Douglas' Blog

Gallery Upgrade

A new version of Gallery (version 2.0.3) was stabilized in Gentoo Portage yesterday, so I installed it on my test server. You may recall that I recently ranted about how great Gallery was to install (I guess that’s not a rant per se), so I thought a quick followup on the upgrade process.

The upgrade process was even slicker than the install. I copied the new version of the files overtop of the old files. When I reloaded the Gallery main page, the app was smart enough to sense that I had upgraded the files and asked me for the administrator password. Then, a wizard guided me through a handful of automated steps that ensured that all the required files and directories were in place and that various modules were upgraded. And that was it. So slick.

Fresh Coat of Paint

I was trying to catch up on my RSS feed reading this afternoon and somehow wound up looking at pictures of various aircraft at the Rochester Flying Club, courtesy of Paul Tomblin.

After a few minutes of clicking, I ended up looking at a Piper Dakota (N8323Y) and I was absolutely astounded at the difference a fresh coat of paint can make on an airplane. Both pictures are the same 25 year old aircraft but which one would you buy? Check the before and after photos to see what I mean.

Why Can't We All Just Be Honest?

On Saturday evening I went a fundraiser event. It was a fun event, not so much because of the event itself but because of the company. Ali and I started the night off at our friends M & B’s house, whom we hadn’t seen forever. And we were joined but our other friends L & J. Although we hadn’t seen M & B for close to a year, it was if it had only been last week. We caught up on the latest news and chatted about whatever came to mind.

At one point in the evening, I had a conversation with M & B about how I valued their friendship due to its low maintenance. Despite the fact that we had been unable to get together for such a long time, there were no hard feelings, no harsh words and no one felt guilty. We all realized that sometimes life gets busy and we just weren’t able to get together. But it wasn’t without trying; attempts were made but coordinating four schedules just didn’t let it happen until this weekend. And that’s okay.

The irony of the night is that I also ran into a colleague whom I’d previously run into in a grocery store. We did a quick catch up in the store and he suggested we get together for lunch sometime. He didn’t have a card so I gave him mine and he said he’d fire off an email. I’m not typically someone who like to get together to do lunch with anyone other than friends because I honestly am not very interested in other people’s lives. I’m busy enough with my own life and the lives of my family and friends that the last thing I need to hear about is some other guy’s life and what he’s doing. It sounds harsh, but after being in business for myself I’ve found that when you are on a high, everyone wants to try and partner up so as to improve their own lot in life. Or that of their business. Or both.

In this case, my acceptance of lunch was a genuine offer but perhaps the offer from the colleague was not. I even took the time to track down this guy’s email and send him one; no reply. Personally, I don’t understand people who make offers they don’t intend to keep. If I run into someone that I know I have no interest in catching up with, I’ll end the conversation with something like “it was great catching up with you; probably see you around” or words to that effect. Why set up the expectation of a lunch or meeting if there is little desire to?

Where was I? Oh yes, the event. And the irony. About an hour after the conversation regarding low maintenance friendships, who should I run into at the event but the same guy from the grocery store. After the friendly “How’s it going?” I asked what happened to lunch. He mumbled though some reply about he tried and how he looked Zymeta up in the phone book, even going so far as to spell out Z-Y-M-E-T-A for me. I was on my way to the dance floor so I left it at that and didn’t see him for the rest of the night. What’s with the excuses? Why can’t we all just be honest? Tell me you forgot. Or you got busy. Or whatever the truth is.

And just to make sure, I looked up Zymeta in the white and yellow pages. Yup, we’re there, under the ’Z’.

Peters' Drive-In

The best friendships are the low maintenance ones. Those are the friendships that persist no matter how much time goes by and where the participants always give the benefit of the doubt. That’s pretty much the way is with my friend Steve. Over the past year we’ve both been so busy that we haven’t been able to connect. Initially we tried to hook up via phone and email, and then it was email, and then we both simply feel off each others primary surveillance radar (that’s my flying reference for today). Of course, meeting for lunch was always in the back of my mind, but the situation just didn’t allow for it. Finally today, after just over a year, Steve and I were able to meet up at the Boston Pizza on 17th Avenue.

Here’s where the Peters’ Drive In reference comes in. It turns out that Steve and his wife bought Peters’ Drive In back in October 2005. For anyone who’s never been to Calgary, Peters’ is legendary with Calgarians and is likely the most well known business within the city. It’s a classic 50s style drive in selling hamburgers, fries and shakes. And everything on the menu is amazingly delicious. And addictive. I’m surprised that there haven’t been rumours about addictive substances being added to their shakes (in much the same way as the similar type rumours around Tim Hortons coffee).

