The Distress Signal

Yeah, it’s fucking Spring …finally.

Thu, 07 Apr 2011 14:15:00 -0400

Yeah, it’s fucking Spring …finally.

Christ, I hate Winter.

Sat, 01 Jan 2011 13:01:29 -0500

Christ, I hate Winter.

Senator Bernie Sanders

Sat, 11 Dec 2010 10:17:15 -0500

Thanks, Bernie.

Now one of the things that we’re going to see going on is that while we struggle with a record breaking deficit and a large national debt; caused by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, caused by tax breaks for the wealthy, caused by an unpaid for medicare part D prescription drug program, caused by the wall-street bailout; driving up the deficit, driving up the national debt.

Then some people can say, Oh my goodness, we got all of those expenses, and then we got to give tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires, but we want to balance the budget. Ghee, how are we going to do that?

Well obviously we know how they are going to do that. We’re going to cut back on healthcare, we’re going to cut back on education, we’re going to cut back on childcare, we’re going to cut back on pelt programs. We just don’t have enough money for working families and their needs. We’re going to cut back on food stamps, we surly are not going to expand unemployment compensation. We got a higher priority, Mr. President, we have got to, got to, got to, give tax breaks to billionaires. That’s what this whole place is about isn’t it? They fund the campaigns they get what’s due them.

JackTard of the Week

Wed, 08 Dec 2010 10:30:00 -0500

Bob Beckel, democratic strategist and all around master of nuance, in an appearance on Fox News recently, had this to say about Julian Assange:

A dead man can’t leak stuff. This guy’s a traitor, he’s treasonous, and he has broken every law of the United States. And I’m not for the death penalty, so…there’s only one way to do it: illegally shoot the son of a bitch.

For not quite being able to grasp how treason works, particularly that one has to actually be a citizen of a nation before they can betray it, and for publicly urging the murder of someone, Bob Beckel earns our JackTard of the Week award. Thanks for playing Bob!

Lieberman for President

Fri, 03 Dec 2010 09:10:00 -0500

I feel bad for all our friends at the State Department and USAID who have been “banned” by their employers from accessing the WikiLeaks site, both at work and on their own home computers.

Essentially, the Federal Government’s logic is that because these cables haven’t officially been declassified, reading them would be breaking the law.

Well, I guess that’s that. I’m glad the Government is looking out for us. I especially appreciate the efforts by our leaders, like Senator Joseph Lieberman, who feel that the nations best interests are served by essentially covering our ears and singing the national anthem really loud so we can’t hear anything. Just pretend like it didn’t happen, that’ll work.

I appreciate Lieberman so much that I think he should have another go at running for the White House. In fact, I’d like to help him get started. So here you go Joe, see ya in 2012: http://liebermanforpresident.org

Pakistan?

Fri, 03 Dec 2010 07:52:06 -0500

I wonder if the American government will ever be able to summon the courage to face the cablegate leaks with the same type of aplomb shown by nations that truly embrace free speech.

Nations like ..wait. What? Oh come on, really? Pakistan? You’ve got to be kidding me.

From Pakistan’s Lahore High Court ruling on whether or not to ban the Wikileaks site:

We must bear the truth, no matter how harmful it is.

When a country like Pakistan holds the moral high ground on America, you have to ask yourself: Just how far from our ideals have we strayed?

Executed as Spies

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 18:00:00 -0500

WikiLeaks has been taking a bit of a pounding from the right since it began the release of 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables last week. Sarah Palin called for the organization’s founder Julian Assange to be treated as a terrorist and described him as an “anti-American operative with blood on his hands”. Mike Huckabee, and others in the right wing press, went further and suggested that those involved in the leak should be executed as spies.

From Red State:

..my preferred course of action would for Assange to find a small caliber round in the back of his head.

Meanwhile, Senator Liberman and members of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee managed to bully Amazon into dropping WikiLeaks from it’s EC2 (Elastic Cloud Computing) service. The site had earlier moved to EC2 following several DDOS attacks on it’s servers in Sweden.

