumne Meadows, along the Lyell Fork to the highest point in Yosemite NP, Mt. Lyell (13,114 ft / 3997 m) and back down to Tuolumne Meadows. Nearby forest fires to the west of the park made many of the views quite hazy in the Grand Canyon of the Tuoumne River, but we could see for miles at the peak.
The kids, Jennifer and her mother also headed out to California during that time. After my excursion into the wilderness, we met back up in the San Francisco Bay Area and met up with old friends.
In August I took another trip back out to San Francisco to see the SF Outside Lands concert in Golden Gate Park. It was the first time a concert had been held in the park at night. The Radiohead performance opening night was spectacular.
A few days ago I participated in a 100 KM trail running 5-person team relay event in Hell, MI called Dances With Dirt. The course involved running along the trails of Pinckney State Recreation Area in widely varying levels of use (or disuse as the case may be). There were numerous fallen trees and branches, hills a' plenty, sand patches, abundant poison ivy, thigh-high muck at stream crossings, a shallow lake crossing. Sounds like fun, no? Though we didn't even come close to winning, it was well worth the experience. Pictures to come (hopefully!).
Welcome to the Jungle
Last week I was checking out Amazon's Mechanical Turk web site. For those of you not familiar with the site, it allows people to set up simple tasks called Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs) for others to do that are easy for people to do but too difficult to automate by computer. The people who perform the tasks are then paid a modest amount for their effort.
I came across one HIT that I thought would interest some friends so I right-clicked the link to a preview of the HIT, chose Copy URL, then shared the link with the friends. After checking the site out, my friends astutely noticed that visiting the site logged them in as me. Looking closer at the URL, I realized it contained the actual session state. Rut roh! But that's not all. There was a link to a "Your Account" page, which then linked to an option to change the name, e-mail address, and password on my Amazon account... without prompting for the current password. Double rut roh! Even after I changed the password, that URL could be used to log in and change it again.
ReaIizing the security exposure, I immediate deleted the credit card info that was on file. I then sent a few messages to the Mechanical Turk team through a few different channels describing the situation. Though I only got "Thank you for your feedback. We'll be looking into the situation." type messages from their team with no way to respond back, it appears they did act on the messages. Upon revisiting the site later that day I noticed that:
- I could no longer find a HIT preview link with the state information included in the URL.
- The offending URL brought up a page saying the request could not be completed successfully. However, this could just be because the session had expired. The top of the page still shows my name and there's still a Your Account link. But...
- When clicking on the link to change the password, the site now prompts for the existing password first.
Kudos to the Amazon Mechanical Turk team for addressing the issue so quickly after I reported it. I have to say, it was kinda fun, though a bit unsettling, to find a security issue with such a high-profile site.
Here we go again!
Two years ago I participated in the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Team in Training program to complete my first marathon. I had a terrific experience, made many new friends and raised over $5000 for the organization from the overwhelming generosity of my friends and family. I received a brochure for their Hike for Discovery program in the mail and knew it was time to do some fund raising again.
So this year I'd like to repeat the experience doing something I have a passion for in a place that I love: hiking in Yosemite National Park. I will be training, hiking and fund raising in memory of my wife's grandmothers Barbara Pugsley and Dorothy Andrews, both of whom past away in recent years due to blood cancer-related illness. I've committed to raising a minimum of $3700. If you have not already, please considering donating. Your support is greatly appreciated.
I've set up a separate blog to record my thoughts and experiences while training for the hike. I'm sure it will be a terrific experience and I look forward to sharing it with you.
The Illustrated President
It's been a few years since I've posted anything related to the current presidency. A friend past along a link to this Harper's Magazine article regarding a painting by W.H.D. Koerner titled “A Charge to Keep” (1916) that George W Bush admires.
