Acme Sprockets

This weekend I tried my new Hakko FX-888 soldering station. What an improvement over my Weller! The quality construction, small footprint, and controllable power make it a pleasure to use. This one is a keeper.

I soldered up a prototype Arduino board I'm working on in no time at all (more on that later). The joints were perfect and beautiful.

Yesterday afternoon I went hiking at Sugarloaf Mountain (easy hiking--had a race that morning). Not much was flowering, but it was still lovely.

new green leaves
laurel blooms awaken
life's promise

Straight to the point: iOS 4 ruins the perfectly good iPhone 3G and 3GS by killing performance. I can't understand why Apple allowed this to happen. Of course “Antennagate” got all the press, but the WSJ reports that Apple is finally investigating the performance issue on older hardware.

I just moved this website from my old hosting provider to a new one and very pleasantly surprised by the speed and ease of the domain transfer. Getting the site running was easy too: created the DB at the new provider, imported the content, scp'd the files, and edited two configuration files.

My running club, MCRRC, will co-host the USA Cross County Championships at the Agricultural History Farm Park in Derwood, MD on Saturday February 7, 2009. Some of the best runners in the nation will compete for prestigious championship titles.

Well it finally happened... I got an iPhone and am now one of "them"... Or should I say "us"? I'm actually posting this from it.

The device and software aren't perfect (blasphemy I know), but is quite good and darn handy. Besides, my black RAZR had died and the pink hand-me-down I had borrowed was flaky.

I'm in Sweden on business. It is funny the things that are just a bit different here.

Last night I went to do some laundry at the hotel. The front-load washer was a Husqvarna -- the same brand as my chainsaw. You can imagine my concern and expectations... especially as I couldn't really make out the settings and instructions in Swedish and the machine seemed to have different "programs" than on top-load American washers. At least it wasn't orange (like my saw)! Thankfully, the clothes seemed to come through fine.

This summer I started using a Garmin Forerunner 205 and love it -- I use it mostly for running, but also took it hiking up in the Colorado Rockies in September.

Much earlier I posted about Rosetta@Home. While that seems a worthwhile project, a series of technical problems eventually led me to volunteer free computer time elsewhere. Namely, to the World Community Grid. It has a variety of well-run projects; I'm currently focusing on FightAIDS@Home and Help Conquer Cancer.

I see that I haven't been doing a very good job keeping this blog up to date. I'll have to remedy that soon, but in the mean time let me plug a good cause: the Rosetta@Home project.