emperorcezar feed

Moved to Tumblr

Cezar Jenkins — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 16:05:00 +0000

For nerdy things I'm using tumblr now. Check it out.

emperorcezar.tumblr.com

VagrantFile Template

Cezar Jenkins — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 14:32:00 +0000

Your workflow should include pull requests

Cezar Jenkins — Thu, 03 May 2012 09:39:00 +0000

I'm a fan of pull requests. Not just the ones most people think of, but the ones that Github itself uses.

The idea is that you don't open a pull request once your code is finished, but very early on in the process. This promotes discussion, mockups, and ironing out issues before they are encountered.

I've tried it myself and it works great. If your team is using Github (you should) then try it yourself on a feature.

For more information check out How we use Pull Requests to Build Github and the talk How Github uses Github to Build Github

List of MongoDB GUI clients

Cezar Jenkins — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 11:13:00 +0000

Below is a list of GUI clients for MongoDB that I have discovered. I haven't had a change to try them all out, so I plan to update this post when I develop some opinions on them.

MongoExplorer

Vagrant, VirtualBox, and a day wasted

Cezar Jenkins — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 21:30:00 +0000

I love Vagrant. I have about 10 instances that I use for my work. About six months ago I moved closer to family. This put me about 45 miles from work. The only reason I moved, commuter rail. So I work on rail. I have 4G, but it is spotty at best. This makes having a local VM a huge boon.

So I recently updated to Lion on my MacBook. Along with this updated I updated VirtualBox to 4.1.4. Today I'm creating a Vagrant instance and during Chef provisioning, my machine hard locks. Nothing responds. Soon the fan kick up and I'm afraid my lappytap will either explode, or take off.

After digging around I find the the process `kernel_task` is using 106% cpu. After some searching online I discover I'm not the only one with this problem. I found a post explaining that we running Ubuntu on a VirtualBox guest in Lion, during the unpack stage it can run wild and kill the kernel.

I poke, I prod. I eventually figure out the issue might be that the virtualbox additions in my VM are for VirtualBox 4.0.4, and version behind. So, off I go to update the additions.

I think, "great, all should be good now". Nope.

Now Vagrant won't provision. Seems that there is an incompatibility with how Vagrant shares folders with the 4.1.4 guest additions. I learned this after three hours of poking around. The most important of these is the Chef cookbooks. Well, that explains the CookbooksNotFound error.

I do notice that my folder shares that are set to nfs => true are still working. Ah ha! I just have to set all the shares to use nfs. I check the documentation, nothing. I ask on IRC, nothing.

A quick aside: Every time I've looked for support on the Vagrant channel on IRC, I've been left hanging. The project has a real issue with there not being enough experts answering questions on the IRC channel. I think it's a symptom of explosive growth. Too many amateurs, not enough pros.

Anywho. I fork the Vagrant repo on Github. Dig in the code thinking that I'll set the nfs flag wherever it's creating the share for the cookbooks. Digging I find that lo and behold a setting exists. Nine hour of work. My solution:

config.vm.provision :chef_solo do |chef|
    chef.cookbooks_path = [:host, "cookbooks"]
    chef.add_recipe "git"
    chef.add_recipe "python"
    chef.nfs = true
  end

chef.nfs = true

Emacs

Cezar Jenkins — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 23:18:00 +0000

"Your first time using emacs you'll just cadge someone's .emacs file and pray you never have to understand all those parentheses. But you'll have to, before you can witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational text editor."

Breaking out the Django Tests

Cezar Jenkins — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 15:33:00 +0000

So I'm using Django at work, and I'm finally getting into this testing thing. My biggest annoyance with django's way of testing is that it forces you to put your tests in either app_dir/tests.py or app_dir/models.py What I want to do is to either break out the tests into files in the test directory, or wherever I want.

