Tag: travel

Phone-in Geolocation: almost working…

It’s a hasty and rather brittle thing, but I seem to have the asterisk side of the equation functioning at a minimal level, including recording audio to go with the latitude and longitude that I dial in when I call. Aside from the beautification and cleanup to make it more intuitive, all I need to do is test the “convert the recording to mp3” call and whip up a quick frontend to display the data. Then all of you loyal fans (and/or secret conspirators) can follow along on my long but hasty journey complete with audio. Aren’t you lucky? (Don’t answer that…) If my schedule works out well enough, I may even be able to do a travelogue update from New Belgium Brewing Company along the way.

The basic process is that I whip out my trusty cellphone, call home, and dial the appropriate extension. I then key in my latitude and longitude, and then record up to a five minute bit of audio to go with it. The script then sticks the latitude, longitude, and timestamp (local to the server) at the end of a comma-separated text file and will then invoke a background process of LAME to convert the file to mp3 for online listening. I’m probably only going to have time for a really simple web interface for the moment since I’ve got to hit the road by lunchtime tomorrow after some work in the morning, but once I’m back from this trip I’ll hopefully have a chance to spiff it up.

UPDATE 20081223:If you’re bored, and you watch http://omniblab.dogphilosophy.net/where you MIGHT see an update or to show up during the day, assuming everything works. Unfortunately I won’t actually know if it worked until tonight when I stop for the evening and get online to check it out…

ANOTHER UPDATE 20081223 (late): Now that I’ve stopped for the evening, I’ve fixed the stupid last-minute typo that was keeping the page from working. The audio isn’t automatically being converted to mp3, so until I get time to figure that out the audio parts of the updates won’t show up until I have time to log in and start the conversion by hand. Hopefully be able to fix that (and spiff up the display page) in a day or two.

Any questions, comments, or suggestions (or requests)?

Geotagging through Asterisk?

Between telemarketers annoying me into getting my upgrade to Asterisk 1.6 finished and the hasty long-overdue road-trip back to and from Idaho again, I’m reminded of an idea that has been fluttering around in the back of my head, not unlike a small bat in the top of a bell tower.

My vast hordes of cult-like fans always seem to want to know where I am. This is obviously an issue in a case where I’m going to be driving 1600 miles, then turning around and driving back, over the span of 4-6 days. It would be pretty easy to set up something on a web page somewhere with some kind of map. The real problem is – how do I update the map?

In some places, I could stop for a while, haul out Igor, boot up, find a public wireless network connection to the internet, and do the update that way. However, that’s time-consuming and awkward, and I want to get this trip successfully completed as quickly as I can. Plus, it’s not always easy to find public network access points, especially through the barren, windy, snowdrift-covered wastelands of Southern Wyoming where a chunk of my route will take me. I have a hypothetical solution, however…

Continue reading Geotagging through Asterisk?

Obscure scientific papers, Mad Science, Travel, and other randomness

First – an amazingly astute observation that I’m ashamed to have not previously noticed myself (click image to go to it’s original site and see it full-size…):
Most 'Mad Scientists' are actually just 'mad engineers'...

I’m proud to say that I think testing Mad Hypotheses is great, and will continue to try to be a Mad Scientist. And a “Dirty Old Man” someday, but that’s a whole separate issue.

Second – I am really loving the perks of my new job – namely access to the college library system. I had previously mentioned (see last couple of paragraphs) a certain article that I wanted to get my hands on:

Greenberg LA:”The Definition of an Intoxicating Beverage”;Q J Stud Alcohol. 1955 Jun;16(2):316-25

Not only does the medical library have copies of a Czechoslovakian microbiology journal, the main library had a set of this old journal, too. I have my bedtime reading for tonight…

Thirdly – Another Giant’s Shoulders carnival has come and gone. I now believe that Eduard Buchner had hit upon not only a useful truth of living systems, but also a nifty alternative “mad scientist” hairstyle. Now I need to come up with one for next month. It’s been getting me thinking, though. That blog carnival is intended for “Classic” papers. Implied is that the papers are somehow important to the development of some scientific field or other. I’d like to see a variation on the “old papers” theme focussing on random old papers (where “old” might mean a few years or decades, depending on the subject) that people have found useful or interesting. Stuff that isn’t necessarily ground-breaking and has perhaps been forgotten or lost to obscurity but still has useful things to teach us. Naturally, I’m thinking especially Microbiology (and especially Microbiology other than Medicine) and Food Science. The Carnival could be called something like “Second Chance Science” or something of the sort. Just a thought.

