I noes I haven’t updated my blog in a few months more than a year, but I’ve been busy working at a small, local news startup. Since one of my New Year’s resolutions was to be a more diligent blogger, I thought I would start this year off with a *whiz-bang*, non-technical post!

(I guess it’s pretty ironic that I’m posting this in January August, huh? )

Last December, I was invited to a Christmas Party. Not your standard-fare holiday party, mind you, but a “World of Warcraft Guild” Christmas Party. Wanting to bring something unique to the potluck, I ended up making “For The Horde Brownies”… and this is a blog detailing the experience.

›› Setup

• Your favorite brownie mix/recipe
• Powdered sugar
• Print out of the For the Horde pdf
• X-Acto knife (or scissors)

›› Baking the brownies

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m no baker. While there are those that profess it as their passion, I see it purely as a means to an end. With that said, you can use <insert your favorite brownie mix here> to make the brownies or if you’re feeling exceptionally adventurous, maybe use one of these recipes. Whatever your poison, just make sure it appears edible – enough to trick your guests with; kind of like this.

›› Preparing the Horde symbol

While baking your magical brownies, print out the enclosed Horde pdf. You’ll want to make a few copies to practice your X-Acto skills on. Of course, if your scissor-fu is amazing, feel free to wield those instead. (It took me two tries with the X-Acto to get it just right). After you’ve finished removing the Horde symbol, it should resemble the following:

›› For the Horde!

After you have a cut out of the Horde symbol, you can use the powdered sugar to apply the symbol to your brownies. If you mess up, like I did, fret not.

Your final product should end up looking something like the following:

Voila!

›› Credits

As usual, I must give props where props are due.

People I owe a soul to

• @sarakata for the wonderful idea (and baking the brownies)
• @pwnies for the magical Horde svg image file
• @mirthlab for creating the Horde pdf file
• Last but not least, all the smarties on the Illlist who gave me a myriad of suggestions on how to accomplish this

Unfortunately, I was tagged by Harper for a “7 things” meme where I have to divulge seven tidbits of randomness about myself. I’m generally not a big fan of these things since most of you on the Interweb could care less about me, but it is Harper… and well, he is my new bicycle, so here goes:

1. I have “girlie” handwriting

I blame this 1000% all on my sister. Throughout the years, people have told me that I write like a girl – whatever that means. I don’t know how many days of my childhood I spent playing “school”, but it’s quite apparent that it was damn too many. Thanks Stace!

2. I used to play an inordinate amount of video games

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but this one just might make you speechless. Damn you, John Carmack, for making one of the greatest games of my generation and *almost* failing me out of college. I’ve just recently been sucked into this wonderful World of Warcraft. God, help me.

3. I

Whether it’s the crosswords, sudoku, kakuro, chess, or that damn Bejeweled, I absolutely love puzzles. I typically have a really short attention span, but puzzles have known to captivate me for hours on end.

4. I am ultra-competitive

I don’t know if it was the math games my mom challenged me with as a child, but I’m probably on the extremely far end of the competitiveness scale. It could be eating (grr, Kobayashi, here I come), games at Dave and Buster’s, or just a game of pickup basketball, I’ll compete at anything. And if you’re lucky, I’ll probably throw in some trash talking as well.

5. I am a total sucker for 80′s cartoons

Whether it’s G.I. Joe, Transformers, M.A.S.K., Thundercats, Voltron, or Silverhawks; I’m an uber 80′s cartoon fan. I don’t know if I should be admitting this as a 30 year old, but I have an extensive collection of Transformers and G.I. Joes safely stored away at my parent’s house. Thanks, Mom & Dad!

6. I love to read

I’m not sure when this happened in my life, but I’ve come to love reading. When I was younger, I absolutely loved Encyclopedia Brown and the Choose Your Own Adventure series. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve stuck to the more non-fiction variety, and I’m currently working on these books here. One of these days, I’m hoping someone will get me an Amazon Kindle. =P (*hint* *hint*)

7. Hi, my name is Ryan, and I’m a caffeine Coke Zero addict

Since my parents never allowed me to drink caffeine as a child, I don’t know exactly when this happened. It could have been all those all-nighters in grad school trying finish up the last bits of code, or the late nights playing online games. In any case, I drink a six pack a day, on the conservative estimate, but I’m really, really trying to stop. I think.

