A Weblog…Again

Camping 101

For a while now, I’ve been wanting to go camping.  Last summer, I thought about it, but my wife got pregnant and roughing it in the wilderness with a pregnant woman is like oil and water; they don’t mix.  My son is nearly 6 years old and I figure that he and I should spend some time away from it all… meaning no Nintendo, Xbox, etc.  I only went camping a few times as a kid, but I found it enjoyable, plus I think if I introduce my son to it at an early age, he’ll grow up to be more appreciative of his creature comforts as well as be more comfortable "roughing it". 

So, the first order of business was to buy camping equipment.  I had a Marmot sleeping bag that I bought about 7 years ago that is still in good shape.  Aside from that, I needed to buy everything.  After conferring with a work colleague who does a lot of backcountry camping, I came up with this initial list of bigger ticket items that I needed to purchase:

• 2 person tent
• Sleeping bag for my son
• Backpacking stove
• 2 sleeping pads
• Backpack (Haven’t bought this yet)

After reading way too many reviews and 2 visits to REI, I ended up buying the following equipment:

Tent

Marmot Limelight 2.  This is a 2 person tent that includes the footprint and gear loft.  It has received favorable reviews and appears to be very easy setup.  The only 2 criticisms are that it only has 1 door and that it is not "D" style, namely when you unzip the door it folds downward instead of to the side.

Son’s Sleeping Bag

North Face Tigger +20 Sleeping Bag.  This seems like a great bag and should be good for my son for at least 5 years.  Its warmth rating, stylish looks and build quality are exceptional.  I was about to get him the REI KinderCone, which also is a great bag, but for $30 more, I thought I would splurge.

Backpacking Stove

I ended up buying the MSR Windpro.  It has favorable reviews and seems to have a stable base.  I’ll buy some fuel this weekend and give it a shot.

Sleeping Pads

My work colleague and others have told me that buying a good sleeping pad is a worthy investment.  I didn’t go all out, but based on the reviews, I think that the Therm-a-rest Trail Lite should be more than adequate for me and my son.  It is a self-inflating pad that should keep us warm and comfortable.  Not much to look at, but here it is.

Now that I have the bulk of the equipment, I plan on setting it up and sleeping in the backyard to see how it all works for us.  This weekend will be hot (in the 90s), so I may have to delay until it drops down to the 70s or so.  Once we have a dry-run in the backyard, I want to hit a couple of state parks before the winter arrives.  I don’t think we’ll do any true backcountry, but if we can just get out there and do a bit of hiking, cook out in the open, maybe build a small fire, etc., I’ll be quite happy.

More to come…

Fresh Baked Bread

A couple of weeks ago, I read this article "Better Bread With Less Kneading" in the New York Times and got it into my head to give it a go.  I found a recipe (which I can’t find anymore) that required no kneading and about 2 hours for the bread to rise.  After ordering an oven thermometer (I ordered the Taylor Oven Guide from Amazon) and buying some yeast and some bread flour, I combined the ingredients and let it rise for 2 hours.  I then simply placed to dough on to a cookie sheet and cooked for about 35 minutes at 350.  The result:  a fairly edible loaf of bread that was rather tasty with some butter and jam.  (Sorry no pictures)

This evening, I didn’t have quite that much time on my hands, but I needed some activity to keep Dhruv occupied.  So I found a great and easy recipe for Banana Bread at The Fresh Loaf.  Dhruv helped with the measuring and mixing and then it was in the oven for about 50 minutes.  The result:  warm and delicious banana nut bread.  Here are some pictures:

My New Leap (Chair)

For the past 10 years, I’ve been a telecommuter working for East/West coast technology companies.  I have been very fortunate in this regard and am thankful for this work/life arrangement.  About 5 years ago, I was in the market for a new office chair.  At that time, Herman Miller Aeron chairs were still well over $500.  I remember reading about the Steelcase Leap chair that had just been introduced into the market.  It was much more of a traditional looking chair, but from an ergonomic point of view, it received accolades from many reviewers.  Unfortunately, the Leap was in the $800 – $1200 range.  So, I ended up settling for a $200 Aeron knock-off.  This was a bad move.  Over the past 5 years, I’ve probably spent anywhere between 8000 – 10,000 hours in that chair.  I can say with some degree of confidence that my posture along with my productivity has paid the price.

