In LA

Folk in Iran and several other places happen to have governments who’ve decided that news and social networking sites on the internet should be blocked. Affected people can bypass such blocks by using a Tor bridge. Those of us who have high-speed connections and live in areas with little or no internet censorship can help by setting up Tor bridges on our personal computers and publishing our Tor bridge links to twitter, facebook, etc.

I spent a few minutes setting up a Tor bridge on my computer. Here’s the link to mine:

75.84.153.203:9001 8BA6A76D36F5A9830F25B5D8315906434AEE50FF

Simple instructions are available on the net for those of you who would also like to set up a Tor bridge on your computer (all OSes are welcome).

Thanks to the “Ian’s Brain” post Tor and the Iranian Election for the great idea.

A few relevant links:

• Download Tor
• Download Tor in Farsi
• Download Tor in Chinese (Simplified)

Hopefully this sort of information is already out there in the native languages of the folk who need it most.

Apple’s iTunes music store has a section of free podcasts called “iTunes U”, which feature lecture media (videos, audio, PDF notes) for classes at a number of universities.

Someone recently mentioned to me that Stanford University’s “iPhone Application Programming” class¹ is available².

I’m thinking I may try to work my way through this set of lessons for a few reasons:

• It would be good for me to gain a better grasp of object oriented programming principles.
• The iPhone looks like a fun platform for which to program, with rich APIs that run the gamut from UI to animations to data storage (with SQLite as an option!).
• I’ve been running a lot of iPhone apps lately, and thinking of apps that should exist and might be interesting to develop.
• Free development tools, based in part on the gnu C compiler, with which I’m already a little familiar.
• If I managed to program anything worthwhile, there are a ton of potential users, and distribution (and sales if it’s a commercial app) would be remarkably easy due to the existence of the app store.

I’m amazed by the apparent number of other classes available for free download in “iTunes U”. I look forward to one day having enough spare time to actually look through more of them.

1. If iTunes is installed on your computer, clicking that link will take you to the page in iTunes from which you can download individual classes or subscribe to the entire feed. [↩]
2. I noticed that the class is co-taught by Alan Cannistraro, a former coworker of mine. It’s nice to see a familiar name. [↩]

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Alas poor 866 Post St, I knew you well.

I lived in this building about 6 years ago, it doesn’t appear to have changed.
 
On that note, I should probably get out of here before someone tries to swipe my rolling suitcase.
 
As an aside, the “rolling shutter” effect of my cellphone camera’s CMOS sensor is manifest in the horizontally compressed image of the passing car.

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And now I’m up again…

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One last “painting” executed on the plane to San Francisco.

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Once again the “Brushes” app keeps me busy on the plane.

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Unfortunately, at least one of my big toenails is not likely to survive its run-in with last weekend’s San Diego Rock and Roll Marathon.
 
Among the known perils of long-distance running, after heat- exhaustion, heart-attack, and hyponatremia, this is the affliction I most hoped to never experience. It’s not an uncommon problem. At pre- race expos I’ve seen singlets on sale emblazoned with slogans along the lines of “toenails are for sissies”.
 
I’m not clear on the exact cause of the problem, but I do know that during a long-distance race it is common for a participant’s feet to swell up to a full shoe size. I suspect this leads the big toenails to rub against the front of the shoe, levering themselves bit by bit from the nailbed below. If this is the case, maybe it would be possible to redesign running shoes to have expandable front-top mesh made of a low- friction material (Teflon thread?), and to avoid designing shoes with a upturn of the firm sole at the front to allow for more foot expansion. I’d guess running shoes just aren’t designed with 20+ mile runs in mind.
 
I can’t wait for my toenails to get on with it and either fall off or heal, as they’re uncomfortable enough to rob me of sleep and they add extra pain to my training runs. That left one especially. Begone chitinous tormentor!

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