Phatpat.com

The tide was already turning against SOPA before the January 18th Wikipedia blackout. Some questioned whether they should even bother. I’m glad they did. Wikipedia is such an immensely used resource today that it got major media coverage, and I’m convinced SOPA would have been largely ignored without it. Lots of people went to look something up and learned what SOPA was for the first time. Some didn’t even bother to read the message. But for the most part, I think the willingness of Wikipedia, and to a lesser extend several other websites, to turn off service for a day garnered more attention for a tech policy issue than has been seen for quite awhile. I applaud them all for it.

Everyone has their issues that are important to them, and for very large fraction of the US population, tech policy is not one of them. I wish it would rise to be something more than a niche issue for nerds. Maybe someday soon.

Sidenote: There were lots of jokes in the media that day about people going to look up random useless trivia, such as the name of somebody in the Cantina band in Star Wars. Wikipedia is a legit information source. When was the last time you pulled out letter “C” of Encylopaedia Britannica? I think most people would agree with me here, but a lot of them publicly make fun of it, or are in denial. I don’t quite get it.

I’m taking a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) class online through Penn State. It’s a fun class and might even be practical.  As part of their online curriculum they wanted to have a few students blog about their experience. I applied, but didn’t make the cut. I thought it would be interesting to post my proposed introductory post here.

Hi! My name is Patrick, and I’m going to sharing my experience as a Penn State World Campus student here. I have only been out of school for two and a half years, but I love my job and want to keep getting better at it. I work on a global model of energy and land use; I try to understand how people across the world might use energy in the future, and how policies might change or influence that. Lately I have noticed an increasing reliance on spatial data; where power plants are located, or where biomass crops such as switchgrass might be grown.  I want to be able to use this kind of information to do my job more effectively, and even present data in these formats. Maps have a way of grabbing people’s attention more than bar charts. After trying my hand at open-source GIS software for a couple weeks, I decided I wanted some more formal instruction, and applied to the online GIS program through Penn State’s World Campus.

The application process was easy and straightforward; I was done before I knew it (literally, I think I hit next on the application and got a “You’re done!” message about 30 minutes before I was actually expecting to be done).  It made me think back to the long process of applying to grad schools I went through several years ago. If only it was this simple then…

So now I am in, and registered for my first class, GEOG 482: Nature of Geographic Information. I can’t wait for this class to get rolling! I have never done an online class before but am optimistic about this one.  They tell me this program requires Windows, but I’m going to give it a shot on my trusty Macbook for the time being.  I think I can work around such pesky requirements with virtualization or Boot Camp, but we will see shortly. I look forward to continuing to blog about my experience with my first online GIS courses at Penn State, and hopefully it can help some people out, or at least provide a little entertainment.

With the cycling season over, and Clara in Turkey on a boat with terrible internet, I have had little to do the past couple weekends other than entertain myself in Washington DC. Labor day weekend I played Starcraft online late into the night with a couple Deerfield buds, had  a great low key bike ride with my Squadra Coppi pals, followed by an hour or two hanging out at the coffe shop afterwards, and hit a bucket of balls at the driving range. Labor day itself was dedicated to lounging around in my apartment. This weekend was not a whole lot different.

All of this helped me reflect on the value of all the friends I have in my life, as well the importance of time for reflection. Down time is important, and it’s been harder and harder for me to get away from all the distractions in my life for more than a few minutes. But I need to do more of just that.

Memorial Day Weekend plus the DHS graduation made for a good excuse for a long weekend back in Deerfield. It’s been a little hectic trying to do everything I want to, but I have had a good time so far. My sister’s graduation was great on Thursday, if a little cold. I saw several of my old teachers, and they actually remembered me. I was impressed; it’s been 8 years. I was too nervous to say hi to Mr. Motsko though, 12 years since freshmen bio seemed like a little much. And he was always sort of intimidating, in a watch-out-for-the-blue-people-of-tennesee kind of way. Other than that so far it has been a lot of hanging out with friends and family. Anna, my Dad and I went for a ride Saturday morning, about 50 miles through suburbia. I picked a new route from the Colavita Chicagoland cycling team (I know nothing of them), and it worked out fine. A few of the roads were a little too busy for comfort, but we had a nice rest stop at a confectionery in Long Grove. Nothing like a few chocolate covered pretzels to keep you going. In a couple weeks the 3 of us head out to Bettendorf, IA for TOMRV, a 2 day ride, 106 miles the first day, 90 the second, 6000 and 4000 ft of climbing respectively. No big deal…

The other highlight thus far has been playing Gauntlet on Gamecube with Chazz and Brian for a few hours. It’s amazing how quickly time can fly shooting away at random baddies.  The fantastic announcer (“Green Knight needs food badly”) combined with jeering at incompetent teammates makes co-op awesome. On a somewhat related note, I need a version of settlers that travels well. And not a second-tier travel edition. Either that or I need to strategically place copies (or friends with copies???) wherever I travel regularly.

