Tralfaz

Blog

  • End of an Era – Passing the Torch

    For the last three and a half years, I have had the pleasure of running the Southern Arizona Greyhound Adoption web page. I was there at the beginning when Diana Hansen, then acting as the Communications Director, hosted us volunteers in her house, to discuss the public facing image of the brand spanking new organization.

    There were 6 or 7 of us in the room, and we were discussing the establishment of our social media presence. I volunteered to begin the creation of the website, and to assist with the other bits and pieces.

    I could have not known that it would last almost three and a half years.

    On that fateful night, we decided to use an open source CMS, Joomla! as the desire was to have a largely static web page, and to have a system that could be used by the other volunteers to create and edit content (oh, how naive I was), and the other two CMS options, WordPress and Drupal, were either too “blog” like or much much overkill.

    So a quick site was created, while in the background, I created the Joomla! site for the long haul solution.

    After a lot of hammering and shaping, the site came together, the best that a design by commitee could accomplish, and it went live in early June 2012.

    Not too surprising, the Joomla backend interface was a bit daunting for the casual volunteers to work with (I think one volunteer worked on it and did like three whole pages) so I setup front end form tools to allow the entry and maintenance of things like available hounds, membership lists, and the like.

    Over the years I got adept at handling the requests for changes in the supposedly static front page (turns out that wasn’t as important as we originally thought).

    Life changes

    In the interim, I took a new job, moved first to Phoenix, then to San Jose, so I became a lot busier. I still kept up the website, maintaining it, fixing it, and adding/adjusting what was requested by the Communications and board.

    However, in late 2014, the version of Joomla! we were using went end of life. The daunting task of migrating to a new version (version 3) and with it, re-doing all the plugins and controls was beyond my ability to achieve.

    So, when the email came in late June that the board, working with a new volunteer (who is now the Communications Director,) had been working on a replacement, it was a major relief. I was unsure how much time I could put into a new website, and knowing what I put into the original one, I expected it to be measured in the hundreds of hours, it was a welcome notice.

    Sidebar: I think the President was worried that I would be offended, or put off by their side project. The email was a bit cautious, trying not to offend me. Ha! I am in Marketing, I can take a lot of offending.

    The last week or so, I have helped with the final touches to the website. The new site is WordPress, which has matured greatly in the last 3 years, and it looks incredible. I see many touches of my original designs, so I know that my trailblazing set a standard.

    Friday night, July 3rd, I pulled down the old Joomla! site, archived it for posterity, and moved the new WordPress site to the hosting.

    It is up, it is live, and it looks like the new owner is well capable of carrying the torch.

    Best of luck!

  • Cursing Apple – trying to lose data

    My old MacBook Pro has seen better days. For far too long it has been my “main” home computer. All my photos, music and videos were stored there. However, with iTunes Match (and now the new streaming service), and the moving of all my photos out from under Aperture to Photos (grrrr) and more importantly, to Adobe Lightroom, there isn’t much need for a massive system anymore.

    Starting in OS-X 10.8, Apple made available the possibility of making a fusion drive, a blend of SSD and spinning disk storage. As this laptop has both a traditional disk, and an SSD, I have long wanted to do it. However, it would be majorly disruptive, so I held off.

    Now that much of the content serving has moved off local storage and armed with a fresh, complete time machine backup, I decided to take the plunge.

    What I was unprepared for was how difficult it would be to accomplish.

    Step 1 – create the Core Storage filesystem

    This was not trivial. Partly my fault, I had the second drive set for all the user data, and it automounted on boot. Back in early 2012, this was the best way to setup a SSD/Spinning disk combo. It required some CLI hoo-doo, but once done, it rocked.

    However, it made this step difficult.

    I first copied the boot disk to an external (thanks to the wonderful Carbon Copy Cloner, software that is easy to use, and creates a bootable copy.

    Alas, this wasn’t so easy. Yes, I created a bootable copy, and was able to boot from it, but it still automounted the spinning disk, so I was unable to setup the new Core Storage spanned disk.

    I tried to re-install OS-X from the recovery partition. This failed too.

