First, for those who just want to look at the pictures, check out the photo gallery. All in all it was a great trip. There were a couple of minor bummers and one major one which I’ll get to at the end, but they didn’t take away from a great trip, the best part of which had to be the camping spot perched on a cliff’s edge at least a couple hundred feet above the largest waterfall I found, nestled in a pine forest. It was awesome.

This was bushwhack hiking – mostly on unmarked, almost, or completely nonexistent trails used mostly by seasonal fisherman. It was obvious I was the first person this season to make my way back into the woods by the state of the fire pits and the complete lack of tracks. I’d tried this hike once before with Andrew but we made the mistake of following the trails and ended up far from our goal, causing us to abandon our goal. This time I found my way though I still stumbled about a bit. Next time I’ll know better to stay up along the ridgeline instead of making my way up and down it in a continual hope that it would remain a stable trail at the base of it. Some positional information for folks interested in making this hike:

I’m heading here for the weekend. I’ve failed to find the 5 waterfalls on the west branch of the Sacandaga once before. This time I’m determined to find them. I should be back Monday.

There’s a small chance I will instead head to Pharoah Mountain because of the possibility that a bridge I need to access the Sacandaga trailhead is out. If that’s the case, my goal is here as an alternative.

Well, sort of. First, a confession. As I’ve written in the past, I have a mild obsession with Absinthe. I’ve sampled it once though its provenance was unclear, and I’ve debated myself on the wisdom of importing a bottle from Europe, which one can do with relative impunity. As of next month, according to this article in the New York Times, I should be able to buy a bottle from the local liquor store. A US company worked with the Louisiana chemist who’s been almost single handedly reviving the drink to formulate an Absinthe that would pass regulatory issues here, and they’ve succeeded. A bottle will run about $60. Guess what I’m bringing to AGCW this year boys 🙂

Ok so these aren’t technically podcasts, but for an absolute treasure trove of spoken word content, head on over to the Project Gutenberg Wiki, and use their filtering tools to find spoken word content. You can look at the full view, or filter on numerous criteria, so for example the Sci fi content (look for the speaker symbol adjacent to the title). The John Carter Warlord of Mars series for free? Count me in! Do note one issue however – this is all fan produced material and the quality can vary. Some readers are fantastic, others less so, and a couple of times I’ve run into folks who do a decent job but have one of those voices that just grates on you. Preview what you plan on grabbing before grabbing the whole thing is my advice.

So I’m not generally in the habit of making household cleaning recomendations, and anyone who has visited me over the years knows that I’m a bachelor and my house reflects that in the grand sense of the word, but man, the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser is awesome. I was first clued into them because of the issue of hand grease accumulating on laptops and being difficult to remove. The Magic sponge does work wonders on that, but I’ve also discovered it’s great for other things, like cleaning off a greasy stovetop, scouring soap scum off of a bathtup, removing marks off of walls, and generally it can clean anything that I used to scrub and curse at. They’re not that expensive and they seem to work wonders – well worth trying the next time you have to clean up your stove if for no other reason.

Despite being skeptical that these sorts of things actually amount to much, I signed this ACLU petition that will be delivered to the signers’ respective congressional reps on June 26th as…call it a symbolic gesture. The way the neocons have been running roughshod over the constitution is appalling and anything to try and make it clear how unhappy this makes me seems worth trying. Consider doing so yourself, it takes only a moment.

So I’m cruising home from work on my bike on friday. I have a pannier with a shoulder strap now to hold my laptop and sundries. I take a sharp turn at speed, maybe 15 miles an hour, and intentionally lock the rear tire to make it skid out, which it does. As I finish the turn I go to apply power again and there is a horrendous clanging noise and I skid to a stop. The shoulder strap got sucked into the chain, which caused the plastic buckle to pop free. The plastic buckle got caught up on the spokes on the opposite side from the chain, making a perfect loop around the tire, wrenching off the bike computer sensor, destroying the expensive rubber dust protector grommet on the rear hub, bending the fender and fender mounting hardware, and generally making a nuisance of itself. It sucked! It took me a while to work it out of the bike. The good news is it doesn’t seem to have damaged the rim or spokes, which I was sure it had done at first based on how tightly it was compressed against the rim. The tires are inflated to 75psi (that’s no typo – I was surprised too), yet the laptop strap had compressed the rubber tire flat against the rim. The bad news is I have to bring the bike in to get the grommet replaced, which will take a while since the part has to be ordered from Germany. It also ripped off several bolts that hold the rear fender secure, so now it rattles like an old jalopy. I tried several hardware stores and Walmart on Saturday morning but had no luck. I’m going to try another tonight.

All in all a major bummer. It could have been much worse so I guess I should count my blessings and move on. I can’t ride it in the wet until I get that part from Germany either.

Bat slips out of batter’s hands and flies into the crowd. Crowd reacts.

If you’re a valve customer who’s paid for a game using their Steam content delivery system, be aware: once again Valve has been hacked, and this time it appears customer credit card information has been stolen. I’m pretty pissed off about this. I’m a valve customer myself, and you would have thought that they would have learned a lesson about the importance of strong network security after a hacker broke in a couple of years ago using trivial means and stole their source-code and released it online. But no, apparently they still have a cavalier attitude towards security despite having millions of customer credit cards. Making matters worse, their response to the issue has been abysmal – basically the community is outing them, otherwise they would not have said a word about it to date.

Anyway be aware. I’ll follow up as more details emerge, but it’s possible if you bought from them that your credit card is on the p2p networks or sold off to some russian crime syndicate or whatever.

[via joystiq] (and Tony who mentioned it to me yesterday)

Today’s the day – The Children of Hurin, a ‘lost’ work of JRR Tolkien, is available. Apparently this was a major unfinished work that JRR Tolkien spent a good piece of his life working on, and now one of his descendants has spent a good piece of their own life completing it. The pre-release buzz has been really good. You can get your own copy for around $15 using the link above. I’ll post a review after I finish it – of course I’ve had it on pre-order for months, given how influential Tolkien was in my early development.