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It was like 70 degrees here today, so I decided to plant a garden.

Yep, it’s along the base of the fence line. Eh, it’s the best I can do with what I have. I’ll let you know how it works out. :)

Keeping and eye on the police has never been so much fun! Recently, my friend John lent me his USRP, allowing me to play with GNURadio. From wikipedia:

The Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) is a high-speed USB-based board for making software radios.

GNURadio is a free software, software radio. Essentially, the USRP allows you to tune or transmit any radio signal, given the correct tuner/transmitter attachment. Currently it is anything in the 0-5.9Ghz range. The USRP John lent me came with a FM/TV tuner — meaning I can listen to anything between 80Mhz and 800Mhz.

What exists between 80Mhz and 800Mhz? Lots of stuff! For example, normal FM radio is between ~87Mhz – 108Mhz, all of which can be demodulated using GNURadio. Also, analog TV transmits in that range, allowing you to watch or listen to any of that on your computer.

But! It gets even more interesting. For instance, San Jose International Flight Control exists around 124Mhz (although, I have not heard much there…). Or, you can even listen to Police Central at 460.4Mhz. Listening to the police has been pretty fun. So far, Sam and I heard about a stabbing at a local restaurant, and plenty of phone number / license plate checks.

Anyway, so far I have not done much hacking on the device — there are a lot of example applications to do the FM demodulation. The one thing I did figure out was now to remove the FM static when the channel is not in use. It took me awhile to figure out, mainly because I did not know the correct terminology. Turns out, the term is “squelch“, and gnuradio implements a block to do this. All I had to do was create a squelch handling block, put it as part of the rest of the processing chain. Looks something like this (inside the usrp_wfm_rcv.py example program):

squelch = gr.simple_squelch_cc(0, 5e-3)

Then add the squelch to the rest of the connect chain:

self.connect(self.u, squelch, chan_filt...

This thing is super cool — and I’m excited to see what else I can make it do.

I’m excited to share that my first few days as a Mozilla employee will be at OSCON (7/23). Soon after I head down to the Bay and start living/working on-site full time (7/30) in Mountain View. Exciting!!!

In the mean time I’ll be spending some time in the Puget Sound, attending a few weddings, and will probably end up helping my parents paint their house.

Woot.

woot, done with my formal 17 year education.

go beavs.

Over the past couple months I’ve gotten into triathlons. So far I’ve raced in 3 sprints (500yd swim, 20k bike, 5k run), and one olympic distance (1.5k, 40k, 10k). My most recent race, Wildflower, completely changed my perspective on the sport.

There were two notable differences that Wildflower had over the other triathlons, scale and distance. All of my previous races had somewhere between 100 and 300 racers. That means each age/sex division has 15-20 competitors. At Wildflower, however, there were 3500 racers in my distance (7500+ overall!!). On top of that, my age division (mens collegiate) had ~150 athletes. To make it even more intense, collegiate men were the first wave to go into the water! When I stepped out of the water somewhere around the 50th racer, there were another 3400 people behind me. This is A LOT different then what I had experienced previously.

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About to go for a swim…

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a couple bicycles…

Unfortunately, as a strong swimmer, but weak cyclist and runner, this means I got passed by about 2000 people.

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getting passed

Oh well, I may not be fast, but I am in darn good shape! :D

Ever wanted to see a sold out show? Want to pay face value or less? Here is the solution: The magic finger. This trick was taught to me one evening as four of us were waiting outside of a venue in Eugene, Or, trying to get into a Mat Kearny concert. The lady at the ticket booth told us to hold up the “magic finger” and we will inevitably get into any sold out show. Ironically enough, it did not work that night. The lady ended up just taking our cash and letting us in without tickets. However, it has worked for every other show I have tried. I have never paid more than face, sometimes getting in for free.

So what is the magic finger? It’s simple, just hold up your index finger pointing at the sky. Also helps to mutter that you are looking for one ticket.

The psychology behind the magic finger is pretty straight forward. There always are people at shows that have tickets they do not need. This is why scalpers exist. Scalpers will find these people, often by holding a sign saying they need tickets, and offer them a little more then nothing for their extra tickets. The person with the extra thinks that they are just going to have to eat the face value, so they take whatever they can get for it. The scalper then resells to people trying to get in at a substantial premium. There is a certian percentage of the attendees that will have extra tickets, so the more people attending, the more extra tickets there will be. For that reason, the larger the show the more extra tickets there will be.