    Turns out that Apple does a really good job of preventing you from losing data from a dumb mistake. If there is a valid file system, with files on it, the installer goes to heroic efforts to not lose that data.

    Admirable, and helpful for most unsophisticated users, but maddening to me, who actually DID want to blow that data away.

    grrrr

    I ended up “installing” OS-X on an external, booting from that external, and then using diskutil to wipe both drives.

    Even that wasn’t easy. I had to delete partitions, recreate them, and delete them again to get it setup.

    nothing is easy

    Creating the spanned core storage “disk” (aka Fusion drive) was trivial, and done from the terminal.

    Making and partitioning it was about a 5 minute process. After dinking around, making two carbon copies, reinstalling the OS twice, and finally getting to a point to install on my new fusion drive. Total time: 1.5 days (ok, I did bike, and do some other things while I was waiting for cloning and installs to complete)

    I now have a MacBook Pro, running 10.10.4 with a 256G SSD/750G spinning disk Fusion drive, and not much else on it. I will out it through its paces, but it is just a backup computer now.

    Summary

    I have been a hard-core Apple fan for a long time now, but this was a rather frustrating process. In the Windows world, it is truly trivial and easy to wipe out your drive and start from fresh. I have done it at least 100 times. since the early 1990’s (yeah, I am an old fart)

    Apple makes that difficult to accomplish. Probably with good reason, as most people would be screaming at the Genius Bar if they had made it too easy to lose all your data. So they take a “preserve the status quo at all costs” approach. Commendable. Maddening too.

    I stumbled around, and because I was more familiar with how to accomplish this task in Windows (wipe and reinstall) I had more difficulty than I should have. C’est la Vie.

  • Medium Format Camera

    I have long been a bit of a photography bug for almost all my life. I started early in High School with a photography class, and have been a bit of a shutterbug since.

    Mostly 35mm film and now digital, I always was envious of the medium format cameras.

    About 10 years ago, when DSLR’s were booming, you could pick up a quality medium format camera for a song on E-Bay. A nice Hasselblad with a solid lens for less than $400. Yeah, that sweet of a deal.

    Then it got stupid, with them running for nearly the same as when they were new. So I dropped the idea.

    Recently though, the bug has bitten. Fortunately the renaissance of the prices has ebbed, and you can once again get a good solid camera for $400.

    You can get a variety of film in 120 format, from good B&W to color and slide film, so that wouldn’t be an issue, and processing is still widely available from specialty shops.

    Will I? I don’t know. But it is tempting. What I can be certain of is that I will not be buying a digital back. They seem to start at about $27K.

    (My preference would be a Mamiya 645 with a waist lever viewfinder)

  • I’m back from a 3 week break from Facebook

    A little over three weeks ago, I deactivated my Facebook account. No particular reason, but not the first time.

    However, since my last “vacation” in 2009, a lot has changed, and not being part of the Facebook community was difficult.

    There is a frightening number of applications and websites that don’t work well if you are not associated with a Facebook account. Everything seems to want to either connect or authenticate via Facebook. Strava, Spotify, and others seem somewhat “lost” if you are not connected.

    My blog, Tralfaz (here, dummy) dropped by at least a third in daily viewings. The irony is that when I look in google analytics for traffic sources, Facebook is almost non-existent in sources, but the trends are clear for traffic. (I wouldn’t be surprised if Facebook does some anonymization to deny Google any leverage from their traffic.)

    I have several pages that I admin, and some of them I have a “secondary” account to log in with. It is amazing how lousy the Facebook experience is with < 10 friends.

    It took a full week for the first friend to hunt me down. I was a bit surprised it took so long, but since I didn’t do a “rage quit” and announce my deactivation, I guess it is cool that some people missed me enough to try to hunt me down.

    The last time I took a break, I lasted 9 months. However, this time, 3 weeks was a struggle. I am disappointed that I folded so fast, but it is a testament to how essential Facebook has become in the last 6 years. It is the principal vehicle that more than casual acquaintances use to keep in touch. It is how I talk to my siblings, and some of my friends there are far closer than any of my IRL friends I have had forever. Powerful and frightening all at the same time.