Whew!

And there you have it folks – a few lame tidbits about me. Now, according to Harper, to make this official, I have to tag 7 other unfortunate online souls. So… I tag:

• Ed S – I met Ed through a basketball league, and it just so happens we share a similar interest in all things technology. Not only does he manage one of the larger media sites in Hawaii, but he is also a featured blogger @ the Honolulu Advertiser.
• Stephen F – A former co-worker, I’m hoping that this will kick-start his blogging. Since he’s busy with kids, school, and work, I’m not sure he’ll have time for this, but hey, it’s worth a try. He knows all things .Net and Ruby.
• Kevin M – We met during our freshman year at U of I in calculus. He’s a .Net machine working for Clarity Consulting and is full of zany ideas. He was even featured on Microsoft’s Coding4Fun for his DIY foosball hack. I’m sure he’ll have something great to write.
• Greg Y – We used to work in the same organization, and I’d help him out with small projects. He’s leading the Hawaii Web 2.0 charge in the organization and also masquerades as a part-time blogger @ Pulp Connection.
• Mark Q – One of my current co-workers who knows all things CSS and Mac. He’s a Symfony user *cough*fanboy*cough* and is currently trying to convince me to switch over to the darkside. “Resistance is futile.“
• Scott V – We met during our freshman year at U of I playing what else but Quake. Not only is he half man, half crazy, but he’s also the nerdvana of all things system administration. He currently works at Threadless with Harper causing all sorts of havoc.
• Trent N – I mentored Trent through HiTechQuest. He’s a young’un but has all types of technological potential. Since he’s the youngest I’ve tagged, I’m sure he’ll have all sorts of interesting things to teach us old folk.

Shia LaBeouf as Sam Witwicky, Transformers

As some of you may know, I recently left my position as a Navy contractor at COMPACFLT for another position at a small, local technology startup. Having come from a family of “lifers”, it wasn’t an easy decision. Even though I absolutely loved both the work and people, I felt that I would have too many regrets not taking this opportunity.

So with that said, here’s a few of my lasting memories:

• Late nights in the dreaded server room with Wally and co.
• The lunchroom gang – Our topics ranged the gamut; from MMA to the next 4chan meme.
• Admiral’s Cup – We won a basketball game! (Not by forfeit!)
• Ping pong Fridays!
• Almost killing my co-worker Cindy with the Wii controller… and then my yo-yo.
• Monday morning chats with Gits about his weekend PS3 adventures.
• Steve’s yellow lunch truck

Though I came in a contractor, I feel as though I’m leaving as family. So with that said, farewell, good luck, and Godspeed to everyone at FLT!

Click on my picture to check out my flickr set!

I finally succumbed to peer pressure.

After some careful online research (like here, here, and here) and being persuaded by my co-worker Stephane, I finally mozied on down to get myself a pair of Vibram FiveFingers. After all, being named one of Time Magazine’s Inventions of the Year couldn’t be all that bad… right?

After perusing their website, I found only two retailers on Oahu that sold them.

• Uyeda Shoe Store across from Puck’s Alley (map)
• The Wheatgrass Center behind the Bank of Hawaii on Waialae (map)

After calling Uyeda’s several times and being greeted with one of those funky fax feedback tones each time (note – please update your online phone number), I finally decided to ring up The Wheatgrass Center. For those of you instructionally-impaired like myself, just take a left on Waialae Ave. before the Bank of Hawaii heading Kahala bound. Located behind the bank, The Wheatgrass Center is quite an interesting store selling both the Vibram FiveFingers and of course… wheatgrass. (Why people want to ruminate like cows is still truly beyond me.)

Review

When I first saw the Vibram FiveFinger, I did what any other (semi) normal human being would do – I laughed. Not any normal laugh, mind you – but a “there’s no f-in way I’m wearing that in public” laugh. They resemble footwear of a ninja-in-training, and since I’m neither of the two (a ninja or in training), I really couldn’t fathom seeing myself in a pair.