In any case, congrats to Steve and given the type of man Steve is, I know that he’ll be true to his word when he says that he ”won’t change a thing about Peters’ Drive In”.

Customer Service at the Yardhouse

Yesterday Ali and I spent the day basically doing not much of anything. We slept in, had a lazy breakfast and then did some furniture shopping. We landed up in Kensington, a nice area of Calgary which is just on the north side of the Bow River. While driving around, we had been listening to the Team Canada women’s gold medal hockey game on CBC Radio and since we were both hungry, decided to grab a bite to eat. The original destination was far too packed so we decided to hit the Yardhouse, and as an added bonus we’d be able to catch the last period of the hockey game on the pub’s TVs.

The Yardhouse in Kensington is the second Yardhouse to open up. The first Yardhouse opened shortly before the Calgary Flames’ run for the Stanley Cup in 2004 on 17th Avenue, which most people know as ‘the Red Mile’. The Yardhouse pub can attribute most of it’s success to the Flames, given that 17th Avenue is a little bit like radio; there are a few stronghold locations and everywhere else tends to have a high turnover as pubs try to reinvent themselves and mimic the popular locations (such as Melrose and The Ship & Anchor).

The Yardhouse in Kensington opened up late last year in what I believe used to be a Bass Brothers location. In any case, the space is nice, in a good location and full of TVs. The service on the other hand, leaves much to be desired. When we came in, the pub wasn’t all that busy, with perhaps 15 people there, all of whom were watching the Team Canada women’s gold medal hockey game. Immediately after the win (yay, Canada!), the sole bartender there switched the sound off the game and onto what he referred to as ‘classic rock’ (personally, I don’t consider Ossy Osbourse classic rock but whatever).

Since the medal ceremony was coming up immediately, Ali asked the bartender nicely if he wouldn’t mind switching the sound back to the game. It was at this point that the rudeness began. Long story short, the bartender was rude, condescending and everything that customer service shouldn’t be. Did he have a bad day? Possibly. But does that matter, especially to us? Nope. And while most people might be offended, leave a small tip and forget about it, if I owned a bar I wouldn’t want to take that chance. Especially when there are lots of options out there. And especially since you never know who it might be that you’re offending. In this case, the bartender angered a women who happens to work in public relations and over the course of her ten years of work pretty much knows everyone in the media (print, radio and TV). And now Ali has made it her personal mission to let everyone know about the poor customer service at the Yardhouse; you can read her blog entry about the Yardhouse.

On a related note, we ended up buying a couch from a cool store named Willow Studio in Kensington and in talking to the owner, Sandra, discovered that she too had had a bad experience at the Yardhouse and will never return. Not a good start for the Kensignton Yardhouse if you ask me.

Back On The Air

I discovered yesterday afternoon that access to this blog (and all the Zymeta blogs for that matter) was limited due to a particular firewall rule. This rule was preventing access to “calendar.css” and as a result for causing grief for anyone accessing the site externally. Of course, it took me several weeks to notice since lately I have rarely blogged outside of the office.

In any case, I don’t foresee shutting down the blog site so in the future, if there’s any prolonged issues please contact me and find out what’s up. Because if somethings wrong and I haven’t blogged about it, then there’s a good chance I don’t know about it. Enjoy any entries here that you may have missed due to the configuration error.

Formation Flying

Yesterday’s trip to Montana was scrubbed. The weather at wheels up time was fine but the forecast for the return was dismal; snow, freezing rain, icing… you get the idea. As it turned out, the weather was fine all day. But the forecast was enough for most of the convoy PICs to cancel, leaving three planes to do some flying. We decided to go far enough that cross-country was involved but not so far as to be stuck should the forecast weather arrive early. The decided target: Vulcan. Again.

I brought along my friends Jamie and Aaron Seigo to act as co-pilot and navigator, which was a treat. Jamie did some pilot training in the past and thus was able to work the radios, GPS and other electronic equipment and was also able to temporarily fly the plane when needed. And both were useful for navigating and looking up info as needed. And of course, they were both good company, which is especially important when sitting together in a small space for a couple of hours. More so when the small space is basically inside a small tin can strapped to a single controlled combustion device (aka Piper Warrior PA-28-161)

The flight to Vulcan had the GPS showing a ground speed of 125 knots thanks to a nice 13kt wind out of the north. We were the last to arrive and I decided on a touch & go first followed by a full stop to join the other two aircraft. Apparantly no one heard me call for a touch and go as there were inquiries as to why I felt the first landing was botched. In any case, both approaches were done with only 10° of flap and carrying a little power and resulted in the two best landings I’ve executed in the Warrior; a good way to instill confidence in two new passengers.