Django uses python's unittest framework. Digging through django's code, I see that It basically imports the app.tests module and runs the unittests loadTestsFromModule. Inspecting this code shows us,

def loadTestsFromModule(self, module):
"""Return a suite of all tests cases contained in the given module"""
tests = []
for name in dir(module):
obj = getattr(module, name)
if (isinstance(obj, (type, types.ClassType)) and
issubclass(obj, TestCase)):
tests.append(self.loadTestsFromTestCase(obj))
return self.suiteClass(tests)

As you can see it looks for any names the module has defined. So I can put my tests in the test module and in __init__.py do import file_name.class_name to make django find my tests

The mistake of clean install perception in Linux

Cezar Jenkins — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 10:16:00 +0000

From here

The day where I can recommend that my father use Linux (without the fear of him calling me on a daily basis to fix things) is the day I’ll proclaim the “year of the Linux desktop” has arrived.

Sorry, but that day was three years ago. I've had Ubuntu running on a machine where novice computer users connect to the internet to do work for a very long time. After the initial setup, not one of them has had an issue.

I spent years installing the maintaining Windows machines. Without the initial setup, they are much more likely to be missing the required software for daily use, the required drivers to take advantage of their hardware.

The difference is that people are used to installing and setting up their windows machines. They know that they will need driver x,y, and z along with software suite a and b.

Most of the time there will be maybe a single issue on Ubuntu that will need fixing by a first time installer.

The amount of universal direct out of box compatibility and feature set expected out of Linux is unreasonable, plain and simple. Just like any other OS (yes, even OS X), it will need setup by an OEM or a technician to be a 100% smooth experience.

X-Files returns

Cezar Jenkins — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 10:03:00 +0000

Maybe I'm atypical of my friends out there, but my mother raised me on X-Files. So today I was really pleased to hear that they are making a final movie, supposedly to tie it up. If you watched X-Files, you know that they let it drag out way too long. It's one of the main reason's that show now limit themselves to typically five seasons from the get-go.

There is much more information here. Including some tidbits of info on producing and directing the series.

Xen on Gutsy

Cezar Jenkins — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 15:31:00 +0000

My installation of Xen on Gutsy went well as far as getting the host(server) up and running. I had an issue when it came to getting my guest(image) running under Xen.

Xen has a few strange things about it, the first being that it uses terminology that I'm not familiar with and is no where explained. Example: "Provision VM" Which I eventually found to be configuring a virtual machine.

Xen also doesn't just emulate the metal. It boots off a kernel from your host's file system. If you build a guest by hand then you need to bootstrap it with a distro of your choice.

My guest would always boot through the kernel, but never init. After messing around for a while I came across this. Seems like there is a bug in the Gutsy Xen-tools configs.

Finally, a bit of my frustration with Xen was not with itself, but with the third party gui setup and management tools. Xenman, Virt-manager, and Enomalism all had show stopping bugs that I'm sure could be fixed if I really tried, but that's not the point.

Over all, the core suite of Xen is very good. With some better intro documentation, and some mature attach on tools, it could be great.

Update: I may not have made it clear, but the guest OS was gutsy also, which is what requred the hooks in Xen-tools to boot.

PHP issues. Part 1.

Cezar Jenkins — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 16:24:00 +0000

Some of you out there know that I hate php withh a vengeance. Why? Well, as I come across them in my work, I'll show you my problems with php. This is the first part. Expect many.

usort:

Usort has a special place in my heart. It's very useful, but like most things in the hack that is php, it's got issues. The first is that it modifies the array by reference. While this is fine, you can never really tell in php if a function operates on something by reference, or if it returns a copy of the array. The second, why is it that types in php aren't objects. In my mind, it makes much more sense to do things like $a.sort() or $a.length(). Making these separate functions is antiquated in my eyes.

The final, and most important. If I want to pass an object member to usort to use as the comparison function, I have to pass it as array("objectName", "memberFunctionName"). Eh? Did I also forget to say that if that object and member don't exist, it fails silently? (if you turn on some level or warnings, it will throw one, but your comparison function being non-existent should really be an error, and not some level or warning)

Php is full of little things like this.

Eric4 on ubuntu

Cezar Jenkins — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 12:04:00 +0000

I came across a python development tool called eric. Eric3 is in the gutsy repo, but not eric4. If I'm gonna judge something, I should judge the latest.

Building eric4 is a little bit of a headache, mostly because Ubuntu doesn't have qscintilla2 in the repo. After digging around, I found that the debian .debs here will work just fine to fullfill the dependancies.

