tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30849628572615881232024-02-19T19:31:38.814-06:00SpoonerismsAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09295770472153811894noreply@blogger.comBlogger182125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3084962857261588123.post-71783359262046125212013-08-15T23:56:00.001-05:002018-09-24T19:53:51.566-05:00[achievement unlocked] installed openstack on a fedora rc1 releaseMy new workstation finally arrived today, so I got to finally ditch the laptop and move to something with a little less play in the keyboard and a slightly larger screen. Most of the other devs opted to use their budget on pretty Macs, but I dumped mine into a whitebox with a lot of storage and RAM. The primary reason was that I need to run a bunch of VMs, and my plan was to try and get <a href="http://www.openstack.org/">OpenStack (grizzly)</a> running on so I could replicate (or maybe just approximate) our production environment. I went over to the <a href="http://openstack.redhat.com/Main_Page">RedHat's RDO project</a> site since they've done a pretty decent job of making deployment easy and bundling everything together.<br />
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The weak point in my plan was an insane idea to use Fedora 19rc1 as the host OS. If you're thinking about doing something similiar, stick with the latest stable release of your distro. There were a bunch of small gotchas due to bugs/changes in 19 that the openstack stuff just didn't handle (stuff like the fact that packages called "mysql" are gone in Fedora now and are replaced by either "mariadb" or "community-mysql"... which the puppet classes don't know about yet, missing sysconfig files for qemu-kvm, etc). Getting the install required a bunch of tweaking of config files and re-running the installer, but in the end I got it working. <br />
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Worse yet, some kind souls had documented their similar adventures, but some of the problems had been fixed since they wrote it. Some helpful hints I ran across:<br />
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<a href="http://funwithlinux.net/2013/08/install-openstack-grizzly-on-fedora-19-using-packstack-with-quantum-networking/">http://funwithlinux.net/2013/08/install-openstack-grizzly-on-fedora-19-using-packstack-with-quantum-networking/</a><br />
<a href="https://gist.github.com/tuxdna/6047147">https://gist.github.com/tuxdna/6047147</a><br />
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I'd also suggest finding an RPM for openstack-packstack-2013.1.1-0.7 or later and rebuilding that from the SRPM rather than using the one provided by the yum repo (think it was 2013.1.-0.3). There's a small problem in the switch_keyring code that's fixed in newer versions. I ended up using 0.24.dev660.<br />
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Also, skip the nagios install with --install-nagios=n. I used mariadb for my database, and ended up having to tell packstack to use localhost for my mysql_host.<br />
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Finally, a word about packstack itself. This is really just a python program (class) that can run on most of the major distros. I'd suggest looking into it if you're thinking about installing on a Debian/Ubuntu system as it really does ease and automate a lot of the installation process.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09295770472153811894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3084962857261588123.post-91373430711084925772013-08-07T05:47:00.000-05:002018-09-24T19:53:51.575-05:00my new job and why I think it's coolI've been pretty quiet since mid-May, and the reason for that has been that I've started a new job. I'm working for a start up called <a href="http://trueability.com/">True Ability</a>, and the 2 second pitch is "We provide a flight simulator for hiring technical talent."<br />
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The "Oh, I got your attention" pitch is that we do technical skills assessment by providing candidates with a series of tasks to complete in a virtual server. It's basically a break-fix test on a VPS that allows non-technical people to gauge the ability of a potential hire. Our ultimate goal is to get rid of the process of weeding through resumes and help recruiters narrow their search down to qualified, interested candidates as well as allow qualified and interested candidates to escape from getting weeded out for non-technical reasons. Right now we're pretty much focusing on Linux administration, but should be moving into other areas in the not too distant future... I'm pretty excited to start expanding our offering.<br />
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The company itself is unbelievable. It's one of those rare times you find awesome people with a truly complimentary mix of skills and expertise with a worthy goal and a clear roadmap to achieve it. My job title is ostensibly "Linux Engineer", but in reality I'm working on the automation code for breaking the servers and evaluating the candidates' solution. It's a funky hybrid role doing software development, but requiring a pretty good system administration base... kind of devops but without the drag of on-call duty. \o/<br />
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If you'd like to know more, <a href="http://trueability.com/">hit us up</a>. The site's mainly geared for the recruiter types now, but we're planning on doing some cool stuff for the technical folks in the future.<br />
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And if you're wondering why I think this is a big deal, read on.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>So for the first half of the year, I was pretty much unemployed. I'd been doing some contract work for the government that had dried up and decided it was about time to give up my mercenary 1099 lifestyle.<br />
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The catch was, I hadn't really, truly searched for a job since 1999 and I'd made the mistake of thinking that everyone else shared my views on the No-BS Interview Process. As I soon discovered, I had a lot of things working against me in my search. One major problem was that I had avoided getting certifications. Another was that I was relying on the reader to understand how past experiences translate into today's world (which is ok if the reader is technical, but most recruiters screening resumes aren't). The final one I'll list here was that there was a lot of uncertain language in job postings that led to interviews where my skills only marginally matched up with what the employer was trying to fill.<br />
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The end result was that I spent a long time in a Sisyphean limbo where I could see jobs I knew I was qualified for but was unable to convince the initial screeners, while at the same time being pelted with inquiries for jobs for which I was clearly a bad fit (Java developer, MSSQL DBA, etc). I decided to try some recruiting firms, but their luck wasn't any better. I just didn't fit any archetype for any of the openings they had, and they didn't know how to pitch me.<br />
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I finally decided to try and apply for a job with a former employer who has now grown into a billion dollar company. I thought my past experience with them would merit a little bit of latitude and that if anyone knew how to handle my jack-of-all-trades resume it'd be them. Two and a half months later, I was still stuck in limbo with their hiring system and starting to ponder whether or not it was time to give up the IT game altogether. I hear mud engineers make decent money... maybe it's time to see what's going on in the Eagle Ford play...<br />
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From looking around at other places like reddit and talking with some other colleagues in the field, it was starting to sound like similar story. There's clearly an impedance mismatch in the system: job seekers aren't getting calls, so they're spamming recruiters, the recruiters don't have time to accurately review applications and resumes because they're getting spammed, and all the while the hiring manager is left sweating bullets because he's been down a Linux nerd for 6 months now and there's no sign that's going to change any time soon so he's thinking about just outsourcing the work or maybe even closing the position. No one is winning here: people aren't working, and jobs aren't getting done.<br />
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I started to think that what was needed was a way to demonstrate what I know to potential employers, and they needed way to tell quickly whether or not I was being truthful about what I claimed to know. And that was about the time I remembered being part of a <a href="http://trueability.com/">TrueAbility</a> beta test last October and decided to see if there was anything I could do to help them out... and here we are.<br />
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Our mission statement is to "make resumes history". While that might be a little tough to do (I mean, look at how long we've spent trying to kill business cards, and yet there they are in your wallet right now), I think if we can reduce the friction in the technical hiring process by even a fraction it'll be a good thing for everyone. We've already hooked up people with jobs for our first few customers, and I'm pretty excited to start bragging about some of the stuff we've got cooking up in the labs now.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09295770472153811894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3084962857261588123.post-81940596911645926262013-05-07T00:43:00.000-05:002013-05-07T00:43:50.168-05:00openstackI figure it's time to finally get back to writing posts about nerd stuff, and so I'll start with adventures in openstack.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><br />
I've been kind of like a dog with a grape when it comes to openstack: I'm sure it does something cool, I just can't figure out where to start or what the cool thing might be exactly.<br />
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The big issue for me was that openstack solved a seemingly narrow problem: managing the infrastructure for a virtual datacenter. While it's great to have an open source alternative to Amazon's AWS, how beneficial is that to people like me? It always seemed to me like that kind of software that would mainly be interesting to hosting providers because you can already easily manage in-house virtual environments with existing tools from VMWare or Xen or whatever. In short, it's a lot of configuration overhead just to get a "private cloud" running on your own hardware when other solutions exist and can do the job adequately, and the only thing it seems like it would buy you is the ability to deploy your setup to an openstack service provider more easily.<br />
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But a couple of weeks ago, I started playing with the openstack packages in debian unstable and finally figured it out. The value of openstack isn't so much that it let's you run a private cloud, but rather that it provides a layer of abstraction for a lot of the different cloud technologies.<br />
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I've been to a few job interviews recently where I've been asked about my experience with vSphere, to which my honest reply is "Not much. Most of my work recently has been Xen and qemu/kvm, but I have messed around with ESXi." That's the point where the interviewer frowns and we start the "Thanks for coming in" exit dance. The belief seems to be that understanding of the basic principles of virtual machines is somehow tied to the unique quirks of the platform being used.<br />
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It's has created an unneeded divide in the talent pool that is making it harder for organizations to hire people than it should be because they're basing decisions on essentially brand loyalty rather than technical difficulty. One company has been looking for a vSphere guy for 18 months, which is more time than it would be to hand a XenCenter guy a couple of manuals and let him catch up.<br />
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openstack has the potential to address the name brand vapor lock by abstracting out the details of the virtualization implementation. It has the opportunity to make more "cloud" developers and system engineers available for organizations to hire, and gives the nerds a way to add a useful technology to their toolkit without getting caught up in a Chevy/Ford or Coke/Pepsi debate. Openness has the tendency to get the software into more hands, and the more people that are using it the larger the community is for you to draw upon later. Doesn't matter if you're using KVM, ESXi, or Xen in your home lab: get OS running and develop to the public APIs and your skills should be portable to any place that's using it for their operations.<br />
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Another interesting aspect of openstack is that it's not really one mega-giant piece of software, but rather a collection of services with web APIs that work together. As a developer, that gives you the potential for doing stuff like using keystone as a standalone authentication service for your app, or extending quantum to manage a real/physical network rather than just virtual ones.<br />
