i am sharing this with you

50km

2007-05-20T20:54:45Z

You can read my report from the 32 mile race I did yesterday here.

Micro Economies

2007-03-06T17:51:06Z

I am envisioning a system that facilitates a local community exchange. People could visit a website and set up a local group of friends that they want to exchange services with. An example might be "Sellwood Babysitting", or "Portland Car Maintenance". The group can be invite only (as in the babysitting example) or open to anyone. Each group has a listing of "services wanted" and "services offered".

The system acts like Craigslist except it keeps track of your commitments. Here is how the commitment tracking would work in the babysitting example:

1) Alex sets up a babysitting group and invites all his parent friends. They invite some of their friends and eventually the group has 30 people. Each member of the group has 0 commitment points.

2) Alex needs babysitting on Friday night and is offering 40 points. Sharie takes him up on his offer. After the commitment is fulfilled Alex has -40 points (a debt) and Sharie has a balance which she can spend to get babysitting on another night.

The benefits over Craigslist include:

* "money" stays within the group it serves. You can not buy car maintenance with babysitting points.
* "money" is issued by the people who use it.
* "money" exist in sufficient supply to meet the needs of that community.

Thoughts?

New Experiment

2006-07-24T14:49:09Z

Here's a new site I whipped together last night.

Favorite things to do in Portland, OR

Gnarls Barkley

2006-05-02T15:32:32Z

If the song "Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley doesn't become this years summer hit then something is wrong with the world.

The Idea Machine

2006-03-20T14:47:27Z

So I started up a new project this weekend.

Go see it

The idea is to experiment with 'social brainstorming'. Typically when we try to come up with new ideas we'll write some lists and maybe talk to a few friends. This project tries to open up that creative process to the entire Internet. Anyone can add a question to brainstorm about, and anyone can submit an idea to an open brainstorm. By 'giving stars' to your favorite ideas an ordered list of the best ideas will hopefully begin to emerge.

How much is your free time worth?

2006-03-07T04:54:57Z

How much money would I have to pay you for you to give up all of your free time over the next 3 months? (Law students aren't allowed to answer)

Block Party

2006-03-03T00:55:45Z

Is it possible that a movie will be released this year that I am going to want to watch more then this?

Better see this in the theater. I don't think Kristin's 9 inch TV is really going to do it justice.

Buying a used car on Craigslist

2006-03-02T19:42:24Z

So now I've actually bought and sold a car on Craigslist. There are so many shady people on the car section of Craigslist it makes you start to think the world is inherently evil.

Here are my tips on buying a car on Craigslist:

1) Choose who you do business with. If you wouldn't take the car owner out for a beer you should walk away from the transaction. There are way too many cars for sale to deal with someone you don't trust. Ideally this person is over 30, has a family, and lives in a house. People take car of their car the same way they take care of their house.

2) Run a carfax.com report on the car. It's the best $20 you can spend.

3) Check to make sure the VIN on the title matches the VIN on the car, there are a shit ton of stolen cars on craigslist.

4) Take the car to a mechanic. Everyone is lying to you so you should get the opinion of a disinterested 3rd party.

5) If everything checks out make a lowball offer. The car owner is probably sick of going for test drives with Meth addicts and the fact that you can speak coherently is probably worth at least $500 to him.

6) Do not leave unless you have the car and the title signed over to you. If someone says "I need your money to pay off the bank before I can send you the title" it's a scam.

Business Idea

2006-02-28T19:13:19Z

Here's my business idea of the day.

A car dealership that caters toward women.

My turn to spread a meme!

2006-02-28T18:44:56Z

Help me fill out my johari window

Sure, why not....

2006-02-20T16:15:02Z

... Because I was 'nudged' by Jen...

Start time: 8:00

1. What time did you get up this morning?
7:00

2. Diamonds or pearls?
Ummm... Pearls?

3. What was the last film you saw at the movies?
The Aristocrats

4. What is your favorite TV show(s)?
The Newshour with Jim Lehreh, Frontline

5. What did you have for breakfast?
Oatmeal

6. What is your middle name?
Pierce

7. What is your favorite cuisine?
Indian

8. What food do you dislike?
Meat

9. Favorite chips?
the jalapeno ones from new seasons

10. What is your favorite CD at the moment?
The Cloud Cult

11. What kind of car do you drive?
1993 Toyota Camry

12. Favorite sandwich?
Tempeh Reuben from the Paradox Cafe

13. What characteristics do you despise?
Arrogance

14. Favorite item of clothing?
I have an old black t-shirt from goodwill that says "tune me up" that i wear a few times a week

