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If you ride the T you are familiar with the mysterious disabled train that haunts the punctual among us. I have never been lucky enough to happen on one. Tonight’s experience suggests that more often than the MBTA would like to admint, a poorly trained operator barrels into the station a bit too fast, is slow on the breaks and overshoots the exit.
If you ever find yourself in a position where someone asks if the subway car you are building needs to be able to reverse, please say “yes.” Consider the occasion that some operator misses the exit and needs to back up a few feet. Suggesting that such incidents are so rare that one could easily deploy a reverse pushing vehicle to facilitate is a poor choice.

I’ve seen Back to the Future III at least a half dozen times and it just dawned on me that there’s a major (potential) plot hole. The move takes place in 1885, 100 years before the original. Marty and Doc are trapped because the time machine that Marty took back ripped a fuel line and ran out of gas. Putting aside the whole why not just change the speed at which the time circuits activate, they still have the time machine that Doc got sent back in. The can’t use it as is to get back (because the time circuits fried and in any case it would create a temporal paradox and disrupt the time space continuum). But there’s no reason they couldn’t siphon the gas from the first machine to get back in the second. The first would stay put for 70 years until 1995 when they refuel it to send Marty back. I guess if it’s taken me this long to figure that out maybe it’s reasonable that Marty and Doc didn’t think of it.

For my birthday this year my wife and I went out for a very special dinner to Blue Hill at Stone Barn. The restaurant is co-located on a working farm and agricultural center. The food is prepared with ingredients from the surrounding lands and the menu is seasonal. To say that the meal was fantastic would not do it justice. We had an eight course farmers feast with paired wines.

Each dish was distinct and delicious. For a teaser they served shots of mushroom soup with fresh carrot and well seasoned cauliflower. Following this was an eggplant satay with miniature beet burgers - a bite sized perfection. A pairing of soy beans, prosciutto and homemade bologna accompanied a sparkling wine. This was the first course.

Our second course was a green tomato puree with crab meat, served cold with a chardonnay. The wine was not oak aged, not a flavor we’re fond of but it went well with the crab. The next dish my wife described as heaven. A poached egg in mushroom broth with collard greens, bacon and a divine Riesling. Fourth was butternut squash with speck and we changed over to red wines with a glass of Pinot.

Following the spec was one of my favorite dishes, a poached salmon with a medley of chickpeas and vegetables (the details of which escape me). I can’t remember which wine it was, though my best guess would be a Syrah. The sixth dish was ricotta filled gnocchi with hen of the wood mushroom. The wine pairing was a Cab/Merlot blend. They brought out a fresh mushroom to show us - it was the size of a beach ball.

The final savory dish, which we were both too full to finish, was pork loin, with sausage and basil. I can’t remember the wine for this course either. Since we sat for dinner at 9, it was now approaching midnight and we were both tired, full and a bit tipsy.

As palate cleanser they served a sweet celery and apple consomme with yogurt sorbet. We each were served a different desert, the components of which I cannot recall. The desert wine was sweet Chardonnay from Macari vineyards in long island.

If you have the opportunity and can plan at least a month in advance, I would strongly recommend the experience at Blue Hill at Stone Barn.

Wife: how…it’s like you’re twelve Me: did you not read my blog post?

We are alone, absolutely alone on this chance planet: and, amid all the forms of life that surround us, not one, excepting the dog, has made an alliance with us.
- Maurice Maeterlinck

If the stereotype is that at 40 men buy a fast car to console the passing dreams of a once adventurous life, then at 30 (or as we approach 30 in my case) we cling to our fanciful childhood (especially those of us with children) by delighting in new gadgets and toys that transport us back to the games of our youth. It was for this purpose that I have this past year been eye-ing a most excellent riding toy called the Whiptide. For those of your familiar with Snakeboards (now called Streetboards) the device is of similar design. Imagine a skateboard with two inline wheels on each of two paddles (for total of four) connected by an axis that has three degrees of freedom (or click the Whiptide link and watch the video - that’s me doing the Ollie).

As with the Streetboard (and unlike a skateboard), the rider must self-propel by wiggling back and forth (see the Streetboard link for a beginners demo video). Unlike the Streetboard, a Whiptide (or Waveboard or RipStick) rider cannot stand still (because the wheels are inline). The advantage is that as with inline skates the rider can carve as one does a snowboard or surfboard (again because the wheels are inline). The combination of wiggling and wobbling when properly executed by a skilled teenager produces a graceful choreography that creates a sense of majestic motion.

Following months of negotiations my loving wife (after renewing the life insurance policy) conceded to purchasing a Whiptide on the condition that we also present my 2 year old son with a Strider Bike. The goal we agreed was to promote father-son bonding as we both might stumble our way down Memorial Drive on Sunday mornings.

With the board delivered this past Thursday night I spent the following evenings practicing my balance in our dining room hall, knocking all of the books, pictures and other assorted items off the shelves. With ten feet of practice under my belt, I was ready to take it up a notch. Thus this morning, brimming with confidence, we set out to the park down the street so I could acquire my bruises and scrapes in the confines of a fenced in street hockey court.

