Six years ago today I was working on eThreads. What am I doing six years later? Working on eThreads. Today I merged some changes from my CGI tree into the mod_perl mainline and wrote a plugin to add an http:// when people forget to include it in the URL they give with their comments. Someday soon I really do need to get around to polishing this stuff up and doing some sort of a release. The eThreads site is a little bare right now.
It's funny to me how sometimes I'm really good at writing papers, and sometimes I'm, well, not. I'm up now working on a paper that I've been "working" on all day. But it's 1am and it's really not close to being done. It's not even a hard paper; I'm just having a hard time getting words down onto the page.
I've gotten a couple pages written in the last hour or so, but it would really help me out if all of a sudden a few more would just appear out of nowhere. It's not like I haven't written papers quickly before.
It's interesting to note the reaction to the recent freeway shootings that have taken place around LA. The Long Beach Press Telegram has an article today calling for Caltrans to record the freeway cameras so that law enforcement can use them as evidence to help in solving freeway crimes.
A veteran California Highway Patrol supervisor with an extensive background in freeway shooting investigations said the CHP and other agencies have repeatedly asked Caltrans to hook up the cameras to recording devices.
"They basically say they don't care about being in the crime- fighting business and claim poverty ... even though ... every 7-Eleven has a system. They are prevalent in Europe and at intersections throughout the United States. They are universally successful,' said the officer, while noting Caltrans' multimillion-dollar spending on its new 14-story office building in downtown Los Angeles.
A couple weeks ago my class went to visit the ATSAC center under City Hall East. That's where all of the LADOT traffic cameras pipe to. This was before the freeway shootings, but this was a topic that came up. Like Caltrans, LADOT doesn't really want to get involved in law enforcement. They don't want people seeing their cameras and viewing them as evidence that needs to be "taken care of." I would imagine that while officially Caltrans may say things about funding and such, they really just don't want to get the big brother stigma attached to their cameras.
USC's wireless would pick today to be acting up on me. It seems to me that it's just one access point, really. When I'm connected to 00:01:F4:ED:1B:6C I get 70% packet loss and 4000ms ping times. When it's 00:01:F4:EE:84:D4 I get no loss and 40ms pings. Yikes.
So right now I'm up on my bluetooth -> EDGE connection. It's not too fast, but at least it lets me browse the news and such while sitting here in class.
I finished a 20-page paper today (well, mine's 17 pages, but it feels done) only to find that I actually could wait to turn it in Friday. Oops. I guess I should read my emails more carefully.
I've mentioned in the last few posts that over the past few days I bought pedals (the SL-CR's) and shoes for my bike. Last night I very unsuccessfully tried getting my old pedals off to put the new ones on. Having failed at that, this morning I tried calling the LA County Bike Coalition (whose offices happen to be across the street, so it's not as random) to see if by chance they might have a pedal wrench lying around the office. They didn't, but they pointed me to a bike shop on 8th & Main, just three blocks from my apartment. A couple minutes and $3 later, I had new pedals on.
Tonight I finally got a chance to try them out. I'll admit it: I was a little scared. Even though I knew it was the way to go, I still wasn't sure about this whole thing of having both feet attached to the pedals. I practiced first in my apartment, holding myself up against the wall and then rolling from hallway to bedroom doorframe and working on unclipping a foot. Then, very cautiously, I headed outside.
Yesterday one of my PPD professors hosted our class for dinner at his house in Manhattan Beach. Being me, I made my way there via bike and train, taking a stop off at REI on the way to pick up a pair of shoes and a multitool. I managed to just miss trains on both trips, so my trip time wasn't too impressive.
The oddest thing, though, was the Blue Line train I got on at Washington and Grand, heading south. Either that train had serious equipment issues and shouldn't have been running, or the operator is the worst I've ridden with. Twice before we even left Washington we had two complete stops of the variety where you can watch every passenger jerked forward and then back in unison. Then, after making the turn, at several station stops we would come into the station fast, start to brake hard, then you would hear a thunking sound (that seemed to me like the wheels locking up and skidding) and finally we'd stop and the doors would open to the smell of brakes.
I remember back to when I was younger and had a miniature railroad. The last power controller I had came with a feature of making stops and starts more gradual, to make it more realistic. With this on you couldn't just instantly stop a train, instead it would have to take a little distance to stop. It seems that's not a feature of modern light rail trains.
I went to the Bike Show yesterday, worried that the hour and a half or so I had until it closed might not be enough time. Well... It was, and then some. Whereas the website claims hundreds of exhibitors, their exhibitor list adds up to only 90 or so. And if there were 90 exhibitors there yesterday, some of them weren't very visible. The marketplace was heavy in some items while pretty empty in others. For instance, it had shoes, but only two models from the same company. I similarly only saw one type of pedals for sale.
