- (https://b-ark.ca/CUU4e2)
A beautiful day for a training ride! As a reminder, the second of three draws in the hand knitted sock raffle is coming up in June 19th, so donate now to get in on the action:
https://b-ark.ca/2024/05/16/tour-alberta-raffle.html
- (https://b-ark.ca/YQsGeK)
A little selection of photos from our second trip to The Rock. Newfoundland truly is an absolutely magical place.
- (https://b-ark.ca/O4cEyA)
Apologies to my donors for the late update, but I’m excited to announce the winners of the first round Tour Alberta for Cancer raffle draw: Liz Fox is the winner of the first pair of socks, while Howard Fiderer won the stuffed gnome! Thanks to their generous donations and the contributions of many others, I’m at over $1100 of my $2500 goal and slowly climbing!
But don’t despair, there’s still two more draws to come for a pair of socks!
- (https://b-ark.ca/IQsEQy)
So a quick update on my Tour Alberta for Cancer donor raffle: In addition to hand knitted socks, I’m excited to announce a fun little early bird prize for those who donate before May 29th: a hand-knitted stuffed gnome! For more information and a sample photo of what you could win, see my raffle post.
The Tour: Why I Ride
This will be my third year riding in the Enbridge Tour Alberta for Cancer and it occurs to me I’ve never really articulated (or even deeply thought about) why I keep coming back. And so, two months away from the big event, it seemed like the right time to put into words what the Tour has come to mean to me.
I’ve thought of myself as a “cyclist” for as long as I can remember. First, purely as a practical matter, cycling has always been my preferred way to commute (so much so that during my early years of post-secondary I rode to school straight through the winter). But as a sport, there’s few things I enjoy more (skiing and hiking come a close second). The Edmonton River Valley, in particular, has long been a playground to me, with gorgeous paved, gravel, and single track trails that seem to go on forever. Countless are the number of falls days I spent with my wheels crunching through leaves on rolling trails, golden sunlight filtering through the branches overhead.
Then, as is apparently inevitable for folks as they enter middle age, in the last few years I found myself getting into long distance cycling across the beautiful open roads of rural Alberta, and in doing so discovered a whole new kind of joy in a sport I thought I already knew so well.
Throughout those years I’d occasionally thought about signing up for an event like Tour Alberta for Cancer, but I was always a bit intimidated. After all, the physical demands of these types of events are significant (though I would discover, in hindsight, that I’d significantly overestimated the difficulty, or rather underestimated my ability to overcome it), and the fundraising is… daunting to say the least.
But a few of years back, while still working at INVIDI, one of my co-workers put together a team and I decided it was finally time to give it a shot. After all, while an event like the Tour might be intimidating, it’s a lot easier when you know there’s other people who are on the journey with you.
Of course, this first year was 2021, and assuming you haven’t just blanked out that year in your memory–and who would blame you if you did?–you’ve probably already figured out that year was a little… odd. As a consequence, our first Tour ride was in fact a virtual one, which… really wasn’t the same. At all.
And so, while 2021 was technically our first Tour, 2022 was our first real Tour.
Now I won’t lie and say it was easy. The ride itself was challenging, though I have to admit it was not as bad as I’d expected. And fundraising was certainly difficult. But in the end I had no regrets and I immediately signed up for the 2023 ride, having found a new and unexpected passion.
Continue reading...- (https://b-ark.ca/KiukCC)
A week of no riding and travel coming up soon means my training routine is set to be seriously disrupted. So I finally just pulled the bike indoors and got on the trainer while I have the chance. And boy it was tough…
Meanwhile I hit the $400 mark in donations! Still a long way to go but I know folks will come through!
- (https://b-ark.ca/8Ag_Ik)
I did it! I successfully replaced the bad top screen on my DS Lite. The most nerve wracking part was transferring the speakers but otherwise it went fairly smoothly. Shout out to The Fix on YouTube for the video and Zedlabz for the replacement part!
2024 Tour Raffle
So when I’m not raising money for cancer research I’m a pretty capable knitter with a specialty in much-sought-after socks. Well, now is your chance to get a pair of your own! Contribute to my fundraising campaign and enter a draw for a pair of custom, hand knit socks! Click through to the post to find out more!