But after trying them on, I was immediately taken back; back to small kid time when I ran barefoot and carefree in the red dirt hills of Mililani. The Vibram FiveFingers not only allows you to feel the contour of the ground, but also provides protection to the soles of your feet. After being given the sales pitch by Mr. Fukuda, I was sold. There’s a few models; I ended up purchasing the Classic. (Check out their website to see the entire product line). Not to mention, Mr. Fukuda instructed ordered me to wear the pair out the door. After a full weekend’s worth of wear and tear, here’s a few images of them on my feet – along with a short list of my pros and cons.

The Pros

• It’s surprisingly comfortable. Sometimes my toes still feel weird being separated, but it’s pretty neat to actually feel the ground without fear of having a rock in your foot. Btw, if you like the separated toe thing, check these socks out from Injini.
• If everything the Internet world says is true (like we all know it is!), I’ll have crazy leg/toe muscles, damnit! And, not to mention, it promotes a more natural walking motion. To learn more, read this article about barefoot running.

The Cons

• I developed a blister on the back of my foot near my Achilles from the back strap. It’s pretty sore, but after reading other reviews, I’m sure I’ll get used to it.
• Since I’m fairly self-deprecating and a non-fashionista (you should see my car), the design doesn’t faze me one bit – but I could see how embarrassment could set in.
• The price. $73 bucks isn’t a drop in the bucket in this economy. Damn, do you know how many beers I’m giving up for this?

I’ll tell you in December how the Honolulu Marathon goes with these on!

Here are some of the highlights of my sweet two week hiatus to Cali4nia:

• The 2008 Rose Bowl – Though my Fighting Illini got killed, it was still quite the experience.
• Seeing friends – Big Fisch and Steder, Steve-o, Lyle, Marshall, Allen, KK, Bobby!, Tricia, and others.
• Hanging with la familia in San Jose.
• House of Prime Rib with the Townsends!

(Click on our group picture to see my flickr set!)

Today, I officially received my Masters in Business Administration from the Shidler College of Business at the University of Hawaii. Though it took me four long years as a part time student, I’d like to thank everyone who made it possible. Thanks for all the late nighters, the fun times running student body, but most of all, thanks for the memories. Not to mention, thanks to everyone who came to see me graduate! Whee! Since I hadn’t participated in a graduation ceremony in a few years, it was quite exciting.

At least I can say I graduated with Colt!

Go Bows!

(I’ll post videos once I can figure out how to convert them from my camera!)

And as a parting thought, the proof is in the pudding!

(Click on the diploma cover to see my flickr set!)

Retirement Party

After slaving away for months planning my parent’s *surprise* retirement party, everything came to full fruition today. Thinking that they were attending an awards ceremony for the University of Hawaii’s Shidler College of Business, my parents were completely taken aback as more than 150 of their closest friends and family gathered to celebrate their retirement.

(Thanks to me and my sister!)

There’s a lesson to be learned here. If you want to see the most bewildered look on your parent’s face as 150+ people scream “Surprise!”, shoot me an email. And trust me when I say this, but…

It was all worth it.

I’ll post some pics once I get them developed. Thanks to everyone who showed up as well as everyone who made it all possible.

I seriously <3 my family.

Illinois gets a whiff of the Roses

The Illinois seriously needed the moons and the stars aligned today for their hand to be dealt the right cards.

1. Virginia Tech beating BC allowed Illinois to move into the top 14 of the BCS poll.
2. Pittsburgh beating West Virginia and/or (whatever way you want to look at it) Oklahoma beating Mizzo allowed Ohio State to move into the BCS Championship Game.

(As much as I hate saying this… but “Go Buckeyes!”)

Since Ohio State was going to be the Big Ten’s representative to the Rose Bowl, moving into the BCS Championship Game means that another Big Ten school could be selected to take their place.

Enter Illinois

After a dismal 2-10 season last year, the Illinois came roaring back this year with wins over then number five, Wisconsin, and then number one, Ohio State. Featuring a potent running attack, an amazing freshman, Leman led defense, and a surprise resurgence of “Juice” Williams, a whiff of the Roses will be well deserved.

Hawaii says pass some Sugar, baby.

For those of you on the East Coast that couldn’t stay up to watch Hawaii’s wild win over Washington, please, please watch today’s replay. Not only does it exemplify Hawaii’s heart and soul displayed throughout the season, but it’ll show all you analysts what to watch out for on New Year’s day.

All I can say is…

If Colt Brennan isn’t a Heisman finalist, something is seriously dead wrong with the system.

