September 2003 Archives

_A discussion of Voice-over-IP and a good explanation of why folks needs something that penetrates firewalls_ Skype Firewall and NAT (Network Address Translation) traversal: Non-firewalled clients and clients on publicly routable IP addresses are able to help NAT’ed nodes to communicate by routing calls. This allows two clients who otherwise would not be able to communicate to speak with each other. Because the calls are encrypted end-to-end, proxies present no security or privacy risk. Likewise, only proxies with available spare resources are chosen so that the performance for these users is not affected. Several new techniques were also developed in order to avoid end-user configuration of gateways and firewalls, whose non-intuitive configuration settings typically prohibit the majority of users from communicating successfully. In short, Skype works behind the majority of firewalls and gateways with no special configuration. Global decentralized user directory: Most instant message or communication software requires some form of centralized directory for the purposes of establishing a connection between end users in order to associate a static username and identity with an IP number that is likely to change. This change can occur when a user relocates or reconnects to a network with a dynamic IP address. Most Internet-based communication tools track users with a central directory which logs each username and IP number and keeps track of whether users are online or not. Central directories%

Windworks Sailing Center. Connie and I just did the second round of classes on sailing over there. They have a really great series called "Adventure":http://www.windworkssailing.com/adventure_lessons.htm Lessons where you don't have to sit a class room and have the instructor say, please say "PORT" class, and you say, "PORT". Instead, you read the book at home and then head out, so it is much more practical. After two 2-day sessions and studying the US Sailing books a little, Jim (a great instructor) has got us taking out 38' sailboats out with ease. How terrific. Now on to Coastal Navigation and the final class on Bareboat cruising and we are ready to head to Tahiti!

Ken Kifer's Bike Pages -- bicycle travelogues, bike safety, bicycling advocacy, and cycling humor.. Sad to say, Ken got hit by a drunk driver while biking at home. An eclectic guy, sad to see. A great site he has/had.

Arrgghh. Mark over at "TQHosting":http://tqhosting.com has switched from ensim as the control panel for shared sites to cpanel. Have to say cpanel is incredibly powerful, but now ever path name has changed. Mark was nice enough to run scripts to flip over nearly everything, but gallery, so now I'm reinstalling that. Need to remember how to do it and use a tool that edits a remote FTP flle like Crimson Editor - Free Text Editor, Html Editor, Programmers Editor for Windows. This thing treats FTP sites like regular directories, so you can open files via FTP, edit them and it knows how to save them via FTP. I know FTP is not secure, etc., but it is very nice thing. Surprising there aren't more utilities like this.

I've been trying to get our old Visioneer 7600 to work and have lost the CD. Thank goodness for "dll-files.com":http://dll-files.com or "downloadthis.com":http://www.downloadthis.net/dllfiles.html they actually have all these random DLLS that various folks spill everywhere. The required files that are needed are: * maxkrnl.dll * www.dll-files.com - download maxcodec.dll is a good example. Used by PaperPort 6.1. * maxutil.dll * pperr.dll * maxrast.dll Well, now it says it can't find the device and connect. Arrrghh.

Hey Ludwig, here's the next big thing, it's a peer to peer voip service. Give it a try!

Skype is moving like wildfire through my family and friends.  Wow.  Easier than e-mail and chat (now that they are garbaged up with features). [John Robb's Weblog]

Good notes from Ray Ozzie about the problem with firewalls. Folks in homes and in business are going to discover this soon. Basically, you have to armor every PC since if you have one infected one, then someone VPNs in and the whole network is poluuted. My buddy, Jon Lazarus, has a good explanation. The Internet is like a dirty stream where you want to get a little clean water. Even one little leak pollutes everything. This means that the vulnerability assessment and individual PC monitoring tools had better get much better. Just think what would happen if a student went to school, picked up a worm and them wifi'ed into a home or into Starbucks. Everyone would get contaminated. At "Ignition":http://ignitionpartners.com, even on our private IP addresses, we get 20 pings per minute from various hackers trying to get in.

BoingBoing: Firewalls are Broken, links to this.  Just as in the Infoworld article a few days ago, people are discovering why compartmentalized security such as that implemented by Groove is so important moving forward.  The alternative is more than a bit frightening: Recognizing their valid concerns, would you allow your employer to "lock down" and remotely manage your home computer? [Ray Ozzie's Weblog]

Sales of security server appliances grew 10 percent year-over-year, as companies turned to low-end appliance servers dedicated to firewalls and virtual private networks, IDC says. [CNet News.com]

I'm just not sure that prosecuting your customers and telling them they are wrong are a good strategy. Never mind what the law says, its interesting to me to see that folks download songs yes, but iTunes is doing well and most folks are happy to pay $1-2 for a ring tone for goodness sakes. Let's hope other emulate Magnatune

Magnatune is a killer new record label that is doing everything a cutting-edge record label should be doing. They offer music from a wide range of genres that you can download, stream, and listen to, but like shareware, you only buy stuff you like after trying it out first. The label splits profits with artists 50-50, and even offers a sliding scale when buying through paypal. After paying for an album, you get both high quality MP3 and uncompressed WAV files for download. [MetaFilter]

a little ludwig goes a long way: NATs and VOIP. I'm amazed. Ludwig found he could just use his VOIP phone from his phone without dinking with his firewall. I wonder how Vonage figured this out? I bet Gary Burd: NATs and Internet telephony is right that what they are doing is having an intermediary so that Vonage on Ludwig's machine only has an outbound port and it is not true peer-to-peer when doing PC-to-PC. Since Vonage is really designed for PC-to-PSTN that makes sense. As Gary points out the problem is that you aren't peer-to-peer so the server side has to pay for hauling the traffic up and down. That is how AOL IM for instance works today. OK for text, but what happens when people ship 5MB pictures to and fro.