I ended up buying pedals from one of the exhibitors, but didn't really get any special deal on them. Now I have to find shoes I like. I'm about to make a stop at REI this afternoon, and if they don't have them there (they have some I like on the web, but I'm not sure what they stock in-store) I'll have to stop by a shop in Pasadena over the next few days.
A couple weeks ago Alan told me to check out Travis Hugh Culley's book The Immortal Class. It took me a while to get through, but yesterday during my field trip I ripped through the second half. From one of the editorial descriptions on the Amazon page:
When unpublished playwright and director Culley found it difficult to earn a living in the creative arts, he took a job as a bike messenger. This is the story of his adventures on the streets of Chicago. The author's descriptions are so vivid and apt that it is easy for the reader to imagine himself pedaling at breakneck speeds through crowded intersections and along sidewalks. More than a mere joy ride, this book is a window into the bizarre and cultlike world of the bike courier and, more significantly, a passionate plea for more sensible city planning.
The first 250 pages is Travis' story, and it's a captivating one. But yesterday it was the last fifty pages that really got me. That's where the story shifts to being more about the relationship between cars and the bicycle, and how the two of them relate to the road. The story from chapter ten -- where a cyclist is seriously injured due to road crews not marking a construction zone, but then isn't allowed to sue for medical expenses since bicycles are not an "intended" user of the roadway in Illinois -- isn't directly applicable to California, where bicycles are considered vehicles. Still, though, both it and the last few chapters highlight the tenuous hold cyclists have on their rights. Even if you don't have time (or interest) to read the whole book, I highly recommend these last pages.
So I had to take a field trip today for my Geology class. I wasn't excited about it, since it meant a good long while in a bus. We left USC at 8am and returned a little before 4pm. Aside from the long sit, though, it was at least mildly interesting. Some cool scenery and rock formations mainly up around where the 138 hits the 15. We ate lunch in the small mountain town of Wrightwood, CA, which I have to say was utterly unprepared to feed three+ buses full of college kids inside of 45 minutes. I've put my photos together as a set over on Flickr.
Interesting to note that next Wednesday LA's City Council will consider a motion to raise the fines for operating a vehicle over 6000 lbs on restricted streets. Actually this motion, which Janice Hahn made last June but has taken some time working its way through the system, isn't to raise the fines per se, but instead to have the City Attorney draft an ordinance that would do so.
For first time offenders, the maximum fine shall be increased from $50 to $250, the second offense to be increased from $100 to $250, and the third and subsequent offenses be increased to a maximum $1,000.
It will be interesting to see if this passes without discussion of the fact that a lot of big SUV's are heavier than the 6000lb limit. This issue (and the non-enforcement of the law) was all the buzz last summer, and it seems it still is: CityBeat published this article just a few weeks ago. I don't really think SUV's should be banned from residential streets (though I do think they should pay extra to attempt to compensate for their additional wear on the roadway), but it just seems that if that's not the intent of the law, the law needs to be rewritten.
The weather's conspiring against me today. I got up this morning, checked weather.com, and saw a high of 73 degrees. So I put on my board shorts and t-shirt, hopped on my bike, and headed off to work. Around lunch time I started to say "Hey, it's not warm out." Just now I went back to check the weather again and found this time a high of only 66 degrees, and some rain coming this evening. In fact here at JPL the high is only listed at 64. So now I not only have to deal with the chill, I also have to plan to beat whatever showers we're going to get back Downtown.
On the plus side I'm really starting to notice improvements in my biking stamina. I powered up the hill from Pasadena in one gear today, and had enough left to give it a little juice coming up to the top. The worst part of my ride, though, continues to be the hill I have to go up once inside JPL. My building's basically at the top of the lab, which is built into a hillside. Looking out my window from the 5th floor I'm even with floor 11 or so of Building 180, which sits approximately on level with the security gate that sits right at the bottom of the hill.
I also have to mention that I enjoyed the LAist post on biking today. Critical Mass and the Bike Kitchen did need to be mentioned along with this weekend's Bike Show and BikeSummer. I bash them a lot, so I figure I should mention when I do like a story. And no, it's not because they linked to blogdowntown.
In my March wrap-up of the DLANC Transportation & Public Works committee meeting over on blogdowntown I mentioned that the CRA's Downtown Parking Study's Best Practices document included talk of smart meters and multi-spot pay station technologies. The City may be soon looking to get serious about that sort of thing, as Councilmember Tom LaBonge has made a motion that
the City Council direct the Deparment of Transportation to report on the feasibility of implementing a pilot project that would involve installing and evaluating smar meters within the City.
