Sign Commemorating Forbes Field

Given that this year is the 50th anniversary, there were quite a few more people there than usual.

People gathered at the wall

So many people were expected that the city closed off the street that runs by the wall in order to accommodate the festivities.

Street Closed

There were some interesting characters in the crowd.

Super 'stache

Arrr, matey!

There were plenty of reporters and cameramen.

Whoa, I definitely should not have had that burrito for lunch.

People brought along souvenirs and mementos…

Maz and the '60 Bucs

…and maybe a beer or two.

Yinz got an arn for me?

When 3:36 rolled around, it was time to celebrate.

Yes!!

High five!

It was a great event, an opportunity for those of us who weren’t there to experience the thrill of it, and a chance to share it with the next generation.

We had 'em all the way!

At the beginning of March we were back in Pittsburgh, where we’ll be moving once I graduate, and we started looking at houses in the hopes of ultimately buying one. Thinking about actually owning a house and getting to customize it in whatever ways we see fit really got me thinking about how we should set up all our electronics, including TV, DVD Player, Stereo, DVR, computers, and backup storage. Ideally, it would all work together and make things basically accessible all over the house.

Ok, so how do I start explaining my thoughts on this, since it involves so many different components? First, I guess I’ll start talking about the network. If possible, I’d like to avoid cables. Cables are the fastest and most robust solution but I don’t want to have to drill lots of holes and pull cable through the walls. Cable is also very inflexible – if my wife wants to rearrange our furniture, any jacks I had made for the cable might no longer suit the arrangement. Fortunately, 802.11n provides an alternative. It seems to have enough range and enough bandwidth to meet all of my needs for the foreseeable future. My work laptop supports 802.11a/b/g/n and we plan to replace our main desktop machine at some point in the next year, so we can get it configured to support 802.11n. Plus, practically all new computers either come with 802.11n networking built-in or they offer it as an upgrade. So, it shouldn’t be too hard or too expensive to create a home network based on 802.11n. In my limited research so far, this seems like the best router/access point for the job.

Next on the list is backup storage. Ever since it was announced, I’ve been interested in Windows Home Server (WHS). It’s now pretty mature and supports lots of great features. So, the plan is to have a WHS machine attached to one of the gigabit ethernet ports on the router. It’ll back up all our machines, provide a network print server, and store all our media (like pictures, home movies, and music). Having all our data in one place makes it easy to then do an offsite backup. There’s a JungleDisk client for WHS and I recently read about a new service called CrashPlan, which enables you to do offsite backups to other people’s computers. So, for example, I could backup our WHS machine to a computer at my parents’ house using CrashPlan and I wouldn’t have to pay per-gigabyte bandwidth and storage costs like I would if I backed up to Amazon using JungleDisk. Plus, I could “seed” the offsite backup by doing the first backup locally and then moving the computer to the offsite location. This would dramatically reduce the time necessary for the first backup (probably from weeks to hours). The upfront cost is higher and I would be responsible for any maintenance but it may be worth it, depending on how much stuff I find myself wanting to back up. While I initially thought it would be cool to build my own WHS machine, I’m now thinking that it might be better to get one of the dedicated WHS machines from HP. They are small, quiet, and have room for up to 4 SATA drives. Plus, the cost of the WHS license is included and you get some additional software that seems really useful. I think I’d have a hard time building a computer with a 4-bay hot-pluggable SATA backplane for less than $500 including the $100 WHS license. Those backplanes are like $100 by themselves!

I’ve also had ideas of having a computer in the kitchen. My wife sometimes finds recipes online and prints them out. It would be really convenient for her if she had a small touch-screen computer in the kitchen where she could pull up recipes, bookmark them or save them locally. It would also be cool if she could view videos, listen to music, or have occasional web chats from this machine while she’s busy in the kitchen. The HP TouchSmart series is too big and too expensive. Something like the Asus Eee Top seems to have both a better size and pricepoint. The Eee Top has 802.11n and a screen that could be used for watching 720p video, though I’m not sure if the integrated graphics is up to the challenge. Hopefully, Asus will release a new model based on the NVIDIA Ion platform with a dual core Atom processor. According to a recent Engadget article, there are a bunch of so-called nettops coming out in the next year that will be based on this combination. Hopefully, at least a couple of these new Ion + Atom 330 machines will have the built-in touch-screen, bluetooth (for a wireless keyboard), and a VESA mount. The ultimate would be if I had the computer mounted on one of the cupboard doors and I had a wireless keyboard built into the cabinetry like an under-the-counter pull-out cutting board. Sweet!