"DNS Stuff":http://www.dnsstuff.com/. An incredibly useful site. It is has reverse DNS, whois, tracert all on a single page. I'm always losing those little command line utilities. _BTW, checkout the new winamp3 plugin that sucks down the current song I'm listening to while doing this blog and then uses Zempf to stuff it into the blog entry. neat_

Link Logger. This is another logger for common home network routers. Interesting to look at and see what folks are doing. I'm not sure the average home owner is going to use this, but if there were an automated service that would be great. "DShield Are You Cracked?":http://www.dshield.org/warning_explanation.php. A great little script. It checks the Dshield data base of IP addresses that are attacking other machines. If your IP address is there, then there is a good chance you've got a worm. "DShield the Movie':http://www.dshield.org/dshieldmovie.php. A kind of cool idea that anyone doing a logger should think about. This thing shows the attack by hour graphically and in motion. Very visual and compelling. Amazing how many Blaster attacks are still going on (this is the attack on port 135 owned by epmap in Windows). "Dshield Reports":http://www.dshield.org/reports.php. Fascinating list of the top 10 attackers, the attacks themselves, etc. The cool thing is "Blocked List":http://www.dshield.org/block_list_info.php which you can automatically use to block suspicious Ip addresses. Too bad router control software doesn't do this automatically.

Internet Storm Center. As part of understanding what is going on, the Internet Storm Center is a pretty amazing site. Tells you what folks are scanning and where the attacks are. Pretty frightening really. Tells you the top attacked ports and what applications use them. Amazing that most of these are Microsoft ports: Top Attacked Ports |program | port | |epmap |135 | |netbios-ns |137 | |ms-sql-m (slammer) |1434 | |microsoft-ds |445 | |www |80 | |netbios-ssn |139 | |ms-sql-s |1433 | |ftp |21 | |CrackDown |4444 | |rtsp |55 | "Dshield":http://dshield.org/. This is a site where you can submit your firewall logs and so folks can share intrusion information. Pretty useful. They have a neat map of the world with attacks. Also, they have "client":http://dshield.org/windows_clients.php#universal software written that will troll through logs and submit them automatically. Supports many routers. I've used WallWatcher from Linksys that does the same thing and it has a submission module as well. They have terrific instructions for how to install a PC daemon that watches the firewall reports and then pushes them up to Dshield or anywhere else for that matter.

_Markl asked me how I created this blog._ A good question, so heres the equivalent of the "About" box: "Movabletype.org":http://movabletype.org. This is the blogging software. They actually have a hosted service called typepad which is supposed to be very good. Very elegant stuff written in perl, so it is not a speed demon, but very flexible. Does require you know how to use Linux and mysql. The entries are stored in mysql and then emitted as static web pages. "Tqhosting":http://tqhosting.com. This is actually a really nice guy in North Carolina (remember when we were that young!) who has a dedicated server on which he resells space. $5/month for a basic blogging package and $12/month for 300MB, so it is pretty reasonable compared with the big guys. I used to pay $25/month to a FrontPage compatible hoster for 30MBs. Anyway, he presets mysql and you can rsh and telnet into his machine. Also has email as well "Godaddy":http://godaddy.com. This is where I get my registrar services. About half the cost of register.com. They are local and the best thing is that they have a very simple user interface to add new domain names, etc. In contrast with verisign and register. (Come to think of it, they use ASP for their stuff, so guess I do use Microsoft stuff). "Blogrolling":http://Blogrolling.com. This is a guy who supports keeping lists of other blogs and handles notifications. It is how the list the right gets updated when other folks update themselve. All these blogs ping weblo.gs so that is how they are in sync. Sitemeter:"http://sitemeter.com". They have a free site monitoring tool so that you can see who is on. "The Ludwigs":http://www.theludwigs.com. I mainly follow the format and improvement that John Ludwig makes. He is MovableType as well, although he is using it on top of IIS and Windows NT. But I love his MovableType template ideas. For editing blogs, here is what I do: MovableType supports a couple of ways. First there is the standard web interface of course, but what I really use are their javascript buttons you can stick up on the Internet Explorer bar. So you can browse and then if you see something, you can MT it! right into your blog. I mainly use a blog like a personal set of bookmarks so this is very useful. It is also free. Textile. This is a plug in to MovableType that is kind of like latex or nroff if you remember those utilities so you don't have to write everything in HTML. For instance, if you type _hello_ it turns it into hello and so forth. Or if you want bullets, you type an asterisk like Word. It is free. w.Bloggar. This is probably the most used client-side editing tool for blogs. Uses the blog API (really an XML-SOAP protocol that talks with MovableType Zempt. This is a nice Windows utility for doing off line edits of blogs. I've been playing with it, but it really isn't that much faster or more functional than movabletype. Reading blogs, here is what I do Feedreader. This is a .NET application that puts blogs that emit RSS into a three pane view. I like the thing because it also lets you also add entries based on what you read via w.bloggar. You just right click on an item and then it stuffs it into your blog.

