Technical Update

The last few days have been spent developing a new menu system for patrickWeb and trying to streamline the several thousand pages of content to make it easier for visitors to find things. I am making progress, but like many technical projects, it is sometimes one step forward and two steps backwards. I appreciate everyone’s patience as I slice and dice the web pages of the site and pull things together. As always, feedback is greatly appreciated. I know my “reorgainzation” of the content has broken many links and I am furiously repairing them as fast as I can.

Technical Update

Thanks to Bob Ishida in Tokyo for finding a bad link in my latest story, “Long Distance – Part 6“. I am grateful for the feedback on content — and errors. For those who read the long distance story, you may have noticed the new menu on the left side of the page. This is a test of a new menu system that I will soon be launching for all of patrickWeb. The software is called “Tree Menu Magic” and it comes from a company called Project Seven. It leverages the W3C standards for cascading style sheets. I’ll be sharing much more about this over the days ahead — stay tuned. Any feedback on the menu — how it looks, how it feels, how it works, etc. — would be very much appreciated.

Technical Upate

From time to time I feel a need to offer a technical update about things behind the scenes at my website. For those who are interested in music, motorcycles, or the big picture of where I see things going with the Internet, just ignore the updates. For those interested in the technical happenings, the updates are my way of sharing what is going on. Thanks to David Leip at IBM for reminding me to update my blogging setup. I now have two RSS feeds to the blogsphere. One feed is compatible with the Radio Userland blogging software which I was previously using and the other with my new blogging software which is Movable Type. This means that readers who subscribed using the prior feed will continue to get updates. Thanks also to Brenna Koch at Six Apart for helping me make the changes.

Technical Update

The conversion to Movable Type is complete now and I would like to thank those who have sent me feedback. In particular I would like to thank those who have caught some things that broke in the process. I am finding Movable Type very powerful and it offers me new featues for the blogging. Some of the naming conventions and file structure are different and that is where a few difficulties came in. Thanks to David Leip for pointing out that my RSS feed was lost. For those who use the RSS feed directly, the new feed is at http://patrickweb.com/weblog/index.xml,
but I have also restored the original RSS feed at http://patrickweb.com/weblog/index.xml
The two feeds are identical and both will be maintained. For those who prefer
to get an email when a new story is posted, you can just subscribe.

ibm.com/patrick has moved

So what’s new? Everything! ibm.com/patrick has now moved to patrickWeb.com. Hopefully you won’t find too many broken links as a result of the move. There are more than 1,000 pages of content and a lot of images. We tried to be careful but I am sure we missed a few things. Your patience is much appreciated — any reports of broken links too! The weblog will remain where it is for the moment but will soon be integrated right here on the patrickWeb homepage.

Status On Web Site Consolidation

I am in the process of consolidating my web sites and weblogs into one place here at patrickWeb and I appreciate your patience while I get this done. The project is coming along well, especially since a summer intern at IBM, Aaron Herrmann, is offering me a hand. Today we learned about a beta available of a Radio tool called Remote Edit that allows you to modify Radio templates in Dreamweaver (and other HTML editors). This should be a big help since I manage all my content (except for the weblog) in Dreamweaver. We are very close to having a merged homepage here at patrickWeb. That is an important first step. From there I’ll be cleaning up the content. If the summer schedule permits, Aaron is also going to help me get the photogallery moved into Gazo, as I previously described. Keep watching this space. (read more)

Do We Need the Interstate Highway System in America?

Reflection – written July 1, 2002

I had long wanted to take a trip from my weekend retreat in Pennsylvania down to southern New Jersey to visit my mother and then back to my home in Connecticut — all without using the Interstate Highway System. An extensive study was done entitled“40 Years of the US Interstate Highway System: An Analysis”, but my study was to be a motorcycle ride to see for myself. I am not really a “road geek”, I just wanted to see for myself what it would be like and how long it would take.