All the ESPN and BCS committee haters can stop drinking the haterade because the University of Hawaii showed true heart and grit in its final four games of the season. Not many of the so called “experts” and “analysts” gave them a chance to be the only undefeated team in college football. Notice, I didn’t say all because there were a few here and there.

But 12 games and a 12-0 record later, here we are.

Since Boise really paved the way for non-BCS conferences last year with a wild win over Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl, the Rainbows are expected to get an at-large BCS selection to the Sugar Bowl.

Go Bows!

Now my only dilemma is what bowl game will I attend?

The very first thing I did was search Google. You know, I really don’t know how people lived pre-Googs. In any case, I found this blog posting describing exactly what I wanted to do. Thanks Ben! Since I’m not a big fan of running one large batch script people create in their blogs, I’ll break it down for the non-*nix fans out there.

Before I begin, I’m assuming that you already have Django running on Dreamhost. If you’re having a “wtf” moment, make sure to stop by Jeff’s blog and read “Setting up Django on Dreamhost“. (This is how I set mine up). To follow my short tutorial, you’ll need shell access to your Dreamhost account.

After ssh’ing into your Dreamhost account, you should be in your home directory (/home/username). According to the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard, the /opt dir “is reserved for the installation of add-on application software packages.” With that said, issue the following commands:

$ mkdir opt
$ mkdir downloads
$ cd downloads
$ wget http://www.python.org/ftp/python/2.5.1/Python-2.5.1.tgz
$ tar xvzf Python-2.5.1.tgz

First, create a directory named opt. Next, create a directory named downloads for all your files. Change into the downloads directory, then download the latest Python from http://www.python.org. Finally, unzip and untar the package into the download directory. Everything will extract into a directory named Python-2.5.1.

$ cd Python-2.5.1
$ ./configure --prefix=$HOME/opt/ --enable-unicode=ucs4
$ make
$ make install

Change into the Python-2.5.1 directory and type in the following configure command. Basically, configure prepares your installation for compilation. The –prefix flag will install machine-independent data files in subdirectories of the specified directory. The default is to install in /usr/local, but it’s overwritten with the opt directory created earlier. Finally, run make and make install which will install your custom Python installation.

$ cd ..
$ rm -rf Python-2.5.1

Finally, delete the Python-2.5.1 directory. Before you can use this Python installation, you have to add the /opt/bin directory to your path. To do this, add /opt/bin to your .bash_profile file in your home directory. To do so, you’ll have to add the following to your .bash_profile.

export PATH=$HOME/opt/bin/:$PATH

Basically, this allows you to type ‘python’ in your shell and reach the custom Python 2.5.1 installation instead of the Dreamhost one. To make sure that our Python installation is working, type the following in your home directory (cd ~):

$ source .bash_profile
$ python --version

After the last command, you should see the following: Python 2.5.1. If that displays, your upgrade was successful! After upgrading your Python installation, you’re not done yet. Since Dreamhost uses an old MySQL-Python installation, we’ll upgrade that as well. Type the following in your home directory:

$ cd downloads
$ wget http://internap.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/mysql-python/MySQL-python-1.2.2.tar.gz
$ tar xvzf MySQL-python-1.2.2.tar.gz
$ cd MySQL-python-1.2.2
$ python setup.py install

First, change into the downloads directory and issue the wget command to download the latest MySQL-Python files from Sourceforge. Once you’ve received the files, unzip and untar the package. All the files will extract into a directory called MySQL-python-1.2.2. Change into this directory and install the files by typing python setup.py install. If you followed the custom Python installation, the files should build and extract into the ~/opt/lib/python2.5/site-packages/ directory as an egg file.

You now have a custom Python installation and a MySQL-Python upgrade!

Voila!

Update: Just so you don’t get caught up in the same mistake that I made, to be sure that your Django fcgi installation is using your custom Python installation, make sure the dispatch.fcgi file reads as such:

#!/home/USERNAME_GOES_HERE/opt/bin/python
import sys

sys.path += ['WHATEVER_PATHS_YOU_NEED']

from fcgi import WSGIServer
from django.core.handlers.wsgi import WSGIHandler
import os

os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'wegoeat.settings'
WSGIServer(WSGIHandler()).run()

Yikes!