  • More notes on LA Traffic

    As a recent post mentioned, I was traveling to visit family in San Diego, and having foolishly chosen to drive, I had to twice navigate the LA Basin.

    Always entertaining, and somewhat frightening, the drivers in LA are somewhat insane.

    • Modern Jaguar – As I was entering into the valley on I15, this jackass was in a huge hurry. He came up on me at about 100 mph, and quickly changed lanes to get ahead almost clipping a semi next to me. Then this asshole did the traffic weaving thing so aggressively that an ambulance he cut in front of almost had to drive off road to not hit him. I was glad to see him disappear into the haze.
    • Giant diesel pickup truck – This gets my asshole of the day award. First we were in a construction zone on 210. So the limit was 55, probably the most ignored limit in the country. This asshole did a few really bad things. First, he decided that he really wanted around this truck carrying giant I-beams for some construction project, so he dove into the exit lane that was ending to get around. Of course he was “rolling coal” around this spewing enough soot to darken the sky for miles. Once he got in front of this big truck, he was disappointed that there was another truck in front of him, so he just jumped over two lanes, almost taking out a Mini, and a beat up, wheezing Camry. Then he was off to the races, spewing the plumes of soot laden diesel exhaust
    • Virtually all trailer drivers and cars/trucks towing – In California, trucks (yes, even big diesel semi’s) and small vehicles towing trailers are limited to 55mph. It was truly astounding how fast these people drive towing rickety, crappy trailers, often bouncing all over the lane. Where is the Highway Patrol when you need it? I swear if they just stopped those breaking just this law, they could easily wipe out any budget deficit.
    • Tomato trucks – In the central valley, you have these big trucks that are open hoppers filled with various produce. Onions and tomatoes are common. Occasionally one of them will tip over making an unholy mess. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case this week. One thing that is certain though is that these trailers are rickety and in poor repair. Yesterday, I was not disappointed. One of them was on the side of the road, a tire had completely disintegrated on it, leaving a debris field about a half mile behind where the driver got it off the road. Yep, that is some spaghetti sauce that will be late to be made.

    Fortunately, I made it home in one piece. Eight and a half hours of driving, 460 miles. Stewie got about 30 miles per gallon, not too bad!

  • Drivers – and Sucking

    Having relocated back to the SF Bay Area a little over a year ago, I have commented on how the civility and the sanity of drivers on the freeways and highways had taken a turn for the worse.

    Really bad, selfish behaviors had become more prevalent and ingrained, with the trend to trying to get a little bit ahead.

    I sorrowed for the past where there was some decorum, and grace to be found, if not universal.

    Then I drove through Los Angeles yesterday.

    Holy fucking hell

    The LA basin has always had bad traffic. There is a continual effort to increase capacity, but alas, all improvements do is create a brief respite until the monster that is LA drivers come in and fill it to overflowing.

    I saw first had some truly insane events.

    1) As I was on I5 headed south, just past the grapevine is an exit (2 lanes exit only) for Lancaster. This ginormous SUV, with California plates (not a tourist) and a hitch rack loaded with camping gear cut in front of me with about 6″ to spare. No signal, no courtesy wave, just cut in barely missing the front of my car. Then this asshole quickly jumped two more lanes over almost causing another accident.

    2) On the 605 cut over from 210 to I5 in Santa Ana, a car about 200 meters in front of me just spun out. No other cars involved, just spinning, smoking tires, and ended up pointing in the wrong direction. Fortunately, I was able to get around that quickly before it turned into a clusterfuck.

    3) Back on the 210, there was some roadwork. All sorts of signs said that the speed limit was 55, and that it was enforced aggressively. People didn’t even blink and continued doing 75MPH or more. About 2 miles into this 8 mile stretch, I saw a CHP merge in, thinking “Good, he is going to nail one of the fuckers…” Nope. He quickly accelerated to 80+ and kept moving.

    I made it to San Diego about 3:30 PM (left about 7:30), so not a bad time.