Ajax Frameworks

Cezar Jenkins — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 12:33:00 +0000

So, I'm finally able to start looking into Ajax frameworks. It's about time, and maybe right on time. Until now I haven't been able to use javascript in my projects. While this was a help for a good while, it's become a burden as UIs evolved and our webapps do not.

For about two days I've been browsing and looking for suggestions for frameworks. I've come down to two, Mochikit and Dojo. From what I understand Mochikit is more Python like, with better docs and testing, while Dojo is more complete and mature, but lacking some docs and less light than Mochikit. Mochikit can work with Dojo and vice versa. Dojo also has the advantage of having some big names behind it. In a year I don't want to come back to a framework just to see that it's dead and not able to provide the guidance needed to add feature x and fix y.

So what is your experience with frameworks?

My poor pump

Cezar Jenkins — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 11:40:00 +0000

Came out this morning to find that someone stole the pump off my bike. What's strange is that they took nothing else. It's pretty easy to take off the lights, the bag, etc. They didn't, just the pump. They also decided to cover my bike back up before leaving it. I have the strange feeling that one of my neighbors in the building "borrowed" my pump.

To Tow a Fat Boy

Cezar Jenkins — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 00:58:00 +0000

Earlier this week you may have read about my chain bending (cezar.livejournal.com), well, tonight on the way home it broke. How to get home? This video will help with the answer.

Behold

Cezar Jenkins — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 16:12:00 +0000

My new idea!

New Bike

Cezar Jenkins — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 23:09:00 +0000

It's been an eventful weekend, most of it today. Today I went to Working Bikes at 11am. Kevin told me that was the time I should show up. What he didn't tell me was that they opened at Noon. So I waited. I decided to get some lunch. Now somehow the guy at Pizza Hut express misunderstood "a cheese personal pan pizza" to mean two cheese pizza combos with drinks.

Anyhow. I walked back to Working Bikes and the dood opened the place up. Now here is where some background is warranted. I originally went to Working Bikes a week ago. I needed a strong bike to hold me till I loose some weight. He told me to go to Rapid Transit and talk to Sam about getting some wheels made. I did so. Turns out that the wheels I want come to $450 after they are constructed. That's fine, because they are supposed to last 10 years of heavy ridding.

Ok, back to story. He points out a bike that he thinks will work for me. An older mountain bike, tough. So I buy it ($80). And a bike lock ($30) I ride it around with Kevin and come home. I'm very excited about this. Dan and I go to Rapid Transit to get a new seat (the one on it is small and hard). We spend two hours there talking to the manager about different bike things. At one point she said to Dan, "Here, let me show you positions" (for a bike lock). I bust out in a laugh. I get the bike seat ($45) and the cable for the lock for extra length ($15).

Ok, so now I need a helmet. My head is too fat for a helmet from their. So they send me to Kozy's, a bike shop. They don't have it, but another Kozy's does. Dan and I road up to Addison and Halstead. There I find my helmet. ($45). I also find an extra gel pad for my seat ($30).

In the end, I ride ten miles on my new bike. My ass hurts. I've also found that bikes are expensive, all in all it should cost me $700 dollars for this bike.

Edit: As Kevin points out in the comments, I got a chance to nerd out. The guys at Working bikes play magic and I got to talk about it with them a bit. Maybe I'll even call up and setup a game.

iPython

Cezar Jenkins — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 12:45:00 +0000

I recently got a chance to sit down and look at the features available in iPython. iPython is an extended python shell. When they say extended, they really mean it. Some notable features include (note: shamelessly ripped from the iPython site):

