This was filmed on the Big Island of Hawaii, in the saddle between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa.
Hat tip to Andrew Cooper.
- The Destiny drama just keeps on entertaining! #
- Hello Monday! #
- Cloud: bus late. Silver lining: get to listen to the CBC Radio 3 R3-30. #
- Maybe I should have put that container of cantaloupe in a plastic bag before putting it in my backpack… #
- I love it when programmers put functionality in the documentation but not in the code. #
- Yay for getting on a train that goes out of service at Edmonds! #
- RT @10thToTheFraser Huzzah! The Royal City Farmers Market 2010/2011 Winter Market is officially on in #NewWest -http://fb.me/HXSimKcF #
- RT @sirhc People who refuse to be vaccinated should be quarantined. Don't endanger the rest of society for your idiotic beliefs. #
- I have to wonder if this code was ever tested. Past experiences with said code (e.g. not closing I/O streams) suggests not. #
- Set a 'missing2' attribute and test a 'missing' attribute — brilliant! No wonder the code thought every sample was missing. #
- Anybody in #NewWest know what happened at Agnes & 1st today at 5pm? Fire trucks, police, road closed off until about 6… #
- Add a few explosions and you've got a blockbuster movie: RT @ctvbc Pot seized at bear-guarded grow-op stolen from cops http://bit.ly/9Xs09P #
- What do you mean the Cold War is over? http://www.cbc.ca/politics/story/2010/08/25/cf-18s-russians-airspace.html #
- What's the difference between selling a used video game & a used car? Why do game publishers get their knickers in a twist about used games? #
- RT @BadAstronomer Bad Universe giveaway: book, TV show swag, a real meteorite! Retweet to enter. Rules: http://is.gd/eDbwy #BadUniverse #
- (sorry for the retweeted contest spam, but he's got an asteroid up for grabs. An asteroid!) #
- (I meant meteorite, of course. Dr. Tatum would be so disappointed…) #
- Didn't I see this on NCIS? http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/26/us/26drone.html #
- High standards in higher education in the US: http://bit.ly/9hYTfr #
- It would be really nice if my wrist stopped hurting. #
- RT @CKNW Have you seen this boy?: Surrey RCMP is seeking the public’s assistance in locating a 4 year old boy… http://bit.ly/dbukHu #
- Why a I not surprised? http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/08/bottled-tea-more-sugar-less-health-then-home-brewing.ars #
- First and last time I spam this: if you play Office Heroes, add me as a friend. My friend ID thingie is, amazingly, 'canspice'. #
- It would be awesome if WordPress's maintenance mode a) didn't lock me out of the dashboard, and b) could be cleared from the dashboard. #
- RT @denisleary Anti-Muslim Florida pastor plans Koran bonfire on Sept 11. Might as well go whole hog & use the Bill Of Rights as kindling. #
- Picking up porter for Welsh Rarebit. Woo! (@ BC Liquor Store) http://4sq.com/bDMhUk #
- When we're outside and you're ten feet away and I can smell your cologne, you're wearing too much. #
- RT @gnat It's much easier on your readers if you take the time to abbreviate and compress your tweets than if you simply (contd.) #
- Elizabeth is going to make an awesome Perl programmer: RT @AliceCavanagh Hbbbbjlm. .?)&$?$ z.,x(),,,?,?!!'ln cxfgfh #
- The best part of visiting Chilliwack is saying Luckacuck all the time. Luckacuck! #
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I started a post using the WordPress iPhone client, which has built-in geolocation. I would like to remove the geolocation. I thought I could do that by deleting the custom fields, but every time I do (and hit ‘Save Draft’) they just stay there.
I do have the Geolocation plugin installed and enabled; is that screwing things up?
Further testing seems to suggest that the Geolocation plugin is screwing things up. I started writing up this post on a browser, and now my blog things I’m somewhere in East Vancouver. Which I’m not.