  • Vacation Time

    Yep, since there is a little revenue problem at work, we have been “encouraged” to take 4 days of FTO in this fiscal quarter. With not so subtle hints that the week before the 4th of July holiday would be grand for this.

    So, I am taking the week off. Woo hoo. Not a great time at work to take off, but alas, I have learnt when they recommend you take time off, there is someone counting those days taken, and you don’t want to be on that list.

    Yippee.

    Today I have a party to go to, a colleague is having a house warming party.

    Tomorrow I will jump in Stewie and head to San Diego. My dad lives there, and as he is now in his ninth decade, there is a realization that there aren’t infinite opportunities to see him in the future (damn, I am getting old).

    So, I am going to be “Jackin’ it in San Diego”

  • The Original Star Trek Episodes

    The Original Star Trek Episodes

    I am probably going to piss off a lot of people with this, but I am wondering why the 1960’s version of Star Trek is a cult classic. Really painful to watch. Far more than the awful acting of the Shatner, the stories just suck.

    I just began watching it again via Netflix streaming, and the first three episodes are just plain awful.

    Huge plot holes, bad acting, awful story lines, it really is crap, and painful to watch.

    However, it is intriguing to see how many South Park plot lines came from the series. I keep connecting the dots.  Those boys sure were fans of both Star Trek and the Twilight Zone episodes.

  • Lunchbox from Hell

    My Lunchbox from Hell

    This weekend, I picked up the electric guitar, and fired up the Gallien Krueger to do some jamming. I almost forgot how epic the tone of this kick ass little amp was.

    I bought it way back in 1985 or so. I remember doing the Guitar Center/Guitar Showcase puch-pull to get it for something less than $500, probably a 20% discount from the list price.

    It is a small-ish practice amp, 2 4.5″ speakers, and built in reverb and chorus. It is a true stereo amp, and if you connect it to two large speaker cabinets, the chorus is lush. However, I just play it to my self.

    There are two channels, a “clean” channel, with a modest gain and some clipping that you can get a decent Fender Twin Reverb sound out of (in about 1/4 the size), but the fun is the overdriven channel. It has a very crunchy overdrive, that can deliver a very satisfying tone.

    The 4 band equalizer provides a stunning range of sounds, and tones, so that you can tailor the sound to your liking.

    When I bought it, I was in a heavy metal phase, and I played it balls out crunchy. Very appealing.

    But as I matured, and more importantly, I bought a good Fender Super 60 amp, my first (and only) tube amp. My sound evolved, and I played more straight up rock, blues, and even some jazzy things (albeit not very well).

    The GK is feeling its age. I suspect the speakers need to be replaced, and the jacks are noisy, but when I plug in, dial down the bass, and crank up the gain, I can feel the inner hair-metal guitar god come through.

    A most enjoyable hour of playing.

  • Spinning Vinyl – How my outlook has changed

    Spinning Vinyl – How my outlook has changed

    I remember my early years of listening to music. When I was gifted a modest hifi system, and began buying records (no tapes in that era), I listened to my LP’s sparingly, as I didn’t want to wear them out. As I learnt with my Sargent Pepper soundtrack (the movie, featuring Peter Frampton) you can wear out a record.

    So, as soon as I could afford it on my paper route money, I bought a cassette tape recorder, and began transferring the music to tape, and wearing those out.

    It was more like a mastering process, where I would covet and protect the vinyl, and then dump it down to cassettes to listen to. This also allowed me to “mix” the songs, my own early “mix tapes“.

    Then, in 1983 the Compact Disc was launched, and I eagerly moved to the new format. A lot of my music was still on LP, but most (or all) of my new purchases was the never wear out, play it all you want, CD format.

    Today

    Fast forward to today. Once again, I have a turntable, a modest Sony belt drive that I inherited. A decent amplifier, and studio monitor speakers.

    I am again buying vinyl, but instead of treating it like gold, playing it solely to record it, I play it to enjoy. Whole album sides.

    I don’t worry about wearing them out. I just play them to listen to.

    Latest addition: Rush’s “Hemispheres”. Great album.