Life « cmiles

2012 January 8 • 6:33 pm 0

The End of 2011 – Notes

Happy New Year! I thought it might be fun to write a few notes about 2011…

New Blog – consuming – I have been using this blog to post and record info about media that I have been watching/reading/listening to (and I like it!).

New Blogging – In the second half of 2011 I started contributing to Trail Talk – the Summit Hut blog, writing posts on both hikes (Airmen Peak, Rosewood Point and North Rosewood Point, Palisade Trailhead to the Sabino Canyon Tram and Buster Mountain, Buster Spring, Montrose Canyon) and about gear (Review: F-Lite 195 & F-Lite 230, First Impressions – Inov-8 Men’s Evoskin™ and Fall 2011 – Jackets with Synthetic Insulation!). Writing these posts has been a fun way to share some of the hikes, destinations and gear that I love.

Hiking/Outdoors – While my Flickr pictures are about any number of things I have more pictures of hikes/outdoor adventures than anything else – and my 2011 Collection has 30 sets of pictures – more than any other year I have on Flickr! I made more time for hiking than any previous year and am excited about getting outside in 2012!

School – I have been taking a variety of classes at Pima Community College for years as a way to keep learning new skills. But this Fall, with the combination of subject matter (diagrams, system planning, …), being busy at work and wanting to get outside I failed to finish my class for the first time in years… I am going to take a (brief?) break from classes at this point and focus on some programming projects at work that I am excited about as a way to keep learning, but classes are such a great way to learn/expand that I am sure I will be back for more at some point…

Rides/Runs – In the past I never felt all that excited about organized races – but I got the bug in 2011 (likely from ADT!) and did The Tour of the Tucson Mountains, El Tour de Tucson (60 miles), Catalina State Park Trail Run (5.1), Urban Assualt Ride and Arizona Distance Classic (1/4). I did not have specific goals (other than finish) for any of these events – and I like it that way – but the experience of seeing and being with so many other cyclists and runners is really inspiring!

2012?

In the first part of 2012, if I can stay healthy, I plan on doing Fleet Feet Arizona Trail Race, Mesquite Canyon (1/2 Marathon), Tour of the Tucson Mountains and the Catalina State Park Trail Run (10.2).

These events are a fun way to get outside – and I think my only goal in 2012 is to get outside more!

Hope everyone has a great year!
CM

Filed under: Life

2011 November 5 • 8:06 pm 2

Google Reader Shared Items -> Pinboard, FeedDemon, Send to Pinboard…

I have enjoyed and used Google Reader’s Shared items for years and I was sad to see that feature removed in recent updates… There were very few people that followed my feed, but I enjoy sharing and it was an easy way to record interesting links for reference.

Thankfully a few quick adjustments and my ‘sharing’ workflow was restored! Some notes…

Google Reader Shared Item Feed discovery features: not important to me so I don’t care about ‘replacing’ these features.

Storing Links: Pinboard! I have been using Pinboard (moved from Delicious a few months ago) to save links and I love it – so I signed up for another account to keep shared links (I could have used my current account but wanted to keep these separately).

Old Shared Items: Google offers your Shared/Starred items as JSON exports – Pinboard can import this format so moving your items items over is just a matter of exporting/saving from Google (under settings) and importing in Pinboard (settings, import). Pinboard added a number of ‘stray’ tags during the import, a little messy – but it really didn’t bother me (although maybe I will do some clean up in the future).

Sharing/RSS Feed: Pinboard offers an RSS feed of your links. You can filter your feed by tags, so I decided on two tags (‘general’ and ‘retail’) to mark articles with. My two RSS feeds – http://feeds.pinboard.in/rss/u:cmiles-reading/t:retail/ and http://feeds.pinboard.in/rss/u:cmiles-reading/t:general/ – nice!

Saving Links – Desktop: FeedDemon is a great Windows desktop RSS reader. It offers a customizable ‘Sharing’ feature that you can take advantage of to easily save links to Pinboard. To add Pinboard to the Sharing menu you need to add a new XML file to the FeedDemon\Data\SendTo\ folder (found in Program Files or Program Files (x86) – under C:\ on my setup). There are already a number of files (for delicious, Digg, Facebook…) in the SentTo folder that you can use as a template – and after a quick look at the Pinboard API Documentation this is what I am using for the links that I want tagged ‘general’:


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> 
 <fdsendto service="Pinboard - General" useInternalHttp="false" template="https://api.pinboard.in/v1/posts/add?url={url} 
 &amp;description={title}&amp;tags=general"/>

This is not quite as smooth in FeedDemon as it was in Google Reader – but close enough for me! Note – this nice post (including Pinboard Information) on using the Google Reader Send To settings to add Pinboard support to the web interface.

