Skiing Silverton in Early January

Just firmed up a quick trip with two friends to ski Silverton (Colorado) in early January. One of the guys, Matt, just skied there today and said it was stellar. It's an interesting place, as it only has one lift, and during the main part of the season you must ski guided. This will be my first real backcountry excursion, although it should be relatively mellow in that regard (no skinning, hopefully minimal hiking as my fitness level is quite poor right now).

I also am hoping to take a lot of pictures. And, given my weak fitness, I expect to not last a whole day of this kind of skiing, so hopefully can also shoot some action shots of Matt and Barry. Matt will easily rip it up, as he's been skiing this kind of stuff all over CO and UT for the last few weeks (the lucky bum).

Dtrace: the anal probe

So I'm listening to the ps pipe grep podcast the other day, and with his always interesting sense of humor, Jason provides this superb quote,

Dtrace is an anal probe for your application.

Classic.

John Nack Slashdotted My Flickr Photos of Adobe

The good John Nack mentioned my photos of Adobe that are on Flickr. And, of course this was about as close as they will get to getting Slashdotted, er, I guess that'd bhttp://beta.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gife Dugg these days.

I should of course make one correction. John mentions I'm a Photoshop engineer. This is only partly true. I used to be full time on Photoshop, but my features are complete (wait for the Photoshop CS3 Beta tomorrow, and I'll blog about them). I'm now actually back to doing web services and web applications (hopefully more on that early next year).

The Photoshop beta is very exciting for those of us who've worked on it though. And of course it's great for folks who've been clamoring for a Mactel version. This will be on tomorrow.

There are some other interesting things on Labs recently as well. For example, check out Kuler and Soundbooth. Really fun and great stuff that's been happening at Adobe. And of course there's all the great Flash and Flex related bits, which I have personally been using a lot.

Amazon's UnSpun done with Ruby on Rails

Pretty cool... Amazon's latest service/site, UnSpun, was implemented with Ruby on Rails. I knew Amazon was looking at Rails, but this is great to see.

Winter Evening in Old Town Auburn

Winter Evening in Old Town Auburn
Originally uploaded by Christopher Bailey.

Gary and I went out for a quick photo shoot in the drizzle this evening. We started near the courthouse in Auburn, and then walked around Old Town. I will have to go back, as it took a while to start finding shots I was interested in. But, I got a few. Gary also took some nice ones.

Adobe Sixth Floor At Night and Other Pics

AdobeSixFloorAtNight.jpg
Originally uploaded by Christopher Bailey.

I took some night shots the other night, while working on servers in the data center (had some time to kill while waiting for Linux to install). This one is shot from the six floor walkway and basketball court area. There are some other shots that I did time-lapse that show some of the planes that fly directly over our buildings.

Hello BingoDisk, Goodbye iDisk

I've had a Bingo! disk for a little while now, and it's just making the iDisk of .Mac look pathetic. I don't use iDisk for much, except keeping some documents I need to keep available anywhere, and off-site, as well as sync'ing those across machines. But, iDisk performance is horrid, and Bingo disk is nice. So, I'm no longer bothering with iDisk, and hopefully I will not renew my .Mac account (not likely yet, because my main use for it is actually keeping Address Book, iCal, etc. in sync across various machines without having to think about it).

Camera and Camelbak Backup Solution #1

Following up on my previous post about needing a backpack that was both for camera gear and held a Camelbak, for use mountain biking, I've identified my first solution. After further discussion with Dakine, and having talked to various others, I'm going with the Ridge pack (in black/olive) and their Camera Block. Dakine suggested this, and believes it should work. The only question is that it may be a bit of a tight fit with a full Camelbak bladder and Camera Block, but we'll see.

Their packs, with the diagonal ski carry are still the most appealing to me for carrying a tripod. I also like the back access and full/instant access to all camera gear that it and the Camera Block brings. I should get these within a week or so, and will report again once I've had a chance to ride with it and try it all out.