NASA - Historic Galileo Mission Nears End. A spectacular thing. There will be a web cast as the Galileo enters atmosphere of Jupiter. Hat tip to Metafilter

While looking at RSS Feed Readers, I also found that the blog clients have gotten much better. Here's my quick review and update: * :: w.bloggar ::. This was the original blog client that I used. He's been buys working on it and it now supports a whole bunch of blog tools using a standard interface and is a very nice HTML editor, spell checking and also the new Windows media 9 blogger api (see below) * "Music Blogger API":http://www.minimalverbosity.com/2003/April/29/introducing_wmpamplog.htm. Microsoft has done an API for Windows Media Player so that blogging clients can pick up the name and track of music you are listening to while writing an entry and throw it at the bottom of a post. Kind of cool. Bill has extended this to Winamp 2.0 and winamp 3.0. Too bad there is not a musicmatch version. * "Zempt":http://www.zempt.com/. This is Bill Zeller's dedicate MovableType blogging client. Kind of cool. Nicest thing is that he has an Internet Explorer icon that does a Zempt it! which calls up the local client. I love that Blog it! feature of Movable Type and this is even better in that it is local to the machine so very fast.

BTS - Airline Information - Airline On-Time Statistics - Detailed Statistics - Results. We are thinking about going to Hawaii and I was curious about ontime departure. Man, those folks at the Bureau of Transportation really have their act together. What an incredible database. You can actually look at 5 years of data on on time departure by flight number now. For instance the flight I looked at was mainly on time but had one time it was delayed an hour. SEA

