Since people have asked, a Christmas wishlist:

• Bruce Schneier T-Shirt. My t-shirt size is Medium or Small.
• “No Raptors” shirt from the xkcd store.
• Something from my Thinkgeek Wishlist.
• Canon EF 1.4x II Extender.
• Canon BP-511A Camera Battery
• Additional memory cards for my camera, CompactFlash format. NewEgg.com is a good source for these.
• A gift card to B&H Photo.
• Various lenses for my camera:
  • Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro.
  • Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II.
  • Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye.
  • Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5.
• CDs are always awesome: Especially blues, They Might be Giants, Beatles (The White Album)

If I think of more things I’ll add them.

Tomorrow, I fly to Portland, OR for a one week business trip. If you’re a total geek like me you can track my flights on FlightAware:

• United 173 leaves KBOS at 0800 EST headed for KSFO.
• United 562 leaves KSFO at 1248 PST headed for KPDX.

Once the appropriate flight plan is filed my flights will show up as “scheduled” then after wheels-up they’ll be tracked by FlightAware (like all flights conducted under Instrument Flight Rules). FlightAware’s tracking is delayed by 6 minutes.

If you’re even more of a geek just like me you can also listen to ATC all over the world at LiveATC.net which isn’t delayed like FlightAware. So you can listen to flights moving from Boston Clearance Delivery, to Boston Ground, then Boston Tower, Boston Departure, then to Boston Center and so on… across the country until NORCAL approach, and so on.

I’ll be returning next Saturday on Alaska 802. Alaska 802’s tracking seems to have some strange issues, including regularly showing up with “result unknown” while a duplicate entry shows up in FlightAware with a slightly different aircraft type code with the normal completion. I believe this may be a bug in FlightAware, perhaps due to Alaska Airlines use of Required Navigational Performance, which is what the aircraft type suffix indicates.

Except for the flights, I’ll generally be reachable via cell phone, text message, email, and IRC/Jabber as time allows.

The week of November 12th I will be heading to Portland, Oregon for the DLNA Plugfest. This marks a new milestone as the first time I’ve ever traveled on a business trip (sadly, I will not be traveling business class :). The plugfest is a week long event where vendors who are members of DLNA will get a chance to test their devices for interoperability, as well as test with out product which is a test suite for the DLNA devices guidelines. I was also invited to the previous plugfest in Tampere, Finland, but alas I was in the UK for my honeymoon during the Finland Plugfest.

Unfortunately, I’ll be missing some class. But it works out well since that week is a short one due to a UNH Holiday and avoids scheduled tests. Plus, there is a decent chance I may be able to attend a plugfest in the spring as well, in either Europe (currently undecided between France and Spain) or Japan. Pretty sweet!

Last weekend Gennie introduced me to Scrabulous, a facebook app for networked scrabble play. On Monday night I realized you could select French as a language and started a game with Gennie. Well, I lost.. But it was quite close and the game ended when she had a q and I had a w and we couldn’t find any place to put them.

Much fun.

Lately I have been trying to do my ten mile bike ride route on Mondays and Wednesdays after I get out of class at 16:00. Today, I had to go to the ATM and the Farmer’s Market (in sequence :) so I got home a bit later - with the fading light I decided to do a shorter but more intense ride. The total distance was around 5.6 miles. It felt quite good. My legs have definitely gained strength and hills are a lot easier. Between that and the shorter distance of this ride the final hill was easily conquered and I didn’t even feel tired at the crest. Wahoo!

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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.

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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Well, Abby and I are married and returned from our honeymoon to the UK. We traveled to London, Keswick (north lake district) and Edinburgh. I have a new Canon Digital Rebel XTi camera, and the standard EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 kit lens, so all my pictures from the trip are with that. It is a very nice camera.. I am happy to have a finally digital SLR, although the kit lens leaves a few things to be desired. I’ve also decided to start hosting my photos are smugmug for now since Apache:Gallery has really left many things to be desired (particularly lately it has not been stable lately). It is an eventual goal to move things back here, but I need to find a better solution and there isn’t time right now. So my smugmug gallery is now the source for photos from my SLR camera.

Full gallery

For the first time in several months, I am clean-shaven.

I started going through some old photos, including my photos from backpacking in the White Mountain National Forest last August (2006). The current blog header photo is from there. None of these photos have been posted here before.

This is the AMC Lakes of the Clouds hut stationed at 5050 ft. near Mt. Washington’s summit cone. Wind and solar power are used here to provide electricity for the hut (radio, minimal lighting, refrigeration). Lakes of the Clouds has had problems losing wind turbines due to the high winds seen at this location.

This was taken around the same time as the previous picture from the Lakes of the Clouds area. You can see some weather monitoring equipment to the left. The area to the left forms the Ammonosuc Ravine.

