Ralford’s Ramblings

This past weekend took me through one of my favorite local hiking destinations – Detweiler Run. I figured this may be my last chance this year getting out in reasonable hammock weather, so I saddled up for a night at Penn Roosevelt State Park.

I waited for the rain to quit on Saturday then made my way toward the parking area at Bear Meadows. On the way were clear signs that the woods weren’t done draining from the storm. I parked, and wandered down John Wert Path. A few hundred feet down the trail, a flooded valley formed a temporary pond, and the trail lead into the middle of it. It was towards 4:00pm, so I looked at my map for an alternate route.

I drove just over the ridge (with many downed bushy tree branches leading the way), and parked at the gate entrance to Detweiler Run Road. No sooner did I get out of the car and I could hear raging water. I knew today’s hike would be up the service road, but I had to check out the creek.

I reached the MST’s intersection at Greenwood Spur, and saw quite a bit of water running down the MST. Just two hundred feet up the MST and I saw the primitive campsite completely flooded by running water. The swift water rushing through the mountain laurel was gorgeous indeed! I made my way another few hundred yards up the MST, and found the trail submersed in swift water. I worked my away around through some thick mountain laurel and found more of the trail submersed. After reconsidering the time, my safety, and the goal of reaching Penn Roosevelt by nightfall, I made my way back up the hillside, and followed Detweiler Run Road up the valley. I changed my course at Shingle Path, and paused where it intersected the MST and crossed Detweiler Run. An unusual amount of water this far upstream made for an entertaining crossing, and I crested over the ridge, making my way down into Penn Roosevelt for the night.

On my way back out of the woods yesterday morning, reaching the MST at Detweiler Run was visible proof I could follow the orange blazes downstream (instead of taking the service road, as I did on my way in). The lack of roaring as I descended the ridge lead me to suspect this reasonable water level. As I made my way down the MST, clumps of fallen leaves and branches showed every turn the water had carved out. I entered the region thick with mountain laurel and found myself hopping from rock to fallen branch, using downed trees as bridges to keep me out of water but on the trail. Finally downstream, I reached the camping area that was flooded the previous day. The stone fire ring was now out of the water, and the area looked a lot closer as it had during my other hikes.

Hiking along Detweiler Run after the rainstorm proved to be an exhilarating experience. I highly recommend taking a look at the area after a large rainstorm to see some local geography in action. Though take caution to dangerous situations. If you are interested in other pictures from my hike, you can find them in my Picasa photo album.

ralford backpacking backpacking, Bear Meadows, Detweiler Run, Penn Roosevelt State Park

I recently read Jacob Haqq-Misra’s Planetary Messenger, and highly recommend it to anyone interested in the philosophies behind our existence.   Here’s a review I wrote for Jacob’s book:

Planetary Messenger, by Jacob Haqq-Misra

Planetary Messenger reminds us that it is inaccurate to view Homo Sapiens as the single most important species in the universe, and that just because we as humans walk upright in what we consider to be a technologically advanced society, that not all forms of life behave the same. Modern cultures assume that for non-human life to exist as a civilized colony, it must first appear and operate similarly to ourselves.

During Shane’s travels to The Planet Finder convention in Washington D.C., Haqq-Misra unravels the flaws behind this unlogical means of comparison, and introduces unique theories to challenge the conflicts between science and religion. Shane learns that the success of human kind is largely attributed to chance, and that the facts behind our existence – whether acquired through historical records, scientific fact, religious scripture or personal belief – will continue to evolve. Though it may not be easy, we must allow culture and religion to incorporate new and understood viewpoints if we want to comprehend the bounds of life.

ralford philosophy philosophy, review

Did you get the memo? Dirty Superb is staging a hostile takeover of your work weary mind. Even though the semester just started, there’s a new CEO in town: Soul Power. Come watch Dirty Superb bring their musical synergy to the stage this Friday.

Dance grooves and general merriment await you in Pleasant Gap. So make the journey and fill us in on what you did on your summer vacation. Come Monday, you’ll be sure to have some stories to share around the water cooler. But this weekend, loosen your loafers and slip into something on the funky side.

Dirty Superb will be playing at the Red Horse Tavern in Pleasant Gap this Friday, September 4th. The show is from 9 to 12pm, with no cover charge. Hope to see you there!

ralford music Dirty Superb, funk, music, Red Horse Tavern

On Sunday I got together with Vitamin Funk to do some jamming and recording before Chris and Mike headed back to college. We had some room-mic recordings of most of our tunes prior to the weekend, but wanted new takes on some of them with a sax player we recently met.

In about two hours we ended up laying down five tunes (bear in mind the goal wasn’t a professionally isolated studio recording).