Looking for combo camera and Camelbak pack

I've been searching for a backpack for mountain biking while carrying camera gear (digital SLR, extra lenses, etc.). There are many camera backpacks, but none seem to have a Camelbak/hydration sleeve/compartment. If you know of one, please let me know (add a comment). I've started compiling a list of some that may work, or that I might be able to customize or so on, on a backpack page. My current setup is just to individually carry camera+lens in a padding neoprene Zing pouch, and then carry lenses in separate lens bags, and stuff these in my Camelbak Transalp, which is a fairly large Camelbak. This works pretty well, but I'd also like to carry my tripod, and have a more organized setup, preferably with a bit easier camera access. If only the Dakine Sequence had Camelbak sleeve.

I haven't tried putting my tripod on the Transalp yet. I may be able to lash/secure it to it, but not sure. The tripod is a magfiber 4-section Manfrotto, so it's relatively light and a bit shorter than average. Regardless, it's not just a little thing to lash on.

We need a large scale web app developer/architect

For our team at Adobe, we're looking for an experienced developer who knows larger scale web apps: how to design them, build them, integrate with hardware stacks, and so on. We already hired the more junior spot of the two we have open, but check out my previous post for the description of the more senior position. This promises to be an exciting gig, as we're using cool technology, building some great apps, and the team is a fun one.

Lake Putt and the Wide Angle

LakePuttFloatingRock.jpg
Originally uploaded by Christopher Bailey.

Yesterday I drove up the hill to shoot, and try out my new EF-S 10-22 wide angle. This lens is a lot of fun! Not a lot of great photos from the shoot, but a couple nice ones. Here's the set of four on Flickr.

Photography Beginnings

I've started to get into photography, and recently finished a short class. The class was given by my father-in-law, who's an avid photography, and while he does some work for pay, it's primarily a hobby. The class was very good, as I am a serious n00b when it comes to real photography (i.e. using more than a point and shoot, and having proper aesthetics and composition). But, it's been really fun, and I'm starting to get some pictures. I put up a of some I took for the class.http://beta.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

Espresso vs. American Fear of Death

As seen on Labnotes:

“Serving size is about the American fear of death. Instead of a great, short experience, people want to prolong a mediocre experience.”

James Freeman of Blue Bottle Coffee

Upcoming Adobe Apollo Seminar

Adobe is doing another Understanding Apollo seminar. The last one was very good, so I'd encourage folks to check it out. I've been doing some work with Apollo and it's really cool. The ability to create web apps that work online and offline has been a huge interest of mine, and really ups the usefulness of many apps.

Web Developer Jobs at Adobe - Rails, Flex, RIA's, etc.

We're hiring at Adobe (we always are, but my team specifically)! We have two positions, with one being essentially more senior. See the job descriptions below. If you're interested, and meet the requirements, email me your resume (in PDF) at chris.bailey at adobe dot com.

Job JV110630

Position Summary:

The Digital Imaging Services team at Adobe Systems is looking for a superior web services developer to help us make our hosted applications and web services architectures best of class in an entrepreneurial and fast moving environment.

You need to have serious Web Development chops targeting LAMP-like platforms using the latest tools. This means you've implemented web services and hosted applications that utilize the latest dynamic techniques and languages, can simultaneously develop for multiple operating systems, know and use n-tier architectural patterns, can sling around SQL, a couple of scripting languages, and automate unit tests with ease, and may have even scaled up a hardware or network infrastructure or two. You should have demonstrated experience working iteratively and incrementally in an agile fashion with a high performance team. Be prepared to explain some of the architectures you've developed, answer coding questions, and tell us about your successes working with a dynamic team!

Knowledge & Skills:

• Expertise with developing multi-tier, distributed web application architectures and deploying in live production environments.
• Experience with Java, Ruby on Rails, or other current technology stacks required, experience with native code development in C/C++ a big plus. Four or more years of hands on LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl/Ruby) development.
• Experience using quality focused development practices such as heavy unit test and automation tool usage or Test Drive Development strongly desired.
• Experience of successful deployment of multiple iterations of a commercial/publicly accessible high traffic web service or application required.
• BS/MS degree in Computer Science (or equivalent).
• Must be able to work both independently and in a focused and efficient Agile engineering team that is geographically dispersed.

Job JV110631

Position Summary:

The Digital Imaging Services team at Adobe Systems is looking for a superior web services and infrastructure developer to help us make our hosted applications and web services architectures best of class in an entrepreneurial and fast moving environment.

