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SW

By anders pearson 20 Mar 2005

i’ve spent the entire day catching up on email and RSS feeds after my trip to austin and tucson last week.

austin to see lani and for the yearly pilgrimage to SXSW to eat, drink, and geek out with the web elite. i reconnected with most of the people i met last year and met many more new people too. i know i met at least 58 people.

i had planned on printing out a whole mess of mfr stickers to hand out to people and generally coat austin with, but i was too much of a slacker to get that done in time. so the night before i left new york i got a bunch of colored 3x5 index cards, some fresh sharpie markers, and drew a bunch of robots. like this guy. about 20 different robot designs, repeating some on different colored cards. 60 cards in all. on the back i put my contact info. like business cards but much more personal and much cooler. everytime i met someone i gave them a robot (when i remembered at least). after the conference, i had 2 robots left. hence, i met at least 58 people.

all in all a good conference. no house fires this year, so i think that makes it pretty successful.

while i was in austin, my parents were in tucson visiting my grandparents and uncle, so i decided to head over there for a few days too since i was in the neighborhood. i haven’t been to tucson since i was in 5th grade and i hadn’t seen the arizona branch of my extended family for quite a few years, so that was good to get in. at SXSW, Molly found out that i was going to be in tucson, where she lives, and insisted that we meet up for dinner. so on thursday night (St. Patrick’s day apparently), my parents and i had some margaritas and grub with her. Molly’s always fun and my parents had been spending a lot of time cooped up in the RV park where my grandparents live so i think they really enjoyed having someone new to talk to for a bit.

the rest of my time in tucson was spent visiting the relatives, seeing various sights, and soaking in the warm weather.

getting back to new york yesterday was the real nightmare of the trip. i’d planned things so that i’d be getting into laguardia at 11pm which, taking the m60 bus, would have me back in my apartment by midnight. my flight from tucson to dallas was delayed long enough that i missed my connection to laguardia. the only other flight to LGA that night was solidly overbooked so they offered me a choice of a later flight to Newark, or a flight to LGA early the next morning. this was possibly the worst choice i’ve ever been offered. worse than the last election. arriving in Newark in the middle of the night or spending a night in Dallas? well, when it comes down to it, Newark is the lesser of those two evils so off i went. we landed in NJ around 12:30. the airport shuttle was running slow so i couldn’t get to the NJ Transit terminal in time to catch the 12:44 or 12:56 trains into manhattan. had to wait for the 1:30. all in all, i finally made it back to my apartment around 2:30. i’m fairly used to that kind of thing flying standby all the time, but this time, i was worried about all the spring break kids making it hard to get anywhere standby so i actually paid a bunch of money for a real ticket. so color me extra annoyed.

two days in the city, and i’ll be off to DC for pycon. then, maybe, some rest.

raising the bar

By anders pearson 02 Mar 2005

we haven’t had much of a problem with comment spam here on thraxil.org. there have been a couple half-assed attempts but nothing like the 500 attempts at a time several times a week that i’ve seen at other sites like mfr and pretty much any popular movable type or wordpress powered blog with open comments is likely to see.

what we have had a bit of a problem with ever since i opened up comments is with… well… bored idiots. i delete them when i spot them, but there seems to be a surprisingly large population out there of people who land on thraxil via some google search or another and see the comment box as an open invitation to spew their garbage all over us. thraxil used to be a little island of intelligent discussion on the web and i’d like it to get back to that. garbage piling up everywhere doesn’t make for that kind of environment; it just attracts cockroaches and rats.

so i’ve made it a little harder to litter here. now, when you post a comment, it will ask you a very simple question which you will have to answer correctly for your comment to go up. anyone who’s been here a while will already know the answer. anyone new who really wants to contribute should be able to figure out the answer without much effort. but it’s some effort, and that should hopefully be enough to keep out the trash. if it proves to be too easy, i’ll raise the bar even higher. you’ll only be asked the question the first time you post from a particular browser, after that it will remember you and everything will work just like it used to.

(i don’t expect this to really block any comment spam; thraxil’s relative obscurity and the fact that it’s not built on a common weblog engine do more to prevent spam than any code i could write. )

plugged

By anders pearson 15 Feb 2005

i guess i should mention that music (for robots) didn’t win the PLUG award. Pitchfork Media beat us :(

we weren’t really surprised. after all, pitchfork (and the other sites nominated) actually have things like… a staff… and a budget. mfr has a free copy of MT, some donated bandwidth, and the spare time of a couple music geeks. seriously, we were incredibly surprised and honored just to be nominated for the same award. hell, we were nominated for an award on the same page as artists like Tom Waits and Nick Cave. Nick Cave was nominated for a PLUG award and lost too! company doesn’t get much better than that.

