J.P.'s Blog

This past weekend, myself and some friends went on a hike on the Iron Goat Trail. I had seen amazing pictures of the hike in the past, so I was looking forward to being able to see it for myself. Not to mention that I have this fascination with trains (always have) as well, so to learn the history of this line and walk along and in a few of the snow sheds and tunnels first built in the early 1900s is just amazing to me.

For those who are familiar with the trail, we walked from the Martin Creek trailhead to the Wellington trailhead and then back again. On the way out, we used the lower grade of the trail and on the way back we used the upper grade. There were some cool sites on the upper grade, but personally, I enjoyed the views on the lower grade more. For those that want to see the details of our hike can check the runkeeper logs here.

If I had to do this over again though, I think I would cheat somewhat. My favorite parts of the trail were in the first few miles of either side. I didn’t need to see as much of the places in the LONG middle of the hike. Speaking of sites, my photo collection of the hike is online here. Some very notable places along the trail were a nice spot on the lower grade where there was an avalanche / land slide. I have an interactive panoramic picture from that spot here. Additionally, standing at Windy Point and looking out over the valley and looking at Steven’s Pass and looking down on the NEW cascade tunnel still in operation as well. We were even able to watch a train cross into the tunnel. One interesting trick it looked like the train used was to have engine’s at both end of the train. I am wondering if it needed both, or whether they could just use one while the other one was in the tunnel. They used to use electric cars to PUSH fully loaded trains through the tunnel when the tunnel was first built which is why I wondered about the two engines.

One thing I never expected to enjoy on the hike was the history of the trail and the town of Wellington. I knew before hand that there were some tunnels/snow sheds and I knew that there were some great photo opportunities as well. However, the whole reason for many of the snow sheds and tunnels being built was specifically because of the avalanche which happened. This remains the worst (by deaths) avalanche disaster in the US even today. I am VERY tempted to pick up this book on the event as well. I will be checking to see if it’s in the library here for sure.

I would definitely recommend this hike to others. There are even different lengths depending on your interest. If you just want a few miles, start at the Wellington end and hike through the shed as far as you would like and back. Alternatively, there is an interpretive center in the center of the trail (scenic trailhead) as well which even has a separate .5mi loop too. If you want to hike as much as 6 mi, I would recommend starting at the wellington trail head and hiking to windy point and back. If you want to see the WHOLE trail, then bring two cars and ferry one car to the Martin Creek trail head or the Wellington trail head. Hiking west to east is both uphill (only railroad grade) AND incurs the tax of hiking up one of the switch backs to get to the upper grade which at the worst spot in the center is about a 400ft elevation gain. If you want to hike a smoother / easier hike but want to see the whole trail, then you can do the same dual car trick and hike from east (Wellington) to west. That hike is 100% downhill. Either way you choose, my personal recommendation is to use the lower grade on the west 3 miles of the hike. Both upper and lower go to and from the same locations though. If you are as crazy as we were, then you can just park at either end and walk all the way through and back also.

I am looking forward to going back and learning even more as well. I was quite fascinated by the history I learned and did not expect at all. For those who missed it in the deluge of links above, here are some highlight links:

- Pictures

- GPS map of the trail including elevations

- A few Photosynths along the trail

Sorry to all (are there any anymore?) who actually follow this RSS feed. It’s been a busy year. This post took about 2 hours working on pictures, an hour of researching the history and gathering links, and then an hour to write it all up as well. I would love to have that amount of free time to write about everything going on. There is a LOT of detail that I miss. But alas, I just have not had the time. The SHORT version is going to be following what I post on Flickr and what I tweet about.

Till Next Time

J.P.

As you may have seen before, I have spent much effort in the past on learning how to sign my own drivers and get these installed in windows.

Recently, I had to do the same again. I was building a computer for downstairs using "spare parts" (this is in quotes since this is actually a VERY long story spanning 2007 to 2010 and sort of sad too). Well the motherboard I ended up using has sound on it, but not digital audio.

I had an extra soundblaster live sitting around that I was hoping to use so that I could get a nice digital signal from the machine to my stereo.

Well, apparently I am WAY behind the times since these are now only in the ARCHIVE section on creative's download site. My new machine is of course 64 bit, which means I needed 64 bit drivers and this device was old enough that windows did not support it natively.

To my surprise, Creative actually does provide a software installer for 64 bit drivers if I select windows 7 as the OS. I thought this was going to be easy. I was wrong.

It turns out that their installer has all the drivers hidden away inside and that additionally they are not signed. Right away, this is an error on Creative's part. If I select win7 64 bit, either A. They need to NOT provide me with an installer that has unsigned drivers, or B. Provide me with actually signed drivers. They claim that they pass the windows driver bench, so they should get a cert for that, but Creative just did not want to include the right version I guess. Not too much I can do to correct their error though.

Well, that means my only solution is to break out the article I wrote before. The first hard part was just getting the drivers out. I had to use the program called 7Zip to open the self-extracting EXE file and find the driver package. Then as I wrote, create the CAT file, and then sign both it and all the drivers in the folder too.

Sure enough, that worked and I have sound on that machine. I am only writing an additional note here to keep the idea fresh in the search engines in case others stumble on this. (The previous article is the most read blog post I have ever posted according to my Graffiti Blogging Engine, so it must be reaching some people.)

Creative, would it hurt you to just sign the darn drivers you release? Really?

J.P.

It’s not the end of the year quite yet, but I already have more than enough pictures to make a decent slideshow, so I am cutting off the entries.

I learned a lot over the last 7 years of making these. Technically speaking with the music and the software and the encoding, etc; this is probably one of the better ones. However, I had quite the challenge trying to narrow down the music selection to only 6 songs that made the final cut. I hope everyone likes it.