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Although the doco is a little rough (it's missing a decent overview of all the components and suggestion on how to setup your network for them), all the options appear to be fully documented. Also, I absolutely love, love, love the fact that each of the components offers up a command line utility that let's you easily modify the services (ie, add users and permissions to keystone) from scripts rather than relying on GUI/web interfaces for everything. This also makes integration into puppet/chef nice, too.<br />
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Deployment from source appears to be kind of rough as the preferred distribution seems to be either 1) use a hosting provider, or 2) use the packages for a supported distro, but it should be possible for someone with moderate experience using all the technologies less than a day to get them setup and running. I haven't gotten around trying to import my hode-podge of VMs into openstack-nova yet, but given the fact that it seems to mostly wrap virsh/libvirt and collects data from the host rather than trying to do the "I'll keep my own configs, thank you very much" pleskishness I feel that shouldn't be much of a challenge.<br />
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Overall, the more I play with it the more it's starting to look like it'll emerge as an important technology in the next few years and has a lot more use than you'd assume at first glance.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09295770472153811894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3084962857261588123.post-15619339178439615892013-02-22T18:01:00.000-06:002013-02-22T18:01:51.271-06:00aerobic trainingH'ok. We all remember the PE class schpiel about max heart rate (MHR) and target heart rate (THR). Turns out that sports science has advanced enough that there's a more detailed theory about what range we should be trying reach to achieve certain results.<br /><br />And if you're a fatboy like me and have been punishing yourself on a treadmill wondering why you're not seeing any gains AT ALL, then you're probably doing what I'm doing: training like you were an 18 year old athlete instead of a 40ish computer nerd. Or to put it another way, pushing way too hard.<br /><br />Here's what I've learned and how I'm planning on changing up my workouts to see if it makes a difference... more words after the jump.<br />
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<br />
<a name='more'></a><b>Two Types of Exercise</b><br />
<br />Think back to high school biology and remember that there's two kinds of ways your body creates energy: aerobic (body uses oxygen to fuel activity) and anaerobic (body uses something else to fuel activity because oxygen supply isn't great enough to handle the needs). A good example of aerobic workouts would be a jog, whereas anaerobic would be a flat-out sprint.<br /><br /><b>Why is that important?</b><br /><br />In aerobic mode (with oxygen), your body is pulling fuel from stored fat. It's also realizing that the cardiovascular system is being used, so the heart gets stronger, the lungs get better at trading CO2 for oxygen, and the circulatory system gets better at shuttling these gases around your body. This is where you want to be if you want to lose weight and "get in shape".<br /><br />In anaerobic mode (without oxygen), your body is basically in an full-on afterburner situation. Since it can't bring in enough oxygen to handle the process of breaking down fat, it starts just burning up glycogen that's been stored in your muscles. Glycogen is the stuff that your muscles keep on hand to respond to anaerobic situations (ie: "<b>OMG IT'S A LION! RUN!!</b>") and comes from what you ate the day before. If it doesn't get used, it gets converted to fat and saved for a later day. If it does get used, it winds up as lactic acid and leaves the muscle sore.<br /><br />So here's the trap: If you are like me (overweight), head into the gym and hit it too hard for an hour, you end up doing anaerobic work instead of aerobic. Not only do you <b>not</b> burn the fat you were trying to lose, but now your body is screaming for more food to replace the glycogen you burned up <b>AND</b> you've got sore (possibly injured) muscles. What's worse, that big after-workout meal you eat gets turned into glycogen, sits unused while you recover, and then gets converted to more fat! /o\<br /><br />It's a strange thought: if you work out too hard, then the best you can do is not gain weight.<br /><br />And it turns out: I've been working out too hard.<br /><br /><b>The Numbers to Know</b><br />
<br />
<i>Max Heart Rate</i><br />
The first thing you need to know is your maximum heart rate - MHR. There's a couple of ways to calculate it, but I use: MHR = 207 - ( your_age * 0.7 )<br /><br />Since I'm 38 (well, almost) it works out for me: MHR = 207 - ( 38 * 0.7 ) = 207 - 26.6 = 180.4<br />
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And there you go. If my pulse ever gets above 180, my heart will explode and I'll die instantly. ;) Ok, not really, but it seems like a great excuse to get out of doing hard work.<br />
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<i>The Zones</i><br />
Using the MHR as your base, you can calculate the heart rate for other zones by simply taking a percentage:<br />
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The Red Zone - 90-100% - Improves speed (fast twitch muscle fibers), can only be done for short periods. Only very fit can reach this. Mostly used for interval training. This is what you shoot for if you're an Olympic 100m dash hopeful. For me, this would be a pulse rate of 162 - 180.<br />
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The Anaerobic Zone - 80-90% - Burns glycogen in the muscles more than fat, creates lactic acid. Emergency reserves. For me, this is a HR of 144 - 162.<br /><br />The Aerobic Zone - 70-80% - Uses oxygen and fat for fuel, develops your cardiovascular system. As fitness improves, you'll find you have to work harder to get to this zone (ie, this is where you want to be if you want to shave time off your mile). For me, this is an HR of 126 - 144.<br />
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The Warmup/Recovery Zone 60-70% - Develops basic aerobic capacity and endurance, allows muscle to reenergize with glycogen. This is why it's a good idea to at least keep walking around in between sets or sprints and why coaches and personal trainers are always yelling at you to "KEEP MOVING!" instead of collapsing in a heap. For me, this is an HR of 108 - 126<br /><br /><b>My Mistakes</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
When I went back to the gym for lifting, my routine started out with a 12 minute run on the treadmill before diving into 3x8 lifts that took around 45 mins to an hour to get through. I'd finish up with another 1/4 mile on the treadmill and maybe some jump rope work.<br /><br />My big goal was to get a 12 minute mile. In order to get there, I kept pushing the speed up and up and up until I made it. Yeah, I was hurting, but I crossed the finish line. Unfortunately, I had trouble maintaining the time across subsequent weeks and even worse I wasn't getting any faster (nor losing any weight). My heart rate was pushing up into the low 150's in order to hit that target... both of those are numbers well inside the anaerobic range. <br />
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Since I was basically trying to maintain a sprint for 12 minutes (whups), I fell into the trap of trying to run it in intervals, which was even worse as the heart rate would spike up into the low 160's (red zone!!) during the 2 minute run phase and only drop to 135-140 during the 1 minute jog phase.<br />
<br />What I should have done was to disregard the distance and instead focus on doing longer runs at a lower heart rate: 30 minutes at 130-135 would have done a lot more for me than the interval stuff.<br /><br /><b>Next Steps</b><br /><br />Acquiring a heart rate monitor seems like a good idea. I've currently got the Mio Sport on my birthday wishlist... it doesn't use a chest strap nor does it require you to stop and touch a finger to a sensor to get a reading. Yeah, it's not as accurate, but I'm looking for general hints rather than scientific precision.<br /><br />Restructuring the workouts is also on the todo list. My current experiments have me turning in an hour of swimming and then another hour of shadow boxing or heavy bag work. I might need to back off on one and see if I can put the treadmill back into the equation at a slower speed but longer run.<br /><br />For now, my new scale is based on the low-end numbers and goes something like:<br />
<br />
108 - would rather be watching Dr. Who<br />
126 - now we're talking... can already feel myself getting lighter<br />
144 - <b>OMG! LION!!!</b><br />
162 - unless I'm sprinting in the Olympics, this is probably unneccessary<br />
180 - heart exploded... seek medical attention at earliest convenience<br /><br /><b>Links to Info</b><br /><br />And just so you guys don't think I'm totally making everything up:<br />
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<a href="http://www.brianmac.co.uk/hrm1.htm">Heart Rate Training and Calculator</a><br />
<a href="http://www.faqs.org/sports-science/Fo-Ha/Glycerol.html">Everything You Wanted to Know About Glycogen</a><br />
<a href="http://www.livestrong.com/article/384598-the-heart-rate-for-workouts/">Pick a Max Heart Rate Formula</a><br /><br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09295770472153811894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3084962857261588123.post-82778788576590417622013-02-22T16:31:00.000-06:002013-02-22T16:31:11.396-06:00that's more like itSo this past week, the workout has changed a little bit more.. but the big news is that I am now losing weight after the workouts (the trick is not backsliding over the weekend or by "justifying" Bad Food). I think I've finally finished putting on whatever new muscle was coming.<br /><br />I ended up pushing to 2K in swimming last Thursday, and it pretty much wiped me out. The pool was closed Friday and Monday, and since I was still feeling burned out on Monday I skipped the heavy bag, too.<br /><br />Starting Tuesday, the workout was basically just 2K swimming. 75% freestyle (no backstroke), the rest breast stroke. I did take short 2 breath breaks in between laps (25m), but only one 30s break at 1.5km and a couple of breaks just long enough to stretch out my shoulders at 700m and 1600m. Finish it up by treading water for 2 minutes to cool down. I'm swimming about 1.8K in 1 hour, so 2K is about 1:10.<br /><br />At night, I'd do 2 sessions of Bas Rutten's 2 minute boxing CD (around 30 minutes) just to keep working on the shoulder and leg strength.<br /><br />Repeated that for Wednesday and Thursday, pool closed today. So I did some bag work for about 45 mins, then swung by the gym for 3x8 powerlifts at roughly the same weight I'd left off at back in December (bench was down 20 and leg press was down 100lbs due being tired and having been out of the gym so long). I gave myself around 30s between lifts, and rotated through BP->LP->Military Press-> back to BP.<br /><br />Considering taking an hour long Basic Bag class tommorrow, and maybe sticking around for a KM class.<br /><br />End result is that despite eating quite a bit more than normal, I'm down 6lbs and at my low point when just dieting. Unlike weight loss with dieting, though, this weight will come back quickly... and it's easy to "justify" a trip to Shipleys with "I'm about to do an hour of swimming". Even drinking Gatorade/Powerade will wreck the weight loss for the day... been sticking to strictly water in the workouts.<br /><br />Post swimming lunch has been a couple of double cheeseburgers from McD's and a bacon ranch salad (no chicken), and dinner has been a couple of double Whataburger Jr.'s (toss the bun). Not exactly healthy, but it seems to be working.<br /><br />Depressingly, my performance hasn't been improving noticeably during these past few weeks of high intensity exercise, and like I said weight loss just ain't happening (although I chalk that up to muscle gains). Even flat-out full speed, my time for 100m in the pool is at best 2:15s (which is absolutely poor) and started off at 2:20s. I've been doing some research on aerobic training that is counterintuitive to what I was expecting and I'll go over that in the next post.<br /><br />But I'm still happy with the progress made thus far.<br /><br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09295770472153811894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3084962857261588123.post-36328614699052623892013-02-04T16:02:00.000-06:002013-02-22T16:31:48.456-06:00slowly getting thereFeel pretty good about today's workout:<br />
<br />
1 hour swimming (1.6K)<br />
* for the first 1K:<br />
- tried to keep it at least 75% freestyle/front crawl (sub backstroke if I'm sucking down too much water)<br />
- breast stroke the other 25% if shoulders are tuckering out<br />
- it's ok to stop every 150m, but no longer than 10s (3 deep breaths)<br />
* last bit<br />
- 50% front crawl, 50% breast stroke<br />
- no set distance.. just shoot for whatever you can get until the hour is up<br />
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20 minutes footwork<br />
* warmup laps<br />
* 3x10 pushups and situps<br />
* shadow box for 3 mins<br />
* "tour the gym" once in fight stance... start at front left corner: walk back, to your right, forward, then left along edge of gym<br />
* 2x "tour the gym" with 10lb dumbbells in each hand at guard position.. 1 min breaks (keep moving)<br />
* 3x10 straight punches w/weights (work on keeping guard hand up and in the right spot!).. 1 min breaks between<br />
* 1x10 punches w/o weights, make sure you use good form, then stretch out<br />
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1 hour heavy bag<br />
* five sets of 5x10 straight punch<br />
- each arm does 5 subsets of 10 punches<br />
- focus on speed and form, not so much on power<br />
