the owl whisperer,

basically there was a school teacher who's part time job/hobby it is to keep track off all the owl's on this island and so we had the chance to see him work, since there were a couple of newborn owl in the backyard.

Baiscally these animals are hard to catch, keep fighting and won't shut up. They also have pretty sharp claws and beaks. So we had to 'rescue' him with band aid.

Sorry for the bad pictures, since I could not use a flash. I was limited to iso 3200 and F/2. I want a D700...

I'm an owl wrap, since I fight back and don't give up. Now where are my mice..

ready to be measured...

you are not supposed to ask a lady about her weight and putting me upside down is not cool...

you can find all the pictures in the Seattle galleria here

the night of saturday we spend at bainbrigde island, which was just gorgeous and beautiful. It finally gave me the chance to capture some macros and we were introduce to an owl whisperer.

day two was to drive to Seattle and to spend the night at bainbridge. And I immediately fell in love with Seattle.

• lunch at a park
• visit pikes market
• walking around a park
• visiting the museum for asian art -> not my art = boring
  
• taking the ferry to bainbridge

Portland was defiantly the most relaxing town of our road trip. Since we spend the complete 1.5 days with

• looking at head shops, no they don't sell hats as it turned out
• testing white Russians
  
• playing the worst game of pool in the history of portland
• looking at fancy art in the Portland art museum, my highlight was defiantly the 'tattoo - the art of Portland' Not because of the tattoos, just some of the photographs were stunning.
• being in one of the largest bookstores ever and promptly buying a book
  
• having good food in the morning and excellent coffee
• buying a tent at REI which we didn't end up using. I'm happy that I bought a cheap one, but will use it soon.
• attending a comedy show in the evening, which had some excellent parts
  

the last 5 days I spend with traveling again. This time we conquered another 2 states of the USA, which means I drove now over 33% of the west coast states.

We originally planned to stay a couple of days in Portland, but since I was not to impressed with the city we quickly made a complete road trip out of it and checked out Seattle and Olympic mountain national park

• thursday: redding,portland
• friday: portland
• saturday: seattle,bainbridge island
  
• sunday: olympic mountain national park (border to canada)
• montay: back to davis

in total we drove a bit over 2000 miles and fixie had no major issues, besides running her into a wall (my bumper is not happy) and taking a drift in the gravel, since a semi wanted to drive over me.
Lesson: do not be in the blind spot of a semi, it would had been his fault, but I doubt that a passat is stable enough to survive the impact of a 40+ ton truck

working the usa,

well the goal of the next couple of years is to travel all of the usa. This is my current state...


...layovers don't count...

if I would had the chance to start over with my whole photo equiqument I would now have a rough idea what to buy and what I want:

• D700
• Nikkor 85mm F/1.4 ( I want to buy this lens since 2 years now and can never convince my self to spend the 1300$ on it, maybe for my 28th birthday)
  
• 50mm F/1.8 (own it, 1.4 would be nice, but not really needed)
  
• 35mm F/2 (my most used lens on cropped sensors)
  
• 3 x SB-600 (got them)
  
• 1 x SB-900 (got it)
  

well I got most of the stuff, I just need

• D700
• 85mm F/1.4
  

and guess If I sell some of my stuff

• 70-200mm F/2.8 - 600$ (love the quality, hate the weight + AF)
  
• D200 + Grip 500 - 600$
• D80 + Grip 400 - 500$
• sigma 10-20 - 350$
  

I would be still 2000$ short. Guess I wait 2 more years till they announce the D700 successor and upgrade than. I'm just really missing the low light intensity and after playing with a D700 last night, well I can only say I'm impressed over and over again.

But hey you never know what live throws at you...

friday night:

clubbing in sac

saturday night:

surprise party at sara's
party in sac afterwards till 3am

sunday:

leave me alone, I wanna sleep...

so we are back in davis and I learned something new.

