I finally sat down and started some serious work on a print stylesheet for Across the Disciplines. While there are some kinks in the general printout, and I’m certain that tables, figures, and some other visual elements aren’t going to print so cleanly in the current version, The print version of the journal’s articles are far more attractive than they were just a few days ago.

We’re hiding header graphics and nav, and are actually restyling headings for a black-and-white document. Hanging indents in the References are now carried over into the print articles. And more.

I had planned to write a print CSS for Across the Disciplines soon after I recoded the journal for XHTML 1.0 Transitional back around 2007 or 2008. It had been on the agenda for quite some time. It seemed that every time I thought I’d turn some attention to what is really a fairly straightforward project I found myself working on some other part of the site.

Most recently, I thought I’d finally write the stylesheet in December 2010. But then I spent a good bit of late December and January ensuring that the articles in the journal complied with HTML5 standards following a major site-wide overhaul of The WAC Clearinghouse.  The result is a site that will certainly remain compliant for some time since HTML5 is still just a draft specification. But that work really left little energy for CSS coding.

Lesson: Write a damn print CSS at the same time you write the screen CSS. It’s easy enough to do and it’s possible that readers will thank you for saving color ink, whitespace, and paper.

This is my second attempt at a POV video of a Mount Agamenticus ride. The first attempt involved a great 25-degree cold weather ride, but the cam was pointed at the ground and one could get no perspective.  On this second attempt, I tried to get the cam mounted in a better position.  Things start out ok, but the duct tape/bubble gum rig I have set up just seems unable to hold the cam in the right position. All the bouncing over rocks doesn’t help.

The audio for this video is courtesy of Youtube’s Audio Swap feature. Apparently, I wasn’t careful enough with fair use in dropping in my own music; Youtube graciously deleted the audio associated with my original before publishing the project. (Thanks, I think.)

The Rig

HTC Evo mounted to a plastic lightswitch cover using zip ties and o-rings. That apparatus is then mounted to the decent quality helmet mount for my night light rig. But the weight of the phone seems to be too much for the little adjustment hinge on the night light rig.

The Ride

I like this challenging little ride. The first part involves a decent climb up the west side of Mt. A, and around to the north. It’s mostly a wide double-track, but there are plenty of decent boulders, slippery wet washouts, and some serious roots to ride. On a dry day it’s 100% doable, provided you’ve got the legs and lungs to take it. In the video, it’s pretty clear that things are very wet and loose. The decaying leaves complicate matters by hiding the treacherous stuff that’ll cause the rear wheel to give way, the front end to stall on a big root, or worse.

The video doesn’t capture the ride to the summit because I skipped that part of the ride that day. It does capture the easterly descent from Mt. A and over to Second Hill. That’s a hairy downhill section with some sizable 2′ drops off boulders that head right into a tangled nest of roots and loose rocks, followed by some nice technical switchbacks that head to Porcupine and Second Hill.

The ascent of Second Hill is another good little workout that’s about 95% doable, at least when it’s mostly dry. I’ve done this hill about 15 times and I have yet to pull up the last little piece of rock to get clear to the summit.  Mostly, it’s because it’s a near vertical face, but there’s also the thigh burn to contend with by that point. Descending Second Hill on the north side is a fun section because it isn’t quite as rocky and root-infested as so much of the other hills, at least until you get near the bottom. At the bottom, there’s a pretty serious washout and root-laden section that’ll draw some blood if a tire slips out at the wrong time. In the video, there’s a nice foot-deep puddle marking the end of the descent. I’m sure some folks have wiped out there and gotten wet. Thankfully, I’ve avoided that problem.

There’s some nice, somewhat challenging up and down riding on the way back over to Mt. A, and I actually wish there were more of that sort of terrain on my ride. And then it’s a good backtrack up the mountain and down the northwest side to the parking lot.

As I suspected in the fall, Smith Preserve is a beautiful, local winter getaway. The trails are frequented by cross country skiers and hikers alike, and it is a beautifully quiet place to spend an hour or two. I strapped on snowshoes a couple weeks ago during a deep freeze.  I found solitude, crisp air, and frozen streams.

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This week I took another late afternoon/early evening hike in Smith.  As I rounded the bend on a loop I’ve been taking an owl flew right across the trail, landing in a tree about 50′ from the trail and 20′ off the ground.

I dropped my poles and headed off into the woods to see if I could get a closer look.  Amazing! The owl was both completely aware of my presence the whole time and undisturbed by my effort to get close.  I stood under the owl and we stared at each other.  I took about a half dozen pictures with my phone, though darkness was beginning to set in and so it was tough to get a nice shot.