I am posting this in a larger format than normal. In fact, its covering up some of the normal content on the right at the moment. However, the pictures are well worth it. In fact. I almost thought against posting this “web” version at all. The colors in this are all washed out and its somewhat blurry compared to the 1080p reference version I started with. However, I can’t quite let everyone stream a 1GB file from my site. So such are the tradeoffs of the web I suppose. Not all the pictures are uploaded to flickr yet, but most are. Also, I have not updated the slideshow site yet. This entry is your exclusive access. I will have download links closer to new years.

Enjoy! (Note: Depending on your internet connection speed, it make take some time after hitting play for the file to download.)

P.S. If you are reading this on Facebook, you will need to click “View Original Post” below to get the video.

Right now as I type this, the windows scripting host and Adobe Photoshop are interacting in the background of my computer making quick work of the 150 or so pictures which will be a part of this years slideshow.

I have used this script for several years now for a variety of purposes. It has always been a huge hack (ok, it still is), and I just kept pasting hard coded data / statements in the script to do what I wanted each year. This was the first year where I decided to edit the script to create a general purpose script that would work for me each time.

Of all things, the first thing I did was that while I was adding proper error codes (yes, in vbscript, you can exit with a correct error code… wscript.quit) to various initial error conditions. In the last 5 years or so, I have learned to get rather picky about my scripting (vbscript / batch) habits. Even at work when I write small scripts for use in automation, I try to follow any coding standards I can which would apply to native development. On a side note, I am now the office wiz at batch development and love using the for command as a general regex substitute in batch.

I have been either using or working on windows for at least 18 years and only in the last year at work have I found the “net helpmsg” command in windows. Currently at work, I need this command almost every day since there are hundreds of different error codes my component produces now with almost no clear way to know what they mean without feeding the error code number into this command. From what I can tell, for the most part, what this command does is translate known and existing errors which are in winerror.h into actual strings. There are other sources which get compiled into this tool however from across windows as well. (On a personal note, when this doesn’t work, I also recommend hrplus.)

I realized though that net helpmsg did not have a reverse function. For instance, I wanted my script to return errors like ‘folder does not exist’ or ‘invalid parameter’ but wanted to look up the standard errors for these. (At this point many of you would ask why I didn’t just search… the answer is because for whatever reason, the first thing I thought of was how to make my own lookup file.) So, beaming idea in my head, that is what I did. I whipped up this VERY short script to create a file with a list of the most common windows errors. (I have added comments to help with the logic. ;))

REM Clear and reset text file
echo Help File>Messages.txt
echo. >>Messages.txt

REM Cycle through top 1000 errors
FOR /L %%i in (1,1,1000) do (

    REM This command is here simply to check
    REM whether there is a valid error value
    REM or not, errors piped to NUL
    net helpmsg %%i 1>NUL 2>NUL

    IF NOT ERRORLEVEL 1 (

        REM Assuming we found an error
        REM echo that number to the file
        echo %%i>>Messages.txt

        REM Then echo the text matching
        REM that number to the file
        net helpmsg %%i>>Messages.txt
    )

)

So, file at hand, I was able to find the error codes I needed. Somewhat a waste of time, but honestly its simple, quick, and fun solutions like this which keep me amused both at work and at home a lot. At work, they get way more complicated at times, but honestly, its about finding creative and fun solutions to easy and every day problems.

So after that was out of the way, I headed off to refine my Photoshop script. I should point out that, this script will not adjust the visual quality of your pictures. You could program it to do that for you, but what I have found over the years is that the composition of every image is different and color balance, highlights, noise reduction always takes a hand touch. So each year, I adjust all 100+ images in the slideshow by hand. I don’t make HUGE changes, but just try to clean up any crappy conditions I may have taken the picture in. The purpose of this script though is just to turn each picture into a 16x9 image for the slideshow (since the built-in movement scripts in the slideshow applications work better when all the images are the same size) and to cut them down to a more manageable size. I have found I can crash almost any slideshow app with panoramic pictures that are 70,000 pixels wide. With that said, here is the script I created. (You may re-use however you like, you may repost only with attribution, and this code is released ‘as is’ with no warranty or rights attached.)

Option Explicit

Dim NamedArgCount

NamedArgCount = WScript.Arguments.Named.Count

if ((NamedArgCount < 1) or (Wscript.Arguments.Named.Exists("Folder") <> True)) then

    wscript.echo "This script takes a named argument to set the folder location."
    wscript.echo "cscript SlideshowImages.vbs /Folder:""c:\Full_Path_To_Images"""

    'Invalid Parameter
    wscript.quit 87

end if

Dim FolderPathString
FolderPathString = Wscript.Arguments.Named.Item("Folder")

Dim fsoRef, folderRef, outputFolderRef, f

Set fsoRef = CreateObject( "Scripting.FileSystemObject" )

if (fsoRef.FolderExists(FolderPathString) <> True) then

    wscript.echo "Input Folder was not found!"
    wscript.echo FolderPathString

    'Path not found
    wscript.quit 3

end if

Set folderRef = fsoRef.GetFolder( FolderPathString )

if (fsoRef.FolderExists(folderRef.Path & "\OutputImages")) then

    wscript.echo "Output folder already exists!"
    wscript.echo folderRef.Path & "\OutputImages"
    wscript.echo
    wscript.echo "Please rename or remove the existing folder."