After some lunch in ‘downtown’ Vulcan, it was decided that Drumheller would be next on the visit list. The three planes all started up, did the run-up and departed back to back to back with the idea that we would try to fly within close proximity so as to get some air to air photos and video footage (I bought a buddy’s digital video camera). I again departed last and the C-182 in the group needed to drop flaps and reduced MP to allow myself and the other Warrior to catch up. Formation flying is forbidden by the club but it wasn’t much of a formation anyway. It was more like flying in proximity air space. Close, but not close enough to be dangerous or considered ‘formation’ for that matter. But ‘formation flying’ sounds cooler. The resulting pictures were great; I’ll post a link once I get Gallery set up for public consumption. Drumheller presented us with a slight crosswind and although my third landing of the day wasn’t as perfect as the first two, it was still pretty good. I made the classic mistake of changing the plan on final approach (decided to land long to reduce the taxi time) and I think that blew it for me.

After some time at the Drumheller ‘terminal’, which included story time with Jamie, we headed back to Springbank direct, which gave us a great view of Calgary International Airport (CYYC) from the air, and finished up with another reasonably good, if not slightly long, landing at Springbank. All in all, it was a pretty good day given that we didn’t get to flying to Montana.

And yes, I have the landing light on. I was trying to make XHO more visible when trying to catch up to the others. Then I forgot about it and left it on. Maybe it’s a safety thing.

Update: You can read Aaron’s account of the trip on his blog. And it looks like the Montana convoy is rescheduled for March 18th.

Best Web Application Install Ever

Since I started administering web based services of one kind or another back in 1996, I’ve installed many web applications. And in most cases I’ve installed or upgraded many versions over time. And until today, every one of those installs has been a pain at best and a tediously, frustrating struggle at worst. Perhaps I’ve been installing the wrong apps or perhaps I’ve just had bad luck or haven’t followed the instructions (if there even was any). But it seems that’s just the way things are and for a system administrator responsible for web applications, that sucks. That’s not to say I’m not happy with most of the apps I’ve installed; for example, I’ve been very pleased for the most part with this blogg app, though I’ve definitely had some issues.

But I said ‘until today’ because this afternoon I installed Gallery, an open source, web based photo album organizer. In most cases, it’s not the actual install per se that causes the grief but the configuration step of the install process. At best, there is some sort of command line or curses based program (SquirrelMail has this) and at worst, such as is the case with Roller, you have to modify a config file and run the database scripts manually. Not so with Gallery. With Gallery, after I copied the files to the proper location on the web server, I then accessed the website to continue and set the application up via a web based wizard. Gallery prompted me for all the various configuration settings, including the database vendor (in my case, PostgreSQL) and database location and login details. Gallery then created and populated the DB tables and got the application to a point where it was fully functional, all within 10 steps or so. And when something couldn’t be done (perhaps a file needed to be created or have certain permissions), the current page instructed me on what needed to be done and wouldn’t let me proceed until it was. The entire process was fast, easy and very slick.

And because of the easy install, Gallery has restored my faith in open source programmers. Why? Because when developing applications, web based or not, programmers (especially junior and volunteer coders) typically like to avoid anything but coding the meat and potatoes of the application. That means that bug fixing, unit tests, install wizards, etc all get second-tier status and rarely get done. But in Gallery’s case, someone clearly cared somewhere along the line. And I can only hope that their upgrade process, when it comes time for me to do that, is equally as slick.

Flying To The USA

On Saturday, the Calgary Flying Club is organizing a convoy down to Cut Bank, Montana (KCTB). Assuming favourable conditions satisfying all the PICs, there will be seven planes participating in the flight. Once we arrive we are going to hook up with some local pilots for some lunch at a local restaurant and then return in the early afternoon.

Despite a decade of flying, I’ve never actually taken part in any flying that involves multiple aircraft at the same time. Last year I took part in a three plane convoy to Vulcan, Alberta but that doesn’t really count since I left Springbank early and arrived well before the other two aircraft and then left Vulcan before them. This time, I plan to be somewhere in the middle of the pack with the hope of getting some good still and video photography. And perhaps some at reasonably close proximity. To ensure success, I’m bringing two other crew members, including KDE’s Aaron Seigo, whom I plan to employ as co-pilot, navigator and photographer and whatever else I deem appropriate. Perhaps even flight attendant. Ha!