I took this earlier on our trip from the summit of Mt. Garfield. Traversing the Garfield Ridge was one of our longest days. The ridge runs along the northern rim of the Pemigewasset Wilderness, seen here. The Pemigewasset River drains this large basin. The woody mountain in the middle is Owl’s Head, bane of peakbaggers.

The evening after climbing Mt. Garfield we were at Zealand falls. The Zealand Falls hut is not far from here. It is the only of the huts to use hydroelectric power. Water is taken from the river and used to run a mechanically interesting well water pump for fresh water at the hut and a second water feed goes to a homebuilt turbine for electricity. Zealand is also one of the huts open on a minimal basis in the winter. We had hoped to go this winter, but conditions and busyness unfortunately delayed that project.

You can find larger versions of these and more in the gallery.

So, we’ve received our grades:

• CS671 Programming Languages: A
• CS520 Assembly Language and Machine Organization: A
• PHIL447 Computer Power and Human Reasoning: A-
• MATH531 Mathematical Proof: B+

Overall I am very pleased. I could probably have gotten an A in my Philosophy class if I’d studied a bit harder on the final, but I am happy I spent that time studying for my math final instead. I was right to not worry about the CS520 final, which was quite difficult. I did quite bad on one of my math tests earlier in the semester, basically made some mistakes, wasted time in the process, and then lost my cool. The final was a joy - everything fit into place. I’m sure I must have done well on the final given my final grade, which I am proud of.

I’ve finally started a short Christmas wish list. I’ll add to it as I think of other things to add.

So, I am now a Computer Science major! And, my schedule for fall is finalized:

• MATH 531: Mathematical Proof. With Rita Hibschweiler, whom I had for Calculus I some time ago. I’m looking forward to this, I think it will be fun.
• CS 520: Assembly Language and Machine Architecture. This will be similar to ECE612/562 and ECE543. But CS majors are required to take all three courses so now I will be learning it from a different perspective.
• CS 671: Programming Languages. This will cover the ML Programming Language and some advanced Java topics. ML is a functional programming language, which will be neat because I don’t have much experience with that paradigm. I wish we were covering another language besides Java in the second half, however.
• PHIL 447: Computer Power and Human Reasoning. I like the professor for this class and I think it will be a lot of fun. It’ll be nice to be taking a non-technology class again.

About a week ago, I stopped at a local gas station and on the counter was a flyer for a local ultralight “Fly-in” (a gathering, basically). This sounded like a lot of fun, and Abby and I headed over to the small private airfield in Greenland, NH where the fly-in was occuring. There were a wide range of aircraft there, from small trikes to light sport aircraft and even what looked to be experimental general aviation aircraft. We both got a chance to take a short trip in a two seat light sport aircraft. It was quite impressive. The aircraft leaves the ground almost immediately after beginning the takeoff roll and climbs steeply after takeoff. The air was still and the ride was smooth.

After climbing for a while, we banked left and headed towards the seacoast area. The pilot demonstrated the stability of the aircraft. Properly trimmed fixed wing aircraft are inherently stable and at a stable airspeed can be flown “hands off.” With his hands off the control stick he had me lean forward to show the effect on the pitch of the aircraft. When you move forward from the center of gravity the nose does pitch down slightly and a descent begins. After this, we got a chance to see some of the surrounding area from the air at around 1000 feet. Returning to the field and joining the traffic pattern, we approached the grass field for a landing as the pilot used the rudder to yaw the aircraft to reduce airspeed (no flaps) and align with the runway after clearing some trees. After straightening out we flared for landing and touched down gently on the grass airstrip.

It was really awesome.

As you may know, Northwestern New England has gotten a pretty large amount of rain this weekend. By some estimates we have already received around 10 inches of rain with more on the way. While other parts of the state (in particular the central part and the Merrimack River Valley) are experiencing more problems there is definitely flooding here.

I took some pictures when I went out earlier to buy some pants. Of particular interest is laminar flow over the Oyster River dam. Typically a more slow typical turbulant flow is seen. When I drove past Packer’s Falls there was a crowd checking out the falls. The river was definitely above flood stage, with water moving fast through trees at the river bank. Not far downstream it was still showing rapids, in the same area I skiied on last winter. When I left the river downstream of the falls was just beginning to creep onto the road.

Later, we went out to Portsmouth for dinner with Abby’s family and when we returned NHDOT was just blocking off NH 108 between Durham and Newmarket. We had to take the back route, which also had numerous flooded sections and washouts, some of which with pretty fast moving water. Fortunately we live on a hill. Although there is a lot of drainage going down the road and down the hill into the retention ponds right outside our porch. The ponds connect with a small waterfall which is typically completely dry in the summer season. Right now, the little cascade is so loud that I can hear it from inside the apartment with the windows closed. Exciting :)

UPDATE: Abby has posted some photos from today. As of now just about every road heading north from here is closed at some point due to the flooding or washouts. We’ll see if I can make it to Durham for work tomorrow morning!

