Postbox (http://www.postbox-inc.com) is a new email client that is still in beta testing. I’ve been beta testing with them for a month or 2 (or 3?) now and, generally, like the email client and the company. They have been responsive to ideas (for the most part), and have some good ideas built into the client. Topics, the Inspector, etc … Plus its cross platform (Mac and Windows) which and the are working on some platform specific features (quicklook, spotlight, etc …). It still doesn’t “feel” completely like a MacOS X Application, but its getting better.

The project is built on Thunderbirds codebase so, like in thunderbird and firefox, there are a ton of hidden preferences. I’ve started compiling a list of the ones that I am using:

http://www.the-forgotten.org/tech/postbox-config-options/

For those that follow my website and use it for information (pics, videos, etc …), apparently more people than I thought visit here, I have several websites … and each has different information. I’ve listed all the interesting ones below … I hope this helps reduce the confusion, I got a lot of questions about things were over christmas. If you can’t find something shoot me an email.

The-Forgotten.Org — This website … This is mainly where I post Aviation and Tech related things under those pages. I also make extensive use of my Links pages as my personal bookmarking site. I don’t really post “Blog Posts” here all that much anymore.

Katherine & Mike — http://www.kathnmike.us … This is Katherine and I’s website. We don’t post frequently, but we provide updates as we have time. Our ‘official wedding webpage’ is also on that website. This is where we both post our Blog posts now …

Photo’s and Pictures — Both Katherine and I use SmugMug for our photos. The links to both Katherine’s Photos and My Photos are on kathnmike.us. Orginizing the photos is a never ending battle, but we pretty much have it under control.

Mike’s Videos — My videos can be found on YouTube, and are also linked from this site AND kathnmike.us. Now that I have a video camera more videos will be going up there … I’ve got a couple on the camera that need to go up but haven’t had a chance to play with them yet .

I’ve never been completely happy with Flickr. I started using it several years ago because I got tired of maintaining Gallery on my servers when services such as flickr and smugmug existed. I originally chose flickr because it was free, but after i started scanning my family pictures I hit the upload limit fast and bought the pro account. Setup my sets and left it at that for a couple of years.

When I started dating Katherine and showing her some pictures she commented on how awful Flickrs navigation is. Flickr’s strength is when you are using its tagging features and searching for lots of pictures … especially if you want pictures from multiple people. I always browsed my pictures in iPhoto on my local machine, not on flickr. I used flickr to link to pictures and let other people browse them. But for people that are not used to tagging and searching tags, using Flickr really IS very cumbersome.

I recently became re-aware of SmugMug from Lifehacker. A friend of mine used it years ago, but i dismissed it because I was running Gallery on my servers. Then i ignored it because I was already using the free flickr and decided to just stick with it. Having some time to kill this week, i decided to give smugmug another serious look and signed up for their 14 day free trial and used Smugglr to automagically migrate my flickr data over to SmugMug. The import worked well, only 4 images failed to import properly. My only complaint about Smugglr is that it didn’t tell me which images didn’t import, so i need to figure that out by hand.

All in all I’m happy with SmugMug, and paid for the year subscription (50% off with the coupon code “flickr”). It allows much more customization and organization options than Flickr does: Categories, Sub Categories, Themes (global and individual galleries), etc …. I feel like I am in control of my pictures again instead of just having a stream of all my images and some “sets” which always felt like a hack to me. If i know what i’m looking for search the tags in flickr worked well, but sometimes you just want to browse your images. SmugMug excels at just browsing things, if you spend the time to setup categories and sub categories and organizing your galleries.

Here is my new Photo website, enjoy:

http://mbond.smugmug.com

I updated the navigation in the left hand bar as well. I won’t be getting rid of my flickr account but it does expire in January and I won’t be renewing the pro account. Pretty sure that means things will disappear after that.

EngineCMS is a CMS that i’m working on developing to fill a specific set of features that I haven’t been able to find in other systems.

1. Use the file system, instead of a database, to store content. This is important so that we can use command line tools to work with the files.
2. Revision control
3. Authentication, Permissions, ACLs against local users (unix auth), built in users (to the CMS), Active Directories Users/Groups/OUs, and IP based authentication.
4. Easily integrate external applications, without resorting to having to use rewrite rules in apache
5. simple ’server’ scripts to handle the rendering and display, providing a robust and stable developing platform. That is, once the rendering engine is developed thats it. All the ‘new’ features will be on the ‘back end’
6. back end, the CMS part, is separate from the rendering engine allowing it to be located on a separate server.
7. system is designed in such a way that no one has to have access to the public web server.
8. Individual pages need to be able to have different themes applied to them, instead of the default theme
9. Fallback — if you specify “images/banner.gif” it will search the current directory for a directory “images” and “banner.gif” inside of it. If it doesn’t exist it will work its way back up the directory tree until it does. Same thing for any file, such as “leftNavigation.php”
10. Easy for people with no web development experience to create and maintain pages

There are some other influences as well, but those are the big ones. I’ve been looking at several CMSs over the years. Drupal and Zope/Plone come the closest to providing what I am looking for, but fall short.