To my surprise the Whiptide was incredibly easy to learn. After a few false starts, my snakeboarding skills (which I earned sophomore year of college and refined in the wide open spaces of the dorm basement…and a certificate to prove it) aligned with my snowboarding skills and I found myself whipping across the court at a blistering 1 mph. A half our of practice later and I was carving like a 10 year old…ok, maybe 8. Tomorrow we adventure out to Memorial Drive to either impress or bemuse the runners, bikers and rollerbladers - Gideon just discovering the delights and freedom of his childhood and me reliving mine.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/

We were plagued by incredibly slow and unreliable internet all weekend. Since we were only only sporadically it wasn’t until this morning that I called our provider to see what was going on. They took me through the usual drill which did not help.
This evening I started poking around my router settings, upgrading the firmware, etc. I discovered that QoS engine was enabled and promptly disabled it, rebooted the router and discovered that our problems went away.
I’m still baffled why this all of a sudden started to cause problems - perhaps it was tagging our packets and our provider recently started to pay attention (in a bad way)?

I stumbled upon some fantastic pictures of Boston on flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pearbiter/122285998/in/set-72057594082411405/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pearbiter/166154363/in/set-72057594082411405/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pearbiter/151628006/in/set-72057594082411405/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pearbiter/141931319/in/set-72057594082411405/

I stumbled across the RNC on TV tonight - mid Giuliani followed by Palin. While I’m not a Republican, watching the rhetoric and support exhibited tonight by otherwise respectable adults was disheartening. I felt insulted and berated for having differing opinions. I’m not troubled when people disagree my beliefs. It’s disconcerting and disappointing when people don’t respect my beliefs.

Ruby is truly infuriating. Not only are there six dozen different ways to instantiate a string but they vary in subtle ways. Single quotes interpret escaped characters and double quotes don’t and anything followed by percent becomes a quote terminator and even though double less than appends to strings, when followed by any non-space they also become a quote terminator and you call it a here document. And you can quote the terminators. So while a << "b" will add "b" to a, a <<"b" will expect a bunch of text followed by a freestanding "b" that terminates the here document. I can only imagine the BNF.

Why does anyone willingly write in this language?

Things that annoy me (when coding it’s all in the syntax):

• elsif is missing an e
• resuce should be called catch or except or anything else but rescue
• there are five dozen ways to say if x then y
• :symbols
• @@globals
• case/when isn’t switch/case
• parens to functions are optional

The combination of the above leads to things that are nigh unparsable:

begin @@master = case @slave when :dude: “dud” when :man: “chicken” else “rub” end if eyes.poke_out? elsif puts “Go learn python” resuce me

I’m trying out a new blogging mashup tool called Zemanta. It installs in your browser and automatically detects when you’re posting a blog entry - whether on one of the popular blogging sites or using any of the tools on your own hosted blog. In wordpress for example, after you enter 300 characters, a widget on the right starts to look up related information. For example, the sixth and seventh items in the list ate the articles listed below.

As for whether this will provide useful links when blogging about something other than Zemanta we shall see…

I’m very particular about my backpacks (not to mention luggage in general). The perfect pack must strike a balance between form and function. It must be black (or mostly black), waterproof, have three compartments for laptop, small gadgets and large gadgets, be compact enough to fit under an airplane seat and expand to hold at least three days worth of work clothes.

My first backpack was not a backpack. It was a messenger back; or the circa 1989 equivalent. Hung one shoulder or slung across the body, it had a single main compartment with a flap cover and a set of outer pockets for knickknacks. That was middle school. By the time I’d gotten to high school I realized that two shoulders carried the weight of a a half dozen books better than one and promptly upgraded to my first real backpack. A rucksack style with a drawstring top, button flap and a front zip pocket it served me well through to college and beyond. When I started carrying a laptop (plus other “stuff”) I quickly realized the benefit of having a built-in pouch just large enough to pad the laptop from everything else that was thrown in there.

In 2003 after much googling I final found the perfect backpack. A Samsonite Black Canyon for a fire sale price that lasted me the following five years and endured three continents and a dozen some odd countries worth of travel. This pack was love at first sight. There was a large main compartment with a padded laptop sleeve that was just the right size, a flap top with an extra outer zip and a front zipped pouch with a few pockets for various trinkets. As a bonus the bag had two size Velcro pockets for easy access to keys, phones and small devices.

Sadly after five years I finally broke it’s will to live. The bag that had endured rain, sun, sea water and coffee and eight different laptops was showing signs of strain. A few patches here, replacement cords there and some well placed tape could only do so much. It was time to find a replacement. Thinking back I probably should have bought two (or ten) when it was still available. Alas the naivety of youth - I thought the pack could last forever.

