MacAlpine.org

I finally got off my arse and set up a proper backend for the website. Now the pages are generated dynamically using a perl CGI script. All the entries are stored in a MySQL database. There should not be any visible changes. But it means that I can now update the site remotely using a web browser without having to edit any html by hand.

Here is a picture of the landlord’s outdoor bar. What’s wrong with this picture?

And therein lies the dilema.

Heather and I went to Cancun at the end of May. Today, a month and a half later, we received some of the post cards we mailed from Mexico. Apparently, a buck fifty in postage (10.5 pesos) gets your mail sent via the express donkey.

Shuyan Chen is a fellow post-doc in our lab. She just got back from a trip to Yellowstone National park. She is also a very good photographer. I helped her set up her images online and thought that I would link to them. Now if only my pictures would turn out this nice!

Sorry about the lack of updates. I have been real busy with work lately. Things just don’t seem to be going the way they should. Hopefully, things will start going smoothly again and I will have more time to update the web page. I did update the images section with new pictures from Dogtown, Marblehead and Rockport.

The beginning of July started off like christmas. Heather surprised me with a completely unexpected gift. Pretty damn schnazzy, I think. Too bad I am the only person I know who likes the stuff. I also ordered via Amazon a Garmin Etrex Vista handheld GPS. I now know my exact location, including altitude, anywhere on the planet within a few feet. In fact my house can be found at lattitude 42.362200 and longitude -71.099440 23.2 feet above sea level. This is simply too cool. Heather and I recently took a trip up to Cape Ann to do some hiking at Dogtown commons. Here are some maps with our GPS tracks laid over them. The color of the line indicates speed, with red being fastest. So the red lines are from driving around and the blue/green lines are from walking. If you look close you can even see where we stopped at traffic lights etc.

• Cape Ann
• Dogtown Commons
• Home/MIT

I finally got Kirby’s new pack in the mail. I had ordered the smallest back pack the Wolf Packs carried, the small. Well, the pack I got was a small, but it was huge! The previous pack we owned could only fit 3 beers on either side of the pack (simply a unit of measurement, I don’t really make Kirby pack the beer). This new pack could easily accommodate an entire 12 pack — 6 on each side. Way too big for my little beagle. I called up the fine folks at Wolf Pack and explained the situation. It seems that they used to carry an extra small back pack several years ago, but had since discontinued that model. Luckily, they still had the template for the extra small pack back and they were able to custom build an xs pack for Kirby. Roodi, my boss’s dog, is now the proud owner of the small pack.