Lots of ridiculousness was had, especially by (e:mike). And lots of candy. Congrats to (e:heidi) and Bobbi.

Sorry, (e:strip) ((e:terry) too), I've been working too much ((e:Paul) too)

For the last couple months I've been awaiting this new tool called "Let's Encrypt" to come out. Basically it allows you to generate valid SSL certs for free, that are trusted by must make browsers. it's backed by Mozilla. You run their open source client (or implement your own based on the spec) which exchanges keys, serves up a file with a nonce, and validates your domain. Some big certificate authority is going to cross validate their certs, and its public starting in November.

I can't wait to use it and not have to worry about paying for a cert.
It doesn't offer extended validation or insurance or anything, but its still very awesome. Too bad the NSA (and others) are still probably listening in already ;)

Now that Halloween has become a month long event, there is a party almost every weekend. This weekend was one at Mickey and (e:robert)'s.

Before we headed over there, I met up with Emily, Mike, Annie and Julie etc at Hardware. Normally I hate it there but we got there before it was a toolfest and had plenty space to dance. Emily got real crunk, hbd gurl.







I met up with (e:paul) and (e:terry) at the Halloween party a little after midnight. The party was disorientingly crazy fun. Mickey and Nick's princess peach costumes were ridiculous.

Tom and (e:paul)

Checking out Tom's fur

We all were drawn to one tiny room, not unlike our parties.

Some how fall snuck up on us, and it went from warm to freezing in the course of a day. I'm wearing shorts because you need to adjust to the weather, otherwise you'll never survive the winter.


We went to the Clinton Bailey farmer's market and got three medium sized pumpkins, instead of one huge one. Whoop for convenience. It's really crazy how many pumpkins are grown that are just used for decoration, and then tossed. I wonder how it compares to the biomass of Christmas trees that are grown every year. At least you can eat the pumpkins.

We spent Saturday doing some fall cleaning on the house, moving plants inside, and preparing the furnace. Here's (e:paul) spinnin' the vacuum hose like a helicopter.



At night it actually snowed. Just a little bit, but still. It's still nothing to the 6 inches they got in the southern tier.

I was hungry and didn't eat lunch today, so I decided to make something with the giant farmers market zuchinni we had.

I had some fritters, we finished them all immediately.

The recipie called for:
4 cups of shredded zuchinni
2/3 cups flour
1/4 tsp salt
2 eggs
1/3 cup scallions

Shred the zuchinni, then squeeze the water of out it until you can't any more. Mix everything together, add shredded cheese and onion if you want, and pan fry until brown.

The squeezed zucchini water was so green. I drank it, because, you know, vitamins.

I ran into this video on reddit of the sounds of different sorting algorithms make as they process random data. It's pretty mesmerizing to watch.


Some actually sound pretty cool. My favorite one is the bogo sort, even though it's basically impossible to actually sort data with it (bogo sort is randomly shuffling data and hoping it's suddenly sorted).

It's cool to see the processed visualized like this. Something makes me think I would have like data structures much better in school if we got to do things like this, considering no one ever needs to implement any sorting themselves.



This video is a much better comparison of different sorts. You can't hear the sounds they make, but you can see the differences in memory usage vs compute time (faster sorts take less time, while the more memory efficient algorithms have less colored elements selected at a time) They start with different arrangements of starting data.

On a different note, I found out today you can get a real computer science masters online for only $7,000 from Georgia Institute of Technology . After PEF reimbursements it would be almost $0 for me. You can also take the same classes for no credit for free. I am never giving a school money, but if you need a piece of paper kind of cool. Most subjects could be self taught and practiced/reviweed with Reddit and StackExchange, but having all a subject's info in one place and getting standard feedback on your projects is also useful.

Doubling up on (e:paul)'s post. I don't like ad like posts, but I liked it enough and I want them to stick around, so I think it should get two posts.



On the way home from the bike ride, I noticed a new store opened in the old Code Blu Juice bar, at North Pearl and Allen Street. It was called "Caféology" and it was amazing. They have a website but it looks unfinished, it does have the menu though.



The inside of the cafe was very new - and extremely hot temeprature wise. I was sweating but I still ordered a turkish coffee. (e:paul) got a cappucino, and (e:terry) got a frozen coffee drink. All of them were amazing taste wise. I have never had a Turkish coffee before but it's even more intense than an Italian coffee, and thick with the coffee grounds. I may be having a heart attack from it right now.