Saving Links – Mobile: I was concerned that I would have trouble finding an easy way to save links on my Android phone – but Save to Pinboard adds an option to the ‘Send To’ menu making Pinboard is available from both of the RSS Readers that I have used – NewsRob and gReader Pro. Again, not quite as smooth as sharing in Google Reader, but pretty close.

The extra software, configuration and extra clicks are clearly not as easy/clean/elegant as the Google Reader sharing – the +1/Google Plus options in Google Reader might be the better way to go?!? But lately I have been willing to do a little more work if my best guess is that it will allow me to easily save my data, the way I want it, in a way I believe may be accessible for many years – with links from 2006 saved in Pinboard the method above seems like it has a chance to meet that goal! (A post about saving personal data on my other blog.)

Enjoy!
CM

Filed under: Life, Software and Services

2011 June 26 • 9:51 pm 0

Another Blog…

I recently decided to create another blog (via WordPress.com of course!) – cmiles-consuming. The new blog is place for me to record and share the media that I am consuming and info/notes/records/comments about it – the first post explains the idea…

I having not been posting very often to this blog – and while I have an idea or two – I don’t expect that to change – but I love having this blog and it is not going away! If you have only seen posts via RSS over the past few years you might enjoy stopping by the site – the widgets on the side nicely aggregate my links, pictures, hikes/rides/runs, media, twitter, facebook, etc…

Enjoy!
CM

Filed under: Life

2008 December 25 • 7:53 am 0

2008!

My blog has been silent during almost all of 2008 and I thought it was time for an update!

Hikes/Outdoor adventures: In 2007 I put a number of my outdoor activities on this blog – it was fun, but I found over time that flickr sets were perfect for what I wanted to do: pictures with tags + a short description. 2008 Sets:

San Pedro, Thumb Canyon, Molino Area, Box Camp, Box Camp, Seven Cataracts, Lower Highway Drainages, Zion, Ridgeline, Palisades, Milagrosa, Molino, Seattle, Romero Pools, Seven Cataracts

Reading: In addition to some technical books and some sci-fi (nothing astounding this year in sci-fi books for me) the highlights were: Richard Powers Echo Maker, David Mitchell Cloud Atlas and Number 9 Dream, Haruki Murakami Kafka on the Shore. All of those were really good and I am astounded I found all of those in a single year (suggestions welcome!) – if I had to pick a favorite I think it would be Cloud Atlas, if you pick it up and find yourself slightly underwhelmed 1/3 of the way in KEEP READING, trust me…

Music: Steinbruchel (and spelling variation…) and Vampire Weekend were the finds for me this year – very different but both amazing.

Programming: In 2008 I worked in C# and VB.NET on Linq to Sql/SqlMetal, Sql Server/Express User Instances and WPF/Composite Application Guidance. I am certainly not an expert in any of these technologies – but have deployed working applications that are useful to their users and great motivation to keep learning! I also worked thru the first 10 Euler problems in F#.

Classes: I have been taking classes at Pima Community College to keep learning, this year I completed Introduction to VB.NET, Web Publishing and Programming & Problem Solving II.

Bike Commuting: Another year! I feel really lucky to live in a spot where I can commute to work, to school and to most of my errands by bike – it is really a great part of my day! Favorite items that go with me: X61 Tablet (in the no longer available hi-res screen), Cradlepoint PHS300+ Verizon UM150 for instant internet hotspot, Tom Bihn Smart Alec with Vertical Brain Cell and Vertical Freudian Slip.

Happy Holidays!

Charles

Filed under: Life, 2008, udate

2007 June 11 • 4:51 am 2

Flickr vs. Picasa Web Albums

I am moving my photos over to Flickr from Picasa Web Albums and gradually changing all of my links – I thought I would share my personal opinion on the two services as a very casual user:

Flickr
Good – More people and better community!!!
Bad – There is not a full featured desktop client for Flickr (that I know of…) like Picasa – for me organizing and tagging is slightly painful in the Flickr web interface (compared to using Picasa on the desktop). [Lance points out below that Picasa is still useful for tags and captions if you do those before you upload!]
If sharing and community features are important to you I think Flickr is the better service.

Picasa Web Albums
Good – Decent integration with Picasa makes it easy to organize/tag/caption pictures on your desktop and then transfer them to Picasa.
Bad – Picasa does not have the same level of community or number of members that Flickr has.
If your primary concern is online personal photo storage and occasionally sharing photos then the integration with Picasa makes this a strong choice.

Other ideas?
CM

Filed under: Life

2007 June 11 • 3:39 am 1

lolcats blackhole

For the past couple of weeks I been unable to stop visiting I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?, and laughing. Why are odd (mostly) cat pictures wth mizpelld captions so funny? And why is this showing up in blogs I read (BoingBoing (multiple times believe it or not) and Joel on Software) practically forcing me to click again and again… pulling me ever deeper into the time wasting blackhole that is lolcats.