While the right indulges in its usual vim and verve about how far they’re willing to go to “protect” the American Way, far enough to trample all over it, I thought it might be helpful to keep in mind a few points about what WikiLeaks has really been trying to accomplish:

From the recent cover story in Forbes:

Kaupthing Bank collapsed in October 2008—a calamitous chain reaction that has strapped Iceland with $128 billion in debts, around $400,000 per capita. Ten months later Bogi Agustsson, a Walter Cronkite-ish anchor for Icelandic national broadcaster RUV, appeared on the evening news and explained that a legal injunction had prevented the station from airing a prepared exposé on Kaupthing. Viewers who wanted to see the material, he suggested, should visit a site called Wikileaks.org.

In September 2009 Commodities giant Trafigura filed an injunction that prevented British media from mentioning a damaging internal report. The memo showed the company had dumped tons of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, chemicals that allegedly sickened 100,000 locals. But it couldn’t stop WikiLeaks from publishing the information. Trafigura eventually paid more than $200 million in settlements.

Reuters, through the Freedom of Information Act, tried unsuccessfully for two years to get the U.S. military to release video of a Baghdad assault in 2007 that left 12 people dead including two employees of Reuters (Mr. Noor-Eldeed and Mr. Chmagh). Someone got the video and handed it off to WikiLeaks who decrypted it and published it online.

From the NYTimes coverage:

The American military in Baghdad investigated the episode and concluded that the forces involved had no reason to know that there were Reuters employees in the group. No disciplinary action was taken.

The video though, painted a brutal portrait of war and the shocking way in which innocent people become victims.

From the same NYTimes article:

it begins with a group of people milling around on a street, among them, according to WikiLeaks, Mr. Noor-Eldeen and Mr. Chmagh. The pilots believe them to be insurgents, and mistake Mr. Noor-Eldeen’s camera for a weapon. They aim and fire at the group, then revel in their kills.

“Look at those dead bastards,” one pilot says. “Nice,” the other responds.

A wounded man can be seen crawling and the pilots impatiently hope that he will try to fire at them so that under the rules of engagement they can shoot him again. “All you gotta do is pick up a weapon,” one pilot says.

A short time later a van arrives to pick up the wounded and the pilots open fire on it, wounding two children inside. “Well, it’s their fault for bringing their kids into a battle,” one pilot says.

At another point, an American armored vehicle arrives and appears to roll over one of the dead. “I think they just drove over a body,” one of the pilots says, chuckling a little.

War is horrible. That fact should be able to be made painfully clear to everyone, lest we forget. If WikiLeaks had been around in the run up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq maybe we would have been better informed about just how ridiculous the Bush Administration’s argument for jumping into that conflict really was. Maybe it would have been easier to remind everyone just how horrible war is and how desperately it should be avoided. Maybe the U.S. could have been kept out of an unnecessary war.

My point is this:

In a society where the free press has become marginalized by an ecosystem of corruption, no one is left to hold the wealthy and powerful in check to create balance for the people.

Is what WikiLeaks is doing, strictly speaking, really Journalism? No, probably not. They don’t provide any real context or analysis to the material, they just publish it. Like a big Xerox machine on the Net, they publish what people send them. They provide “a secure and anonymous way for independent sources around the world to leak information to journalists.”

It may not be journalism as we’ve known it in the past, but it does enable journalism, most critically in it’s role to inform the citizenry. And, According to legal experts, it enjoys the same protections under the law.

Ultimately what WikiLeaks is trying to do, I think, is to provide some cover so real journalists can get back to doing what they’re supposed to. Inform the public and hold those in power accountable for their well-being.

As usual, someone already said it way better than I ever could:

Without debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed — and no republic can survive. That is why the Athenian lawmaker Solon decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy. And that is why our press was protected by the First Amendment — the only business in America specifically protected by the Constitution — not primarily to amuse and entertain, not to emphasize the trivial and the sentimental, not to simply “give the public what it wants” — but to inform, to arouse, to reflect, to state our dangers and our opportunities, to indicate our crises and our choices, to lead, mold, educate and sometimes even anger public opinion.