- 'Hallowed Ground' http://daryllang.com/blog/4421 #
- So is Pano pretty much what one should get for auto-stitching photos on the iPhone? #
- It's hot. #
- A mojito is an excellent way to end the day. #
- RT @perlbuzz Temporarily delete hash keys or array elements with "delete local" http://www.effectiveperlprogramming.com/blog/504 #
- Oh Jesus, I didn't know "fur babies" was loose. http://bit.ly/b4SoKg #
- RT @BadAstronomer Get vaccinated at Dragon*Con! No big whoop. http://is.gd/enj0f #
- I'm wearing my JRX shirt (with Left 4 Dead Zombie Jesus) to work. I work at a Catholic hospital. #
- "As is often the case, you can read a truncated, insulting version of a story somewhere else or you can go to Ars Technica." #
- "Look Who's Derailing Democracy in BC" – http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2010/08/17/DerailingBCDemocracy/ #
- RT @BadAstronomer See? this is why I <3 @wilw. http://is.gd/enwZQ #
- Note: it's "per se", not "per say". And "voilà", not "viola" or "wallah". #
- No, no, why would I want to know that you're shutting down our DB server to upgrade the memory? #
- The clouds are low this morning. #
- Reboot 43 servers and Nagios goes nuts. #
- Dammit, Dan Mangan scheduled his Vancouver show the same night as Wintersleep, and we already have Wintersleep tickets. #
- Tyler Wright is a dumbass. Let's go for a long hike in running shoes, no extra clothes, no gear, no sleeping bag. Brilliant! #
- Wait, he had a backpack. No tent or sleeping bag though, and little wilderness hiking experience. And now the dumbass is lost. Well done. #
- Time to go camping! See you sometime Sunday! #
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There were a couple of outages, but it looks like I’ve got things back to normal. Or what passes for normal.
I’ve changed the theme to fusion.
I’ve gone with the Akismet Plugin for handling spam comments, so I apologize in advance if any of your comments get flagged as spam. I’ll do my best to go through the spam folder over the next few weeks to check for mis-classified comments.
I’ve also installed the WP-CodeBox plugin, which lets me do things like this:
=item B<new> Create a new instance of an C<Astro::Flux> object. $flux = new Astro::Flux( $quantity, $type, $waveband ); The first three parameters must be defined. They are: quantity - numerical value for the flux, my be a primitive, or a C<Number::Uncertainty> object. type - type of flux. Can be any string. waveband - waveband for the given flux. Must be an C<Astro::WaveBand> object. If any of the parameters are undefined, the constructor will throw an error. If the waveband parameter is not an C<Astro::WaveBand> object, the constructor will throw an error. The type is case-insensitive for lookups using the C<quantity> method. A fourth optional argument may be passed; this is a hash containing the following optional keys: quality - an C<Misc::Quality> object denoting quality flags for the C<Astro::Flux> object. reference_waveband - an C<Astro::WaveBand> object denoting a reference waveband for the C<Astro::Flux> object. This is used for determining magnitudes when deriving them from C<Astro::FluxColor> objects. See C<Astro::Fluxes>. datetime - an C<DateTime> object which is the datetime of observation for the measurement in the C<Astro::Flux> object. obsid - An array reference to a list of observation identifiers. Can be used to identify the observation(s) from which this measurement was taken (e.g. from a filename). =cut sub new { my $proto = shift; my $class = ref( $proto ) || $proto; my $quantity = shift; my $type = shift; my $waveband = shift; my %args = @_; croak "Quantity must be defined" unless defined $quantity; unless ( UNIVERSAL::isa($quantity, "Number::Uncertainty" ) ) { $quantity = new Number::Uncertainty( Value => $quantity ); } croak "Type must be defined" unless defined $type; croak "Waveband must be defined" unless defined $waveband; unless ( UNIVERSAL::isa($waveband, "Astro::WaveBand") ) { $waveband = new Astro::WaveBand( Filter => $waveband ); } my $flux = {}; $flux->{QUANTITY} = { uc($type) => $quantity }; $flux->{WAVEBAND} = $waveband; $flux->{TYPE} = uc( $type ); if( defined( $args{'quality'} ) && UNIVERSAL::isa( $args{'quality'}, "Misc::Quality" ) ) { $flux->{QUALITY} = $args{'quality'}; } if( defined( $args{'reference_waveband'} ) && UNIVERSAL::isa( $args{'reference_waveband'}, "Astro::WaveBand" ) ) { $flux->{REFERENCE_WAVEBAND} = $args{'reference_waveband'}; } if( defined( $args{'datetime'} ) && UNIVERSAL::isa( $args{'datetime'}, "DateTime" ) ) { $flux->{TIME} = $args{'datetime'}; } if( defined( $args{'obsid'} ) ) { $flux->{OBSID} = $args{'obsid'}; } bless( $flux, $class ); return $flux; } |
As always, let me know if you notice any problems.