- keep hands in guard position, even during breaks<br />
- should take around a minute<br />
- 1 minute break in between... walk/jog<br />
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* 5x15 of two-fers<br />
- switch lead hand on each set<br />
- left+right = 1 rep<br />
- chop feet, try for power and KO on 2nd punch<br />
- should take around 15s... 30s breaks<br />
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* 5x15 four-fers<br />
- switch lead hand on each set<br />
- left+right+left+right = 1 rep<br />
- chop feet, try for both speed and power<br />
- should take around 30s... 1m breaks<br />
<br />
* 5x15 3bows<br />
- switch lead hand on each set<br />
- left+right+left+right elbow<br />
- try to put a crease in the bag with the elbow<br />
- both speed and power<br />
- should be around 30s... 1m breaks<br />
<br />
* 3x10 front kicks<br />
- 10 with each leg = 1 set<br />
- defensive kick... use whole foot to hit bag<br />
- focus on form (knee up to cock it, then snap it forward)... keep balance and work on foot position<br />
- work on getting power from popping the hips<br />
- 30s break between each set<br />
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* 5 sets of 20 second flurries<br />
- front punch as fast and hard as you can for 20s<br />
- break 20s, then back into it<br />
- it's ok for the punches to get really weak... just keep going like your life depended on it<br />
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My big goal for the next week is to start shortening the break times some more (ie, no break is longer than the punching time) and then maybe work on increasing reps.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09295770472153811894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3084962857261588123.post-38159461384918050412013-01-29T09:15:00.000-06:002013-01-29T09:15:41.443-06:00hacking my feetSo one of my weak points that has been exposed in Krav Maga has been my foot position. The basic problem is that my feet feel more natural when they're both 45 degrees off center:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaU55D9Rw_DIoVFqvMvp-ZSnHnI89rEqMEmzWyYzAaavhjD55YE4Y5Po80lNvf4j8ZbXrjimjkETanEjH7FdYe2E2UIJfGdZCbNgbKHFE8EkxljWgzkgpL2c9Z8P80zcp7BIGNtOkpybRQ/s1600/IMG_20130116_182348.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="112" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaU55D9Rw_DIoVFqvMvp-ZSnHnI89rEqMEmzWyYzAaavhjD55YE4Y5Po80lNvf4j8ZbXrjimjkETanEjH7FdYe2E2UIJfGdZCbNgbKHFE8EkxljWgzkgpL2c9Z8P80zcp7BIGNtOkpybRQ/s320/IMG_20130116_182348.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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A few more degrees, and I think I could call it my "Fred Flintstone" stance. Not sure if this is because it's genetic, structural, or just out of habit. Great for dead lifting, not so hot for driving forward.</div>
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In order to get max power for punches and keeping your weight centered so you can move around more easily, the feet need to look like this:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCc2Q6sKfVrKyrj0EdOExzaltCtaCXJwNHLNXvK7MP9OD0kFGxxl43wqGNLjn1hLxfGNRQKYgGR92KEDiSR-aOgvVVbpF0RQm7TPlIn9qLPrw9F5Y_huhwc4VdeCoukQWvYez0hyphenhyphenTqv-rc/s1600/IMG_20130116_182414.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCc2Q6sKfVrKyrj0EdOExzaltCtaCXJwNHLNXvK7MP9OD0kFGxxl43wqGNLjn1hLxfGNRQKYgGR92KEDiSR-aOgvVVbpF0RQm7TPlIn9qLPrw9F5Y_huhwc4VdeCoukQWvYez0hyphenhyphenTqv-rc/s320/IMG_20130116_182414.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Seems like a minor detail, but it's an important one. As I get tired, my right toe starts to drift back out which means I end up using the right leg to push off of more for punches. The extra stress really became apparent one night when we start throwing knees and my right calf muscle was cramping pretty much the next day.</div>
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<br /></div>
What I've been doing to try and fix it has been to try and walk around by pigeon toeing my right foot inward. To me, it feels excessively turned inward, but that seems to be just a mind trick. The end result is that my gait is a little noisier and my weight seems to be pushed more forward. Also seem to be less agile with the feet parallel... as in changing direction or sidestepping stuff isn't as easy to do. <br />
<br />
Just for kicks and grins, I tried keeping the feet parallel for the kick during the breaststroke, too: didn't notice much of a change in power, it's just "different".<br /><br />It still feels weird, but it's becoming less so. On the plus side, my calves are no longer killing me on the day after a heavy bag workout so I think this is having an effect.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09295770472153811894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3084962857261588123.post-83799522189051955232012-09-18T17:18:00.000-05:002012-09-18T17:18:05.961-05:00diaspora: shattered armistice<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">I finally got around to checking out <a href="http://diaspora.hard-light.net/">Diaspora: Shattered Armistice</a> the other day. It's a free game that basically gives you a good ole' X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter style flight simulator set in the Battlestar Galactica universe. Download is about 1.3GB, and it support Win/Mac/Lin.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">The good stuff: It's got both single player and multiplayer modes. They obviously put a lot of thought into the game and there's a pretty good amount of detail. Combat is hectic and "realistically fake" like the old X-Wing games were (ie, you let off the throttle and you stop moving, despite the fact there's no friction in space).</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">The bad stuff: It's hellah complicated. There are a lot of different buttons to push, not all of them make sense, and not all of them have anything close to an easy to remember mnemonic. I'd also argue that it suffers from ARMA II's problem of having too many buttons to press and some of them could probably be merged into one key. The craft are *very* responsive, which is cool, but in order to get all 6 degrees of control you need both the mouse and the keypad which makes flying kind of awkward. It almost feels like you're trying to fly emacs.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">As for the production values, they aren't bad for a free game. The scripts for the voice overs are actually pretty cleverly done to avoid that awkward "Anonymous rookie pilot, stop those planes!" situation.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">If you're looking for a complex combat flight sim that has a few rough edges, this might be right up your alley. If you're looking for a quick, cheap yank'n'bank shooter thrill to blow off some steam, this probably isn't for you.</span>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09295770472153811894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3084962857261588123.post-26298609226795222762012-07-14T20:01:00.000-05:002012-07-14T20:01:17.075-05:00ajax with jquery in railsSo I'm going back through the updated rails books in an effort to see what all has changed since I last poked at it (as it turns, quite a lot). One of the big changes was the removal of RJS (rails javascript) and the move to jQuery. Unfortunately, the new jQuery interface doesn't seem to be referenced in the doco I've got nor was it easy to get a straight answer from googling, checking the js console, or even good old alert() debugging.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>The main malfunction is that jQuery needs to be told to wait until the DOM has finished rendering before it can start doing anything asynchronously. If you attempt to fire off an asynchronous event (like an .ajax(), .get(), or .load() call) before the browser is ready, the bind for the callback will be missed and nothing will happen when the other end of the call answers.<br />
<br />
Given the way RJS worked and without any extra guidance, you'd expect a setup like this to work with a <br />
<div id="cart">
in your application layout and an <%= button_do 'Add to Cart', line_items_path( :product_id => :product, :remote => true ) %> in the index view.<br />
<br />
<i>app/controllers/line_items_controller.rb</i><br />
<pre style="background-color: #ddffdd;"> def create
@cart = current_cart
product = Product.find( params[:product_id] )
@line_item = @cart.add_product( product.id )
respond_to do |format|
if @line_item.save
format.html {redirect_to @line_item.cart }
format.js
else
#[.... rest of function ....]
</pre>
<br />
And then in <i>app/views/line_items/create.js.erb</i> you would expect something like this to work:<br />
<pre style="background-color: #ffdddd;">alert( "This alert will popup" );</pre>
<pre style="background-color: #ffdddd;">$('#cart').load( "<%= escape_javascript( cart_path( @cart ) ) %>" );
</pre>
<pre style="background-color: #ffdddd;">alert( "But you will never, ever see this one." );</pre>
<br />
But, it doesn't. It just fails quietly leaving you to google for answers. Even more confusing is the fact that non ajaxy stuff you put in the file see what's happening will work, but nothing after the async function call will.<br />
<br />
The solution I found was to wrap the ajax stuff in a document ready function (again in <i>app/views/line_items/create.js.erb</i>):<br />
<pre style="background-color: #ddffdd;">alert( "You will see this alert popup.");</pre>
<pre style="background-color: #ddffdd;">$(document).ready( function($) {
$('#cart').load( "<%= escape_javascript( cart_path( @cart ) )%>" );
} );
</pre>
<pre style="background-color: #ddffdd;">alert( "And you'll see this one, too, after the cart div updates!!!" );</pre>
<br />
This forces jQuery to slow it's roll and wait for the DOM to finish its ponderous task before firing off the event. At least, that's what I think is going on... javascript isn't my strong point. But that explanation sounds better than "When I wave the dead chicken like this, the sky makes thunder."<br />
<br />
I also found someone that had come up with a solution of binding click events for any button with a "add_to_cart" class to the ajax:success event and use that to update the cart div, but that seemed like a giant trap to maintain and was a nonobvious solution to the problem.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09295770472153811894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3084962857261588123.post-34054804893483529222012-07-06T22:32:00.000-05:002012-07-06T22:36:24.887-05:002m sleeved dipole<div>
A'ight. I ran across some articles about off-center fed, sleeved dipoles for 2m and 70cm use. They're cheap and fairly simple to make, which is right up my alley. I was going to mess around with using some copper tubing, but this sucker is working well enough I don't think I'm going to bother with the copper (or I'll save it for another project). Total price for this thing for me was around $12.<br />
<br />
The original articles I referenced were <a href="http://www.athensarc.org/sleevedipole.asp">KV5R's OCF Sleeve Dipole</a> and <a href="http://www.hamuniverse.com/w7lpn2440sleevedipole.html">W7LPN's 2M/440 Dual Band Sleeved Dipole Mod.</a> I ended up keeping the idea of the RF choke close to the bottom element, but went back to simply using aluminum tape on the outside of a PVC pipe. Instructions after the jump, but here's a pic of the antenna in action:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSCjVykUFm3o_fjG0NzLQSj5p5-G1knz62g6acyOKoABlBVnd8n5ALBRVMyNSy23OXI09OMU1_x20_w0RPsX3gPAwRyOMBPo1e4BWHlihymoQJLMjV80muMVP8bYZFAQwAHFFtGrnIAxvX/s1600/IMG_20120706_210822.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSCjVykUFm3o_fjG0NzLQSj5p5-G1knz62g6acyOKoABlBVnd8n5ALBRVMyNSy23OXI09OMU1_x20_w0RPsX3gPAwRyOMBPo1e4BWHlihymoQJLMjV80muMVP8bYZFAQwAHFFtGrnIAxvX/s320/IMG_20120706_210822.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<b>Results</b><br />
<br />
Before I start boring you with the construction notes, I should probably report the results. This thing does fantastic on 2m/144Mhz and is passable (but not ideal) for 70cm/440Mhz. While moving the transceiver to 144, I hit the public radio stations and it was a cacophonous blast of music as the antenna was picking up a bunch of stations from out of town crowding out the local stuff. 50 watts on 144 and 440 puts out a commanding signal, but the reception on 440 is about half the strength of what I get on 144. Will try to do some field tests for distance later on this month and see just what kind of range it's getting. Also going to back off on the power a bit and see how close to QRP I can get to hit the repeaters.<br />
<br />
I was also able to send out a clear signal to 2 EchoLink repeaters in San Antonio (443.575 north side, 444.625 south side), but reception on the northern repeater was a lot better/clearer. The next step is to figure out the DTMF codes for manipulating the repeaters to setup the link... going to try and schedule a time with W9DAN in Illinois for that.<br />
<br />
<b>Materials</b><br />
<b><br /></b><br />
What I ended up using was:<br />
<br />
* about 6 feet of 3/4" sched 40 PVC<br />
* a roll of 1.89" wide aluminum foil duct tape<br />
* 3/4" PVC end cap<br />
* 3/4" PVC T section<br />
* 3/4" PVC threaded connector<br />
* 1" hose clamps<br />
* 1 zip tie<br />
* around 25" of el-cheapo RG-58 crap cable that was made in 1978 from Radio Shack<br />
* PL-259 connector with an RG-58 adapter for the end piece<br />
* T connector that I'm using as a male-to-male bridge for the coax from the antenna to the coax to the transceiver<br />
<br />
I should have bought the CPVC in order to provide some extra RF shielding for the feedline through the bottom element, but it doesn't seem to make a huge difference.<br />