I seem to like camping and honestly after buying all this stuff I had no real choice. But yes it was a lot of fun.

lessons learned:

• my stomach can't handle only dried fruit, I need fresh stuff too
• contacts worked surprisingly well, but quite a hassle in the morning/midnight
• getting the brightest light I could find was an awesome idea. I actually could see something in the dark
• ebooks and rivers are a bad combination. Get a waterproof bag for it
• camera and rivers are a really bad combination, I found some great spots and couldn't get there with the camera, get a waterproof bag...
  
• using only 2 lenses was a great idea, 35mm F/2 and 90mm F/2.8 worked very well, but I could had used something in the 20mm range like this
• buying the right equipment the first time was a really good idea, it was expensive but I will have it for years.
• bringing a reflector instead of flashes was a great idea
• putting water bottles in the sun for 2 hours => hot nearly boiling water
• waterfalls => much colder than rivers => store beer here...
• do not sleep on a slope...
• lots and lots of trouts in the river => bring fishing pole next time
• if you do rock climbing during the day => bring gloves to avoid burned hands...
  

whats next?

• portland/oregon coast in 2 weeks
  
• next year hawaii or yellowstone (once i got over my fear of wild animals eating me, like bears/pumas)
• Yosemite in September?
• Scotland in October?
  
• discovering which food is the right food
• bring more tea

conclusions?

Well this weekend was a bit expensive, since I had to buy all kinds of stuff, but it was a lot of fun and I wanted to get most of this stuff since a couple of years. At least now I have it and can take it on future trips.

I also managed to rent out my old apartment for the next month, not for the price I wanted. But 350$ are better than nothing.

camping...

well the plan for this weekend was to go camping, and ever endless tries to avoid It I caved in.

Means shopping time :(

Which made me realize yet again that it sucks to not fit the standard.

• sleeping mattress, normal person : 40 - 45$, gigantic tall people like me 85$
• flash light, people with good night vision: 15 - 25$, people who are more or less blind in the dark, 'sir yo should get the extra bright one', 55$
• super small lightweight pillow and sleeping bag 180$ (the one I borrowed did not fit in the car and was to big to be hiked in.)
  

Other stuff I had to buy

• a hat, 25$
• a folding knife, 55$ (after negotiating 16$). I'm not going anywhere without a knife! I watched enough MCGyver to know this...
  
• 2 x water canteens, 20$. After now people who went hiking with me know I freak out, if I have not enough water
• bug spray 15$ and they still will bite me...
• ultra portable pillow, 15$
• compression bag, 25$
  

another quest was to get food, which won't perish during the next 72 hours, while being outside in 40 degrees Celsius+ (104 something in weird American Fahrenheit) and gives me my needed 3000+ kilo calories to sustain me.

Short another 40$.

And I still forgot a lot of stuff, I know me...

video from our friends Jen & Abby after the houseparty/mini concert can be found here.

well our weekly gamenight turned out to be something special this week.
This time we got:

• fantastic food, like always
• a fun group of people, like always
• a new game
  

and,

here it comes,

live music from the touring band "Jen & Abby", which promptly let to an improved photo shoot, while they were performing for us, since they needed some pictures.

Now this put me into a challenging position, how the hell are I'm supposed to take pictures...

• awe full location, a cluttered living room is just plain bad
• not able to move anyone around, since I don't want to interrupt there beautiful music
• no subject/background seperation

well since the girls where young and had great skin, the solution was simple. Just drop a couple of spotlights on them and let the rest of the world go black. I also tried some high keys, but they did not work at all.

Note for later, I could had used a 85mm F/1.4 so badly...

So they are not my best work, but for the circumstances they turned out pretty well.

Saturday we decided to make a 'short' trip to pine lake nearby. The idea was to hike and swim abit.

But for some reason it turned out to be a 10mile+ hike, since we walked around the lake. Which has 10 miles shore and our side trips and shortcut's did not really help. So to judge how I felt the next day, we walked roughly 2500 miles. Which translates into 12 - 15 miles, after some careful consideration.