I’m going to be switching around my WordPress installation in a few minutes. I know not many of you read this, and an outage of a few minutes will probably go unnoticed, but I thought I’d throw up a warning anyhow.
For those who care, I’m switching from tarballs / standard installation to using Subversion. Thus I’ll be able to update easier in the future (I hope).
If the geotagging on this post worked, you can see that I started writing this post somewhere between SkyTrain stations 29th Avenue and Nanaimo in Vancouver. I take the SkyTrain every day to and from work, and it’s great.
Sure, I bitch about it every now and then, particularly when it gets delayed, but all in all I really like SkyTrain. Never mind the financial advantages of public transit over driving, never mind the environmental benefits of public transit over driving, I like it because it’s stress-free!
Compared to driving, that is. A few nights ago we were driving from Langley to New Westminster, which means crossing the Fraser River at some point. I had two options: Highway 1 over the Port Mann or King George Highway over the Patullo Bridge. They’re replacing the Port Mann and reconfiguring the freeway, so construction delays are inevitable. King George Highway has a lot of traffic lights and the Patullo always seems to have a lane closed for unknown reasons. We picked the Port Mann.
Mistake.
Traffic was horrible! Backed up for miles from the bridge (to 176th, to put it into context for locals), we hit maybe 40km/h. And it’s like this every day. How do people put up with it? How do people stay sane?
Contrast that with my daily commute: I walk down to the bus stop (leisurely and exercise), catch a bus (get to sit down while the bus zooms around), drop Elizabeth off at daycare, catch another bus (get to catch up on Twitter and Facebook), transfer to SkyTrain, walk to work (more exercise). It takes about an hour and forty minutes to get from home to work. Yes, it takes a while, but I get to sit down and relax on the bus and SkyTrain. While on the bus with Elizabeth I get to interact with her face-to-face. I get to read news on the way in. I get to post things to Twitter. I get to draft posts for my blog. I get a nice walk in at either end, and I can stop for coffee if I want to.
I don’t have to worry about other drivers. I don’t get stuck in stop-and-go traffic. I don’t have to worry about finding a parking spot. I don’t have to worry about paying for a parking spot.
Given my options, why would I want to drive?
Oh yeah, here’s a funky map of the geolocation of this post. Fun.
[geolocation]
In Hawaii Alice and I shared a car. Our monthly loan payments on it were about $350, insurance was about $125, and gas was about $250. Add in maintenance and we were spending, say, $850 a month to get ourselves around.
Moving to Vancouver meant leaving the car behind, as it would have cost about $3000 to ship it up. We found an apartment close to a SkyTrain station, which makes it easier to get around. Transit costs us about $100 a month each.
But what about those times when we need to buy something big, or if we want to go where transit sucks, or if we want to go to Vancouver Island? Enter car sharing. We’re members of the Co-operative Auto Network. Whenever we want a car we go to their website, find a nearby car, and sign it out. We pay $3 per hour and a few dimes per kilometer. Given how infrequently we drive, this is ideal.
Last month we made a couple of big trips so my Car Co-op bill was higher than normal, about $175. Alice’s was lower. All told we spent about $425 on transportation last month, about half of what we regularly paid in Hawaii!
Side note: if you live in Vancouver and want to join the Car Co-op, let me refer you. There are financial incentives for both of us!