RaceWriter

While I was down in LA, I worked with my Dad to make some improvements to his web site. I taught him how to use a Cascading Style Sheet (.css) file to give his pages a little better look and feel. I also tried again to get him to start using Blogger as his main publishing tool, but too much of his site is non-liner / non-chronological. [The over all navigation is a mess.]
On the way back to Seattle, I conceptualized a new blogging tool specialized for runners, like my Dad. The result is a new web project that I'm working on, RaceWriter.

Back In Bellevue

Arrived home safely at 5:40. Traffic from Salem north
was heavy but moving.
I found out from my housemate that the recycling truck
knocked down the cable connection again. So no
Internet until Monday.

Around The Snow

After sleeping in Eureka, got a good start about six
AM. Stopped in Crescent City for gas just as it was
getting light. Found about two miles of slushy snow
near the OR state line. Rest of drive has been
uneventful, with light rain. ETA 1800

Made It To Eureka

Left LA about 1045. Drive so far has been uneventful,
except for a little light rain.
Expect to get about eight hours of sleep then back on
the road. Should get to Crescent City about first
light.

Heading back to WA via cost route

I'm headed back to western Washington via the coastal route due to snow forecast for the Siskiyous. Will be heading up I-5, then out to US-101 near the SF Bay area. Will overnight in Eureka. I plan to get an early start Sunday getting to Crescent City about first light, then over to Grant's Pass, OR hopefully before the snow level drops below the pass level.

TSOed

Last night I went to a Trans-Siberian Orchestra performance at the Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim, CA, with my Mom and my niece. Was a wonderful performance. I especially liked the electric violin, keyboards and the special effects (lasers pyrotechnics, etc.). The ending / encore was truly amazing.
The audience was overly sedate, given the amount of heavy metal / rock concert look and feel that the show had. I've seen more animated audiences at philharmonic performances back east.
After the performance we managed to briefly hook up with Michael Lanning, a long time friend of my Mom's, and got to visit a little back stage.
If you like classical music and/or heavy metal, I would highly recommend catching a the when it comes to your city.

Showing off how I post blog Entries

Spent much time today working on my parent's computers and their web site.

In LA For Christmas

Arrived in Glendale about 4:30 this afternoon. Very soon after I got to my parent's condo, we headed out to my brothers place for dinner with Ed, Laura, Nicole & Jack.



After dinner we hung out at their house until Jack's bed time.

On the Way to LA

Left Bellevue about 1100. Made it to Redding in just
under twelve hours, including stops for food, fuel,
etc.
ETA 1800ish

Tom & The Trencher

Here's a photo that my housemate(s) took this past summer as we were replacing the drain pipe that runs along side the driveway.



I like working with big tools!

No good deed goes unpunished

Toady I was informed, in a somewhat formal meeting with my supervisor, that my initiative to develop and deploy an open source barcoding tool for my co-workers to use has been rejected because our legal department is fearful about using software that is covered by the GNU Lesser General Public License. This despite the facts that: 1) Another division of our company (like many other companies) manufactures and distributes a Tivo which includes many software components covered by the exact same license and even the more restrictive GNU General Public License. And 2) that our upper management has historically been strong supporters of open standards such as the compact disk and the universal serial bus. Oh well, this in and of itself is simply an example of the old adage that the quickest way to kill a good initiative, is to consult the legal department.
As if simple rejection weren't enough punishment, I was also informed that my web site included or contained inappropriate "self promotion" using the {Employer’s Name Removed} name [and/or trademarks?]. While parts of my web site, including TomS Barcode Bonanza, are blatant self-promotion, I thought that my referential use of the {Employer’s Name Removed} name was typically editorial in nature. And I certainly haven't tried to pass my self off an official spokesman for {Employer’s Name Removed}. I've even tried to link to official {Employer’s Name Removed} sites for those who are looking for that kind of information and stumbled across my site instead.
For the most part I've been proud to be an employee of {Employer’s Name Removed}. So I am somewhat disheartened, that I feel I need to censor my web site to keep from offending my employer. So in the coming weeks, I will be updating various past posts to my blog and other pages to reflect this paranoia.

Been Busy !!!

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. It's been a busy couple of weeks.

Big news items are:

• The vaulting team has been trying horses.