we did get free VIP passes to the PLUG awards ceremony in new york last week which was pretty cool. much cooler than the grammies. i have pictures up (including our celebratory pre-awards dinner at our favorite japanese place). we didn’t really meet anyone famous (Christina Ricci’s on the PLUG advisory board so i had my hopes up), but getting to watch from the VIP lounge as Dillinger Escape Plan terrified a hall full of hipsters was pretty sweet. (go see DEP if you ever get a chance. they were nominated for the ‘live act of the year’ award for good reason)

almost famous

By anders pearson 20 Jan 2005

MTV (and MTV2 + MTVU) is currently airing a short piece that features music (for robots). it’s one of those hourly news break things that they’ll repeat over and over again for a few days. i haven’t actually seen it yet, but i heard that it first ran during TRL (hah!).

the story is mostly about this kid in one of jP’s classes and his band who are getting famous because of the exposure we gave them on the site.

last week they interviewed jP, blair and myself. the interview lasted about an hour. the piece was supposed to be edited down to a 2 minute segment of which we would be a small part. unfortunately, because of the presidential inauguration, they had to edit it down even further to 1 minute. as a result, jP was the only one of us that actually had any time on screen (and only a few seconds).

still, between this and being nominated for a PLUG award, we’re pretty damn surprised at all the attention we’ve been getting.

now it remains to be seen whether the site will manage to hold up to the increased traffic.

nofollow

By anders pearson 19 Jan 2005

thraxil’s engine now supports the nofollow anti comment spam technique.

yeah, we haven’t really gotten any comment spam on here yet, but i prefer to remain proactive.

enjoy.

buy blue

By anders pearson 14 Dec 2004

buyblue.com lists a bunch of companies and which political parties they contribute to.

it actually crossed my mind a couple weeks ago to build a very similar site. since elections are won by the party with the most money. actual votes don’t seem to matter in comparison. it was going to be a “who you really voted for” calculator. you would enter in estimates of how much money you spent with certain companies over the last month or so and it would weigh those numbers based on the amount and percentage that those companies donated to the parties and tell you who you actually voted for with your purchases. these guys beat me to the general idea, but it might still be worth building the calculator just for fun.

the buyblue site also seems focused on holiday gift purchasing so they miss some of the big ones like tobacco companies.

update: Choose The Blue has a more complete list, but still no calculator.

come work with me

By anders pearson 05 Dec 2004

we‘re looking to hire a new junior programmer.

if you’re a good web backend programmer and you want to work next to me, apply now. we have applications deployed using: python, perl, java, zope, plone, mod_perl, tomcat, postgresql, oracle, db2 (but we’re moving away from it), wxPython, Flash. having some familiarity with a subset of those would be a good start.

it’s academia so the pay isn’t quite what you would see for the equivalent position in the private sector, but it’s enough to live on comfortably in manhattan plus the benefits are good, you get to take free classes at Columbia, and you get to work with a very cool bunch of people in a pretty laid back environment working on software to help educate the next generation (not just to make some rich guys even richer like some industries).

misadventures in mexico

By anders pearson 24 Oct 2004

here’s the full report on the trip to mexico with lani and anastasiya.

no one was killed or kidnapped and overall it was a good time. Copper Canyon and Mexico in general (outside the border towns and spring break type areas) are highly recommended for vacation spots. the main downside to the trip was that we spent a lot of time travelling.

lani’s mom is a flight attendent so we are able to fly pretty cheaply. the catch is that we have to fly standby and that means that things don’t always work out like planned.

the plan was for me to fly down to austin on friday afternoon (with connections in DC and atlanta) where lani and anastasiya were already waiting, then we would fly to El Paso on saturday morning and take a bus across the border to Juarez and then a 10 hour bus down to Creel. i managed to get on a 3:30 flight to DC. the last flight from atlanta to austin was at 10pm. to catch it, i had to get on a flight to atlanta that left DC before 7. didn’t get on the 5:00. didn’t get on the 6:00. didn’t get on the 7:00. the 8:00 was delayed till 8:30 but i finally got on it. since i’d missed the last flight out of atlanta, lani’s mom picked me up at the airport (she lives outside atlanta) and i spent the night giving her guitar lessons. first thing in the morning, i got on a flight to austin.

we spent saturday in austin while lani finished up stuff at her lab. there were 5:30 and 7:30 flights from austin to el paso (with a connection in dallas). we made it to the airport at about 5pm. one of the other catches with flying standby on the airline’s dime is that there is a dress code. no jeans. no open toe shoes. etc. lani and i have flown standby many times so we’re used to it. this was anastasiya’s first time though. since it had never affected lani or i before, we were unaware that lip rings are also against the dress code. to make a long story short, i had to extract it in the airport with some needle-nose pliers. by the time that was taken care of though, we’d missed the 5:30 flight. the ticket agent assured us that the 7:30 had plenty of empty seats though. 2 hours later, we discovered that there were exactly 2 empty seats on the plane (and 3 of us).

flights out of austin the next morning were all oversold (although the dallas to el paso leg was fine). so we had no choice but to rent a car and drive to dallas overnight. none of us had really slept more than a few hours in the last few days, but somehow we made it without killing ourselves (though the overnight drive through texas certainly had its share of David Lynch moments).