I've got no less than three people asking me about bicycles to buy. Here's quick list for Peter, Tim and Brad. First, here are the information sources to look at in order of importance: # "Road Bike Reviews":http://roadbikereview.com. This is a site that doesn't seem to have become polluted with biased reviews like C|Net. I usually look at the bicycles by most reviews and then scroll through the ones with ratings of 4.5 or higher and have 10 reviews or so. # "Bicycling Magazine":http://bicycling.com/gear/reviews/1,5070,361-41----1,00.html?category_id=361&article_type_id=&family_id=41. They don't tend to do many reviews, but it is the biggest publication, so interesting to look at and compare with Road Bike Reviews. In fact most of the bicycling magazine don't really review road bikes. Lots of mountain bike reviews though. h4. Decisions to Make There are a couple of key decisions to make. I'll divide it into a couple of steps that will tell you how much to spend, what class of bicycle to buy, what frame material and what component level. # How committed are you to the sport? $1,000 gets you a decent bike, $2,000 gets you a very nice one and $3,000-4,000 is ultra nice. I would say the sweet spot in terms of value for dollar is in the $2,000 range right now. # What kind of riding are you going to do? Three choices here are: a) all out day racing so you want the lightest thing possible, b) a general purpose bicycle that can do a little of everything and c) something that is going to be comfortable and not fast, but general purpose. # Where should you get fitted? A not very good bike that fits is going to be much better than an ultra-deluxe model that doesn't. So, how do you get a great fit. The best option is to find a dedicated fellow who does fitting. John over here in Seattle does that. It is expensive. $150 or so, but worth it. He'll leave you with the set of bikes that will work for you and consult with. An alternative is to go to a local bicycle shop (see below). Way too much to go into hear, but the key measurements are the top tube distance (determines how stretched out you are) and the standover (determines if it really hurts if you stop quickly and the top tube hits you-know-where). # Where should you buy? Most folks should go to a reputable local bike shop that knows what they are doing. Here in Seattle there are quite a few, the best ones I know are Gregg's Bellevue Cycle, Montlake Cycle (the original one in Montlake). I've also heard good things about TiCycles. ebay if you are roll-your-own kind of guy (ebay buying will typically get you 30-50% off compared to a brand-new bicycle but caveat emptor). # When should I buy? The best time is right now in the fall. The new model year (2004) are coming in and most local bike shops are discounting 15-30% off of list to move out the 2003 models. Particularly for road bikes, things don't change that much from year-to-year. So a last year model is a great thing. # What particular frame material should I buy? This is a topic of endless debate. There are steel, titanium, carbon fiber and aluminum as the major flavors. I've pretty much tried them all and it is a matter of taste and how well the bike fits overall for me. The conventional wisdom is that steel is heavier but more comfortable and easy to repair (it gives more), titanium is has the steel ride but is lighter and very expensive, aluminum is the harshest riding but great if you are a heavy and it is inexpensive and finally carbon fiber tends to be the lightest but is expensive and feels deader. Try and see what you like, but generally, the big guys seem to get aluminum, if you are average then I see carbon fiber (because hey Lance uses it) and titanium if you've got the cash. There is quite a bit of fashion in frame materials. The latest trend for instance is titanium or aluminum with carbon seat stays. So you get the stiff aluminum and the compliance of carbon. I haven't tried this exotica yet myself. Other trend is to a sloping top tube which is slightly lighter (like 2 ounces), but looks cool and more importantly from a bike manufacturer POV means you can make fewer sizes since standover height is less important. # What level of components work for me? Besides the frame, the other important thing are what is the component level. Most folks will be getting Shimano components (they are the leader in the various bits and bobs you put on a bicycle like the shifters, gears, etc.). The main decision is whether to go Dura-Ace (best), Ultegra (better) or 105 (good). As with most things, Ultegra, the middle, is the best price-performance. For those who like exotica and impressing their SOs, you can also go to Campagnolo. They have a huge line, but the basic choice is Record (more expensive that Dura-Ace and there are endless debates about how good it is) and Chorus. Think of this choice as picking between Toyota and Ferrari. This is pretty much tied to the first question on what you want to spend. 105 equipped bikes are the $1K range usually, Ultegra are $2K and Dura-Ace $3K+. Second decision is whether to get two or three rings in the front. Two means a total of 18 gears (2 in front and 9 in back) while three means 27. If you are old and fat like me, get the additional gears, it makes a difference on those big hills because biking is a sport where you don't want to "blow up". Just 5 minutes of burning agony are the equivalent of 5 hours of easy riding. # What about wheels and things? Most folks can use the standard set of wheels, but if you are a big person. Say in the 200 pound range, then you need to beef things up. That means much stronger wheels (ask for 3-cross, 32 or 36-hole, your bike guy will know what that means). OK, so those are the main things. You should know have an idea of price range, type of bicycle, where you are going to get fitted and when and where you will buy it. Now let's go virtual shopping for models. h4. Things you must do (but won't and regret it) Here are some of the things that you won't want to buy, but which will completely change your life if you take up riding in order of importance: # Castelli Progetto Y2K Bib Shorts. These are outrageously expensive listing at $150 (although ebay has them for $120 many times). So, why spend 10% of the total budget on a *clothing*? Well, believe me when you put them on, it will make riding 50 miles seem like going 5. I know you won't believe me, but it is true. This is one area where if you want to love the sport, spend the money. Really. BTW, bib shorts mean that they are shorts, but have these fishnet suspenders. They are the most comfortable because you don't have a elastic thing crushing you when you are riding. Look dorky, but work great. Get a good wicking undershirt too while you are at it since the suspenders go over delicate parts of the anatomy (Defeet Undershurts are really great for that). # Clipless pedals and shoes. You gain 30% more power by using these special clips. They really are easy to learn to use and make you more efficient. For folks starting out, the Speedplay Frog pedals with Sidi Dominator shoes seem like good price/performance. # Brightest lights you can afford. The fact of life is that you are out there with folks driving 5,000 lb SUVs with one hand on their cell phone and the other holding their latte. The only real defense is being blindingly obvious (beside riding defensively). Ideally, you want a headlight on your helmet that would blind a driver in broad daylight. People don't drive into something they can't see and having it on your head makes it easy to point. Best lights in the business are the Light & Motion Cabeza HID for example. Heavy, but worth it. h4. Pure road bikes To start the analysis, I took the "top rated":http://roadbikereview.com/2002,Road,Bike/ASRcrx.aspx?CategoryID=4229&CategoryID=4338&PriceMin=&PriceMax=&MinNumReviews=10&MinRating=4.5&Index=0&SortField=1&SortFieldOrder=1 road bike from roadbikereview.com for the 2002 and 2003 and looked at those with at least 9 reviews and scoring 4.5 and above. Think of this as the elite mainstream list that roughly reflects popularity of geeks who ride. Here's an analysis of these bikes by their product family. Most models are really just changes in components, so lets look at the super families that seem popular on roadbike review in order of number of reviews: * "Trek 5200, 5500, 5900 Family":http://trekbikes.com . These are the carbon fiber bicycles that Lance Armstrong rides made by the #1 bicycle manufacturer in the world. It is super popular (it probably has more reviews online than all the other bicycles combined :-) The 5200 is the Ultegra equipped version and 5500 is Dura-Ace, while the 5900 is the exotic ultralight and ultra-expensive model. All come in either double and triple in the front. Main issue are limited sizes so folks end up in between on sizes and the fit suffers. Also if you are a big guy, then look elsewhere since these are not super stiff. Best value is the Trek 5200D which is Ultegra with 3 rings in the front. Street prices are about $2,500. On ebay, there are lots of these and the good news is that this model hasn't changed much in 3-4 years. * "Giant TCR Composite":http:// . Giant is the #2 maker of bicycles in the world after Trek (and its many sub-brands) and is a low cost leader. They have a whole family of carbon fiber bicycles. The top end is the TCR Composite Team and the Composite 0 are major lust bicycles are much higher end. * "LeMond Victoire" . This is LeMond (made by Trek) titanium frame. I haven't tried it, but glowing reviews. It is titanium which is incredibly durable. Also consider the "LeMond Zurich": and there is the lower end "LeMond Buenos Aires": . A buddy has this bicycle. A middle of the road one. Quite a bit heavier, but much less expensive in the $1,200 range. * "Specialized Allez E5 Elite": . Don't know much about the specialized bicycle line. The others ones are the E5 Comp that is the same frame, but less expensive components * "Litespeed Arenberg": . Litespeed is the largest maker of titanium bicycles. Gregg's carries them. This is their middle of the road bicycle. I've ridden them and they are really just like riding steel but lighter and stiffer. Also well like is the Hyperion. This is a titanium frame with a carbon seat stay. Supposed to add comfort beside being ultra cool. Siena is another model in the line. * "Cannondale R1000"; . My buddy Dave Malcolm has a higher end Cannondale, an R5000 I believe. This is a very strong bike. Made of aluminum. Great for big guys. Really beautiful frame. Cannondale went into bankruptcy last year because of their motorcycle division, but they don't seem to be stopping on the bicycle front. Other bicycles to consider that are off the mainstream. These rate highly, but I haven't seen them around much here: * "Look KG 361": . I've not seen this bicycle around except at recycled cycles in Seattle and don't know much about it. Very highly rated. Also the KG 381i is also highly rated. " "Merlin Agilis and Extralight": . These are also custom bicycles and supposed to be a dream to ride. * "Seven Cycles Axiom and Odonata": The completely custom made dream. If you really need a fully custom bicycle then this is the one. The best dealer is also the guy who does incredible bike fitting. * "Eddy Merckx Team SC". Don't know much about this one. * "Airborne Zeppelin": Airborne is a mail order vendor, but Montlake Bicycles carries them now. This is their top of the line titanium frame. Pretty costly at $3K. Airborne is a mail order vendor. Recently repurchased by the original owners from Huffy (thank goodness), they now also distribute in shops (Montlake carries them in Seattle). Supposed to be good low-cost titanium bicycles. I've not ridden this "Valkyrie":http://www.airborne.net/eready/janette/store/vkbike.asp, but it is reasonably priced at $900 for the frame. A built up bicycle is $2,200 with Shimano Ultegra. Very cool web site BTW, let's you pick and choose just about everything. h4. Touring bicycles This class of bicycles aren't going to go as fast as the bicycles above. They are meant more for touring for a day and can carry a pack. The ones above are best for a day out and about where you don't need much stuff. These are more upright and comfortable, but go a slower. It's my bias, but I find that touring bicycles are 1-2 mph slower. Doesn't sound like much until you realize that after a 30 mile ride, you are going to be a mile or so behind the other guy. h4. Hybrid or comfort bicycles These bicycles are closer to mountain bicycles and are quite upright. They are best for the casual rider I've found. Not someone who wants to go fast, but someone who wants to have a good hour or so riding. These are also called urban bicycles. They tend to have mountain bike handlebars and also some of the top end ones have disc brakes. These are good in the rain. If I worked in a bicycle shop, I'd sell these all day long to the people just getting into cycling who don't want to be intimidated by the whole thing.