Fourth – speaking of “Microbiology Other Than Medicine” and Food Science, apparently The National Academies of Science want to know what scientific topics people most want to read about. As usual, “microbiology” appears to have been relegated in their breakdown to merely a subset of either medicine/diseases, “biology”, and perhaps a small subset of “energy” and “Feeding the World” (no, seriously). The survey includes space to tell them what they’re missing – I heartily encourage anyone who cares to make sure you take the survey, and mention industrial and environmental microbiology and food science as subjects they shouldn’t continue to neglect.

And, finally – next week I need to make a very-long-overdue run back up to Idaho to grab some things from the old house and make sure it’s still standing, the water’s really turned off, nothing unnecessary is running, etc. 1600 miles of driving each way. Ugh. Anybody got any good recommendations for things to listen to on the trip? Other than having a chance to finally grab some things that I am missing, maybe I’ll at least have a chance to visit New Belgium Brewing Company again, since my route goes right past it. So long as I’m not driving by on Christmas day (when I assume they’ll be closed) I may have a chance.

Possible audio show, and “ask me anything!”…

You may be wondering where I’ve been. (If not, in order to spare my fragile little ego, please pretend that you were. Thank you.) Well, mostly I’ve been in my car driving to and from my spiffy new job.

This hasn’t left me with much time to blog lately, which annoys me a bit. On the other hand, the commute is long enough that I run out of netcasts to listen to during the week, leaving me with driving time back and forth during which I could conceivably be doing something productive.

Continue reading Possible audio show, and “ask me anything!”…

Lake-spanking map and pictures

Lake Conroe has been persistently naughty. Since nobody else seemed to be taking responsibility for its misbehavior, we took matters into our own hands yesterday and gave it a good spanking. I paddled it until I got blisters.

I think this will need to be done much more often, since I don’t think the lake has learned its lesson yet. On the other hand, I learned a few – interactive photo-map and details below…

Continue reading Lake-spanking map and pictures

(Tap Tap Tap) Is this thing on?…

Move is underway. Here’s a quick update / test.

Cornelia and Monk(eymutt), the Laser Dogs

On the way home (to Texas, that is, with a load of furniture from House v1.0 in Idaho) we adopted a co-dog. Now Cornelia isn’t the only official dog in the house.

Yeah, I know, pretty frivolous stuff. What do you want – this is mainly a test post. You guys ARE seeing this post, right? (Please comment and let me know). I’ve finally found and jumped through the hoops necessary to migrate the bigroom.org website over to the new host. It’s also running on the old server in House v1.0 on the DSL line as well, but this post isn’t getting put on it. If I’ve done everything correctly, hosting for bigroom.org should now be handled by Eskimo North. Just a few other minor tweaks and I’ll be set to return to House v1.0 and shut down the old server so I can move it down here to Texas.

I’ve gone from about 4400ft elevation down to about 250ft, but the plastic bottles of Mountain Dew® Wine seem to have positive pressure, so it would appear there is still some live yeast left in there and the priming sugar is slowly doing its job. I’m pretty sure the benzoic acid is what’s slowing down the activity so drastically, but it hasn’t killed it off yet.

I’ve also got a couple of entries in mind already for the next The Giants’ Shoulders blog carnival, and hopefully some more crazed brewing project news to offer sometime. And, of course, the promised post on why benzoic acid works. Stay tuned.

Very brief post…

Sorry about having another brief bout of blogstipation. We’ve finally managed to close on a house and now we’re probationary Texans (y’all). I’ve been spending the last week+ driving back to SE Idaho (by way of Best Friends, since we now have room to hire a second dog to hopefully keep Cornelia the Laser Dog company. I’ve got to lug 3 cats (and one goldfish in a small fish tank) a distance of 1600 miles or so starting in about 6-8 hours. Wish me (good) luck.