The women working said it will be open until 10 pm, which is awesome. I think this would be a nice place to do work at if they have WiFi. I always thought there should be a coffee shop opened late but the only option around here is a Tim Horton's or Spot.

Menu

It was so nice out we went to ride bikes. Originally we were going to ride out to East Aurora, but decided it might be too long to do starting at 1pm. So we headed down to hike at Tifft. It was basically summer.

A concrete carrying French Canadian ship!


Herrlicher tag - here is a beaver dam, the OG engineers



We walked up around the southernmost path to the railroad tracks.


A lot of the park is overrun with knotweed. Blech.








While we were back there, (e:terry) and I snuck through the bushes to the foundation of some old building. (e:paul) thinks it used to be used for raves, called "The Metal Pit". The building is gone now, and all around the edges were these tunnels that were half filled in - possibly to an old basement? I went in one but you couldn't go very far.



On the way back we took a really overgrown-not-really-a-path. I think it was made by the deer because we saw one bouncing away on it.



In the nature center there were a few interesting books. A book on hallucinogenic plants, and the most obsessive book I've ever seen on warblers. The warblers book catalogued every type of North American warbler species, their range, behavior, song - everything about them. It's one of the few times I feel like I've found a book that I couldn't find all the information online - at least in one place.



The ride home was nice. We went down Allen and passed a new coffee shop at North Pearl. We also see this stupid fucking parking lot where the old Artvoice building was. If the preservation board allows this and not three freaking solar panels, what are they good for?


Post bike refueling done by (e:terry)'s vegetarian chili.

I went to go walk my dog Midnight for my dad while the rest of my family was out of town. He finally conquered his years long fear of this giant blow up Halloween cat - I think it was the pouncing position that scared him.

On the way back I went to the new taco place in Kenmore to get some for (e:terry) to try. It's called La Divina. They were very cheap and fast, but unfortunately no vegetarian options. Terry seemed to enjoy them at least. The store itself was not much to see - almost all candy, fried snacks, and Jesus-y candles.

On the block over, there is now a Vasilli's. This block is almost looking like something you'd find in Elmwood now - I always wondered if Delaware Avenue was going to turn into something like that.

I have Fridays off again! Thanks to my new job on the Web Marketing team, I now can do four day weeks and take off Friday. I like this a lot more because I can choose whether I want to work, or do something else. Instead of my old position, where I would end up working extra time because I have to be in the office 5 days a week for no real reason.

We went to Grindhaus cafe for lunch with (e:xandra). I got a tofu caprese sandwich and a Lebanese mujaddara bowl with rice, lentils and cucumber. We all got the chia pudding which is definitely the best thing there.




On the way home (e:paul) and I noticed the Hill Hotel neighbor added a "mission statement" sign. Seriously Sinatra www.sinatraandcompany.com ? How is boarding up a house, paving the front yard, and leaving it to rot making a "positive impact in our community"? So lame.



Friday night was bike party. The ride was just alright, due to an influx of slow rollers and confusion in directions cutting it short. But the end party at Hot Mama's was fun. Lots of fried food and beer.


Saturday was spent doing some errands, a lot of bouncing around the house. (e:paul,60267) and I went to the Clinton Bailey market, and got a bunch of food, including the apples. (e:terry) made a chili with the peppers and tomatoes we got.

We also dropped off a bunch of my old clothes to Goodwill. I'm anti-hoarder as it gets, and most of them I never wore anymore - but even I was a little nostalgic about shirts I used to wear the fuck out of. Mostly free college ones and all the fraternity things.


Later we all rode over to Guercio's to get a few baking goods like olive oil and baking soda. I kind of want to know who is buying these giant chocolate bars.



On the way back we stopped at (e:mike) and (e:libertad)'s.



Later that night, (e:terry) and I went out to (e:keith)'s house for a party. (e:paul) was home sick ;(. Their attic is awesome. It has a ton of seating, a loft sitting area, a dance floor, and this time, a giant inflatable dragon.


The house is also full of weird things such as this dog painting.


Here is (e:terry) talking to this girl named Felicity and her friend Ana. Felicity was running around speaking a few German words. We tried to practice but one or more of us was too drunk to keep it up too long.

(e:flacidness) - realness