blog.fogel.ca

Sniff, sniff.

Dear undertow,

I don’t know if there’s a laptop heaven, but I think there must be because if there wasn’t that just wouldn’t be fair.  You’ve done so much for me over the years – so many late nights, so many trips together.  Our relationship came before all others, when you cried, I would be there for you, day or night, weekday or weekend.  You’ve done so well… just look at how you’ve grown!  New system board, new hard drive, new wireless, new WWAN, new RAM (2x)… you survived coffee, red bull, too many drops, three operating systems, and even a 35mph collision with a Jeep Grand Cherokee.  But now, now your system board has decided to fry all your internals.  undertow, I took you everywhere I went… I just don’t know what I’ll do without you.

Except replace you, with a better you!  HAH!  0wn3d.

Yours,

root

Update: By (popular) demand, if you’d like to help get me hacking again, you can donate.  All donated funds will go directly to getting me a brand spank’n new sup’d up laptop.

Let’s say you wanted to transfer a complete copy of an existing SVN repository, all history included, from a googlecode.com project to a subdirectory in another preexisting repository. This takes a few steps since us mere mortal non-googlers (and former googlers) don’t get direct command line access to the googlecode.com servers.

1. Make a local copy of the full googlecode.com repository.
   

   svnadmin create local_repos
   echo -e “#\041/bin/sh” > local_repos/hooks/pre-revprop-change
   echo “exit 0″ >> local_repos/hooks/pre-revprop-change
   chmod 755 local_repos/hooks/pre-revprop-change
   svnsync init file://`pwd`/local_repos \
       https://urproject.googlecode.com/svn
   svnsync sync file://`pwd`/local_repos

2. Now, you can make a dump of that local repository.

svnadmin dump ./local_repos > thedump

3. Copy that dumpfile over to wherever your preexisting destination repository is located. -C is for gzip compression during transfer, and is helpful if you have a big repository full of text.

scp -C ./thedump yourhost.com:~/

4. Now, we load that dumpfile.
   

   ssh yourhost.com
   svn mkdir file://path/to/your/repos/dir_for_googlecode_copy
   svnadmin load /path/to/your/repos \
       –parent-dir dir_for_googlecode_copy < thedump

Revision number will be incremented correctly (ending at the sum of the two previous repositories), all the commit logs and such are transfered intact, including the authors (even if they’re not users on the new system).  Pretty smooth.

Good thing, because those eucalyptus were really causing a problem.

This is a symptom of deep, powerful problems within Stanford, and in the big picture, within our society as a whole.

The fact that Stanford is replacing nature with nature because one’s been deemed one more ‘natural’ than the other isn’t the problem.  The fact that Stanford is paying $$$$$($?) per tree for this upgrade isn’t the problem, as Stanford has $$$$$$$$$$$ (yes, 11 digits there) lying around.  In fact, the problem is not even that the money spent on each tree could instead give one of the 10,000 people living off the street just around the corner a place to call home.

The problem is that we, as a culture, as a people, are A-OK with this disparity of wealth, this wasteful opulence, this dehumanization of those in need… directly in front of our faces, our doorstops.  Not to mention the other 3 billion who are kept out of place, out of mind.  The problem starts with those in power, those making the decisions, those who choose to push that 21.6 billion dollars toward million dollar landscaping upgrades – but it extends down to you and me, who drive by the problem every day, and turn a blind eye.  This indifference, this willful indirection, ingrained in the most powerful people on the planet is neither acceptable, justifiable, nor in the long term – sustainable.

We can, and we must, do better.

Caltrain is currently putting together a Bicycle Master ‘Plan’.  This is a Good Thing, as Caltrain has some serious problems with their current bicycle situation, which are getting worse fast (and, I’d argue, will continue to worsen polynomially with respect to gas prices).  However, Caltrain’s Draft Bike Master Plan currently isn’t focused on these issues – but rather on bike parking and storage at stations.  Which is not a problem of any significance.  Awesome!  Is this one of those classic ‘the people making the decisions are not the people using the service’? Or is this intentional blindness? Is it that the money coming in has strings attached to it? What’s the deal?

