Something is broken with my SQL server :(. So ... if you have problems with my Photo Gallery or Forums, just reload the page and it should work. I am waiting for my web hosting company to resolve the problem.
Friday, September 29, 2006
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Mt St Helens Climb
Tuesday I climbed Mt St Helens with some people from my group at work. It was our group's official "quarterly." It was probably a bit of a stretch for a group outing ... but I think we all had a great time. Allen, Michelle, Jason, Aparna, PK, Bob joined me from the Xeon team ... and Derek (Michelle's fiance) tagged along. We were originally supposed to have 13 people, but a bunch of people had to cancel for various reasons. Almost everyone made it to the top :).
They re-openned the mountain earlier this summer after closing it due to activity a few years back. To climb to the summit, you need to get one of 100 permits that are issued each day. It is not a very long hike - only ~10 miles, but does climb 4500 ft (think 3 Sears Towers). Before the hike, I figured that 4500 ft over 5 miles would be tough, but not that bad. I thought that it was strange that they called the permits "climbing permits" instead of just "permits" or "hiking permits." Well ... after about 2 miles into the hike with very little elevation gain, I discovered why.
When the volcanoe blew up back in 1980, it stopped resembling standard mountains :). Rather than followwing a nice steep trail of switchbacks all the way to the top, the "hike" became a scramble up talus (think bolders) and then through fine rocks (where you take a step and slide back down half way). The initial part of the climb is all through talus, and then breaks through to the sand for the final ascent to the summit.
Here is a picture of Derek and Allen making their way through the talus:
Here is a picture of Bob, Derek, and I taking a break while climbing through the talus with Mt. Adams in the background:
Below is a picture of our crew heading up the sand portion. Bob, Derek, and Allen are in front of me heading up. At this point, we started to get effected by the elevation and the climb was pretty tough. Bob and I adopted the technique of stopping at every rock that was large enough to sit on. I find that it is a lot easier to set small, simple goals at times like this than to look at the top and think about how far away it is.
The view all the way to the summit was fantastic. We could see Mt. Adams to our right and Mt. Hood was behind us. When we got to the summit, we were able to look down into the crater and see Mt. Rainier on the horizon. This was one of the best 360 degree views I have seen in my life. Bob, Allen, Derek, and I hit the summit at about 12:15 ... just in time for lunch.
Below is a picture of the crater (with Mt. Rainier in the background). This picture does not really do the dome justice. It is currently ~1000 ft high. I was talking to some people on top who had done the hike ~6 years ago (before it was closed), and at that time there was basically no dome :).
Here is a picture of Allen, Bob, and I sitting on the rim of the crater shortly after getting to the summit:
See a nice stitch of the crater taken by Allen.
We headed down at about 1:15. After about 15 minutes of cruising down through the sand, we rand into some of the others in our party. They ended up hitting the summit at maybe 2:30, and headed down at 3:00.
-- Waiting for a picture from PK of the second group --
Allen, Derek, and I got back to the parking lot at about 4:30, and waited for the rest of the crew to trickle in. Our total travel time varied from ~8 hours to ~11.
I would highly recommend this "climb" to anyone who is in good shape and understands that it is going to be a bit painful. Everyone who went was very happy about the experience the following day ... but probably only 1/2 were happy with me for dragging them up right after the hike :).
See all our pictures here.
They re-openned the mountain earlier this summer after closing it due to activity a few years back. To climb to the summit, you need to get one of 100 permits that are issued each day. It is not a very long hike - only ~10 miles, but does climb 4500 ft (think 3 Sears Towers). Before the hike, I figured that 4500 ft over 5 miles would be tough, but not that bad. I thought that it was strange that they called the permits "climbing permits" instead of just "permits" or "hiking permits." Well ... after about 2 miles into the hike with very little elevation gain, I discovered why.
When the volcanoe blew up back in 1980, it stopped resembling standard mountains :). Rather than followwing a nice steep trail of switchbacks all the way to the top, the "hike" became a scramble up talus (think bolders) and then through fine rocks (where you take a step and slide back down half way). The initial part of the climb is all through talus, and then breaks through to the sand for the final ascent to the summit.