So here we are in the middle of May, and while I still have a fair bit of time until the big ride on July 20th and 21st, I still have a long way to go to reach my $2,500 fundraising goal. In past years I’ve been truly amazed by how generous and supportive my friends and family have been; just through internet advocacy and a little gentle… let’s call it nudging, I’ve typically managed to get well past the half way mark. Stir in generous employer support and a bit of self-donation to get over the hump, and hitting that $2,500 goal, while difficult, was quite doable.
But, as I’ve mentioned in past posts, without that employer support, this year is going to be tougher than usual. Fortunately, that also means I have a lot more time to actively raise funds, which brings us to my first event: a hand-knit sock raffle!
Continue reading...- (https://b-ark.ca/SIsgu8)
While lean product development is all about trying small, cheap experiments, it’s applicable to anything you try for the first time. This is my first year starting plants indoors and I didn’t want to invest in expensive kit while I’m still learning. So here we have my grow table on the cheap: a repurposed SAD lamp sitting atop a garbage bag frame over some TV trays.
- (https://b-ark.ca/ESYgmW)
While being on a career break right now makes the fundraising campaign tougher this year, it does make for a lot more time to train, and with the weather turning fully to spring I took advantage of it. It’s only an hour in the saddle but it’s the first step on a journey to July!
And while it’s still early and I have a long way to go, I’ve already gotten the first couple of donations that will get me to my goal, so thank you to my early bird donors!
- (https://b-ark.ca/KuAi4K)
Two and a half years into owning my Framework 13” and I finally fixed my lingering issues:
- Fixed s2idle using a tip from the forums,
- Fixed spurious wake-ups by disabling XHCI in /proc/acpi/wakeup
- Enabled suspend-then-hibernate to automatically hibernate after 30 minutes suspended
I updated my original blog post so I don’t forget any of this.
- (https://b-ark.ca/O4w6Wq)
Maintenance done! She’s road worthy and now I gotta get training as I did nothing over the winter. Fortunately I have three months and plenty of time to get ready for the big ride!
- (https://b-ark.ca/MscAgw)
I’m riding in the 2024 Enbridge Tour Alberta for Cancer, raising money for the Alberta Cancer Foundation, and have so far raised $2,578, exceeding my $2,500 goal!
Help me by donating here!
And remember, by donating you earn a chance to win a pair of hand knitted socks!
Kindness of strangers
We had the privilege to witness the 2024 eclipse in beautiful Durango, Mexico. To get there we took a bus from Mazatlán, and it did not go as planned, as a four hour trip turned into an eighteen hour ordeal; an ordeal that became one of my favourite parts of the trip as we experienced, first hand, the wonderful kindness of strangers.
After traveling to Utah to view the annular eclipse in November, an experience that was absolutely incredible, both because of the eclipse itself and because of the people with whom we shared it, Lenore and I knew we had to travel somewhere to view the great North American total eclipse of 2024. After looking at cloud coverage maps, it didn’t take long to make our decision: we needed to go to Durango City, Mexico.
Now, despite being a location of deep and fascinating history, beautiful architecture, and delicious food, Durango isn’t exactly a common tourist destination, which means, in the past, traveling there would have been a bit challenging. Fortunately for us, ten years ago a brand new highway was opened that connects Mazatlán to Durango, turning what was once a 7 to 8 hour journey across a highway colourfully referred to as The Devil’s Backbone into a 3-4 hour trip through 63 tunnels and across one of the highest cable-stayed bridges in the world.
Realizing this, we came up with our plan: we’d fly into Mazatlán, spend a couple of days there, and then take a bus to Durango the day before the eclipse, tour around that afternoon, view the eclipse the next day, and then return to Mazatlán the day after and enjoy a few more days of sun and sand before flying home.
I would’ve never guessed that bus trip would turn into one of my favourite memories from the trip. And not for the reasons you’d expect.
Continue reading...- (https://b-ark.ca/qqysG2)
Just released version 3.6.7-2 of my old NetHack port for the Nintendo DS with some QoL improvements and bug fixes. It’s amazing how, when you step away from a project for, oh, 15-ish years, you start to notice little warts that you’d just gotten used to…
- (https://b-ark.ca/EC_AEI)
Don’t ask me why, but I restarted tinkering with my old DS port of NetHack! I forgot how much fun it is coding for platforms like the DS. It’s just so… simple.
