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An item I saw yesterday but forgot to blog about: Friendster goes PHP. Pretty cool.

Finally on Friday we launched a platform rearchitecture based on loose-coupling, web standards, and a move from JSP (via Tomcat) to PHP. The website doesn't look much different, but hopefully we can now stop being a byword for unacceptably poky site performance.

I haven't had much of a chance yet to use Friendster to see if it truly is faster, so I can't personally comment on that aspect. And predictably, this is going to bring all sorts of people out of the woodwork arguing over the relative merits of Java/JSP (which was old Friendster) versus PHP... just look at the comments on the link above to see it already happening. And while debate and disagreement can be healthy and productive, how about a quick reality check to everyone:

PHP is good. Java is good. Both have their merits and disadvantages. Loudly complaining that [Java|PHP] is the only true way and the other is crap is boring and uninformed.

Here's a site containing links to the texts of diaries from the Oregon Trail. Interesting stuff; it would be worth collecting it and turning it into a Palm Reader ebook. (If I can find the time.)

Totally wacky article on Kuro5hin: Using Quantum Cryptography to Find Invisible Men:

But is it truly a myth, or do invisible men walk among us? And if an invisible man were to be created, how would we detect him and track his movements?
...
Invisible man detection has gone a long way, from the clumsy mob actions of a hundred years ago to the sophisticated mob actions of today. The time has come to step into the 21st century with a quantum solution to a threat you'll never see coming.

As reported on Bend.com, Greyhound is leaving Central Oregon:

It is eliminating 260 stops, leaving 99 in the 13-state region.

In Oregon, the list of 35 communities losing Greyhound service ranges (alphabetically) from Albany to Zigzag, with Bend, Klamath Falls, La Pine, Madras, Redmond and Warm Springs among those in the middle.

Too bad. I suppose it's a bit odd to lament the loss of a transportation service that's in decline and is (let's face it) mediocre at best, but I have some fond memories of Greyhound. For instance, growing up, every year my grandparents in Portland would ship our Christmas presents in a big package via Greyhound. And they were the best presents; they always got us the cool toys and video games.

(Strange in this day and age of UPS and FedEx everywhere that people would send packages via Greyhound, of all things, but there it is.)

Or the time my brother, when he was still living in Portland, made a surprise trip to visit the family on his birthday. I was in on it; he made an evening call and had us pick him up at the bus station around 10:30 that same night, and then surprised everyone the next day. That was a helluva lot of fun.

I even remember when the Greyhound station was downtown on the corner of Greenwood and Wall—when they had an actual station instead of sharing a gas station somewhere (as they'd been doing the last few years).

Ah, well. It's a shame.

So I put together a Costco shed today, with help from my dad. Part of our grand plan to outfit the new house with all the bling bling, you know. It's a nice shed, but it was a pain in the ass to get set up. Actually, the shed itself wasn't that bad, it's all plastic and rubbermaid-type material. The worst part was setting up a "foundation" for the thing on a slightly-sloped part of the yard that backs up to the fenceline. We found some sturdy pallets in the dumpster across the street that fit the bill, after levelling them off with cinder bricks, flat stone and two-by-four shims.

Yeah, we did some dumpster diving. But it's the big construction dumpster for the development we're in, filled with lots of usable scrap wood and stuff! That makes it okay. :)

Yeah, I'm still here. Just haven't found the time or energy to post much lately. So, quick one-off tonight with an interesting site: Lulu.com. Free self-publishing of books, which they will print on demand and ship to the purchaser. Sort of the CafePress of publishing.

Still continuing to settle in to the new house. This weekend we cleared out the storage unit, and it never ceases to amaze me just how much stuff we've managed to accumulate over the years. Of course, it doesn't help that I've got a packrat personality and it's actually hard for me to get rid of stuff. But—wow. How does this happen? You're puttering around in your daily life, happily oblivious, then one day you turn around and BAM!—where did all this stuff come from? And yes, you remember getting that, and yes, those have a story, and then you realize the true culprit:

Time.

Time: you lose track of it for even a moment, and it will sneak up on you. Your kids will grow a few more inches and start school, everyone you know is suddenly older, the music you spent formative years of your life listening to is on oldies radio stations, and stuff accumulates.

And yeah, that packrat personality I mentioned, I have that. But not too badly though, not apeshit crazy like you see on TV or read about, where the old hermit guy has 30 years of newspapers tied up in his living room, or the wacko lady has 8,000 unopened boxes of toothpicks, or anything like that. No, I've got it just enough to annoy my wife. Could it ever get more serious? I doubt it.

But you know... time will tell.

Since we've moved into a brand-new development, we don't even have a mailbox yet so we have to go to the Post Office to pick up our mail. The location for this is their warehouse in the industrial part of town, and when you go in, there's simply a tiny lobby and a doorway that leads to the rest of the warehouse.

While waiting for the postal lady to retrieve my mail, I noticed a whiteboard leaning up against the wall inside the warehouse. It was a chart, and the heading at the top was, "DCU FLASH (PERFORMANCE)". It seemed to mark down delivery times/speeds.

Of course, any self-respecting comics geek would recognize that "DCU FLASH" refers, of course, to DC Comics' Flash, and is entirely appropriate for a chart about delivery speeds.

Well, at least I thought it was kinda funny.

Joel Spolsky on How Microsoft Lost the API War:

Outside developers, who were never particularly happy with the complexity of Windows development, have defected from the Microsoft platform en-masse and are now developing for the web....

Much as I hate to say it, a huge chunk of developers have long since moved to the web and refuse to move back.

Good article. I recommend reading all of it, not just my highly selective snippets here.