Dynamic object introspection. One can access docstrings, function definition prototypes, source code, source files and other details of any object accessible to the interpreter with a single keystroke ('?').
Tab Completions
Numbered input/output prompts with command history (persistent across sessions and tied to each profile), full searching in this history and caching of all input and output.
User-extensible 'magic' commands. A set of commands prefixed with % is available for controlling IPython itself and provides directory control, namespace information and many aliases to common system shell commands.
Alias facility for defining your own system aliases.
Complete system shell access. Lines starting with ! are passed directly to the system shell, and using !! captures shell output into python variables for further use.
Background execution of Python commands in a separate thread. On a grid if you want.
The ability to expand python variables when calling the system shell.
Filesystem navigation, via a magic %cd command, along with a persistent bookmark system (using %bookmark) for fast access to frequently visited directories.
Automatic indentation (optional) of code as you type (through the readline library).
Macro system for quickly re-executing multiple lines of previous input with a single name.
Session logging (you can then later use these logs as code in your programs).
Session restoring: logs can be replayed to restore a previous session to the state where you left it.
Verbose and colored exception traceback printouts. Easier to parse visually, and in verbose mode they produce a lot of useful debugging information (basically a terminal version of the cgitb module).
Auto-parentheses: callable objects can be executed without parentheses: 'sin 3' is automatically converted to 'sin(3)'.
Auto-quoting: using ',' as the first character forces auto-quoting of the rest of the line: 'my_function a b' automatically becomes 'my_function("a","b")'.
Extensible input syntax. You can define filters that pre-process user input to simplify input in special situations. This allows, for example, pasting multi-line code fragments which start with '>>>' or '...' such as those from other python sessions or the standard Python documentation.
Flexible configuration system. It uses a configuration file which allows permanent setting of all command-line options, module loading, code and file execution. The system allows recursive file inclusion, so you can have a base file with defaults and layers which load other customizations for particular projects.
Embeddable. You can call IPython as a python shell inside your own python programs. This can be used both for debugging code or for providing interactive abilities to your programs with knowledge about the local namespaces (very useful in debugging and data analysis situations).
Easy debugger access. You can set IPython to call up the Python debugger (pdb) every time there is an uncaught exception. This drops you inside the code which triggered the exception with all the data live and it is possible to navigate the stack to rapidly isolate the source of a bug. The %run magic command -with the -d option- can run any script under pdb's control, automatically setting initial breakpoints for you.
Profiler support. You can run single statements (similar to profile.run()) or complete programs under the profiler's control. While this is possible with the standard profile module, IPython wraps this functionality with magic commands (see '%prun' and '%run -p') convenient for rapid interactive work.

This this is god's gift to python programmers. It really comes off as being a _python shell_, in the same way that bash is a bash scripting shell. It almost seems possible to replace bash with iPython. I'll keep everyone abreast of my iPython adventures.

New Machine

Cezar Jenkins — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 00:02:00 +0000

UPDATE 29, June 2007: I've pretty much given up on getting a modem driver that will go beyond 14.4. I've setup a machine to share it's connection and hooked up a wifi router. I find this solution just as good and now I have wireless. 24.4 wireless, but wireless.

UPDATE: Read about my modem issues here and here

So, for a few weeks I've been playing with my new Dellbuntu. Not too many issues, but a few. I've had three issues, one minor, and two major. The first to occur was that the resolution was low. This was easily fixed by installing the package "910".

The next issue was major. After a kernel update, the package changed the boot partition from hd(0,2) to hd(0,0). This killed the system. After an edit the system rebooted fine. Dell knows about this problem and has the fix up on their forums.

The second issue is one I haven't solved yet. After a kernel update today, the modem failed. I'm assuming that the driver binary doesn't work with the new kernel (damn proprietary drivers). I booted into the previous kernel and get a dialtone, hopefully I'll be able to fix this soon.

My God! It's full of stars!

Cezar Jenkins — Fri, 18 May 2007 13:25:00 +0000

When I started using Python, I assumed there would be less resources than my old PHP. I'm wrong, and I appologize for that. :-) All it took was finding the right starting point. It seems like the Python community was hiding on usenet (Google groups). This is a change in scenery for me. I'm use to the communities I've worked with being spread out over a bunch of webpages. Even with this I though that that was it. Then I came along this post. Go a bit down and you'll find a ton of links to many many pages with info on it. This is more than I ever came along with PHP. I'm quite happy.

The Philosophy

Cezar Jenkins — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 08:48:00 +0000

The subject of this post is a little old. It focuses on the decision by Ubuntu to include proprietary drivers for things such as WiFi cards. The thing that irks me are those that attack Ubuntu for this decision. I understand the problem associated with the drivers. I also understand the philosophy against them. On the other hand, I understand the reason for including them.

The main reason I support Ubuntu is because it is the distribution and organization that I believe to be most likely to make an impact on the computer world. I support them because in 10 years, I don't want to forced by my situation to use Windows or something else that is totally proprietary.

