Eponymous
   



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  • Eat. Run. Sleep.

  •        
    24 Dec 2012

    Christmas Eve
    On Christmas Eve, I headed out around 7:00PM to take a look at the Christmas lights and decorations around town. There was a snow storm predicted for around 9:00PM, so I decided to take the DeLorean out for one last drive before the Wonderful Winter Weather(TM).

    The snow started much earlier than expected. The snow was light and slow, and despite the car not handling well in slick conditions, I kept going for a while.

    As I was driving I had the realization that I was having an experience no one else in the world has ever had. I was driving a DeLorean through my town on Christmas Eve, admiring Christmas lights and listening to Christmas music as snow fell.

    I looked over at the empty passenger seat and wished there had been someone, anyone there to share this with. So for now, until circumstances like this arise again, I will continue to be the only person to have experienced this.

    When I got home, I took this photograph.
    Snow Covered DeLorean

    [/dmc] [permanent link]

    02 Dec 2012

    Happy Birthday

    I'm starting to get used to celebrating my birthday at TBM concerts. This year it was about a week prior to my birthday at a show on December 1 held at New York's Gramercy Theatre.

    Along with the tickets, I had also purchased the "VIP package." This package included an autographed poster signed by all members of the band, a "VIP" laminate on a lanyard, and... the opportunity to meet the band prior to the show!

    You may be thinking, "But they stick around after shows and mingle with their fans anyway," and "You've already met them a few times!" Both are true. And even with this "VIP" package meet-and-greet, they still make time for all their fans after the show. What this provided was a somewhat quieter meeting in a more intimate setting.

    In fact the meeting was in a small lounge beneath the concert hall. Dim mood lighting, mirrors, and couches set the atmosphere. I spoke with Rainbow, Michael, and Nate first. Rainbow informed me his name was Michael also and made a joke about the "power of the three Mikes lighting the room." After a bit, they started moving me to Chibi who was sitting on a couch after injuring her knee during a show two nights prior. She tried to walk to me, but I told her not to. She said, "I'll meet you half way then."

    I gave her a get well card, knowing she had had surgery on her vocal chords about 8 weeks prior and recently injured her knee. Someone decided we needed a photo of that and she gave me the card back so I could give it back to her. I believe it was Owen who said, "Act natural and hold it for 30 seconds!"

    I asked Rainbow about writing "Unfamiliar" because both he and OE were given credit in the liner notes. He said it was mostly OE; OE started it and Rainbow had finished it. I said I wanted to thank them because it was a song that had taken on some greater meaning to me and I relayed a brief version of the story of the moment I recognized that. It turns out "Unfamiliar" is one of Chibi's favorite songs too.

    Every one of the bands that night were amazing. All, remarkably, were performing as duos. Creature Feature was a real fun band to see. Their music is heavily influenced by old horror movies which gives them a dark yet fun sound.

    Aesthetic Perfection put on a good performance. Their drummer is amazing and fun to watch. They heavily synth-based and while there was a dark tone to most of their songs, they still had fun and lightened things up with a Fine Young Cannibals cover.

    William Control was the only other act I had heard before the show (Thanks Last.fm!). He was great live and I'd love to see him again. He reminded me a little of Dommin in that Dean Martin meets Glen Danzig sort of way.

    The Birthday Massacre was great. They played a good mix including songs from every album. For most of the set Chibi was sitting on a speaker placed near center at the front of the stage, wearing a knee brace. She stood up and moved around occasionally, but not much. At one point Rainbow sat down on another speaker and stuck out one leg in a similar fashion to how Chibi was seated and laughed a little. It was easy to tell by their interaction here that Chibi and Rainbow are close.

    If you care (or even if you don't), their set list follows:
    • Night Shift
    • Down
    • Control
    • Always
    • Red Stars
    • Video kid
    • Lover's End
    • Forever
    • Pins and Needles
    • Happy Birthday
    • Alibis
    • Calling
    • In the Dark
    • Sleep Walking
    • Midnight
    • -- Encore --
    • Leaving Tonight
    • The Long Way Home
    • Blue


    The band did not leave the stage prior to the encore as they normally would. Chibi said, "This is the part of the show where we say thank you and leave and you clap and we come back out and play some more. But I'm not going to walk down those stairs anymore than I have to, so do you want to hear three more songs?"

    [/tbm] [permanent link]

    Happy Birthday

    I'm starting to get used to celebrating my birthday at TBM concerts. This year it was about a week prior to my birthday at a show on December 1 held at New York's Gramercy Theatre.

    Along with the tickets, I had also purchased the "VIP package." This package included an autographed poster signed by all members of the band, a "VIP" laminate on a lanyard, and... the opportunity to meet the band prior to the show!