Here is a picture of Derek and Allen making their way through the talus:
Here is a picture of Bob, Derek, and I taking a break while climbing through the talus with Mt. Adams in the background:
Below is a picture of our crew heading up the sand portion. Bob, Derek, and Allen are in front of me heading up. At this point, we started to get effected by the elevation and the climb was pretty tough. Bob and I adopted the technique of stopping at every rock that was large enough to sit on. I find that it is a lot easier to set small, simple goals at times like this than to look at the top and think about how far away it is.
The view all the way to the summit was fantastic. We could see Mt. Adams to our right and Mt. Hood was behind us. When we got to the summit, we were able to look down into the crater and see Mt. Rainier on the horizon. This was one of the best 360 degree views I have seen in my life. Bob, Allen, Derek, and I hit the summit at about 12:15 ... just in time for lunch.
Below is a picture of the crater (with Mt. Rainier in the background). This picture does not really do the dome justice. It is currently ~1000 ft high. I was talking to some people on top who had done the hike ~6 years ago (before it was closed), and at that time there was basically no dome :).
Here is a picture of Allen, Bob, and I sitting on the rim of the crater shortly after getting to the summit:
See a nice stitch of the crater taken by Allen.
We headed down at about 1:15. After about 15 minutes of cruising down through the sand, we rand into some of the others in our party. They ended up hitting the summit at maybe 2:30, and headed down at 3:00.
-- Waiting for a picture from PK of the second group --
Allen, Derek, and I got back to the parking lot at about 4:30, and waited for the rest of the crew to trickle in. Our total travel time varied from ~8 hours to ~11.
I would highly recommend this "climb" to anyone who is in good shape and understands that it is going to be a bit painful. Everyone who went was very happy about the experience the following day ... but probably only 1/2 were happy with me for dragging them up right after the hike :).
See all our pictures here.
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
So you are thinking of starting a webpage?
So today I got an email from my friend Rohini asking for information about starting a webpage. Rather than just respond to her, I thought I would write something up here so that anyone interested could learn about it. Hopefully this will get a few of you to start blogs that I can spend time reading each week.
So, lets start at a high level. The first thing that you need to ask yourself before starting a webpage is: "What do I want to do with my webpage?" Now ... you may not know the answer right away ... but this should at least be in the back of your mind as we progress through this little rant.
With that Q in the back of your mind, you have to decide which of three types of webpages you would like to have. The options are:
(1) Get a free account on the web to create a blog.
(2) Pay for a web host to serve your webpage, and create whatever you want.
(3) Serve your own webpage over your home internet.
I have done (2) and (3), but never (1) ... so keep that in mind as we now go through each of the different options.
Free Blog Sites
Using a free site out there is actually pretty nice these days. There are a couple of popular blogging sites out there. One major one is Blogger.com (aka blogspot). Another is Xanga.com. These both seem pretty nice. They not only allow you to write blogs, but also have space where you can upload and share your photos. You also have a good bit of control over what your page looks like. To see some examples, check out Jeff's blog (blogger) and Jenn's blog (xanga). Being that I don't have any real experience with either, I cannot really recommend one over the other.
In general, these sites are nice for getting started with webpages. It is most likely the fastest and easiest way to get a webpage. However, you are somewhat limitted in your freedom with what you can do. If you are thinking of creating a webpage but are not sure what you want ... I would recommend giving one of these guys a shot for a bit to see what you think. It is free ... so why not. If you don't like it ... just cancel your account :).
Paying to have your site hosted
I am currently paying for this site to be hosted. I used to host my own site, but got sick of the hassle. The good thing about paying to have your site hosted is that you have as much freedom as you like. You can do something really simple ... or get as fancy as you like. If there is something that you don't like ... you are in control and can change it if you like. Again, this is probably not as easy as creating one of the free blogs ... but you sure don't need to be a hacker to put together a decent looking webpage. (Note that "hacker" is a term for someone who is a strong programmer, and actually is misused wheb refering to programmers who partake in illegal activities).
Like I said before, there are infinite options for creating your own webpage. One easy thing that you can do if you have a mac is to use iLife. This is what Janel used to create her webpage. Generally, anything that apple puts together is very user friendly. You can quickly and easily make webpage, photo galleries, blogs, etc. Both Pablo and my dad created their webpages with iLife.
