North Ridge of Mt. Conness

Passing through Tuolumne Meadows was just too much of a temptation, so Kim and I decided to knock off the North Ridge of Mt. Conness on our way back from Deep Springs. Life's demands --- thesis, research, and work --- had prevented me from getting out for most of the summer and I wasn't feeling in great shape. Kim was also nursing a sore shoulder, given to her by a careless driver who decided to run his pickup through a stop sign, knocking her to the ground. Despite her doctor's warning to "take it easy", Kim's not likely to follow that advice; the last time we went to the meadows, she climbed all day on a swollen ankle (injured, ironically, while walking in a climbing gym), easily flashing 5.10 face climbs.

We left Deep Springs as the last of the day's light was leaking over the Sierra crest, speeding up the 395 towards Lee Vining. Arriving at the secret bivy spot behind the Mobil gas station, we were surprised that nobody else had claimed the best patch of dirt underneath the big pine. The next morning, Kim woke me --- we had overslept our alarm! We grabbed all of our stuff, threw it into the car, and sped up towards Tioga Pass, arriving at the Sawmill campground to begin our hike up towards Conness at 6:13am.

The hike was beautiful, gradually ascending a valley gouged by the passage of a glacier eons ago. The glacier had long retreated up the mountain to the highest cirque, leaving behind a series of lush meadows and alpine lakes fed by its remains --- today, the Conness glacier barely covers a few football fields and the next few years of rising temperatures will continue its gradual erosion. Skirting high above the last lake, we gained the top of the ridge and began following it as it wound its way, like a snake, up towards the summit. As we approached the ridge, its bulk and sheltered us from the wind, but now as we strode on top, we were exposed to strong gusts which knocked as off balance and sent us teetering like drunks. We made good time, scrambling unroped up towards the second tower in our sneakers before rappelling down the other side.

But something wasn't right after the rappel --- the terrain roughly matched the description in the guide, but the angle was all wrong. Instead of easing off, as the guide book promised, the angle of the ramp below us steepened before descending out of view. I put on my climbing shoes and headed down, trying to scope an exit off the ramp to the easier ground rising to our right. I shot a wary eye towards the gravel that was strewn like so many ball-bearings on the ramp. It didn't take too long for my feet to skate, and I hung, motionless for a moment before bear-hugging a block in front of me. "Probably not the right way," I called back up to Kim before heading back up.

After a while, we figured that we hadn't rappelled far enough, and so we set up another intermediate rappel before reaching easier ground, wasting a lot of time. It was a strange experience to climb so much terrain unroped, with your partner so close at hand. Climbing, for the most part, is pretty solitary since one person stays behind to secure the belay while the leader forges ahead.

Freed from the demands of gear and a rope, we wandered back and forth over the face, finding the easiest way up, squeezing through chimneys and climbing through blocks of shattered rock. Finally, one last move and we were standing on top of flat ground, the summit block just in front of us.

Captions:

1. Kim with Mt. Conness in the distance. The north ridge ascends the right hand skyline towards the summit.
2. Panorama of the north ridge from the beginning of the route. The route winds its way through two sub-peaks (termed the first- and second-tower) before ending at the summit
3. Kim starting up the ridge
4. Kim with the Conness Lakes in the background
5. Kim scrambling through
6. At the first tower, approaching the second tower
7. Approaching the second tower
8. Kim on the summit
9. Kim signing the register
10. "I love the alpine like I love loose women." You never know what you'll find in the register
11. Panoramic from the top of the lower part of the route
12. Overview of the trip

Deep Springs College

Deep Springs College is a unique educational institute. In exchange for laboring on a fully-functional cattle and alfalfa farm, students receive free tuition, room, and board. At the end of their two years, they transfer to some of the best universities in the country. As part of the package, the all-male student body lives in self-imposed isolation on a farm nestled in a remote desert valley. They govern their own affairs, including admissions, curriculum, and disciplinary actions, accepting only 12-13 students a year.

I had heard of Deep Springs in high school, but my interest never extended past requesting some application materials. Like most high schoolers, the idea was romantic, but I couldn't quite wrap my head around such a radially non-traditional path. Safer it seemed to just go with the flow and apply to a four-year college and come out with a firm path towards medical school or some other professional degree and some societal acceptance. But the place had stuck out in my mind as an interesting experiment in education and an admirable model of self-governance.