Maui's Best Whale Watching Cruises | Pacific Whale Foundation. Here's a blow-by-blow of every whale trip last year by the Pacific Whale Foundation. useful if you are whale-geek or if you are trying to figure out if there are going to be many whales during spring break this year :-)

Maui Whale Watching counts. Connie just loves these creatures and is dying to show the kids. Here's a note from 2002 on when the whales are holding court. They are around january to May.

According to "Ludwig":http://www.theludwigs.com, he only reads using RSS instead of browsing web sites the old fashion way, so I'm off to find the best RSS reader. Not easy to find I should say. Lots of developments since the last time I looked. Here are the sources: * RSS Readers (RSS Info). The top google reference when looking for rss readers. * "Weblogs Compendium":http://www.lights.com/weblogs/rss.html. A list of RSS readers, but not reviewed really. Here are reviews of the ones I've used so far: # "Feedreader":http://www.feedreader.com/. The top hit from Google. Haven't tried it yet. Doesn't seem to work with what MovableType outputs alone, so you have to know where the rdf files are. # "Amphetadesk":http://amphetadesk.com. This was the original reader. It reads and spits it out in a local web server page. Main problems are that it is pretty slow because it uses a web interface and also the application itself is ugly. Has this whole notion of channels which is a little complicated.

OK, if Brad thinks the Blur is great, let's have a look and see what I need: h4. Blur Sizing I'm 5' 10" to 5' 11", so the recommendation is medium with a 120 stem. The effective top tube is 57.7 cm (I usually ride a 56.1 cm and 120 mm stem on my road bike). For 5'11" it is a large with a 100 mm to 120 mm stem. Effective top tube is 59.3 cm which feels long to me, but is geometry different for mountain bikes. Intuitiion says something less stretched out would be better which is why I have looking at mediums. h4. "Build Kits":http://www.santacruzmtb.com/bicycles/retail/build_kit.asp Per Brad's recommendation, I looked at the XT-level kit. The Super X with Disc brake option has: * LX hollow cranks & bb 44/32/22 * XT 11-34 cassette * LX Rapid fire 9-speed shift pods * XT front & rear derailleurs * Hayes Hydraulic Disc Brakes * wheels front White hub, Bontrager Valiant rim, butted spokes, alloy nipples * wheels rear XT 9-speed, Bontrager Valiant asym. rim, butted spokes, alloy nipples * tires Kenda Karma 2.0 Kevlar 110 gram tubes * Easton EC70 350mm seatpost * saddle Titec Ithys-Gove Ti 205 gram * stem Easton Alloy * bars Easton CT2 Carbon 125 gram or riser bars Easton carbon Monkey bar lo-rise 160 gram * headset Cane Creek S2 * pedals not included h4. "Pricing":http://www.santacruzmtb.com/bicycles/retail/blur.asp The list price is $1500 for anodized and $1350 for powder coated for the frame alone. List price with a Fox F100 RLC is $1975 for frame and fork List price for the above with the Super X disc brake option is $3435

Been in brain lock about buying a mountain bike. My good buddy "Brad":http://www.thesilverbergs.com finally gave me a push. Here are some of his words of wisdom below. There are quite a few Santa Cruz Blurs now on ebay as the early adopters are getting their next bikes. The powercoat lists for $1300 and the anodized for $1500, so if you can get a frame for $1,000 or so that's a pretty good deal.

You should really buy one. they are so much fun. it sounds like you've done a lot of research. have you talked to the guys at "downhill zone":http://www.downhillzone.net/? i've found them to be the most knowledgable guys in town for mountain biking. With this new vpp design and new shock designs (stable platform), there are new bikes coming out all the time. i would think you want a trailbike with 4-5" travel. with the new designs, you can get a 5" travel bike that rides great, like a 3" bike used to. I don't think you'll be doing stunts or drops or jumps -- which would steer you to a beefier, heavier bike (5-7" travel). the bikes on my short list for a trail bike would be the blur with 5th element shock, an ellsworth truth (which I have), and a turner 5 spot. the blur is 4.5", the truth 4", and the 5 spot 5". i really like intense bikes too. the spider xvp though is supposedly more of a race bike than the blur. there was a head to head review in mountain bike action that i think i still have if you want. i heard intense is coming out soon with a more trail oriented vpp. but it took them so long to get the spider out, i wouldn't hold my breath. the downhill zone guys though would know -- they are well connected with intense (a few are sponsored by intense). the intense tracer is nice but it's only 3". for components, i'd go with xt, hayes hydraulic disk brakes, and either xt or chris king hubs. standard stuff that will perform great and is not too expensive. Mountain bike stuff wears out or you crash and break it, so it's less appealing to go xtr to me (plus i'm undecided on the new xtr shifting). disk brakes are great -- especially around here where it's wet. For fork, with a 4" bike you want a 100mm fork, like a fox or a manitou super air. I am not a huge fan of rock shox anymore. Marzocchi is also good but their best are more freeride oriented. the marathon sl is a good fork. The best thing though is to talk to the dh zone guys if you haven't already. they know their stuff and can help you pick the best frame and parts.

