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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.

About to go for a swim…

a couple bicycles…

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

getting passed

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

In preparation for my second to last term of school … I’ve updated the ever necessary “Write a paper introducing yourself” homework. So yeah … here it is. If you make it all the way to the bottom I even talk about my post-grad plans (exciting).

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As first year students, my friend Brandon and I had decided that we wanted to spend the rest of our lives at open source developers. It just so happened that a little, virtually unknown group called the Open Source Lab (OSL), was hiring for the first time students to work on open source software. There were two positions available so we both prepared our cover letter and resumes.

In a perfect world Brandon and I would both be able to get the position. However we realized that the odds were against us. I felt like I had to do something in order to make my interview stand out. So I brought the only thing I knew to ever bring me a little extra luck, my tie dye socks. Ignoring all the advice of my Mother, the day of the interview I pulled them on under my slacks and dress shoes.

The interview seemed to go great! Two days later I got a call from Brandon telling me that he got the job and that I should check my email. In anticipation I ran to the nearest terminal and found out that I did not get the job. I glanced down at my socks, shook my head, and replied requesting for a meeting to discuss what I could do to improve in the future. Next week when I met with Jason, one of the interviewers, among other things he said, “Dress a little nicer.” With that I learned my lesson with regards to student employment, leave the tie dye for the weekends!

It did not seem more then two days later that another position opened up with Network Engineering (Net) on campus. The job interested me, and I would be working physically near the OSL, so I went for it. By the end of the week I was working as a Network Security Assistant. I was under the lead of Scott Kveton, who at that time was working half and half for Net and the OSL. As Kveton transitioned full time to the OSL, he took me with him as a “Community System Administrator.”

Working for the OSL gave me invaluable experience. The trust that Scott and Jason put into the students that worked under them gave us the best opportunity possible to shine. I am confident that any student that has worked for the OSL will never have a hard time being successful.

Over lunch one day with Scott I turn to him and asked, “Do you think it would be possible to get an internship with Mozilla?” He looked back at me and said,”I could make that happen in a heartbeat.” A few days later he had emailed the appropriate contacts. A few weeks later I had an offer letter in my hand. A few months later I was moving to the heart of Silicon Valley to work for the absolutely coolest open source project imaginable.

It was not until many months of working for Mozilla I had realized what happened. I was on the corporate Expedia website picking out my plane tickets for the Mozilla “all-hands” meeting when it hit me. I owe all of this to student employment. They had taken me seriously, something that is unique for scrawny freshman, and with that others took me seriously too.

After a year with Mozilla I moved on. I decided to take an internship with Google in New York City. This move was partially due to a burn out at work, and partially to answer “what do I want to do with my life?” question. Google was a fun place. It opened my eyes to new possibilities as a system administrator. It also helped me decide that I did not want to be a sysadmin forever.

Coming into my Senior year I helped start, again with Brandon (and Dr. Budd), the Open Source Education Lab (OSEL). Open source software had given me amazing opportunities and this was the answer to sharing them with others. The OSEL is still growing and changing and will someday mature into a great resource for students that want to dedicate themselves to open source development.

Looking forward to post graduation, I have accepted a full time position with Mozilla. Mozilla has offered the opportunity to work on product/marketing tasks within the organization. I’m excited to shift my career from sysadmin’ing to something new and unknown.

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So yeah … I’m moving to San Francisco (commuting to Mt. View, yuck, I know) sometime this summer.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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!

I’m totally airborn!

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!