Monday, April 28, 2008

Red Fox in Back Yard

Even though we're about a mile and a half from the city limits of Philadelphia, we've seen several red fox in the back yard and around the neighborhood. Yesterday morning, I saw this fox in a neighbor's back yard. The neighbor had trapped a grey squirrel in a 'have-a-heart' cage (I have no idea why he did that), and the fox was trying to get it. At first, I thought it was two fox cubs playing together, then I thought it was one fox with prey, and finally we realized that the squirrel was in a cage.

I grabbed a camera, and was able to get this picture:
The fox is looking directly at the camera..... I'll try to get a better shot next time. I suspect there's a den somewhere in the neighborhood. This looked like a mature male. He is definitely big with a massively bushy tail (which doesn't show in the photo).

Bike Ride on DandR Canal path

Excellent ride this weekend on the D&R Canal Path, which is part of the New Jersey D&R Canal State Park. I took the SUN EZ Cruiser recumbent with fat tires (weighs about 35 lbs, but needed on the unpaved path), and rode from above Lambertville through Trenton. I calculed about 32 miles, round-trip. Since I rode at a stately 8-10 mph on the SUN, it took about 4 hours, but the ride is worth the trip.
I had ridden on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware Canal path before - from New Hope to Easton, but the New Jersey side is much better. For one thing, the PA side deals with canal bridges by making you either dismount or ride down a step incline to go under the bridge. The New Jersey side just continues the path through the bridge surface. Even in places where the path is narrow, it's still wide enough for two bikes. The PA side is frequently just 6 inches of dirt.
I had intended to ride from the Canal Park through Trenton and up the main part of the path to the 5 miles lock (or as close as I could get to it), but it looked a little unwise to ride completely through Trenton alone, so I stopped at Montgomery street in Trenton, and turned around.
It's an excellent path - very flat, very clean, and not heavily used. I only ran into other bikes and foot traffic around Lambertville - probably because they had the Shad Festival that day.
Next time - I'll ride from the 5 mile lock down to Trenton and back.

Friday, April 18, 2008

5,000 miles on my bike !

On April 17, I logged 5,000 miles on my main bike. This will be it's 4th season, and I hope to add another 1,200 miles by end of bike season in October.  It's a Haluzak (which are no longer made, unfortunately).  The picture is from the Bicycle Man site (http://www.bicycleman.com). 




I wondered how far 5,000 miles is in real-world miles,  so I found a web site (http://www.GPSvisualizer.com), which lets you make your own overlays over Google Maps. So, I used it to draw a 5,000 mile circle on the Earth, with my home as the center point. Here's the map:




So, that was the highpoint of my week: hitting 5,000 miles on a bike.  I rode additional miles on other bikes, but this is the only one where I keep track of cumulative miles on the computer.

Saturday, April 5, 2008

OPLC - and WPA Security

The automatic OPLC update function works great. I was able to get the command to work, downloaded the latest stable version of the OS (656), and I can now use the computer on my home network to access the internet.
I used the on-line update feature, which required activation of the T-Mobile account, and taking the OLPC for an outing to the closest Borders, but it was worth it. I also submitted a request for a developer key, which should be activated within 24 hours. This lets you boot and, in general, treat the computer like any other.
Next step: figuring out why the version of Fedora that the OLPC organization calls "Sugar" is missing (I think) some key commands in the CLI. More to come on that, as well as what I eventually use this computer for.