<br />
Tools I used were:<br />
* PVC pipe cutter<br />
* drill press<br />
* 7/16 drill bit<br />
* 5/32 drill bit<br />
* scissors<br />
* tape measure<br />
<br />
I didn't use any PVC cement as friction is holding most of this sucker together. I did spray some 3M loctite adhesive on the end cap that the antenna hangs from, but that's just because I didn't want it falling down into the neighbor's yard.<br />
<br />
<b>Construction</b><br />
<b><br /></b><br />
I used W7LPN's measurements for the elements: 22 1/8" for the top element, 15 5/8" for the bottom. Unlike his plans, this one is spacing the elements apart 3" instead 1/4". Also, instead of using metal tubing for the elements, I'm simply using aluminum foil tape attached to the outside of the pipe.<br />
<br />
Since I used PVC, I left about 1" for caps/connectors. I cut the top element to be 24 1/8" and made the bottom 18 5/8" (extra inch to hold the 4-5 wraps of RG-58 for the RF choke). I used the 5/32 bit on the drill press to poke out 2 holes in the end cap for the zip tie. Then I did some quick measurements on the bottom element to figure out where to make the holes for the RF choke and then punched those out with a 7/16 bit.<br />
<br />
Here's a pic of the RF choke on the bottom element:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixFU7fmlneSfaXdZFGV26unpmiDU8t4KXf8qBAK7JQlyVB6Pnv-4aNPJC8ImLq6fK3rHvsYFh9qvhe96473XnhjzAtFf95WFG_aNxvqCZFP1pb6F11FmtY8EaQxfy-gCRiT7eCn004IJMd/s1600/IMG_20120706_211007.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixFU7fmlneSfaXdZFGV26unpmiDU8t4KXf8qBAK7JQlyVB6Pnv-4aNPJC8ImLq6fK3rHvsYFh9qvhe96473XnhjzAtFf95WFG_aNxvqCZFP1pb6F11FmtY8EaQxfy-gCRiT7eCn004IJMd/s320/IMG_20120706_211007.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
The next step was to dry fit everything and I found it all locked together tight enough that I didn't have to worry about PVC cement. I ran the RG-58 cable up from the bottom of the antenna into the lower hole and pulled it through until I had about 6 inches left hanging out. I then wrapped the cable around the bottom and pulled it through the top hole and ran it up to the T connection.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPw50IPtZAxO3r_0czS4-vtj1YyP1u8XJPpCooWqoU2Jh4lvJgH3tJ1zcDAvV1UgMvZhKcH375D5MojajlO53kZIRNX5nsq2kafFZiVfPDmCNPzJ41oVZMuSpCRUV-3sqixhWaxBB5v_iC/s1600/IMG_20120706_210954.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPw50IPtZAxO3r_0czS4-vtj1YyP1u8XJPpCooWqoU2Jh4lvJgH3tJ1zcDAvV1UgMvZhKcH375D5MojajlO53kZIRNX5nsq2kafFZiVfPDmCNPzJ41oVZMuSpCRUV-3sqixhWaxBB5v_iC/s320/IMG_20120706_210954.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
The next step was to put the tape on. A piece of tape run lengthwise down the pipe will cover up around 55% of the circumference, so 2 pieces will overlap. Other plans I've seen suggest wedging your feed line in between the overlapping pieces of tape, but I decided to simply use hose clamp since that would make disassembly easier (never know when you're going to strip stuff for parts in the future). <br />
<br />
I cut 2 pieces of tape for each element (22 1/8" for top, 15 3/8" for bottom) and slapped them lengthwise onto the pipe. I then stripped back about 6" of the RG-58, opened a hole in the mesh sheath, and pulled the center wire back through it. Next I simply clamped the sheath on to the aluminum tape, and did the same with part of the center wire that I had stripped back.<br />
<br />
<b>Random Notes</b><br />
<br />
* the top element should probably be cut back to 21 1/8".. this might improve selectivity for 440, but I'm not concerned with it<br />
<br />
* I should have probably added another inch at the bottom and run the cable back out the side of the bottom element instead of the bottom of the antenna. My intent for using the threaded cap on the bottom was to enable me to screw this antenna on to a mast if I ever needed to... running a feed line up inside of a mast cuts down on options for mounting it.<br />
<br />
* totally assembly time was around 2 hours, cost was around $12, and could have been done without any power tools. Not too high a price for the payoff of S9 signals at 20 miles out.<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09295770472153811894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3084962857261588123.post-89845744968799725722012-06-07T05:25:00.000-05:002012-06-07T05:26:07.698-05:00that's a lotta knobsThere's a reason it takes you years of study and practice to become a black belt: as much as you need to learn the skills of various punches and kicks, you also need to gain the experience of when to use them and the wisdom of choosing the right move for the right situation. Although going around and using the Crying Dragon Death Touch as the opening move in every fight you get into is a valid strategy, it turns out that you will run out of sparring partners pretty quickly. Yes you can learn the moves pretty quickly and achieve proficiency with them in short order, but without experience to guide your actions you are still just another n00b stumbling around and making messes.<br />
<br />
And that's kind of how it was with my quick entry into the world of ham radio.<br />
<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
I went from "I can manage to find a rock station on a car radio" to fully licensed ham radio operator in 2 weeks, and as a result missed out on a lot of practical experience (which for me is the real way I learn stuff). Fast forward a few months and there are some choices I probably wouldn't have made back then if I knew what I know now.<br />
<br />
The big one was my choice of starter radios: the <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%3Ca%20href=" http:="" indexvs.cfm?cmd="DisplayProducts&ProdCatID=102&encProdID=8CBB7C4BDBAF40129AD4253A4987523C&DivisionID=65&isArchived=0"" www.yaesu.com="">http://www.yaesu.com/indexvs.cfm?cmd=DisplayProducts&ProdCatID=102&encProdID=8CBB7C4BDBAF40129AD4253A4987523C&DivisionID=65&isArchived=0</a>">extremely awesome Yaesu FT-857D. The problem isn't that the radio isn't good, but rather that it's taken me a lot of time to be able to use even half of its capabilities (because it's got a lot of 'em).<br />
<br />
When I was shopping for my first transceiver, I was fixated on having "flexibility". First and foremost, I wanted the setup to be as portable as possible. I had visions of leaping up from the desk in my "shack", disconnecting the radio, dragging it out to my car and hooking it up, driving out into the middle of nowhere, and then dragging the radio out in a backpack to operate from some mountaintop. The second feature I was looking for was as much capability in one radio as I could find, and the 857 certainly fits that bill by covering everything from 160 to 10m, as well as 6m, 2m, and 70cm.<br />
<br />
The problem? Well, there's a lot of options for dealing with all of those different bands, and options means knobs to control settings. But since it's a compact design, you can't really fit a whole lot of knobs onto the radio and still have a portable interface. Yaesu's engineers did a masterful job of creating a cascading menu system using the limited space and input controls, but I find myself a lot of times thinking "Couldn't they have just put a button the face to get to this?" The other trap is that I'm often left trying to remember what abbreviations in the menus mean, what that function is supposed to do, and which values I want to use for that setting. I suspect I'd have a much easier time in my first fumbles into the ham radio world if I'd gone with something a little narrower in scope (like getting a dedicated HF rig and using a handheld for VHF/UHF) and less concerned with portability.<br />
<br />
The other trap that I've come to realize is also part of gaining ham zen: the fscking antenna is always <strong>ALWAYS</strong> the pain in the butt. Being portable and able to get out a signal on 160m sounds great in theory, but.... stringing that dipole (roughly 123 feet for 1/4 wavelength... or about 1/3 the length of a football field) up on a mountaintop is going to be problematic to say the least. It can be done, but... how about we just focus on 10m instead? :)<br />
<br />
Bottom line: I wasn't ready for this radio, but hopefully I can get there without too much more stumbling. I've got a long and proud history of doing things the wrong way... no need to change up tactics now.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09295770472153811894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3084962857261588123.post-25186178311607315272012-05-25T01:52:00.003-05:002012-06-07T05:27:39.923-05:00mobile nerdnessI put up a post on g+ about getting some ham radio antennae on muh car and thought I would post some pictures in case anyone was interested.<br />
<br />
The basic idea was to make something I could easily deploy and take down, so there wasn't a whole lot of hole drilling and a lot of stuff is in temporary locations. Pictures and a talk-through after the jump.<br />
<br />
Which should be coming up right about........ now.<br />
<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><b>The Plan</b><br />
<b><br /></b><br />
I have a Yaesu FT-857D transceiver. It's got 2 coax antenna connectors on the back: one for HF and one for 144/444 MHz. W9DAN sent me a Newtronics Hustler changeable antenna (with whips for 10, 15, 20, 40, and 75 m) along with an old school fender mount. I also managed to purchase a 1/4 wavelength 2m antenna from KCOMM before they closed up shop.<br />
<br />
I wanted to build a cross bar for the luggage rack in order to house the 2m antenna as well as provide a flat surface for anything I happened to be hauling. In the interests of keeping the height of the truck as low as possible, I decided to mount the HF Hustler antenna on a trailer hitch. Although I didn't end up drilling too many holes in my car, I did do a fair amount of drilling into metal bits attached to the car... I feel I should get partial credit for the "real ham" requirement.<br />
<br />
<b>The Power Problem</b><br />
<br />
Anyone who's tried to mount a radio in their car knows that the one, unalienable rule that you must always follow is: "drill a hole in your firewall and hook the rig up directly to the battery". Running the power off of fuse boxes or cigarette lighters is inviting trouble in terms of electrical fires, RFI, or unexpected power losses if the voltage falls too low.<br />
<br />
So I ended up hooking my power leads up to a fuse box:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLY486R6dcEgkmWB2Kt1tvp5kVPeqvSg2va5zwAMesqff_Ds35wBZC1NoG42Rhesn8LjgjerbcLFkEboQUzcT6RJOZkK9NNoWUJyKB8rGDcL-qRmLHsXvj5MIyd0egyPKMPZFv4fEajhQ6/s1600/IMG_20120524_141041.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLY486R6dcEgkmWB2Kt1tvp5kVPeqvSg2va5zwAMesqff_Ds35wBZC1NoG42Rhesn8LjgjerbcLFkEboQUzcT6RJOZkK9NNoWUJyKB8rGDcL-qRmLHsXvj5MIyd0egyPKMPZFv4fEajhQ6/s320/IMG_20120524_141041.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
Basically, the transceiver's power is from the two wires at the top (both fuse protected) using an extra power cable I snagged from KCOMM.<br />
<br />
Ok, it's not exactly a fuse box. On the driver's side of the Chevy Trailblazer under the rear seat is a power panel that already has a direct line to the battery. This panel is used to manage stuff like the remote door locks and OnStar (which is under the passenger side rear seat and I have completely unplugged, btw). Installing this cable was a matter of putting on the 10 AWG ring connectors on the power cable, disconnecting the negative terminal at the battery, checking that there was no power with the voltmeter, checking a second time, then a third time to satisfy my OCD, and finally screwing those puppies down. I had to clip the ring connector for the positive terminal in order to get it to fit over the threaded post in the panel.<br />
<br />
From this location, the power cable can reach pretty much anywhere in the truck if you don't mind it being exposed. Routing under carpeting and around seats will probably be tough. It easily allows the transceiver to sit up in the front passenger's seat for the time being.<br />
<br />
<b>The Trailer Hitch Hustler Mount</b><br />
<b><br /></b><br />
To make the trailer hitch mount, I first disassembled the Hustler bumper mount to remove the actual antenna mount (looks kind of like a trailer hitch ball) from it's mounting plate. The next step was to drill 3 holes through a 2" Interlock trailer hitch (around $25 from Lowes) and attach the Hustler mount to the hitch with 3 stainless steel screws. In order to drill the holes, I used a normal drill bit, clamped the old Hustler mounting plate down over the trailer hitch, and just kept pressing down until I punched through.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9EtP7hZJvUaKal9bnaqjNtCREf83z01H7o4b13eIoa-jvYWKoSLG_PgoEX7pmPZXmlM-vFe4m-4V_wPMutfdMzuAKa1Kdp2RNYd7Nr3j8oEOofIO_UbKkUCdBxjg_GuNobVp5IP0nwDz9/s1600/IMG_20120524_140640.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9EtP7hZJvUaKal9bnaqjNtCREf83z01H7o4b13eIoa-jvYWKoSLG_PgoEX7pmPZXmlM-vFe4m-4V_wPMutfdMzuAKa1Kdp2RNYd7Nr3j8oEOofIO_UbKkUCdBxjg_GuNobVp5IP0nwDz9/s320/IMG_20120524_140640.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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The next picture shows the wiring on the bottom side of it:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgPU_JqW9R6Jhyi0KuWs71raTVI5Bk2kPnf-nfCYoEPwRbaQc35Kx39PU0j-vn_iQJLmOXaa1EGz5sAprjS-UzDgfs540LK29_bBbIm77PX3r4SKJn1c4sqXr9_x0df0nLHQV_9xCAy7Js/s1600/IMG_20120524_140659.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgPU_JqW9R6Jhyi0KuWs71raTVI5Bk2kPnf-nfCYoEPwRbaQc35Kx39PU0j-vn_iQJLmOXaa1EGz5sAprjS-UzDgfs540LK29_bBbIm77PX3r4SKJn1c4sqXr9_x0df0nLHQV_9xCAy7Js/s320/IMG_20120524_140659.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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The topmost screw is being used for a grounding strap that attaches to the car. The big center screw is for the positive line on the coax (basically, the thin center wire) and the bottom is for the negative (the sheathing). As you can see, I used more ring connectors (10 AWG is probably overkill, but ya use what ya got).<br />