I was also reminded that, you know, my port plays really damn well. I forgot how many hours I logged in it! So, if you’re a NetHack fan, own a DS, and have a flash card, all four of you can try it out!
https://github.com/fancypantalons/NetHack/releases/tag/NetHackDS-3.6.7-1
- (https://b-ark.ca/M4mcca)
If I’m asked what I accomplished on my break, the first thing I’ll list is using my iFixit kit to repair the shoulder buttons on my old Nintendo DS Lite (easy repair, corroded contacts in the micro switches). Why? Because it was there.
- (https://b-ark.ca/Aw62GO)
From Jenny Odell in “How to Do Nothing”, on the power of what she calls “manifest dismantling”, or the intentional dismantling of the artifacts of “progress” as part of recalibrating our relationship with both our environment and each other:
“When we pry open the cracks in the concrete, we stand to encounter life itself–nothing less and nothing more, as if there could be more.”
- (https://b-ark.ca/e0AAk6)
“can you successfully post replies to M.B. from your blog?”
There’s only one way to find out…
- (https://b-ark.ca/_qOOY4)
Well, what started off as an icy mess turned into an absolute banger of a day up at Sunshine! Just gotta wait for that snow to thaw. Ngl, though, spring skiing conditions in Alberta on January 30th is weird…
- (https://b-ark.ca/8sw404)
Stories like this are why, despite being in tech for decades, I tend to avoid closed smart devices:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/fossil-smartwatches-go-extinct-company-quits-wear-os-ecosystem/
An analog or old school digital watches can work for decades, but remotely updatable, closed digital devices can be subject to rug pulls at the whim of their controling corporations. We’ve seen this repeatedly with IoT devices and it was only a matter of time before a major wearable went the same route.
- (https://b-ark.ca/wAu8wc)
So I’ve been plugging away at a little side project for kicks. I haven’t written code for a month, now, due to other issues and distractions but I have been thinking about it, and it occurs to me how novel that is: without the pressure of deadlines I can actually spend time thinking about the problem, ensuring I build the right thing first, without the pressure to deliver the fast wrong answer.
Review: Legends & Lattes
Review of Legends & Lattes (Legends & Lattes #1.0) by Travis Baldree (9798985663211)★★★★
(https://b-ark.ca/CcyQMq)My wife had previously raved about this book, and then I ran across a mention of it on Hacker News of all places. Commonly described as a ‘cozy’ fantasy novel, this was a delightful little treat and definitely worth the read.
Worn out after decades of packing steel and raising hell, Viv the orc barbarian cashes out of the warrior’s life with one final score. A forgotten legend, a fabled artifact, and an unreasonable amount of hope lead her to the streets of Thune, where she plans to open the first coffee shop the city has ever seen.
However, her dreams of a fresh start pulling shots instead of swinging swords are hardly a sure bet. Old frenemies and Thune’s shady underbelly may just upset her plans. To finally build something that will last, Viv will need some new partners and a different kind of resolve.
A hot cup of fantasy slice-of-life with a dollop of romantic froth.
Anyone who knows my wife knows she’s, well, calling her a ravenous reader is doing a disservice to her book consumption habit. Books being such a central passion in her life, I’m always asking her what she’s reading, what she’s read, what she liked, and what she didn’t, and so it was that at some point she told me about this book she loved by an audiobook narrator that she really likes: Legends & Lattes.
So, I will absolute profess to some initial skepticism. I’ve long been a fantasy reader, having initially cut my teeth on pulp horror from the likes of Stephen King and Dean Koontz before taking a hard turn to David Eddings and Robert Jordon. So I’m far from unfamiliar with the genre. But I’ll freely admit that a fantasy book about an Orc opening a coffee shop seemed… a bit far fetched?
In hindsight this was, honestly, a pretty dumb assumption on my part. Terry Pratchett made an entire career out of building a fantasy world (Discworld) in which books are centered around the invention of modern contrivances (paper money, movies, the telegraph, etc). Why not a coffee shop?
Well, as the year was winding down I ran across a book recommendations post on Hacker News and decided to poke around, and I’ll be damned if Legends & Lattes didn’t earn a mention! I relayed my surprise to my wife, and she offered to re-listen to the book with me on our anniversary vacation, and you know what? It was great!
Continue reading...