    You may be thinking, "But they stick around after shows and mingle with their fans anyway," and "You've already met them a few times!" Both are true. And even with this "VIP" package meet-and-greet, they still make time for all their fans after the show. What this provided was a somewhat quieter meeting in a more intimate setting.

    In fact the meeting was in a small lounge beneath the concert hall. Dim mood lighting, mirrors, and couches set the atmosphere. I spoke with Rainbow, Michael, and Nate first. Rainbow informed me his name was Michael also and made a joke about the "power of the three Mikes lighting the room." After a bit, they started moving me to Chibi who was sitting on a couch after injuring her knee during a show two nights prior. She tried to walk to me, but I told her not to. She said, "I'll meet you half way then."

    I gave her a get well card, knowing she had had surgery on her vocal chords about 8 weeks prior and recently injured her knee. Someone decided we needed a photo of that and she gave me the card back so I could give it back to her. I believe it was Owen who said, "Act natural and hold it for 30 seconds!"

    I asked Rainbow about writing "Unfamiliar" because both he and OE were given credit in the liner notes. He said it was mostly OE; OE started it and Rainbow had finished it. I said I wanted to thank them because it was a song that had taken on some greater meaning to me and I relayed a brief version of the story of the moment I recognized that. It turns out "Unfamiliar" is one of Chibi's favorite songs too.

    Every one of the bands that night were amazing. All, remarkably, were performing as duos. Creature Feature was a real fun band to see. Their music is heavily influenced by old horror movies which gives them a dark yet fun sound.

    Aesthetic Perfection put on a good performance. Their drummer is amazing and fun to watch. They heavily synth-based and while there was a dark tone to most of their songs, they still had fun and lightened things up with a Fine Young Cannibals cover.

    William Control was the only other act I had heard before the show (Thanks Last.fm!). He was great live and I'd love to see him again. He reminded me a little of Dommin in that Dean Martin meets Glen Danzig sort of way.

    The Birthday Massacre was great. They played a good mix including songs from every album. For most of the set Chibi was sitting on a speaker placed near center at the front of the stage, wearing a knee brace. She stood up and moved around occasionally, but not much. At one point Rainbow sat down on another speaker and stuck out one leg in a similar fashion to how Chibi was seated and laughed a little. It was easy to tell by their interaction here that Chibi and Rainbow are close.

    If you care (or even if you don't), their set list follows:
    • Night Shift
    • Down
    • Control
    • Always
    • Red Stars
    • Video kid
    • Lover's End
    • Forever
    • Pins and Needles
    • Happy Birthday
    • Alibis
    • Calling
    • In the Dark
    • Sleep Walking
    • Midnight
    • -- Encore --
    • Leaving Tonight
    • The Long Way Home
    • Blue


    The band did not leave the stage prior to the encore as they normally would. Chibi said, "This is the part of the show where we say thank you and leave and you clap and we come back out and play some more. But I'm not going to walk down those stairs anymore than I have to, so do you want to hear three more songs?"

    [/musings] [permanent link]

    07 Oct 2012

    Signs of the Apocalypse
    A friend told me this was from Glee. I found it amusing; thought I'd share.

    It's a fact that the book of Revelations predicted Twitter. It's one of the seven signs of the apocalypse; Along with porn, unexplainable weather anomalies, martian rovers, Barney Frank, the middle east and MSNBC. It's like Kirk Cameron said, "It's never too late, until it's too late."

    [/musings] [permanent link]

    29 Aug 2012

    Migraine
    I hate waking up with migraines.

    [/musings] [permanent link]

    28 Aug 2012

    freebsd-update
    I'm attempting to update my laptop from FreeBSD 9.1-Beta1 to 9.1-RC1. The freebsd-update(8) utilitly was reporting an error finding the public key. A quick search found this thread. As per tangram's suggestion, I used

    env UNAME_r=9.0-RELEASE freebsd-update upgrade -r 9.1-RC1

    and then the update began working.

    [/unix] [permanent link]

    20 Aug 2012

    unHide
    After a friend's computer became infected with some malware that hides files in your home directory and tries to extort money from you in order to "recover" your data, I was inspired to write this little program.

    All it does is search for hidden, non-system files and unhides them. It defaults to the user's home directory (My Documents), but other directories can be chosen.

    If anyone wants to try it out, please do. If you do try it, let me know what parts I can do better. I primarily work on embedded systems and Unix daemons professionally; the user only knows my software exists when it isn't working. As such, I have very little experience with GUIs or human-computer interactions. Any feedback would be much appreciated.

    The Windows executable can be found at: http://www.skinnymf.com/~mforde/unHide/. Source code is available upon request.

