All posts by cs

Hawk Dawg

social

The casual reader may dismiss this post, family may derive some closure.

I gave up my buddy pal this afternoon… I hadn’t realized how his 10+ year existence was integral to our lifestyle. Our dear pet was always triggered to react predictably to the rustle of a key chain, footsteps, his master’s voice. He would watch you leave and wait patiently in the drive for your return knowing your vehicle by its exhaust beat drum.

He was the neighborhood “best trainned dog” and the park’s “frisbee champ“. The community will remember him for his ability to selfishly guard his tennis ball at the top of the drive and then precisely release it (to roll down to the curb) as one walked or drove by. They could then lob it to him and the process could repeat. He would wait there focused on that dang ball, until someone got a clue and heaved it back. He knew the property line.

Our best routine were all of those prime years when he and I would jog the park. It was always great exercise and on some days when I was lost to the computer keyboard his pining would give me incentive to get up and take him, irrespective of rain or shine. And so we would. It was always a good run and sometimes there were stories to tell.

Our children loved him growing up. They learned about dog handling and responsibility. It was hard to let him go. He is comfortable now. We shall miss him.

killin’ time

computers, flying

While waiting for my day job to begin I’ve found a new project / time sponge. Most of my flight logs (circa 1975-1988) are pen and ink ledger books. So, now is a good time to update the media and bring the old archives into the new millennium. Using mouse, keyboard, and Excel spreadsheet to transpose the data items, line for line, is not only tedious, but some of the airports flown have been renamed, moved, closed and lost to residential expansion. I have found several online resources which help me reconstruct these old flights. Some private landing fields, crop duster strips or ranches are obscure and difficult to pinpoint. One such challenge was Las Cruces and its private Club de Caza y Pesca de Baja California resort. All of these places seemed matter of fact in my mind 25 years ago and were merely scribbled, short hand, into these old books. Today, however, some locations are lost to memory and the documentation limited. Diener and Peck Ranches, Jubil and Schwartz Farms — where did they go?

Once found, I post their geo-coordinates, importing all into a database on my server. Using a few lines of PHP, and the Google Maps API, dynamic code displays a nifty push-pin map. It’s a work in progress and so far this map project displays my first decade of flying. View the output [ here ].

buying time

boats

The welder boxed in the frame rail with 1/4 inch plate. A patch of sorts, the repair will postpone the demise of the old trailer. Rust is inevitable and I suppose that it didn’t help matters that I sped the process by dipping the ill protected iron in sea water over the last 3 seasons. A new trailer is a significant piece of change however, and thus the incentive to slow the cancer is on going. In a chain reaction this fix was precipitated by a faulty brake system with a seized (rusted) wheel cylinder. The neighbor, from the other side backed her minivan into a fender crushing it. Actually, the rust had mostly done its work – the careless driver only finished the job. Mounting new fenders, I discovered the structural weakness on the frame. Then heat from the welder’s gun did a number on electrical wiring for the running lights. Hopefully stringing new ones won’t turn up any more jobs.

saturation

flying

After fifteen training days, without time off, I can literally powernap and see dials, charted data and performance minutia on the backside of my eyelids. Finally, a 2 hour verbal and then a 4 hour checkride culminates in a (successful) test of ability. An HS-125 type rating has been added to my air transport pilot certificate. Taking deep breaths now in anticipation of introduction to an actual machine and first flight, after a day or two off — hopefully.

who-rahhhh

social

I’m in a windowless classroom all day all week and the instructor is quite good at keeping us from drifting off. Every couple of minutes there’s a hand clap or a table slap report for punctuation. At first analysis I thought teach sounded like Fire Marshall Bill Burns with sentences beginning: “Lemme tell ya somethin’…” but now I’ve decided his voice is, if you can imagine it; Ned Flander’s (Simpsons) mixed up with drill sergeant, R. Lee Ermey (Mail Call).

ORB

computers

I’m using SageTV to timeshift favorite TV network programing. Since I am on the road 50% of the time, I need to spaceshift this video as well. FTP will deliver the entire file to a portable device but here is an alternative solution: ORB live streams the media over the internet. You need a broadband connection and windows media player. If you have a desktop, laptop, PDA, or Smartphone you are good to go. Here is a demo if you can suffer through a home movie. No worries it’s a 6 minute short film. [On location in Maine]

Piggyback

computers

A newspaper article today describes the behavior, that of using some one’s bandwidth, as akin to reading someone else’s newspaper over their shoulder. Ethical or not, WiFi makes this practice easy and many out of town road warriors have begun to depend on its availability. Experts estimate that only 30 percent of all WiFi installations have been secured. This means that most wireless access point are free (or assumed by many of us to be). Internet security does have a learning curve. An excellent source to become enlightened is Richard Gibson’s Security Now website. He features a weekly 35 minute podcast that explains the elegant design of inter networking at the same time pointing out, for example, a now obvious omission: the total absence of security on your Ethernet (LAN). The architects of the net never foresaw the need for security on your local area network. They assumed that anyone in your household or on the office LAN would be trustworthy. Read: There isNO inherant security built in, nada, zip, zilch! A WiFi access point is configured, by default (go figure), as public. It is therefore wide open and subject to eavesdropping aka man in the middle. The only way to lock down your network is to keep the unworthy out. Take an hour and become informed. Activate the WPA encryption for your router. Piggybackers know your network ID. It broadcasts the universal piggyback invitation code signal: Linksys 😉

New!

social

838

This demonstrates a WordPress and Gallery2 mashup. Gallery2 is a standalone photo album server that is integrated with WordPress. It is possible to navigate seamlessly between the two applications thanks to WPG2. Here’s a nifty tool for image choosing. ToDo: Locate a theme plugin to tie Wp and G2 ascetically.

garage floor pc

cars, computers

garage floor mechanic

A laptop portable would be the preferred and graceful means to retrieve fault codes from this vehicle’s onboard computer. Unfortunately, the proprietary serial interface cable dongle from my tool box needs a COM port and (all my) computing devices have evolved toward USB 2.0. The only machine in the house with a vestigial serial port was this heavy weight which I manhandled, peripherals, CRT, trailing cables and all, to the garage. Of course, a dealer could do all of this for you… 75 bucks!

portable tv

computers

Apple’s release of the iPod w/video created a media buzz. Now you can download selected ABC-Disney network programing via the iTunes store for a moderate fee of $1.99 per episode. Apple is providing a way for the mainstream to capture and carry it anywhere and as simply as possible.

If you don’t own the latest and greatest iPod (or wish to fork over the download fees) there is another way! The first step is to record a TV program. VHS tape is so old tech. TiVo, SageTV, or BeyondTV are great PC TV enhancement PVR choices allowing you to save your show for later viewing at your convenience. Your recording is stored on your PC’s hard drive as a file. That file, as you might imagine, is huuuuuge. The second step then is to make it portable. You could burn it to a DVD… Better still, use a utility called DivX, which will reduce the size of that file using an compression codec (much like your music files are shrunk to mp3 format). An hour long television video at 1.9 Gigibytes can be reduced in size to 112 MB. This is small enough that you don’t need to burn it to a DVD or CD. It will fit on your keychain flash memory. Step 3: Transfer your file to your handheld PDA viewer. Use this utility called Core Pocket Media Player – TCPMP which recognizes the DivX format for viewing. Done! Enjoy the show.