I am *not* a fan of webpages created with microsoft tools. No ... I am not just being an anti-msft snob. I am a big fan of some MSFT products (Excel, Visio, etc) ... but have found their web page creation tools to frankly be crap.
Another option if you are a bit more brave is to download what I will call a free webpage template. You can also buy some nice templates out there for not too much money. I am not familiar with this, but I know others that have gone this route; and have created some nice looking pages with not too much effort or money. You can find lots of free software (of all types), including stuff like what I use for this page, at Sourceforge. Just search here for "blog" and sort by the number of downloads. There are all sorts of options here that you can use ... and each of them are completely open source, so you can modify whatever you like if you are not afraid to get your hands dirty with a little simple html or php. Many of these tools can also be used with absolutely no knowledge of programming or anything. People have spent a large amount of time over recent years upgrading these tools so that they are as easy to use as possible.
I personally use "Simple PHP Blog" which is currently the 4th option when performing the search I described above. I am pretty happy with this tool. I have done a little hacking at the code ... but it was not really that necessary. In case you were wondering ... it does not automatically use those google adds that you may see on the right of my page when you scroll down. I added those myself (this goes back to the hacking on the code that I have done) as an experiment to see how it works. I have made a whole $0,65 cents in the month or so that it has been up. Apparently nobody likes to click on them :P. I chose this tool because it is very simple, and I wanted to keep things as basic as possible. With that said, lets talk a bit about databases.
There are all kinds of options out there that you will run in to when (1) picking who to have host your site and (2) what software to use on your site. One thing that you will run into are databases, or you may see "SQL" or "mySQL". Databases are used to organize data. They can be very complicated. With that said, it is nothing to really be afraid of for creating a webpage. Generally web hosting packages that include databses cost a bit more, but it is not at all uncommon for the free tools that are available on the web to use them. Most of the software can coach you through getting your database setup. All you will have to do is create a database (generally through some "dashboard" with your web host), and the web page installation tool will do the rest.
My blog page, unlike many of the ones that you will find out there, does not use a database to store the posts. Instead, it just stores everything in text files on the server and processes them with php code (php is just a simple scriping language commonly used to build webpages). On the other hand, my photo gallery uses a databse to maintain all of its state.
One thing to keep in mind with some of these dynamic pages is that it is a good idea to keep them up to date. It is not uncommon for security problems to crop up -- especially with the more complicated tools. I have had problems in the past with other tools with people getting access to my webpage and adding posts and such to it. This is really annoying :) ... but can generally be prevented by just updating your site with the most recent code. This can be a pain with some tools, and quite easy with others. When investigating your different options, take a look at the upgrade instructions (commonly in the installation section). If it looks like a pain ... then try to find something else :).
Beyond just creating a blog or a base webpage, you will probably want to post photos. There are a lot of free photo tools (check out sourceforge). I am a big fan of "Gallery". It does require a database ... but has been around forever and is very user friendly. It is very easy to add photos too it and have it create thumbnails and such. Mine is a bit slower than I would like ... but this may have something to do with my web host or the fact that I have over 5000 photos uploaded :).
i just covered a lot of information about creating your webpage. Hopefully you are not too overwhelmed. Trust me though ... as long as you don't get too ambitious ... it is really not that bad. It will definitely be more time consuming ... but can also be a lot of fun.
Hosting your own page
It is possible to host your own webpage. If you are computer-savy enough to try this, I probably do not need to tell you how to go about doing it :). All I want to say about this is that I would recommend against it. I seriously think it is much more hassle than it is worth. It is not that hard to get things running at first ... but nobody wants to deal with keeping everything up to date all the time on your system. Speaking as someone who has had his system hacked into twice ... just don't go here. The other thing is that it is really not cheaper to go this route. I did some calculations a few years back ... and basically found that it is actually cheaper to not have your computer plugged in all the time and to pay for someone else to host your website than to pay for the power to have it on all the time. This was with a bare bones system -- no monitor, no video card, no crazy processor. So ... if you think you are saving a buck or two by serving your own page ... try turning off you computer instead :).
So, lets start at a high level. The first thing that you need to ask yourself before starting a webpage is: "What do I want to do with my webpage?" Now ... you may not know the answer right away ... but this should at least be in the back of your mind as we progress through this little rant.