Well, we're all moved in and (relatively) comfortable. Still not feeling like blogging much—after 3 days of moving and cleaning and unpacking, and the ongoing process of more unpacking and arranging and tweaking (things like hanging curtains, and towel racks), I'm just beat. So, some quick thoughts on the moving process:

• Smartest thing we did: hiring movers. Totally worth it. If/when we move again, it's the only way to go.
• Taking a day off from work was also smart.
• Going back to work feels like a vacation.

Ugh. More later.

So tomorrow we get funded and close on our new house, and take possession. Then comes the Move; we'll start hauling a load or two over tomorrow evening, and then Saturday is the big day. Fortunately, this time we've hired movers to do all the heavy lifting.

I don't expect to be online much or at all after I leave work tomorrow, at least until Sunday sometime, maybe later. If all goes according to plan, Bend Broadband should have our cable service turned on Saturday (I think), but I seriously doubt I'll be interested in going online after spending the day moving.

Thus marks the end of one chapter of our lives, and the beginning of a new one. It's not the first house we've bought, but it will be first brand new one we've lived in. Should be interesting!

Just a quick note here... I saw Wikipedia's new look this evening and I have to say, I like it.

My favorite show on Food Network is Good Eats—it's entertaining, informative, and quirky, all due to its host/creator, Alton Brown. So after reading the story on Alton Brown in this month's Wired, I figured it was high time to blog some links.

So, in addition to his site, which I linked to above, it's interesting to note that he has a blog.

When I was growing up, thongs were the semi-sandals that you wore on your feet, pictured to the right. Nowadays, they're called "flipflops" and if you call them "thongs" in public, you get sharp looks and people think you're having a stroke when you try to explain what you were talking about.

Sigh. The times, they are a-changin'.

The Bend Brew Fest is kicking off this year at the Les Schwab Amphitheater, on Saturday, August 21. Excellent! Not quite a contender with the awesome Oregon Brewers Festival, but very cool nonetheless.

From the Les Schwab Amphitheater Events page:

On Saturday, August 21st over 20 Pacific Northwest brewers will present over 40 craft beers for public tasting at the Les Schwab Amphitheater for the first annual Bend Brew Fest.

Event hours are Noon to 10pm. Cost of admission is $10 for an advance ticket or $15 at the gate. Included in the cost of admission are a commemorative tasting mug and two tasting tokens. One token is required for each beer sample. Token costs are $1 apiece.

Finally! McMenamins is on track to open the Old St. Francis School here, on November 15, 2004. Seems like we've been hearing about this for years, but this time it's the real deal. (I hope.)

Bend.com has an article on the opening. This paragraph is noteworthy:

Gathering of stories, photos and memorabilia is currently under way to supply the artists with subject matter, as well as for documenting the school's seven decades of experiences. Anyone interested in contributing is encouraged to contact McMenamins historian Tim Hills at (503) 223-0109 or via e-mail to timh@hq.mcmenamin.com.

If you've ever been to a McMenamins, you know that the art, history and memorabilia play a huge role in creating their unique atmosphere. Seems like a cool opportunity to get a little piece of the action.

I saw this yesterday (actually, my wife saw it and sent me the link) and forgot to blog it: "Bend firm gets paid to play," about the mysterious Sony Bend and the release of their third Syphon Filter game. As usual, Jake beat me to the punch on blogging this and gives me entirely too much credit for this article.

Pretty cool, though. And, anyone who wants to work in the video game industry, take note: Sony Bend is looking to hire 20 artists, designers and programmers this year.

Tim Bray has posted an amazing photo of Mount Hood that he took from a plane—his description is "Mount Hood paying its respects to the moon" and I think that's entirely appropriate. Worth a look.

The previous post got me thinking for some reason about the 2000 year-old tree stumps found just off the Oregon coast, in Neskowin. You haven't heard about them? Judging by the amount of time searching to find any pointers or references to them, most of the Web hasn't either.

This is from KXL.com's Coastal Tour Guide page:

This downright spectacular oddity is almost a rare sight in Neskowin, but you may not know just how spectacular it is unless you know what it is you're looking at.

They look somewhat like old, ragged pilings leftover from something manmade - but they are, in fact, stumps of a 2,000-year-old forest. As many as 100 are sometimes visible in various shapes and sizes. It's theorized that around 2,000 years ago a massive, cataclysmic earthquake abruptly dropped this forest as much as six feet. This wound up preserving them, rather then destroying and scattering them as natural erosion might've done.

An article on these appeared in 1998, and I remember being awed and amazed that these artifacts from the era of Christ and the Roman Empire were being exposed right in my backyard, so to speak. Scouring around the Web, there's only a couple of decent articles I was able to find on the subject: this Herald-Sun Newsbrief from March 18, 1998 and this archived Sunset article. Good to know I'm not completely crazy.

Anyway, if you find yourself in or around Neskowin, Oregon, find your way down to the beach and check it out.

Is this for real?

Scientists Finding Strange Life Forms in Great Salt Lake

With levels now at a 30-year low, the salt in portions of the shrinking lake has reached saturation levels ten times the salinity of seawater. Westminster, the University of Maryland and George Mason University are not only finding life where life shouldn't exist, but life, perhaps like nothing of this earth.

Instead of the rods, spheres and spiral shapes microbiologists are familiar with, they're seeing organisms shaped like pyramids, triangles, squares and crescents.

Dr. Bonnie Baxter, Westminster College Microbiologist: "Completely novel sequences that don't match up with anything in the databases. And one of our genome guys who was taking a look at these said this looks like alien DNA. It doesn't match anything we have on earth."