As a magic finger user you just have to hold your finger up, let people know you are looking for a ticket (to see the show, not to resell), and good things will happen. It has never failed. Some of the shows that I have gotten into using this technique include: Panic! At the disco (in Times Square, paid face), Bloc Party (face value), Oregon/UoO Civil War (2 x free!), and many others. I’ve given up on buying tickets a head of time. Just go, bring no more cash then you want to pay, hold up the finger, and you’ll get in.

I thought I would be all clever and dress up like a penguin on Halloween, but some of my peers got the best of me:

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Made my night!

Oh, and, don’t forget to vote!

This weekend started last Thursday with a trip to Portland. Some of my long time friends (Lucas, Logan, and Aaron) had their first show since moving to the most sustainable city in the USA. Aleson Tap is made up of true musicians, which allows them to put on an awe inspiring show.

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Lucas, making stuff up

Then, on Friday afternoon, I headed out with my new fishing buddy, John, to the McKenzie. We didn’t have any luck, but it was nice to get out on the water.

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John on the McKenzie

Saturday was equally exciting. I got on the bus. Well, kind of. “Team Corvallis” of the Oregon Bus Project headed up to Washington County (somewhere in Beaverton). We met up with the rest of the 50ish volunteers there. I canvassed for Tobias Read, a democrat running for state representative. All said and done, I knocked on 52 doors. Canvassing was new to me, so it was a little intimidating talking to strangers about a candidate I had just met. It all worked out — nobody beat me up or sent their dog after me.

THEN, once we got home it was time to party it up with some friends. First, I went over to the lovely Andrea’s to carve pumpkins.

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Firefox pumpkin!

After watching American Beauty (awesome movie) we headed over to Nelson’s for his birthday party. There, I got to catch up with a bunch of friends I had not seen in awhile.

Things did not slow down on Sunday. Team “pale hax0r” (Brandon, Stuart, and I), banded together to compete in the Beaver Fever Duathalon. The race consisted of a 5k run (me), 30k road race (Stuart), and another 5k run (Brandon). Brandon and I both PR’d (vs. our race last weekend). I even won a $25 gift certificate during the raffle!

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I’m totally airborn!

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Stuart dashing in to start Brandon off

And I thought the Rouge rafting trip two weekends ago was going to be hard to beat!

… ohh, and I’ve been working on the OSEL a lot. It is sort of the pinnacle of everything I have been working towards related to free software on campus. Check it out!

I guess now I just need to study for midterms. :\

Wouldn’t it be neat if Goodwill offered an opt-in service that let you know when your donated items had been purchased? Or, as a buyer, you could see the life cycle of the item you are purchasing. I think it would keep people more involved with the donation process, and make it feel less like an alternative to the dump.

My old excuse for shopping at Goodwill was because it was cheap, my new excuse is that it is sustainable. Post-consumer products! Woo woo!

First, before I even get started, I have to say thank you. There are sooooo many people that helped me make this summer awesome. You might be thinking to yourself, how did I help? Well, think about it a bit more, you’ll come up with something. Anyway, yeah, thank you. It was rad.

Where I lived

I worked and lived in Manhattan (NYC). I really feel like I got the experience or at least as much as I could only being there three months. My apartment was on the upper west side, right across from the American Museum of Natural History. I lived with fabulous couple in their spectacular pre-war apartment. I got a kick everytime I watched the doorman operate the manual elevator.

Where I worked

I worked as a Linux System Adminstrator for Google. Yep, I can confirm, Google is an amazing place. My first two jobs were pretty much start-ups; both workplaces at which I could be super idealistic and make crazy ideas happen. Moving to Google I was nervous that I would lose this. Well, I sort of did. I was an “intern”. Parts of the company were off limits. However, they were very open with what they could be. I got to see behind the iron curtain. I feel like I am better system administrator because I can now think at a scale much larger than I had before.

What I did

I went out a lot. My co-workers were very good at showing me around the city. Some of the more memorable times include running across town in torrential down-pour with sandals on just for a slice of pizza, getting kissed by an overweight 40 year old lesbian (she “wanted to know”), and the bar the Irish women forced us to stay at.

Then there were all the concerts. Here are some of the bands I saw, in no particular order: Say Hi to You Mom, Ozomatli, Panic! At the disco, Dresden Dolls, Jose Gonzalez, Damien Rice, Fiona Apple, We are Scientists, Belle and Sebastian, Martha Wainwright, Gomez, and Bloc Party… to name a few. Everybody plays in NYC, so I got to see TONS of great bands.

What else happened

I went to Europe! Spain and Italy were cool, but I think I liked Vietnam better. I’m glad I went… it opened my eyes a little bit. I mean, those places are OLD. I need to post photos. Katrina and I had a lot of fun.

OK, this is incomplete… but I’m posting it anyway.