15. If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation?
Tokyo

16. What color is your bathroom?
White with turqoise tiles and tub

17. Favorite brand of clothing?
American Apparel

18. Where would you want to retire to?
Portland, Oregon

19. Favorite time of day?
Early morning

20. Where were you born?
Fairview Hospital - Cleveland, Ohio (same as Erin)

21. Favorite sport to watch?
A tie between baseball and ultimate fighting

22. Who do you least expect to send this back?
Ohfunk

23 Person you expect to send/post it back first?

24. What laundry detergent do you use?
Something that is "free and clear"

25. Coke or Pepsi?
Coke! Not the fizzy stuff but their odwalla orange juice

26. Are you a morning person or night owl?
morning person but not by choice

27. Do you have any pets?
no

28. Any new and exciting news you'd like to share with everyone?
I might be buying a new car soon...

29. What did you want to be when you were little?
A tycoon ala Rockefeller or Henry Ford (no shit!)

30. Favorite candy bar?
oatmeal cookie from the daily grind

31. What is your best childhood memory?
Ummm... Going camping with "Indian Guides" (a kind of boy scout lite)

32. What are the different jobs you have had in your life?
Dishwasher, Cook, Tutor, Computer Programmer

33. What color underwear are you wearing?
black hanes boxer briefs

34. Nicknames?
nope

35. Piercing?
ears

36. Eye color?
green

37. Ever been to Africa?
"it's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you! there's nothing that a hundred men or more couldn't do!"

38. Ever been toilet papering?
I don't think so.

39. Love someone so much it made you cry?
Yes

40. Ever been in a car accident?
No

41. Croutons or bacon bits?
Croutons

42. Favorite day of the week?
Sunday

43. Favorite restaurant?
Assagio, Nicholas'

44. Favorite flower?
lilac

45. Favorite ice cream?
chocolate peanut butter soy delicious

46. Disney or Warner brothers?
AOL... As an aside I wrote some of the code that runs the computers at aol.com

47. Favorite fast food restaurant?
Pepino's

48. What color is your bedroom carpet?
Hardwood laminate

49. How many times did you fail your driver's test?
0

50. Before this one, from whom did you get your last email?
The database guy for wikipedia

51. What store would you choose to max out your credit card?
I don't have a card for it, but if I did, Ikea.

52. What do you do when you are bored?
Fill out this survey

53. Bedtime?
In bed and reading by 10:30

54. Who are you most curious about their responses to this
questionnaire?
Kristin!

56. What are you listening to right now?
Silence

57. What is your favorite color?
Black

58. Lake, ocean or river?
Ocean

59. How many tattoos do you have?
None

60. Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Egg

61. How many people are you sending this email to?
0

62. Time finished?
8:12

Personality Test....

2006-02-20T15:47:29Z

the Achiver
Test finished!

you chose AZ - your Enneagram type is THREE.

"I need to succeed"

Achivers are energetic, optimistic, self-assured, and goal oriented.

How to Get Along with Me

Leave me alone when I am doing my work.

Give me honest, but not unduly critical or judgmental, feedback.

Help me keep my environment harmonious and peaceful.

Don't burden me with negative emotions.

Tell me you like being around me.

Tell me when you're proud of me or my accomplishments.

What I Like About Being a Three

being optimistic, friendly, and upbeat

providing well for my family

being able to recover quickly from setbacks and to charge ahead to
the next challenge

staying informed, knowing what's going on

being competent and able to get things to work efficiently

being able to motivate people

What's Hard About Being a Three

having to put up with inefficiency and incompetence

the fear on not being -- or of not being seen as -- successful

comparing myself to people who do things better

struggling to hang on to my success

putting on facades in order to impress people

always being "on." It's exhausting.

Threes as Children Often

work hard to receive appreciation for their accomplishments

are well liked by other children and by adults

are among the most capable and responsible children in their class
or school

are active in school government and clubs or are quietly busy working
on their own projects

Threes as Parents

are consistent, dependable, and loyal

struggle between wanting to spend time with their children and wanting
to get more work done

expect their children to be responsible and organized

Renee Baron & Elizabeth Wagele

The Enneagram Made Easy

Discover the 9 Types of People

HarperSanFrancisco, 1994, 161 pages

You are not completely happy with the result?!

You chose AZ

Would you rather have chosen:

BZ (FIVE)

CZ (ONE)

AX (SEVEN)

AY (EIGHT)

My test tracked 2 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 71% on ABC
You scored higher than 0% on XYZ

Link: The Quick and Painless ENNEAGRAM Test written by felk on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

Coupons clipped by robots!