Anyway it was a beautiful day and I had the chance to take some pictures.

how to describe twain harte, I guess wikipedia gives it a try, but can't say much about it.

My best guess is to look at this picture to the left. I think it tells you all in a very simple story.

Basically it's a small very relaxed and down to earth community. Celebrating the American way of live. Beginning with the old trucks and proud flags to small American dinners with deer heads on the wall and a waitress running around with a classic coffee pot, serving gigantic amount of breakfast for decent prices.
Everything closes by 9.30-10.00 pm and skunks are running around at night, trying (successfully) to escape me an my camera...

after we arrived at twain hart and got the cabin ready, which included hunting down several kinds of different spiders.

Yes gigantic monstrous spiders, the kind which I hate! They decided to move in since the last time the cabin was used. Ok it's been a year, but still they are not supposed to be there.

Anyway we both ended up (Ashley and I, not the spiders and I) relaxing in the cabin and reading a bit.

so this weekend started a bit unexspected with somebody trying to prove he can park. Resulting in hitting my car in the most unfortunate way. Causing no damage what soever, besides a cracked license plate.

Couldn't he hit my rear bumper? I need a new rear bumper...

well last night was fun, we just ended up going for a concert in the park and playing uno with friends.

The concert was, well different. It was supposed to be latin music, so I expected something like Santana style and instead we got some very strange and unexciting acoustic guitar player singing English songs.

Well at least we had fun with friends.

The picture on the left was only taken, because the light was so pretty...

since people starting to complain that this blog is to much about work and coding and so, well there is now a new blog, only about coding.

Coding and More

SetupX Installation under Ubuntu

moved to: Coding and More

Creating Minimum and Maximum date in Java

move to Coding and More

playing a bit with my friend ashleigh and the camera.

But somehow nothing worked as planned, but we got some nice shots of her.

Grails and some annoying default CSS

moved to Coding and More

well after years of grilling tri-tip and pan fried tri-tip we tried something new and involves the smoker (what a surprise)

We made an amazing smoked tri-tip and I think this is the way togo. Well the guest's seemed to be pretty happy too and we ended up making so much food, that I have a whole smoked tri-tip left to my self :)

Anyway the recipe:

• get yourself a good looking tri-tip with some nice marbling and about 1.5 - 2lbs trimmed, or 2.5 - 3 lbs untrimmed (and trim it a bit)
  
• make a dry rub out of salt and pepper and rub it onto the meat. You need roughly a cup of dry rub
• toss in a zip lock bag and leave it in the fridge for 5 - 6 hours
• remove it from the fridge when you are setting up the smoker, ca 45 minutes prior
• fire up the smoker with some hickory wood and let it settle at a temperature of 220-250 Fahrenheit
• toss in the meat, add the remote meat thermometer and enjoy a couple of hefeweizen (roughly 1 hour a pound, so about 90 minutes or 3 -5 hefeweizen)
• do NOT open the smoker and look all the time, that's what's the remote thermometer is for
  
• once the meat reaches 145 Fahrenheit, take it off the smoker and let it rest for 10 - 20 minutes so it's as juicy as possible
• slice it into thins slices, alone in the kitchen (everybody else is outside...) and serve to the hungry pack

the dip

since I like to keep things simple and quick I just made a spicy (for germans) yogurt based dip.

• 1 lbs of yoghurt, not the fat free kind!
• 4 cloves of garlic, minced
  
• Salt, Pepper, Basil, Oregano to taste
  
• half a red onion, minced
  

mix everything together and let it rest in the fridge for an hour. It works really well with meat, since it enhances the taste of it, by adding a slight sour and fresh note.

well today I took of the day to move to my new place for this year and I hope to stay longer here. Depending how everything goes with the roommate and my wonderful girlfriend.

