12/05/16 11:56 - ID#60725

Erie County fiber survey

Not fiber like celery fiber but fiber optic.

Erie County is doing a survey of internet speeds right now at

Take it and show them how pathetic Buffalo's speeds, are especially if you're with the extortion that is Time Warner!

Personally I'd love a municipal or county owned fiber network but I doubt they're build that out. I'd definitely take something like the private Greenlight networks in Rochester. 100/20Mbps for only $50, less than we're paying Time Warner for a third of the speed.

Permalink: Erie_County_fiber_survey.html
Words: 87
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 12/05/16 11:56

Category: programming

11/30/16 11:57 - ID#60723

Refactoring e:strip

The past week or so when I have the time, I've been going through the source of (e:strip) and cleaning it up.

So far I've:

Moved a lot of the concatted PHP views into more HTML-y templates
Cleaned up some of the registration process and updated the confirmation process
Removed dead code
Given a controller to most of the views

I still want to pull out all of the inline styles and refactor the CSS into something useable, maybe with flexbox.

I also want to try out multimedia websockets for the Talkbox. And maybe add

Schema.org descriptions for users and posts, so we can get structured data to crawlers.

Not that anyone is really posting - but there's something satisfying about cleaning up retro code. It's almost Zen, seeing how much code you can condense into the simplest few lines.

Permalink: Refactoring_e_strip.html
Words: 145
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 12/01/16 01:06

Category: family

11/30/16 01:59 - ID#60722

Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving, (e:terry) came with me for the first round to my parents. I didn't really take too many pictures.

Here's the crumbly falafel turkey with veggie stuffing my mom made us. It lost it's turkey shape.

My mom has gone full 90's mom. It looks like she could be in on a alt 90s band cover.

I can't count how many pictures we've taken in this spot now.

Afterwards we headed over to (e:paul)'s parents' to make our stomachs explode and play catchphrase.

Did you know they sell militarized My Little Pony dolls now? A pony named cheese sandwich has a "party tank".
I always thought Equestria needed an armed conflict.

Permalink: Thanksgiving.html
Words: 119
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 12/01/16 12:58

Category: tech

11/25/16 07:05 - ID#60720

New monitor

I have a new monitor. Well. (e:paul)'s not so old 4k monitor which he bought last year, because he's already bought a newer ridiculous 4k TV to use as a monitor.

Since my Dell only has one HDMI display output, I've replaced the previous 1080p Paul monitor monster hand me down.

I didn't think my laptop would let me do a built in 1080p and 4k monitor because it's so old and limited to HDMI 1.3. But thanks to the magic of Linux configuration, I now have the builtin 1080p at 60Hz and the 4k displaying scaled 2k at 30hz.

I couldn't figure how to add custom resolutions with Wayland and Mutter in Fedora 25 so I've reverted back to Xorg for now.

Here's how I did it with xrandr and cvt:

Run cvt verbose with your desired x and y resolution and refresh rate. It retuns a list of X settings along with the calculated bandwidth it needs to display. This helps you figure out if your output can carry the signal. in this case I was conservative with 2k at 30Hz.

cvt -v 2048 1556 30

Take that output and pipe it to xrandr --newmode. After that you add that mode as a x setting for an output device with --addmode. You can then set the mode with --output or in the Gnome display settings.

xrandr --newmode "2560x1440_30.00"  146.25  2560 2680 2944 3328  1440 1443 1448 1468 -hsync +vsync
  xrandr --addmode HDMI1 2560x1440_30.00 
  xrandr --output HDMI1 --mode 2048x1440_30.00

Permalink: New_monitor.html
Words: 241
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 11/25/16 07:06

Category: bikes

11/20/16 11:00 - ID#60713

Cranksgiving

Last Saturday I convinced (e:paul) and (e:terry) to get on their bikes on the windiest day for Cranksgiving. It's a scavanger hunt/race where you ride around to different stores, trying to get as many items on the list as possible for Food not Bombs.

We didn't stick around for the results at the GoBike shop at the end but I'm convinced we were in the top third at least.

Permalink: Cranksgiving.html
Words: 75
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 11/20/16 11:05

Category: fashion

11/20/16 11:00 - ID#60712

Dress shoes

With winter approaching, I finally decided to retire these shoes, that I've had since sophomore year of high school at least. My heels might as well have been on the ground.

I feel at the very least I made the cows hide useful as long as possible. Anyway now I just wear my sneakers to work. no longer shall you be embarrassed (e:Paul), for now.

Permalink: Dress_shoes.html
Words: 68
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 11/20/16 11:00

Category: politics

11/08/16 09:07 - ID#60710

League of Women Voters' guide

Since news and social media is so obsessed with the presidential election, if you don't know who's running on your local ballot, you can look them up here.

The League of Woman Voters also sends every candidate in every state and federal race a questionnaire to get a summary of their opinions.

It looks like for our ballot it's not as useful, because the race was either decided in the Democratic party primary or they never answered. But it allows you to do a little research and at least not be the person who votes based on someone's last name.

Permalink: League_of_Women_Voters_guide.html
Words: 114
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 11/08/16 09:07

Category: bikes

11/07/16 01:02 - ID#60709

Cyclocross in the park

After spending all yesterday morning cleaning up even more of the Halloween party (this time taking down and untangling the lights) (e:terry) and I went for a bike ride. We came across the Campus Wheelworks "Dominator" cyclocross race in Delaware park, by Rumsey woods.

For some reason I always thought they were tiny events but there were at least 100 people there for a giant party. Beer chugging on bikes, two riders running up the stairs with a tandem etc. The course was about a mile long and the whole race was over 4 miles.

I'll have to check it out earlier next year.

Permalink: Cyclocross_in_the_park.html
Words: 106
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 11/07/16 01:09

Category: fashion

11/07/16 01:01 - ID#60708

Foxy guys

(e:mike) and (e:libertad) had us over for a delicious vegetarian dinner of pasta fagoii and black bean burgers (thanks guys), and to watch some dumb TV movies.

I got to take home this foxy mask.

Permalink: Foxy_guys.html
Words: 38
Location: Buffalo, NY
Last Modified: 11/07/16 01:31

Category: going out

11/07/16 12:59 - ID#60707

Couchsurfer at the pink

I had a Couchsurfing.org profile from a long time ago but I only just recently filled it out. I did a few weeks ago, and got a request last week for a couchsurfing on Thursday and Friday night.

So the first night we hosted a girl named Tina from Bavaria. She had sold all of her possesions, quit her job, and was traveling around North America as long as her money lasted.

It was kind of awkward at first, mostly because my German was somewhat rusty and her English was as well. We walked around Allentown, she wasn't really impressed by Allen Street. She did like Ethiopian.

We ran out of things to talk about quickly. As soon as (e:paul) and (e:terry) got back it was much easier, especially with (e:paul)'s German.

(e:paul) wanted to go out so we took her to the pink. I think it was a suitably weird experience for her.

At one point a random blond girl came up to us, telling us how sad that nobody at the bar wanted to get with her. She came up again later to ask Paul and the conversation went something like this:

Girl: Do you speak Estonian?
Paul: No, we're speaking German.
[girl speaks Estonian to them]
Girl: Can you translate something and tell her for me? I work for my father in St. Catherine's and he had me look up other companies. I read about something about the Schaefer company, it's very interesting. Tell her that.
[paul tells her that]
[girl turns to her and tells Tina in english]
Girl: Our children, are going to grow up as best friends.