I went to Providence and Boston for Thanksgiving, home for Christmas, Hartford to see Clara’s cousins, Faber, VA for training camp, and Shenandoah National Park for a few days. But you don’t need me to tell you that if you have access to my computer. Apparently the backup iTunes creates when you sync an iPhone stores locations your phone gets from triangulating cell phone towers. Not as accurate as GPS, but sufficient to expose any interesting trips. A couple creative developers wrote a little application called iPhoneTracker that parses the backup and gives you a little animation with your locations at weekly intervals. Here’s mine:

I found this article from Engadget a year ago noting how Apple revised it’s privacy policy with the release of iOS 4 to allow Apple to anonymously collect real-time location data and share it with partners and licensees. Related? Who knows.

[Wired ; New York Times]

My teammate Chris and I drove out for the Morgantown 4/5 road race on Saturday. We drove through a mess of weather; blizzard, rain, sleet, and very icy roads. The race was delayed 30 min, but we got a good window of weather to ride our bikes.

The first 10 miles was pretty flat. About 6 miles in there was a nasty section of potholes. They had a flagger there to point it out, and circled them with orange spray paint, but there were too many to avoid completely. Chris hit one the wrong way and eventually broke a shifter cable. Riding this race in your 39-11 was not a good plan, so he had to turn around.

I carried on, and the pack stayed largely together until the first real steep climb at mile 24. Things strung out a lot here, and we shed a good fraction of the pack. I was able to hang out in the top 10 and keep a good cadence.  There was a second little riser a couple miles later. I was sitting 6th wheel or so, and a TOMS guy comes up from the left, at the same time as another TOMS guy from the right, and all of a sudden there are 3 TOMS guys off the front having a go of it. I yelled something to the effect of “3 guys on the same team, we can’t let that go”. Nobody else could really chase, so I went up the front and gave it my all. I couldn’t make it all the way up, but ended up in a 2 man chase in no man’s land. A few miles later 3 other guys caught us from behind, and at some point 4 or so more caught us. We tried to get something going, but just couldn’t make it happen. The TOMS trio took it to the finish.

With about 4 miles to go on the 50 miles loop, there was a  short hill, and 4 of us opened up a gap on the rest of our little chase group. We traded pulls well and were able to keep it to the line. I lost the sprint, but was happy with 7th place on the day. I put in a fair amount of work during the race, but I think everyone in the top 10 did. Overall, it was a great course and a well-run race in Western Virginia and Pennsylvania.

This past Saturday Clara and I drove up to Boyds, Maryland, for my first race of the year, the Black Hills Circuit Race. The course was a 1.5 mile loop with a 45 second climb and a lot of downhill after that. We did 10 laps. It was hard, but I guess racing should be. My teammate Geoff took off from the gun. He eventually got caught, but stayed at or near the front and made sure the pace was high. I was on my limit just trying to hang on. The climb was too much of a power climb to really suit my needs. The 75 man field strung out on the first lap, and split into 2 packs of 30 by lap 5, and the front pack was whittled down to 15 by lap 10. Over the hill at the beginning of lap 9 I was wondering if I could stick with it, but I gritted my teeth and did just that, finishing 12th. It was a solid day of racing to start the year, and I’m optimistic about Squadra Coppi pulling it together to have a strong cat 4 squad.

After the race Clara and I drove down to Front Royal, Virginia for a weekend of adventure in Shenandoah National Park/Skyline Drive. On the way down, we passed Dinosaur Land. Clara refused to stop; maybe next time. It was still early afternoon when we got to Front Royal, so we had time to do a short warm up ride on Skyline (or maybe a cool-down ride, post-race for me). Clara was a little surprised by the fact that Skyline just continues to go up (and up). Saturday we did the same thing. More climbing. Lots of it. Despite being a little chilly, the weather was perfect for a weekend out there. The fact that it was still off-season meant traffic was light. Monday we took a day off the bike and went for a hike on the Appalachian Trail. And now I have an annual pass to go back whenever I want. Overall it was a great weekend, with both some solid training miles and a lot of time to relax.

A short breather at a Skyline overlook

Clara patiently waiting for me

I don’t understand what the “clean energy standard” Obama proposed at the State of the Union is. 80% clean energy by 2035. I think it probably includes gas with some sort of minimum efficiency, clean coal (probably not purely coal with CCS. Maybe IGCC?), nuclear, and renewables.

From a policy perspective it sort of makes sense. Obama wants to pass some sort of energy legislation. Cap & Trade, which he campaigned on, didn’t go anywhere. Congress couldn’t even agree on a renewable portfolio standard, because there are a lot of  republicans who I think have a knee-jerk reaction against renewables. So now we have a clean energy standard, which seems to encompass any sort of new power plant that would be built today. I guess it would be cool if the policy could force the retirement of existing coal.

I worry they won’t even be able to pass this, with so many republicans that want to disagree with Obama just because, and the inclusion of nuclear and some sort of coal more than likely to anger the far (and not so far) left. Regardless, despite the continued dilution of the policy, I think it’s cool that energy is important to this administration.