Smith Preserve is proving to be a really sweet spot. It’s halfway between home and office, and it’s position on the commute makes it ideal for a quick trip into the woods.

My friend Daniel and some of his colleagues have been hard at work on a really important documentary about development in New York. Having done a lot of the hard work behind the documentary, they’re now at a financial impasse.  They need additional money to be able to purchase rights to some of the archival footage they want for their documentary.

To help generate funds for this important next stage of their project they’ve turned to Kickstarter, a really interesting crowdsource-based fund-raising tool. And they’ve created a trailer to both set up the context for their project and to solicit donations.

The clock is ticking. Consider a pledge.

Butternut, January 2011

We took a couple days last week to ski Butternut in the Berkshires. Butternut is a nice little mountain, a little larger than Mohawk, our normal ski stop. We had two days of great weather, and since we went during the week we avoided most of the crowds.

I found myself wondering why we hadn’t driven the extra 30 minutes to hit Butternut before now. The terrain isn’t particularly challenging, and so the kids can ski the entire mountain without any difficulty. We’ll definitely drive up again this season. And with Will in 5th grade, he skis for free every time we go.

One highlight: There’s a cool little concrete snowman on one of the trails. But he was missing one of his stick arms. We stopped to help him out and Nate added the missing arm to make him complete.

After driving past Smith Preserve for a month or so, I decided to give it a shot.  There’s a clear sign indicating that mountain biking is allowed there. It’s a network of double-track trails likely to draw cross-country skiers in the winter months, along with some single-track that I have yet to fully explore because I don’t want to be lost in the dark back there. Mostly, I’ve managed to eke out small 30-minute rides before fearing that darkness will set in and leave me hanging. It’s clear that there’s more to explore, and I have yet to find a soul in the woods.

It’s not at all challenging from a technical perspective, though the flat terrain does make for a good cardio ride.  It’s a soupy mess in places, owing to the general marshy nature of the entire Kennebunkport area.  Autumn leaves littering the trail do make the ride a bit challenging since boulders, downed logs, and more hide in the puddles.  There are definitely trail hazards in there. Even with a good night light, the dusk rides get a bit scary in places.

It’s hunting season as well.  Pick-ups are parked all around the area, a clear sign that one could get shot.  My guess is that the preserve is off limits, but I’m not sure.  I broke out my fluorescent orange waterproof cycling jacket for the occasion. The bonus is that it keeps me warm enough to ride as the temperature dips.  No frosty rides – yet.

I started to struggle to get myself around Mt. Agamenticus before darkness set in once we turned back the clocks.  Not wanting to be caught out in the cold and the dark on the mountain, and tiring of the 35-minute drive just to hit a trail, I had to strike out and find another riding spot if I wanted to stay on the bike. Smith Preserve fits the bill just fine right now.

Last April, at the Northeast Writing Across the Curriculum Consortium (NEWACC) Steering Committee meeting at Boston University, I agreed to work with Mike Palmquist at the WAC Clearinghouse to get a NEWACC site up and running by the upcoming NEWACC meeting at Quinnipiac University. NEWACC was imagining a website within the Clearinghouse, as well as a blog. Ideally, this would run in a single tool, a CMS with a blog built into it. I started thinking WordPress because of its strong blog platform and its functionality as a CMS. (Obviously, that’s not the only option.)

Unfortunately, the Clearinghouse didn’t have the back end apparatus to host any of the popular blog platforms. And there were concerns about security in a PHP/MySQL setup. At first it looked like a unified solution would not be possible. But Mike is a great guy who is willing to push the boundaries a bit.  He told me they were experimenting with virtual servers for local projects at Colorado State. After a few months of testing, in mid-September Mike got a virtual Windows Server up and running, with IIS on it.

WordPress on Windows?  Hmm. Generally, Windows and PHP with MySQL don’t even belong in the same sentence. My first response was, “This won’t work.” Then I thought, “This won’t work without major hacks, patches, and a major months-long headache.” Surprise!

6 Hours Later…

WordPress is notable for its famous “5-minute installation” instructions. Right in the instructions are guidelines for installing WP on Win. Microsoft has a FREE (yes, free) product called MS Web Platform Installer that makes relatively quick work of all this headache. Get it installed on your server and you can manage all the app downloads and installations through checkboxes and a GUI.  Sweet!

