The El Capitan Hike - The hike of all san diego hikes

Brutal. And brutal all the way up. And brutal all the way down.

First Thoughts: Of all my past hikes, the easiest part of hiking was the one where you reach the top and then you back down to the starting point where its all supposed to be downhill and easy. Not quite so for the El Capitan trail. The 12 mile trail (with a sheer 4000 feet of elevation gain in just six miles) snakes it way across several smaller hills with really steep ups and downs before you get to the topmost part of the mountain and then back. As such, it gets pretty difficult on either directions. The trail is considered extremely strenuous even for intermediate-to-advanced hikers and you have to be not just in better physical condition but also well equipped with plenty of water, a hat and a snack to help you through.

My Gear: Having learned my lesson well from the last San Bernardo hike (where I attempted that six mile hike over an elevation of 1000 feet with just a 20 oz bottle of water and temperatures hovering at high nineties), I geared up fairly well for the El Capitan. A generously packed day pack (Futura Pro 42) with a snack, 100Oz water pouch (CamelBak 3L Unbottle), a few extra bottles of water just in case, a nice big hat and plenty of sunscreen.

Mistakes Learned: I still made a couple of mistakes by ignoring two more critical items (good hiking shoes, and walking sticks). Your hike shoes need to have a really good grip (and mine were basic nike running shoes) and those walking sticks can be a life saver. Because of those steep up and down climbs, those walking poles can you give you good support. It is very easy to slip and if you do, the trail is pretty rocky and one side of the trial often tapers in a dangerously sheer vertical drop. But I nevertheless did the trail without them and survived. A bad choice and I got lucky.

Solo all the way to the top and back: I decided to go solo on this hike since my hiking group consisted of pretty advanced hikers and I knew there was no way I can catch up to their speed. I also wanted to do it at my own slow pace (since I was a beginner hiker), and enjoy the scenery around and spare some time for photography.


The El-Capitan himself!!!


No wonder its called the old jeep's trail


Wild Flower


Somewhere close to the top


Burnt Trees - Remands of California Wild Fires


Wild Plants


Wild Flower


Trail Pointer


Wild Plant

Sailing on The JADA, the all-wooden sailing boat from 1930s era

It's actually been more than a week since the trip and I can't seem to remember much except that it was fun (like everything else). The JADA is an all-wooden sailing boat built in early 1930s. It was my first trip abroad a sail boat so I was able to see in person how the sails were hosted and the boat navigated via the sails. Really interesting. Brad, I think was the shippie onboard, and I also met a professional photographer who gave some splendid tips on photography.

Some of the pictures that I took while I was abroad the JADA:


Enjoying the sun:


Pirates Ahoy!!!


Sheesh..musta got on the wrong boat..THAT's the boat shud hav bin on:


Hmm...


Hmm....


Hmm...what do you think this is? titanic?


Hoisting the sails:


Ship engine/navigation control:


Cabin:


And I thought I had parking problems:

San Bernardo Mountain Hike (19th April, 2009)

Whew! While there was not much of scenery involved on the hike, this was to be my first seven mile hike over an elevation of about 1000 feet, and at day temperatures hovering at high nineties. The trail was a mix of flat dirt trails and some steep rocky climbs and way too demanding for a beginner hiker like me. But Stephen from my hiking group who turned out to be professional hiker gave me plenty of useful tips that I definitely intend to follow for my next hike.

I wish I could have taken more pictures along the trail but I was so dead exhausted and at one point, almost decided to turn back with the rest half of the group who couldn't take the high temperatures any longer. But Stephen, Jen and Martin stuck on to continue up the trail, and I am glad I decided to tag along. Nothing is more thrilling than the experience of reaching at the top. One more mountain conquered. Veni, Vedi, and Vici, my roman and non-roman brethren.

And yup, this time I learned my lesson. Plenty of sunscreen lotion, lots of water and some snack bars can really make a huge difference.

Martin, Jen and Stephen at the top of the bernardo mountain:


View from top:


Trail Path:


Poison Oak!

Cowles Mountain Hike (17th April, 2009)

My second hike trip came within a week of my first one. This time I picked up Cowles mountain. At an elevation of around 1600 feet, at the top of the mountain you get to see a panoramic view of the entire city of san diego. It's also supposed to be the highest hiking spot within the city. The trail covers a distance of about 1.5 miles snaking its way across to the top of the mountain. The altitude change is somewhere within 1000 feet.

