Pat Hawks

Merry Christmas

pat@pathawks.com (Pat Hawks) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 12:20:20 PST

Merry Christmas from the beautiful caribbean!

This is Christine's and my second Christmas together as a married couple, and our first Christmas together outside the United States.

While I've seen Christmases with no snow, I think it is safe to say that this is the first Christmas I've experienced where I didn't even consider wearing long sleeves.

I like it.
I like it a lot.

Christine and I just got back from a wonderful week on Saba (Christine has already posted about it here and here), and now I am putting the finishing touches on a friend's website because I was silly enough to say "Sure we can launch it Christmas morning!"

Merry Christmas!

On Comments

pat@pathawks.com (Pat Hawks) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 16:16:13 PST

Matt Gemmell wrote a great post this week about why he's disabling comments on his blog.

I disabled comments on this blog quite a while ago, and since there is a lot of discussion about comments today, I thought it would be a good time to take a moment to explain why.

I noticed a couple of years ago that I was spending less and less time reading comments on websites I visited. It seemed that more and more users were commenting, and the comments were getting less and less valuable.

It has been said 'Nobody should read the bottom half of the internet,' and that's exactly what I was experiencing.

I must say that I never experienced any of that on this blog. All of my readers have always left only the highest quality comments. It just seemed that, as the general quality of comments on the internet was decreasing, it was less important to have comments enabled on my own blog.

Another thing has also changed since I started this blog: many other people have started blogs too.

When I was really getting started on this blog, most people I knew did not have a blog of their own, certainly not outside of Xanga or MySpace.
Today, I have a long list of friends' blogs that I check regularly. I don't think I'm alone, either.

Today, it is very easy to publish one's thoughts online. If you want to respond to something that I've said, you don't need my help to do it. Develop your thoughts into a post that you can be proud to put your name on (or, put your pseudonym on, as the case may be) and publish it on your own blog.

Or you may not want to respond to me quite so publicly. I understand that. This is, after all, a very personal blog. In that case, it might be better to just email me.
Or call me.
Or @reply me.

There are a number of ways to get in touch with me, and the truth is I just didn't feel like blog comments were a very effective tool.

I think John Gruber said it best, "You write on your site; I write on mine. That’s a response."

alt.pathawks.com

pat@pathawks.com (Pat Hawks) — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 12:35:27 PST

Since I've spent so much time updating this blog lately </sarcasm> I've decided to start a second blog.

alt.pathawks.com is a place for me to talk about Google and Creative Commons and things of that nature. Things that wouldn't really fit here.

I will still continue to update PatHawks.com, at least, as much as I ever have.
I just see this space as more of a public journal all about me.
alt.pathawks.com is something of a bully pulpit for me to shape the world of technology and such.

I very much doubt that anybody who has been reading this blog would be interested in that one, it just seemed fair to let you know.

Spoiled

pat@pathawks.com (Pat Hawks) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 12:11:55 PST

I never really realized how spoiled I was growing up in the United States until Christine and I moved to Sint Maarten.

Don't get me wrong, I love wading in the ocean every afternoon, and I never need to wonder what the weather will be like, because it's always 80 and partly cloudy with a 20% chance of rain. It's just lots of little annoyances that I had never thought to worry about before.

For instance, just a couple of days ago, I bought a brand new desk chair. Not super expensive, but not the cheapest at the store, either. I tried several at the store and thought the one I picked out was pretty solid.

Today it totally fell apart.

The thing is, this doesn't really surprise me as much as you might expect. The quality of things down here just can't compare to inside the USA in general.

A few weeks ago, somebody stepped right through a concrete floor. The plywood supporting the concrete had completely rotted away.
Did I mention this happened at a fairly nice resort?

That's just how things go here.

Our house was painted just before we moved in, but nobody bothered to paint under the house number. They just painted around it.

The power hasn't gone out yet today, but I'm sure it will. It usually averages an hour or two a day. A week or two ago, it was out for five hours, in the middle of the day. That was the worst.