2005-08-31T06:05:02Z

I extended the mediacrash idea onto another domain I own that I haven't been doing anything with. Wazima.com now collects coupons and the best sales that are occurring around the web. Like mediacrash it personalizes the information so it should only show you the sales and deals that you are interested in.

News Recommendation System

2005-08-23T16:33:44Z

Fixed up some bugs in my news recommendation system and threw it up on a domain name that I bought but haven't used.

Mediacrash - Personalized News

Personalized News....

2005-08-22T05:17:46Z

Another Sunday project:

http://scriptfurnace.com/recommend/

It uses a lot of math to try to recommend news articles that it thinks you will find interesting. The more articles you click on, the better the recommendations get.

Pike Place Market

2005-08-08T20:44:48Z

Pike Place Market
Originally uploaded by alexk.

Chris's sister and I at Pike place market

Indians playing the Mariners

2005-08-08T20:43:53Z

Indians playing the Mariners
Originally uploaded by alexk.

No Emacs

2005-08-08T18:10:12Z

Script to remove all emacs files from a source directory and skip all arch directories:

#!/bin/sh
find . -path './.arch-ids' -prune -o -path './\{arch\}' -prune -o -path './,,*' -prune -o -path './+*' -prune -o \( -name '.*~' -or -name '*~' -or -name '
#*#' -or -name '.#*' \) -print -exec rm -f {} \;

Arch Notifications

2005-08-08T16:25:25Z

At work we use GNU Arch as a version control system. Here is a file that emails the selected people a diff of any commits to the code base that occur.

#!/bin/sh
###############################################################################
##
## hook - tla hook.
## Copyright (C) 2005 Alex Kroman
##
## This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
## modify it under the terms of version 2 of the GNU General Public License
## as published by the Free Software Foundation.
##
## This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
## but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
## MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
## GNU General Public License for more details.
##
## You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
## along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
## Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307, USA.
##
###############################################################################

# This hook needs to be placed in ~/.arch_params/hook

ARCH_ACTION="$1"
NOTIFY="alexkroman@email.com"

case "${ARCH_ACTION}" in
    commit | import)
        ARCH_CATEGORY="`tla parse-package-name --category $ARCH_REVISION`"
        ARCH_BRANCH="`tla parse-package-name --branch $ARCH_REVISION`"
        ARCH_VERSION="`tla parse-package-name --package-version $ARCH_REVISION`"
        LOG_FILE="`tla cat-archive-log ${ARCH_ARCHIVE}/${ARCH_REVISION}`"
        PATCH=${ARCH_REVISION##*-}
        PREVIOUS_PATCH=`expr ${PATCH} - 1`
        CHANGES="`tla changes --diffs ${ARCH_ARCHIVE}/${ARCH_VERSION}--patch-${P
REVIOUS_PATCH}`"
        echo -e "${LOG_FILE}\n\n${CHANGES}" | /usr/bin/mail -s "IBR  ${ARCH_ACTI
ON}: ${ARCH_REVISION}" ${NOTIFY}
esac

Emacs File

2005-08-08T16:12:52Z

Here is the emacs file I am currently using for OACS development.

;; My customizations
(setq-default indent-tabs-mode nil)


; retitle emacs window
 (defun frame-retitle (title)
   (modify-frame-parameters 
     nil 
     (list
       (cons
          'name
          title
       )
     )
   )
 )
  
 ;; set a beautiful title bar
 (setq frame-title-format
       '("%S: " (buffer-file-name "%f"
                                  (dired-directory dired-directory "%b"))))

;; Red Hat Linux default .emacs initialization file

;; Are we running XEmacs or Emacs?
(defvar running-xemacs (string-match "XEmacs\\|Lucid" emacs-version))

;; Set up the keyboard so the delete key on both the regular keyboard
;; and the keypad delete the character under the cursor and to the right
;; under X, instead of the default, backspace behavior.
(global-set-key [delete] 'delete-char)
(global-set-key [kp-delete] 'delete-char)

;; Make the backspace key work 
;;(global-set-key [?\C-h] 'delete-backward-char)
;;(global-set-key [?\C-x ?h] 'help-command)
(keyboard-translate ?\C-h ?\C-?)