In part 2, I’ll look at the TV and DVR. This is an especially complicated issue because the proper solution is not independent of the service provider we choose for TV. I’m just starting to get knowledgeable about issues like CableCards and how they affect DVRs, etc. Hopefully, I’ll post part 2 soon.

While the 11-10 finish is noteworthy, the score was very nearly 17-10 or 18-10.  On the last play of the game, Troy Polamalu appeared to score a touchdown after blocking a lateral pass, recovering the ball, and reaching the end zone with it.  However, upon review, the referees ruled that one of the series of lateral passes preceding the touchdown was, in fact, an illegal forward pass.  This meant that the ball was dead and the play was over before the touchdown was scored.  According to this article, however, after the game, the referees changed their minds and decided that the touchdown should have counted after all, but it was too late to change the score.

While it would have been nice to see the Steelers win by more than a 1-point margin, the fact that the game ended in a heretofore unrecorded score makes it much more interesting.  I wonder what other mathematically possible, relatively low score combinations haven’t been recorded.  Actually, I’d be interested in seeing a histogram representing the frequency with which all mathematically possible scores are recorded.  It seems like this type of data should be available on the internet, but in about 1 minute of googling, I didn’t find it.  Let this stand as a challenge to those of you who consider yourselves internet search experts.  Leave any interesting results in the comments.

I’d been aware of the availability of replacement iPod batteries for a while and I had considered just getting a replacement battery and accepting the less-than-ideal capacity for the time being.  However, last week I found a site talking about upgrading the hard drive in iPod Minis as well. It turns out that, unlike newer flash memory-based iPods, which have their memory soldered onto the main board, Minis use Hitachi Microdrives, which are essentially tiny hard drives disguised as compact flash cards. These drives can be removed and replaced with actual compact flash cards. So, I realized I could basically remedy both of my gripes with my Mini by installing a replacement battery and upgrading the storage capacity by installing a large CF card.

Before I left for Pittsburgh last week, I ordered a 16GB compact flash card from Newegg for $45. Yesterday, I picked up the CF card from our mailroom and drove over to Microcenter, where I picked up a replacement battery.  It took me a while to get the case open but eventually I got it.  Once the case was open, it didn’t take long to swap out the battery.  Replacing the Microdrive with the CF card was a little harder but, all in all, it was pretty painless.  After I got the case put back together, I plugged the Mini into my computer where iTunes prompted me to restore it.  After loading the most recent firmware, I was prompted to plug the iPod into an AC adapter in order for the firmware installation to complete.  I then charged up the battery and copied over all the music I wanted.

Now I’ve got about 3300 songs on my iPod with almost 3GB of free space, along with great battery life all for about $65.  I saved myself a bunch of money and avoided sending another gadget into a landfill, so I’d say this is a win-win.

Upon inspection, I discovered that the power supply fan had died.  The computer was still working but the fan in the power supply had given up the ghost.  It wasn’t too surprising, actually, since it had been chirping on and off for probably 2 years.  In fact, I had bought 2 replacement power supplies in July of 2006 just in case the existing power supply would fail – an occurrence that actually took a lot longer than I expected.  In any case, I discovered this problem about 15 minutes before the taxi was supposed to pick me up, so I had to just shut everything down.  After returning late on Monday night, I spent some time on Tuesday trying to get things fixed.  However, things weren’t quite as easy as I expected.

