lumensoutdoors.org - Page 17

• All bottled up - November 2, 2006

  Last night was a really busy night. On Tuesday, I went up to Nashua Garden to meet with David and Chris Aillon for food and drinks after an especially rough day at work. Well that killed everything I planned on doing that night, so I had to make up for it last night by getting tons of things done. Among other things, I had to bottle my pumpkin beer that I have previously talked about.

• Packing - October 30, 2006

  This past weekend, I pulled a bunch of boxes and plastic tubs out of storage to start packing up my apartment in anticipation of moving soon. I also cleared out a big space in my bedroom to stack up packed boxes and things that didn’t need to go in boxes. My strategy here is that I will fill these tubs and boxes with things, drive the boxes over to the new place, unpack them there, and bring the empty boxes back to be refilled. So, I started looking around for things to pack up because I want to get this done before the last minute. After a while of looking around, it hit me: with my plan for reusing boxes, there’s really nothing I can pack right now. The first things I will want to move is stuff I’ll need in the new place, but those are things I need now as well. So I can’t very well pack them up. However if I pack up junk I’m not using right now, then the first things I’ll be moving are things I don’t need. I guess I will just wait.

• Laundry room flood - October 28, 2006

  When I got up this morning, it was raining. It rained all day long, sometimes quite heavily. Well since there was no possibility of doing anything outside, I decided I would start packing for that move I coming up in a few weeks. Since I am a semi-professional mover, I bought a bunch of thick plastic tubs before my trip to New Hampshire. I also saved a couple of the nicer boxes when I was finished with them. They all went into a storage closet downstairs in the laundry room. So today I went downstairs to retrieve these things so I could start packing.

• Thud! - October 24, 2006

  Today we released Fedora Core 6, code named Zod. The most compelling new features of this new release are in the installer, of course. Our main new feature is the ability to install packages from additional repos at installation time. For the average user, this means you can just punch in the URL to your favorite mp3/DVD/flash/other patented stuff repo and select packages just as you would for the base system. There’s no post-installation step required to get this stuff. Administrators of large installations will like this because they can point anaconda at a local repo of all their custom site-specific software. Naturally, this is supported by kickstart too. We also added IPv6 support, simplified the number of screens you have to go through, and sped up package dependancy calculations by quite a bit.

  Oh, I guess some other people within the Fedora Project made some changes for this release as well. There’s the shiny new window manager compiz, new printing support, better package update support, new fonts, virtualization via Xen, and of course all the latest and greatest versions of packages. The release summary has the details.

  So go give it a try. The release announcement tells you how to get it. We worked like crazy on this release and should have it pretty well figured out, but there are always bugs anyway. Report them to bugzilla and we will do our best to fix them. And in the future, you will be able to install from the updates repo at install time too so you can get the fixes right away.

• Welcome to winter - October 23, 2006

  Yes, I know it’s only October, but yesterday’s hike was wintry enough. I knew it was going to be cold and snowy in the mountains and I was prepared for it but it was still an experience. I left from my house at 7am with the intention of hiking Mt. Liberty. It’s a tall but not too tall mountain and is approached by a relatively straightforward 3 mile trail. I thought that would be a good test of my winter gear without getting me into too much trouble. Unfortunately as I approached Franconia Ridge, I happened to look up towards Mt. Lafayette which is the big mountain on the ridge. It looked so inviting with all the snow and wind that I just had to try it.

• Cleveland rocks - October 19, 2006

  This past weekend, I made yet another trip to Cleveland to visit Sarah. Due to various other travel commitments (weddings, guests, seeing other friends) it had been since May since I was there last. I didn’t expect it had changed much, but it’s still always nice to get out of town for several days. So Thursday evening after work, I got on a plane in Manchester, NH and flew through Baltimore to Cleveland.

• FC6 - any day now - October 18, 2006

  Seems like we’ve been at this for months and delaying it for weeks on end, but I think we are really about to release Fedora Core 6 within the next week. At least, today David came over to my cube holding a CD and talking about 0-day warez, so that leads me to believe the packages have been signed, the final CD images made, and everything prepared to push it out to mirrors.

• Quick new recipe - October 17, 2006

  Ted and I were hanging around in IRC earlier today when someone mentioned how he wanted to try a stout that reminded him of non-fruity granola. Ted immediately started thinking of the flavors that go into granola (oats, nuts, some honey sweetness) and started thinking up a beer recipe for it. A couple minutes later, he had the hasic idea outlined and messaged me for my opinion. After ten or fifteen minutes, we’d debated the merits of various ingredients and decided on a final grain bill. A lot of it took the form of “I like oats, so let’s use more!”. This was a bit of a departure from how I usually come up with recipes, as my technique starts at the final numbers I want to achieve (ABV, IBU, color, etc.) and works back to the amounts from there. This was very much just talking about what we wanted in it, kicking some numbers back and forth, and then just picking a final amount. Interesting.

  Anyway here is the final recipe. Ted thinks we should both make a batch and then send them off for tasting. I was going to make a second batch of my oatmeal stout in the next month or two, but maybe I will make this instead. It was lots of fun to come up with. I sure do enjoy talking about and working on beer.

• Back from Cleveland - October 15, 2006

  I just got back from visiting Sarah in Cleveland. I left on Thursday evening right after work and just got back in the door. Since it’s late and I have to be at work early in the morning, I can’t post too much but I wanted to say why I have been a little light on posting recently. The short story is that we went on a bunch of tours and ate a lot of food. I came back with a cheap wool sweater for hiking, a couple empty bottles from samples I left her, and an imperial pint glass from a bar special. This was the first time I’ve been to Cleveland since my ill-fated trip there in May. This one worked out a whole lot better. I had a lot of fun.

  I’ll try to remember to post more about this in the next day or two. I know I said that about the Charlottesville trip but never got around to it. Maybe I will correct that oversight too while I’m at it.

• Denied by the thrift store - October 13, 2006

  I went looking for cheap clothes today. I need to get some good midweight and heavyweight layers for winter hiking, but all the stuff at EMS and similar outdoors stores is too expensive. Sure, the microfleece might be really warm and really soft, but is it worth $50? I can’t bring myself to spend that much on a simple fleece jacket. So the backup plan was to start searching around in thrift stores for wool and fleece. Those are pretty much the only materials I can use because of the heat-absorbing properties when wet. That’s a critical property in winter and why cotton is so dangerous for hiking.