from there on it was pretty smooth sailing. we got to El Paso and got on the bus to cross the border. i had my first injury of the trip then. the bus had little TVs hanging down from the ceiling with nice sharp corners. one of which put a nice dent in my skull and some blood in my hair. but it didn’t hurt too much and we made it across the border and got onto a sweet bus to Chihuahua. probably the nicest bus i’ve ever been on. the seats were comfy, there was plenty of legroom, and LCD television screens (that were nowhere near my head).

we got into Chihuahua at about 6:30 at night only to find that there were no more buses to Creel until the next morning. so we found a dirty $10 hotel (the Lonely Planet guide recommended it as about the best in town) with no hot water, had some dinner and wandered around town for a bit (but it was sunday night and there wasn’t much open).

the bus to Creel wasn’t nearly as nice and turned out to be a local bus so it stopped at every little town on the way. it even stopped to pick up people on the side of the highway. 6 hours later, we finally made it to Creel. dropped off our stuff at the hotel (the same one that every other Lonely Planet reader in town was staying at). got some lunch. then decided to rent some mountain bikes and explore the sites around town.

it only took about 20 minutes for that to turn out to be a really bad idea. i was riding behind lani and anastasiya, we were going downhill at a pretty good clip. they stopped. i squeezed the brakes as hard as i could. the front brakes apparently worked really well–the front wheel stopped completely but the rest of the bike and my body continued on at full speed. after flying over my handlebars at full speed, according to lani, i did a pretty impressive aikido style roll on the pavement (tucker would be proud). the roll seemed to have prevented any kind of head injury which was good because they didn’t rent us helmets with our bikes. still though, a high speed somersault on pavement isn’t recommended. i left a nice amount of palm and knee skin on the pavement and couldn’t really move my arms through their full range.

adrenaline’s a hell of a drug though and i was feeling surprisingly spry after my little dive so we kept riding. unfortunately lani’s bike started having some mechanical issues so we didn’t make it too far. after a few hours though, i started feeling more and more pain in my wrists, elbows, and generally my entire body. it was starting to get dark, we had to ride a few miles back along a winding mountain road with no real visibility, our bikes didn’t seem to have any sort of reflectors (i started looking after that and never saw a single bicycle with a reflector for the entire trip) and i was wearing my usual “invisible pedestrian” costume (all black), so we turned around and headed back. my wrists and arms kept getting worse and by the time we were back in town, i couldn’t move my left arm at all or put any weight on it and my left wrist was massively swollen. my right arm was only a little better but i was able to use it to steer the bike (with some pain).

we got some bandages and antiseptic and cleaned my wounds up and immobilized my left arm the best we could. at dinner that night and all the next day, i could barely get the fork to my mouth and drinking the last half of a bottle of beer was painful (but i did it dammit!). on tuesday i was way too sore to go anywhere but anastasiya took a bus to Batopilas (a town at the bottom of the canyons; Creel is up near the top in the mountains). lani and i just stayed in Creel and had a nice siesta to catch up on the sleep we missed with all the traveling, walked around town a bit, and spent the evening at the town’s only bar drinking tequilla.

by wednesday my right arm had more or less returned to usefulness. lani and i went on a hike up to the hill above town, then we took a bus to Divisadero, which is a nice high point that you can see most of the canyons from. the bus there cost about $3 and was a 1 hour ride over twisting turning mountain roads. the view there was absolutely stunning. Copper Canyon is four times the size of the grand canyon and even deeper. from Divisadero, you can pretty much see it all at once.

unfortunately, we didn’t realize that the bus we came to Divisadero on was the last one going back to Creel for the day. so instead of taking the bus back, we had to wait about 2 and a half hours for the train that (luckily) was heading that way. the train took about 2 hours to cover the same distance and cost over $10.

thursday morning we took a bus back to Chihuahua (another annoying local bus) and spent the afternoon there wandering around the city taking pictures, eating street food and spent some time online. we tried a different hotel that night and it was even more special than the one before. this one had hot water but the toilet was missing a seat. after anastasiya reported seeing cockroaches in her room, lani was so freaked out that she insisted we sleep with the light on. somehow we survived the night without being eaten alive by killer cockroaches or anything and got on a bus back to Juarez and El Paso first thing in the morning. we didn’t even have any trouble crossing the border.

anastasiya had actually purchased a ticket out of El Paso, so she got right on a plane and out of texas. there were no more free seats on planes for lani and i though so we got a hotel room and explored the strip malls of El Paso on foot. not too exciting. we finally managed to escape El Paso the next morning and made it back to our respective cities.

i can more or less move my arms now but they still hurt like crazy if i try to put too much weight on them. i hope to someday be able to do pushups again. i’ve also still got some massive, ugly bruises on my elbows and the skin hasn’t fully grown back on my knee yet. but really, it was a fun vacation. i highly recommend it. the people were all really friendly and helpful, the scenery was gorgeous, and the food was fantastic (and even edible for a couple vegetarians). if you go, you may want to skip the mountain bikes though if you have my coordination and ability to injure yourself.

and, of course, pictures are here.

mexico update

By anders pearson 21 Oct 2004

in Chihuahua now. all members of the party are still alive and unkidnapped. back in the US tomorrow. mexico rocks but mexican pavement is unpleasant at high speeds. i’ll explain when i get back.