I know I’m late with my updates, but I’m currently enrolled in the final project based MBA class at the University of Hawaii and it’s been kicking my @$$. In any case, enough excuses… here’s the quick rundown of the presentations I attended on Day 3, 4, and 5 at OSCON. Btw, all the presentation files can be found online! (Don’t you love open source). Not to mention, I’ve tried to scour the web for reviews notes for each session and linked them appropriately.

Day 3

Session 1: Subversion: Powerful New Toys with Director for The Apache Software Foundation, Justin Erenkrantz

Since we’ve implemented Subversion at work, I wanted to be forward thinking and check out all the new features and the direction of the project. It’s nice to know they’re looking at Mercurial’s revlog.

Session 2: Who Gets to Decide What Open Source Means? with a really powerful panel of people.

With a panel of supastahs, I wanted to hear the debate about all the confusion surrounding the word “free” software and what exactly constitutes open source. Pretty interesting to see what all the fuss is about especially once the software crosses over into the Enterprise.

Session 3: PHP: Bigger and Faster with Rasmus Lerdorf, creator of PHP.

It’s funny; I ate lunch with Rasmus and I didn’t even know it. Really interesting talk about PHP. I’m not a hugeeee PHP fan but still interesting nonetheless. First introduction to YSlow for Firebug.

Session 4: Using Trac Efficiently: Work Smarter, Not Harder with Vivek Khera

Since I just installed a VMWare image of a Trac install on Windows, I wanted to see what the community buzz was all about. The talk was really, really crowded; not to mention I heard numerous speakers over the course of the conference pimp out Trac. People mentioned having trouble installing Trac on Windows, but I followed the wiki instructions and it was fine – not sure what all the fuss is about. I’ll have to get back to the office and figure out how to setup the authentication and hooks into our repository so we can actually use the installation I configured at work.

Session 5: High Performance Web Pages with Chief Performance Yahoo!, Steve Souders

Steve introduced an internal Yahoo! tool, YSlow, that hooked into the lovely Firebug to grade the performance of a website. After having played with it for a few days, I’m loving it. Nothing like instant gratification in the form of a score. And if you develop ANYTHING on the web and you’re not using Firebug, it’s best advised that you do.

Day 4

Session 1: Why Observability Matters – How DTrace Helped Twitter with Adam Leventhal and Brandon Gregg.

After reading about all the scaling troubles of Twitter, I really wanted to see what tools helped determine the root cause of the problem. Sun’s DTrace is a fascinating real time, trace tool that can help debug and trace pretty much any issue that you’d encounter. Though I can’t use it at work, I still love to see the low level tools that are being developed. If you’re lost, don’t worry I was too, read more about DTrace at Wikipedia.

Session 2: Using and Writing Rails Plugins with Eric Pugh

Since I’ve slowly been delving in the Rails world, I wanted to see what the plugin system was all about. The session was pretty informative, even recommending sites that give statistics on the most frequently used plugins. (Don’t worry, I still love my Django).

Session 3: Python 3000 with Guido van Rossum

Hearing the God of Python speak about its future is pretty fascinating. I find it interesting that Py3K will break compatibility with Python 2.X. If you don’t know what that means, basically – you have to upgrade all your Python scripts to 2.6, then a source-code conversion tool will be used to convert your source files in Python 2.6 to Py3K. Scary but rest assured that these guys are super smart. To read more about Py3K, you can check out the PEP for it.

Session 4: Advanced Spring Framework with CEO of Interface21, Rod Johnson

I’ve heard Rod speak a number of times at JavaOne and since I’ve converted all my projects to use Spring in some fashion or another, I always like to see what’s going on in the community. Btw, if you’re not using a dependency injection framework, you really, really, really need to look into them.

Day 5

Session 1: Subversion Worst Practices with Google employees, Brian Fitzpatrickand Ben Collins-Sussman.

Since Harper and Scoot are friends of Brian’s in Chitown and we use Subversion at work, I wanted to see what the core development team thought about the worst practices. This was by far the funniest of all the sessions I attended, and it was SRO only. To read about notes from last year’s session named “Subversion Best Practices”, check them out here. Or… even better, check out Fitz’s blog about this year’s presentation.

Whew. All in all, a very awesome conference. Hopefully, I can convince management that this is the future. // KANNO