Please don't misunderstand me, I really do like it here.
I'm just learning about a lot of luxuries I grew up with that I never gave a second thought before moving down here.

Christine has been dealing with similar issues.

The Crazy Ones

pat@pathawks.com (Pat Hawks) — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 09:17:18 PDT

Being Social

pat@pathawks.com (Pat Hawks) — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 12:14:17 PDT

Just finished watching Zuck's keynote at Facebook's f8 Developer Confrence
What is striking to me is how much emphasis was put on things that are popular.

Beginning in a few weeks when Facebook's new (even newer) interface rolls out, Facebook is going to try to show me things that are popular amongst my friends. For instance:

Many of my friends have watched movies with Johnny Depp
Many of my friends have listened to Come As You Are by Nirvana
Many of my friends go jogging in the same park

On top of this, Facebook is going to try to make it as easy as possible for me to copy those actions. With one click, I can listen to the same song many of my friends are listening to, or watch a movie that many of my friends have watched.

Don't get me wrong, the technology they're using to put this stuff together is really amazing, but I have to wonder if they're putting too much emphasis on popularity.

If the best man at my wedding starts listening a lot to a new band, that's much more interesting to me than what a mob of people I haven't talked to in years is listening to.

I will have to think on this a bit more, and I don't want to just jump on the "Bash on Facebook" bandwagon, but this all does make me question the relevance of Facebook's newsfeed.

It's not "News," Facebook. It's life. They're not your friends. They're mine.

Seasons

pat@pathawks.com (Pat Hawks) — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 10:34:41 PDT

It would seem that a person either always thinks in terms of seasons, or never thinks in terms of seasons.

When Christine and I told people in the midwest that we were moving to the Caribbean, many people remarked "I bet it gets hot in the summer."
Well, no, because they don't have a summer.

When we tell people in Sint Maarten that we're from the Midwest, they ask if there's snow back home.
In the midwest it's hotter than it is in Sint Maarten, but if you don't understand seasons, all you know is that sometimes it snows there.

The problem here is trying to figure out just how hot is is.
I've been able to deduce that 30°C is warmer than is comfortable, and 20°C is a bit cooler.

Depth Perception

pat@pathawks.com (Pat Hawks) — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 09:20:42 PDT

xkcd really hits home today.

I, too, suffer from a lack of depth perception.
It has come and gone a few times, leading to awkward situations like one time, with my friend Kevin in the car, I pulled over to the side of the road and shouted Everything looks so 3D today!

This was before my problem had been diagnosed, so Kevin thought I was on drugs and I thought Kevin was a huge buzz kill.

Not Home Yet

pat@pathawks.com (Pat Hawks) — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 21:50:25 PDT

Christine and I are having a wonderful little accidental vacation.

We were planning on getting to Sint Maarten last week, but Tropical Storm Emily had different plans for us.
Our cruise was rerouted to Mexico instead of Sint Maarten, and then back to Florida.

So instead of moving to Sint Maarten, Christine and I got to see the Mayan city of Tulu'um and spend some extra time on the cruise.

The Freedom of the Seas was not planning to be in Mexico, but another ship, the Oasis of the Seas, was. This meant that we got to see two of the four largest cruise ships in the world docked side by side. This was quite a sight.

Now, Christine and I are "stuck" in Florida for a week until we can hop back on the Freedom of the Seas and try for Sint Maarten again.

I say "stuck" in the nicest way possible. We've been to the beach, Ron Jon Surf Shop, the Kennedy Space Center, etc. So we're certainly not complaining about our "misfortune."

I think this trip is a wonderful example of Warner luck.

Tropical Storm Emily

pat@pathawks.com (Pat Hawks) — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 05:54:26 PDT

Tropical Storm Emily has thrown a bit of a wrench into our travel plans.

It looks like Sint Maarten is going to get some rain this week.

The cruise ship isn't going to go near the activity, so instead, we've changed course to Mexico, then north back to FL.

Christine and I will enjoy the rest of the cruise, spend a week in Florida, then jump on the next ship to Sint Maarten on the 14.

