This is what I was greeted with when I attempted to watch a march headed downtown. Shortly there after the peaceful gathering was ruled an “unlawful assembly” and the police used intimidation techniques including an LRAD to chase the demonstrators away.

These law enforcement officers were here to protect and to serve their fellow citizens, but instead they intimidated and arrested people who were simply expressing their discontent with the G20.

This was happening on the other side of the police line I was behind after the police confronted the march.

I don’t know what would have happened had they allowed the march to continue, but this show of police intimidation continued through the night as a result. What started as a peaceful march escalated to students being arrested in Oakland, again for unlawful assembly and refusal to disperse.

Once back in the office I felt nauseated and thought I was just dehydrated. After some discussion with co-workers I believe that my nasea was caused by the LRAD device. The voice is terrifyingly calm and devoid of any emotion. I hope I never hear it again.

Later on that evening on my commute home I had a choice to make. I could either attempt to ride my normal route home which was blocked off by the police or ride through downtown. I chose to ride through downtown.

I headed towards downtown on Penn and talked with another cyclist on the way who was headed back to the South Hills. The detour required I cross the 16th street bridge and ride the trail to the 6th street bridge into downtown. The National Guard officers along the way were friendly and helpful.

Once downtown I was greeted with a ghost town.

I chatted with Ross for a few minutes at Liberty and Forbes where there was a line of busses held up because of the motorcades planning on leaving the city. He compared the police state in Pittsburgh to what it must be like in Iraq or Afghanistan.

A bus driver I talked with briefly said she had no idea how long she would be there. The busses on Boulevard of the Allies were stacked two across as far down as I could see.

The rest of my ride home was nice and calmly paced. Later that night I went to see Drugdealer at Howlers in Bloomfield, where only a couple hours earlier the protesters were being told to disperse by the police.

What I experienced that day was like nothing else I have ever experienced.

At the office we are responsible for managing our source code in Subversion. Since no one here is all that familiar with Subversion I had to do some research and bug Matthew to find out how to merge back and forth from trunk to branch.

This is a little cheat sheet that I added to our wiki as well.

svn merge

These are command line processes.

Merge a branch back to the trunk

• From the branch, svn log –stop-on-copy, this returns the revision number where the branch began (XXXX)
• From trunk, svn update which will return the last revision number (YYYY)
• From trunk, svn merge -r XXXX:YYYY path/to/branch where XXXX is the branch’s revision and YYYY is the latest revision
• Last but not least svn commit the changes back into trunk with a nice message

Merge from trunk to a branch

• From the branch, svn log –stop-on-copy, this returns the revision number where the branch began (XXXX)
• From trunk, svn update which will return the last revision number (YYYY)
• From the branch, svn merge -r XXXX:YYYY path/to/trunk where XXXX is the branch’s revision and YYYY is the latest revision
• svn commit

For both of these processes I have had more success going directory to directory, example merge the web directory and the src directory separately. Also be sure to svn update both the branch and the trunk to be sure you have the latest source code.

Southwest Airlines has this sweet new service called Early Bird Check-in. It works like this, you give them $10 for each leg of your trip and they will reserve a seat for you!

Other airlines already do this. It’s called reserving a seat.

Recently I have had some issues with some older files having a lock that couldn’t be removed using the info panel.

The issue was two fold, first I had to remove the lock. After searching around I found this command, “chflags -R nouchg.” I typed that into Terminal and dragged the file into the window which removed the lock so I could now at least open the file again.

The next issue was the fact that I was no longer the user allowed to edit the file. Using the info panel I had to add myself as a user and add the permissions “Read and Write.”

I had to do this for about 40 files one by one but at least I could edit the files again.

This in response to J. HENTOSZ

From what I understand, anyone driving a car in the streets is to follow the rules of the road — stop at red lights, no turn on red, yield, etc.

I see these guys/ladies running red lights, not even stopping, breaking the law. It’s like they do whatever they want, and when they hit someone it’s automatically the other persons fault for being in their way!

I don’t understand how you’re supposed to share the road with a person in a car going 55 mph in a 35 mph zone. It’s idiotic, and you should not be able to drive a on the street if you can’t follow the law and drive safely.

It’s a danger to other drivers, pedestrians and themselves if they can’t just slow down for five seconds of their day.

I am sorry.

I am sorry that I touched your car. I really am. You see, I was trying so hard to stay out of the way of the cars and busses to the left of me doing 35 mph that I forgot to also pay attention to what was coming from behind me. When you passed me within inches of my handlebar you scared me and I acted out by slapping the back of your car. A love tap really. Why you couldn’t wait the five seconds for me to clear the intersection and reach the bike lane is irrelevant. I acted out and I am sorry.

When you abandoned your turn, cut off a lane of traffic, stopped in front of me and got out of your car I realized the mistake I made. But again that is irrelevant and I am sorry.

I learned my lesson. You taught me good.

Next time I will take up the entire lane rather than just the portion I was taking up so you can’t pass me so closely and risk my life in doing so.

All sarcasm aside I am honestly upset over my behavior.

I am in the market for a steel single speed road bike. I am looking for a fun urban bike for commuting, general city riding and maybe some rails to trails rides with Monica.

I have narrowed it down to the following, all have rack and fender mounts, are steel and are single speeds.

Bianchi San Jose link
Pros:

• Can add disc brakes for winter riding
• It’s a cyclocross bike so it’s more rugged

Cons:

• Maybe not as “fun” a ride
• Can not be set up geared

Salsa Casseroll link
Pros:

• Can be set up geared
• More “fun” of a ride

Cons:

• No disc brakes

Redline 925 link
Pros:

• Cheap
• Comes with fenders

Cons:

• Maybe too safe
• Not sure I like bullhorn handle bars

I found this video on Jeff’s blog and found it to be really inspiring. It is especially relevant since I was just reading about the Flip Mino HD camera he used to shoot it with.

He proves you can do a lot with a little, he cleverly glued a wide angle lens to his Mino camera, and still create something meaningful and beautiful.