Stephen Skory

Bookmarks for January 17th through January 31st

Stephen Skory — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 05:07:18 +0000

These are my links for January 17th through January 31st:

Record and Reverie " Blog Archive " The Correct Way to Enable AC3 … – How to allow AC3 passthrough audio on a mac using Perian.
Fossil: Fossil Home Page – Yet another distributed version control system, but this one has some interesting features (web interface built-in in particular) and uses a SQLite database on the back end.
Overview — Numpy and Scipy Documentation –
The Infosphere, the Futurama Wiki – I can't believe I didn't know about this until know.
Chicago Journals – The Astrophysical Journal – Information for Authors – Guidelines on how to format an article for submission

Bookmarks for December 23rd through January 12th

Stephen Skory — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 22:07:41 +0000

These are my links for December 23rd through January 12th:

Astrophysical Journal Subject Headings, Astrophysical Journal Subject Headings –
CUBA: A Package for Computing the UV/X-ray Background Evolution – Unfortunately, the files are not downloadable, but this appears to be what I need.
Azureus, now called Vuze : Java BitTorrent client – Latest CVS Snapshot – The files needed to run Azureus from the command line.
Console UI – AzureusWiki – How to run Azureus on the command line.
bitbucket.org – Free and premium mercurial hosting. Has some interesting features.

Bookmarks for December 17th through December 22nd

Stephen Skory — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 01:01:08 +0000

These are my links for December 17th through December 22nd:

Berkeley Unified Parallel C (UPC) Project – The homepage for UPC.
ClickToFlash – Block flash in Safari.
500 Internal Server Error – 500 Internal Server Error
Example vimrc – Vim Tips Wiki – An example .vimrc file.
Compression Ratings – Compression Benchmark – A whole site dedicated to comparing various compression packages.

Bookmarks for December 7th through December 10th

Stephen Skory — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 21:06:24 +0000

These are my links for December 7th through December 10th:

Root Wireless – CNET Reviews – High-quality maps showing the quality of coverage for the major American cell phone carriers. No maps in SD yet.
Lala – Save and stream your music collection online, for free, with an iTunes-like interface (for better or worse). Someday they may have a business model, but for now it's free.
Glims for Safari | www.MacHangout.com – Offers a wide suite of enhancements for Mac OS X Safari.
Pimp My Safari: plugins – A good list of plugins for Safari.
Safari AdBlock: block ads in Safari – Uses the same list as AdBlock plus for Firefox.

Thanksgiving Dinner 2009

Stephen Skory — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 03:27:59 +0000

Turkey sandwiches with heirloom tomatoes and country bread, and homemade french fries. For two.

Bookmarks for November 6th through November 19th

Stephen Skory — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 05:00:50 +0000

These are my links for November 6th through November 19th:

Plus 3 Network – Raise funds for charity by logging athletic activities.
PasteExtension – Mercurial – A mercurial extension that pastes the result of 'hg diff' to a pastebin of your choice.
500 Internal Server Error – 500 Internal Server Error
MyP2P.eu :: Free Live Sports on your PC, Live Football, MLB, NBA, NHL and more… – I haven't actually tried this yet, but it seems promising.
Readability – An Arc90 Lab Experiment – A bookmarklet that turns any webpage into a simple book-like page free of distracting clutter.

25 Hours of Frog Hollow

Stephen Skory — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:02:24 +0000

Last week I traveled to Utah with seven friends (above: Paul, Chris, Stephen L, Mike M, Mark, Mike H, Matt and me) to ride our mountain bikes. The main attraction was the 25 Hours of Frog Hollow race that was held 10 A.M. October 31 to 10 A.M. November 1. The twenty-fifth hour was provided by the end of daylight savings time that happened during the race.

The race was held just outside the sleepy Utah towns of Hurricane and La Verkin, near St. George. The location is amazing, which I’m told is not unusual for Utah. Above you can see Matt watching the sunset on the mountains and the (nearly full) moonrise as he gets ready for a lap.

The course itself is broken up into four sections. It starts out with a climb, mostly on fire roads. Next is a descent on the Gem Trail which is fast and smooth and extremely enjoyable. After the Gem trail, there is a section on flat fire road that connects to the Virgin River Rim trail (I think that’s the name) which is a very brutal and demoralizing stretch of rocky single track. The trail is littered with sharp-edged flat-topped rocks spaced inches to feet apart. It was difficult to maintain momentum and the terrain made my back hurt.

I rode four laps of the course. My first at 11 am, then 3pm, 8pm and finally at 3am. The pace of laps naturally slowed at night, and we also got some sleep in the early part of the morning. The bright moon meant I didn’t need my lights for most of the climb on the night laps. This kept my eyes sensitive, and I could see the sky filled with stars. On one of the night laps I stopped for a minute or two to just enjoy the calm and emptiness of the desert at night. The weather was very amenable to racing. It was clear the whole race with minimal winds. The daytime had temperatures in the mid-70s (F, of course), and nighttime in the low 40s. For the very curious, I have the GPS track of my ride online. I didn’t clear the GPS between laps so there are some weird smoothing effects on the graphs during the time I turned off the GPS.

My team was made up of Matt, Chris and Stephen L, and we came in fifth of six finishing teams, out of seven that started the four-person category. The other team in our group, Paul, Mike M, Mark and Mike H, finished one lap up on us and in fourth place. Neither of our teams had any designs on actually competing for a high place in the event, so we are both satisfied with the results. All of us also had Halloween costumes. Mike H above shows his very warm Luigi costume that came in handy for one of his night laps.

I want to also mention the ride we did a few days before the race, on Gooseberry Mesa. This was riding like I have never done before. The mesa has huge rock-face sections that we crossed on which the trail is marked by painted white dots. It felt like sight-reading music for the first time, picking our way on carefully planned routes to cross technical rock sections. The trail network is built on a mesa that narrows to a point high above the surrounding land. The panorama above is a nearly 2π view from the point. The land below is the area on which the race was held, and a few of the fire road sections can be seen. This Google Earth image shows the relationship between the two places we rode.

A couple of the trails we rode tracked the rims of the mesa very closely, especially the south rim trail. In this Google Earth image, you can see just how closely the red line tracks the edge of the mesa, and below you can see the sharpness of the mesa edge near the point. It was truly spectacular riding! Again, for the very curious, here is the GPS track for that ride.

As always, I’ve posted a few more photos here.

Bookmarks for October 12th through November 3rd

Stephen Skory — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:00:34 +0000

These are my links for October 12th through November 3rd:

AnnualCreditReport – The only official, free credit reporting site. The rest are all lies!
About Dictionary Cleaner | Two AM Software – A control panel that allows you to see and edit your custom spelling dictionary in Mac OS X.
500 Internal Server Error – 500 Internal Server Error
Main Page – Fail2ban – Blocks IP addresses that attempt and fail too many times to log into a server.
RANDOM.ORG – String Generator –

Blue Angels Over Mesa

Stephen Skory — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 23:29:08 +0000

We didn’t go to the Miramar Air Show this year. I’ve lived long enough in Mesa apartments to know the routine for the Navy’s Blue Angels and that they they pass overhead several times. When I heard them pass the first time I went out with my camera to see what I could capture. This is the best picture I got. I see (and hear!) F-18s flying overhead daily, but never in such close formation so low to the ground, nor turning so sharply as when the Blue Angels are in town.

Nobel Canyon

Stephen Skory — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 17:04:13 +0000

Yesterday I rode the Nobel Canyon trail in Cleveland National Forest with Mike Hannon, Mike Morton and Stephen Lynch. Yes, it was two Mikes and two Stephens. I have posted a few photos and a movie here, and my GPS track can be seen here. The splits view of the ride shows there was one kilometer that rose 133 meters, which works out to over 13% average gradient for that kilometer.