• I've been helping my housemate rewire the bathroom.


• I got and have been setting up a Linux box.


• We been in the big christmas push at the toothbrush factory.

Hope to write more soon, but I won't make any promisas.

Real Postcards from Online!

I found this cool service through the USPS website. I was able to upload a photo I took with my digital camera compose a message, have it all printed and sent to 10 recipients for under $5. Assuming that the printed quality turns out to be reasonable, this looks like a good deal and a great way to earn brownie points with that Grandma that doesn't do e-mail.

Barcode Bonanza

This evening I whipped of a barcode generator application for my web site. This was my first public PHP project. The more I use PHP the more I like it. At some point I want to learn how to generate PDF files with PHP.

Vaulting Photos

In case you missed it, I posted a couple of cute photos from the Devonwood Vaulting Harvest Fest on the Cascade Vaulters' blog / public web site.

Volcano Visit 2

Today turned out to be a sunny but cool day so I drove down to Mt. St. Helens again. Again I got all the way out to the Coldwater Ridge Visitor Center. Unlike my visit on 10-8, this time the Volcano was in spectacular view.



When ever the few scattered clouds would move out of the way I could clearly see the steam plume rising from the creator. At one point the plume got very gray. I couldn't tell if it might have had some ash in it or more likely that it was just a rather dense puff of steam.



It was really neat to see this kind of geologic activity first hand. The proximity of active volcanoes was one of many factors that influenced my decision to move to the Pacific NW back in 2000/2001.

For more info on the current activity at Mt. St. Helens and the other Cascades Volcanoes click here.

I again spent time with my laptop in the Cafe of the Coldwater Ridge Visitor Center watching the various clouds and the steam plume waft about. And while I did I worked more on the Club Bylaws and Rules for the Cascade Vaulters.

As I was leaving I found out that the Coldwater Ridge Visitor Center will be open a few days a week through out the winter, so I plan to make some trips back if the activity keeps up.

Soot (the Cat) 1993 - 2004

I got the following bummer of an e-mail from my friend Jen today.

Dear Tom,

I'm sorry to have to tell you that Soot passed away last week, on October 19. He'd been having some trouble walking and the vet thought he had hurt his back, but it turned out he had a rapidly-growing brain tumor. The neuro-specialists we took him to were very good and I don't think he had any pain or fear - he just got duller and quieter and then he slipped quietly away only a couple days after we learned there was a problem. We will be putting his ashes in the back yard.

Smoke seems to be doing OK; he's been very sociable and clingy, but doesn't seem to be sad.

Sorry to relay the bad news. Josh and I were pretty in pieces about all this but we are recovering and remembering the 11 years of joy Soot gave us.

Love,
--Jen

Soot and his brother Smoke were the inspiration for my domain name, Soot-n-Smoke.com. I certainly enjoyed the time I spent with him over the years and I will miss him.

RE: Flame: FW: Special Alert regarding P&G boycott! Pls forward

I got the following reply from my Uncle.

Tom,

I am very sorry to have offended you. It is
certainly not my desire that your bonus be reduced, but we serve a God who can
increase our bonus in ways we never thought possible. Everything I
have, including all pay and bonuses, I considered as having come from the
Lord. "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the
Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows."
(James 1:17).

I have a lot of compassion for people who are
involved in homosexual relationships because I know that God loves them. I
believe that God's Inspired Word, the Holy Bible, tells us that He views
homosexual behavior as sin (Genius 19:5-7, Leviticus 18:22 & 20:13, and
Romans 1:27 [all of these should be read in context with the verses around
them]). Our God is a Holy God and a Just God and therefore, we deserve
death for the things that we have done that are against His
Law. But "Christ loved us and gave Himself up
for us" (Eph 5:2). Jesus paid the price for our
sin so that If we repent and turn to Him, we can be forgiven and be
healed. There are also a lot of sins in heterosexual behavior that God
also views as immoral (e.g., adultry) and therefore as sin. All of these
sins God can and will forgive through Jesus Christ.

