Arriving in Chicago

I’m officially moving my blog to http://artchang.com, which is now hosted by Posterous.  Tumblr gives me problems posting lists, code snippets, and such.  For some reason I’m getting much better SEO over on Posterous as well.  Either way, I might not be updating my Tumblr that much anymore.  Visit my Posterous hosted blog!

The Bay Bridge, here in Oakland / San Francisco, California, underwent a huge change last weekend.  They found a crack in the bridge, that was extremely dangerous, which they had to fix before continuing their planned construction.  Everything opened up only about 2 hours behind schedule.  Everyone is happy… but doesn’t anyone wonder: If we only caught that crack by first dismantling the bridge, what the hell else is broken on that bridge that we can’t see regularly?

The crack was reported to be “unrelated to the construction,” and “the cracked eyebar by itself would have forced officials to close the bridge for repairs.”  Yet they didn’t see it until now.

Are people surprised that Interstate 35 / St. Paul, MN bridge collapsed from unseen damage?  Maybe, but this just gives me chills.

Read more about the bridge opening on SFGate: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/08/BA3E19K0E7.DTL&feed=rss.news

My turn to put in a few notes on what I did to get Rails to work nice with my newly updated Mac OS: Snow Leopard.  I got most of my information from Riding Rails blog post here: http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2009/8/30/upgrading-to-snow-leopard.  I would recommend reading that through, but I found a few new things along the way:

Save your .bash_profile and your paths before doing the upgrade to Snow Leopard, you’ll need them later.

Backup your databases, and be ready to reload them in after this is all done since we need to reinstall mysql with the 64 bit version

DO NOT use the latest mysql gem 2.8.x, it doesn’t work.  Use the 2.7 version instead like this: sudo env ARCHFLAGS=”-arch x86_64” gem install mysql —version 2.7 — —with-mysql-config=/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config

You must reinstall MacPorts before running the port commands listed in the blog post, you can now grab the latest Snow Leopard binary package here

You will have to upgrade —force install with your MacPorts to get the libraries updated correctly.  Takes a long time!  If any fail, just try deactivating the failed one first, then uninstalling it with -f, then reinstalling it.  If it’s good, you will need to restart the upgrade —force install once more.  This will help resolve the issues there.

Use the script they have at the bottom of the post to see which gems you want to reinstall

After a lengthy MacPorts update, reinstalling gems, figuring out that I need the mysql 2.7 gem, getting git and some other paths like mysql back into my environment, everything fired right back up.  Now I have to reload my databases and I should be good to go.

Hope you guys get your stuff working!  If anything, read the comment thread on the Riding Rails blog, that’ll help a ton!

I received a pair of clownfish today, they are both a hybrid from a captive bred brood formed between a Onyx Amphiprion Percula and a black and white Amphiprion Ocellaris pair, two totally different Amphiprion (clownfish) that are very rare in that they’re completely black with white stripes.  This is a pair from them, which have a dark orange mixed with black.  These were bred by Sanjay who has done a lot of research in aquarium lighting for reef tanks, and he has dubbed them “Black Photon Clownfish”.  

The male (smaller one) with a non-completed middle stripe.  The female (larger one) came with some ich, hopefully she will pull through soon.  I’m hoping my ELOS 120 tank will be a great home for these two extremely unique clownfish.  In the coming weeks I am going to try to collect a pair of naked ocellaris (no white stripes), a misbar pair (with non complete stripes), and perhaps a snowflake pair (tons of white, little orange).

Here are a few pictures of the pair in the tank:

Woke up super early (5am) for the Rails Rumble 2009 competition.  The competition started about 12 hours ago, but we decided to get a little sleep in and start early this morning.  Here’s our walk from the Embarcadero BART over to Dog Patch Labs on Pier 38 (townsend and embarcadero).  All photos taken from my iPhone and processed 2x through the Magazine filter on CameraBag.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Taking pictures of my friends at the California Academy of Sciences

Nancy decided to go for the scrunch look:

So I went to the Academy of Sciences last night for my friend, Denilyn’s, birthday.  I got there really early to get some planetarium tickets, and just went around taking pictures.  I ended up taking pictures of mostly people hanging out.  This place is so cool, it’s my third time and I still love it.

We’ve been at the new Yardbarker.com Headquarters for a few weeks now, and I haven’t taken any pictures!  We’re still in San Francisco, heck, in the same building, but different floor.  The layout is nicer, we have more conference rooms, and it’s of course a fun place to work.

Lots of good stuff coming down the road for Yardbarker.  Features galore!  Here are some pix:

I’m in love with taking photos with my iPhone.  I’m never looking for perfect quality, sharp, well exposed shots, but more composition.  It’s always really handy and super discreet.

I’m also completely infatuated with public transportation, and the stories it shows you in the form of riders.  Here’s a shot I snapped while on the N Judah Muni train today: