The lens used in both my is my Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM prime telephoto, an excellent lens. The flash used is a Canon Speedlite 580EX II. And, of course, the body is the Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi.

ISO 100, 1/60, f/4.0, Program AE. I shot this one a few days ago and only got around to post processing it in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom last night. To take it, I put the camera on a small tripod and used my new cable release. That way I avoided the dreaded “arms out” photo. Afternoon light is coming in from the right of the photo. I used the 580EX flash bounced vertically off the ceiling, with the white bounce card extended. White balance and contrast adjusted in Lightroom. Other sizes.

ISO 100, 1/100, f/3.2, Manual Exposure. This was shot in the bathroom mirror when I was first trying out the 580EX. The flash head is facing directly up, with the bounce card extended just past the edge of the frame. You can see the reflection in the lens. Other sizes.

How to Daemonize in Linux

Abby accidentally left her key in my car so I had to drive home after my 8AM class to return it to her. Since I was home and today is such a beautiful day I decided to go for a bike ride before work. I biked out to Wiswall Dam, in Durham. The route is via Packer’s Falls Road (my standard route to UNH) and then Wiswall Rd. right after Packer’s Falls. The Wiswall Dam area used to be the center of Durham, with a mill and later hydroelectric power used to light surrounding towns. Once the University of New Hampshire was founded, the center of Durham moved to its present location. Now there is an old dam and a wooden deck bridge over the Lamprey River just above it.

After a short break at Wiswall Dam I rode home by continuing down Wiswall Road, eventually reaching NH 152 by turning left onto Little Hook Road and Lee Hook Road. Then, I followed 152 back to meet my previous route and headed home. The whole thing was about 10.1 miles, in about an hour of actual biking. Not bad for having my mountain bike and being out of practice with regards to biking.

You can see the route below (I did the reverse of what Google’s route shows):

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Today for the first time since before our trip to Mt. Kilimanjaro I ran hills.. just like old times. I ran around 2 miles, stretched, then ran the Hersey Lane/Durrell Drive hill near our apartment from bottom to top 3 times in sequence, walking down in between. According to Google maps the hill length is between 0.3 and 0.4 miles (hard to select exactly where the hill crest is on the map). So, this is a pretty good workout. Plus, I was pushing myself on the hill. I didn’t time my first run up the hill, but the second and third were 2:54 and 2:46 respectively. This is somewhat more but comparable to what I was running while training for Kili (except I was doing 5 or 6 runs up the hill instead of three). Even more gratifying, after the third (and fastest) push up the hill I did not stop at the crest and kept going at a very good pace until I reached my customary spot to walk a cool down before returning home.

Git cheat sheet

In SVG and PNG formats.

Lawmakers to Cut Subsidies To Student-Loan Providers.

The money will go towards Pell Grants instead of the student lending agencies who have recently been rocked by corruption and scandal.

How JPEG compression works.

Not only did Bush know there were no WMDs in Iraq prior to invading, he was personally involved in distorting the intelligence to fit his agenda.

I actually went running again today, for the second time in two weeks. It felt really good, even better than last time, and I was able to do a more strenuous run. From our apartment I ran up the hill, then down the big hill to Huckins Drive. Huckins is a one way loop of around a quarter mile - nearly the length of a standard track (400 meters). I ran around Huckins once hard, then walked it, then ran it again hard, then walked it, then ran one final time fast. Then I walked for a short ways until the big hill (Durrell Dr/Hersey Ln) and then ran up the big hill. This ended up being about 45 minutes of reasonably strenuous activity, with three 400 meter sprints. The total distance was probably around 3.2 miles.

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From #haskell, via a discussion on reddit:

<sigfpe> Haskell is so strict about type safety that randomly generated snippets of code that successfully typecheck are likely to do something useful, even if you've no idea what that useful thing is.