I respectfully
decline to debate this issue and hope that you will understand I hold
nothing against you for what you believe -- that is between you and God.
You are part of our family and we love you. If you have
accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, then we pray that He
will guide you into all Truth. If you have not believed and received
Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, we pray that you will. After I
received Jesus as my Lord and Savior (I was about 34 years old), I found that in
knowing and loving Him, I have come into a wonderful relationship with a
Awesome & Mighty God and I will be spending the rest of eternity
worshiping Him.

It was good to hear from you and hope that all
is well. Again, I am sorry to have offended
you.

Love,

Uncle Rodney

It's too bad that he declined to debate the issues at hand. But it is understandable as most arguments based on blind faith don't hold up when examined rationally.

My Uncle references several Bible verses and implores that they should be "read in context with the verses around them". But he seems to forget that they should also be taken in the context of when, where and by whom they were written.

Saga of the Heater Valve: Epilogue

The new heater valve, battery and starter seem to be working well. My Jeep hasn't had any more starting troubles or leaking coolant.

In case you missed them, due to my back posting, parts 2, 3 and 4 of the saga are now online. The original part 1 is here.

Words of Encouragement

I got these comments by e-mail to my Flame: FW: Special Alert regarding P&G boycott! Pls forward entry. (Charlie is my Dad and Joanie is my Mom’s cousin.)

thanks for the forward Charlie

RIGHT ON TOM!!

thanks for having the courage to speak your mind.

Take Care,
Joanie
@}--}---

As of the time of this post I haven't heard anything back from my Uncle Rodney.

So I’ll simply add that now is the time for Moderate Christians to stand up, speak out, and take back our churches, our communities and our nation.

Flame: FW: Special Alert regarding P&G boycott! Pls forward

Note: This entry was censored on 2004-12-07. See this entry for details.

Uncle Rodney –

I am deeply offended at your call to boycott Procter & Gamble. And so I challenge you to an open online debate of these and related issues in front of God, our family and the Internet. I will be posting this message on my blog and invite you to designate a location online for your comments and rebuttals.

First, to the best of my knowledge, you do not live in Cincinnati nor do most of the individuals that you are asking to join the boycott. So a local ballot measure in Cincinnati is, quite frankly, none of your business and none of ours. Procter & Gamble is headquartered in Cincinnati, and thus a corporate citizen of Cincinnati. P&G is also large employer in the area. Their $30k donation may simply be a reflection of the concerns of their employees or for the economic well being of their home city and thus their shareholders.

Second the ballot measure in question simply repeals a section of the city charter, and says:

Be it resolved by the people of Cincinnati that Article XII of the Charter of the City be repealed. This amendment to the City Charter shall in all respects be self-executing. Article XII shall be null and void and of no force and effect

It in no way grants any special rights to homosexuals, lesbians or bisexuals as alleged in your e-mail. A detailed analysis, including full texts of the existing City Charter Amendment and the ballot measure to repeal it, can be found by clicking here.

Third on October 1st my employer, {Employer's Name Removed}, announced {link removed} a major partnership with P&G and released a new co-branded product line, the {Employer's Product Name and Link removed} from {Employer's Brand Name Removed} and Crest. So the boycott of Crest products that you’re advocating would likely adversely affect my bonus next year.

Finally what makes you so sure that God shares your views that attack the loving and supportive relationships of homosexuals, lesbians and bisexuals. As with slavery, women’s suffrage, and the rights of the disabled, shouldn’t a truly Christian community seek to provide equal protection under the law (both civil and ecumenical) for any minority group that is attacked by bigoted individuals in positions of power or influence.

TTFN
Tom

Saga of the Heater Valve: Part 4, The Starter

Fortonatly I didn't have to work on Friday (10/22). I checked the web and was able to get a replcaememnt starter at a local Schucks Friday morning. Their web site showed that almost all the local stores stocked starters for 1992 Jeep Cherokees.

It took a little over two hours to put my Jeep up on jack stands, pull off the old starter, mount the new starter and set my Jeep back down on it's wheels. It probably would have been about a 30 minute job, if I could have thrown my Jeep up on a lift. The most time consuming task seemed to be the repeated crawling under my Jeep to do something then back out to get a part or tool I needed.

By early afternoon I had finished up the repair, returned the old starter for the core depost and was on a long test drive.

Saga of the Heater Valve: Part 3, The Battery

Once I got back from Devonwood, my Jeep continued to have starting problems. By Tuesday the battery seemed to be having trouble holding a charge and I was having to bump start more often then I could get the starter to turn over.