    [/code] [permanent link]

    01 Jun 2012

    Fun little alias
    I use a console based RSS reader written in Ruby. It crashes often and will delete my list of feeds in the process. It also has a tendency to not fully exit, leaving a ruby process sitting in the background soaking up close to 100% CPU time. For such occasions, I've added the following alias to my .cshrc file.

    alias killraggle kill -9 '`ps ax|grep raggle|grep -v grep|awk '\''{print $1;}'\''`'

    [/unix] [permanent link]

    01 May 2012

    Volunteers Needed
    The Lincoln Park Triathlon needs volunteers. If you'd like to help out, please visit www.lincolnparktriathlon.com/volunteers for more information.

    This event isn't possible without the help of volunteers. If you or anyone you know would be interested in helping, please contact us.

    [/musings] [permanent link]

    29 Mar 2012

    Lincoln Park Triathlon


    Registration for the 2012 Lincoln Park Triathlon is now open. If anyone is interested in volunteering, please email volunteers@lincolnparktriathlon.com.

    [/musings] [permanent link]

    01 Mar 2012

    Just a Question
    Given the following code fragment, I was asked to implement foo such that the program would output "America." How would you do it?

            int main()
            {
              char *p = "Hello";
    
              foo(         );
              printf("%s",p);
    
              return 0;
            }
    

    My solution involved allocating new memory from the heap to store the new string, and changing p to point to that buffer. They didn't like that answer. They preferred the method of putting the new string in the data segment as well.

    I personally would always avoid that, whenever possible. "Hello" is stored in a read-only area of memory as is "America" in their preferred solution. Any attempt to alter those strings will trigger a segfault. This is an accident waiting to happen.

    [/code] [permanent link]

    17 Jan 2012

    Races, Races, Races
    I've been busy the last few weeks or so; I've done a few races.

    • On October 30, I ran the Marine Corps Marathon in Arlington, VA and Washington D.C.
    • On November 5, I ran the Beavertown Fall Classic 5K in my hometown.
    • On November 6, I ran the New York City Marathon for the second time.
    • On November 19, I ran the Knickerbocker 60K Ultramarathon in Central Park.
    • On December 3, I ran NJ Winter Trail Series Race #1 Half Marathon in Wayne.
    • On December 10, I ran the NYRR Jingle Bell Jog in Prospect Park.
    • On January 7, I ran the Walt Disney World Half Marathon, part one of Goofy's Race and a Half Challenge.
    • On January 8, I ran the Walt Disney World Marathon, completing the Goofy Challenge.

    In 10 weeks I ran a 5K, a 6K, two Half Marathons, three Marathons, and an Ultramarathon, plus a few training runs in there...

    And last night Wii Fit called me a couch potato.

    In defense of the game, I hadn't used it in 547 days, and I'm now 11 pounds heavier than when I had last used it. It has no way of knowing that the vast majority of that weight gain was lean mass. It also has no way of taking into account all that I've done outside the game.
    Even with that in mind, it's still a little frustrating to be called a couch potato after running a marathon and a half last weekend.

    Each of these races were pretty special. I ran MCM alongside some fairly awesome people; people who I consider to be among my closest friends. In the Beavertown 5K, I somehow managed to take 12th overall and 5th in my age group without really trying.

    At NYC and then at the Knickerbocker, I ran with the friend who got me started running in the first place. I credit him with saving my life, and it was an honor and a pleasure to run with him.

    The trail half was my first trail race (not counting my time on the high school cross country team) and I ran that with a friend I hadn't seen since our days on the high school track & field team (she was a runner, I was thrower). We have both run full marathons in less time than it took us to complete this half.

    The Jingle Bell Jog was a fun race with bells and hot cocoa, and it was the first time I ran alongside my friend and former physics TA. And lastly, I ran the Goofy Challenge alongside another one of my close friends and training partners.

    These races were a lot of fun. Some of the courses were quite amazing to see, and these races were opportunities to spend time with some pretty awesome people.

    [/running] [permanent link]

    04 Jan 2012

    Disgusted
    With the Goofy Challenge just 3 days away, I should be carb-loading. And I am. And with each bite of my lunch I hate myself more. Every time I eat, I feel fat. And every time I ingest anything that isn't ultra-lean protein or high-fiber, I disgust myself. But I sit here, shoving food down my gullet.

    [/musings/self] [permanent link]


       
    Eponymous
    Eponymous
       



    About
    My Infrequently Updated Blog. The web-based journal of M. Forde, computer nerd, endurance athlete, and DeLorean owner


    contact

    Subscribe
    Subscribe to a syndicated feed of my weblog, brought to you by the wonders of RSS.

    Flavors
    There's more than one way to view this weblog; try these flavors on for size.

  • index
  • circa 1993
  • Sections

  • main
  • musings
  • running
  • DeLorean
  • code
  • unix
  • album
  • TBM
  • Archives

  • 2022
  • 2021
  • 2020
  • 2019
  • 2018
  • 2017
  • 2016
  • 2015
  • 2014
  • 2013
  • 2012
  • 2011
  • 2010
  • 2009
  • 2008
  • 2007
  • Disclaimers, Copyrights, Privacy, Etc.