Today I inaugurated backpack version 4.0. After many more months of searching for flat top backpacks and rucksacks coming up empty I focused in on variations of camera bags, designed to protect a diverse set of sensitive equipment under the most grueling conditions. I finally settled on LowePro, a well reputed manufacturer of top quality camera bags that expanded their line to include bags tailored for the digital camera buff (who carries a laptop). Thus the LowePro CompuRover AW became backpack 4.0 and I bid farewell to my trusted 3.0.

A few modifications here and there, some padding and unnecessary plastic parts removed and I’m starting to think it might just do the trick. The back has a very nice drop down pouch at the bottom with a clip (and a finicky zipper - let’s hope it loosens up over time). This holds my book sized gadgets (see my previous post on the RedFly) as my power pack (iGo everywhere130). Above it is an expansive pouch with three fixed pockets and one removable one as well as room for all my small cases and devices. On the left and right are zip pockets for keys, phones and small devices. And in front is a nice deep pouch for…well…I’m not quite sure what yet, but I expect to find a use. It’s black and waterproof and includes a built in rain cover. The laptop pouch is a side loading one. Overall it has a few too many zippers but the structure is growing on me.

Update 7/13/2008 (Friday no less) with pics:

“Control panel extension is incompatible with driver version?…It’s a mouse!”

Celio corporation recently began shipping their Redfly Windows Mobile companion. Being a gadget freak (some would argue rivaling the fictional king of geeks Mr. Gadget himself) as well as a Windows Mobile nut (I use it for everything), I had to get one. Having placed the order on Monday it complying arrived today, just in time for a weekend gadget fest. I’ve been using it for a few minutes now (including typing this post) and I have to say that aside from pressing up arrow instead of shift with my right hand, it is eminently useable. However useful I have found my phone in the past, the Redfly takes it to a whole new level.

Out of the box the first thing that surprised me was the weight. Actually, in the box I was surprised by the weight. I was fully expecting a 500 page manual. While it weighs in at 2lbs even, combined with the diminutive size (roughly 9×6in), it’s a very dense device. Like the HTC TyTNII, the Redfly has a solid build and feel to it. The keyboard is very typeable (if cramped) and has a good feel. Slightly squishier than my thinkpad but the given only goes down to the middle of the device, not all the way through.

The outside is a deep burgendy and has a rubbery finish (like the back of the HTC). The device definitely does not require a case, which is a plus. Connectivity is painless, especialy after setting it up. Drivers on the phone install ota and connecting it via USB authenticates the device. From there I just need to click the bluetooth button and I get my phone on a 7″ screen and 9″ keyboard. Combined with 3g (hello AT&T) that makes this a ery practical laptop alternative for 75% of what I do all day (now if only I could get openvpn to work).

The device is not without its faults. There’s some wierdness on my home screen and it doesn’t really work well with touchcommander. Of course I can see all of your programs (I have about 40 installed) on one page, so that’s less useful. A touch screen would be nice as would a standard plug (anyone know of a way to get 9v out of an iGo?). The screen updates and scrolling can be jerky, but that’s a Windows Mobile thing. Celio has also indicated that there are some optiizations to come wrt the display. I’m also using it primarily over bluetooth, which is slower than USB but wires are the spawn of the devil so it’s a resonable trade off.

Finaly question - is the Redfly worth $500? Given their target market (me?) - I would have to say yes. We’ll see how much less I open my laptop over the next week. That is, after all, the real goal.

One of the interesting talks at BarCamp was on visualizations. Matt McKeon talked about a service they’ve developed at IBM Research called Many-Eyes. He recently put together a tag cloud of the BarCamp registration page. If there was any doubt as to the preferred e-mail provider for BarCamp attendees, this visualization makes it obvious.

Twitter’s Down Again

I spent this past weekend suffering from allergies and probably something else that the kid gave me. I was also at Barcamp (trooper that I am) sniffling my way through two very exciting days. By far most surprising was the number of entrepreneurs, especially given the geeky nature of the crowd.

Sessions ranged from gaming to hardware hacking to rails, django, twitter and semantic web. If you’re not familiar with Barcamp it is an unconference. Registration is via wiki and donations are optional. There are corporate sponsors who help pay for breakfasts, lunches and snacks. Conference topics are self selected and each 30min session is as much a presentation as discussion. Some of the best discussions are in the hallway or ad-hoc groups assembling in the cafeteria. You can see the final schedule as well as links and presentations at barcampboston.org. There were also some links and thoughts twittered at #bcb3.

One of the cool new tools I discovered was snaplogic, a 100% python pluggable transformation tool. It’s more yahoo pipes than talend or kettle. Totally hackable. There was a distributed twitter talk that consisted of people discussing the need for distributed twitter. The google appengine discussion was mostly Q&A about appengine and a guy from google taking notes on feature requests. I’m going to have to look into wpbook - a wordpress facebook app theme - when I get some free time (when’s that?). The semantic web discussion turned up some interesting pointers (calais and opencyc). There was a great discussion about connectivity between platforms (the internet being a platform, mobile devices, real world, etc). And consensus among those who showed up was that the final cylon is either some random person we have yet to see or the ship. All in all a good weekend - save the allergies.