So after work I stopped by my local Les Schawb and had them test the electrical system. Of course they found that I needed a new battery. And since batteries cost less than starters and my jeep's battery was getting up there in miles, I let them sell me a new one. This seemed to fix the starting problems, at least for a few hours.

By Wednesday after noon I was back to the point of having to bump start most of the time. Fortunately most of the places I park my Jeep are on hills so this wasn't a particular inconvenience. Though I did end up getting gas at a station I don't normally stop at because it had a nice slope away from the pumps.

By Thursday evening the starter wouldn't turn over at all.

Saga of the Heater Valve: Part 2

On Friday morning (10/15) I found the time to pick another heater valve from Eastside Chrysler Jeep and install it in time for my drive down to the Devonwood Vaulting Harvest Fest in Sherwood, OR that afternoon. I again used the plastic bag trick to catch the escaping coolant. And when I got this new valve installed did not leak. :)

With respect to my Jeep, the drive down to Devonwood was warm (but not hot) and rather uneventful. While in Oregon, I continued to have moderate trouble getting the starter to turn over. Most of the time it would require several turns of the key, and a few times I gave up and just bump started. On Saturday I got a call from a guy at Shucks letting me know that replacement valve I ordered had arrived early. The drive home on Sunday was much like the drive down.

On Monday I stopped by Shucks and picked up the valve I had ordered (and had pre-paid). So now I have another one on hand when the current one starts leaking.

Saga of the Heater Valve: Part 1

For the past few months, the heater control valve in my Jeep [1992, Cherokee, 4.0l, 5 spd] has had a small leak. Until a couple of weeks ago this was barely noticeable, just requiring a little topping off of the coolant when changing the oil.

Over the last couple of weeks the leak has been dripping onto the starter / starter solenoid and has become a real nuisance. While the solenoid engages with each turn of the key, it requires several tries or a blow from a hammer / the clutch before the starter will turn. I think that the coolant has contaminated some of the electrical contacts in the solenoid and/or starter.

On Monday I bought a replacement heater valve at the local Shucks auto parts store. The “Four Seasons 74777, Fact Air Heater Valve” was the only one in stock. On Tuesday I swapped out the old valve for the new one and found that the new one leaked much worse then the old one. The new valve leaked around shaft that rotates the butterfly plate where the shaft enters the housing.

TIP: When swapping out this valve place a 1-gallon plastic freezer bag stuffed with paper towels under and around the valve before you disconnect the hoses. The bag should catch the coolant that drains out of valve and the heater core.

I couldn’t leave the new valve in as it would leave a good size trail of coolant everywhere I drove and a puddle when I stopped. I couldn’t put the old one back in as it was killing my starter. Correctly figuring that it would take several days to find a better replacement, I got a lift down to Lowes and picked up a couple of brass hose butt connectors and simply bypassed the heater core.

Today returned the defective “Four Seasons” heater valve, and ordered a “Ready Aire, 5941 Heater Valve”. As expected it won’t arrive until the 18th. So until then I have no heater. Or if it gets unexpectedly cold I can swap the connectors around and have heat that is always on.

This is the third time I’ve had to replace this valve and I think that it a underlying problem is a design flaw. The OEM part and the replacements have all had plastic housings that I suspect have been cracking from the hot and cold cycling experienced in about 50k miles. So I’m also looking for a better long term solution, like a better designed valve meant for some other vehicle or some other application entirely. The valve has four hose attachments for standard 5/8” heater hoses and is actuated by a small vacuum servo.

Cascade Vaulters Visit ECV

The Cascade Vaulters went on their first "field trip" toady, visiting the Emerald City Vaulters and participating in a joint practice. Highlights included Beth and Sandy getting experience on a "green horse" and goes at canter. Also Adrianna go to practice on Storm in preporation for Devonwood Harvest Fest next weekend. In all it was a very fun and sucessful event.

Please Don't Buy a Compaq

Please, please, please, pleeeeeeease, don't buy a Compaq if you want me to help support it. Recently a few people I know have acquired Compaq laptops and all of them are having troubles.