In any case, Caltrain is accepting comments on their draft plan through August 17. If you ride Caltrain (especially with a bike), please take the time to tell Caltrain what issues you think it’s important the bike plan address, and any ideas you may have for actually addressing them.  You can email your comments to bikeplan@caltrain.com.

To: bikeplan@caltrain.com
From: Michael J. Fogel <mike … at … fogel.ca>
Subject: Bikeplan comments:  refocus on the real issue – bikes on board

Good Morning Bikeplan,

I want to add my voice to the chorus.  I feel it’s downright silly that Caltrain is investing time and effort into bicycle parking and storage at this time.  It’s true that may need improvement, but it doesn’t have anywhere near the urgency nor importance that the ‘not enough space on board for bikes’ problem does.

Currently:

- a significant portion of the Caltrain system is consistently delayed, primarily due to bikes loading and unloading.

- 100’s of riders a day are ‘bumped’ from their trains because of a lack of space for them and their bike.

- This problem is getting worse, fast.  This is primarily a product of rising gasoline prices.

Conversely:

- I’ve been riding Caltrain for 5 years, often with my bike.  I have yet to ever, ever hear someone complain about bike parking or storage at a station.

Addressing the ‘bikes on board’ problem is much more difficult than the ‘bike storage’ problem.  But Caltrain needs to suck it up, and address it now.  It’s getting worse, fast!  There are three classes of general approaches:

1. Disallow bikes on board.  They take up too much space and time.

2. Continue fully subsidizing bikes on board.  Thus you need to add more trains, and achieve better loading and unloading throughput.  I don’t (nor does Caltrain, I gather) feel this is a practical solution in the long term (long term meaning: $10-20 for a gallon of gas).

3. Implement a series of coordinated of incentives/disincentives to bringing bikes on the train.  Caltrain’s current approach falls into this category.  However, Caltrain is restricting their study and action to one small part of this solution:  Caltrain wants to provide one incentive (improved bike parking/storage) to help reduce demand for bikes on trains.

Providing improved bike parking and storage will indeed reduce demand and ease the real ‘bikes on board’ problem… by what, 3% ???  Has Caltrain made any estimates of the (intuitively insignificant) effect this is going to have on the real issue here?

Caltrain must refocus its Bikeplan directly at the real problem: bikes on board.  Improved storage and parking is a part of the solution, but a small part.

A few suggestions for other (larger) parts of the solution:

1. Begin charging a ‘fair’ (in comparison to the other Caltrain patrons, who do not bring bikes on board) fare for bringing a bike on board.  If a bike takes up enough space for what would have been another passenger, require that all bikes have tickets.  Also, a surcharge could be imposed on that bike ticket to account for the increased loading/unloading time.

2. Remove all bike cars from express trains and add them to the non-express trains.  Now you can still bring a bike on board if you need to, but you know your trip will be a little longer.

3. Require advance reservation (and purchase) of bike spot on a train, just like assigned seating.  This would reduce loading/unloading times, and greatly reduce the stress of bringing a bike on board.  In addition it would provide a moderate disincentive bringing a bike on board, via increased complexity.

Caltrain has made impressive strides in the last five years or so.  The issue of bringing bikes on board is causing significant problems, while the issue of bike parking and storage is not.  And worst of all – the situation with bikes on board is getting worse, fast.  Caltrain must refocus its Bikeplan now, directly and explicitly on the real issue: bikes on board.

Thanks for your time and consideration,

Michael J. Fogel

(This letter, and your responses, will be publicly posted.)

If Caltrain ever does reply, I’ll post it here.  Don’t hold your breath – we’re already pushing two weeks.

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition has also publicly posted their comments on the situation.

Just plug it in. It just works. I can’t believe it. Somebody wake me up… or wait, don’t. My debian box is ‘just working’!

Still, I’m watching songbird’s development closely and eagerly….

Most bottom brackets are reverse threaded on the drive side, so that you aren’t slowly loosing the bottom bracket as you ride. Well, if you have an older Italian or French bottom bracket, then they got that backwards. Awesome. Your BB is threaded the same on both sides, regular old right-handed.

If your BB says ‘36×24T’ on it, it’s Italian. Otherwise, look it up in Lord Sheldon’s BB database.