Gone to I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER? – Be Back Later,
CM

Filed under: Life

2007 February 24 • 6:38 am 2

Bike Commuting

Two years ago I bought a Specialized Rockhopper Comp Disc (current version) and started commuting to work. ADT and I still have one car and I drive occasionally, but now I prefer to ride – for commuting to work, errands and fun. Biking has made my life better – if you are lucky enough that your life/work situation permits it you should try it too!

Current favorite bike commuting gear -

Rockhopper Comp Disc with Nimbus Armadillo 26×1.5 tires (I think skinny tires turn a hard-tail mountain bike into a pretty nice commuting setup – and I have had too many flats with knobby tires on Tucson roads)

Starfire Single Beam w/ Smart Switch and Fuel Gauge from Jet Lites (Reliable, bright and I love the battery guage. I ride home in the dark ~4 nights a week and it is a huge benefit to be able to see the remaining battery life)

Timbuk2 Pro Series Backpack (Large) (I have used about 5 different backpacks/messenger bags in two years, nothing is perfect but I love the size of this pack, enough space for all the basics AND some groceries)

Icebreaker Tops – Merino wool is warm and does a great of staying stink-free even after a week of commuting

Toshiba R10 Tablet PC – Not technically commuting gear – but the bike/laptop is just a cool combination (I am a huge fan of the convertible tablet format)

Happy Commuting!
CM

Filed under: Life, bike commuting

2007 January 2 • 6:13 am 2

2007 Resolutions

A post of little interest to almost anyone other than myself – but hopefully a useful public declaration…

2007:
-Go to a gym once a week with ADT (classic New Year’s resolution with the small twist of helping/getting help from ADT, apparently a devilish thing to accomplish…)

-Don’t over eat (although guilty of this at home I certainly have in mind the insane portion sizes that many restaurants force upon you (see how much success you have telling the person behind the counter at Chipotle (which really has pretty decent food (but in one of the more insane portions I have seen)) for half the amount of beans and rice – likely you will be slightly frustrated…) I think I might actually pay an extra dollar to be given less food)

-Take a multi-vitamin every day (no comment)

-Program something useful in a non vb related language (originally I was going to say in C#, but maybe I would learn more writing in something where syntax was not the biggest change from vb)

-Take a picture every month of me and ADT (hopefully the start of a 50+ year tradition)

Good luck if you subscribe to this tradition also,
CM

Filed under: Life

2006 December 30 • 7:03 am 0

Carl Stone – Nak Won on iTunes

I was on iTunes last week and was delighted to find Nak Won by Carl Stone – one of my favorite musicians/composers!

If you have not heard any of Carl Stone’s work check out his website, which features a number of free (and very worthwhile) downloads. If intrigued and curious – iTunes has Mom’s (great album and perhaps an easier introduction to Stone’s work than Nak Won) and CDeMusic has several CDs (including Nak Won if you are not an iTunes fan).

I started listening to Carl Stone in 2003 while taking an electroacoustic music class at the University of Arizona with Kip Haaheim. It was a fantastic course, the highlight for me was spending my 2nd semester of the class working with Cycling 74′s max/msp (available for Mac OS X AND Windows XP, the Windows XP version might be a surprise if – like me – you have been away from it for years – this may not be good for my budget) [see pd as an alternative/another starting point]. The work I did in max/msp is among the best, most joyful and vivid memories I have of my graduate work.

Happy Listening!
CM

Filed under: Life

2006 September 6 • 4:46 pm 2

Bike Commuting for Better Knowledge

My bike is in the shop and I have been car pooling rather than bike commuting to work for the past couple of days. I have amazing company while commuting (Alison!), and it is a nice change – but I miss the time that commuting creates for listening.

If I did not commute I doubt I would find time to do as much listening as I currently do – and with all of my listening time I have learned that it is not music that is most satisfying on my commute, it is the educational/informative programs.

Commuting is good exercise, can be economically efficient and is good for the enviroment – but most importantly I think commuting is actually making me smarter! (Does the bike shop understand that they are holding up my education every day they keep my bike!?!) My current favorites include:

Berkeley Webcasts – This is incredible! So good you must click the link. Check out the courses that they record! This (almost) makes me wish my commute was longer. Can not say enough good things about this.

Security Now – I have learned new things about security, networking and the internet from this show.

FLOSS Weekly – TWiT has a number of interesting shows, this is my 2nd favorite (after Security Now).

Harvard Business Review – Not free – like the links above, but really enjoyable. Audible offers other publications as well – but for some reason this is the one that I keep coming back to as good listening material.

Commute More!
CM

Filed under: Life