Twenty years ago Compaq made really good, state of the art, portable computers. Fifteen years ago their products were okay. But IMHO their systems have continued to go down hill ever since.

The basic problem is that Compaq tries to put too much of their own software between the hardware and the OS. This wouldn't be a problem except that hardware companies are notorious for writing bad software.

Back when operating systems were relatively small and simple, implementing software between the hardware and OS was a relatively small, simple and safe task. But with today's multiple operating systems, that tend to incorporate everything including the kitchen sink, this is nearly impossible to do well.

Good laptop brands these days are: Toshiba, Sony & IBM.

Volcano Visit

I drove down to Mt. St. Helens today. I got all the way out to the Coldwater Ridge Visitor Center. This was the second time that I got to the locked gates protecting tourists from an active Mt. St. Helens. The first time was in the summer of 1980 when traveling with my family on summer vacation. That tile we drove up to the the edge of the "Red Zone".

unfortunately the weather today wasn't the best for Volcano viewing. The entire time I was there most of the mountain was obscured by clouds. It did clear enough at times to see much of the pumice plane and lower flanks. And at one point I may have seen the lowest part of the crater. But I never did see the upper portions of the crater, the lava dome or the rim.

For more info on the current activity at Mt. St. Helens and the other Cascades Volcanoes click here.

While I waited at the Coldwater Ridge Visitor Center to see if the weather would clear up, I was able to find a seat in the cafe with a power outlet. So I got some work on the Club Bylaws and Rules for the Cascade Vaulters done on my laptop.

Cascade Vaulters

The Vaulters formerly known as Redwing held their first practice away from Faith Farm today. The vaulters warmed up by running down to Meydenbauer Beach and back up the hill. After stretching the vaulters then worked on their freestyle routines on the Region III Barrel. As the vaulters worked on the barrel, the vaulters, parents and the coach (me) discussed various names and chose "Cascade Vaulters" as the new club name. We also selected royal blue [#2b60de], navy blue [#000080] and silver [#c0c0c0] as the new club colors. We adopted a set of bylaws, and selected officers so that we can get our non-profit paper work turned in to the AVA by the October 15th deadline.

Recycling vs. Cable TV/Internet

When I got home from work Friday afternoon I again found several Comcast (CATV) and Quest (phone) lines had been knocked down along our street (400 block of 98th Ave NE). This is the third time this summer that the Rabanco Recycling truck has apparently torn down these lines.

Like several of the neighbors I reported the incident to the Bellevue PD and they alerted Comcast & Quest. But it took almost 24 hours for our internet can cable TV service to be restored.

Tom as Head Coach!?! w/ New Vaulting Club in 2005

Well it's official. On October 1st. I'll be taking over as the head coach of the Redwing Vaulters and shepherding the club through a major reorganization. Thankfully one of the parents, Therese Rogers, has agreed to serve as interim Club Manager.

After many wonderful years of support, Katy and the Duppongs have decided to take a few years off from vaulting. They have agreed to let us continue under the Redwing Vaulters name until the current AVA registration expires at the end of this year. This will give us time to finish the 2004 competition season and organize under a new club name and structure starting the first of next year.

From an equipment stand point we seem to be doing well. Unless there is an unexpected objection from the region, the new club should be able to take over the custodianship of the Region III barrel. Furthermore, Katy and the Duppongs have agreed to a long term loan of their black surcingle (complete with back pad)!

Our biggest challenge of the moment is that we're still looking for a practice venue.

Rap Othello

For the Shakespeare fans out there: I recently ran across a version of the RSC's Rap Othello and was ammused. You can find it on their download page. Enjoy!

Reduced Shakespeare Company - Downloads

Blog & E-mail Fixed!!!

Moving my site to a new hosting provider has fixed much of the problems I was having with both my blog and with my soot-n-smoke.ocm e-mail. I can again publish (not just post) entries to my blog and now anyone with a blogger account can comment on my blog entires.

Also I've reorginized the way e-mail to soot-n-smoke.com gets handled so most of the 5000+ junk e-mails I was getting each day now bounce when the spammer's server try's to upload them. I've also set up TomS at Soot and Smoke dot com to forward to my yahoo account that I can easily check from my phone.