I know, any kind of thing like this takes forever to work its way through the system, but Tom LaBonge has been on a roll with cool transportation related motions lately. Eric Garcetti seconded, and this motion now makes its way to the Council's Transportation committee.
I just noticed in the referer logs that the site FishBowlLA had done a bit on my coverage of the April Art Walk. I assume that I'm supposed to take it to be making fun of my lack of art jargon describing the walk. Of course they start by just getting the site url wrong (blogdowntown.com, thank you), so maybe I'm reading more into it than there really is. I'm perfectly fine with the fact that I know nothing about art. Pre-LA, none of the places in which I've lived have ever have anything more than a Thomas Kinkade shop.
But if you're going to do the "gossip blog" take on LA media, pick on bad writing in something a little more prestigious than a little blog.
At least do what I do, and pick on one that's about trying to make money.
I got my March Flexcar bill in the mail a few days ago, and noticed that it came with a sheet titled "Important Notice to Flexcar Members." The annual membership fee is going up $5, mileage charges are going away, and the Advantage plan rates are changing. The flyer doesn't specify, but I would assume these changes are specific to the Los Angeles market (at least the plans... the annual fee might be system-wide). Taken together, the changes make me wonder if Flexcar is altering its focus away from short mid-day trips.
I signed up for flickr pro today. That got me thinking that even though I've loved flickr, I've never really explored it all. There's some cool stuff there. I'd never used the organizer, and I'd also never seen the calendar of photos by date taken. I also set up my first set, with the seven pictures I took at Art Walk last night.
Question: Is it possible to write ten pages off of this thesis?
The characterization of societal power structures in the film The Muppets Take Manhattan serves to underline the importance of equity and diversity.
We'll find out soon. The paper's due in three hours. I'm halfway into page four.
Update (Saturday): The answer, I guess, is that you can at least write nine. The resultis now up in verbal intercourse: "Being Green in the Big City" (PDF Version).
LAist today gives us this great observation:
We saw this billboard on Vine at Selma. Is it still up?
Nevada sure isn't pulling its punches as it lures business away from our sorry state.
Is Nevada's message accurate?
"They" include what is a good picture of the Nevada "terminated" billboards, so I'll give credit there. But, uhh... Those billboards have been running since October of last year. For instance, here's a picture I took on October 15th, 2004, just a few miles from my apartment. I thought the point of blogs was to be current. Perhaps the post just got caught at the editor's desk.
Too bad they couldn't add any insight to the "sorry state" bit. I happen to think that the small business tax reform passed in LA recently might improve the business climate, but I don't know if that makes the state's message accurate or not.
Is it just me, or does Bob Hertzberg's bigideas4la need some new ideas for service? Yesterday and today I've gotten a SERVFAIL error from the site's listed DNS servers. :
[eWorld (eric@bit)-([Tue April 12 10:25am])]
~: dig www.bigideas4la.com @208.185.250.115
; <<>> DiG 9.2.4 <<>> www.bigideas4la.com @208.185.250.115
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: SERVFAIL, id: 2737
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0
Perhaps big ideas should start with even a little work on keeping the host entries working correctly.
It's been a long time since I posted a screenshot. This one's actually from the first four desks of my workstation here at work, but I wanted to point out that three of the four backgrounds are photos. Two of them (the second and fourth desks) I took, and one that Jonah posted on LA Blogs. I love how all three work with the transparent terminals on top.
Sometimes I just have to sit back and wonder how it is that I ended up in my life out here in LA. Friday afternoon was one of those times.
It all started when I wanted to buy a pirate hook.
I wasn't sure where to do that. So I emailed Jon Regardie at the Downtown News and asked if anyone around the newsroom knew where I might pick one up. Oddly, he did.
Being that I'm somewhat in love with technology, it would seem to me that I should like things like the self check-out machines at the Central Library. But I don't. They're hard to use.
Today, though, the line for regular check-out was long and I didn't feel like waiting, so I thought I'd go through with it.
From the San Jose Business Journal:
The Union Pacific Railroad's switching yard in smoggy Fresno has been picked as the place the Omaha, Neb.-based company will test its first hybrid diesel-electric locomotive.
... It is expected the hybrid will cut air emissions by 80 percent to 90 percent and reduce diesel fuel use by 50 percent to 80 percent compared to a conventional diesel-powered switching locomotive, the company says.
The locomotive is built by Railpower Technologies. Apparently I missed the LA Times story from March 16th talking about one of these locomotives in LA. Here we find that the engine can switch cars around the yard for at least eight hours on battery power.
My favorite line, though:
The locomotive is the world's largest and heaviest hybrid land vehicle currently in production, Union Pacific says.
Not much competition at that size, I don't think.