Over the past few weeks, the chair started falling apart.  I noticed a screw on the ground.  It creaked incessantly everytime I would swivel or lean back.  The armrest padding came undone.  It was time for a new chair.

After a bit of research, I pulled the trigger on a Steelcase Leap.  It has only been 2 days, but the difference is night and day.  The chair enforces good posture; no more slouching for me.  With all of the adjustments on this chair, it can truly be customized to my sitting style.  It is a great chair and a worthy investment that should easily last me for the next 5 years.

The Steelcase Leap

Blog Updated

I just upgraded to the latest (2.9.2) version of WordPress for my blog.  I also added integration with Facebook, which in turn required upgrading to PHP5.  Using SimpleScripts this was trivial.  Let’s see if this actually posts to Facebook or not.  Hopefully, I can get back on to the blogging bandwagon.

NAS: Move Over FreeNAS, Here Comes Ubuntu

A couple of months ago, I embarked on building a NAS with 3 x 1 Terabyte drives in a RAID 5 configuration (see here).  I used an old server that I had lying around.  I thought I had it working, but after several hours of use, the drives would heat up and sometimes they would go offline.  I would then have to reboot the server.  So, obviously, this was not a very stable solution.  I had put really silent fans inside of the server, since it was in my office, but that was probably not providing enough ventilation, thus the overheating hard-drives.

Now that I’ve run Cat 5e cable from my office into the basement, I can put the server into the utility room in the basement and voila sound is no longer a constraint.  In the meantime, the stability of the system was deteriorating.  I also didn’t like the inflexibility of using FreeNAS.  Sure, it is nice to have it all pre-packaged, but I think FreeNAS is really for those who aren’t technical enough to roll their own NAS and enable the appropriate services.  Don’t get me wrong, FreeNAS is good if you just want to get a NAS running with minimal technical know how.  But one of the issues with FreeNAS is that it appears that it only has a sole developer behind it, so releases are infrequent.  Also, the forums aren’t as active as they could be.  All of this, along with the fact that one of my drives went kaputt, has led me to build a NAS based on Ubuntu.  With very little effort, I was able to build an Ubuntu based NAS using RAID 10 with 2 x 1 Terabyte drives.  I am just playing around with RAID 10  right now as I only have 2 drives and I’ll switch to RAID 5 when my 3rd drive gets shipped back to me.  Using mdadm and some simple instructions, it was a cinch to get RAID 10 working.  I used a separate 40 GB drive for the OS install.  Once I got the system up and running, I installed the excellent web-based administration tool called Webmin.  From the looks of Webmin, it appears that you can perform RAID configurations from within it, so there really isn’t much command line expertise even required.

Since I wanted to mimic a lot of the functionality of FreeNAS, I also installed Fuppes so that I could stream media from the NAS to my XBox 360.  These instructions were invaluable for installing Fuppes.

I also wanted to configure the server allow AFP (Apple Filing Protocol), so that the Apple computers in the house could use that instead of NFS, which would be more inefficient.  These excellent instructions for configuring AFP on Ubuntu worked flawlessly. 

Once I get my replacement drive back, I’ll work on the following:

1. Put all 3 x 1 Terabyte drives into a RAID 5 configuration
2. Enable the server to act as an iSCSI target.  This is important, because my personal Macbook can then read data from the iSCSI target, which will be treated as a local drive, which means that Mozy (the online backup service I use) will back up the data.
3. Burn (once again) my complete CD collection to the NAS.  Unfortunately, with the last disk failure I lost all of the MP3′s that I had burned.  In any case, I want to now burn them in a lossless format.
4. Configure the NAS to act as an iTunes/DAAP server so that music could be streamed to any device in the house.
5. Move this server into the basement, because it sounds like a rocket engine in my office.

