This was the third year in row that my friends and I made our way to the Santa Monica Mountains to enjoy some spirited driving on the twisty roads there. We started out at “The Commons” in Woodland Hills where we crashed the meeting place of vintagemotoring.net. They are a group of old car nuts that also meet up for drives in the mountains on New Years Day. Though we’ve never driven along with them, we’re pretty sure they don’t have as much fun as we do on the roads. (wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more) We do enjoy checking out there cars with a fresh coffee before we head out.

This years run had two new attendees. Dave brought his Lotus Elise and Marcelo drove Robert’s BMW 2002. They both throughly enjoyed the day.

The canyons were a blast and enjoyed by all. We were slowed on Stunt Road by a pick up truck, But we made up for it on Yerba Buena Road. Yerba Buena is great because it’s constantly twisting. The road surface is very rough, and it often carries a fair amount of debris, but it’s a blast to drive.

Unfortunate for me I didn’t plan the drive well enough to make it to the Reel Inn for lunch with everybody. That’s normally my favorite part of the trip. Being the lead car for the day I could have made this happen. But, that’s a notion that didn’t occur to me until it was too late. Still, it was a great day judging by all the positive comments in the email thread that followed the event.

Here’s our route, and a few pictures from the day

Bianca signed us up for this event several weeks ago. Since that time I’ve been actively training for this day. My worst fear was that I might embarrass myself by not being able to finish or not going the distance.

Cold and wet, but on top of the world.

To that end I started riding my bike after upgrading my handlebars and stem and replacing a worn tire. I started with short rides, then gently added more distance and increased the frequency of my rides until I’d reached about 52 miles in the week prior to this event. I realize that doesn’t sound like much, but, coming from nothing, it’s something. I plan on continuing to ride, I’m sure that someday I’ll look back and laugh at the short rides I started with.

It certainly paid off. Today’s event was great. I had a great time “racing” against the other bicyclists. I managed to go the entire distance and didn’t want it to end. I was even hollered at (angrily) to slow down by a course worker as i approached the finish line. I thought you’re supposed to pour it on at the end? Maybe that’s only for runners. In fact, now that I think of it, I wonder if the course worker’s attitude might come from some deep seated runner vs biker animosity. Who knows?

Bianca did great as well, considering she hasn’t been on a bike for several months. She took a more slow and steady pace, but never stopped once and came in about 20 minutes behind me, hardly breaking a sweat. Gotta love her.

Drizzling at first, and pouring for most the event, the weather didn’t ruin it for me. My feet were wet by about half way through the race and soaked by the end. If I do this again I’ll shop for rain booties. My new water resistant windbreaker from Peral Izumi was a tremendous success.

Sorry there’s no pictures. I had great intentions, but the rain was too much.

I like this for a lot of reasons. It was shot with a DSLR, so it has a technically pleasing immediacy to it achieved without spending a fortune. The contraption appears to be very well made, with quality connectors and a high level of technical proficiency. I realize it could be argued that what he does with it might be considered by some, outside acceptable boundaries, but then I smiled.

robo-rainbow from mudlevel on Vimeo.

New Years day 2011. Met up with friends in Malibu at 9:00 am on one of the coldest days of the year for a drive in the Santa Monica Mountains. It warmed up quickly due to the proximity of the ocean and it turned into a perfectly nice day. Below was our route. Click where it says “view full route” and you’ll see some photos and more information.

We had a bit of a scare when Ken’s oil filler cap went missing from his recently purchased 1964 Lotus Elan. After trying some McGiver magic we headed back down the road in hopes of spotting the missing cap. This was successful and soon Ken was back in business. Though I don’t envy him the task of making his engine compartment all nice again.

Lots of fellow car enthusiasts were in the canyons enjoying the day and no doubt avoiding football on TV. We had a great lunch at the Reel Inn in Malibu, then it was my chance to take another run across the mountains while my friends headed south. Once I made it back to the Valley and traveled east towards lower elevations I found some of the coldest air I’d felt all day. The San Fernando Valley was apparently a big pool of cold air.

WiFi access point security password etiquette.