  • ToS
  • Copyrights
  • Links

  • olix0r.net
  • netmeister.org
  • Giraffes
  • Eat. Run. Sleep.

  •        
    03 Nov 2014

    Things I love about vim

    • Tabbed interface in the 7.x line
    • Macro recording
    • Built-in sed
    • :make
    • Not needing to remember a thousand key combinations that require seventeen fingers to properly execute

    [/unix] [permanent link]

    24 Oct 2014

    Initial Thoughts on Windows 10 -- UPDATED!
    I'm done with Microsoft for any platform that is not a telephone. Windows 10 attempts to "fix" the abomination that was windows 8 on the desktop, but just makes things worse.

    The "search" "app" that replaces the previous existing search feature really only sends a query to bing. I'm looking for a file somewhere in a subdirectory on my hard drive. I didn't want to search the web for 20141020*.txt. The UI looks like crap. Slapping a titlebar on top of the "modern" "apps" does not make them usable on the desktop. The start menu has returned, but it has never been this useless. And the ability to revert to the "classic" start menu, the behavior introduced in windows 95, and refined in win98 and Windows 2000, has been removed. I shouldn't be surprised by that given that Windows 7 also lacked the "classic" start menu. At least Windows 7 allowed a "Windows Classic" theme for the rest of the UI.

    Ever since Service Pack 3 for Windows XP, MS has been slowly and surely trying to make things "easier." However, what they deem "easier" often means removing features and behaviors I relied on to get work done. Windows 10 continues this tradition.

    I never really had a problem with Microsoft, I never avoided their software for ideological reasons. I believe in using the right tool for the job. Windows 10 is the wrong tool for any job.

    UPDATE!!!

    Using the Windows Update mechanism, MS pushed out a new build of Windows 10. This upgraded the installation from build 9841 to build 9860. After a lengthy download, installation, and a very long reboot, I was able to log in again, Only to be greeted by this:

    Windows 10 build 9860 Update breaks Windows Defender causing error
code 0x80070241

    And this lovely error when I tried to open the new "Notification Center":

    Windows 10 build 9860 Update Notification Center cannot find
explorer.exe

    Now isn't that special?

    [/musings] [permanent link]

    07 Oct 2014

    The Truth is Out There
    Tonight, I had the great fortune of joining a person who means the world to me at a book signing by Gillian Anderson and her co-author Jeff Rovin. Jeff has ghost-written/co-written several novels for and with Tom Clancy, and Gillian is AGENT DANA SCULLY!!!

    Gillian indicated that she modeled the main character as someone she would play in a cinematic version of the story, and Jeff mentions that, while not required reading, the novel is a spiritual sequel to Edgar Allan Poe's only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.

    I'm going to put The Crytptonomicon on the back burner and put Poe's work and this new novel, A Vision of Fire at the front of my priority queue. Gillian Anderson and Jeff Rovin
    Gillian Anderson and Jeff Rovin

    [/musings] [permanent link]

    26 Sep 2014

    Give My Love to the Princesses
    I was out and about and happened to run into these two lovely ladies who seemed to like the car.

    Elsa and Anna of Frozen with DeLorean Elsa and Anna of Frozen in DeLorean

    [/dmc] [permanent link]

    14 Aug 2014

    Resetting Vim
    On occasion while I'm coding, I'll mistype something and vim's code autoindenting will stop honoring my settings. Likely, I've done something stupid that has disabled or modifying the settings from the defaults I set in my .vimrc file.

    If (when) this happens, Vim can be reset without exiting the procces by going into command mode and typing

    :source $MYVIMRC
    

    This reloads the settings of the .vimrc file without forcing you to restart the process, thus losing your place in your code.

    [/unix] [permanent link]

    31 May 2014

    1401554904
    http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amargasaurus

    ==================================================================
    This mobile text message is brought to you by AT&T

    [/mobile] [permanent link]

    28 Apr 2014

    Looking back...
    As I look back at code I wrote a decade ago as an undergrad, I often find lots of little things that can be done better. For instance, in one file I found that reversing the order in which two functions were called would have eliminated a half dozen conditionals from one of the functions and would have resulted in the same expected behavior, but with fewer lines of code and a lower cyclomatic complexity.

    [/code] [permanent link]

    07 Apr 2014

    1396881317
    Gear Tip: Dry Out Soggy Sneakers | Runner's World http://www.runnersworld.com/running-shoes/gear-tip-dry-out-soggy-sneakers?cm_mmc=F

    ==================================================================
    This mobile text message is brought to you by AT&T

    [/mobile] [permanent link]