You can imagine how upset Christine and I are that our move has turned into an extended vacation.

We should still get to SX more than a week before classes start, so really, this is the best sort of problem to have.

Moving to Sint Maarten

pat@pathawks.com (Pat Hawks) — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 12:47:09 PDT

Christine and I are getting on a boat in a few hours and leaving the country.
Perhaps I should explain.
My wife, who graduated from Creighton University in May is starting medical school next month.
We have decided to go to American University of the Caribbean in Sint Maarten.
I visited Sint Maarten this spring to get a feel for the island and see where we would be living and it is awesome! There's so much to do on the island, we'll be living very close to the school, and crime is less of a problem down here than it was in our neighborhood in Omaha.
Because I'm not a resident, I'm legally prohibited from working in the country. Instead, I'll have to work on flying, SCUBAing, and doing volunteer work with the spouses organization at the school.
Marriage is quite a sacrifice, let me tell you.

So Christine and I have packed just about everything we own into a Dodge Grand Caravan and drove to Port Canaveral, FL where we will board the MS Freedom of the Seas and head down to Sint Maarten. We should get there Thursday
Christine and I will keep our same phone numbers while we are down there, and calling us won't cost anything more than a call to any other US number. This is because I'm very crafty, and use Google Voice.
We will have a two bedroom bungalow, so visitors are welcome. I'll try to post photos as soon as we get down there.
When you come to visit, make sure I take you to Maho Beach and Sopranos Piano Bar.

I'm sure I'll have much more to say when we get down there.
We won't have internet access on the ship, but if you send me some questions, I'll try to answer them as soon as I can.

Adventures in Lanesborough

pat@pathawks.com (Pat Hawks) — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 18:28:33 PDT

Christine and I are on our way back from visiting her relatives in Lanesborough, MA.

It was an amazing weekend!

We got to hang out with Christine's uncle David, who Christine hasn't seen in something like 20 years (he lives in Norway).

We went hiking and kayaking with David, and he showed us the crazy steep cliff he used to ski.

We got to stay in a beautiful cabin, built by Christine's uncle George in just a few months.

This cabin was just amazing, with a spectacular lake view. One afternoon, we even saw a black bear sniffing around the cabin.

We also got to hang out with all five of Christine's cousins on her mom's side (a first).

They are all super cool in different ways.

Christine and I definitely want to raise our kids somewhere there are lots of things to do outside.
Somewhere it is impossible to be bored.
Somewhere like Lanesborough, MA.

#CrazyAwesomeColoradoTrip

pat@pathawks.com (Pat Hawks) — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 18:32:06 PDT

Wow!
Christine and I have been in Colorado for a solid two weeks now and it has been incredible. We've hiked a list of trails longer than I can remember (thank goodness she has been keeping track), we've eaten at a number of amazing restaurants in Estes Park (Go to Poppy's, order Enchilada Pizza with tomato sauce instead of enchilada sauce), and we've visited our favorite local coffee shop so many times, they've started giving us the "Local Discount."
We've seen a couple moose, a dozen big horn sheep, half a bazillion elk, and one very scared black bear.
On a similar note, Christine informed me that a bear's sense of smell is seven times stronger than that of a blood hound. Kinda makes you wonder why there aren't more drug sniffing bears. I imagine that would be at least seven times as effective.

Today I rode a horse for three hours through RMNP's backyard. Got to see the back of a couple mountains that Christine and I have summited, so that was pretty rad. Am planning on doing an all day ride later in the week.
The horses here are very nice. They follow the trail and they always follow the trail.
The horses here are not terribly smart. They don't like walking sideways and you can forget about getting one to turn on the haunches. But, alas, I have been spoiled.
For trail riding, they are really wonderful horses. They follow the trail and they always follow the trail.

I am quite excited that Christine and I get two more weeks out here in Colorado. We already have everything planned out.
Unless Trail Ridge Road gets closed again (stupid winter storms).