With that Q in the back of your mind, you have to decide which of three types of webpages you would like to have. The options are:
(1) Get a free account on the web to create a blog.
(2) Pay for a web host to serve your webpage, and create whatever you want.
(3) Serve your own webpage over your home internet.
I have done (2) and (3), but never (1) ... so keep that in mind as we now go through each of the different options.
Free Blog Sites
Using a free site out there is actually pretty nice these days. There are a couple of popular blogging sites out there. One major one is Blogger.com (aka blogspot). Another is Xanga.com. These both seem pretty nice. They not only allow you to write blogs, but also have space where you can upload and share your photos. You also have a good bit of control over what your page looks like. To see some examples, check out Jeff's blog (blogger) and Jenn's blog (xanga). Being that I don't have any real experience with either, I cannot really recommend one over the other.
In general, these sites are nice for getting started with webpages. It is most likely the fastest and easiest way to get a webpage. However, you are somewhat limitted in your freedom with what you can do. If you are thinking of creating a webpage but are not sure what you want ... I would recommend giving one of these guys a shot for a bit to see what you think. It is free ... so why not. If you don't like it ... just cancel your account :).
Paying to have your site hosted
I am currently paying for this site to be hosted. I used to host my own site, but got sick of the hassle. The good thing about paying to have your site hosted is that you have as much freedom as you like. You can do something really simple ... or get as fancy as you like. If there is something that you don't like ... you are in control and can change it if you like. Again, this is probably not as easy as creating one of the free blogs ... but you sure don't need to be a hacker to put together a decent looking webpage. (Note that "hacker" is a term for someone who is a strong programmer, and actually is misused wheb refering to programmers who partake in illegal activities).
Like I said before, there are infinite options for creating your own webpage. One easy thing that you can do if you have a mac is to use iLife. This is what Janel used to create her webpage. Generally, anything that apple puts together is very user friendly. You can quickly and easily make webpage, photo galleries, blogs, etc. Both Pablo and my dad created their webpages with iLife.
I am *not* a fan of webpages created with microsoft tools. No ... I am not just being an anti-msft snob. I am a big fan of some MSFT products (Excel, Visio, etc) ... but have found their web page creation tools to frankly be crap.
Another option if you are a bit more brave is to download what I will call a free webpage template. You can also buy some nice templates out there for not too much money. I am not familiar with this, but I know others that have gone this route; and have created some nice looking pages with not too much effort or money. You can find lots of free software (of all types), including stuff like what I use for this page, at Sourceforge. Just search here for "blog" and sort by the number of downloads. There are all sorts of options here that you can use ... and each of them are completely open source, so you can modify whatever you like if you are not afraid to get your hands dirty with a little simple html or php. Many of these tools can also be used with absolutely no knowledge of programming or anything. People have spent a large amount of time over recent years upgrading these tools so that they are as easy to use as possible.
I personally use "Simple PHP Blog" which is currently the 4th option when performing the search I described above. I am pretty happy with this tool. I have done a little hacking at the code ... but it was not really that necessary. In case you were wondering ... it does not automatically use those google adds that you may see on the right of my page when you scroll down. I added those myself (this goes back to the hacking on the code that I have done) as an experiment to see how it works. I have made a whole $0,65 cents in the month or so that it has been up. Apparently nobody likes to click on them :P. I chose this tool because it is very simple, and I wanted to keep things as basic as possible. With that said, lets talk a bit about databases.
There are all kinds of options out there that you will run in to when (1) picking who to have host your site and (2) what software to use on your site. One thing that you will run into are databases, or you may see "SQL" or "mySQL". Databases are used to organize data. They can be very complicated. With that said, it is nothing to really be afraid of for creating a webpage. Generally web hosting packages that include databses cost a bit more, but it is not at all uncommon for the free tools that are available on the web to use them. Most of the software can coach you through getting your database setup. All you will have to do is create a database (generally through some "dashboard" with your web host), and the web page installation tool will do the rest.
My blog page, unlike many of the ones that you will find out there, does not use a database to store the posts. Instead, it just stores everything in text files on the server and processes them with php code (php is just a simple scriping language commonly used to build webpages). On the other hand, my photo gallery uses a databse to maintain all of its state.