I'm sitting in the Annenberg computer lab right now waiting for my advisor to get back from lunch. Being in a room full of Windows machines gives me occassion to see my site in Internet Explorer for the first time in a good while. At least on IE 6.0, it really isn't that pretty. Sidebar padding is a bit whacked, and some background colors aren't getting into places they should.
But you know what? I don't care too much. The design still works in IE, even if it isn't optimal. And I'm sick of trying to accomodate really broken CSS models. I'll bend for Safari, since at least it's trying (and the couple bugs like min-width: might be working now), but as long as it's at least passable in IE I'm satisfied, despite its leading 34% marketshare (on blogdowntown).
It seems like this kind of stuff pops up every few months these days:
Martin, named FCC chairman two weeks ago, told a crowd at the National Cable & Telecommunications Assn. convention here that his agency did not have the authority it exercised over conventional broadcasting to regulate the programming that streams over cable lines.
But, he warned, that could change if Congress decides to give the FCC power to police content on cable and satellite.
At least he's honest; cable's in no way within their control. I don't think Congress can change that, either. Sure, they can pass a law giving the FCC control over cable. They can even make cable indecency fines a million bucks a piece if they feel so inclined. But you're going to have a pretty hard time convincing the Supreme Court that they've been wrong about almost a century of established doctrine regarding what forms of speech the government does and does not have the right to regulate. The government can talk and talk and talk about how "pervasive" cable is because "everyone" has it, but that still doesn't change the base fact that it's a service into which you have to subscribe. Case closed.
This afternoon I attended a City Council Budget & Finance Committee Meeting, and live-blogged it. You can find both my live-blog and my post-meeting summary over at blogdowntown. I thought I'd come over here, though, to post my comments on the whole idea of live-blogging.
Starting with the tech: I brought my laptop, bluetooth adaptor, and cell phone. Cingular's EDGE network gave me connectivity with 1000ms ping times and fairly low packet loss. Both phone and laptop lasted through two straight hours of connectivity, though the phone battery was about done afterward.
I basically blogged the contents of the meeting raw as it happened, filtering a little but on the whole recording wholesale what I found interesting. I was IM'ing with Alan during the meeting, and noted that I was probably getting a little too in detail. He agreed, and said looking back a lot of the specifics probably wouldn't be that important. To me, though, it seemed best to record everything and then summarize it later. My summary's probably still too in depth, but oh well.
All in all a fascinating experience. I was amazed at how much I could type during a two-hour meeting.
I wouldn't doubt that this was the first live-blogging ever to be done from inside Los Angeles' City Hall. I doubt that will be recorded in the record books anywhere, but I figure that more times I say it the more google will pick it up.
I guess the generators must have worked just fine. Power stayed on all morning. I'm glad I chose not to shut things down during the projected downtime.
I blame Vegas for no posting over the weekend.
There's a sign downstairs saying that Monday morning they're going to be testing the building's emergency generator -- please turn off your computer. This creates an issue for someone like me, whose computers never turn off. It also creates an issue for this site, which would go black with the building.
That got me thinking... I have a laptop that's perfectly capable of running the site for a couple hours, but the problem is that my DSL bridge needs power for that to even matter. I guess what I really need is a little UPS that could give juice to just one 18 watt device for two hours. If anyone who reads this happens to have one handy, I'd love to borrow it.
Of course a setup like that wouldn't give me any sort of generalized protection... I'd need to know the outage was coming to get the laptop up and serving (and enough warning to rsync current data onto it), but I don't care about generalities. I care about Monday.
I posted yesterday that I had ridden the fifteen or so miles from JPL to Downtown on my bike. I forgot to mention that this also gave me the chance to try out my new front light and rear flasher. First, though, I had to settle out my battery situation. I had been complaining to Alan earlier in the afternoon that I had gone to the JPL Store and bought AA batteries without taking the time to realize that my rear flasher needed AAA. Oh well, though, for my little ride I wasn't going to be needing lights. Of course then I decided to make my little trip a big one. When it started to get dark I pulled into a liquor store in Highland Park and bought AAA batteries. I grabbed my front light out of my bag and... it didn't turn on. It had worked a couple days ago, so somehow it must have gotten turned on and drained its batteries. Conveniently, though, I had the AA's I had bought by mistake. In the end my lighting worked out perfectly.
Yesterday after my ride I felt great. Today, though, on the way up the hill from Pasadena, I realized that I had in fact gotten a workout. My legs are feeling it. I still think I'm going to do the big ride again this evening. It's just fun.
Every year it's the same things:
You can't read Slashdot, 'cause it's all fake stuff.
blogging.la^Wmetroblogging says they've been bought (last year). Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me again, shame on me.