One last aside, while Christine agrees that I certainly don't have the mental capacity to get through the books, I've decided, based totally on the movies, that The Two Towers is my favorite in The Lord of the Rings series. I mean, that's when everything happens!

Gandalf triumphantly returns
Merry and Pippin meet the tree dudes who take them to Isengard
Frodo meets Gollum and realizes how similar they are and starts freaking out about what he thinks he's becoming
They meet the king's son with the curly hair who looked very much like the king's other son with the curly hair
Successful battle at Helm's Deep is important for equal parts morale and survival of the human race
That elf and that dwarf become good friends, which is pretty important to the story

...you see, I've already forgotten the names.

Lulu City

pat@pathawks.com (Pat Hawks) — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 16:51:20 PDT

Sunday, Christine and I hiked to the site of Lulu City in Rocky Mountain National Park.

At it's peak, Lulu City had a population of about 500 people, including one "Squeaky Bob" who would occasionally open fire in a local tavern, but he really never meant any harm.
Unfortunately, the heyday only lasted for about a year and a half. After prospectors found out that there was not quite as much silver in the hills as they had hoped, it was time to move further west.

Five years after Lulu City was established, there was nobody left.
Folks left in such a hurry that in the abandoned cabins, there were still clothes in the closets and dishes on the tables.

Beautiful little ghost town, Lulu City is.

Island Time

pat@pathawks.com (Pat Hawks) — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 18:59:51 PDT

Spending a good deal of time over the next two weeks in the Caribbean trying to see what life is like and find a place for Christine and I to live this fall.

I've heard a number of people here use the term "Island Time" which was a difficult concept for me to grok until I saw a wonderful illustration in the lobby of my hotel earlier today.

A man was livid with the person behind the front desk because he had asked for extra pillows twice, but still didn't have his extra pillows. The employee at the front desk was very calm and told the man that it would be no problem; she would make sure he could sleep with extra pillows tonight.

She placed a phone call and about ten minutes later, another employee arrived at the front desk with two pillows. When this other employee met the desk clerk, they began to converse about how the morning had been going and isn't this nice weather, and maybe they should join the group going out after work.

The customer, who had been sitting in the other side of the lobby, got up and interrupted the conversation.

He told both employees, in not such a friendly tone, that he had asked thrice for extra pillows and still had no extra pillows in his room and if it was going to be so much trouble he would just take the pillows to his room himself!

The employee with the pillows said, in an extremely polite tone, that he was just on his way to the customers room with these two extra pillows and it was no trouble at all.

The frustrated customer took the pillows from the employee and left for the elevator, all the while going on about having to ask three times for extra pillows but nobody seems to care.

The two employees could not figure out what the man was so upset about. It wasn't that they thought he was overreacting, or that he could have been nicer; they absolutely could not figure out what difference it would make to get extra pillows at 10am versus getting extra pillows at noon.

Island time.

REAL Photos from our Trip

pat@pathawks.com (Pat Hawks) — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 13:54:40 PDT

New Mexico

pat@pathawks.com (Pat Hawks) — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 21:15:13 PDT

Have been on the road with Dr. W and the boys for the past week.

We've visited Kansas, Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado. Have seen some very interesting things.

Most of my pictures are on film, so I'll have to wait until we get home to get them developed, but here are just a few that I've taken with my iPhone.

Happy Birthday Katie

pat@pathawks.com (Pat Hawks) — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 09:19:54 PDT

Spent the past day and a half hanging out in Cedar Falls with my brother and sister celebrating my sister Katie's birthday.

Wordpress Plugins

pat@pathawks.com (Pat Hawks) — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 06:00:58 PDT

As I've mentioned before, I'm the webmaster for my alma mater's student newspaper website, HooverChallenger.com.

The site runs on Wordpress, and I've done quite a bit of custom code to get it to look so pretty; the homepage looks nothing like a typical Wordpress landing page. When Carl first gave me the design mockups for the site, I was pretty sure most of his ideas were impossible, but with some time and effort, we got the whole thing to work perfectly.

This weekend, I decided to make available some of the custom plugins I've created so that others can use them also.