UPDATE 2: More pics added from Tuesday. Things have now crested, and water levels are falling. The NH Army and Air National Guard are here to fill and place sandbags along the edges of the Macallen Dam in town. Hopefully at this point a dam breach has been avoided - earlier today it was a very real posibility. A river has appeared near the Citgo station on Gerry Ave. which is flowing across the road and through houses before eventually emptying into the lower Lamprey river below the dam.

So, I’ve finally made the upgrade I’ve needed to make for some time: more RAM. When I built Vindaloo in 2003, I included 512MB of memory in two sticks. This was an unfortunate decision. While the RAM I purchased was fast, I’ve really found myself needed more lately. Between Eclipse and other Java apps, lots of tabs in firefox, and general intense multitasking, I’ve found vindaloo swapping intensely and basically the disk thrashing endlessly while the system practically hangs. I have on multiple occaisions exhausted all 512MB of memory and 512MB of swap. So, with a gigabyte of RAM costs around $70, I finally made the upgrade. Vindaloo now has two new 512MB sticks plus one of the two 256MB sticks. Unfortunately, there are only three slots, so one of the original 256MB DIMMs is left over.

I’d eventually like to replace vindaloo, of course. I’ve really found myself wanting a multiprocessor systems, as frequently I am doing enough things that two cores would really bring about a huge increase in the general interactivity of the system. So, I find myself wishing for a dual core Athlon 64 workstation. No mere gig of RAM, either. I’m not making that mistake again. When I build the replacement it’ll have at least 2GB. Vindaloo itself would become a dedicated storage server. Of course, this is some time with the fairly distant future. One of the more frustrating things is that advances in bus technology (specifically PCI-Express) mean I can’t upgrade vindaloo piece by piece. I will need to upgrade at least the motherboard, CPU, and graphics card in one chunk and at that point one might as well build a whole new box.

If you or anyone you know would be interested in purchasing a 256MB stick of low CAS latency (2-2-2) PC2700 DDR SDRAM, please drop me an email or comment and I can figure out a price.

So, I have now had all of my classes for the spring semester. In approximate order of difficulty:

• CS 620: Operating System Fundamentals. This will be my second CS “concepts” class, the other being data structures. My last CS class involved a lot of programming. This class is going to involve conceptual understanding of how operating systems work. There will be a few C programming assignments, but they will be of minimal scope. So far, the material given in the class has mirrored what we covered in ECE562 last year. I also feel like I’m entering the class with a pretty good grasp of how operating systems, especially Linux, fit together.
• ECE 583: Design with Programmable Logic. This class will introduce VHDL and other modelling techniques. In typical fashion, there is an unsupervised lab where we will be building something. While the professor has a strong Chinese accent and is sometimes hard to understand, I feel like the material will be relatively easy to grasp.
• ECE 544: Engineering Analysis. Multi-dimensional Calculus with a slight emphasis on electrical engineering applications (IE, electric and magnetic field modelling). This could be a tough class. The professor has some interesting ideas about a hands on learning method which well set us loose trying to solve problems on our own. Then we’ll discuss potential solutions in class and come to conclusions. Very new age. My concern is that with the tight density of engineering math courses and the slower teaching pace described by the professor we’ll run into a time crunch or not be able to cover all of the material. Hopefully, it will work out alright.
• PHYS 408: General Physics II. As with most Physics classes, I anticipate a lot of work. This class already has significantly more scheduled time than any of my others, with three hours of lecture, 1.5 of recitation, and three hours of lab scheduled each week. In addition, online (”webassign”) homeworks are due three times a week, plus lab reports. This adds up to a significant ability to eat time. I tend to find physics principles easier to grasp than other students, but that doesn’t make this class any less difficult. I think I’ll find the topics covered in this half to be more interesting than mechanics.

I’m excited about this semester. I can finally see a light at the end of the tunnel, and the material we are covering is very interesting.

Aelscha and I are in Florence, Italy. So far we’ve been to Venice, Florence, and today a day trip to Pisa. Tomorrow we’re going to travel south of Rome to Sorrento, near Naples. We’ll get to see Pompeii and samples some of the Southern Italian cuisines. I am actually relatively impressed with my ability to speak a few words of Italian. Right now we are on a wireless access point in Florence. More later, when I have a chance!

Aelscha and I leave for Italy today. We’ll be back on January 14th. We’re going to be starting at the top - Venice - and working down. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to post an update here from a net cafe. And, as always, expect lots of photos when I return.