    'File Exists
    wscript.quit 80

end if

wscript.echo "Found " & folderRef.Files.Count & " files in: " & folderRef.Path
wscript.echo
wscript.echo "Creating output path: " & folderRef.Path & "\OutputImages"
wscript.echo

set outputFolderRef = fsoRef.CreateFolder (folderRef.Path & "\OutputImages")

wscript.echo "Detecting and Initializing Photoshop..."
wscript.echo

Dim appRef, startRulerUnits, startTypeUnits, startDisplayDialogs
Set appRef = CreateObject("Photoshop.Application")

' Save the current preferences
startRulerUnits = appRef.Preferences.RulerUnits
startTypeUnits = appRef.Preferences.TypeUnits
startDisplayDialogs = appRef.DisplayDialogs
' Set Photoshop CS2 to use pixels and display no dialogs
appRef.Preferences.RulerUnits = 1 'for PsUnits --> 1 (psPixels)
appRef.Preferences.TypeUnits = 1 'for PsTypeUnits --> 1 (psPixels)
appRef.DisplayDialogs = 3 'for PsDialogModes --> 3 (psDisplayNoDialogs)

Dim jpgsave
set jpgsave = CreateObject("Photoshop.JPEGSaveOptions")
jpgsave.quality = 9

For Each f in folderRef.Files

    if (LCase(Right(f.ShortName,3)) <> "jpg") then
        wscript.echo "Skipping file:" & f.Name
    else   
        wscript.echo f.path
        dim document

        set document = appRef.Open(f.Path)

        dim h, w, newHeight, newWidth, resave
        h = document.Height
        w = document.Width

        wscript.echo "Resolution: " & w & "x" & h & "(" & CStr(Round(w / h, 6)) & ")"

        resave = false

        if (Round(w / h,6) <> Round(16/9,6)) then

            resave = true

            if (Round(w / h,6) > Round(16/9,6)) then
       
                newHeight = Round(w * (9 / 16),0)
                newWidth  = w

                wscript.echo "WIDE: " & CStr(newWidth) & "x" & CStr(newHeight)

            else

                newHeight = h
                newWidth  = Round(h * (16 / 9),0)

                wscript.echo "TALL: " & CStr(newWidth) & "x" & CStr(newHeight)       

            end if

            document.ResizeCanvas newWidth, newHeight

        else

            Wscript.echo "Image is already 16/9, skipping canvas adjustment..."

            newHeight = h
            newWidth  = w

        end if

        if (newWidth > 3840) then

            'Since many slideshow software does VERY badly / crashes on images
            'which are more than 7000px wide, just cut these down to 4K

            wscript.echo "LARGE: 3840x2160"           
       
            document.ResizeImage 3840, 2160

            resave = true

        end if

        if (resave) then

            wscript.echo "Saving as: " & outputFolderRef.Path & "\" & f.Name
            document.SaveAs outputFolderRef.Path & "\" & f.Name, jpgsave
           
        end if

        ' 2 == Do not prompt
        document.Close(2)

    end if
   
    wscript.echo
Next

' Reset the application preferences
appRef.Preferences.RulerUnits = startRulerUnits
appRef.Preferences.TypeUnits = startTypeUnits
appRef.DisplayDialogs = startDisplayDialogs
 

Now that the pictures are just about ready to go (they are now all in the right format and ready to get put in the timeline) I need to settle on the soundtrack. My possible song options ballooned in the last few months and I have been re-considering the songs be listening to a playlist over and over again. You can check out the list here. Not all 39 songs can make it. Maybe only the top 6 or 7. They are listed on that page in the order in which I first heard them this year.

Honestly I have so many other topics I could sit down and write about here lately such as the article I want to write about Portland now (similar to my “J.P.’s Guide to Vegas”), but I just have not had the time lately. (Nothing there is new I guess.)

My photos from my recent trips to Phoenix and Portland are both online now. Many more in the later than the former.

I also found that over 90% of the images in this year’s slideshow happened to already be ‘lurking’ in my Flickr photostream from the year as well. So for the hell of it, I corralled them into a preview bucket. Of course EVERY image from all of my slideshows is neatly stored on Flickr still as well in this collection. Not to mention the collections I have specifically dedicated to Travel and Hiking/Biking as well. And as always, my moblog (perma-linked at the top of this page) is hosted on Flickr as well.

Have a very happy holidays everyone. Looked for a finished slideshow “soon” ;).

Wow, it has sure been a while since I have posted here. I guess I should start off with a few apologies. First for letting it go so long, and the second for the fact that for those that have been reading since the beginning, this post will no where be as detailed, verbose, or as visually descriptive as previous posts you have seen here. In making notes for what was on my list to blog about, there have been no less than 19 significant enough places / events to write about since my last post. Given how much time I usually put into writing about any given thing, this would probably take weeks to properly link and catalog everything. But, I will try to embed lots of links to Flickr pictures.

If you REALLY just want the quick and dirty, then the best thing you can probably do right now is just head over to flickr and check out the sets on the right. At the time of this writing, the last 9 sets you see on the right contain pictures of journeys I want to write about here.

Well, I mentioned the haul ash in one of my last posts. I spent more time biking and building up to that one earlier in the summer and actually accomplished it. All 41 miles. It was tough. I don’t have a road bike and had never done a ride over 33 miles before, so 41 was the longest I had ever been on to date. I find it rather interesting actually how quickly the body gives up / hits a wall though. a 20 mile ride is pretty easy for me (assuming the right conditions / flat), but just about every mile beyond that, and even more so beyond 26 miles or so is very difficult, painful even. No gradual discomfort or fatigue, just a point at which its tough to go any further. I have of course heard of this from others before, so it’s not a new concept, but I find it rather fascinating as an engineer. We aren’t like a battery that slowly runs out. We are more like a lamp that runs out of fuel. I have ridden a few more times with friends after that, but as you may find evident soon, I haven’t actually had much time to do much riding since then.