Drupal, currently, doesn’t support ACL properly in version 6 and its been out since February. Version 7 is already in development. A lot of the *core* features i want are in modules that lag far behind the main system. This worries me and makes me think that I will get stuck in an old version of drupal.

Drupal also requires all “addons” to be drupal modules. In some cases there are things that we will want to throw up that will be easy to throw together, but not easy as a module. An example would be a temporary application that might be up for 1 semester, and we only have 1 week to develop it.

Drupal’s revision control is also lacking a bit.

Zope/Plone is a great system. I used it for years on my own personal website and I still use it on the Library Intranet website (until this new system is ready at least). Problem is, everything has to be done via the web interface. You can’t use common commandline tools to work with files. If i am out of town on a 56k dial up, i want to be able to use emacs to make an edit instead of having to use a web browser. This is my biggest complaint about Zope, which kills it for me.

Enter EngineCMS

EngineCMS, for lack of a better name, addresses everything above and is very alpha at this point. I’m currently implementing the authentication system. Once the authentication system is done, which i hope to get done by 8/11/2008 (that might be wishful thinking), the Engine/Front-End part will be ‘feature complete’ and I will be able to start working on the back end.

The back end is where all the actual CMS magic happens. It is where web authors will go to do their thing. The front end is merely what will render the pages that are on the server. Once the front end is done I will begin converting the library’s intranet to the new CMS, by hand, so that I have a test bed for the back end CMS stuff. It will also give me a frequently used, but private, area to debug problems with the front end so that it is rock solid by the time we are ready to move it to live-public-production servers.

Development is being done in PHP, which is something i’ve resisted for years … but it is starting to grow on me. It allows for a lot of neat things without having to develop an actual server, like I’ve done in the past (and like zope still does).

On May 31st I tested at the dojo. It had been a year and 1 month since I last tested, for 3 Kyu (3rd Brown), and going into the test i wasn’t sure which rank I was testing for. Sensei has been testing all the brown belts since December, first by asking us to work harder and observing the results. He had said that some of us would lose 1 strip and some 2, but never telling us which of us would be testing for which ranks. Finally at the beginning of May, after 5 months of recording workouts and having extra workout sessions, Sensei told 3 of us that we would be testing at the end of the month. 

On Saturday 2 of us showed up for testing, the third injured her back earlier in the week and was not able to test. I’m still not sure how long we were in the Dojo on saturday, but I know that we held a horse stance for 1 hour. That part is still vividly fresh in my mind (and legs). As always happens when you test, you find areas where you know you can use more work than you thought. Even if you work out in front of mirrors almost every day (so that you can see and fix your movements), during testing those flaws that you didn’t notice during your normal workout jump out at you. “I should have my knee up slightly higher on my side snap kicks,” “My hip is turning over too late on my round house kicks, and not enough on my rising round house kicks,” “i’m turning my hip over too far on my thrust kicks,” just to name a few mistakes that I noticed.

Last night, June 2nd, Sensei used the advanced class to talk about the test. Doug was promoted to the rank of 2 Kyu (2nd Brown) from 3kyu. I was Promoted to the rank of 1 Kyu (1st Brown), and given the title Sihin. This is a title reserved for people that have shown a love and dedication for the school, and is usually given to the highest ranking student that has not yet attainted the rank of Black Belt. 

Honestly, I’m not sure how I feel about this title. Sensei tells me that I should be very proud, but I am not. I don’t FEEL like i deserve this title. When I look at my knowledge and skill compared to Senpai Kennedy, I feel that my skills are lacking. He has been a black belt for almost 3 years now, having tested for black at the same time i tested for my yellow. Obviously he SHOULD be much better than I, but I still choose him as a basis for comparison of my own skills. I wish I could see what his blocks and strikes and sparring looked like 3 years ago.

I also don’t know how I feel about having an actual title. I feel that it might give other students, especially the younger kids, the impression that I am better than the other students. I am not! I still have many flaws in my technique that need corrected, just like every other student. 

I thought a lot about this while I was drifting off to sleep. I can’t give him any more than I already am, and won’t sacrifice everything else in my life to do that. I’ve decided that i’m going to keep doing exactly what i’ve been doing while in the dojo and hope that is what sensei expects of me. 

Last night at the dojo, after a relatively mild workout, one of the students grabbed a Gatorade. I used to do the same thing, your thirsty and Gatorade not only fixes that problem but puts essential things back into your body. I don’t know what these things are, i’m not a doctor, but they are essential the commercial told me so.

If you are trying to lose weight though, don’t buy into the hype. Fitness drinks, all of them, have calories. 1 Bottle of gatorade is between 100 and 200 calories. Depending on your weight you need to jog an extra 10 to 20 minutes to burn those calories you just put into your body to quench your thirst (http://www.healthstatus.com/calculate/cbc). Then, your thirsty again …

Do yourself a favor and just drink water after your 20 to 60 minute workout. It will save you money, it will save you calories (you’ll get all those things back when you eat!). Fitness drinks like gatorade have their place: running a marathon, playing in a sporting event, testing in martial arts, or other activities where you are trying to maintain peak physical performance throughout the activity for hours on end. In those situations you need the calories to continue functioning properly, as well as all those things. But if you are just working out, you’ll find that you get much more out of your workout if you don’t drink fitness drinks.

