Unsolicited advertising

Just a heads-up, a reminder if you will, that advertisments sent to me under the guise of businesses I have deals with, that include prepaid return postage will always yeild a response from me - like it or not. So please don't forget to factor my cost into your advertising calculations. (At least I don't mail bricks.) Also, please remember to recycle, to help offset some of the shipping waste.

Thanks,
Ryan

I'm such a rascal...

Transportation

Heading home.  End of the line on a beautiful evening.  Eventually the train will extend north to UNCC and North Davidson where stuff happens.  That is, as long as the corporations can keep raising pigs and chickens so Bank of America can keep making money and paying taxes and employees (who buy property and pay taxes), so our local government can stay afloat.  Or, that those kids who romanticize trains grow up and want them.

But for now, it stops here.  Just blocks from city center.  Inside the immediate two-square-mile-beltway.  But that's alright with me.  I enjoy riding my bicycle.

I take the train into work when it's too hot, not that I couldn't get away with it, just that I grew-up and have remained accustomed to a certain level of comfort.  I, unlike most people who complain about, perhaps rightfully so, tax dollars spent on someone other than them, chose to live and work along the train line.  In fact, positive transportation planning awarded Charlotte with a check-mark while searching for a city to live in.

But I ride in when the sun is down, or the weather bearable, and I always ride back.  Not only is it thrilling, but it helps me prove to myself that my job is not draining.

As a 21st century shopkeeper, I was informed by another that they wished that they could ride their bike everywhere because they figured it'd be a good way to stay in shape.  I offered that perhaps it would be so long as one didn't mind arriving to appointments moist, or making trips to the grocery a couple of times each week.  And that was that.

I think that if more people are to consider bicycles as a legitimate form of transportation, then more people are going to have to actually enjoy riding bikes.  And I don't think they do.  But I don't know why.  Maybe they think its childish or unsafe.  I enjoy riding through a city with an unobstructed view of the buildings and the lives going on around me.  I enjoy the rush and thrill of pwning the roadway in city traffic.  I envy the elite few who make their living pedaling.  I love that I am being propelled by nothing more than a gear physically manipulated by my living body.  

And my bike runs on vegetables.

And when I transport I grow stronger.

And the contraposition holds true.

The States are an highway wasteland.  If we incorporate safe paths for bicycles more people will be able to enjoy them.  Just lets not render this a class divide.  Lets not put the bikes on the hitch to go for a ride.  Lets enjoy it for real.

Urban Assault Charlotte

Urban Assault was a blast.  I would probably do something like that everyday if I could.  I guess I do to some extent, but it makes an impact doing it as a group.  The Ski Team, (Chris & I) came in 104th out of 340 or so participants.  But we captured all the bleeds, and that's what counts!



To see that many bikes at one time in Charlotte makes me appreciate this city a bit more.  And if the solar powered sound system, and wind-made brew were irrelevant to my cohabitants, then at least no one complained.  And I'm sure a lot of people, like Ski Team, actually rode to the event ;)




The last obstacle was a BigWheel track which held me back as I had to retract to collect my phone which I had just rolled over...


View UA traversal in a larger map

All in all, it turned out to be about 26 miles.  And it felt like 95 degrees.


  
For some reason I'm not as excited as I should be about free food.

Fun times!

***UPDATE***
Some pictures I forgot to post...



    The calm before the cycling storm.



The first wave run for their rides.  We were resigned to the end of the line.  Either too slow (in registering) or too stupid (to pass the quiz).  And then we didn't even know where we were racing to!  Probably should have let us go first...



Sweet bike.  Functional.



Chris demonstrates how light the bike is.


These crazy people wanted me to take their picture.  Note - everyone is protecting themselves, post-race, from the scorching action of the midday summer sun by hydrating themselves with tasty beer.  Oh yeah, and there exists a picture of a dude wading in that green swan poop water.  [Seriously, they have to pressure wash all that excrement off of the sidewalk into the water.]

I never in all my walks came across a man engaged in so simple and natural occupation as building his house. -Henry D. Thoreau

A love story for capitalism

I finally got around to watching Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story, and you've already formed your opinion about what you're about to read.  Every fiscal Conservative should love his argument, but it's dismissed as quickly as sentence one.

As his Vizzini says: The guy who makes the best ice cream gets the customers, and the guy who doesn't fades away.  There you go.  We all want the best ice cream.

What Moore argues is that we let the crappy-ice-cream-making-guy cheat and serve us pus.  People let themselves be swayed and spoken for by media and commercials rather than asking where the milk came from.

When people can work together in a Democracy with Capitalism, they can win.  Divided and unquestioning they're at the mercy of the few in control -- for better or worse.

On his argument that Capitalism is to blame for corporations profiting on the death of their Peasants?  Is it the gun that kills the people, or the people that kill the people?  Obviously it is people who kill, but I don't own a gun.

But you might say that Moore has a thing against guns.  It doesn't matter: his whole point is to get people to wake up and pay attention, already.

Android tethering for Puppy

How do you tether an Android Motorola Droid to a Linux Puppy?

I have an old Pentium III laptop, running Puppy 4.31.1 (Macpup Foxy 3) and a Droid phone.  Using the phone to supply internet connectivity to the Puppy is easy using USB tethering - provided you can add some functionality to the kernel on the phone.

The easiest way to do that is to root the phone and then install the Clockwork ROM updater (from the Marketplace) in order to install Cyanogen's ROM.  This of course voids your warranty and whatnot, but it's fairly easy to do and allows for a bit more functionality.

With the phone prepared, you'll need to:

• Turn OFF USB SD drive access
• Turn ON Settings-> Applications-> USB debugging
• Turn ON Settings-> Wireless & Network-> Internet tethering
• Connect the USB cord to the Droid and the Puppy
• Launch Network Wizzard on the Puppy.   You should now see USB as a network option.  Verify the network, DHCP, and you're good to go.

Verizon allows 5G/mo transfer on their "unlimited" plan.

I did have a bit of difficulty connecting through WIFI and BT.  The WIFI problems I suspect are due to the ad-hoc nature of the WIFI programs:  Barnacle, WIFI Tether for Root Users.  My WIFI card may have limited support.  My Bluetooth adapter may also have limited driver support or functionality.

I also had difficulty utilyzing methods employing the Android Development Kit Tools.  For some reason, my Puppy seemed to behave flaky -- most of the time the command 'devices' yields no results.  This prevented me from attempting various proxy methods.

And the popular PDANet was out because of an apparent lack of Puppy support.



Thanks to all the folks on DroidFurums.net, Alldroid.org, and Murga-Linux.com!

I'm very impressed with both Google's and Archive's implementation of privacy considerations.  Upon marking a site private, I am immediately presented with this:

Robots.txt Query Exclusion.

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Snipets are still available in Google search results, but requests of the cache are denied.  Bravo.  I'm sure records are still kept forever, but they at least require a court order.