A blurb from the article:
Bush has consistently exhibited what psychologists call the “Tolstoy syndrome.” That is, he is completely convinced he knows what things are, so he shuts down all avenues of inquiry about them and disregards the information that is offered to him. This is the hallmark of a tragically bad executive. But in this case, it couldn’t be more precious.
I thought it was quite humorous. Life imitates art? How true.
Four on the Floor
After nearly 4 years I finally upgraded this blog from Movable Type 2.64 to 4.01a. I had been holding out on the upgrade because:
- The contents of the blog were stored in the original Berkeley DB format
- Version 4.x no longer supports the Berkeley DB format and instead uses MySQL by default
- Many changes to the preferences, templates, and plug-ins were made in that time
I finally upgraded because I was getting a lot of comment spam on any entries that I left open for commenting (especially Justin's entry... spam scripts have no shame!) and I was getting sick of spending so much time removing it. The spam filtering in MT 4.x is supposed to be much better.
The upgrade went remarkably smooth considering the large version leap.
- First I backed up all of the blog entries, comments, templates and settings manually as suggested by the tutorial on the Learning Movable Type web site.
- Rather than using the default MySQL, I chose to use SQLite due to it's simplicity, so I upgraded the Perl environment to include the DBD::SQLite module.
- I then cloned the Berkeley DB and upgraded to 3.36 as an intermediate step as recommended by Six Apart. While upgrading the database, I did get an error about an unknown column in the database. I simply reloaded the page as suggested in a Six Apart forum post, and the process finished successfully.
- After the DB was updated and everything looked good through the MT 3.36 admin page, I ran the mt-db2sql.cgi script to migrate the data to the SQLite format. Had I realized this script existed and that it transferred everything, not just the blog entries, I probably would have upgraded long ago.
- I then upgraded to the latest 4.x version (4.01a). I tested it by republishing The Windeler Net first. Not noticing any problems, I republished this whole blog.
The one quirk I've noticed so far is that after the upgrade, the comment count went from 139 comments to 150. Apparently a few spam and duplicate comments were resurrected during one of the database upgrades. At one point a few years ago the backend database had become corrupt after the machine was power cycled while I was making some changes to the site. I was able to recover the data in the database, but it's entirely possible there was some latent corruption still lingering.
If you notice any problems with the web site, let me know. I would like to take advantage of some of the new functionality in this version eventually. And one of these days when time permits (ha!) I'll get around to updating the look and feel, too.
Sugary Tweet
I realize I haven't been very good about blogging recently. As a stop gap measure, I've been using Twitter to capture fleeting notions over the past week or so. I had been holding off, as I felt the last thing I needed right now was another Internet distraction. But I have to admit, it's kinda fun. And I find I post to it fairly frequently because 1) the entries have to be short because they are limited to 160 characters and 2) there is little to prevent me from posting since I leave the site open in a browser tab most of the time. And I explicitly chose to not have it notify me when a follower tweets (in Twitter parlance) so that it wouldn't be a distraction.
One of these days when I upgrade the blog software I'll figure out a way to pull my tweet RSS feed into this blog's entry stream. Until then, you'll have to visit the site (or use the RSS feed) to see updates.
If you've got a Twitter account or feel like getting one, let me know so I can add you to my "following" list.
The Audience Is Listening
A few friends asked me what I've been listening to recently, so I thought I'd share my response in case you're looking for some new tunes.
- Wilco. Chicago band that makes music that's kinda like Southern rock meets Radiohead. I haven't heard their latest album but Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is one of my all time favorites.
- Calexico. Like their name sounds, the music is a mix of southern Cal/Mexican style folk rock. I like pretty much everything they've made.
- Beck - "Guero". This came out a few years ago but it's still high on my list. I haven't heard much from his most recent album "The Information", but what I've heard has been pretty good. He's got an amazing ear for hooks.
- The Weepies - "Say I Am You". Kind of a melancholy Six Pence None the Richer or Shawn Colvin sound. This was on heavy rotation in my iPod last year (just one of those years).