After the weekend, I should have some time to get back to the real posts. The Mountain Dew Wine was virtually unfermented when I returned, even after sitting there 10 days, but since I’ve gotten back it’s started going. Still slowly – the bubbler spits out 3-5 bubbles ever 40 seconds or so – but it’s going. It’ll be interesting to see what I end up with. I wanted to do 2-3 posts on the effects of benzoic acid on yeasts (that’s the preservative in Mountain Dew®), and I would swear I had one or two others in mind. Oh, yes, and an update on getting a Magellan GPS replacement that can actually be used – they seem to have located a slightly lower-end model eXplorist that they can send me. I sent them back their “walled garden”-based Triton 500, so the replacement unit ought to show up next week, I think. Their service has been pretty good, at least.

Another “Open Thread”/quick followup

Time to take the special-needs kitty to the vet for boarding and gas up Flagella (yes, I named my car Flagella) and hit the road. By popular (i.e. more than zero people) demand, here’s my route (again, RSS readers will need to come to the website to see the map). Wish me (good) luck.

ID to TX [height=480;width=560]

Another cheatin’ “Open Thread” and random stuff

No single topics to dominate a post today. I’m in a hurry (as usual lately) and have very little time. Tomorrow morning I’m back on the 1600-mile route back to Southeast Texas, hopefully to sign the closing paperwork on the house we’re trying to buy.

My Mountain Dew® Wine appears to be still sitting there after several hours. Either the benzoic acid is still inhibiting the fermentation (in which case it’ll go REALLY slowly) or the yeast is just in shock or something. We’ll see how it looks in the morning. I’ll leave it for a week or so anyway to see how it does. Meanwhile I’ll refrigerate the other batch of yeast culture until I get back. If I have to develop my own strain of “Mountain Dew Yeast” I will, dagnabbit!

I did get a chance to go for a quick walk in the Big Room on the way back from some errands yesterday, so it gives me an excuse to play with the wordpress map plugin again (RSS feed readers: the map doesn’t get inserted there. Please check out the interactive map at the blog’s website here.) Comments on the map (or anything else, really – I DID say “Open Thread” after all) are encouraged – what do you think? I’d like to do some audio content for points on a map at some point, too. Maybe some video.

Lava Rock Walk [height=560;width=560]

If anyone’s bored enough to want to see how I get from Southeast Idaho to Southeast Texas, I can post a map of that tomorrow, too…

I finally got to Bristol Brewing Company…

Signage in front of the Bristol Brewing CompanyAfter spotting the company’s mention in Jeff Sparrow’s “Wildbrews“, I’ve been wanting to visit Bristol Brewing Company, particularly since they may be the only such brewery using local yeasts and bacteria that they isolated themselves from their local environment.

Since we’re moving from Southeastern Idaho to Southeastern Texas, I’ve been going back and forth between the two location. It just so happens that along with New Belgium Brewing Company, Bristol Brewing is actually right along a convenient route between the two locations. (Let’s see if I can figure out how to work the Google Maps plugin):

How’s that look? How does it work? (Those of you reading this on the RSS feed: The interactive map only appears on the website, it would seem. Please check it out here.) I made the KML file myself…

Bristol Brewing is a cozy little brewpub, and the people there are encouragingly helpful. They were in the middle of bottling, so there were no tours. Also, there were not currently any of the skull-‘n-bones beers available. However, I did get an educational series of tastes of their current brews on tap (thank you to the employee I spent most of the time talking to whose name I’ve embarrassingly forgotten, but who I believe was Tad Davis judging from the photos on the web site). I also lucked out and their microbiologist, Ken Andrews, happened to be there. I asked about their native Colorado brewing flora. Turns out Bristol Brewing isn’t quite as bold as I originally thought. They’re still doing their primary fermentation with “normal” brewing yeasts. What they’ve done is inoculated some wine barrels with the locally-isolated yeasts and bacteria, and they use the barrels for a secondary fermentation and aging instead. Much safer if you have to worry about having a drinkable product at the end, and of course it makes me feel like more of a crazed rebel for wanting to isolate my own local bugs for the main fermentation. So, a great visit overall.

Incidentally, it seems they’ll be tapping a new Skull-‘n-Bones brew in a couple of weeks, at 5pm on Tuesday, May 27th (2008). It sounds like they’ll probably have some available for a few days before it all disappears, so I’m hoping my return to Texas can be timed such that I can swing by and at least get a taste.