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The other end of the coax got a PL-259 connector with an RG-58 adapter.<br />
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Finally, here's a picture of the hitch in place with the mast and whip attached for 40m:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihBpR50dQgBO-BkQkvOnG2-DazVtG90c9z2gaAB3udf8NFGnN8TPf-dalbpW0agJfFlXEF3YuM34FyXXY9WNGyLS7U0uGF632uPHbDC07THH4Y2SYDoEfMEvI1Xto6ZXDIW-b9Om49ouU9/s1600/IMG_20120524_140935.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihBpR50dQgBO-BkQkvOnG2-DazVtG90c9z2gaAB3udf8NFGnN8TPf-dalbpW0agJfFlXEF3YuM34FyXXY9WNGyLS7U0uGF632uPHbDC07THH4Y2SYDoEfMEvI1Xto6ZXDIW-b9Om49ouU9/s320/IMG_20120524_140935.jpg" width="252" /></a></div>
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Some notes about this setup:<br />
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1) Can't open the hatchback with the antenna on (dammit)<br />
2) The hitch is loosely seat, so there is a <b>lot</b> of bouncing and swaying while the car is moving<br />
3) The ground plane in this configuration absolutely sucks... it would be better served mounted on the crossbar, but height becomes an issue then.<br />
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I got the car up to 60MPH with the antenna on the hitch, but was pretty nervous about it. I'm probably going to chicken out and only use it when the truck is stationary.<br />
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<b>2m on a cross bar</b><br />
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For the 2m antenna, I decided to build a cross bar similar to the one for a <a href="http://forums.offroadtb.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=8">light bar described here.</a> I basically just used a 1"x1" square steel tube about 4' long (I think it cut down to around 43 or 44") and used a 1" wide x 3/8" thick piece of steel for the feet that went into the runners. I cut all the steel with a sawall using an 18T metal blade, and then drilled some holes for 10-24 <i style="font-weight: bold;">flat head</i> screws into what was roughly the center of them. The flat head was important in order to get clearance over the bolts that hold the luggage to the roof of the car.<br />
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I then JB welded the 10-24 screws into the feet, and then inserted them into the rails so I could measure exactly where to drill the holes in the square tube. The screws were near enough to the end of the tube that I was able to tighten them down a bit with a narrow wrench. The final step was to drill 3 holes onto the back of the tube in order to attach the antenna's mount plate:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfvt0sLl9xxY9W9hgILMM0RJH7_SsdlNwLAQ3k3vNfQZuOl4ltDCWyt9IFd2nUVqHKlqUNArw54QPJYRNa2oN5qDKInpuoFyrGmav6GxLwsxC2gH51Amc_pkxRRHY-KP6pOXD3mtSBcLCO/s1600/IMG_20120524_140600.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfvt0sLl9xxY9W9hgILMM0RJH7_SsdlNwLAQ3k3vNfQZuOl4ltDCWyt9IFd2nUVqHKlqUNArw54QPJYRNa2oN5qDKInpuoFyrGmav6GxLwsxC2gH51Amc_pkxRRHY-KP6pOXD3mtSBcLCO/s320/IMG_20120524_140600.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09295770472153811894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3084962857261588123.post-16491135079381719162012-01-30T05:58:00.000-06:002012-01-30T05:58:26.368-06:00if it ain't documented, it ain't permanent<div>On the matter of README files... (caution: it's a long one)</div><div><br />
</div><div><a name='more'></a></div><div><br />
</div>Back around the turn of the century during the dotcom bubble, I found myself working for a certain hosting company. I started work on a gloomy day in mid December, 1999 and from the moment I showed up I had no idea just what exactly I was supposed to be doing there. My previous job had been building a Linux distribution, so I spent a week trying to scramble to find a niche I could fill with my skill of wedging device drivers into an installation disk and rebuilding RPMs. After my first week, I was thinking to myself "Oh God... they're going to fire me because I can't do anything useful!"<br />
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As luck would have it, one of the founders handed me a floppy disk that they had tried to use to do automated installs for RedHat 5.2 systems, and asked me to try and set something up for the upcoming 6.1 release. I'd gotten that done, made up some new floppies and handed a stack of them out to our datacenter crew to use to build new servers. Then two important things happened: 1) the hosting company decided to buy a new SCSI RAID controller that the stock RedHat installer didn't support, and 2) I overheard some of support staff complaining about how they were having to recompile PHP and kernels to enable some high inode deal that some e commerce package was recommending. Pretty soon I had rebuilt the kernel RPMs to add in support for a new driver, and rebuilt PHP so that our servers were optimized out of the box. Then I wedged them into a new install pool I'd setup on an NFS server. While I was at it, I fixed a bug (actually a misconfig) in the RH installer that brought the install time down from around 20 mins to 7 mins.<div><br />
</div><div>As time went on, I started creating more and more custom RPMs based on customer demand that filtered in to me from the support folks, and I added in support for more and more funky hardware. I eventually heard about PXE booting from a new guy who was all hardcore about server hardware, and moved the system over to it so I wouldn't have to worry about someone accidentally using an old floppy image. Pretty soon, all our datacenter folks needed to do was plug a server into the network, boot it up, and they would be given a prompt for a customer identification number. After adding in some mojo to pull down configuration information from our customer information system, I was able to create an install system that could handle any combination of RedHat release versions and optional 3rd party packages (such as our custom tape backup scripts, shopping carts, control panels, etc) based solely on the customer identification number.</div><div><br />
</div><div>The benefit of the system was pretty huge. We were able to insert security and driver updates into our provisioning process instantly. All of our installs were centralized on a single server, so migrating the system to new datacenters on remote continents became a breeze. Integrating 3rd party software at install time became simple. Our techs could assemble an enterprise class server in under 20 minutes... combined with a sub 10 minute install, we gained the option of being able to provision a server in under 30 minutes. Servers were going online on an unprotected public network with the most recent security patches and we had a searchable record of the software that was installed so that when a vulnerability was discovered we knew exactly who was at risk.</div><div><br />
</div><div>We then started trying to expand the system. I added in support for FreeBSD, and while we weren't quite able to add in support for Windows 2K, we were able to use PXE to boot strap the install image and have the installer write important versioning information back to the install server.<br />
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While setting up and maintaining an automated provisioning system wasn't particularly difficult or challenging, it did become tedious after 4 years. Each new operating system we added just added in another permutation into possible configurations and drove up complexity. It quickly got to a point where I was overwhelmed by having to backport patches and rebuild RPMs: a single kernel vulnerability meant having to rebuild at least 2 (usually 3) kernel packages, and each those meant having to patch in specific driver versions for hardware we were using. We grew 3 more datacenters, which meant I now had 3 sets of hardware distributors to cover. It got kind of rough, and I started getting crabby as I had to spend more and more time nursing the system and couldn't spend time talking to the support folks who were on the front lines or the datacenter folks whose lives I was supposed to be making easier. I started whining about getting some help and after a brief 18 months, reinforcements finally arrived.<br />
</div><div>The upside is that during those 18 months, I was able to create some very simple documentation on how the whole install system worked. The original intent for documenting it was to transfer knowledge to other people in case something happened to me: Here's what The Machine does, why I built it, and what I hope to do with it in the future. In the fine tradition of Dr. Moreau and Dr. Frankenstein, I had left blueprints for my monster along with a chronicle of my madness. It wasn't exactly complete, but it was sufficient to train my first replacement well enough that he was able to jump ship and pick up a gig at RedHat after a few months. My second replacement picked it up well enough to add in support for Debian's FAI stuff... and that was around the time someone up above me got the bright idea to rip me out of a development role and stick me in the IT department. Around a year later, I'd leave the company and go try out some other stuff.<br />
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It made me proud to hear that even a couple years after I'd moved on, the provisioning system I'd setup was still in place and had been passed on to a 3rd and then 4th generation of techs. I usually keep an eye on job ads just as a way to get hints on what various people are doing, and it was kind of cool to see job postings for a role I had created. A role that didn't exist before 2000.<br />
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And unfortunately no longer exists. Which is the whole point of this post.</div><div><br />
</div><div>It seems that one of the groups that came after me decided to rewrite the scripts that glued the installer together. I'll admit to some wounded pride, but hey... progress happens. What that group failed to do, however, was document what they did, how it worked, and why they did what they did. As key developers of the group moved on to other jobs (both inside the company and out), institutional knowledge not only of the solution but the problem itself was lost. My old documentation and the notes that had been added to it were chucked because they were obsolete and could only provide a brief glimpse of what we trying to do 10 years ago. None of it applied to the new stuff. Eventually, the hosting company was left with a system that had stopped making it nimble and able to accommodate customer needs and had turned into this ticking time bomb that no one understood or could understand without some major league code archaeology expeditions. To make it worse, the people with the skills to run those archaeology expeditions were busy doing other things that were vastly more exciting and interesting; the people who could defuse the bomb had better, safer stuff to do than defusing bombs. </div><div><br />
</div><div>In short, an asset soured into a liability. Eventually the company figured out that the old way wasn't going to work any more. They had grown large enough to demand that their vendors make the necessary changes to the operating system before buying the hardware. The responsibility of the job was moved from the company I used to work for up to its vendors. The job role I had created was outsourced because no one left anything behind to explain WTF they were thinking or why they were doing it. I'll leave it up to the biz guys to argue whether or not that was a Good Thing(tm) as far as the P&L sheets are concerned, but I think it's Bad(tm) because a tactical ability was lost that provided a strategic advantage.</div><div><br />
</div><div>As an not-quite-greybeard, I'm finding that the idea behind the code is much, much more valuable than the code itself especially if you are trying to do something strange/unique/innovative. A quick README file explaining what you're trying to do can be more informative than a 40 page essay on the clever use of language idioms or circular documentation comments on all the methods in your classes (ie, def Defrobnify( self ): # defrobnifies the object). If our jobs as developers are to solve problems, then we ought to be making some notes to help us remember the how and why we got the answers.<br />
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Show your work, or be forgotten.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09295770472153811894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3084962857261588123.post-51853271359608337242011-08-29T06:37:00.000-05:002011-08-29T06:37:50.761-05:00shaker furnitureAfter I got back home, I made a quick to the library and ended up picking up way too many books. One of them was <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Build-Shaker-Furniture-Thomas-Moser/dp/0806983922">How to Build Shaker Furniture</a> by Thos. Moser. The book has turned out to be a pretty good catalog of different joinery types, how to use fasteners, a good reference on stuff like types of wood, tools, etc. Although I'm probably not patient or skilled enough to start in on some of the designs he's got, there are some pretty good inspirations in there. I'm thinking this book needs to be on the bookshelf more permanently.<br />