New Web Hosting Provider

Sorry I havent posted any updates in the past couple of weeks. I've been having trouble with my hosting provider. I'm in the process of moving my whole web site to LunarPages. As part of this move, Im also changing the way my email gets filtered.

Wired News: Wi-Fi Shootout in the Desert

I think this kind of amature radio stuff is cool.

Wired News: Wi-Fi Shootout in the Desert

Made it Home Safely

Just a quick post, letting everyone know that we made it home safely early this morning.  I'll be posting more about the trip in the next couple of days.

On the Way Home

Nationals went well. Though it always seems like an
exercise in sleep deprivation.
Im now on the way back acrossthe midwest. Tonight well
sleep at Aunt Rebas BnB In northwest Iowa.

Virginia and Maryland

<>We had a very long leg into Indiana. We didn’t pull in until about 5 AM so we ended up sleeping/camping for a few hours at the horse motel.

Pulled into Lexington Saturday night in good condition except for some sleep deprivation. The rest of the Emerald City contingent flew in Sunday morning. and after some sleep, a practice session, moving the horses from the layover stables to the competition site and dinner, I finally got on the road up to Maryland.<>

I spent Monday extracting items I want to move out to Washington from my storage unit. So far I’ve found almost everything I want to bring west. I plan to head back down to Lexington this afternoon.

Made it to Iowa

Got through the digital phone wasteland of the
Rockies. On the way stopped at Wall Drug. Got a flat
in Rapid City. Got into Aunt Rebas B&B late. Kids,
horses & coaches are well.

Loading Up And Hauling Out

I spent the night at Dreamswept Farm. This morning
were loading up kids and horses and hauling out.
Im posting this from my new phone.

Off to Nationals 2004

I'm about to head out on the first leg of my trip to Nationals. Keep an eye on this, my blog, for more updates.

Packing for Nationals

I well into the process of packing for my trip to the American Vaulting Association's National Champinoships in Lexington, VA.  I'll be leaving home for Dreamswept Farm on Monday afternoon and hitting the highway with the Emerald City Vaulters early Tuesday Morning.

With any luck, I'll be making posts to my blog from my phone along the way. But I probably won't be able to sift through my regular e-mail until I get home in about three weeks.  In the mean time if you need to e-mail me please use my yahoo account. 

Cavalia

I went with Chris & Gretta Cook this afternoon and watched the Cavalia performance. It was good show and highly recommended for those who are equestrian inclined. At $60+ it's kind of expensive for those not particularly interested in horses. Click here for the Seattle PI's review.

I also picked up a nice long sleeve tee shirt.
front
back

Beginner Vaulting Camp @ Dreamswept Farm

I got to spend another fun Friday at Dreamswept Farm's Vaulting Camp, this time with the beginners.
Again the vaulters participated in hour long yoga, ballet and gymnastics classes. The vaulters also got to perform their compulsories and freestyle routines at the canter or trot for a small audience while I video taped. Later they got to perform their team barrel freestyle routines, again while I video taped. [Sorry I didn't get any still pictures of the horse work as I was too busy panning the camp's video camera.] After the team barrel freestyle routine performances, Tames Alan worked with the vaulters on their individual freestyle routines on the barrel. Then Tamea Denault worked with the vaulters on various skill building drills while I provided some near real time video/digital photo feed back.

Fireworks on the Forth

Got a bunch of photos of the fireworks in Downtown Bellevue with my new camera last night. Including this one of my housemate Jen watching the fireworks from the front yard.

Advanced Vaulting Camp @ Dreamswept Farm

I had lots of fun observing and helping out with the Advanced Vaulting Camp at Dreamswept Farm. I only got to attend on the last day, Friday.

I watched as the vaulters participated in hour long yoga, ballet and gymnastics classes before lunch. After lunch the Nancy Stevens-Brown [AVA President and renowned clinician] worked with the advanced vaulters on their team barrel freestyle routines.

E-mail is broken.

The volume of junk e-mail coming in to random addresses at Soot-n-Smoke.com has grown significnatly over the past few weekes. On the order of three to four thousand messages a day. It's gotten to the point that it's now causing problems with my accounts and my e-mail client.

I'm working on the problem but I may not receive e-mail or may be slow to respond for the next few days.

TTFN
Tom

New Digital Camera

I got a new digital camera from my folks as a birthday present.