You need to have serious Web Development chops targeting LAMP-like platforms using the latest tools. This means you've implemented web services and hosted applications that utilize the latest dynamic techniques and languages, can simultaneously develop for multiple operating systems, know and use n-tier architectural patterns, can sling around SQL, a couple of scripting languages, and automate unit tests with ease, and may have even scaled up a hardware or network infrastructure or two. You must have experience building infrastructure that is highly available and has had to grow quickly due to rapid uptake. You should have demonstrated experience working iteratively and incrementally in an agile fashion with a high performance team. Be prepared to explain some of the architectures you've developed, detail growing pains and solutions while scaling SW/HW/Net infrastructure, answer coding questions, and tell us about your successes working with a dynamic team!

Desired Talents:

• Analytic.
• Learner.
• Communication (written and oral).

Knowledge & Skills:

• Expertise with developing multi-tier, distributed web application architectures and deploying in live, high availability production environments.
• Expertise with current commodity based hardware, networking, and software infrastructure and related Operations exposure.
• Experience with two or more of Java, Ruby on Rails, Perl or other current technology stacks is required, experience with native code development in C/C++ a big plus. Eight or more years of hands on LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl/Ruby) or similar development.
• Experience using quality focused development practices such as heavy unit test and automation tool usage or Test Drive Development strongly desired.
• Experience of successful deployment of multiple iterations of a commercial/publicly accessible high traffic web service or application required.
• BS/MS degree in Computer Science (or equivalent).
• Must be able to work both independently and in a focused and efficient Agile engineering team that is geographically dispersed.

DualingMacLaptops

DualingMacLaptops
Originally uploaded by Chris Bailey.

This is the frequent configuration of my desk in my home office lately. That's a MacBook Pro sitting on top of a PowerBook. I've been doing some things lately where the MBP is a big advantage, so have been bringing it home, even though I have the PowerBook to use at home. The PB's days may be numbered.

Note, I don't have them both on (i.e. fully awake) at the same time. The MBP is currently on and in use, but the PB is sleeping. I also use the handy smcFanControl to ensure the MPB's fans are cranked up and keeping it nice and cool.

FirewoodStackWinter2006

FirewoodStackWinter2006
Originally uploaded by Chris Bailey.

Here's my morning workout - stacking a half cord of nice oak firewood. About another quarter of it is on the side of the house, as it doesn't all fit in the rack (and this is claimed to be a half cord firewood rack :)

Adobe Open Source ActionScript code - attend the chat today

Today, there is a Mozilla developer chat with Brenden Eich and Kevin Lynch (Adobe), discussing Adobe is contributing source code from the ActionScript Virtual Machine to Mozilla! Learn more here.

Encryption choice dramatically effects WiFi range

I've had range problems with the WiFi in our house for a while. And more than that, it seemed that the older iBook we have in the kitchen simply wouldn't deal with our encrypted WiFi. Last night, after setting up WDS (Wireless Distribution System: basically a way to link many WiFi base stations up to provide a bigger network range) I learned the bigger reason.

The kind of encryption seems to make a BIG difference. I had been using the strong WPA2 Personal encryption. This worked just fine within close range of the base station. But, terrible in other spaces that had worked before with an older base station. Switching to WEP 128-bit dramatically changed things, and now I have excellent coverage again.

The WDS setup also helped in one room in particular, and is relatively easy to set up. In case you're interested in that, here's two resources for doing it when using a Linksys WRT54G base station and then either Airport Express or Airport Extreme as the extension:

Linksys WRT54G, Airport Express, and WDS
Extend a Linksys WRT54G network via AirPort Express

Upshot: our kitchen laptop, which is about the furthest point from our upstairs base station went from sometimes seeing the network, but never being able to connect, to now having a solid 4 bar connection. Similar improvements in other places.

HalloweenPepperBBQ

HalloweenPepperBBQ
Originally uploaded by Chris Bailey.

I'm taking today off. I'll be doing two primary things: cooking and coding. I'm going to do some coding work on my side project, as well as cooking for the little family Halloween get together we're having. As you can see from the pic, I'm grilling various peppers, some of which will be eaten as is, others are diced and put into a salsa I'm making. I've already got the chili simmering on the stove, and the immense cheese platter is up next. But, right now, it's time to take a break and code for a little bit. Happy Halloween!