It’s a forecasted to be a hot day with highs in the 90′s and the possibility of thunderstorms. I departed at 10 am from Greentown, Pennsylvania and headed south on route 507 with the Garmin StreetPilot pointing to Pennsville, New Jersey. It would be 126 miles the way the crow flies. The Street Pilot shows color maps and, although it doesn’t tell you when and where to turn, it would always be pointing precisely at Pennsville. I purposely did not do much planning — I would just use a form of ”dead reckoning”, pick interesting “back roads” and use the GPS to confirm that I was heading in the right general direction. My adventure had begun.

The early phases of the trip were very enjoyable. I picked up route in New Foundland, Pennsylvania and continued south. It was absolutely beautiful weaving through the hills, mountains and along the creeks and rivers of northeastern Pennsylvania. It was fun to see the various farms, businesses, homes, people to wave to, and other scenes that I don’t normally notice when driving a car.

Avoiding the interstate highway system was no problem — until I got to East Stroudsburg. This was the point at which it was time to cross over from Pennsylvania into New Jersey. I knew there was a bridge there, but didn’t recall that it was connected to Interstate 80 on both sides. So for a short few miles, I was on the interstate system.

I took the first exit I could after arriving in New Jersey and shortly thereafter found myself crossing back over a bridge I didn’t know about into Pennsylvania! At this point, I decided to continue down Route 611 which meanders along the Delaware River which separates Pennsylvania and New Jersey. I’m glad I did — it was a beautiful ride. I arrived in Easton, Pennsylvania, crossed back over a bridge into New Jersey and used dead reckoning to find my way through Phillipsburg, back into the countryside of North Jersey and headed down route 519. I stopped at a Citgo gas station and food mart for some gas and a sandwich.

I am now 70 miles from my destination, the way the crow flies — probably closer to 100 miles the way the roads go.

I continued along the Delaware River — but now on the New Jersey side. There are many historical sites along this route. I passed by Washington Crossing State Park and it conjured up an image of the famous picture of the General in the boat with his aides rowing him across the river. Beautiful historical homes were in abundance and later the gold dome of the capitol of New Jersey in Trenton came in view. I had a patriotic feeling for this whole phase of the trip.

Then it was into real South Jersey. No more big buildings. No more mountains or hills visible in any direction. Corn fields, barns, farms, farmhouses, and flat roads make up much of this part of the world. One of the most impressive historical towns in New Jersey is Haddonfield. Cruising down Main Street was a treat — stunning 200+ year-old homes with American flags and flowers everywhere. It was a real treat. I arrived at Mom’s place around 4 PM — odometer reading was 187 miles. That meant that there was about a sixty mile and three hour penalty for my adventure but it was well worth it. The return trip was a different story.

The forecast was hazy, hot, and humid. All three turned out to be true. The day was to be a brutal endurance test. I was at times tempted to get on the Interstate and shorten the trip but I resisted. The trip started out with a ride by the house where I grew up and then off into the countryside. Flat roads and a lot of farms. This lasted for about an hour but as I headed up the fiddler of the state the population, the traffic, the congestion, all increased dramatically. I got to see the inner-city view of North Brunswick and other cities in the Northern part of the state. Route 202 was part of my plan but I learned that in some places it just stops. No signs, no detours, just an end where another route picks up. Using my GPS I continued east or west and then north and eventually picked up 202 again. This happened several times. I made a number of mistakes in judgment but eventually got to the top of the state. I didn’t want to take the George Washington or Tappan Zee bridges to cross the Hudson River so I continued north through the beautiful Harriman state park to Bear Mountain and then across the river. The last part of the trip was on route 301 which goes from Cold Springs to Carmel. It is a lot of curves and was a joy on the bike — although it would have been better if it had been cooler.

I stopped four times for a soda or water and to stretch. The trip would have been 185 miles by the Interstate System — my trip was 270 miles and took eight hours. I am glad I did it but won’t be anxious to repeat it for awhile! Do we need the Interstate Highway System? . I don’t believe for one second that we can do without them anymore than we can do without the train system or our airline system. My adventure made me appreciate the back roads, communities, and ways of life I witnessed. The physical drain of the trip made me appreciate the efficiency of the alternative. It’s a good thing the nation’s commerce doesn’t depend on back roads and motorcycles.