As some have noticed, i’ve lost a touch of weight in the last year. Specifically from October through April I was dieting and dropped approximately 65lbs. Since then i’ve taking off another 5~ish pounds through exercise. Many people have asked how I did it, which diet did i use? Was it atkins or south beach?

Truth is, I just learned about portion sizes. I did it the old fashion way, i ate less food and I exercised more. Thats it. Eat less, Move more.

“But i’ve tried that and it doesn’t work” the people say. Well, that’s because people believe all those diets and nutritionists that say you shouldn’t be hungry while you are trying to lose weight, because you’ ll starve yourself and actually gain weight. That’s a load of crap. Yes, if you don’t eat enough you will end up starving yourself, which will in turn make your body store fat. But that is easy to avoid. Here is what i eat monday through friday for those months, approximately 1000 calories a day:

Breakfast: Danon light and fit yogurt. 1 serving @ 60 calories

Lunch: Snickers Marathon Mutrition Bar. 1 serving @ 150 calories

Dinner: Whatever I wanted. Steak, potatoes, BBQ Chicken, Fried Chicken, Nachos, Burger, whatever. The trick is that I read the side of the box, looked at what a portion was and STUCK to that. Did you know that 1 serving of beef is 4oz. That’s right, 4oz of uncooked meat. After the fat is drained you’ll get about 3oz. Did you know that a serving of nacho chips is 12 chips? Yup. those 12 chips is all you get.

Did you know that in the 1980’s a begal was 1/3 to 1/4 the size it is today? People expect bigger portions of food today, which is a huge part of our problem.

Want to lose weight? Learn to eat portion sizes closer to what you should be eating for your level of activity. After you hit your target weight, increase your calorie intake to what it should be (don’t listen to anyone but your own body. add food back in slowly and find the correct amount of food that will maintain your weight. that is what you should be eating!).If you become less active, you have to eat less food. Simple and easy to understand.

Don’t fall into the trap of over eating ‘good for you foods.’ Eating 1 pound of apples may be healthier than eating 1 pound of beef and make you feel full, but that isn’t going to help. You have to learn to eat less food, which is going to make you hungry and uncomfortable for a week or so.Your stomach will make noises and you will be very uncomfortable and hungry. Just fight through the urge to get a snack. After a week or so, you’ll find that you are no longer uncomfortable and eating less will fill you up.

“What about holiday’s and vacations? Can’t i pig out once in a while?” … Absolutely, just once in a while though. I’ve found that even overeating mildly for just one meal makes it more difficult to say no to the second helping of food at the next meal. You need to learn to say NO to more food when you’ve had enough.

And don’t forget the exercise. Diet alone is useless. Yeah, you’ll lose some weight, but if you don’t tone and build some muscle it will just come back. Muscle burns more calories at rest than fat does, so if you tone some muscle it will help.

I work out at least twice a week at the local dojo (email me for info, its a GREAT workout), usually 3 times a week. Then at home I bike (at least 20 to 30 miles), jog a couple miles, use the Ski Machine, use weights, etc … I try to get in approximately 10 to 20 hours a week of quality workout. Yeah, thats a part time job … but its hard work to lose weight and keep weight off. Once you’ve had that weight you have to remain diligant about keeping it off.

To give you an idea: I love red robin cheese burgers. When Katherine and I visit her sister we usually end up at red robin. I usually get the 5 alarm burger, a shake, and fries. That food there puts 5 solid pounds on me (if i get on the scale before and after the meal i learn that i’ve added 7 pounds, 2~ish must be water weight because it comes off by the next morning) … and it takes me about 2 days to work it back off. Thats 2 days of an hour or more of exercise each day, plus my normal daily activities.

I should also note that over the past couple of years i’ve given up ALL Soda, Tea, and Coffee (i drink mostly water now, with the occassional juice(But remember, juice adds calories ). I no longer use Ketchup or Syrup to flavor foods. I’ve also learned to eat whole grain, wheat, and rye breads instead of white. It takes a while to get used to not reaching for the ketchup to put on a burger or fries, but once you do you learn that those foods actually have flavor of their own and its pretty good.

Scheduled 10 hours in a Citabria with a CFI in August. FINALLY going to have a chance to get my tail dragger endorsement .

Hoping that I have enough time left after doing the tail dragger stuff to do some spins. That would be most excellent.

Upgraded to Wordpress 2.5. Painless upgrade, nice changes to the dashboard.

Integrated My Flickr page into the website using a Wordpress plugin called Slickr.

The results can be seen here on the Photo Gallery Page, so far I’m happy with the results. The only thing I’d like to see different is the ability to define a ‘default’ photo set to display when the page is loaded. Maybe if i get board I’ll add that in.

I also updated the theme to be widget aware, and added the slickr widget to the sidebar.