Now that more and more people are carrying devices capable of browsing the Internet via wifi, your chances of being called upon to share your wifi access point have gone way up. Alright, maybe the only thing that’s gone up is the number of people in your home who wish they had access to the Internet via your wifi router, but are afraid to ask for your password.  They’re afraid to ask because they don’t want to put you on the spot, fearing that our Wifi password may not be the simple low tech unique password it ought to be.

How passwords are hacked or stolen varies based on what the password is for. Website passwords can be hacked  from a computer most anywhere. Those passwords  should not be a word found in the dictionary, they should include a mixture of upper and lower case letters and numbers. Best practice is to vary these passwords by sites. That way if you’re password is compromised at one site other sites are not left vulnerable. To gain access to your account on a password protected site, hackers use computer programs that can automate the process for them. Often referred to as the brute force method its basically the same as someone trying your pets name or your kids names or your birthdate in different combinations until they get in.

Wifi access is different from web site security in that to gain access to your network your attacker needs to be close enough to your router to attempt to gain access to it.  In a neighborhood it may be obvious that there’s a car parked nearby with someone who doesn’t belong. But if you live in an apartment or condo there may be people trying to access your network at their leisure. If you fear this maybe the case you may choose to change your router password once a month or so. Not using a simple common word your pets name, street name or other obvious piece of information is a good idea. Wifi access is very low fruit for those wishing access to something they shouldn’t have access to. Email, banking and shopping sites are far, far more valuable. So much more valuable that the idea of someone working hard to gain access to your network is a relatively low risk.

So I propose wifi passwords should be secure enough to keep your neighbors off your network, but friendly and simple enough to share with visiting friends or family. They should be different than all your other passwords. They can be a phrase “theflowersarepretty” “onein1million” or a number and name “2354schwartz” The idea is it should be different than your important passwords easy to share, easy to remember and  easy to change.

The best ringtone imaginable should make you not want to answer your phone. It should bring a smile to your face and fill you with joy or a fond memory.  Of course it should also be loud enough so that you know your phone is ringing in the first place. I believe I have found the perfect general purpose ringtone. It’s not anything like the song I hear when my wife calls, or the tune I’ve associated with my son, or the alarm that warns me my ex is on the phone.  (She’s not that bad, the alarm sound makes me laugh when she does call. sorry Cami.) This ring reminds me a great trip to Montreal and of the awesome power of an F1 car.

My new ringtone if a recording of several F1 cars speeding past, about 20′ away. The cars have just exited a sharp left turn in 3rd gear at about 85 MPH and continuing on through the gears to 180+ MPH. They’re shifting into 5th at about 135 mph on their way to 7th gear right in front of me. What a sound!

I’m not a huge fan of alternative ringtones but I do believe they have there place. I’d never pay for a ringtone. Instead I prefer to edit an audio file, save it and transfer it to my iPhone with a program called iToner. I know next to nothing about transferring ring tones to other phones.

Now the best part, like sharing this story I’m sharing the file I created. Here is the file for you to use on your phone. It’ll open in a new window. Right click it and save it to your machine.

because somewhere, someone, sucks more than you.

This one took me a while to learn. If I knew this in my 20s or 30s I might have made it where I wanted to be, much faster. Or perhaps I’d have gotten there, got bored and been looking for something else.

Here’s the idea. Do you know what they call the guy who graduates last from medical school? They call him “Doctor.”

What ever you think you’d like to do in life, get yourself as close to it as you can. Do what ever it takes to be a person making money doing that thing. Never worry that you may not be good enough, talented enough or lack in any way, what it takes to do that thing (unless its specific education, no way around that one). Because once you arrive in that job you will find people there that are worse at it then you than you ever feared you could be.

Many people just fall into a field of employment based on family, friends or circumstance. By pursuing your dreams, by being involved with what interests you, your chances of success are already higher than someone who doesn’t take the time get what they want.

I wanted to work in entertainment, (television/movies) since high school. I’m here now, but my journey here was long. I see young people around me working in entertainment, many of whom I’m sure have very bright futures ahead of them. There are also people in entertainment who just “fell into it” based on circumstance or situation. Some of those people are hard workers and do great, but others who lack the drive and initiative to make something of it risk losing their jobs to someone willing to work harder. The entertainment field is special in that a college degree isn’t mandatory. Depending on the job, creative talent or most importantly initiative matters most. Success is nearly guaranteed to those that can see what needs doing and gets it done.