It wasn’t quite that simple, though I have to take some of the blame because of my lack of knowledge.  I didn’t know there was something called IIS until I started trying to run a tool built to run on Apache on a Windows Server.  It took a couple meetings with some web folks at UNE (Al and Neal, thanks!) before I started to get a handle on the Windows Server/IIS thing. My internet access in Maine is pretty spotty, and this really limits file transfer speeds. The first installation of WP went into a subdirectory, and so it was in the wrong place.  And the FTP access wasn’t activated on the server until after I poked around.What is amazing to me is that it’s running at all. And it is!

WP 3 as a Network

The new power of WordPress 3 is that it can run multiple blogs in a single installation. It’s important to activate this feature within 30 days of an installation. I don’t know if NEWACC will have a use for this feature, but if we don’t do it now we’ll find it harder to handle down the road.  So I took on this piece as well.  I found instructions for Network activation on a Windows installation of WordPress at Laura Gentry’s site. Smooth as silk.

Next Steps

4.5 months into the project we’re set up with server space at Colorado State. We have a virtual server running WordPress 3, a platform that will integrate the NEWACC website with the NEWACC blog, and a tool that can actually scale up to host multiple blog or sites over time. I can now turn my attention to the thing I agreed to do in April.  I can start to build the website for NEWACC!

I found another nice set of bike trails in the area.  Mt. Agamenticus is a cool mountain in York at the heart of “one of the largest remaining expanses of undeveloped forests in coastal New England” (http://www.agamenticus.org/index.html). On Sunday I rode the trails that head to the mountain peak. It’s only about 30 minutes away from my place, making it fairly easy to ride.

I rode Ring and Fisher on the way up, and Witch Hazel, Ring, Chestnut Oak, Porcupine, Rocky Road, and Ring on the way down.  I missed the turn to hit Chestnut Oak, ending up on a nice, technical ride down Goosefoot.  But Goosefoot dropped me at Cedar, a trail that ran off my trail map.  I had to climb that same technical hill back up to catch the Chestnut Oak trail. (Oops.)

Perhaps the coolest thing about this ride is the bonus view from the top of Mt. Agamenticus.  A lookout on the north end of the mountain offers views of the hills and valleys of Maine and New Hampshire, and I could see the Presidential Range in the White Mountains of New Hampshire in the distance.  (A panoramic sketch of the mountain silhouette helped me locate those mountains, taking me back to the days when I used to hike those mountains all the time.) And from the southeast side of the peak I could see the Atlantic ocean. This will be a great place to ride as the leaves turn, and as they drop and the views just open up. This is a great place for hiking as well.  On the summit, at the ranger station, there’s a wonderful nature exhibit, with hawk wings, pelts, and plants that introduce visitors to the wildlife of the region. I’ll bring the family here soon!

It was such a nice ride that I headed back for more on Monday evening.  I met Rob, a local Ogunquit bike shop owner, at the trail head.  He offered to show me some of the trails I hadn’t yet explored.  We had a really nice, quiet evening ride as I explored the northeast end of this conservation area.  After running around Ring and out around Second Hill, we rode straight up the north side of Agamenticus on Sweet Fern.  We hit the summit just as the sun was setting over the mountains to the west.  Gorgeous! I don’t normally ride with a partner these days, unless I’m riding with my kids.  It was great to have someone to ride with and I’ll be sure to try to ride with Rob again.

Apparently, there’s another network of trails in a water district conservation area just across Mountain Road.  Rob and I agreed that it would be nice to explore that area some other time.

I have a really cool space in Kennebunk, inside a historic Masonic Hall. With 15′ tin ceilings, massive windows, and an open layout, the space just breathes. After wrapping up my second week with the Masons, I’m starting to feel at home. It’s a very quiet area, though the construction on Main St. starts at about 6 AM. (Good thing I’m an early riser!) And the people in the area are so friendly and helpful.

Masonic Hall - Main St., Kennebunk

I met one of the individuals running the cafe downstairs (Jason), and took a brief bike ride around the Kennebunk neighborhoods to check out housing in the area. I was even able to unpack some research and do some writing. I’m feeling like this is going to be a great place to live, at least for now.

After waiting all summer to sell our house so we could hold a yard sale, we decided to have the sale even though the house hasn’t sold. Emma came up with the idea of a lemonade stand, and she added iced tea to the menu. She sat out front all day selling lemonade to people who came to the yard sale, to the mailman, and to passers by. I think she made almost $20 over about 6 hours. (That’s more than I made in 6 hours when I started flipping burgers at 16!)

At the end of the day, I pulled out my phone and shot some video of the kids pitching lemonade. Today I pulled the video off my phone, imported it into iMovie, added a filter to give it an old movie look, and put a piece of the video on my Youtube account.

You’ll notice that Emma isn’t offering more than unpaid internships at her stand! Too bad for her brothers.