Early in May, I had a whirlwind travel tour, going to both Vegas and New York with only a matter of hours in between (but having to fly back to Seattle in the middle). Vegas was fun, but was still Las Vegas. Not that much has changed outside of the new City Center being completed. This is a time where there are so many stories from Vegas I would probably dive into here if I was dedicating an entire post to the two trips, but suffice to say that we saw a few shows, went to a few bars, relaxed by the pool, and went to some nice restaurants. The next time I go to Vegas will be too soon though. I have had more than my share over the last 7 years, going what I think is now 9 times in that time frame. I didn’t get to this time, but my best Vegas recommendations are still, Zion national park, Red Rock Canyon, Hoover Dam, and the Atomic Test Museum. We did all have a really fun time at Hofbräuhaus this time though too.

Flying to New York was fun too. I was there to see my cousin graduate from NYU. I had not been to New York since I went for a school trip back in my freshman year of high school. (I’ll help you with math, that was 7 years prior to 9/11. As an interesting note, as I sit and write this it is 9/11/2010 today.) I was glad I went back then though. I have pictures of inside the world trade center from ‘94 and of course got to ride the elevators to the top back then. I am saddened by the tragedy of course (especially since the person that lived across the hall from me freshman year in college was working in one of the towers that day and didn’t make it out), but was nice to see the city again even after and see things still as bustling as ever. I went to see a show, went to some nice restaurants, got to see central park, the Met, the Brooklyn Bridge, and of course see some family members I had not gotten to see in quite a while. It was a good trip.

At the beginning of June a group of us went camping at the Bedal camp ground which is on the Mountain Loop Highway in the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, just east of Darrington. It was actually a great campground. It's right on the river and is far enough away from civilization that you actually feel like you are camping. Whether it was hiking the Sauk river, taking pictures, relaxing, or just hanging out, we all had a good time. Check out the album I link to above for even more pictures.

I also got to go see a taping of ‘Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me’ here in Seattle as well during June. That was pretty fun, but I don’t mind saying that I felt a bit distracted when I could see what was going on. Something about only having to listen meant that I was able to follow the discussion more on the radio normally, however, when I had to watch many people on the stage while trying to listen to just one, I was challenged to keep up.

The rest of June was also a busy month as well, but other than some more biking, much of it was spent helping my friends get ready for their wedding at the end of June. Once again, I also managed to preempt my birthday by having a party a few weeks earlier and not happening to mention my birthday was coming up. :) This is the best of both worlds the way I see it since I still got to spend time with friends, but without all the pressure / awkwardness of a “birthday party.” I found a few weeks beforehand was early enough that people didn’t suspect it either. I may not be as successful at preemption in future years though.

July was then the month of hiking. I love getting out in nature and hiking. There is something about the northwest vistas of trees, mountains, and sky that is very calming. A group of us went and hiked Rattlesnake Ledge. I had not hiked it before, but it was not bad at all and the views are just amazing. Next up and probably my favorite was hiking the John Wayne Trail as it cuts through Olallie State Park. I have a soft spot for bridges and trestles. This hike is over old train tracks (loose gravel) so the valleys it crosses go over amazing bridges you get to walk on. Finally, the next weekend after that was another quick hike up Little Si. Though parking for Little Si just seems to be getting worse. They basically now have signs now just after the turn in North Bend telling people to go away. Note, I don’t think the signs are discouraging enough for people, the parking lots were all packed, with lots of people still illegally parking.

Jumping back a bit in time, this year for July 4th (the same day I walked through Olallie State Park), I went to a friends place on the lake for their own fireworks show. More fireworks pictures are available in the set from that weekend. In the middle of the month, I got to go to a bbq where they actually roasted an entire pig over a fire pit. Let me tell you that was darn good bbq.

Rounding out the end of the month, my parents came out again to visit. We went to Gas Works park for a great view of the city, to Ballard to see the salmon (and have some of the best gluten free pancakes ever), to golden gardens (on what was probably the busiest day there I have ever seen), up to see the Peace Arch at the Blaine crossing, and finally rounding out the trip, a trip to Tacoma to the museum of glass.

Also on the last day of July, I managed to go to some place I can’t believe I had never been to before: Discovery Park. It was a great day to walk around the park and take pictures, look over the cliff, and even sit on the beach listening to the waves for a while. In total, that day was comprised of about 9 miles of walking. It was fun, but sure tiring. We are headed into the wrong season now, but I look forward to when I can go back there!

For another first, starting in August I was invited on a kayaking day trip! We only went about 8 miles or so and stuck to the shore near Bellingham, but it was amazing. I had never been sea kayaking before. For that matter, only one week earlier was the first time I had ever gone kayaking at all before. For that trip we just went out for a few hours in Lake Union (rented from Aqua Verde). But sea kayaking was even more fun because everything is so much more open. The plant, animal, and mineral life that you get to see (as well as the cool places to visit at low tide) is just wonderful. Sorry that I don’t have more pictures from these trips, but electronics (cameras) don’t like the water all that much, so I was trying to be more careful.

Also in August, I finally got to go to my first Seahawks game too! It was fun (and loud) and they won! This year is definitely a year where I have been following more football than in years past. ;) It’s all ok with me though, since there are times I miss following/watching.

Right around this time in the summer, my blueberries out front were also just ripening up as well. I should sheepishly admit at this point that while I have lived in this house for more than 3 years now, I had no idea I had blueberry bushes (large ones) out front. I have honestly no idea where I was in past summers not to know or notice, but somehow, I sure didn’t. While they weren’t necessarily as plump or sweet as other home-grown blueberries I have had, it was neat to have these as a snack from my front yard for a few weeks this year. Once they REALLY ripened, then the birds and other animals around just decimated it. One day all of the fruit was gone. Next year, I’ll know better though and have some netting ready.