More photos to come later.

RSS Feeds for Coppermine Photo Galleries

I found and had installed a PHP script that generates an RSS feed for Coppermine Photo Galleries.

However the script has some bugs that prevented the feeds it generated from validating. So I had to debug it a bit. When I got it working on both my site and my Dad's site, I posted the revisions back to the Coppermine support forum where I found the script.

My.Yahoo Supports RSS Feeds!!!!

I recently found that Yahoo has support for RSS headlines in beta for their My.Yahoo.com portal service. I've already added this blog and my Dad's blog to my.yahoo page. And I've asked our hosting provider to install a small RSS script to our photo galleries. (I haven't had time yet to update the various templates with XML icons pointing to the feeds.)

Early access to G-mail!!

Hey I got my favorate user name at Google's new gmail service.

Post Dated Blog Entries

Can you post an entry to a Blogger site that uses a date in the future?

Evidently you can, but they don't show up until the first time you publish your blog after the Change Time & Date.

Tools for Editing Vaulting Music

Recently I've been using Easy CD-DA Extractor for CD ripping and audio file format conversion. I've also been using GoldWave for editing music files. Finally I've been using Roxio's Creator Classic 6.0 for burning CDs (part of their Easy CD Creator package).

AVA Board of Directors in about 2006

After much heart felt consideration, I regret to report that I'm just not ready to serve on the AVA Board of Directors. A few factors outside vaulting would make it difficult, at present, for me to commit the additional time and resources that a position on the Board deserves.

Serving on the Board is something that I eventually want to do, as I have many ideas about how we might improve our organization and our sport. And I had been thinking that I might run for a position starting in about 2006.

I sincerely regret that my decision may well leave Region III under-represented in the short term.

Web Site Overhaul

Now that I've got my Dad's site about done, I'm working to overhaul my web site.

I'm giving up on FrontPage, in part because it doesn't output clean HTML and partly because I can't find my CDs to reinstall it on my desktop computer.

AVA Board of Directors. Me?

Got an e-mail asking if I'd be willing to serve on the AVA's Board of Directors. I'm going to think about it over the weekend.

Cool Google Tool

Google has a built in calculator!

http://www.google.com/help/features.html#calculator

Atom & Blog "Plug-ins"

I've been exploring Weblogs lately. I read a few on a regular basis, generally just from bookmarks. Recently I set up a web log for my Dad, as that seem to be what he really needs as far as a web site. In doing so came across the Atom API. The more I learn about the technology behind weblogs the more it looks like a "power to the people" kind of "killer app" in it's early stages. Much like HTTP and HTML did in the early '90s.

While I'm only tangentially interested in the syndication and aggregation side, I'm very interested in the authoring side. Specifically in developing a few 'blog plug-ins. An example a 'blogger might have a home weather station that reports temp, pressure, humidity, etc. and want to post the local conditions on his weblog. If enough 'bloggers could regularly post this data to their weblogs using a standardized schema it might be of interest to weather researchers and forecasters. This could be easily accomplished with a plug-in that runs on the 'blogger's home PC and regularly posts the local weather conditions and station / location info to the weblog via the Atom API.

Again while I've got numerous ideas, I haven't got as much time to work on them as I'd like. If you're also interested drop me a note.

Need a Digital Camera

Now that I've got a Photo Gallery script installed I need to get a digital camera so I have something to post in it.

Dad's new web site

Did a major overhaul of Dad's web site this weekend. First I set Blogger to post to his homepage. Then I got our web hosting company to install a photo gallery script called Copper Mine. Finally I edited the various templates and style sheets to give the site a consistent look and feel.

Vaulting Demo at Small Farm Expo

The Redwing Vaulters presented a half hour demonstration of equestrian vaulting at the WSU Co-op Extension's Small Farm Expo. About 50 people watched 17 vaulters and four coaches perform on both the horse and on the barrel.