So here are some pictures of the front and backyard and I post pictures of the rest of this house as soon as possible.

My room basically has barley any stuff in it so far, since i need to remodel my bed and so. But once it's done it's going to be beautiful.

The backyard and frontyard are nice and I smoked my first tritip tonight, which was just amaizing and pretty cheap at 20$ for 4 lbs.

I guess I have this kind of sandwiches for the next 4 - 5 days.

Anyway it's late and time for bed.

well this is something new, a very strange behavior in one of my tests cases:


List result = this.getEntityManager().createQuery("from " + LoggingEntityBean.class.getName() + " b").getResultList();
assertTrue(result.isEmpty() == false);

int size = result.size();
int exspected = testSize * addres.length;

logger.info(size);
logger.info(exspected);
assertTrue(size == exspected);


now why do I get this error message...

[17:37:02,007] [INFO ] [main] [LoggingServiceTest] [400]
[17:37:02,008] [INFO ] [main] [LoggingServiceTest] [200]

junit.framework.AssertionFailedError: null
at edu.ucdavis.genomics.metabolomics.binbase.logging.server.LoggingServiceTest.setUp(LoggingServiceTest.java:73)
at org.jmock.core.VerifyingTestCase.runBare(Unknown Source)
at org.junit.internal.runners.JUnit38ClassRunner.run(JUnit38ClassRunner.java:81)
at com.intellij.rt.junit4.Junit4ClassSuite.run(Junit4ClassSuite.java:99)
at com.intellij.rt.execution.junit.JUnitStarter.main(JUnitStarter.java:40)



error in this line:

assertTrue(size == exspected);

ok it's supposed to fail because 200 isn't 400, but not with a NullPointer exception...

now I have been working with intellij for a bit over a week and it have to say it has it's highs and it's lows.

• refactoring is just great
• override/implment function works good
• I hate the code completion, it's just strange behavior wise
• the junit plugin is nice, but a bit strange
• the grails/groovy support is exceptional good
• the performance is good if I work on a single project, if I work on my average 40 projects at once it's impossible to work with
• nice support for for python, works quite well
• uml support is great
• ant based build are a nightmare, but we want to use maven anyway whenever, where ever
• maven plugin is great in therorie, but with complex pom's it's extremely slow.

conclusions:

• python development will be in intellij
• groovy development will be in intellij
• scala development will be in intellij
• java development will be in eclipse
• pom writing will be in intillij and I generate the project directly via 'mvn idea:idea eclipse:eclipse' instead of using the pom as project file
  

ok it's not hot in davis,

it's ridiculous hot, 47 Degree Celsius....

I mean seriously...

lesson:

• do not buy a car with black leather seats...
• do not buy a car with black leather...
• do not buy a car with black...
• do not buy a car with...
• do not buy a car...
• do not buy a...
• do not buy...
• do not...
• do...
• ...
• ..
• .

translation I hid in the office, enjoyed the AC and got some stuff done (Die hard, Die hard with a vengeance,...)

Also no smoked meat today, I will not sit for 12 hours next to this thing fighting with the heat during the day or the roaches at night.

Now time to run for a restaurant and get some tasty food. I'm in no mood to cook tonight.

mocking spring,

moved to Coding and More

ajax and grails

moved to Coding and More

to cancel flight's is fun...

Flight cost summary

Flight cost - 6/16/09

Airfare #XXXXXXXXXXXXX	$679.25
Flight cost	$679.25
Exchange cost - 6/25/09
Airfare #XXXXXXXXXXXXX	$688.78
Previous airfare	-$679.25
Airfare difference	$9.53
Orbitz exchange fee	$30.00
Airline change fee	$200.00
Total exchange cost	$239.53	USD

Grand total itinerary cost to-date	$918.78 USD

boy my checking account truly hates me right now...

so it look's like the raid is now running, so this next step would be an lvm2 layer on top of it.

I thought it would be easy, but...