Ubuntu's quality of "just working" has been the largest factor of my successes of getting people to switch over to free software. Right now, desktop linux does not have a large enough market share to push hardware vendors into having open drivers. I personally think that Ubuntu, and this decision will help towards that goal in the long run.

WiiMote Javascript Library

Cezar Jenkins — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 13:27:00 +0000

Michael Bolin has written a JavaScript library that handles events from the WiiMote. Now this brings up the issue of what to do with it? Games are an obvious direction. It also occurred to me that some interaction could be coded into a MPD front end. Wave the mote forward, goto next song. What do you think?

Math and Physics

Cezar Jenkins — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 11:40:00 +0000

I now understand why never actually got Math and Physics, but was somehow able to pass them.

Beer Launching fridge

Cezar Jenkins — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 11:39:00 +0000

Sounds like a Lug project to me!

Beer Launching fridge

Firebug: A gift from the gods

Cezar Jenkins — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 11:29:00 +0000

Yesterday I decided to install Firebug. Firebug is a Firefox extension meant to aide in web development, and it exceeds all expectations in this area.

Some of the better features include:

Editing the html on the fly through a collapsible interface
Editing the css in the same manner
Showing what css has been overridden
Calculating the final css.
Showing the layout of an element using visuals.

I haven't gotten a chance to check out the JavaScript tools yet, but if they are anything close to the html and css ones, I'm in for a ride. I Highly recommend you to install this extension if you do web development.

Resurrecting an old iBook G4

Sun, 25 Jan 2009 21:38:05 +0000

Recently, my co-worker Kevin got a new work laptop. Being that I have a super sexy awesome workstation, I was never privy to a laptop. A laptop though, is very useful. For a while now I've felt like my only recourse to get my productivity back on track is to change my environment. In the case of my job at ID, my office. A laptop helps me do that, I could, and did pick up and move to working in Kevin's office with him. When I feel like telling Kevin something, or asking a question, I no longer have to get up and walk around the corner, or open an IM window. This helps me keep my concentration on what I'm doing.

When Kevin got his new macbook, I was able to aquire his old iBook G4. As some of you might know, an iBook G4 isn't the best laptop in the world, but it's not the worst. This machine was a 1.2Ghz PPC with 700ish Megs of Ram.

I'm a Linux guy, I'm productive in Linux. Linux is put togeather well and almost all software on the system is free. I could have kept OS-X on the machine. Technically I could have run all the programs I needed (Firefox, Emacs, and Terminal), but I really don't want to deal with an os without a real package manager, and with a poor excuse for a default terminal. I like my machines useful out of the box. Apple the company, don't get me started.

Appologies to Mac fan boys. The hardware is great.

Anywho. Thus began my quest for a good PPC Linux.

Ubuntu:
My first attempt was Ubuntu, while not officially supporting PPC, they do have it. This was great and worked fine for about a day, at which point it quit booting, randomly. Ok, one down, my next step

Yellow Dog Linux:
My next attempt was Yellow Dog. YD was at one point the official mac Linux distribution. It installed fine, but I then found that it was running Gnome 2.18. This is o o old. I'd like something a bit more current

Arch Linux:
While I hear good things about Arch, the modern world required that Installation and hardware detection be simple. After that it can be Gentoo hard for all I care. The problem of difficult hardware detection and installation has been solved. This may have only been the PPC install. I went through installing Debian and Redhat over a decade ago and don't wish to go back to the age of grabbing a six pack to complete an install

Open SUSE:
When I found out that Open SUSE supports PPC officially, I thought I'd give it a go. The install was simple, and looked great. The system itself ran fine. My only issue was wireless. The SUSE wiki should be updated with this info, which I will try to do later if it isn't on there, but I needed to run bcm43xx-fwcutter to get the firmware for the wireless on the laptop.

With my operating system installed, I moved onto personallization and setup. The biggest issue with this iBook is the small amount of RAM. For web development using firefox, firebug, and web developer toolbar, 700 Megs isn't enough. It get tore up.

I tried using XFCE, which worked fine, but was setup strange under OpenSUSE, it looked more like openbox. I tried Enlightenment, but found that it only had E16. The best solution for me was actually IceWM. This is extremely minimal, but still didn't free up enough ram.

Finally I decided if I could try using VNC and just using the laptop as a head. VNC was slow, even over the network. Same with X forwarding. This was until I read about using compression in SSH and using the blowfish cypher. This was the solution I was looking for. It's fast over the wired network. Emacs and Firefox run almost as fast as the do on my workstation (they technically are running on my workstation). The only thing I had to do on the iBook was install the same themes so everything looked right. Now I have an alias setup on the iBook.

alias remote="ssh -X -C -c blowfish mymachine.com"

This lets me type "remote firefox", along with key authentication, firefox pops right up and runs smooth.

The machine is useable, and should be for some time. Since the ram for firefox and emacs is the ram on my workstation, I can run gnome in it's full glory, and some apps like gwibber, that I couldn't get running on PPC, run fine through X forwarding. It's now like I was on my workstation, with a tiny screen.

UPDATE:

I had never gotten sound working and decided to tackle it. Following the guide at http://en.opensuse.org/AudioTroubleshooting#STEP-2:_Trying_YaST_.26.2For_ALSACONF_to_configure_ones_sound I was able to get it working at the end of step too. I got it to store the settings with "alsaconf store"

The freedom of the dutch teenager

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 05:39:11 +0000

From http://hembrow.blogspot.com/2008/11/lang-zal-ze-leven.html

My eldest daughter is fifteen today. Happy Birthday ! She set off for school on her bike this morning, as every morning, and she’ll be accompanied home by several friends on their bikes this evening for cake and so-on. Some of them live between 10 and 20 km away, but they’ll ride home on their own afterwards (some will have up to 20 km to go). They’re all getting a good head-start towards the 100000 miles that many will cycle in their lifetime.

Fifteen is still very young. You can’t buy beer here until you’re sixteen and can’t drive until you’re eighteen.

Sigh

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 07:10:15 +0000

Exactly

http://www.wsoctv.com/automotive/17945476/detail.html#-

The Tribune got a shot of me

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 15:57:36 +0000

Chicago Tribune

Who got to be at the Obama rally?

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 06:55:14 +0000

That's right. I was Kevin, Rich, Future sister in law, and I. Kevin and I got tickets for the ralley and went tonight. I was pleased with the result. When they announced the winner the ground shook. I have to give props to McCain for his acceptance speach. I can only hope now that Obama will be president, he tries to do the best he can.

Video about the first sunday parkways

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 19:06:15 +0000

A fun family time.

http://www.biketraffic.org/cbfblog_comments.php?id=1747_0_19_0_C

Cars and smoking

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 13:07:03 +0000

Lock your bike

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 04:36:57 +0000

I have my rss reader feed me the list of stolen bikes from http://stolen.bikechicago.info

What I notice is that people who have nice bikes, seem to buy the crappiest lock they can come accross. A cable lock isn't sufficent. A good set of bolt cutters and 20 seconds is all it takes to defeat them.

I know I'm a snob, but it's pretty easy to buy a straight forward u-lock to secure your bike with. I think you can get them for the low low price of $30. They even sell them at target. If you're gonna put hundreds of dollars into a bike, the least you can do is put a proper lock on it.

I think the best thing people can do to discourage bicycle theft is to not sell cable locks. If you're a salesman as a shop and someone buys a new bike and a cable lock, do your best to lay it out to them. "If you only use that, your bike will be stolen".

Some people, on the other hand, go crazy. I personally use a kryptonite chain lock and a plain cable. The chain goes through my front tire and around rack. The cable goes through my saddle and back wheel. They all meet and the super mini ulock locks it all to my frame. I do this mostly because my rims are the most expensive part of my bike.

For more info on locking your bike property go to http://www.nationalbikeregistry.com/proplock.html

More info on locks at http://www.slate.com/id/2140083

Real estate agents catch the bicycling bug and share it with their clients

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 16:07:28 +0000

"Kirsten Kaufman, right, a real estate agent for Prudential Real Estate, and new home buyer Emily Gardner travel by bicycle to visit houses for sale in Portland."