a little ludwig goes a long way: Scott Hanselman's Utility List. Cool utilities per Ludwig. Ones I liked include:

• Xenu. Link checker that is pretty cool and works really fast. Nice for checking my blog.
• Command Bar. A cool utility that lets you run command line utilities in the windows explorer.
• NetPing. Tells you just about every fact you'd care to know about machines on a local network (hint, Tim!)
• Key Finder. Finds the product identification key (PID) for Office and Windows that you used for your machine in case you lost it.
• SHN Shortener. This converts lossless SHN and FLAC files to either MP3 or Ogg Vorbis files. Perfect for me since it is a simple converter so you can archive in lossless FLAC and then conver to MP3 or Ogg Vorbis.

Been studying a little bit the codec market and how it the whole thing hangs together. There are clearly folks who are doing open source development that doesn't involve licensing. The two that strike me right away are Lame and Vorbis.

I'm wondering what the other ones are. Here are some links based on a quick google search:

• Thomson IP Licensing overview. Buried in this general presentation on licensing or some words about MP3 and MP3Pro licensing.
• MP3 Licensing Background. A good summary of how we got MP3. In 1996, U.S. Patent no. 5,579,430 was granted to Fraunhofer
  Gesellschaft in Munich for a "digital encoding process for transmitting and storing acoustical signals and, in particular, music signals." (Fraunhofer Gesellschaft is the parent company of the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits, creator of the core technologies incorporated in the MP3 standard.) One of 18 MP3-related patents held by raunhofer and patent partner Thomson, this is the basis of their current claim to a "fair share" of MP3 revenues. However, Thomson did not assert its claim until the fall of 1998.
• Fraunhofer IIS. All their licensing terms. Boy, they hold lots of patents on MP3, MPEG4, MPEG2. How do they get these things standardized and minting money. Pretty interesting.
• MP3 Royalty Rates. Nice to have all your royalty rates just published on the Internet. Says the list prices are $0.75/decoder for MP3 and $1.25/decoeer for MP3Pro.l True for whether it is hardware or software. 2% for MP3 streaming of revenue and 3% for MP3 Pro.
• VIA Licensing. A Dolby Laboratories subsidiary doing all kinds of licensing. Dolby is another good analog to this kind of codec licensing. Make something standard then charge for it. THX is the same. Their big license is for MPEG2 AAC used in XM and in Japan. Their sliding scale is $0.45 to $0.10/decoder with $0.25 being the middle range.
• MPEG4 Visual. Yet another licensing group. They have a good overview on what they are doing, but basically rather than per device, they want a cut of revenue. But for devices, it is about $0.25/device and only for big guys with a $1M minimum commit that buys you 50K devices

Time Sport USA. I've got a brand new Time Monolink stem. It is amazing. 125 grams made of carbon fiber. Unfortunately, while hammering up a hill, one of the titanium bolts snapped right at the head. Wow, I'm lucky I didn't crash. In any case, the nice folks at Time Sports USA actually answered my mail. Told me that they were switching from titanium bolts to steel bolts and sent me another set. If you have this stem, beware!

John Ludwig points out the music business is collapsing and "Joseph Lasica":http://www.jdlasica.com/blog/archives/2003_09_08.html#001472 has some sage advice on the topic. Hard for me to imagine since I've lived my days in the world where music was so important and everyone wanted to hear the latest. Back to the days of going to clubs I guess. Seriously, the music business is in for big changes. Wonder what will happen to movies. Does it mean that long-term, we are going to be like Little House on the Prairie and put on little plays and learn the banjo?

Spam Conference. The last spam conference was super interesting. At MIT again this year. Some good theoretical work. "Spam 2003 Conference":http://spamconference.org/proceedings2003.html. These were the presentations from last year.

Home - MailFrontier, Inc.. "Brad":http://www.thesiverbergs.com says that this is a good product. Need to look at. Just did another round. A silicon valley deal with Draper Fisher Jurvetson and NEA in the A round and Menlo did a $10M B round.

Outclass: Mail Classification for Outlook with POPFile. A pretty big upgrade for this mail classification. Check it out. Best thing is getting rid of the training mode stuff.

The Fishbowl: Bayesian Filtering: The Spam Fights Back. BEsids having the absolutely best tagline for a web site (tail -f /dev/mind > blog), he does a good job explaing the latest attacks on spam filters. I've been using a Bayesian filter called popfile with good results, but this latest attack will mystify it. "Spammers Compendium":http://www.jgc.org/tsc/index.htm. is a great insight into how the other guy is thinking. It's kept by John Graham-Cumming, the guy who wrote popfile and a leading anti-spam expert.