One thing to keep in mind with some of these dynamic pages is that it is a good idea to keep them up to date. It is not uncommon for security problems to crop up -- especially with the more complicated tools. I have had problems in the past with other tools with people getting access to my webpage and adding posts and such to it. This is really annoying :) ... but can generally be prevented by just updating your site with the most recent code. This can be a pain with some tools, and quite easy with others. When investigating your different options, take a look at the upgrade instructions (commonly in the installation section). If it looks like a pain ... then try to find something else :).
Beyond just creating a blog or a base webpage, you will probably want to post photos. There are a lot of free photo tools (check out sourceforge). I am a big fan of "Gallery". It does require a database ... but has been around forever and is very user friendly. It is very easy to add photos too it and have it create thumbnails and such. Mine is a bit slower than I would like ... but this may have something to do with my web host or the fact that I have over 5000 photos uploaded :).
i just covered a lot of information about creating your webpage. Hopefully you are not too overwhelmed. Trust me though ... as long as you don't get too ambitious ... it is really not that bad. It will definitely be more time consuming ... but can also be a lot of fun.
Hosting your own page
It is possible to host your own webpage. If you are computer-savy enough to try this, I probably do not need to tell you how to go about doing it :). All I want to say about this is that I would recommend against it. I seriously think it is much more hassle than it is worth. It is not that hard to get things running at first ... but nobody wants to deal with keeping everything up to date all the time on your system. Speaking as someone who has had his system hacked into twice ... just don't go here. The other thing is that it is really not cheaper to go this route. I did some calculations a few years back ... and basically found that it is actually cheaper to not have your computer plugged in all the time and to pay for someone else to host your website than to pay for the power to have it on all the time. This was with a bare bones system -- no monitor, no video card, no crazy processor. So ... if you think you are saving a buck or two by serving your own page ... try turning off you computer instead :).
Wednesday, September 6, 2006
Lazy Labor Day
I had a nice lazy labor day weekend. Originally Janel and I were planning to take a trip out to Crater Lake for Labor Day...but Janel decided that she needed the weekend to get ready for school. She meant it. I think she worked like 80% of the entire weekend. Teachers may get done with class @ 2:30 ... but I know that they sure put in a lot more time than most of us (for a lot less money).
Friday night we had a little "party" with Allen, Shelley, Michelle, and Derek. For the first time, we had enough people to play Cranium! It is good to finally have friends :P. We also played a bit of a new game that Derek and Michelle introduced us to -- San Juan. Janel and Allen and I have been playing it a lot lately. It is another German game (if you are familiar with Settlers) and I would highly recommend it. It has a good amount of strategy ... but not too much thinking (I do enough of that at work).
We had Shelley, Pablo, and Allen over for a BBQ on Monday. It was good to see Pablo again. Not much else to say about that :).
Not sure if any of you follow this sort of thing, but Intel announced some major layoffs today. This has been underway for a good three months now. Welcome to the tech industry :). Oh well ... I think that I am in good shape and according to my manager I have nothing to be worried about. Hopefully this is true ... only time will tell. I only know two things: (1) this will not be the last of these layoffs that I ever have to go through and (2) whatever happens -- it is not the end of the world :).
Friday night we had a little "party" with Allen, Shelley, Michelle, and Derek. For the first time, we had enough people to play Cranium! It is good to finally have friends :P. We also played a bit of a new game that Derek and Michelle introduced us to -- San Juan. Janel and Allen and I have been playing it a lot lately. It is another German game (if you are familiar with Settlers) and I would highly recommend it. It has a good amount of strategy ... but not too much thinking (I do enough of that at work).
We had Shelley, Pablo, and Allen over for a BBQ on Monday. It was good to see Pablo again. Not much else to say about that :).
Not sure if any of you follow this sort of thing, but Intel announced some major layoffs today. This has been underway for a good three months now. Welcome to the tech industry :). Oh well ... I think that I am in good shape and according to my manager I have nothing to be worried about. Hopefully this is true ... only time will tell. I only know two things: (1) this will not be the last of these layoffs that I ever have to go through and (2) whatever happens -- it is not the end of the world :).
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