The above was from President Kennedy’s speech to the American Newspaper Publishers Association in 1961. Listen to the whole speech.

I drive under this sign every morning on my way to work. It...

Mon, 08 Nov 2010 19:49:00 -0500

I drive under this sign every morning on my way to work. It makes me sad for America.

I’ve used lots of mice in my day, but nothing beats the...

Sat, 11 Sep 2010 12:03:12 -0400

I’ve used lots of mice in my day, but nothing beats the Kensington Expert Mouse. Nothing. Fine control over acceleration, perfect ergonomics, it’s simply the best.

Quicksilver

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 08:38:00 -0400

To be a European Christian (the rest of the world might be forgiven for thinking) was to build ships and sail them to any and all coasts not already a-bristle with cannons, make landfall at river’s mouth, kiss the dirt, plant a cross for a flag, scare the hell out of any indigenes with a musketry demo’, and - having come so far, and suffered and risked so much - unpack a shallow basin and scoop up some muck from the river-bottom.

Yeah. Pretty much my most favorite book. Ever.

24 Hours in Shenandoah: Marshall Mountain

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 15:01:15 -0400

Another weekend and another chance to spend 24 hours in Shenandoah. This time I was up on Marshall Mountain in the Northern section of the park. The loop starts at the Jenkins Gap overlook around the 12 mile mark on Skyline Drive. I’ve gone both ways around on this loop and I definitely think coming back on the Appalachian Trail is the way to go. That section of the loop has the best views and there are some real choice spots for pitching a shelter up on the ridge.

Find the trailhead for the Mount Marshall trail just south of the Jenkins Gap overlook on the left. This part of the loop to Bluff Trail follows an old fire road, it’s broad, generally level, and perfect for quickly putting a couple miles behind you. I was lucky enough this morning to have a deer keeping pace about 20 yards ahead of me for the first mile or so, generously breaking the trail of all those annoying early morning spiderwebs I normally take right in the face. Eventually though, I guess I got to close and he scrambled up the hill to the right of the trail and was out of sight.

After dropping into the first hollow you’ll quickly come to the first of three creek crossings (38.79464 -78.17381 | 38.78722 -78.17547 | 38.77249 -78.17899 ) that I assume feed down into the Jordan River. In mid-August these were all really low but still had enough life to let you gather water if needed.

After about three miles you’ll connect with Bluff Trail on your right (38.77118 -78.17905). Bluff Trail ascends here rather quickly over some sharp switchbacks before leveling off and connecting with the Big Devil Stairs Trail on the left (38.76412 -78.21294). If you want to add another mile or so to the loop you can take a quick detour here to some nice views about halfway down the trail.

About a mile and half further and you connect with the Harris Hollow Trail, (38.76369 -78.23213) take a right at the junction and you’ll soon come to the Gravel Springs Shelter on your left. The shelter offers a nice place for a rest and I stopped to have a bit of lunch and leaf through the shelters journal. It’s always interesting to read through all the messages left by travelers on their way up or down the AT. There’s also a spring next to the shelter if you still need to gather some water. Once you’re all rested, continue North on the Appalachian Trail cross over Skyline Drive and you’ll begin to ascend the Southern section of Marshall Mountain.

The AT ascends steadily up and over this Southern portion with short cutoffs to the left offering some great views to the West (38.77088 -78.22411 | 38.77149 -78.22241). Before you know it you’re back at Skyline Drive again and moving up the Northern section to the summit. It’s a shame that the AT has to cross over Skyline Drive so much in Shenandoah but it is what it is. One good thing about doing this loop in reverse is that you’ll end up spending the night deeper in the wilderness area, but I think the views you get from Marshall and the chance for a great sunset are well worth the trade off.