This summer, I have decided to go back to being gluten free again. I grew up knowing that I had celiac / was gluten intolerant. For the most part, I didn’t grow up on pasta, cookies, cake, pizza, etc. However, once I left for college for sure, I had gone the route of waffles, pizza, cookies, bagels, etc. and had not looked back. I was pretty lucky overall. There were a few times where it would bother me, but for the most part, only part of the time would I feel bothered. This continued on through my twenties and it wasn’t until after I turned 30 that every time I started to eat/drink any gluten I would start to feel ill. Well this year I decided that enough was enough and gave it up (to the dismay of my drinking buddies). I have never regretted the decision though. I haven’t felt sick all of the time anymore. I feel like I have much more energy, and somehow this also managed to trigger a bunch of weight loss as well which I certainly won’t complain about. (Of course biking / hiking / no beer all help with that as well.)

This summer I also purchased a bread maker which has a gluten free setting on it. My local grocery has gluten free bread maker mixes as well which are easy to throw together and put in the  machine. I then slice it up and freeze two slices at a time to take lunches into work. I love it. It tastes close to real bread and there is nothing like having warm home-made bread out of the bread maker. So far its easy to just do this every few weeks for slices of bread compared with the frozen gluten free bread at the store.

For the last weekend in August, I went with some friends to spend a few days on Decatur Island here in the San Juans. It was a nice fun and relaxing time. There were games, gatherings, relaxing, hiking, and exploring. This was the second year I was invited and it’s been fun both years!

For labor day weekend, I was lucky enough to be able to spend several days in and around Boston. Whether it was walking around Cambridge and Salem, walking the freedom trail, relaxing in the gardens, or exploring Georges island in the harbor islands, I had a great time! One other amazing activity on the trip was being able to go to Fenway park as well to see the Red Sox completely crush the Rays. There were of course plenty of other reasons why this was such a great trip. Those that know will understand.

In terms of notable events / activities, that brings you to “current day” at this point. However some other notables are that I bought an iPhone (I love it so far). I have been discovering a lot of new music and have a new pandora station tracking the new artists as well as a few new last.fm stations corresponding to the new music too. Soon, I need to start selecting which music to put in the slideshow this year as well. I already have more candidates that will fit than I have time, but this year, I think they are all really great songs so far. Also, I have a TON of pictures to choose from this year as well and of course plenty of events to showcase too. It will be a fun time making it this year. I should start on it sometime in November or so.

Well, now you are mostly up to date on some of the larger activities of the last several months. There is just way too much detail in the middle that I would love to share with everyone, but this is the 3rd late night of typing this now, so hey, its bed time. :) I hope everyone else’s summer was just as fun! Here its back to being 60s, rainy, and turning dark just around 7pm again (it will eventually creep up past 5pm).

There is and was oh so much more left out and much I purposefully censored to protect the innocent as well. But I think much of that is for another time.

J.P.

So, I have been building up a long list of blog topics for months now, but I just have not found the time to compose the posts.

I have taken more pictures in the last week alone than most months of the year.

I am creating notes for an upcoming post (I have for some time), but just need to sit down for half a day or so and write it out (yeah, it normally takes several hours to put these together right).

As usual, I suggest following both the Flickr and Moblog links above as well for more constant real-time posts.

Also, I am ALREADY looking forward to the slideshow this year. I think it’s going to be great!

J.P.

Recently, I have been getting back into biking / walking. I would like to do the Haul Ash coming up. It’s a 41 mile ride from Red Hook in Woodinville to Fremont and back. That would be the longest ride for me so far to date. But, I think that I can do it.

Just last weekend, I completed a 36 mi ride from Woodinville to Gas Works park in Seattle and back. It was a great day for it. By the end, I was at my limits. That is about as far as I could comfortably go. But I did get some great pictures out of it. You can see my favorite for instance on the left. This is taken at the top of the hill in Gas Works park facing south with the skyline in the background. The link above will take you to some other cool pictures of the city as well as Gas Works.

I have been keeping the rest of my pictures from bike rides online here as well. I plan to add more there as I take them.

Some other fun rides I have done recently as well are a trip from downtown Issaquah along I90 up to the highlands plateau (challenging, but worth it) and back as well as a trip from Mercer Island across the I90 Floating bridge and into Seattle and back. A couple of select images from both of these trips are just below as well.

Though, one somewhat exciting moment was that at the VERY beginning of my first ride this season (the highlands ride, pic to the right), I had a tire blow out while heading down the hill. Originally, I had parked at the top of the hill and was going to ride down and then back up. I only had made it about .75 mi (if that) when my front tire burst. However, at first, I didn’t know that is what happened. I just knew it was an explosive flat.

Thankfully, I kept control (again, I was heading down a steep hill). I just slowly applied the breaks and stopped. I always carry spare tubes with me, so I moved off on to the grass and started to take the tire off so I could replace the tube. What I SHOULD have done is immediately matched where the hole in the tube was with the tire. Instead, I just scanned the inside of the tire for nails / glass / etc to see what I hit. I was confused since, I didn’t find anything, so I continued to replace the tube. Thankfully once more after getting the tube in and the tire back on, I again checked the tire to see if everything looked ok. It was then when I spotted what the problem was. There was a hole in the sidewall of the tire. I am not sure why, but when I had started to head down the hill, the pressure from me leaning forward must have caused it to give way. Darn. That meant I wasn’t riding any further than that. So I turned around and walked my bike back to the car (I was darn glad I wasn’t far away at that point). From there, I went to REI and found a new tire which was the exact make and model of what I already had (which is lucky considering it’s age). Then, I just reversed the ride and started from down off of Gilman where I was (because of REI) and biked UP to the plateau instead. It turned out to be a great ride. The shot of the lake (above-middle) is more amazing in person.