I started off my hike at around 6.30. I was about 20 minutes late so I missed my hiking group who were already half way up the mountain. Since the trail wasn't too difficult and plenty of people around to help if I happen slip and broke my leg or something , so I decided to go ahead, solo. But starting at 6.30 was a bad idea as I tripped over a few rocks and sprained my ankle since it became pretty dark on the way back. Definitely would advice anybody to avoid night trails unless you are really familiar with the trail itself.

Cowles Mountain is also an excellent place if you are into stamina training. It would be one of my main reasons to be go back there on a regular schedule.

Some more pictures of this place below:

Torrey Pines Glider Port Hiking Trip

Hardly 3 days after moving from East Coast (New Jersey) to West Coast (San Diego), I decided to check out some of the more notable hiking spots closest to my new home. And I picked Torrey Pines Glider Port Park for my first hike in San Diego. And ohboy! I certainly wasn't disappointed.

The drive to the hiking spot itself was something to appreciate about, as I cruised along the Torrey Pines Scenic Drive Road. At the end of the road you arrive at the Torrey Pines Glider Port park which seemed to be a pretty popular area for handgliders, paragliders, beachgoers, surfers, and hikers alike. If you happen to be into paragliding, definitely check out this website (http://www.flytorrey.com). I found plenty of parking space at the gliderport despite a large crowd. However the road inside the park is unpaved and very dusty and its just too bad if you washed your car recently because it most likely is going to end up with a nice coat of fine dust when you leave.

The hiking trail, leading from the top of the cliffs at the north end of the gliderport down to the bottom of the cliff leading to the beach (Black's beach) is over 350 ft high (according to Brett). And the views, like Brett promised, was simply breathtaking. While it does not take much time to walk down the trail and back up, but do it a few times in a row and you'll know how challenging it becomes. There is a also a side trail that splits somewhere in the middle (I believe its called the goat's trail or something) that is way more challenging (I was literally walking on fours on my third trip up but via the goats trail).

Some pictures of the trail below:

Picture from top


A broad view



Sideview from top


Steep and rickety rickety


Paragliders at dusk, on top of the cliffs

the gizmos grabowski solution to stuck print jobs

http://worldcadaccess.typepad.com/gizmos/2006/09/tip_plugged_up_.html

works like a charm if you have a lot of print jobs and need to delete them quickly. be sure to use a command terminal when deleting or windows explorer will take forever to delete them.

Debugging tcp connection problems

Super cool article on debugging tcp problems on unix boxen.

http://prefetch.net/blog/index.php/2006/04/17/debugging-tcp-connections-with-tcptrace/

subversion install / requirements

1. The apache portable runtime libraries (apr and apr-util)
http://apr.apache.org/download.cgi

Installs by default to usr/local/apr


2. Download expat
http://sourceforge.net/projects/expat/

3. Download subversion from http://subversion.tigris.org

Use the following command, assuming above default installs in step 1 and 2:
./configure --with-apr=/usr/local/apr --with-apr-util=/usr/local/apr
make
make install

openbsd / too many open files /erro no 24

OpenBSD has a default open file descriptor limit of 64. As such, many of my web apps had been quitting on the "too many open files" error (error 24). To fix this, use the following steps:

1. Edit /etc/login.conf and make sure the openfile limit is set to a larger number than it currently is.

2. Use ulimit -n to set the maximum number of open files. To see current limit, use "ulimit -a".

Creating ethernet aliases in Suse 9/10

This link says it all.

http://blog.tiensivu.com/aaron/archives/397-The-correct-way-to-add-IP-aliases-multiple-IPs-on-one-device-in-SuSe-Linux-10-and-below.html

Hardware Information from your linux box

use these commands:

# sysctl hw
# sysctl kern
# dmesg

Setting Date and Time Information on Linux

Kewl link

http://www.linuxsa.org.au/tips/time.html

Changing object/folder permissions on the fly, using runas

Here is a tip to get access to that folder without have to log off and log back in as somebody with admin privs.

Use runas to get to the command prompt:
runas /user:Administrator "cmd.exe"

In the privileged command prompt, use the below command for folder "xyz", granting user "thisuser" full access:
cacls xyz /E /G thisuser:F

For more info, read the man page for cacls.

Adding some content to the freshly created php page in KnowledgeTree DMS (KTDMS Series 2)

Carrying forward from the same example as described in series 1, you would obviously want to define and output some data out of the php page you created. In this series we will use the dispatcher and templating classes provided by Knowledgetree to output some simple data out of this page.

Pages in knowledge tree are created by extending the KTStandardDispatcher class. For every custom class you create, it should have at least one method "do_main" which is the first of your methods that gets called automatically when a web user tries to access this page. Additional methods can be defined in the format "do_" that can be called conditionally based on the http request variable "action" (HTTP POST/GET vars). For example, you can define a method "do_createnewrecord" and call the php page with a http request variable "action" of value "createnewrecord", and the page will then automatically look for and execute the "do_createnewrecord" method defined in the page class.