Here

German town's experience with removing all traffic signs and sidewalks

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 04:12:26 +0000

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0912/p07s03-woeu.html

Moms and thier Mamachari bicycle

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 13:44:50 +0000

"It is a really simple bicycle that you see all over Japan. Usually mothers use them for quick trips to the grocery store or to bring the kids to kindergarden. Thus the name, a combination of 'mama' and 'chariot'. Nope, the mamachari is not particularly sexy, but it is easy to ride and always comes with a basket up front. Plus a baby seat. Or sometimes two babyseats: one up front and one in the back."

Good video attached to the story of a school letting out.

Getting rid of a car is hard

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 05:33:54 +0000

Lately that's been my goal. Now that Kim and I live togeather, we have two cars. I barely drive mine. So. I started looking into how to get rid of it. I've found it very difficult. Since it's financed, I can't sell it outright without paying off the loan. The problem is that I owe 11 thousand(ish), the thing is worth closer to 9500. I have a few options. Taking out a personal loan and paying off the car to get the title then selling it straight out. This maybe the way I go. It's also possible that I can get someone to buy the car off me for what is left on the loan. That would be nice, but I doubt it'll happen.

Pedestrian and Bicycle Memorials in NYC

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 17:30:50 +0000

Touching video and demonstrates the need for safety.

http://vimeo.com/1656438

Our oceans are dying and we're at fault

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 04:03:30 +0000

We are putting too much food into the oceans, scientists say, and now the oceans are reverting back to primeval seas of millions and even billions of years ago.

League of American Bicyclists releases state rankings

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 02:44:51 +0000

I was suprised to see that my home state, West Virginia, comes in dead last.

“West Virginia may offer some great trails and mountain biking resources, but otherwise fell short in every category," said Clarke. "Their low bicycle usage rates and high cyclist crash and fatality rates are indicative of a state that does not adequately provide for the needs of cyclists.”

Bike commute tips blog mentions homewood

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 02:53:54 +0000

My future home, with my future wife!

http://bikecommutetips.blogspot.com/2007/12/take-classic-spin-this-christmas.html

and again here

http://bikecommutetips.blogspot.com/2008/01/suburbs-turning-more-bike-friendly.html

I'm starting to be so happy. One day I might even be the CBF Southland coordinator.

Paul's convention draws more people and excite than the GOPs

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 22:47:49 +0000

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/09/03/ron_paul/

The Most Beautiful Bike I Have Ever Seen

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 19:14:01 +0000

http://www.urbanvelo.org/issue9/urbanvelo9_p62-63.html

Thousand Rally at Ron Paul convention

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 17:33:57 +0000

'"Freedom brings people together," Paul said before a sold-out crowd at Tuesday's Rally for the Republic.'

'He also pointed out that "not one single taxpayer's cent" was spent on the day-long rally.'

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/02/paul.convention/index.html

The Jolly Crew

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 15:46:57 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtBUanwGTyE

Chicago Sun Times: Breaking out of car 'cocoon'

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 15:49:05 +0000

"It's one thing to gripe about the evils of America's car culture. It's another to pry the car keys out of your own hand.

George Zrust and his wife Nancy Sreenan of Evanston decided to put their own environmental ideals to the test this summer -- and go car-free."

http://www.suntimes.com/news/transportation/1124650,CST-NWS-ride25.article

Adrian Holovaty of Django fame makes front page of Tribune

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 00:59:05 +0000

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/technology/chi-mxa0817magholovatyaug17,0,2153905.story?page=1

A good quote about Django. "...it's become a standard among developers, to where even Google uses it heavily now."

Alex Wilson in Sun Time "50 people who make chicago a better place"

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 20:47:48 +0000

http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/1112965,CST-NWS-betterdaytwo18.article

SXU Gets Bike Program

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 18:27:56 +0000

“Over the summer, the University will install the SXU Green Bike Program, providing 65 European pedal bikes that can be automatically checked out 24 hours a day, seven days a week with a Cougar card and returned to any of several computerized docking stations around campus. The first 15 minutes between docking stations will be free, and patrons can use cell phone technology to more easily arrange for a bike.”

What makes me angry?

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 01:29:49 +0000

The NBC website supporting only windows, not linux, not mac to stream videos for the olympics. That's one. The other is that youtube carries them, but not in the US. Seriously who sold the games to a network. I thought this was some hippie world event? Guess not.

http://downloadmovies101.com/wordpress-1/2008/08/01/olympics-online-video-forget-it-mac/