Bookmarks for September 4th through September 21st

Stephen Skory — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:05:01 +0000

These are my links for September 4th through September 21st:

Message Passing Interface (MPI) – Useful for general reference, too.
Dive Into Python 3 – The popular Python book updated for version 3, which I may use someday.
pixelsnap – Project Hosting on Google Code – A plug-in for Inkscape that automatically snaps graphics to the pixel mesh, so when the image is exported to a non-vector graphic format, the lines don't become fuzzy.
pool.ntp.org: the internet cluster of ntp servers –
U.C. Alumni Club of San Diego County –

NYC March 2000

Stephen Skory — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 21:21:09 +0000

I am not a very sentimental person, but I remembered I took these photos years ago, and I’ve uploaded them today. These were taken in March 2000. The nighttime shot is from the top of one of the towers – the south one I believe – you can see the other tower in the corner.

Bookmarks for August 15th through September 3rd

Stephen Skory — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 21:48:24 +0000

These are my links for August 15th through September 3rd:

Triton Ganglia Cluster Report – Keep tabs on how people are using Triton.
Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: Compatibility –
pdfpirate.net – free, online and no limits pdf restriction remover –
Snow Leopard Compatibility: Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Compatibility List –
Python: module pexpect – A python module to do expect-like operations.

Seattle

Stephen Skory — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 04:21:49 +0000

I’ve put up some photos from our trip to Seattle, here. Enjoy!

At SciPy 2009; Caltech

Stephen Skory — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 18:12:34 +0000

I’m at the SciPy 2009 conference at Caltech in Pasadena today and yesterday. It is an amazing collection of nerds and questionable facial hair styles. There have been some interesting talks.

I like this ’snub cube’ fountain:

The SciPy crowd:

A fountain in front of the building the conference is in:

Bookmarks for July 14th through August 13th

Stephen Skory — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 15:01:10 +0000

These are my links for July 14th through August 13th:

Parallel MPI BZIP2 (MPIBZIP2) –
Parallel BZIP2 (PBZIP2) –
Chapter 8. Managing releases and branchy development –
National Center for Computational Sciences » BBCP – Helpful bbcp examples.
Detexify LaTeX handwritten symbol recognition – Draw in a box, and it returns the LaTeX command for that symbol.

2009 Tour Pool Wrap-Up

Stephen Skory — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 15:16:41 +0000

The 2009 Tour de France pool is over, and Team Storky came in fifth. In terms of the time gap to the winner, this team did better than any I’ve been part of before. But it lacked several things: luck and winners.

The team lost Levi Leipheimer, a nearly-guaranteed top-five finisher, Jens Voigt who always finishes tours well-placed and is capable of winning a stage, and Robert Gesink, a promising young Dutch rider who has won a Tour of California stage ahead of Leipheimer and finished seventh in the 2008 Vuelta a España. No other team in the pool lost a single rider of the caliber of Leipheimer, nor three riders of such skill and ability.

The team also got exactly two time bonuses, for a total of 25 minutes of bonus time. This put Team Storky as the second-lowest team in terms of accumulated bonus time, ahead of only the astoundingly unlucky Team John Arnold. Team Wells got over eight times as much bonus time as Team Storky. On one stage, a group of eight escaped from the pack and reached the finish before everyone else. Of those eight, three were on Team Storky. Time bonuses go to first, second and third. The Team Storky riders got forth, fifth and seventh. That outcome is emblematic of the kind of luck the team had throughout the tour. It appears that to win the pool, a team needs at least a sprinter or two that can finish well-placed on a number of stages reliably, something my team didn’t have.

Above: The fire department was training across the street from my apartment on Sunday, in no way related to the Tour de France. I just wanted to share that.