Assuming you are already well familiar with the plugins/pages/actions... concepts in ktdms, the following example creates a page plugin class called "MyTrainingRecords", by extending the KTStandardDispatcher class. KTDMS uses the smarty templating system, so I created a test template file called test.smarty that simply outputs a Hello World message. The do_main method calls some of the default variables defined in the KTStandardDispatcher class to instantiate the template and render its output.

//all required includes defined in series 1, plus
require_once KT_LIB_DIR . '/dispatcher.inc.php';

class MyTrainingRecords extends KTStandardDispatcher {
function MyTrainingRecords()
{
//lets add a breadcrumb detail for this page ;optional
$this->aBreadCrumbs = array(
array('action'=>'mytrainingrecords', 'name'=>_kt("My Traininig Records")),
);
return parent::KTStandardDispatcher();
}

function do_main()
{
$oTemplate =& $this->oValidator->validateTemplate('ktabr/test');
$this->oPage->setTitle('My Training Records Page');
return $oTemplate->render();
}
}

$oDispatcher = new MyTrainingRecords();
$oDispatcher->dispatch();

For a plugin page to be meaningful, its class has to be instantiated and dispatched by the dispatcher (by explicitly calling the dispatch method), which is what the last few lines of the above code do.

The below screenshot shows the output of the newly created php page, along with the breadcrumb detail as defined.

Creating and linking a fresh php page in KnowledgeTree DMS (KTDMS Series 1)

Creating a new php page and linking it on the main page (alongside the dashboard, browse and dms administration hyperlinks) involves several steps described below:




- Create a fresh new php page and make sure you include the following essential includes:

require_once 'config/dmsDefaults.php';
require_once KT_LIB_DIR . '/templating/templating.inc.php';
require_once KT_LIB_DIR . '/templating/kt3template.inc.php';
require_once KT_LIB_DIR . '/dispatcher.inc.php';
require_once KT_LIB_DIR . '/util/ktutil.php';

Let's say the new php page you created is "mytrainingrecords.php" and you want to link the action "mytrainingrecords" to this page. Go into the kt3template.inc.php file and scroll across until you come across the "initMenu" function. Populate the $this->menu array to include the following array item:
"mytrainingrecords" => $this->_actionHelper(array("name"=>_kt("My Training Records"), "action"=>"mytrainingrecords", "active"=>0))

That adds up the additional link on the main horizontal menubar alongside the dashboard and browse links. When somebody clicks on this link, the KTDMS will use the controller page (control.php) to figure out what page to call and it does that by following the mapping defined in the siteMap.php (located in the config directory). Open up the siteMap.php page and add the following php line anywhere:

$default->siteMap->addPage("mytrainingrecords", "/mytrainingrecords.php", "My Training Records", Guest, "mytrainingrecords");


That is pretty much it.

PHP Pear / Date Functions / Time Zone Conversions

Pretty good tutorial on using the Date class of the PEAR library to do various date manipulations:

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-3513_11-6122735.html

Automated database backups via cron

Here is a quick and dirty script to do automated backups of a mysql database. If you want the script to be executed hourly (as is in my case), place it in your /etc/cron.hourly directory. In my case, I dump the backups onto /local/backups directory which happens to be mirrored via raid1.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
#!/bin/sh

x=`date +%d-%H`
abrcimsfile1="v2edclite${x}"
abrcimsfile2="abrcimsv1${x}"

mysqldump -u root -p v2edclite_v1 > /local/backups/$abrcimsfile1
mysqldump -u root -p abrcims_v1 > /local/backups/$abrcimsfile2
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Packages required for PAM support with php and cryptocard

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
missing package 1
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For the cryptocard server 6.4 (build 39) and php4, I got some missing errors about libstdc++.so.6 . I checked out /usr/lib/ but the latest version I found was libstdc++.so.5.

Checked out that I needed the following package for Suse Enterprise 9 that I was running: compat-libstdc++-lsb

Easiest way is to do the online update with yast and select the "lsb" update.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
missing package 2
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ofcourse the pamauth package that takes care of the magic between php and pam authentication. Dont remember the dowload link but I'll post it back when I come across it again.

missing pam_start function errors

make sure you have the pam_devel package installed

phpize errors

Be sure to check your installation of the following packages and if any of them are missing, install it.

1. php-devel
2. automake and autoconf (if you dont have this and get the aclocal error message, its probably because of these missing packages).