New in Lightroom 3 is the ability to make lens corrections similar to those possible with an articulated view camera. I’m absolutely loving this feature. Below is an example of a snapshot processed through Lightroom without any compensation for the distortion of the buildings caused by misalignment of the film plane to the buildings. Mouse over the image to see the corrected image. The lens corrections feature allows you to straighten vertical lines and correct for pincushioning or barrel distortion.

Roll over to compare before and after.

The lens on the Lumix LX3 un-corrected, adds a wicked amount of distortion all by itself. Lightroom corrects for this when it converts the RAW file. Jpegs from the camera have this distortion corrected in the camera as the Jpeg is prepared. The only time you would even notice it is when using a RAW convertor that doesn’t automatically correct it. The distortion I’ve corrected for in this photo was caused by how I held the camera as I took this picture. I like seeing the buildings straightened out instead of leaning into the street. Using this feature does chew up some of the image. Shooting wider or looser is one defense or I could have held the camera parallel with the vertical lines in the scene.

It was a great trip despite our difficulties getting there. We flew from Los Angeles at about 10:30 pm expecting a 2 hour wait between planes in Washington DC. While deplaning I received an email informing us that our next flight had been cancelled. We found a surly gate agent that offered the choice of flying about 5 hours later to Toronto and then on to Montreal, or we could wait 8 or 9 hours and fly direct to Montreal. We chose the former and set about entertaining ourselves at the airport. We would have left the airport and checked out some sites but according to my phone we couldn’t get anywhere of interest and back before our next flight.

In Toronto we had 2 hours between flights. At least on paper we did. We made our way through customs and took our time checking out anything interesting along the way to our second gate. Back through security and John’s second hands on body search, due to his pacemaker keeping him out of the metal detector. We arrived at restaurant for a meal and a beer. Were not really sure what meal it was, since we didn’t really sleep on the flight from LAX and we’re now three hours ahead, tired and confused we enjoyed the meal.

After the meal it occurs to me to check our boarding pass for our next flight. According to what I was reading that plane had already left.  There was no, “maybe we can run and catch it” about it. It was gone and we weren’t on it. I offered this observation to Robert who had great difficulty accepting the reality of our situation. We paid for our meal and gathered up John who had left us for bathroom break and headed off to get help. Damit! How did this happen? Where did the time go? didn’t we have 2  hours?

We did have 2 hours. But just barley 2 hours. Airplanes start boarding 30 minutes before they leave, plus we waited in the security line and wondered about the airport. In our lack of sleep confused state we simply missed our flight due to fatigue. It was decided this was our only defense as we pleaded for help form the airline to get us to Montreal. Afraid we may need to buy another ticket to Montreal, due to our careless respect for our first tickets, we found help. It turns out that flights from Toronto to Montreal leave every hour, we were booked on a flight leaving in another hour and a half to give us time to retrive our luggage and re-check in. Here we are waiting for our bags to re-emerge after their hands on security check after being removed the the plane we weren’t on.

Thursday was going to be a fine day of sightseeing and getting situated in the city prior to the race. Now it’s been spent on airplanes and in airports. We finally arrived in Montreal at about 8:00 pm and our Limo driver was nowhere to be seen. Repeated calls from Toronto and from the airport in Montreal were met with an answering machine. We were forced to take a taxi (a beat to crap Toyota Camery) to our hotel. The Orbitz travel voucher has all kinds of language on it about how they don’t even entertain the notion of refunds so now I’ve lost $55 due to the cancelled flight and our inability to get on a plane. Crap!

The next few days all went well as we enjoyed the city and the race. The F1 cars are amazing. Here’s an audio file recorded as we made our way to our seats for qualifying.

In our last few hours in Montreal it occurred to me that I was still holding the travel voucher for the failed limo ride from the airport. So I called the limo company again and got the answering machine. Then I turned off my caller ID from my phone and called again. SUCCESS! They answered. I explained that I wanted to use my voucher from our arrival to take a limo from the hotel to the airport, “sure” he said “what time would you like the driver to meet you?” Perfect. Yeah they seemed to be avoiding my calls, but so what, at least we’re getting what we’ve already paid for.