Replacing the power supply was easy since I had replacements on hand.  I also took the opportunity to clean the case out properly since it was full of dust.  I expected that after replacing the power supply and cleaning everything I would just power the machine on and everything would be back to normal.  Unfortunately, the network interface didn’t work.  I was getting some kind of IRQ conflict.  If I brought the interface up, I could ping it for awhile from a different machine and then it would stop responding.  I wasn’t able to figure it out yesterday so I just left it and worked on some other, more pressing things.  I took a look at the issue this morning again and this time, the network interface wasn’t showing up at all.  The IRQ conflicts were gone since the system was no longer seeing the network hardware.  So, I turned off the machine, opened it up, and put in an old ethernet card I had lying around.  This was recognized by the system as eth1 so I made a quick change to /etc/network/interfaces to move all of my previous settings from eth0 to eth1.  I restarted the machine and everything worked!

I think there are two lessons to be learned from this story.  One is that keeping spare computer components around pays off.  I fixed the problem with a spare power supply and ethernet card that I had on hand.  I didn’t need to go to any store or order anything online.  I probably saved myself a bunch of money and I definitely saved myself a bunch of time by hanging on to old stuff.  The second lesson is that this machine may go completely belly up before too long.  When motherboard components (like my ethernet port) start failing, the computer may not be too much longer for this world.  That said, as a 500MHz Pentium III from 1999, I’d say it’s had a good run.

I heard yesterday that the Pirates traded Nady and Marte to the Yankees. This made me upset. I feel like this season the Pirates have a legitimate shot at getting above .500. However, without Nady and Marte, their likelihood of having a winning season is a lot lower. The trading away of talented players for prospects reminded me of a t-shirt I had seen on eBay that said “Pittsburgh Baseball: Rebuilding since 1992″. In the wake of the Nady/Marte trade, I thought that maybe I should buy this shirt. So I went to eBay to see if I could find it. It had been sold by a Pittsburgh-based T-shirt maker for quite a while, so I thought I’d be able to find it. No such luck.

Not able to find it on eBay, I tried to remember what the seller’s name was in order to see if I could find it through some other channel. I finally found that it was “River City Shirts”. So, I decided to see if they had a website. Google had it indexed but it’s no longer online. I found a MySpace page for “River City Shirts” but the account had been deleted. This seemed very strange. Then, I found an entry on auction-safety.org – a complaint against River City Shirts for having sold a shirt and then never delivered the item. From the complaint, I found the seller’s eBay id and I checked out eBay’s page for the seller. It indicated that despite having achieved power seller status and having compiled a ton of positive reviews, this seller is “No longer registered as a user”. In addition, this page featured a number of angry comments from customers claiming to have not received the merchandise they had ordered. Those keeping score at home will note that we now have a defunct website, a deleted MySpace account, a deregistered eBay account, and multiple complaints on multiple sites.

Basically, the entire online presence of River City Shirts has been deleted. This led me to wonder if perhaps the guy running it had died. From the auction-safety.org complaint, I had the guy’s name and address. So, I did a Google search for his name plus the word “obituary”. This search returned 3 hits. Only one pertained to a person from Pittsburgh. It was a report of a wedding that occurred June 22, 2008. It turns out that our River City Shirts proprietor is not dead; rather, he was a groomsman at the wedding. Furthermore, I went to high school with the bride. It took me a while to realize it, though. I looked at her name and thought that it seemed familiar. I seemed to recall her having been a year or two younger than me. I looked at my school district’s alumni database but I couldn’t find her in it, so I started to doubt that my initial inclinations had been correct. However, as I read through the article again, I took note of the names of the bridesmaids. It turns out that I’m sure that some of them went to high school with me. So, I now have no doubt that the bride went to high school with me.

In any case, having found this article about the wedding does nothing to help me figure out what happened to River City Shirts. I still want my “Pittsburgh Baseball: Rebuilding since 1992″ shirt. Maybe I should contact this girl I went to high school with to see if she can hook me up.

What I wanted was a Google Map with colored overlays defining each neighborhood. However, I could not find such a thing. So, I decided I should make one. I get my data from this site, operated by the City of Pittsburgh. If you click on a neighborhood, it’ll bring up a map of that neighborhood. That page also contains a link to a pdf file of the map, which you can zoom in on if necessary. It’s a little tedious, but I’m copying a neighborhood at a time into a Google Map using the “My Maps” interface.