So when my friend Frances invited me and Kim to join her as she moved into her visiting faculty position at Deep Springs, I jumped at the chance. It was a chance to just check out the place. We drove over there, crossing the Sierra Nevada at Tioga Pass, before heading down another two hours. The college is located about an hour's drive outside of Bishop, a small town on the east side of the Sierra range. While we were there, we got a chance to check out the campus and experience a small slice of life there. Anyway, here are the pictures:

Captions:
1. Climbing a tree at dawn
2. Alfalfa field
3. Tire Swing
4. Reading at night
5. Alfalfa field and irrigation system
6. Breakfast on Frances' porch
7. Sitting in front of the main building
8. Climbing trees
9. Sitting in trees
10. Frances on a tire swing
11. The farm implement from hell
12. Dairy cow and dog
13. Doing dishes after meals
14. Slop bucket for the pig
15. Contemplating the desert

Kaiseki at Kaygetsu

Alex Honnold Free Solos Half Dome

 
A really amazing video of Alex Honnold free soloing the Regular
Northwest Face of Half Dome. As with most climbing videos, this one
was almost certainly staged after the fact to recreate his ascent.
However, his original solo stands as a major milestone in free soloing
-- a futuristic accomplishment that's beyond its time. Very few people
solo to begin with, and *nobody* solos stuff that long.
 
The solo of the Regular NW Face is especially difficult because the
hardest section comes near the top. Difficult sections are also spaced
pretty frequently throughout the route. Yet he was able to do it in a
little under three hours -- the mind control that you need to do this
must approach that of a Jedi knight.
 
For comparison, when we climbed the same route, it took us 48 hours --
an order of magnitude slower!

Play Classic NES Games online!

One of the cooler sites I've stumbled on. Their selection is limited,
by they do have a lot of the old school classics like Excite Bike,
Mario Bros., Contra (!!), and Zelda. I never really had an NES and was
always jealous of my friends who had tons of games. Now I can relive
my childhood, one 8-bit soundtrack at a time. Now if only they'd
release the entire Wing Commander Saga -- then we'd have something!
 
http://www.virtualnes.com/list/index.html

Mmm... can't wait!

This is gonna be one good dinner. Check out the menu!

Simple perl script for downloading entire books from myilibrary.com

Wow. People really want to download books from myilibrary.com. They restrict downloading, even to students who have legitimate access to their books through their universities. I was somewhat annoyed by this, so I wrote up a quick 5 minute script that would download entire books from Myilibrary.com and posted it out of pure frustration with their stupid policy. Since then, I've gotten a lot of people coming to that post through google.

I've had a few requests for this script so I'm posting it up here. Remember, this script is an old script (I haven't used it for awhile) so I don't know if it will still work. Second, this script will only allow to automate the download process to books you already have legitimate access to (usually through your school or university). Third, you can only download about a hundred pages a day, so you'll have to split your downloading of long books over several days. Fourth, I have no interest in maintaining this script or answering emails about how it works-- I needed it to download two books, and once that was done, I haven't touched the script in several months. If you need more details, check the notes I made that will give a reasonably tech-savvy person everything he needs to know.

[UPDATE: I've been asked to remover this content by a DMCA Complaint initiated by Ingram DV LLC. However, that's not to say any reasonably tech-savvy person couldn't figure it out.]

Ruby on Rails Implementation of Microsoft Live Services Delegated Auth

I searched awhile without finding an easy-to-understand example for implementing Delegated Authentication for Microsoft Live Services. I guess the community of people implementing Microsoft Live Services in Ruby is still pretty small. Also, the opaqueness of the documentation made it clear that Microsoft had no interest in making their API's accessible.

 Anyway, I pieced this gist together from MSFT's own example code and documentation. Their examples were long-winded and painful to get through -- this gist just shows the essentials for generating a valid authentication URL. Hopefully others implementing in RoR will find this useful! In the near future, I'll add methods to handle the ConsentToken that is returned after your user authenticates.

A few caveats:

 - This assumes a pretty standard RoR development environment. However, you must require openssl, cgi, and base64. More importantly, your OpenSSL module *MUST* include SHA256 as an installed algorithm.

 - Annoyingly enough, my ruby install on my Mac *DOES NOT* include SHA256 in the OpenSSL module. If this is true for you, then you won't be able to run this code off-the-shelf on your local development machine. Since most developers have access to a Linux box (Ubuntu's ruby install has SHA256), my work around was to extract the code for the 'get_app_verifier' method and put it into a script that would execute on the remote box. Then, if RAILS_ENV == development, I'd just remotely execute that script using SSH and capture the output.

Grad Student Still Life

Just made a directory on my computer called "Thesis." It has begun. Let's hope I can finish ...

Cafe Du Nord