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I also snagged <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Making-Elegant-Custom-Tables-Stowe/dp/1558705651/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1314617672&sr=1-1">Making Elegant Custom Tables</a> by Doug Stowe. While this book didn't have much in the way of plans and it was meant to be more of a pictorial survey of some of the author's work, it did have some nice explanations of the techniques he used (like how to build pedestals) and some of the tools he crafted (like a cylinder lathe).Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09295770472153811894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3084962857261588123.post-3257693852784431962011-08-27T05:38:00.001-05:002011-08-29T06:28:43.072-05:00weight loss updateBottom line is that I'm down around 40lbs since I started the I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Atkins diet. <br />
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<i>upd</i>ate on 08/29/11: <i>make that 41.2lbs officially. \o/</i><br />
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There wasn't much loss over the past 6 weeks because I was out of town, staying with my brother. Carbs were consumed. :( However, there was some offset because we were doing physical work (building a shed, yardwork, etc) and he's pretty hardcore about sugar-free stuff (even his sandwich bread). From a diet standpoint, Atkins was wrecked by Powerade (we were working out in a heatwave that kept temps around 100F), a weekly pizza, and I'd guess about 3-4 nights a week involved carb-loaded dining choices (ie, chinese food, subs, burgers, etc).<br />
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The end result is that I didn't lose much weight over the course of the trip. However, I didn't gain any either. There were some physical changes, though, and folks are saying I look like I've lost weight in addition to clothes fitting better. I suspect that I did lose some fat, but gained some muscle along the way, too. I'm now comfortably wearing clothes a size smaller than I was in April, and I'm able to squeeze into clothes 2 sizes smaller than April (although it's not pretty by any means). A belt I bought before the trip and was fastening at the second notch is now down to the fourth, and we're getting close to taking it down to the fifth notch. Another interesting bit: I was able to get up on ladders to do some construction work without having to worry about the sucker collapsing on me.<br />
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I'm averaging about 10lbs a month, and if this rate continues (which is a big if... I'm expecting it to flatten out here pretty soon), then I'll be back to the weight I was at after my freshman year of college shortly after Halloween, my high school football weight by my birthday. If we just drive full speed into fantasy land and assume the trend continues into next summer, then I'd be at what I'd consider my athletic weight (basically, the point where I can start doing pullups and dips again).<br />
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One problem that is emerging is saggy skin. It's not really noticeable at the moment, but there are places where you can pinch the skin and see it. I have to admit that I'm worried about that aspect of weight loss and the fact that even after dropping the weight it's going to be another 2-3 years for the skin to reabsorb back, but ah well. Hopefully I can minimize the impact by resuming some athletic activity and drop the tobacco usage. To be honest though, I think I can hide saggy skin better than I can a body by Dominos, so although it is a concern it doesn't outweigh the desire to keep losing the weight.<br />
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Another issue I've been having to deal with is impatience. I like to see results fast, and while 10lbs a month is a pretty good clip, it's not moving as quick as I'd like. I have to remind myself it took me about 15 years to pack the weight on gradually, so in the Big Picture losing weight at this rate is actually pretty good.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09295770472153811894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3084962857261588123.post-86265147888111932072011-08-05T22:50:00.000-05:002011-08-05T22:50:40.196-05:00experimenting with lap joinsSo, for the shed project I'm working on, we've gotten to the point where we need some doors on this sucker. I tried making a couple by simply screwing some 2x4's together like they were studs, but we quickly discovered that without a diagonal brace it's not stable. So unstable, in fact, that simply sinking a second screw at a corner could pull it out of shape. The diagonal worked, but it was a major pain to make adjustments to the door: finding out you need to shave off 1/8" means having to basically take the door apart to do the cut. There's also the problem that it's kind of hard to find threshhold flashing that's 3 3/4" wide.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpfRr8K_uYhNCB7H_4lk3CTaaSu6D8eiLPPb_JCEvAgMHjglpg8HmMotSz9NzNx5Z5kvGzjgK3rU7y5u0XJ9Ur6scMOGYPS7plRy037O22JG4cJm2grYshD2RDPl9SFZI5uSnVqvS9cRC0/s144/IMG_20110805_203526.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpfRr8K_uYhNCB7H_4lk3CTaaSu6D8eiLPPb_JCEvAgMHjglpg8HmMotSz9NzNx5Z5kvGzjgK3rU7y5u0XJ9Ur6scMOGYPS7plRy037O22JG4cJm2grYshD2RDPl9SFZI5uSnVqvS9cRC0/s200/IMG_20110805_203526.jpg" width="150" /></a><br />
So, I decided to finally try out a lap join and just turning the 2x4's so their faces were to the front. It's a heck of a lot more work and takes longer, but holy cow was it worth it. I basically ended up with a much thinner door (1 1/2") that fits the flashing perfectly, is much lighter, doesn't need another brace, and is dead simple to get to 90 degrees in the corners.<br />
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The technique I used was pretty caveman-style. Basically just measured the boards to fit (no need to knock of 3/4" on the ends since we're going to lap them), cut, and then marked off 3 3/4" back on the board. I then set the circular saw to 3/4" depth and just made a bunch of cuts across each end of the board that needed a lap, knocked out the remaining wafers with a hammer, and planed down the lap to get it as close to 3/4" thick as I could.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjbZL4psSPLmVKA0GpuubFA3ZJu2judkvPNZL8knN4bh-8CRTTNc3IDO7TYsWiTdOXM6Bff0gVFq794Opz1nYy4oXH7y-cJSTzZFRXRhC1z1JJgLx9-i3x2O1U5xbNn_KR7Ov9xZEXkC29/s1600/IMG_20110805_203426.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjbZL4psSPLmVKA0GpuubFA3ZJu2judkvPNZL8knN4bh-8CRTTNc3IDO7TYsWiTdOXM6Bff0gVFq794Opz1nYy4oXH7y-cJSTzZFRXRhC1z1JJgLx9-i3x2O1U5xbNn_KR7Ov9xZEXkC29/s200/IMG_20110805_203426.jpg" width="200" /></a>The board on the left is what it looks like after planing, the right side is the before photo. I did just enough for the lap to kind of "feel" smooth, but as you can see it's still got the marks from the circular saw in there. I tried using a chisel to clean up the lap, but I found that just using the plane got the job done quicker and avoided the risk of gouging deeper into the wood.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTKulXPBfUCeWB0l_TMhic_9mQNVSVlYmBIchr8TPL3bgO4bbdGOBVIh47RBt96Ax3DZQ4TRnNx5TCUEECfmE95DtYA-ClTRog3He0tvx1DIaaksZjvC7r4Bb4W0ManxAMO8HSAiCM5sR6/s1600/IMG_20110805_203541.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTKulXPBfUCeWB0l_TMhic_9mQNVSVlYmBIchr8TPL3bgO4bbdGOBVIh47RBt96Ax3DZQ4TRnNx5TCUEECfmE95DtYA-ClTRog3He0tvx1DIaaksZjvC7r4Bb4W0ManxAMO8HSAiCM5sR6/s200/IMG_20110805_203541.jpg" width="200" /></a>After cleaning out the laps, the last step was simply to assemble the boards. What I did for that was to simply lay the stiles (sides) of the door down on their backs, and put the rails (top and bottom) across the laps. I started at one corner with a 1" screw in the center, used a speed square to make sure it was 90, and then sunk in a second screw in to lock the join in place.<br />
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In the end, it was a wash in terms of the time it took to make the frame. The lap join took a lot less time (and frustration) to assemble, but also took a lot more time to prepare the materials. And a lot of that time was spent with the ciruclar saw (ow, my ears). There's probably an easier, more efficient way to do the lap cuts, but for a first stab at it worked out pretty well.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09295770472153811894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3084962857261588123.post-61611304986876993312011-06-24T19:14:00.001-05:002011-06-24T19:14:31.340-05:00but i know what you want me to doBeen a while, but here we go. The Heavy - No Time:<br />
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<iframe width="425" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/XWHiiaL1buU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09295770472153811894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3084962857261588123.post-13657494391600594612011-06-23T01:32:00.000-05:002011-06-23T01:32:15.577-05:00the lost monthSo, not quite a month since my post about weight loss, but figured that I'd go ahead and update anyway.<br />
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As we pushed on into June, I had managed to drop to 355 (lost around 30lbs in 2 months) and was feeling kind of cocky. On the 10th, I took a 3 day trip to the beach and induldged in carbs. When I got back home, I found I was at 370 and got pretty disheartened about the whole deal. It wasn't until earlier this week that I started getting back on the low carb regimen, and I'm now down to 362.<br />
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So, that means a net loss of a measly 2 lbs since June.<br />
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My theory to explain the rapid weight gain during the vacation is that I was drinking a lot of sugary beverages (since I was out in the sun) as well as eating poorly (pancakes, chocolate cake, and "a couple" of beers). I suspect that the change to diet caused some water retention which made the weight gain seem a lot worse than it really was. In the week and a half following the trip where I was still eating poorly (but not as poorly as on the trip... much less caloric intake) the weight seemed to maintain itself.<br />
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Basically, I'm blaming it on Gatorade in the afternoon and cake at night. :)<br />
<br />
I'm also finding that I'm losing weight with a double/double (toss the bun), french fries, and sweet tea from whataburger... around 1lb a day on the days I've had it as a meal. This implies that going over the carb limit for Atkin's induction isn't the end of the world. Finally, I'm also wondering if the Zone's idea of the glycemic index might not have some validity.<br />
<br />
But the important thing: I still don't feel like I'm on a "diet". I haven't had to suffer any hunger pangs or low blood sugar days.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09295770472153811894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3084962857261588123.post-11355849243914477612011-06-15T01:16:00.000-05:002011-06-15T01:16:11.965-05:00maybe that's why it's called spookySo, I've been reading this quantum mechanics for idiots book recently, mainly because I'm a nerd but also because everyone time I've tried to talk with someone In the Know(tm) about QM I get a "don't worry about it" in response. The book I'm reading is <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Perplexed-Dr-Jim-Al-Khalili/dp/1841882380"><i>Quantum: A Guide for the Perplexed</i></a> by Jim Al-Khalili and it does a pretty good job of both not descending too far into the mathematics and acknowledging that basically everything is counterintuitive and the natural response is to say "no wai! lies!".<br />
<br />
Any rate, my big epiphany was that everything at the atomic level appears to be indeterministic. Which is highly unsettling because all that stuff we learned in high school is based on the assumption that we live in a deterministic universe: that you can know everything about anything and make predictions accordingly. We've used these tools to split the atom, go to the moon, approximate how long ago dinosaurs roamed the earth, hurl data around the globe, and create machines that can peer inside your head and let a doctor see if blood vessels in your brain are healthy or not.<br />
<br />
And it's basically all been an approximation.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09295770472153811894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3084962857261588123.post-27290394701419377132011-06-03T00:52:00.000-05:002011-06-03T00:52:47.458-05:00laser table mark iii<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://a7.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/251315_1950126107028_1058875191_2223561_674748_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="270" width="360" src="http://a7.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/251315_1950126107028_1058875191_2223561_674748_n.jpg" /></a></div><br />
So, I've mostly completed the frame for the "Mark III" version of the laser table. I decided not to use the previous version because of a change in options to mount the lasers. The drafting table just didn't have enough space for the flush mounts.<br />
<br />
The features of the new table are:<br />
<br />
* built from 2x4s so it's sturdier (but also heavier)<br />
* the table top is hinged and has legs built in so it can be used flat or lifted to be an angled surface<br />
* used pocket screws to hold stuff together... looks less "engineery" while joins are stronger<br />
<br />
What remains to be done:<br />
<br />
* figure out some way to mount stops for the tabletop legs to hold it at an angle <br />
* cut some mounting rabbets out of moulding to hold the plexiglass surface just below the center of the laser beam<br />