It’s been interesting so far and some things have been a little surprising. For example, did you know that CMU is technically in Squirrel Hill, not Oakland? Despite having spent 4 years at CMU, I did not know that. I would have said that Squirrel Hill starts immediately to the east of CMU. However, as far as the City of Pittsburgh is concerned, that is not the case. Also, there are a bunch of neighborhoods that I had never heard of, like Terrace Village.

My map has existed for less than 24 hours and has already been viewed almost 300 times, so I’m hopeful that people are finding it useful despite its incomplete status. If anyone would like to help me in this endeavor, let me know, and I’ll invite you to collaborate, which will give you the necessary permissions to edit the map. I think you may need to have a Gmail account for it to work, but I’m not sure.

Upon moving to Pittsburgh, I became interested in the inclines, which are technically known as funiculars. These are basically railways that go up the side of a mountain at a steep angle. Not to be confused with cog railways, funiculars are drawn by cables and generally include two cars which counter-balance one another, one going up while the other goes down. There are two left in Pittsburgh: the Monongahela Incline and the Duquesne Incline, both of which are on the south shore of the Monongahela River and take passengers from river level up to the top of Mt. Washington, a bluff on the south side of the city. While there are only 2 left today, 19 inclines have called Pittsburgh home over the years. Furthermore, though my exposure to inclines has been limited to those in Pittsburgh, there are inclines all over the world, including all continents except Antarctica.

Another form of transportation that captured my imagination during a trip is the system of canals in England. Obviously, I had seen boats and rivers before, but I was fascinated by the man-made features of the canals that enabled them to negotiate difficult terrain. During our trip to England, I saw plenty of locks in person and read about other interesting parts of canals elsewhere, including canal tunnels, navigable aqueducts, boat lifts, canal inclined planes, and marine railways. A number of years later, during my year in Germany, I saw a boat lift in person: the Henrichenburg Boat Lift on the Dortmund-Ems Canal. Shortly thereafter, I decided that when I retired, I would build an elaborate model of the British countryside, including railroads and canals, with particular emphasis on including the interesting features listed above. I’m less committed to this plan now than I was at the time, so we’ll just have to see if this works out or not. I’ll let you know in 40 years or so.

A third form of transportation to which I was introduced during a trip is what might be called a cable car or aerial tramway. During a trip to Germany with my parents in 2000, we rode up to the top of the Zugspitze in a cable car. The Zugspitze is interesting because it’s right on the border between Germany and Austria and you can actually go back and forth between Germany and Austria on the observation deck at the top. Not only that, getting to the top involves taking a cable car or a cog railway, so it offers two unique transportation options. While the cable car was interesting, it didn’t really capture my imagination in the same way as the canals or even the inclines had. Perhaps this is due to it being more modern and not seeming to belong to a different era.

The last form of transportation to which I was exposed on a trip involves much shorter range transport than the others. The year I lived in Germany I got to take a tour of the WDR studios in Cologne. In their main building, they had a crazy elevator-type contraption called a paternoster. Basically, it’s like an elevator with no doors that never stops. There are two shafts side by side and a series of cars on a continuous loop travel up one shaft and then down the other. This means that you simply step in on one floor and step out when you reach your desired destination. If it’s not clear what I’m talking about, check here. These really fascinated me for a while because they’re unique, very efficient, belong to an earlier era and are disappearing. Right now, there aren’t many of these left in existence and those that survive seem to be getting phased out as buildings are renovated or demolished, since they’re more dangerous than normal elevators and they’re not handicapped-accessible.

The 4 modes of transportation mentioned above fall into two categories for me: those that I have used and those that I have not. I have been in inclines in Pittsburgh and I rode a cable car in Austria. However, I have never been on a canal boat, much less on a boat while it went through a lock or some other interesting canal feature. In addition, I have never been on a paternoster. I hope that I’ll get the chance to take both of these modes of transportation in the not-too-distant future.  If I do, I’ll let you know.