Finally, one of the other interesting rides I have taken recently is a trip from Mercer Island to Seattle and back on the I90 bike path. (Some time I want to try this from Issaquah as well.) When I90 heads underground on the Seattle side, the bike path heads through a tunnel. It’s sort of neat to ride in the tunnel actually. It feels like you are going faster since the walls are closer.

On the topic of outdoor pictures, I have also done some walks / hikes around recently as well. For instance I have also walked the same floating bridge path that I mention above. I didn’t go into Seattle, but did at least walk through the tunnel and back. I snapped the below picture of the skyline while it was still somewhat light out.

In addition to the city, one day I managed to by chance find a cool natural area near my house which has a lot of different style of hikes to chose from. Originally, I was more just curious about checking out the first substation which the Snoqualmie Falls connect to. If you have some time (about an hour) I really enjoyed watching this video on the history of Snoqualmie falls and especially the history of the power plant there. Most people probably know of my interest in hydro electric power. I have been slowly making my way across the state visiting hydro-electric dams and taking pictures / understanding the history. Well, via satellite maps, I could see that the first Snoqualmie substation was near my house and I was curious to find it. Its somewhat eerie actually since it’s in the middle of nowhere. What is also strange is to find a manhole cover and fiber optic internet in the middle of the woods as well. As interesting as this is though, while the PSE substation which connects to Snoqualmie is so close to me, my power actually comes just about directly off of the BPA lines which run a few blocks from my house. I think my neighborhood is the only one around it seems which gets power from BPA lines rather than PSE.

Other than the power part of it though, as you can see (to the right), there were some great hiking trails through the woods here as well. There was a LOT which I missed as well that I should catch some other time (since its so close).

In other photo related news, recently, I got to participate in the launch of the new Photosynth.net. Many of you already know I like to take panoramic pictures. I have been using a microsoft research tool for the last 5 years or so to create these. They now released a new version to go with the new photosynth site which can also upload 3d panos directly to their site. This is awesome since I would go through a ton of hassle in the past to post mine (I won’t even bother linking since there are too many to link and they will  look like crap compared to the new ones).

I think that my favorite so far on the new site was one of the series of pictures which I took on top of Taipei 101 in Taiwan. (Which I continue to point out was the tallest building in the world at the time when I was there, which means I have been on top of 4 buildings now which have at one point been known as the tallest, and two of them (taipei / world trade center) at the time they held the title. I have also posted pictures from Boundary Dam as well as Chicago (Sears tower) on there as well.

Finally, I have been playing around a little with displaying live / dynamic data on this site. In the beginning, this started with just showing the latest twitter post from the twitter account I manage for this site. You have probably noticed its been a long time since it’s changed. Sorry, I am working on that. Since then though, to the right, I now have my current list of Pandora (music) stations, as well as the list of most played artists on Last.Fm. (Note that I have a last.fm scrobbler for Pandora, so there is a good chance that the top artists are going to seem to fall into the Pandora stations I have listed.) I also have added a list of top Scientific / Technology news bits to the right as well. I follow WAY too many feeds to collate into one feed, but this seemed like a decent set of feeds I follow to show the top bits of news I am following. That list will always be up to date with the news.

For all of these, I am using the power of Yahoo Pipes. I have a very long list of feeds I have created there which I follow. Everything from what all my friends post on facebook and twitter to deals on hard drives. I was then following these on My.live.com (the follow-up to start.com), but on April 20th 2010, the last my.live.com site was taken down and I no longer have a decent online RSS reader to use. My.msn.com is horrible. I am not really a fan of igoogle, or yahoo’s custom home page either. I have been testing out google reader for now, but it treats every item as email, which at thousands incoming a day, I can’t keep up.

You will also notice I added like buttons to all the posts as well as to the home page (all the way on the bottom on the right). This is somewhat of an experiment to see how all of this integrates with facebook. Who knows if it will all stay, but so far its pretty interesting. Feedback on all of this is also welcome. You know how to get in touch.

Ok, well that all (including the olympics post) took about 4 hours to gather & write, so I should sign off for now. Till next time.

J.P.

Ok, I admit, it has been a while since I have last posted. Probably not the longest gap in posts, but I just never felt like sitting down and writing something lately. Even now I don’t necessarily, however, I have so many different events built up to post about that if I don’t post something now, I may never get to it.

  A few days before my last post I headed up to Vancouver, BC to pick up my ticket to see curling in the Olympics. It was a really nice day and there was no line at all when I picked up my ticket. I had gone early in the day with the expectation that I would have to stand in line the whole day, but no one was there. So I used that time to walk around the city and take pictures and enjoy it while no one else was there yet. This turned out to be a good idea since I didn’t end up walking around too much during the day when I went up for the actual event, so I was able to get some good shots of the city while I was there the first time. These pictures are added to my collection of Olympic pictures on Flickr.

  If you have not taken Amtrak anywhere, I highly recommend that you give them a shot. This was my second major trip relying on the rails. The first was a trip to Portland that I took recently. (Wow, I just realized I haven’t uploaded any specific Portland pics to flickr. Well, you can check out the ones that made it in last year’s slideshow taken on Nov 5th, 6th, and 7th. These are just the ones which made it into the slideshow. Maybe I should post more some time.) But, I have had good luck so far with the train trips. They have power outlets at each seat. If you get their on time, then you have a chance a getting a row to yourself as well if the train isn’t full. Also, I was getting good 3G coverage on the trip to Vancouver. The 3G coverage on the way to Portland is really poor. At times not even getting Edge coverage.