- CU - a Brazillian female vocalist. Latin American lounge with hints of hip-hop beats (her band includes a turntablist).
- DJ Shadow - "In Tune and On Time". A live album from 2004 that's a pretty good mix of all he's done in the past (of which I'm a big fan). I haven't heard his latest album but I heard it's more of a hard-core hip-hop album so I haven't had much interest in checking it out.
- MixMaster Mike. DJ for the Beastie Boys. I recently picked up Eye of the Cyklops and it's pretty good albeit short (it's an EP).
- Easy Star All-Stars - "Radiodread". A well done reggae cover album of Radiohead's "OK Computer".
- Ashton Allen - "Dewdrops". Very Elliot Smith-sounding indie artist.
- Camera Obscura - "Let's Get Out Of This Country". Another indie band with a female vocalist. The album has a optimistic, vintage sound if that makes any sense.
- Bonobo - "Days to Come". Loungy, (mostly) instrumental downtempo trip hop. Nice relaxing music after a day of work.
- "Cinematic". An album of remixes of a bunch of classic film scores.
- Jack Johnson - "In Between Dreams". I'm sure you've heard his stuff on the radio. This is a good album for making breakfast to on weekends (or any day of the week really).
- Putumayo Presents "A New Groove" - Latin-American influenced groove compilation. Lots of catchy tunes.
- Rodrigo Y Gabriela - Virtuoso Spanish guitar street busker duo. You can check out some cool videos on YouTube.
- Radiohead - "In Rainbows". Not their best album, in my opinion, but a decent showing. Good to hear some fresh material.
Other artists that I've recently come across and like but haven't bought any music from yet:
- Basia Bulat - quirky folksy Canadian female vocalist. Check out the video for In The Night [Quicktime req]. She's like Bjork with an autoharp.
- Bishop Allen - band from Brooklyn with a semi-retro and/or folksy sound
- Feist - another quirky Canadian female vocalist. You may be familiar with her song "1234" from the iPod commercial.
Big Heart
I ran the Big House Big Heart 5K this morning in Ann Arbor. Jennifer and the girls were gracious enough to join me by waking up before dawn and driving over an hour so I could run in an event that lasted less than 23 minutes (22:56 to be exact... a 7:21 minute/mile pace). The event itself was pretty fun. I met up with a friend and a few of her relatives before the race. As it turns out, the brother who was running with her was in a work group with me in one of my advanced math classes back in college. Small world! While I we caught up and waited for the event to begin, a small men's college a cappella group entertained the crowd by singing various U of M anthems (Hail to the Victors, anyone?). I ended up running solo as the rest of them were going to be running at different paces.
The route started at the NE corner of the Michigan Stadium, headed up State Street, around the diag, back down State Street, then along a path through the training fields on the athletic campus and to the stadium. It finished by going through the tunnel into the stadium, followed by an immediate turn down the sideline to the south end of the field and back up the center, passing through the finish on the 50 yard line. It was fun to participate for that part alone.
I don't know if it was just the fact that it was a beautiful Sunday morning and people were basking in its glory, or that I was in a fast enough pace group that everyone was pushing themselves too hard to talk (me thinks the latter), but as we passed the Union and Angell Hall I realized that no one in the immediate area was talking at all. The only sounds were those of the shoes hitting the pavement.
Jennifer and the girls just missed me crossing the finish line by a few minutes as they stopped by our friends' place after dropping me off but then had trouble finding parking at the adjacent Pioneer HS. Fortunately we were able to meet back up shortly after they arrived. Randomly, a few friends-of-friends noticed me in the crowd milling around after the finish so we chatted a bit.
To complete our time in Ann Arbor, we made the obligatory side trip to Zingerman's to pick up a loaf of chocolate cherry bread (among other things) and a trip to the Wasem Fruit Farm for apples, cider and donuts. Mmm... trans fats... :P