After crossing Skyline Drive and climbing up a series of switchbacks you end up right at a nice little rocky outcropping with the best views of the loop (38.77491 -78.20622). You can see all of Browntown valley below you to Dickey Ridge on the right and Hogback Mountain and Gimlet Ridge on the left. This is a great place to hang out for a while, enjoy the view and have a bit of a snack, which is just what I did. In fact after setting up camp a little ways further down the trail I then doubled back to here and enjoyed a nice dinner with a view as well.

There are a number of great places available for pitching a shelter up on this part of the Mountain (38.77549 -78.20529 | 38.77470 -78.20649) some facing East towards Thoroughfare Gap and some facing West towards Browntown. I picked a nice spot facing West so I could enjoy a nice sunset before turning in for the night.

After a quick breakfast of the greatest bowl of oatmeal ever made I walked the last bit of trail to the summit. The summit is pretty closed in by trees but a short cutoff trail to the left leads to a little rocky outcrop offering some limited views and the USGS marker (38.77619 -78.20275) for the mountain. From the top it’s an easy descent down and across Skyline Drive where you continue heading North on the AT. This part of the trail meanders through Hogwallow Flat and is lined for a mile or so with large crabapple trees. In mid-August there were apples everywhere on the ground and lots of deer around presumably to feed off the apples.

In about two miles you’ll see a stone marker where a horse trail joins on the left. Straight ahead the AT continues North and to the right is a cutoff trail that will lead to a little parking lot just above Jenkins Gap overlook. I actually parked at the overlook itself which is about midway between this exit from the AT and the entrance to the Mount Marshall Trail so a quick walk south on Skyline Drive had me right back at my car.

I managed to catch this excellent sunset the last time I was in...

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 14:26:47 -0400

I managed to catch this excellent sunset the last time I was in Shenandoah. I snapped this about 5 feet in front of where I pitched my shelter for the night.

AppleBlog Roundup 04

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 21:20:00 -0400

Well, another couple weeks have gone by and it’s time for another roundup of recent articles I’ve written over at TheAppleBlog. Maybe one of these days I’ll figure out a better way to bring all my content together but until then here’s roundup number four.

iPhone HDR: I played around with some HDR apps for the iPhone and tried out the new HDR Pro tools in photoshop CS5. In the final analysis, the iPhone camera is just a 5 megapixel cameraphone and it’s never gonna produce the kind of photos one can get with a DSLR. Never the less, constraints are good for creativity and the iPhone is still my favorite camera to have with me on a hike.

Apple’s New Battery Charger: Yeah, it’s a charger.

Apple’s new Magic Trackpad: See above. Seriously though, I don’t see this being a feasible option for me. It may be great for some and a lot of people seem to think it’s the new controller for iTV, but I’m a doubter. One thing’s for sure it will never be better than the greatest mouse ever made.

Is Jailbreaking Still Worth It?: Before the new jailbreak dropped I took a look at a few of the better applications available out there for jailbroken iPhones. My conclusion was that yes, it is still worth it. When jailbreakme became available I hopped right on the bandwagon ..and then restored to factory fresh a couple days later. What was the problem? I forgot just how buggy all these non approved apps tend to be. I may miss out on some functionality but at least everything works like it’s supposed to.

iOS 4.0.1 Drops, the antenna is still fucked: Early on I had high hopes that the whole antenna thing was just the result of some software glitch with how the phone was choosing signals. Eventually it became obvious that attenuation and detuning as the result of the external antenna were the real culprits. The reporting that AnnandTech did in the midst of all of this has to be one of the shining examples of serious online journalism at work. Really, it makes me feel a bit embarrassed looking at it next to the crap I’m writing.

Huffduffer: I can’t say enough good things about hufduffer. It’s ostensibly a service that lets you tag audio files you find online and then publish them via RSS for subscription in iTunes. It’s killer value though, are all the people constantly finding seriously cool and unusual audio content. This thing totally changed my morning commute.