Well, I arrived in Vancouver just before midnight, the day before my curling match. I had shifted my ticket to be the night before because a friend of mine had a pull out couch available where they were staying (I had found it next to impossible to find anywhere to stay). Once I got there, we proceeded to make a night out of it. We first went to Saskatchewan House in the Olympic Village. We followed that by a late night dinner / 4th meal at Yaletown brewery. While at Yaletown, we realized we were going to miss the last train back to where we were staying (last train left downtown at 2am). So in an attempt to then just make the most of the night, we head over to Granville area seeing some sites along the way. (Note the time in that picture. Crazy.) After that, we head over to the olympic store (which was open 24 hours at that point). EVERYONE it seems was looking for maple leaf mits for some reason. They had lots of kids mits, but none for adults. All sold out. After that (I think around 4:30), we then were trying to decide whether we pay the huge fee for a taxi, or just wait the extra hour for the first train. My vote (since I wasn’t about to pass out, and wanted to see more) was to wait and then head over to the cauldron. This is what we did. You can see the picture above. Well after that, a short nap at a local hotel lobby, and an early breakfast at Tim Hortons (as well as picking up lunch for the next day), we finally head to the train station to catch the first train. I would say we were definitely first. The train ride out was about 45 mins. It seemed like an eternity. By the time we were there, I was ready to crash.

Well, the “next day” (really meaning about 5 hours of rest later) we awoke to find we completely slept through “check out time” and the cleaning woman had come in shocked to fine people asleep (whoops). We all quickly got ready, had a fast lunch, and head out. It turned out I underestimated the time it would take me to get to the curling venue. What was a 45 min train ride at night became more like an hour during the day (and these trains were PACKED). Then after getting downtown, I had to switch trains and catch a train on the other line to the venue (where I then also had to walk a mile from the station as well). I got to the venue about 10 mins late, only to find a line outside. Whoops. The line moved neither fast, nor slow, it was another 15 mins before I got inside. I quickly made my way to my “seat” (this term NEEDS quotes because I would call it more of a bleacher with a plastic flat portion sticking out a few inches to delineate where the assigned places were. But I was there, and I got to be AT an olympic event to watch the US team lose badly. I just wished that they looked like they were more involved. At one point most of the coaches and team were not even watching their own match. Sigh, oh well. At least watching Canada was exciting. I failed to realize when I bought the tickets that Canada would be playing. I would say 80% of the people there were only exclusively watching the Canada match (if you didn’t figure out by now, they play 8 teams / 4 matches at once). But that’s ok, I did at least have a view of all the action (see above). Though had a terrible view of the US match (though I suppose with them losing, that didn’t matter).

After all of this though I still haven’t gotten to the part I would call the most moving / iconic part of the trip. After the curling match, I head back to the city only to find that just about EVERY single place to eat was completely packed because of the USA vs Canada hockey match. Canadians take their hockey SERIOUSLY. While I would easily call Vancouver the nicest city I have every visited (I didn’t post it here, but there were just a  number of incidents where the people of Vancouver were overly polite and nice when they didn’t have to be to the hoards of foreigners coming for the games). They get VERY serious over hockey and around the US/CAN match was one time where I wasn’t going to offer up my nationality. So, every bar and restaurant (even coffee shops) was completely packed. Most with signs up saying they were closed until after the match was over since they were too full. So I found probably the only place in existence at that time without a tv or radio. By the name / style, you would think this is more of a food stand, however, they actually had places to sit inside and was kept up very well. It seemed somewhat new and was very clean (again they were also friendly there as well). So I had a Coney Island Dog, Mac ‘n Cheese, and of course a Stewart’s Root Beer. It was nice to sit and have dinner without the crowds or shouting, etc. Soon dinner was over and it was time to start heading to the train. (Actually I was late.)

I started walking back thinking of taking a train there (since my ticket gave me free rides all day that day), but for some reason I decided to walk the whole way there. I am glad that I did. My route took me down by the water and right past the arena where the hockey match was. You couldn’t help but know the score, everyone on the street was talking about it, most bars had the game blaring out the windows, and while walking, I past two jumbo screens setup at local parks for people to watch on just for this game. But the best part was that while I was walking, there were 3 points scored. The first that I heard was actually a tying point for Canada. I was JUST outside the stadium at that point when I heard what sounded like a fog horn go off inside. I was very deep and darn loud. A moment later, I heard the whole stadium (again, from the outside) erupt in cheering, and about 10 seconds after that (probably because of the speed of light), I heard just about every park, open window, bar, restaurant or otherwise erupt cheering as well. It was like the whole city just started making noise at the same time. I have never been ANYWHERE in my life where that has happened like that before, it was amazing. But it gets better.

You see, about 2-3 minutes later, I heard the same sound again. It was another fog horn, but while I waited for the cheering to follow, I heard nothing. The silence was golden. I knew this means that the US had scored, putting them in the lead again. And finally, JUST as I was about to get to the train station (another few minutes later), I heard it again. And again, the following silence was just confirmation that I was sure we were going to win. While I wasn’t going to ever pay the 30k on ebay for a ticket to the game (yes, that is what people were saying the tickets were going for), I feel my experience of it was just as good as any other US citizens who may have been walking around the arena that night as well. It was a great way to end the trip. Of course just about everyone on the train was from the US as well and the train was all shouting USA, USA, USA for a while before we left. Some guy ran outside the train holding a flag behind him as well. (They waited until they were past customs of course to behave this way.) I owe my friend a favor for agreeing to come get me after the trip back as well. You see the last train from Vancouver arrives just after the Seattle busses all stop. Leaving me with the option of parking downtown for several days (expensive) or getting a hotel (even more expensive). So in the end, it was a great time.