DVD Software Best of Breed. Another hat tip to Ludwig. This is Furrygoat's view of good DVD software. He likes DVDLabs, TMP2Enc and Nero which I agree with. And, Windows Movie Maker which I don't like. The ones I need to try in addition are: "Muvee Auto Producer":http://muvee.com. This is an editing package for $50. "Womble MPEG2VCR":http://www.womble.com. This is a basic MPEG-2 video editor and encoder. $120. Ones I need

UCDS and the John Neilson Fund _John Neilson passed away several years ago, but his memory lives on. Connie and I contributed to a fund for teaching and education. Here are some results from a program that is part of the teaching center it supports. It is kind of cool to see something that actually works_

We've just received great news about the current state of Thurgood Marshall's math program (UCDS, in a collaboration with the Applied Math Department at the UW and funded by a grant from the NSF, has been mentoring their teachers in this area for two years). As the figures below show, 4th grade students at Thurgood Marshall now have math scores that exceed the Washington State average. We will provide a full story on this in an upcoming issue of the weekly, but felt you would want to celebrate this amazing news with us now. |Math WASL Pass Rate|2000-2001|2001-2002|2002-2003| |4th Grade Thurgood|9.8%|45.5%|58.7%| |Washington State Average|43.4%|51.8%|55.2%|

_Hat tip to "Roadbikerider.com":http://roadbikerider.com newsletter on this tip about ProLink._ I can't say enough about ProLink. It keeps a chain running clean, it lasts longer than any lube I've used, it seems impervious to water, and it increases chain life substantially. You can find our full review at "ProLink":http://www.roadbikerider.com/products.htm If you buy the 32-oz. size, you'll save some dough and have enough to last a couple seasons. There's no need to lube as often because this stuff lasts. I know this sounds like an ad, but the guys at Pro Gold Products did their homework on ProLink, and then some. A word to the wise(guys): Don't apply ProLink or any other "dry" lube just before a ride. It'll get slung all over the back end of your bike and the chain will vacuum up road grime. A dry lube must be allowed to dry before you ride. If you can't wait overnight, steal someone's hairdryer to speed up the process. If you get caught, claim the devil made you do it and promise never again (with your fingers crossed behind your back, of course). Bottom line: More important than what you do to a brand-new chain, keep it clean and lubed throughout its life. Life ends when there is measurable stretch.

Well, it's time to think about virtual next year. The summer is done, so what rides am I committing to and training for. Here is the list: * Ride for the Roses. October 26, 2003. Sunday. Ride for the Roses is a century in Austin. Sounds like a wonderful event. Saturday is the all day bike expo and fair. Sounds like fun. * "AIDS Lifecycle":http://www.aidslifecycle.org/. June 6-12 from San Francisco to LA. Sounds like a wonderful ride. Hat tip to "Hoops":http://scbhooper.com for finding this one. It is 7 days and 585 miles. Have to say, it sounds long, but the training program looks simple compared to the one-day STP. It is still 83 miles per day though! * "STP":http://cascade.org/EandR/STP.cfm. July 17-18, 2004 in the upcoming year. It is the 25th anniversary by the way. * "Butterfiled and Robinson":http://www.butterfield.com/index.asp?navid=125. Sometime in July, plan a bike trip with the whole family. Hoops is looking into it now.

General George Patton quotation. Less poetic than Mao, but pretty colorful advice on warfare.

BELLUM - warfare philosophy. Super well organized site on the philosophy and doctrine of warfare through the ages

Some quick notes on cool tools that I've been exploring lately around the area of IP blocking * "kazaa-lite":http://www.kazaalitekpp.com/. This is clean version of Kazaa. Doesn't have spyware. Also implements IP blocking through a central "list":http://kazaalite.host.sk/dl/BannedIpRanges.txt. The list itself is an interesting read for nerds. * "PeerGuardian":http://peerguardian.net. This is a general purpose IP blocker. Sort of like a lightweight personal firewall with automatic update of blocked IP addresses. Works great because the IP list gets updated daily, but in current releases 1.99 and 1.98, it is very resource intensive. Fascinating to see my personal machine banged by doubleclick all day. * Filetopia: Your secure file sharing and communications tool. Got a good review from some of the folks at peerguardian.net.

Well, it's a pretty sad picture for HDTV particularly in Seattle. But at least a little better than a year ago. Seems like it is hard to get information on what works and what doesn't. Here is what I've found out via sites like "HDTV Pub":http://www.hdtvpub.com/ which keeps track of such stuff: * "Over the Air":http://www.hdtvpub.com/local/localarea.cfm/city_Seattle/state_WA/cat_Washington/. Over the air, if you can see the right antennas (mainly on Queen Anne Hill), you can get Fox, PBS, NBC, CBS, ABC and WB. PBS is actually a multicast with a couple of stations. Independents include KONG, PAX, UPN My dad has this and it works well if you can see the "Hill" * "Comcast Cable HDTV in netnews" and "HDTV Pub Reports":http://www.hdtvpub.com/local/viewReports.cfm/zipcode_98101/dma_819/county_King/cableco_1/. The news thread explains it, but on August 7th, Comcast rolled out HDTV versions of KCTS and ESPN, the public channel, KOMO which is NBC. They also have some Mariners games on Fox Sports Northwest as well as Showtime and HBO. The charge structure is that you pay $25 for a new digital set top box. You get KCTS HD, KOMO HD and Fox Sport HD if you subscribe to Digital Cable. If you want Showtime and HBO HD, then you need to pay $15/month each or get a package. The HDTV Pub folks also say that Fox, KING, etc. are coming by year end. Hallalujah! * "DirecTV HDTV":http://www.directv.com/DTVAPP/imagine/HDTV.jsp. You get ESPN, Discovery, HDNet and HDNet movies for $11/month, HBO and Showtime HD if you have a package with these as well as pay-per-view movie channel for $5/movie. Also, there is the Masters and NBA games as special packages. * "Dish HDTV":http://www.dishnetwork.com/content/programming/hdtv/index.asp. Right now, you get Discovery for $8/month, HBOHD or SHO-HD if you subscribe to any package with HBO or Showtime, CBS for $5/month and one pay-per-view movie and NBA station. You do need a Model 6000U Receiver as well and be able to see latitudes 61.5 and 148 locations. So right now, the best thing would be to watch what Comcast is doing with HDTV, if they add all the locals in HD, that is lots of programming. Beyond that I'd say that DirecTV has a slight edge because of ESPN and HDNet (they have some great programming on "HDNet":http://www.hd.net/ BTW including Thieves and Fugitive two original shows of theirs. Thieves is actually pretty good).