It doesn’t take much range to blow out highlights or...

Sun, 08 Aug 2010 11:57:00 -0400

It doesn’t take much range to blow out highlights or shadows on the iPhone and scenes like this spot where I stopped for lunch on Marshall Mountain yesterday can be hard to capture. So, I resorted to some HDR which trends slightly more surreal than photorealistic but it captures the mood. At least touch to expose makes setting up for processing easy.

24 Hours in Shenandoah: Knob Mountain

Fri, 06 Aug 2010 19:50:20 -0400

I managed to get out for a quick loop hike in Shenandoah last weekend, 24 hours quick to be exact. To me, 24 hours seems to be almost the perfect length of time to be able to enjoy an easy bit of backpacking. I can head out early on a Saturday hike all day, find a nice place to spend the night, hike out in the morning, and still have time Sunday to run errands and get ready for the upcoming week. This weekend I was out on Knob mountain.

The trailhead starts at about the 24 mile mark on SkyLine Drive at the bottom of the Elk Wallow picnic grounds. Pick up the Appalachian Trail (38.74109 -78.31198) and start heading south. After about half a mile you connect with Jeremy’s Run Trail (38.74295 -78.31369). The AT breaks off to the left but you’ll want to stay straight and continue heading NW towards Jeremy’s Run. It’s a nice easy walk descending into the wilderness area, the trail is broad and really well maintained here with nice views into the valley to the east. I spotted a couple deer here and the trail was full of evidence of their passing.

Eventually you’ll come to a three way junction (38.74857 -78.32070) Jeremy’s Run Trail continues to the SW and a cutoff trail to Knob Mountain heads NW. This being a loop hike there’s really two ways you can go at this point. Option one is to take Jeremy’s Run down and come back over Knob Mountain. Option two would be the reverse, taking the cutoff trail up the mountain and then coming back on Jeremy’s Run. Having gone both ways myself I can tell you that the ascent from the east is far easier, plus there’s a string of nice campsites at the bottom end of Jeremy’s Run in case you want to spend a night out in the open.

Moving out on the cutoff trail brings you quickly to the first of many water crossings you’ll have to make during the loop. I was here before in early Spring and the stream at that point was high and swift. If you’re willing to get wet then fording across is not a problem. If you’re planning on keeping your feet dry by rock hoping your way across though, you may have to bushwhack a bit until you find a suitable spot to cross. By late July the run had shrunken dramatically and moving across was trivial.

Once across, the cutoff trail climbs up over a number of switchbacks and becomes pretty steep in places. After passing through the remnants of an old stone wall, you’ll connect with Knob Mountain Trail proper (38.75302 -78.32458). Head SW on Knob Mountain trail and enjoy a nice easy ascent of about 4 miles to the summit.

I noticed lots of Bear scat on this part of the trail and even eventually met up with the culprit himself on the other side of the hill. Luckily though all it took was a quick yell and a shake of my trekking poles to get him flying away through the brush. This was the first time I ever had to stare down a Bear on the trail and even though everything I had read told me that they would be far more scared of me than I was of them I was never the less happily surprised when this turned out to be true.

Unfortunately, the summit (38.7291 -78.34884) is pretty closed in but if you continue down a bit on the other side it really opens up and you’re rewarded with some nice views of the valley and Neighbor Mountain to the South. This is a great place for a break and a late lunch.

The rest of the trek down to Jeremy’s Run consists of sharp switchbacks and descends 1900ft in about a mile and a half. Once at the bottom you’ll merge with Jeremy’s Run Trail (38.71197 -78.37081) on the right, head NE on the trail back towards the AT. If you’ve been keeping a brisk pace up to this point you may have time to finish up the last 4 miles or so of Jeremy’s Run, connect to the AT and then be back at your car before sun down. If on the other hand you’re looking for a place to spend the night before hiking out in the morning you’ll find a string of nice spots about a mile or so (38.71109 -78.36291) further down the trail.