Three were previously written, and the other two were an upbeat blues song and a reggae beat – both ideas that came up while fooling around earlier in the summer. They were both on file as well, but we wanted a more formal shot at them with more than one mic in the room. The three originals were Off the Wall, Jammy Moe, and Keeping it Funky.

Sunday was a great time, and I look forward to the next Vitamin Funk show whenever that may be. We’re toying with the idea of setting up a show or two in State College around Thanksgiving. I’ll let you know if that comes to fruition.

ralford music funk, music, recording, Vitamin Funk

Among the many things to accomplish before leaving State College, one that a beer taster should seek is to get their name on a plaque in one of the bars downtown. Zeno’s Pub offers this opportunity as a reward for savoring 80 different beers. To take the challenge, all you need is a dollar which gets you the famous Zeno’s passport. I’ve been here for almost seven years now, and decided on July 4th that it was time to start the quest.

The majority of pages in the passport list beers from the United States, Canada, England, Germany, and Belgium to name a few. There’s also a healthy list of beers from Pennsylvania breweries. A number of the beers throughout are common to most Pennsylvania bars (Molson, Guiness, and Yuengling for example), but the list is full of bottled surprises that – at least in this town – can only be purchase at Zeno’s.

Some of the beers on the list are seasonal, and may not make it back to the Zeno’s tap for some time as they are known for their selective and broad tap rotation. This won’t stop you from completing your 80 because the back of the passport has a few blank pages for tasty craft brews like Bell’s Expedition Stout and Dogfish Head’s Palo Santo.

Upon completion of the passport and getting your name on a plaque, you also get a Zeno’s tshirt. If you really want some name recognition, I’ve heard you can get your name on a red plaque by drinking 80 beers in 48 hours.

Since starting my passport, I’ve completed 16 out of 80 beers. Listed in approximate drinking order, they are:

1. Dogfish Head Aprihop
2. Newcastle Brown (bottled)
3. Anchor Steam (bottled)
4. Troeg’s Dreamweaver
5. Samuel Smith Oatmeal Stout (bottled)
6. Yuengling Porter
7. Victory Pils
8. Samuel Smith Nut Brown (bottled)
9. Troeg’s Rugged Trail
10. Shiner Bock
11. Dogfish Head Palo Santo
12. Stone Smoked Porter
13. Molson Canadian
14. Chimay White
15. Dogfish Head 90 minute IPA
16. Red Hook’s ESB (bottled)

Any on the list above not specified as bottled was on draft. Stay tuned through the year as I continue down through Zeno’s beer selection. Any beer suggestions you have for my passport are welcome, so long as they are actually available at Zeno’s.

ralford beer tasting beer, State College, Zeno's

Last week I encountered a limitation with using externals in SVN. It shows up when you are using the svn:externals property to bring a folder into your working copy, and when the folder you are bringing in uses the svn:externals property to bring in another folder whose path is no longer valid. In my case, the problem was caused by the second external referring to a path with an absolute link instead of a relative link – the absolute link was no longer valid.

Here’s an example.

Let’s say you have a project called Pizza which has the svn:externals property set to bring in a folder Pepperoni from revision 4500. The property looks like this:

-r 4500 http://server_name/meals/pizza/toppings/peperroni Pepperoni

And let’s say you want revision 4500, because the head of the trunk is at 4900, and features that were added to Pepperoni between 4500 and 4900 do not apply to the new Pizza project. The unique thing about the Pepperoni project is that it has subfolders for different spices and flavors: Salt, Pepper, and Smoke. The Smoke folder happens to be using the svn:externals property, and it looks like this:

-r 3222 http://server_name_old/meals/pepperoni/spices/smoke Smoke

Again, you want revision 3222, because features that were changed between 3222 and the 4900 (the top revision of the trunk) do not apply to your Pizza project.

If you noticed the difference in paths, you’ll see the external for the Smoke folder is using an old name of the server. Sometime between version 3222 and 4500, the server’s name changed from ’server_name_old’ to ’server_name’. Because of this, when you commit your Pizza project (with the svn:externals property set to bring in Pepperoni), the subfolder of Pepperoni, Smoke, which is being externalled in at a second level, will not see the old server name.

Because the svn:externals property applied to Pepperoni occurred back in time (at revision 3222), you can only correct the invalid absolute path by copying revision 3222 of Pepperoni to a branch, and adjusting the externals property to use the new server name. You wouldn’t want to keep it in the trunk as you’d lose the changes made between 3222 and 4900 (the head).