Bookmarks for June 28th through July 9th

Stephen Skory — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:00:54 +0000

These are my links for June 28th through July 9th:

HG QuickRef v1.0 – Yet another quickref for mercurial, but this one has gaudy colors!
Intrinsic functions in Fortran 90 –
KDTREE – A Fortran & C++ (using Boost) kD tree implementation.
Forthon – Build Fortran code into Python modules, like f2py.
California ISO: System Status – See the current energy demand for California.

2009 Tour de France Pool

Stephen Skory — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 20:11:41 +0000

It’s Tour time again, and I’ve posted the team rankings after today’s prologue in Monaco. You may remember this from last year, when I didn’t do very well. I hope to do better this year. For once I actually put some thought into my choices.

I’ll update the rankings every day after the stage as quickly as I can!

Pareidolia

Stephen Skory — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 16:58:57 +0000

For a few months I have subscribed to Shorpy, a site that posts high-quality scans of historic American photographs. I save the ones I like, and I’ve set my computer to rotate randomly through them as my computer desktop picture. This morning I saw something I couldn’t ignore! Take a look at the photo below of the French Market in New Orleans in 1910:

What do you see just above and to the right of the wagon wheel? You can click on the image for the full view, or look at a zoom-in below:

It’s Che Guevara, of course! You can clearly see an eye, his beard, two nostrils and hat. He even appears to be sticking his tongue out. I am forced to wonder how his image ended up on a horse-drawn cart in New Orleans eighteen years before he was born. But clearly it’s a sign of something profound and mystical. Any ideas?

(Further reading.)

Bookmarks for May 27th through June 17th

Stephen Skory — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:00:30 +0000

These are my links for May 27th through June 17th:

GALAXEV: Bruzual & Charlot (2003) – Bruzual & Charlot SED code page.
Murky – A Mercurial GUI for Mac OS X.
Page Speed Home – Benchmark webpages. Kind of like Yahoo!'s YSlow.
BibDesk – Organize your bibtex references.
North Korean Economy Watch » North Korea Uncovered – (Google Earth) – A Google Earth KMZ file of North Korean points of interest.

Water Drip

Stephen Skory — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 03:57:16 +0000

I found the faucet in my lab at school dripping this morning. I guess some air got in the pipes and a bubble formed. Each new drip was forming on the bottom of the bubble until it fell off. Fun accidental physics!

Play Quicktime version

Bookmarks for April 27th through May 25th

Stephen Skory — Tue, 26 May 2009 04:00:40 +0000

These are my links for April 27th through May 25th:

Skim | Home – Annotate PDFs with text and symbols.
kD-Tree kNN in python ‎(Mike’s Coderama)‎ – A python kd-tree implementation.
YooouuuTuuube – Make any youtube video into trippy art!
Simplify Media – Connect Your Music – Share music across the internet. Interesting, one of several approaches to this problem.
Irradiated Software – SizeUp – Finer control over window sizes in Mac OS X. Donationware.

Inconsistent

Stephen Skory — Sun, 17 May 2009 20:05:01 +0000

Seen this morning in front of the La Jolla Farmers Market, parked in a red zone:

DTV Delivers

Stephen Skory — Fri, 08 May 2009 01:41:08 +0000

Big news.

Universal Sports, which is part of NBC, is going to show the entire Giro d’Italia live! I’m guessing that because Lance is riding the Giro, Universal Sports figures Americans will be interested. Down here in San Diego, the local NBC affiliate broadcasts several digital channels over the airwaves. They have their main channel 39-1, that shows full-1080p high definition TV. They also have 39-2, a weather channel, and 39-3 shows Universal Sports. Neither is HDTV, but I’m not complaining. The Tour de France is always on cable, so I have to go to a friends apartment to watch it. I’ll be glad to watch this on my very own couch.

My mornings suddenly got much earlier for the next month.

Update May 9: The Giro is being streamed live online, not over the air. It is just a commercial-free stream of the Italian coverage (with inconsistent English commentary) on the Universal Sports website. I guess I read what I wanted to read. I’ll take it however I get it.