I myself wasn’t quite ready to turn in yet so I broke for a nice dinner and then continued on for another 2.5 miles or so where I found a nice spot just this side (38.74893 -78.32432) of the cutoff trail. I really prefer to hike until I can’t hike anymore, setup a stealth camp and then go right to sleep. Fires are not allowed in Shenandoah and eating in camp is a bad idea with bear around so really the only thing left to do is sleep. In Shenandoah backpacking is a lot more about the hiking than it is about the camping.

In the morning I was able to get up early, have perhaps the best bowl oatmeal I’ve ever had, and then quickly cover the last bit of Jeremy’s Run back up to the AT and then to my car. The perfect 24 hour loop hike. I really like Shenandoah for these kinds of quick trips, I’m lucky to be living so close. Even though it’s pretty narrow East to West it’s got a wealth of trails so there’s lots of opportunities for configuring your own quick loops. I plan on walking a lot more of these before winter gets here.

Heart Sutra

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 07:53:00 -0400

Speaking of being left blank, I’ve been thinking on the Buddhist Heart Sutra quite a bit lately. If you’re not familiar with the specific aspects of Buddhist philosophy represented in this particular sutra I’ll give you the cliff notes.

All things are empty: Nothing is born, nothing dies, nothing is pure, nothing is stained, nothing increases and nothing decreases.

It’s essentially all about the notion that everything around us (objects, phenomena, people) actually exists without any inherent substantiality. Instead their nature is derived from this interconnected web of perception and experience; nothing stands apart and nothing stands forever. At least that’s what I think it means, but what the fuck do I know.

This one bends my head every time I try to really conceptualize it. Just when I think I’m there, I’ll breath, and the whole framework slips away.

There is no ignorance, and no end to ignorance. There is no old age and death, and no end to old age and death. There is no suffering, no cause of suffering, no end to suffering, no path to follow. There is no attainment of wisdom, and no wisdom to attain.

Still, it’s a nice thought. That everything we need to be happy, we already have, because we don’t really need anything, except each other.

..much like my 401k described within.

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 14:29:17 -0400

..much like my 401k described within.

A Quick Walk

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 13:08:00 -0400

I got out for a quick walk the other day, partly to check out a new trail I found recently and partly to test out the camera in my new phone (iPhone 4). The trail is only about 5 minutes away from my place, so it’s not exactly out in the middle of the wilderness. Being right next door though and only like 4 miles long makes it a great option when the mood strikes in the middle of the day. There’s also a ton of cutoff trails leading to the edges of the park so there’s lots of opportunities to explore.

As far as the camera goes, I like it quite a bit. I’ve always been a big fan of the iPhone cameras, especially since the 3gs came out with the tap to focus/white balance feature. The latest iteration continues the progression by upping the MP count, adding a flash, and enabling HD video.

On the whole it seems to be a great camera, though it does break down a bit on really bright highlights. What do I know though, I’m just a jackass with a phone. You can see my point about the highlights in the video below of some beavers I found making a den (html5 only). Shaking is a bit of a problem as well.

*hint the beavers are at the very top corner of that wood pile

Disclaimer: I don’t know anything about photography. Seriously, I still get confused by the whole large f-stop means small aperture thing. I do know what I like though, and an iPhone 4 camera + a wealth of processing apps is just the thing.

When I realized that my last few PhoneTography posts were all...

Sun, 27 Jun 2010 12:40:50 -0400

When I realized that my last few PhoneTography posts were all full of clouds, spring, and flowers I figured I better balance things out a bit. So here’s a picked over deer carcass I happened on recently during a bit of a walk. Everything ends.

There’s not much that brings a smile to my face with...

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 21:05:00 -0400

There’s not much that brings a smile to my face with greater ease than just staring at cool looking clouds. Maybe it’s a fundamental appeal to my lazy aspect, maybe it’s a spiritual connection to the true nature of things, who knows. Either way, snapping this after a near miss with an imposing thunderstorm was worth a few smiles.