* cut the plexiglass down to fit in the rabbets :)<br />
* mount the flush mounts at the correct angle to cover the entire surface<br />
* rejigger electrical stuff to run off floppy disk power lead<br />
* see if running lasers in series will work better than in parallel (currently using the parallel setup)<br />
* wax paper on acrylic and see if the projector works<br />
<br />
Then I can start on the software phase. <br />
<br />
I should probably also think about attaching a trap for the laser light at the edge of the tabletop, but for right now I just want this sucker to work.<br />
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Way more info after the jump.<br />
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<strong>Why The New Design</strong><br />
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With the previous "drafting table" style setup, I was going to need to find a way to mount the lasers so that they could be calibrated to keep the beam sweeping just across the top of the plexiglass. I found some cheap speaker mounts at Altex that were almost perfect for hanging the laser's tube off of and could be swiveled around to any angle, but it was starting to look (and feel) super hackish at that point. While pondering what to do about it, I found out <a href="http://www.aixiz.com/">Aixiz</a> has now started selling laser table kits for $65 or so and they sell mounting brackets for their lasers for $4 each.<br />
<br />
One of the biggest problems with the first test version of the table was getting the laser to line up in the right planes. A flush mounted laser would basically remove the hassle of trying to get the x and z factors right and leave only the rotation of the laser itself to worry about (assuming you mount it at the correct angle) in the y plane.<br />
<br />
In short, it'd make it so easy a caveman could do it.<br />
<br />
But the drafting table's edges were too narrow to handle the width of the mount. So I decided to just put the plywood top back in and use it as a drafting table. :)<br />
<br />
<strong>Features and ToDo</strong><br />
<br />
As mentioned above:<br />
<br />
* it's built out of 2x4's (sturdier, but heavier). Using 2x4's for the top enclosure gave me enough space for the mounts, plus it allowed me to rip 1" legs from the side supports and put a hinge on them.<br />
<br />
* hinge at the front of the table top so you can swing it up to whatever angle you want, but the lasers will hold their calibration. I imagine that adjusting the web cam and the projector is going to be a pain in the ass, however.<br />
<br />
* made use of pocket screws with a jig from Kreg. This made joining pieces a freaking snap, and I believe they are stronger joins than what I got from using carriage bolts and wood screws previously. Although the table frame would benefit from braces, it's sturdy enough that I'd trust it with about 75lbs on the tabletop and there's no wobble.<br />
<br />
* actually sanded this one, so less splintery ouchy action!<br />
<br />
As for the ToDo, there's only a little bit of carpentry-pretend left to play:<br />
<br />
* cut some supports for the plexiglass out of molding to hold it up just below the plane of the lasers<br />
<br />
* cut the plexiglass down a little in width to fit the table I goofed up the calculation for the width of the tabletop, so the whole thing ended up being exactly 2' wide (rather than 2' 2").<br />
<br />
The rest is getting is the hard part:<br />
<br />
* rewire lasers to run in series, and figure out how to power it all off a floppy disk power lead (5V.. only need 3.2V)<br />
<br />
* figure out where to put projector+camera and if there's anything I can make to help in calibration of those suckers.<br />
<br />
* building a PC from scrap parts and getting the software up and running<br />
<br />
So, basically, got a lot done, but we're far from finished. :(<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>Woodworking Lessons</strong><br />
<br />
I think the big takeaway is that pocket screws are pretty damned awesome, and that you should avoid using larger lumber than you need to use. I could have probably gotten away with using some 1x4's instead and just turning them on their sides for the tabletop frame in order to get the space I needed for the laser mounts. However, the 2x4 came in handy when making the fold down legs for the tabletop.<br />
<br />
The other big thing I learned was to stop sweating the measurements so much. Although I did start off with a rough sketch of what I wanted in order to calculate how much lumber I'd need, I didn't worry about figuring out every single cut to the 1/32nd of an inch like I did for the drafting table. I also would use a piece I cut (such as the first leg) to measure the cut for the next leg, rather than pre-marking everything out on a board and losing accuracy to the kerf.<br />
<br />
And this bears repeating: the pocket screws are damned awesome. I was able to accomplish all the joins single-handedly. The only thing I needed an extra set of hands for was to hold the tabletop frame upright while I was screwing in the hinges. They also let me get away with using less hardware (2 pocket screws are lighter than 2 carriage bolts), and use less lumber (no need for weird supports).<br />
<br />
There were some disadvantages, though. Once the screw is in, you aren't getting it back out without destroying either the screw or the wood (and it'll most likely be the wood). The Kreg screws also use a funky square head... not a problem since the jig kit I bought came with an attachment, but still. Finally, if you're going to use this setup, be sure to rip the boards to 90 degrees. Having the rounded ends of the 2x4's didn't create too many problems, but things didn't sink together as snugly as they could have while I was lining up the boards to be clamped.<br />
<br />
Finally, I'd like to say: Sanding. It's not just a good idea. It's the law. I used 120 grit (also had some 320 but that turned out to be wishful thinking) and hand sanded the table. I've learned my lesson and will hunt for a belt sander or something... but the wrenched shoulder was worth it. The el-cheapo stud wood I was using is pretty much splinter and snag free, and I was able to get most of the "hello I'm a n00b and bought stud 2x4s for a furniture project" tell-tale stampings rubbed off. Probably would have been much better if I'd cut the 2x4's square before using them, but oh well. Lesson learned.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09295770472153811894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3084962857261588123.post-61690056997605537092011-05-25T20:35:00.009-05:002011-06-23T01:32:41.724-05:00a month of dataA month ago, I made some changes to my diet after my doc ominously dropped the D word. Basically, I've started doing an Atkins-like program... still trying to keep carbs to 20g or less per day, but I haven't been following it as strictly as I could have. End results is that I've lost around 18.2 pounds in a month's time. <br />
<br />
<script type="text/javascript" src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/static/modules/gviz/1.0/chart.js"> {"dataSourceUrl":"//spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/tq?key=0AuQR_0LcL7judDhISGxyT0VYNzZtemFmLUNkZkQ4TGc&transpose=0&headers=-1&range=A1%3AE31&gid=0&pub=1","options":{"displayAnnotations":true,"showTip":true,"dataMode":"markers","fontColor":"#fff","midColor":"#36c","pointSize":0,"colors":["#3366CC","#DC3912","#FF9900","#109618","#990099","#0099C6","#DD4477","#66AA00","#B82E2E","#316395"],"headerColor":"#3d85c6","smoothLine":false,"lineWidth":2,"maxColor":"#222","headerHeight":40,"labelPosition":"right","is3D":false,"fontSize":"14px","displayRangeSelector":true,"hasLabelsColumn":true,"wmode":"opaque","hAxis":{"maxAlternation":1},"maxDepth":2,"allowCollapse":true,"minColor":"#ccc","displayZoomButtons":true,"mapType":"hybrid","width":575,"height":300},"state":{},"chartType":"AnnotatedTimeLine","chartName":"Chart 1"} </script><br />
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Naturally, I saw the biggest loss while working outside in the heat. I was drinking around 4-6 liters of water a day but still losing 4-6 lbs. Those losses were temporary, however, and after the brush clearing had ended the weight went back up to where it was when I started the work.<br />
<br />
I'm also finding that while a minor deviation from the carb limit has a small effect of either arresting weight loss or even adding a pound or two, a major lapse can have a huge, huge impact. For example, a PBJ sandwich probably means no progress the next day, but a pizza could cost up to 7 lbs (depending on how much I pig out). The good news is that, like losses from working out, the weight gain appears to be mostly temporary. My supposition is that the increase in complex carbs (and sodium) causes the body to retain more water the next day.<br />
<br />
So. General conclusions:<br />
<br />
* heavy physical activity (although you need to do it for overall health) is only a temporary weight loss... stop working out or reduce the activity and the weight comes back<br />
* the amount of complex carbs seems to play a bigger role than calories<br />
* sodium can jack up the equation (ie, a Coke Zero has no calories or carbs, but it does have sodium that can prevent you from losing water weight) unless you're sweating it out<br />
* occasional small cheating a couple of times during the week is better than one big mega-cheat once every two weeksAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09295770472153811894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3084962857261588123.post-72482207110706977032011-05-18T21:26:00.002-05:002011-06-03T00:53:34.031-05:00MT table Mark IIOkay. So my last swipe at this wasn't technically a table, but give me a break. I got busy and couldn't find spare time for... 18 months. /o\<br />
<br />
Any rate, I've been on a kick lately and I'm moving away from doing stuff on my computers and moving more towards the analog method of designing stuff: grabbing a damned pencil and a sheet of paper and just sketching it out. I don't know why, but when I write/draw something I seem to retain it for a much longer time than if I type it up. Part of this has led to a desire to get a good old drafting table. But why buy a solid pre-built one when you can build a shaky, hideous one from scratch and save $20?<br />
<br />
So I set about designing a drafting table, and about halfway through it occurred to me that I could also fashion it so that I could remove the plywood table top and slide in a sheet of plexiglass later on to easily convert it to a multitouch table later on.<br />
<br />
Since it's been 18 months... <a href="http://spoonix.blogspot.com/search/label/multitouch">here's a link to previous multitouch posts</a> (read from bottom up for chronological order).<br />
<br />
And <a href="http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1920276920817.112328.1058875191">here is a link to the Mark II</a>.<br />
<br />
It's not as perfectly aligned as I would like it, but I don't think it's half bad for my first woodworking project EVAR and it's sturdy enough I can lean on it. More thoughts after the jump.<br />
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If anyone is interested in plans (although it's not that complicated) or has questions about the construction.. hollah.<br />
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First thing, some notes on the construction. Materials:<br />
<br />
about 6 or 7 1x4x8' boards<br />
pack of 100 6-1 1/4" wood screws<br />
sheet of 4x2 oak plywood (for table top)<br />
8 1/4" carrier bolts (around 2" long, with washers and hex nuts)<br />
<br />
If I had this to do over again, I probably would have gone with 20 carrier bolts and put 2 in each board I used them on to provide little more stability and less insanity when trying to get everything lined up.<br />
<br />
Tools I used:<br />
<br />
* table saw (absolutely key for the 30 degree cuts.. would hate to try it with a circular saw)<br />
* drill with a 7/16" bit (for pre-drilling for wood screws) and 1/4" bit (for carrier bolts)<br />
* at least 3 clamps... helps if 2 of them have a wide gripping surface<br />
* 90 degree clamp for the legs<br />
* builder square and board square<br />
* philips head screw driver<br />
* ratchet wrench with a 5/8" head for the carrier bolts<br />
* pencil<br />
* and, of course, a humble tape measure<br />
<br />
The legs are basically held together with wood screws at 90 degree angles. You'll want 30 degree cuts at the top of them to make sure the table top is flush. Due to inaccuracies in measuring and some slight misalignments when bolting everything together, the legs are about 1/32" off from each other, and the inside leg on the front appears to be cut at a slightly higher angle than 30 degrees (probably a mistake when I ran it through the table saw). The important thing is that the tabletop is pretty darn close to being a perfect 3x2' rectangle.<br />
<br />
While the table relies on the lower side and back trim for stability, it was really hard to keep all the angles squared up during assembly. This result in varying measurements for the tabletop that drove me nuts trying to figure out... I finally put 2 shorter boards inside the top of the frame to hold the damned thing close to square while I put the top trim on. Unfortunately, since I only used one screw on each end of those boards, it only helped mildly and there was still some last minute tweaking to be done when putting the upper trim on.<br />
<br />
The upper trim sides and front are actually pushed up 1/2" to accomodate the thickness of the plywood, while the back is pushed down to be flush with the back of the legs. This lets gravity cradle the plywood and hold it in place without needing to screw it down. This should also let me use a thicker piece of plexiglass, or possibly 2 pieces with something to catch the projected image wedged in between, yet still leave room to catch the laser beams when I get around to installing them.<br />