The URLs I show in the svn:externals above are absolute. In Subversion 1.5, relative externals were introduced, which allow you to external in a folder without naming the server. Here is the correct external, which uses a relative path to the repository root (without the server name):

-r 3222 ^/meals/pizza/toppings/peperroni Smoke

Using relative links with the svn:externals property will prevent broken external properties that happen as a result of dead (invalid) paths.

ralford hardware design software, SVN

This Thursday night at 7:30pm State College’s funk, soul and Motown band Hounds of Soul will be performing live for the first time at Tussey Mountain WingFest. We’ll be playing tunes of the 60s and 70s, and covering songs by Tower of Power, Blood Sweat and Tears, Stevie Wonder, Steely Dan and James Brown to name a few.

The nine piece band features a four piece horn section and includes members who have performed in State College and Altoona area bands such as Cliff Turner and the Afterburners, Cootie Brown, and SouthWEST.

If you are into funky music and like wings, come out to Boalsburg to see State College’s funkiest horn section. More information for the event can be found at the Tussey Mountain webpage. The band will also be performing at 8:00pm this Friday night at the Bellefonte Arts and Crafts Fair.

ralford music funk, Hounds of Soul, Motown, music, soul, WingFest

This has been an exciting summer of music…

On July 4th, Cootie Brown played at Central PA’s 4th Fest, which, come to think of it, was probably the biggest stage I’ve played to date. YouTube has some brief footage of us in front of Beaver Stadium.

A few weeks ago, I played my first wedding reception with Vitamin Funk. Towards the end of our set, a trombone and sax stood in with us, and we started into a blues instrumental. Also at the reception was The Lovin’ Spoonful’s John Sebastian. During the blues jam, he hopped on stage with us and wailed on the harmonica! I saw him play for the first time last year with David Grisman at the State Theatre, and have been listening to their folk recordings ever since. To say the least, playing music with him was surreal.

Throughout the summer, Dirty Superb has been playing about once a month at Pleasant Gap’s Red Horse Tavern, and we are going to be doing our first gig at Bar Bleu this week in State College. We are also now playing as backing musicians for Gina Riggio, and will be joining her for a set at the Bar Bleu show.

And finally, State College’s funk/soul/Motown band, the Hounds of Soul, will be making their debut this week at Tussey Mountain WingFest. If you enjoy the music of the 60’s and 70’s, and are into the powerful horn lines of Tower of Power and Blood Sweat and Tears come check us out!

Here’s August’s schedule so far:

• Dirty Superb and Gina Riggio: Monday 8/10 – at Bar Bleu (10:00pm)
• Hounds of Soul: Thursday 8/13 – Tussey Mountain WingFest (7:30pm)
• Hounds of Soul: Friday 8/14 – Bellefonte Arts and Crafts Fair (8:00pm)
• Hounds of Soul: Monday 8/17 – 2009 New York-Penn League All-Star Mountain Bash (7:30pm)

ralford music Bar Bleu, Cootie Brown, Dirty Superb, Hounds of Soul, music, Vitamin Funk

I’ve posted another track recorded by my old band, Ubiquitous Proprietors, called Where the Ceiling Meets the Floor. It may have been the last original we wrote, and was recorded about nine or ten years ago. It’s straight-up funk/rock, and is surely the song to listen to if you want to hear U.P.’s sound.

For me the song marks a sort-of milestone of where I was in life, reminding me of some extremely fun times, people, and places, all that I’ll never forget. It’s interesting how repeated listening to or playing music can capture memories from a time period.

Where the Ceiling Meets the Floor can be downloaded from the MP3 Goodness page.

ralford music memories, mp3, music, U.P.

Last week I used a Photoshop plugin to create a favicon.ico file for the Dirty Superb website. This was my first time making one, and it took me a while to get it looking right since I wanted the image to look decent at 16 x 16 pixels. I started with a 64 x 64 pixel image, and sharpened the edges before shrinking it (if you don’t sharpen the edges they can get lost or blurred when you shrink it). That didn’t work too well for me, so I settled for a simple two-color icon where sharpening wasn’t an issue.

Shortly after, I whipped up an icon for Ralford.net. When I had something that wasn’t horrible, I published it. A few days went by, and when I saw it next to the link on my Google Profile page, I thought it kind of looked like crap… so… I took it down. Today I checked out my Feedburner Subscriber count and saw it drastically went from a whopping 5 subscribers down to 1. Feedburner’s Subscribers chart showed me that this happened within a day or two of removing my favicon. Until I removed it, I’ve had a steady 4 to 5 “readers” (almost all of them bots) since creating this blog.

So I suppose the moral of the story is to not create a half-assed favicon the first time around. Get it right, publish it, and be satisfied. Though the Ralford.net favicon is still in the works, I’m rather happy with the first one I created. You can see it over at the Dirty Superb website.

ralford Uncategorized Dirty Superb, Feedburner, RSS, Wordpress