Stay tuned to this channel for some upcoming posts on hiking and biking around the area.

J.P.

If you look back through history, many of the innovative scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and others who helped progress society (be it technologically or socially) have, at the time, been considered outcasts.

Whether you want to believe it or not, I think that today’s technology is stifled. I have my own individual opinions in several areas on why this is the case. Enumerating and explaining these would probably take too long anyways. However, there are enough similarities to discuss. Some days I wonder actually how many people are actually aware of how much technology we have available in the world which just isn’t or can’t be applied because of social, political, legal, or other reasons. I know there are good reasons for this, but just saying from a pure technology perspective, technological progress is generally at odds with capitalism as well as social normality as a whole.

Here are some of the examples I would use today.

• With both cameras as well as televisions now capable of displaying 4K content, you would think that modern delivery mechanisms for delivering video content to our homes would actually be progressing in a direction allowing for clearer content at larger resolutions. This just is not the case. (Note that its actually degraded even more today in 2010 than 2 years ago.)
• With technologies such as 40Gb & 100Gb here and almost here, you would think that our data connections to each other would also be getting faster as well. This is also not the case. While the US did improve from 35th to 18th over the course of 2009, overall, our average internet speeds were reduced by 2.4%. (This is one area where I am actually happy with the 16Mbps I am getting today, but obviously that is 4 times the average, so many others must be getting slower speeds.)
• Given the current wide array of available technologies to capture, store, and transmit digital video in addition to the extremely wide array of available content today, level of difficulty, limited set of options, and cost involved today in just trying to tap into even a SMALL set of this information is really saddening. I admit, this day in age is the information age without a doubt. The amount of detail and information simply available at one’s finger tips is absolutely amazing (and scary). However, for whatever reason, we have also entered an age where information is controlled and protected as well. Don't get me wrong, I actually do believe in some control of information. There are some situations, where I think that it is appropriate actually. There have been times in the past where I have realized some thoughts / ideas which used incorrectly or in the wrong hands are just dangerous. I know that saying such a thing somewhat contradicts my argument here, but we are all contradictory at times so tough.
• Heard about HTML 5 and about the video support which comes in the standard? Did you know there are some problems that this idea exposes? Yes, for whatever strange reason, computer video is one of those things which has been licensed for a long time. There were no technical reasons why XP couldn’t playback DVDs for instance without something else installed. It’s just that it costs a lot to license the ability to play back the video off of the disc. Since then, Microsoft pays for the ability to play DVDs in every copy of windows sold. If you ever wondered why software is so expensive, there are many various licenses which are included in the cost of the software so that the user has the right functionality. Anyways, the problems with MPEGLA continue today it seems and there is no clear solution for HTML5 at the moment.

I could probably go on for a while actually, but suffice to say, we as a society are all quite mired in our own devices so much so as to tangle technological progress right up in the middle. Again, for disclosure, I make my livelihood off of software, but I feel very confident in saying that while corporations ARE a business, at work, I have the progressive capabilities of users in our best interest on a daily basis. For that matter, given my position, its part of my job actually. For that matter, MS has quite a large and respected research division as well that works on a wide range of technology areas.

I was having a lengthy discussion with someone today around software licensing. The result of that conversation was this entry. My thoughts on the subject are “complex” and probably differ depending on a variety of situations. I don’t need to get into it other than to say that there are a variety of different software licenses out there today. This can create a nightmare for developers and software companies though. Because the nature of software can be broken down into finite parts, there is always much concern on ensuring that these parts are either original works or are properly licensed. Such isn’t necessarily a bad thing per se. However, its the complexities and implications involved with any given license which can scare just about any professional software developer. There are enough examples out there as well of when people make mistakes in this area as well. The results are never positive. So again, while I probably agree to the concept of licensing in principle, the implementations we have today sure do hold up a lot of potential progress. (Note: I hope that the irony of this statement isn’t lost on people. Yes, I pointed out that the complexity of these licenses has the net opposite effect on what many were created to ensure in the first place.)

So why the title you may ask? Well honestly, here again we are in several socio-technical situations in which progress can only be achieved by going against social norms. There are days where I wonder as a society how long we will be stuck here. Will this last for only another 5 years, 10 years, or longer? Combine the ease of information flow with litigious society, and there is actually zero tolerance these days for any type of social deviance at all. This is BOTH good AND bad.

Who will be our next progressive figures? Who will have both the knowledge and resources to be able to forge new paths silently and against the flow?

You may ask whether all I am really asking is when is someone going to beat the system? Not really. The way that I see it today, a healthy dose of confrontation is already weaved into the problems that exist already. I think there may just be too many social and legal problems today for any non-deviant / socially compliant person to be able to legitimately transform the technical landscape very much and it saddens me to have to say that.

J.P.

P.S. On an entirely separate note, I finished a Google Voice SMS app for windows mobile which I wrote using the WM6 SDK this weekend and have it running on my phone. Seems to work fairly well with one exception which is that it won’t actually get notified of new SMS messages yet. :( But, step one was just to send free SMS. Let me know if you want a copy, its completely standalone if you have a GV account.

(Oh, and if you didn’t follow any links, you should know that half the meaning in this post is in the links. Plus it took several extra hours researching and gathering all the right places to link to.)

With somewhere near 130000 pictures from the last decade, deciding on which pictures to rotate through the banner here is harder than it sounds.

So far, I have been just finding pictures which fit well in a 950x210 mask that have appeared in past slideshows.

This time, I went a little further back for some, but generally pulled some new ones from the 2009 slideshow as well.

Below are the new images added to the random rotation. You should see these start to mix in with the previous set.

J.P.