/dev/sdc1: lseek 10448441413827256320 failed: Invalid argument

Incorrect metadata area header checksum

--- Physical volume ---

PV Name /dev/md3

VG Name data

PV Size 9.09 TB / not usable 3.25 MB

Allocatable yes

PE Size (KByte) 4096

Total PE 2384157

Free PE 2384157

Allocated PE 0

PV UUID 2EQH1i-BIYU-BDvH-sRb3-yruB-V15f-ZCTywN

"/dev/sdc1" is a new physical volume of "8.98 EB"

--- NEW Physical volume ---

PV Name /dev/sdc1

VG Name

PV Size 9.06 EB

Allocatable NO

PE Size (KByte) 0

Total PE 0

Free PE 0

Allocated PE 0

PV UUID 2;??-ƈ+-?m-s?b3-?ruB-V15f-ZCTywN

"/dev/sdn1" is a new physical volume of "64.01 PB"

--- NEW Physical volume ---

PV Name /dev/sdn1

VG Name

PV Size 64.01 PB

Allocatable NO

PE Size (KByte) 0

Total PE 0

Free PE 0

Allocated PE 0

PV UUID 2EQI1i-BHYU-BEvH-sRb3-yruB-V15f-ZCTywN

it looks like I just got promoted to a 64 Peta Byte server on the disk's sdn1 and 9.06 Exta Byte on sdc1.

Guess I got more harddrive space as I ordered...

So it look's like it's adding my disk's to the group instead of only my raid6 devices. The solution for this is to disable in the /etc/lvm/lvm.com the related disks:

filter = [ "r|/dev/cdrom|","r|/dev/sd*|" ]

Time for the next issue...

currently I'm fighting since 4 weeks with a retarded server, well whenever I got some time besides

• fixing bugs
• keeping the system running, because the main server is offline since 2 month now
• helping people with problems
• fighting with power outages
• fixing servers
• and actually coding doing research in the left over time

anyway for some reasons the raid system keeps failing all the time, specially it keeps forgetting it's devices.

So just some small things for me to remember for the next time...

• removing existing raid stuff: mdadm --zero-superblock /dev/sd[c,d,e,f,g,h,i,j,k,l,m,n,o,p]1
• stopping a raid: mdadm --stop /dev/md_d3
• getting some info's about the raid: mdadm --examine /dev/sd[c-p]1
• trying to assemble a raid: mdadm -v -A /dev/md_d3 /dev/sd[c,d,e,f,g,h,i,j,k,l,m,n,o,p]1
• creating a large raid0 for testing: mdadm --create --verbose --force /dev/md3 --level=raid0 --raid-devices=14 /dev/sd{c,d,e,f,g,h,i,j,k,l,m,n,o,p}1
• creating a raid6: mdadm --create --verbose --force --name=data /dev/md3 --level=raid6 --raid-devices=12 --spare-devices=2 /dev/sd{c,d,e,f,g,h,i,j,k,l,m,n,o,p}1
• storing the generated configuration: mdadm --examine --scan --config=mdadm.conf >> /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf

solution: found here

now just wait a tiny bit for the rebuild...

md3 : active raid6 sdp1[13](S) sdo1[12](S) sdn1[11] sdm1[10] sdl1[9] sdk1[8] sdj1[7] sdi1[6] sdh1[5] sdg1[4] sdf1[3] sde1[2] sdd1[1] sdc1[0]

9765510400 blocks level 6, 64k chunk, algorithm 2 [12/12] [UUUUUUUUUUUU]

[>....................] resync = 0.7% (7591112/976551040) finish=1074.7min speed=15024K/sec

well since this month turned out to be much more pricey than planned

• ticket to germany 700$
• visa fee 200$
• conference fee 200$ (should get reimbursed in the next view weeks)
• smoker 350$ (including needed stuff like coal and wood)

and next month is going to be the same game

• rent deposit 500$
• last month rent 500$
• paying rent for 2 places 750-1000$

well I need a new cheap hobby, which won't cost more than 50$ a month and the eququiment should be also affordable/rentable.