On the font page, I use the Category Thumbnail and Postlist plugins to create boxes for each category with links to recent posts and a recent featured post thumbnail.

On the Daily Announcements page I use the PDF embed plugin to embed the PDF version of the daily announcements using the Google Docs Viewer.

On pages that include a YouTube embed, I use my own YouTube plugin to embed the iFrame video player, so the video will be available on iPhones and Android devices. Also, this will allow some videos to be embedded directly with H.264 or WebM in the future.
There were other plugins already available to embed YouTube videos in an iFrame, but they all required special shortcodes or other custom code.
My plugin integrates directly with Wordpress's oembed framework, so current YouTube embeds will use the new player without any changes to the post itself. No custom code necessary.
As a sidenote, I can see why other plugins hadn't done this yet. The Wordpress oembed functions are not really documented at all. I ran into some weird errors and my only option was to poke through the Wordpress source code to figure out what was going on. Also, to make sure the new player is loaded for current posts, I had to delete a bunch of cached values in the post metadata table. Again, this was not documented anywhere, I had to figure it out for myself.

There are still a few more plugins I may release in the future. I just wanted to highlight these in particular.
I'm very proud of the work I've done.

Spring Break

pat@pathawks.com (Pat Hawks) — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 23:30:12 PST

Originally uploaded by Pat Hawks

Where should Christine and I go for spring break next week?

Spike leaping in the tree

pat@pathawks.com (Pat Hawks) — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 16:29:51 PST

This must be just about the coolest picture I've ever taken

Cats in a Tree

pat@pathawks.com (Pat Hawks) — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 08:29:00 PST

Dr. Warner's cats had some (supervised) fun climbing in a tree this week.

Old Cameras

pat@pathawks.com (Pat Hawks) — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 13:59:40 PST

I've been using Canon's PowerShot G line of cameras for several years now as my primary point-and-shoot.
I like these cameras a lot because they offer a lot of DSLR features in a much smaller size, and I don't have to worry about detachable lenses. Also, the kit costs much less than a DSLR.
Also, I can use my underwater gear to get pictures like this.

So I was using a Canon Powershot G9 until a year ago, when it mysteriously died, about the same time this happened...

Not sure how exactly it died, but I kept it and had always hoped I could put it back together.

In the meantime, I've been shooting with a Canon Powershot G11, which is very similar to the G9 except that it's image sensor is a bit more sensitive, it has slightly better controls, and a nicer LCD screen.

As you can imagine, the day I got my G11, the impetus to fix the G9 dropped substantially.

Fast forward to a couple of nights ago when I decided it was time to see about fixing the G9.
Once I started poking around the inner bits of the camera, it quickly became obvious that it was a lost cause.
This camera was dead dead.

It's an odd thing, but I was quite sad when I reached this realization.
I mean, before I got my G9, I went through several cameras in a couple of weeks. I've also been known to go through phones rather quickly, though that too has subsided lately.

I guess it just got me thinking about balance. I don't want to define myself by my stuff (like the Ikea catalog scene from Fight Club), but neither do I want to become so unattached from my stuff that I can loose several phones/cameras in a couple months and not think anything of it.

My sister said something to the effect of taking care of the stuff that you have so that you can get the most good out of it.
I guess that's kind of the point.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I like taking pictures, and my camera allows me to do that, so I will take care of my camera.

Year in Review

pat@pathawks.com (Pat Hawks) — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 11:50:00 PST

I realized recently that it has been quite an eventful year.

I got married I traveled outside the country for the first time (excluding a 45 minute trip to Canada a while back)
I earned my pilots license
I saw both coasts
I vacationed in Colorado (twice)
I reconnected with several old friends
I've made a few new friends
I've traveled several thousand miles on a train
I rode in a helicopter for the first time (over lower Manhatten, no less!)
I found out that I have a higher IQ than 98% of the population

The American Dream

pat@pathawks.com (Pat Hawks) — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 18:28:22 PST

This song perfectly summerizes everything that terrifies me about the American Dream.