Out with Kindle 1, In with Kindle 2

Last September, I bought the Kindle 1 as a birthday present from Mona to me.  At the time, they had a promotion of $100 off the price of the Kindle, so I think I ended up paying about $265 for it or so.  Since I’ve had it, I have been very pleased.  I’ve been reading more novels and book length non-fiction.  I have found that I no longer realize that I’m reading electronic media; it has dissolved and I become absorbed in the words.  I actually have no reason to buy the Kindle 2.  Well, in steps my father into this picture.  He is obsessed about reading the New York Times and since he travels around to all of his childrens’ houses so frequently, there is no shortage of anxiety for him in figuring out how he is going to get the Times the first thing in the morning.  Add to that, that his vision isn’t what it used to be and the cost of the paper NY Times subscription, the Kindle makes a lot of sense for him.  I showed him my Kindle 1 and its ability to enlarge the text font and the immediate delivery of newspapers and books and he simply had to have it.  So, we arrived at an agreement where he gets my Kindle 1 and I get the Kindle 2.  Wait, it gets better.  Because both Kindle 1 & 2 will be registered under my Amazon account, we will be able to share all of our books with one another at no additional cost.  This doesn’t apply to subscriptions, only books, unfortunately.  Since we read a lot of the same non-fiction, this will be very worthwhile.  So, my Kindle 2 will be here on Wednesday.  Till then, I’ll just have to go "old school" and read a physical book a la Gutenberg.

Wireless – 0; Wired – 1

This afternoon I worked on one of the projects that I had earlier mentioned.  I decided to abandon trying to get WDS (Wireless Distribution System) working between my office on the 2nd floor and the home theatre in the basement.  Instead, I bought a 100 ft of Cat 5e cable and just ran the wiring from the outside of the house.  In my office and in the basement I have Netgear GS105 gigabit switches, so the connectivity blows away any wireless network that I could’ve set up.  It took about 3 hours or so to run the wire, tack it down, cut drywall, punch the wiring into the adapters, but I think I would have spent a lot longer trying to get WDS working correctly.  So, what’s the net result of this wiring job?  Well, now we can finally watch movies from our Instant Queue on Netflix via the XBox 360 on the plasma TV downstairs.  Oh, that is, of course if I actually had time to watch TV.

Nike Sensor + iPod

I was just about to pull the trigger and buy the Nike Sport Kit that works with the iPod as well as an armband to hold the iPod in.  Unfortunately, I have an old iPod Mini (2nd gen) and the Nike Sport Kit only works with the iPod Nano and Touch.  This is a real bummer as I have started to make jogging a part of my life.  Even though I am only jogging about 2.5 miles at a stretch, I have been fairly consistent for the past few months, averaging about 3 times a week.  My wife does have an iPod Nano (4th gen), so I could try to talk her into swapping with me, but that probably won’t work.  Guess I’ll either have to buy a Nano or just be content to listen to jogging podcasts on the Mini for a while.

Upcoming Projects

So, my wife and son will be going on a little vacation in April.  I will have 7 days to myself including one whole weekend.  This is the ideal time to spend some serious time on one of the many mini-projects I’ve been working on or have planned.  The projects include:

1. Configuring the home network correctly for the WDS (Wireless Distribution System) so that the main wireless access point in my office can communicate with the wireless access point in the basement where the XBox360 and home theatre are.  This is key for being able to watch Instant Movies via Netflix.
2. Instead of #1, run Cat 5e cable from my office to the basement.  The challenge with this is running the cabling itself.  Ideally, I would like to run it inside the house, but that may be beyond my skillset.  I am leaning towards doing this instead of #1, because it will be very reliable.  I have had a lot of issues with the WDS implementation by DD-WRT. 
3. Work on my little Contacts application on Google App Engine using Django.  I think I’ll probably start this over from scratch, since it has been so long since I worked on it.  Without having a concentrated, focused amount of time on this, I just don’t seem to be able to make much progress.
4. Work on creating some video-casts showing how to setup the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS).  I haven’t seen any video-casts that cover the basics of UCS, so I think it would be useful.
5. Create a presentation that summarizes the state of cloud computing focusing on the types, definitions, resource pointers, etc.  Though there are a lot of presentations already about cloud computing, this would be more an exercise in self-edification.

Simon’s Rock on NPR

I came across this story about Simon’s Rock on NPR.  I went there from 1987-89 and if I were to believe what is being said in this story, the school has changed a lot.  The school has probably changed and become more academic and less of a "social experiment".  My guess is that changes in college entrances nationwide have also caused the composition of the student body to change, so perhaps it is more of an "early college" for "bored" high schoolers and less of a place for "misfits", which was more the case when I went there.

Oh, and now it costs $50,000 per year, which is $20,000 more than what it cost when I went there, which could also lead to a greater self-selection among the student body.

Tuition and Costs
2008-2009

Tuition and Fees: $37,860
Student Activity Fee: $150
Room and Board: $10,600
Health Services Fee: $640
First-Year Orientation Fee: $525
Total:          $49,775