Solution?

I will try to pick up free climbing, which will also help me to conquer my fear of heights. And also will try to survive on 500$ of food (so no more chocolate and soda)

so what's new,

• my experiment to live on 100$ a week worked quite well, only 2 days left and I still have 2 whole chickens in the freezer, which are going to visit the smoker tomorrow
• for some reasons my back is killing me time to try a different workout and I'm looking forward to swimming again
• booking a flight to germany and a visa appointment and screwing it up, now I have only a 2 day window to get my visa delivered
• trying to learn and understand ajax
• trying to work more with groovy and grails
• learning a new IDE (IntelliJ 8) and so far I love it
• switching from firefox to safari for internet related stuff, since firefox is so slow
• looking for a small ultra portable laptop with 10 hours of battery live

just another saturday, well since I decided to skip carmel this weekend and stay in davis, since friends are in town, well I decided to use this weekend and give the smoker a run for it's money.

So today we make trout spread for bagels and smoked trout.

• buy 4 trouts = 10$
• buy cottage cheese and cream cheese = 5$
• buy 12 bagels = 6$

ok now this is out of the way time to setup the smoker, this time we use apple wood chips to see how they work.

First we brine the trouts for an hour in sugar and salt (lesson for next time, brine 2 - 3 hours, they are a bit dry and needed a lot of salt), while setting up the fire. It turned out that the new york times is an aweful starter, so let's try another newspaper the next time.

The trouts are now happily smoking for 3 hours at 220-240 Fahrenheit and I use this time to be productive, equals watching cheesy movies.

Once the trout were done, we had one for lunch, put away one for dinner and mixed 2 for the spread.

• sellery
• onion
• garlic
• cottage cheese
• cream cheese

It turned out that my hand blender is broken, our other blender is not strong enough and a fork is a lot of work. So the spread is a bit chunky, but very tasty!
And I also have about 2 pound of spread now, which has to be eaten in the next 4 days, so 2 bagels for breakfast everyday and if somebody want's some spread, call me.
(It has some fishbones, blame the blender...)

About the smoked trout in general? It's is amaizingly tasty and quite a fat fish. I like it.

so the smoker finally arrived and so we started to cook our first dish.

The lesson of the day? It's not worth it to cook a single chicken, since you need way to much charcoal and wood for it. It was like 5$ worth of charcoal.

lesson 2:

one chicken is not enough, they are so damn tasty you want a second one 5 minutes later

how too?

• soak chicken in solution of salt and sugar for 2 hours
  
• try chicken
• put pepper on chicken
• preheat smoker to 250 degrees fahrenheit
• leave chicken in there for 3h
• try to understand where you need to put the thermometer and figure out why it constantly looses connection
• figure out a way to kill the coals and wood once you are done, since it makes me nervous as hell to leave the bbq on over night and going to bed
• carve the chicken, executed by ashley!

todo:

get more chickens and repeat!

step two:

the smoker is ordered and on its way...
and so is the meat thermometer

(no more dining out this month...)

step three:

get wood and charcoal

step four:

get some ribs and smoke them tomorrow night till the early morning

BBQ season has started and this year I will full fill my desire and buy a smoker.

But first time to read up where I can get what parts of beef and the parts for the smoker. Like wood and so.

You know, the usual...

well I'm back from phillidelphia and the first thing we did was a nice picnic in sacramento. We also looked at some town houses and discovered a small honey store.

It's amaizing how different honey can taste. From delicious to disgusting is just a spoon apart

• orange blossom - yummy
• clover - yummy
• sage - ok and very mild
• eucalyptus - disgusting
  
• several other kind's I can't remember

I only bought 2 pounds of honey, but it was so much cheaper than grocery stores.

...time to make some tea...