Related links…

I discovered with a simple Google search that there are vast resources about every aspect of roads and highways. See Personal Road and High Pages for example, orHistory of the US Highway System. There is even a Road Geek E-mail list.

Website Consolidation Project

Reflection – written June 8, 2002

ibm.com/patrick has been around for more than seven years now. In April of 1998patrickweb.com was registered with the long-term idea that someday it would become the “portal” into all of my activities. Initially patrickweb was used just for private email but then in early 2000 a patrickWeb homepage came to life using Net Objects Fusion. Rather than host it at IBM along with ibm.com/patrick, a small ISP in New York City (which has since folded it’s tent) hosted it. Since patrickWeb was intended to be more personal, it was better to move it to outside of IBM. Since my “retirement” from IBM, a transition plan has commenced that will consolidate all of my activities, weblog,photogallery, etc. onto patrickWeb. I will continue to use ibm.com/patrick as an alias so that people who have it bookmarked can still find me. Hopefully, the consolidation will be completed by the end of the summer. I am using Dreamweaver for the homepage and much of the content. Radio Userland will be my weblog tool. Thanks for your patience as I work my way through this project. Comments and feedback always welcome.

My PhotoGallery

Reflection – written June 5, 2002

I started my first PhotoGallery in 1995 shortly after I built ibm.com/patrick. The nice folks at Kodak loaned me one of their new (at the time) DC-210 digital cameras and I began to take pictures all over the world. It is quite commonplace today but back in the mid-nineties it was a bit unique. I initially set up the gallery on some basic html pages but quickly realized that organizing them by category, providing a search ability, and creating some meta data would be key to an effective viewing experience. A colleague at IBM, Dipen Mehta, developed a Lotus Notes/Domino photogallery that was, and still is, quite unique. The way Dipen set it up, I could simply copy my camera files to a directory and then his utility would create a thumbnail plus a large (800 x 600), a small (640 480), and a preserved original picture. Each category could have a description and a nice page showing the corresponding thumbnails and links for the pictures at either high or low size.

The only problem was that Dipen moved on to new opportunities and he was the only person who knew the details of how the gallery worked. I became determined to find a replacement technology that I could maintain on my own. I am convinced that the Domino solution which Dipen developed is an ideal enterprise approach but for a hobbiest like me, I had to have something simpler. I looked high and low and eventually, thanks to an unsolicited email from Don Means, I discovered Gazo. It is extremely powerful and relatively easy to use. I am in the process of converting more than 1,000 to the new gallery. I’ll add a link here soon.

My PhotoGallery

I started my first PhotoGallery in 1995, shortly after I built ibm.com/patrick. The nice folks at Kodak loaned me one of their new (at the time) DC-210 digital cameras and I began to take pictures all over the world. It is quite commonplace today but back in the mid-nineties it was a bit unique. I initially set up the gallery on some basic html pages but quickly realized that organizing them by category, providing a search ability, and creating some meta data would be key to an effective viewing experience. A colleague at IBM, Dipen Mehta, developed a Lotus Notes/Domino photogallery that was, and still is, quite unique. The way Dipen set it up, I could simply copy my camera files to a directory and then his utility would create a thumbnail
plus a large (800 x 600), a small (640 480), and a preserved original
picture. Each category could have a description and a nice page showing the corresponding thumbnails and links for the pictures at either high or low size.

The only problem was that Dipen moved on to new opportunities and he was the only person who knew the details of how the gallery worked. I became determined to find a replacement technology that I could maintain on my own. I am convinced that the Domino solution which Dipen developed is an ideal enterprise approach but for a hobbiest like me, I had to have something simpler. I looked high and low and eventually, thanks to an unsolicited email from Don Means, I discovered Gazo. It is extremely powerful and relatively easy to use. I am in the process of converting more than 1,000 to the new gallery. I’ll add a link here soon.