"East side elms" written by Joe on estrip.org

Category: trees

10/25/15 11:18 - ID#60294

East side elms

One of the best looking streets in Buffalo is Timon Street. It has a full canopy of elms on it running between Genesee and Northampton. It even has a brick road. How have they survived?

I can't imagine back in the day when every street in Buffalo had a canopy like this.

There are disease resistant elms now

. I would love to have one - a big tree that could withstand snow, salt, and not fuck up all the pipes and sidewalk. Especially compared to the twigs the city plants now.

Permalink: East_side_elms.html
Words: 104
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 10/25/15 11:30

Category: shopping

10/25/15 11:17 - ID#60293

Good shopping, bad shopping

Saturday was a lot of shopping.

First off (e:paul) and I went to the farmers market. It was good as usual, except for one farm. I need to confirm which one it is next week before I publish the name - but when we got up to get our fruit, the trashy lady was swearing and complaining about something being "fucking sent her way" and gave us a knowing look - I ignored it not knowing what she was talking about. When we finished our transaction and walked away, I saw the only other people at that stand was a family speaking Arabic. I can't believe how ridiculously racist that was and she looked to us for some sort of confirmation. I'm making sure to never buy anything from that stand again.

This put me in a bad mood. Then we had to go to Cheektowaga Target to look for a container to ship Basra and I went nuts. Sorry I was so miserable Paul - I shouldn't take the culture hate all out on you.

Here is childrens' olive oil they have - how could it really taste that different?

A gold spray painted geode

And royal tabloid news for (e:mike)

It turns out Target didn't have a box big enough for the beast so we went to the nearby pet store. This is some shopping I am okay with, because we got to see:
Meerschweinchen!

and birds

and Paul looked at orthapedic dog beds (they were really comfy)

It almost felt like cheating but I even looked at a Russian tortoise. He only gets to 8 inches, and lives 50 years. He also hibernates.

Permalink: Good_shopping_bad_shopping.html
Words: 285
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 10/25/15 11:44

Category: allenstreet

10/24/15 02:33 - ID#60287

Jones and O'Toole Launch party

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

Permalink: Jones_and_O_Toole_Launch_party.html
Words: 24
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 10/25/15 12:33

Category: web

10/21/15 01:55 - ID#60286

Let's Encrypt

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 ;)

Permalink: Let_s_Encrypt.html
Words: 151
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 10/21/15 01:58

Category: halloween

10/18/15 10:20 - ID#60283

Halloween Take I

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.

Permalink: Halloween_Take_I.html
Words: 125
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 10/18/15 10:30

Category: weather

10/18/15 10:16 - ID#60282

Snow already

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.

Permalink: Snow_already.html
Words: 158
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 10/18/15 10:25

Category: food

10/17/15 03:04 - ID#60280

Zucchini fritters

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.

Permalink: Zucchini_fritters.html
Words: 94
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 10/17/15 03:04

Category: programming

10/13/15 01:23 - ID#60277

Sorting music

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.

Permalink: Sorting_music.html
Words: 274
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 10/13/15 11:18

Category: allentown

10/12/15 04:45 - ID#60274

Cafféology Cafe - Allentown -Buffalo, NY

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

Permalink: Caff_ology_Cafe_Allentown_Buffalo_NY.html
Words: 224
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 10/13/15 01:26

Category: nature

10/12/15 04:42 - ID#60273

Ride out to Tifft

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?