I truly love the new Blackberry (really a blueberry), but it is amazing how hard it is to get support for it. Between the carrier and Blackberry, it doesn't seem like there is a place to find out what is going on. So it is off to Google we go. BTW, the only difference between the 7210 and the 7230 is that one is locked to T-Mobile and the other to AT&T Wireless: * RIM/Blackberry - AT&T Wireless Support. Although we have T-mobile, there is no support forum at all for it. They tell you to literally call Blackberry or email help@blackberry.net. Right. AT&T does run a pretty good forum though, so I'm going to use it even though I'm on T-mobile. I am completely in love with Markf who is on that forum. he actually answers back. * "PDAStreets":http://www.pdastreet.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=7. This is the top google hit for blackberry forum. Seems more random than the AT&T forum, but is more active. * "Tekforum":http://www.tek-tips.com/gthreadminder.cfm/lev2/66/lev3/68/pid/952. Another moderately active forum. * "Blackberry Developer Forum":http://www.blackberry.net/developers/forum/index.jsp. Amazingly, the only forum that Blackberry sponsors is about Java, still sometimes some useful tips there. Here are the problems and answers as I know them: * "Invisible Fonts":http://forums.attwireless.com/attws/board/message?board.id=rim&message.id=584. I personally find the system font nearly invisible. I'm getting old. Millbanks 10 in the Options icon, choose screen/keyboard is much better. I am now using BBCondenses in 8 font with subpixel rendering and it is very nice too. * _Lousy deleted interface_ The Blackberry web client has a 10MB limit (not very much!) and if you delete mail from the inbox, it just goes to deleted items and it still counts against your 10MB limit. So, to really get more space, you have to deleted from the inbox, then go to deleted items and delete again. Arrrrghhh. So, if you just complete delete from the inbox, you have to either understand what "Permanently Delete" is vs. just "Delete" or go to deleted and delete there. What a lousy interface. Also, the same happens with sent mail. There are aging rules, but the default is 365 days which is way too long given that there is only 10MB of storage and you have to set for each folder, so that's another half hour wasted. * "Reconcile mail":http://forums.attwireless.com/attws/board/message?board.id=rim&message.id=607. It is completely unobvious is how to do it. You have to first hit on your Blackberry, the options/Reconcile now, then you have to hit Options then in that page, goto the menu item that says Purge Deleted items to actually get rid of it because of the strange deleted is not deleted. Doesn't appear documented anywhere but the AT&T forum. Alternatively, you can set the deleted items aging rule to 1 days. The minimum it appears. * Web Client slowness. The client is incredibly slow. Sometimes takes a minute to respond. Nothing like hotmail or any other web client I've used. Must be lots of fancy Jscript programming, but it is nearly unusable. * "Backlighting":http://forums.attwireless.com/attws/board/message?board.id=rim&message.id=491. I've never thought any Blackberry really had it, but this is nearly as bad as the original 957. More information at AT&T support * "HTML Web Sites":http://forums.attwireless.com/attws/board/message?board.id=rim&message.id=153. It is sad, but both AT&T and T-mobile lockout the use of standard HTML web sites via WAP. So, you can't just browse an ordinary site, you have to have a WAP enabled, yucky one. What are they thinking, the Blackberry is a 486 class machine, it could browse static html easily and the browser is already on the machine. The best solution appears to be to use the "Wap.google.com":http://forums.attwireless.com/attws/board/message?board.id=rim&message.id=211 site which then proxies to the HTML web page cache that google has. This does the HTML to WAP translation. How cool! * 7210 Applications. None of the older 957 or 6210 or 6710 applications appear to work. Requires a whole recompile. Wonder why. * 7210 Unlock. The Blackberry is locked to a particular service. The good news for those of you using T-Mobile USA is that they will supply the unlock code. You just need to call them and tell them you are traveling overseas and don't use their service there. This BTW is true for all T-Mobile phones I've had, they will give you the unlock. Very friendly folks. AT&T on the other hand won't give the unlock code at all and there appear to be no third party services that do it.

Well, it's time for Rich's twice-yearly shuffle of cell phones and plans. When number portability strikes, it will be even easier, but right now of the five or so phones I manage for my family, most have contracts ending around now. here is what I'm doing and other advice for you: h4. Best GSM Plans * T-Mobile - Family Plans. If you have a high usage person and some low usage folks (fits me to a tee, I'm high usage, Connie and my parents are low), then T-mobile has some of the best plans I've seen. The Family Plan right now gives you 800 minutes shared between two phones for $70. You can add another phone for $10/month. Does require a one year contract. Amazing thing is that