'Blog Plug-ins

I've been thinking on an idea for some blogging tools that would allow the creation of plug-ins.
A good example application might be in the realm of personal health care. With a "nutrition" plug-in, a 'blogger could record and track what they ate and could generate a report they could use with their healthcare professionals to improve their diet.
Another example might be a "bird sighting" plug-in that would help a bird watching blogger track their life-time species list and allow scientific analysis of sighting patterns using web spiders.
This requires a couple of things. First it needs a schema / API that defines how 'blogging tools should capture arbitrary data and/or render some kind of applet that captures the data. Next it requires a systematic way for plug-ins to include tagged data in or with a post. Third it needs tools to crawl through a blog, extract the data posted with a plug-in, aggregate that data and generate some kind of meaningful display of that data.
If you're interested in working on something like this drop me an e-mail.

Family Tech Support Continued...

Well it looks like my Dad managed to more or less get my Mom's new laptop set up and working on their wireless network. Though I expect it will take a couple of hours on the phone with my Mom later this week to pick up the pieces and finish the job.
I could go into a long rant about what went wrong, but let's just leave it that incomplete information sure doesn't help.

Vaulting DVDs

I spent an hour or so today talking with Angela, one of the other assistant coaches, about how she might use her TV/video production and grant writing skills to produce a couple of vaulting videos / DVDs.
We talked about the immediate need for an educational DVD with commentary by various judges for coaches and vaulters. We also talked about the need to develop some "B Roll" footage to get more / better TV coverage of Vaulting, and the long term prospects of getting vaulting produced for TV like gymnastics, figure skating and other equestrian sports.
These ideas are some that I've been thinking about for the past few years as an extension of the video taping and digital music stuff I've done.

Family Tech Support

Dad got Mom a new laptop for her birthday, and of course I ended up spending several hours on the phone helping her set it up.

Tom's Tech Support. How can I help you?

Arc Welder

I finally got around to using the hobby arc welder I bought two years ago for $30. I used it to affix the legs back onto the mini-tramp that we use with the vaulters. It was probably the first arch welding I've done in about 20 years. And I never really did enough back then to develop any real skills at it. So my welds weren't particularly pretty. I need to find some hunks of metal that I can practice on.

Fun with Vectors

Recently the high school age daughter of one of my parents college friends asked my Dad for some help with a math class project on the application of vectors. The following is part of my contribution.

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Consider a database that recommends movies. First users enter ratings, 1 to 5 stars, for movies they have seen. The database represents each rating as the component in dimension of a particular movie of the user's preference vector. Then when a user wants a recommendation, it searches for other user's preference vectors that point in similar directions and include movies that the user hasn't seen.



Given the ratings above, the database would expect Bill to give the new Keanu Reeves movie, "Constantine", a rating of just over 4 because Bill's preference vector most closely matches Bob's but tends to be a little higher on average. The example above uses 8 & 9 dimensional vectors, but a web site like NetFlix probably uses vectors with hundreds and hundreds of dimensions.

Cubby Prototype Built

I spent the afternoon building an engineering prototype for the cubbies that I am building for the vaulters to stash their stuff during vaulting practice.

Sleep is a good thing! We should do it more.

As I was headed to bed a little before midnight last night, I got to thinking about how adding a blog to my web site should impact the overall site design.

Thus my brain wasn't in much of a mood to sleep anyway, when the local cops must have chased someone down the alley behind our house. Think guys with flashlights, police helicopter over head, barking dogs, etc. It was all over in about 10 minutes, but I was wide awake.

It was almost three by the time I finally fell asleep. My alarm on work days goes off at 3:45 AM.

Stylesheets

I moved all the style definitions for my blog out of the template and into a separate file. Looks like I managed to do so with out breaking my blog.

"It will rain soon, you see if it doesn't." -- Eeyore

Found this while digging around my computer and just had to add it to my blog.

Dad Needs a 'Blog

I think I'm going to set up a blog for my Dad. He's running marathons for his retirement and likes to publish photos and race reports. His current web site, is hard to navigate and has an utter lack of color and/or graphic design.

I ought to be able to find a running template that I can tweak to fit my Dad.

Dad also probably needs a good photo gallery / album scripts for his web site. But I haven't found one I like yet.

Words of Wisdom?

I think I may combine my blog and my "Words of Wisdom" pages. A blog is a good place to capture and store random bits of information. Mater of fact I think I'll change the title of my blog to Tom's Words of Wisdom.

I think that G.Tom (my grandfather / my mom's dad) would have liked the idea of a blog.

Hello world!

This is my first blog post, and is only a test.