<br />
As for converting it to a laser table, I think I'm only going to use 2 lasers at the top corners and see how that works out. I'm not sure how I'm going to handle mounting (or aligning) them yet, though... but it seems patent that clay and craft glue isn't going to hack it this time. :)Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09295770472153811894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3084962857261588123.post-23279193947775840382011-04-20T03:52:00.000-05:002011-04-20T03:52:47.192-05:00the 2 minute offenseI was once watching a game with a friend who was new to (American) football who overheard the commentator use the phrase "2 minute offense" and wondered what it was. Being more interested in the game, I brushed it off with the quick explanation: it's an offensive play scheme designed to move the ball down the field as fast as possible so you can score before the end of the quarter.<br />
<br />
My friend waited for the play to run and then asked, "So why wouldn't you do that for the other 13 minutes in the quarter? Isn't the point of the game to score the most points?"<br />
<br />
On the surface, it's a good question, but when the theory is reduced to application we find that it's a bad idea because it's resting on some very, critically, super star-level bad assumptions that you made when trying to think about the problem in the abstract.<br />
<br />
The truth is that the 2 minute offense can be a wise gamble, but it's a poor standard operating procedure for the same reasons that "crunch time" is a bad thing for software development.<br />
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The first killer assumption is: Every 2 minute offense will result in a score.<br />
<br />
This is obviously not true. Ask Peyton Manning if being under time pressure prevents throwing interceptions. Moving fast and throwing for big yardage doesn't come with a guarantee that a receiver won't drop the ball. There are a lot of things that can happen to stop the momentum of an offensive drive and can result in you losing the chance to score.<br />
<br />
The second killer assumption is: Plays run during a 2 minute offense cost the same as plays run "normally".<br />
<br />
Also not true. In a 2MO, you are emphasizing speed over safety. Your players are rushing to try and claw out as much yardage on each play as they can possibly get. At the very least, they are going to tire out much, much quicker. In the best case, your linemen aren't paying attention and accidentally jump offsides costing you both a down and yardage. Worse than that, the quarterback could make a poor decision and accidentally lob the ball straight into the waiting arms of the other team's safety. Maybe the offensive line starts dragging a little bit, and all of a sudden defensive linemen are able to start sacking your quarterback. The end result is you are increasing your chance for failure by stupid mistakes made due to fatigue.<br />
<br />
Worst of all is that someone could get hurt: maybe a sneaky defensive lineman finds the hole that your offensive linemen are too tired to cover, or maybe your all star receiver doesn't see the cornerback coming at him so he ends up taking the blow standing straight up. Either way, not only have you failed to score, but you've also potentially lost a multi-million dollar employee because you made a reckless strategic decision.<br />
<br />
The third and worst killer assumption is: Everything will be ok.<br />
<br />
When the game moves into the high intensity phase of a 2MO, the chances for people getting hurt go up dramatically. Tired players do unsafe things or put themselves into dangerous positions. Receivers stand up when they make the catch and leave themselves exposed to bone shattering hits from the secondary. Running backs plant their feet and try to cut upfield in the wrong way, wrenching their ankles and knees. Even if the players don't sustain an injury that immediately takes them off the field, they can rack up micro injuries (hairline fractures, sprains, etc) that will impact their performance for the majority of the season.<br />
<br />
In short, you can't use the 2MO for all 15 minutes of a quarter because 1) the penalty for making a mistake is magnified, 2) the chance of making any mistake is magnified, and 3) people are going to burnout under the load.<br />
<br />
I bring all this up because I've recently tried to explain to someone why, as a manager, you should absolutely loathe "crunch time" development. It's usually a better idea to spend the other 13 minutes of a quarter slowly and steadily racking up points than it is to try and rush to cram them all into the last 2 minutes.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09295770472153811894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3084962857261588123.post-1962540445053462672011-03-31T03:47:00.000-05:002011-03-31T03:47:29.699-05:00back to the gymI lead a pretty sedentary life, and thanks to OpenVPN and being able to work from home, it's gotten even more sedentary since at least work has stairs you have to go up. While I knew I needed to do something, it wasn't until I got winded heading up the apartment stairs with some laundry on Sunday that I realized it was go time. On Monday, I swung by <a href="http://www.anytimefitness.com/en-us">Anytime Fitness</a> took a quick tour, and signed up for the month-to-month plan... end results is that it's around $43/month, but I have 24 hour access to the gym via nifty key fob you swipe at the door. After a month or so, databases get sync'd up and the fob will work for any AF gym in the US. Pretty slick.<br />
<br />
This isn't the first time I've tried to get back into a gym, but it's the first one where I'm not trying to think up a reason to procrastinate going until it's too late. I've also made a few changes to my approach for getting back into the swing of things that I think are helping.<br />
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The first big thing is my goal for working out. Instead of "I want to lose weight" or "I want to look better", my goal is simply to regain lost power (or as much as I can being in my 30's now). I've discovered that I still have the strength I worked to achieve with the Bigger Faster Stronger program back in my football days, but I've lost anything resembling stamina. I can probably still pick up 400lbs, but carrying a 40lb box up a flight of stairs is a wipe out. I can shuffle through a mile, but it becomes absolute murder with a 25lb laptop bag on my back. I simply want to get to a point where these things are no longer "*wheeze*wheeze*Gimmesome*wheeze*Gatorade*wheeze*" events. More info on my plan for that below.<br />
<br />
The second thing is: I realize I suck now. Whenever I'm doing a lift and I feel like my muscles are turning to Jello, it's time to stop. Period, end of story. Yes, it's good to push through the pain... after you're in shape and the body is used to repairing the damage. Right now, though, it's just going to hurt you and put you further behind schedule. In fact, if you get to that point, you've overestimated yourself and need to scale back the weight for your next workout (because, I like I said, you're done for today because you're hurt). Yes, I feel like an absolute pansy doing squats with a 20lb dumbbell. No, I don't care because 1) I'm able to walk the next day, and 2) I'll be up to big boy weight in a few weeks as long as I don't get hurt.<br />
<br />
I really can stress how much the second point is against my nature, but I've come to understand just how important it is.<br />
<br />
Any rate. The Plan(tm). Everyone's got their own work outs that they'll tell you is the best. For me, the general workout I've had the most success with is a short, simple workout based on the BFS system I used back in football days. Basically lifting 3 times a week (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) and doing the 3 core lifts (legs, chest, other) in either 3x8, 3x12, or 3x15. MWF starts off with 20 minutes of cardio, TRS are only 20 minutes of cardio.. no lifting.<br />
<br />
Core lifts are supposed to be:<br />
M - bench, squat, military press<br />
W - dips, dead lift, power cleans<br />
F - towel bench, box squat, behind the neck press<br />
<br />
Unfortunately... towel bench and box squat means moving massive amount of weight around and requires some strong spotters, so I just replace those with normal bench and squats. I also exchange leg press in for dead lifts simply because, again, dead lift is a lot of weight to be moving without people you know nearby. Dips also come off the table for now because, well, body by Dominos, knowwottamean Verne?<br />
<br />
The big thing is to get the cardio done first before lifting. If you get your heart rate up to the 75% mark, then you get "extra credit" from your metabolism... each minute you spend at 75% gives you another minute that you can do an anaerobic exercise (like lifting weights) but you still burn energy as if it was an aerobic exercise. If you don't waste time screwing around, you can get the core lifts done in 20 minutes.<br />
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For now, I'm using a combo of 2km on a rowing machine, and making up whatever remainder of time I need for the 20 mins on a treadmill. My first time back, the performance on the rowing machine was horrible... 17 minutes for 2km, and I was basically stopping every 500m. 2nd time worked better: 11:05, only took 4 breaks. The grand ultimate goal is 8 mins for 2km on the rowing machine, and 1.5 miles on the treadmill in 12 mins.<br />
<br />
For lifting, I've gone with extremely light weights, high reps. Simply trying to knock out 3x15s with bench, dumbbell squats, and an overhead press. Managed to get the bench press fully done, but wussed out on the last set of squats with only 12. I'm hoping to get the full reps in on Friday, and move on to the overhead presses. Monday will try to add in some sort of rowing lift (lat pull downs or something), and one final optional lift on Wednesday.<br />
<br />
I figure if I can hang in there for the first 2 weeks, I can start ramping up the weights after my body realizes that this isn't going to stop.<br />
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In the meantime, I'll be eating aspirin like skittles and drinking lots of orange juice.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09295770472153811894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3084962857261588123.post-5862898245968975772010-09-24T15:04:00.000-05:002010-09-24T15:04:26.542-05:00hi clear, bye clearA few months ago, I had to cancel my home internet service with Time Warner. It turns out, TWC was executing a telemarketing campaign with some severely broken equipment. This meant random calls to my cellphone that never left a message and in the off chance I did manage to answer I was promptly hung up on. TWC left no way to get in touch with anybody who might be responsible for the calls, and letters I wrote asking them to stop went unanswered, so after two weeks I finally told them to cancel service.<br />
<br />
To replace home connectivity, I went out and snagged a 4G wireless modem from Clear. The prospect of 6MB that I could take on the road with me for less than TWC was charging me sounded like a good deal, and for the past 3 months it's been everything I'd hoped for. Less downtime, and waaaaay less harrassing phone calls.<br />
<br />
However, earlier this month (last Friday in fact), Clear instituted some mechanism that attempts to rate limit users who pass an unspecified bandwidth usage threshold. If you trip their bandwidth-hog alarm, your connection drops from 6Mb to 0.25Mb download speeds, and this makes doing pretty much anything relatively impossible... the speed is basically bumped below the throughput of a dialup modem from 1999. It is impossible to watch Netflix movies uninterrupted, and it's introduced some real problems when I try to play games or use VoIP services.<br />
<br />
The intent is pretty obvious. Rather than scale up their bandwidth to accomodate a large influx of customers, they have chosen to ration out access. They were clearly assuming people would only be using the service to check email or maybe listen to a few mp3's... fools burning 30 hours a week on movies and video games will quite easily wreck that business model. The problem is that rather than cap me at the speed I've paid for, they serve up more than I paid for (12Mb) until I hit this limit, and then slap on a draconian limit to punish me for the amount of traffic I've pushed. From my point of view, I have very little to show for it since most of the bandwidth is from dynamic services (ie, Netflix and WoW) rather than from downloading files.<br />
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It's basically akin to flipping on the TV to discover that the cable company is only going to let you watch public access channels and CSPAN because you've spent entirely too much time watching HBO this month.<br />
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This is a total deal breaker for me. I don't really care about throughput so long as it's greater than 1Mb. I'd be happy taking a price break and using the slower service to having my provider suddenly and without any warning yank my leash for violating rules I don't understand and have no way of monitoring. Unfortunately for Clear, the faster (and cheaper) solution is to just cancel the account and install DSL service rather than give them "a month" to iron out the bugs in their rate limiting ubersystem.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09295770472153811894noreply@blogger.com0