;; Turn on font-lock mode for Emacs
(cond ((not running-xemacs)
       (global-font-lock-mode t)
))

;; Visual feedback on selections
(setq-default transient-mark-mode t)

;; Always end a file with a newline
(setq require-final-newline t)

;; Stop at the end of the file, not just add lines
(setq next-line-add-newlines nil)

;; Enable wheelmouse support by default
(cond (window-system
       (mwheel-install)
))

;; *******************************************************************
;; set up psgml mode...
;; use psgml-mode instead of emacs native sgml-mode
;; from http://www.tldp.org/LDP/LDP-Author-Guide/editing.html

;;(autoload 'sgml-mode "psgml" "Major mode to edit SGML files." t )
;;(setq auto-mode-alist
;;  (append
;;  (list
;;    '("\\.sgm$" . sgml-mode)
;;    '("\\.sgml$" . sgml-mode)
;;    )
;;  auto-mode-alist))

;; set some psgml variables

(setq sgml-auto-activate-dtd t)
(setq sgml-omittag-transparent t)
(setq sgml-balanced-tag-edit t)  ;; If non-nil, inserting a start-tag 
                                 ;; will also insert the corresponding 
                                 ;; end-tag. 
(setq sgml-auto-insert-required-elements t)
(setq sgml-live-element-indicator t)
(setq sgml-tag-region-if-active t)


;; create faces to assign to markup categories

(make-face 'sgml-comment-face)
(make-face 'sgml-start-tag-face)
(make-face 'sgml-end-tag-face)
(make-face 'sgml-entity-face)
(make-face 'sgml-doctype-face) ; DOCTYPE data
(make-face 'sgml-ignored-face) ; data ignored by PSGML
(make-face 'sgml-ms-start-face) ; marked sections start
(make-face 'sgml-ms-end-face) ; end of marked section
(make-face 'sgml-pi-face) ; processing instructions
(make-face 'sgml-sgml-face) ; the SGML declaration
(make-face 'sgml-shortref-face) ; short references

;; view a list of available colors with the emacs-lisp command:
;;
;; list-colors-display
;;
;; please assign your own groovy colors, because these are pretty bad
;; http://www.geocities.com/kensanata/colors.html is a good reference

(set-face-foreground 'sgml-comment-face "gray27")

(set-face-foreground 'sgml-start-tag-face "blue")

(set-face-foreground 'sgml-end-tag-face "blue")

(set-face-foreground 'sgml-entity-face "navy")

(set-face-foreground 'sgml-doctype-face "firebrick")

(set-face-foreground 'sgml-ignored-face "snow4")

(set-face-foreground 'sgml-ms-start-face "navy")

(set-face-foreground 'sgml-ms-end-face "navy")

(set-face-foreground 'sgml-pi-face "navy")

(set-face-foreground 'sgml-sgml-face "navy")

(set-face-foreground 'sgml-shortref-face "navy")

;; assign faces to markup categories

(setq sgml-markup-faces '
  (
  (comment . sgml-comment-face)
  (start-tag . sgml-start-tag-face)
  (end-tag . sgml-end-tag-face)
  (entity . sgml-entity-face)
  (doctype . sgml-doctype-face)
  (ignored . sgml-ignored-face)
  (ms-start . sgml-ms-start-face)
  (ms-end . sgml-ms-end-face)
  (pi . sgml-pi-face)
  (sgml . sgml-sgml-face)
  (shortref . sgml-shortref-face)
 (end-tag . sgml-end-tag-face)
  (entity . sgml-entity-face)
  (doctype . sgml-doctype-face)
  (ignored . sgml-ignored-face)
  (ms-start . sgml-ms-start-face)
  (ms-end . sgml-ms-end-face)
  (pi . sgml-pi-face)
  (sgml . sgml-sgml-face)
  (shortref . sgml-shortref-face)
  ))

;; tell PSGML to pay attention to face settings
(setq sgml-set-face t)


(setq sgml-mode-hook
      '(lambda ()
         (setq fill-column 70
               indent-tabs-mode nil
               next-line-add-newlines nil
               standard-indent 2)
         (auto-fill-mode t)))

;; ...done setting up psgml-mode.
;; *******************************************************************

(defun jdz-to-first-non-space ()
  "Move point to first non-blank character on the current line. Sort
of like 'w' does in vi."
  (interactive)
  (beginning-of-line 1)
  (skip-chars-forward " \t"))

;;(global-set-key "\C-cw" 'jdz-to-first-non-space)
(global-set-key "\C-A" 'jdz-to-first-non-space)

(partial-completion-mode t)

(defun indent-or-complete ()
  "Complete if point is at end of a word, otherwise indent line."
  (interactive)
  (if (looking-at "\\>")
      (hippie-expand nil)
    (indent-for-tab-command)
    ))

(global-set-key (kbd "C-c") 'indent-or-complete)

Forwarding X11 Sessions Acrosss Multiple Nodes

2005-08-06T18:37:33Z

This is the setup I am currently using to work from home:

ssh -L 8022:192.168.X.X:22 user@hostname
ssh -X user@localhost -p8022
screen
emacs