Corripio

Life and death

2012-01-16T08:25:00.000-05:00

Someone somewhere is fighting for their life, lying down, taking slow and painful breaths, thinking about the final moment. Their eyes are sad, maybe peaceful, they may be scared. Even if it is a dog, it is still a living being and it knows when its life is on the line.

Tidbits

2012-01-02T09:15:00.001-05:00

One has to be careful of what they put into their body. I am officially quitting Starbucks, milk, meat, fats and sugars. This may be an experiment in futility but I'll be damn if I ever see a doctor again. That's a promise.

Texas weather

2011-12-13T22:02:00.001-05:00

So, we finally made the move to Texas (Austin area) in October 2011. Florida was rainy, wet etc. Texas had its biggest drought in 100+ years. Well, we moved here and guess what? It has been freaking raining almost every single day! 5+ inches and counting. I am so sick of this damn weather crap, it's not even funny... Actively wishing and thinking of going back to Florida, at least the ocean was close by...

Signed,
Pissed off in Texas

Nice introduction to GIT

2011-08-27T09:37:00.001-05:00

These days knowing how to program and then knowing how to program in a certain language is paramount if you are a software engineer (obviously). Equally important is knowing how to use source versioning tools. Having a github account can almost serve as a resume for quite a few software shops. Thus, learning tools like Git and how to use websites like github optimally will increase your chances of employment...

Here is a nice Git introduction - tutorial...It is linked to from the beginner pages of github anyways ;)

Hmmm - Haskell and Quadcopters - what's not to like? :)

2011-06-23T21:31:00.001-05:00

Here...

Checking in

2010-08-16T06:59:00.002-05:00

A lot has happened since we got back from GA. We went for a horse back riding trip to Wyoming's Wind River Valley with Ed Dabney and 18 other people. Ed trailered our horses up there, we flew into Jackson Hole and then drove to Dubois where we met the convoy (yes, it was a convoy of eight horse trailers!). We spent a wonderful week in the wilderness just hanging out with everyone, riding in the some of the most beautiful scenery this country has to offer. Slept in an ultra light two person REI tent with a zero-degree sleeping bag. The temps were in the 40s during the night and high 70s and low 80s during the day. Humidity was low (yes!). WY is an "open carry" state which allowed me to wear my Ruger Vaquero 45 LC single action in a holster in plain view! That feeling alone is awesome!

The camp had primitive facilities, no running water, just a pit toilet that was amazingly clean.

After WY we spent a night in Dubois - this town is beautiful western town. The next day we drove to Jackson Hole, rented a one-way car from Hertz and drove down to Albuquerque. We initially reserved a full-size vehicle but because the Jackson Hole location was privately owned, they did not want to part with their full size new car and instead offered a Corolla with 50K miles on it or a brand new tiny Yarris. We took the Yarris and that puppy held up great! Drove through Rock Springs, WY on to Cheyenne to meet I-25 down through Colorado and into New Mexico. Stopped a bit in Ft Collins, CO which has a beautiful downtown full of restaurants, bars and shops.

The drive through CO was uneventful except a huge rain storm close to Trinidad. After that we rode into NM and rain followed us for a while. Drove through Raton, NM which is very scenic. One observation through NM is the amount of mobile homes, many of them in disarray!

We spend the night in Albuquerque, making sure we had dinner in our favorite restaurant - the "Flying Star". The next morning we went on south on I-25 down to Truth or Consequences and then on to Hillsboro. Hillsboro is the start of the Gila Natl Forest, it is a quaint town with population of about 150. Has two cafes (ate a great lunch at one of them), a gallery and a post office. It is about 40 miles from Silver City (our destination) but the road winds through the Gila Forest and some quite scary switchbacks in the mountains. It took about an hour and a half to cross the 40 miles! Silver City was alright, it is an old mining town with a lot of history and a historic downtown. About 10,000 people live in it and it has all the services of a bigger town, including chain restaurants and a Walmart. It also has a "drag" downtown where we saw a bunch of Latino folks drive around looking all "gangsta" and playing loud music out of their cars.

5 miles north of SC is the community of Pinos Altos - there is a historic Opera House (still functioning!), an old saloon and a museum in town. Worth a visit.

At the end we looked at a property in Mimbres, about 30 minutes away from SC in the Mimbres Valley. This house was on 2.5 acres and its back gate opened into the natl. forest!

All in all, a great trip!!! Can't wait to move out West.

Sarge and I

2010-07-19T08:21:00.002-05:00

My boy and I...

Back from the GA trip

2010-07-14T13:21:00.001-05:00

We are back from Georgia, it was awesome, we got to ride, ride ride!!! We also got to know our horses better and hang out with some very nice folks (thanks Ed, Dan, Ramona, Madeline, William, Elizabeth and Marcus!). In ten or so days we will be setting out for an even bigger adventure - our first trip to Wyoming! We will be riding our horses in the real wilderness with Ed, Dan and 15 other riders and horses, camping in the middle of nowhere and just enjoying nature. We are in the process of buying all the necessary supplies, a new rifle, handguns (yes, we have a CCW now!), ammo etc. After WY we will spend a few days in New Mexico just chilling out and looking at some properties. A LOT more pics to follow!

Ognen/Dacia

Happy first 7 days of vacation!

2010-07-04T10:55:00.003-05:00

Here are some selected photos of our vacation in GA:

New Saddles

2010-06-17T10:21:00.002-05:00

Dacia and I ordered our new saddles from SouthernTrails. They are A-fork wades - the photo is above. I must say I love the way it looks (old school). Apparently the saddle maker is old-school too.

New horse pics

2010-06-17T09:06:00.003-05:00

A lot has happened in the last week or so. We went to Ed's place in Dacula for a weekend and did some horseback riding. Here are the photos to prove it!

Here is my favorite (Dan is in front):

A little friend we found on the beach today

2010-06-06T20:24:00.002-05:00

Pesticides and your food

2010-06-01T05:41:00.002-05:00

Here is a list of fruits and vegetables that are non-organic and doused in pesticides. Along that is a list of things you can eat that is not so bad.

List

Small scale farming in the city

2010-05-25T08:44:00.001-05:00

Here is a guy who makes sense:

http://www.farmandranchliving.com/2007/DJ07/feature06.asp?RefURL=&KeyCode=&tdate=&PMCode=&OrgURL

Also, there is the Urban Homestead - they grow 6,000 lbs of vegetables and fruits on 1/10th of an acre!!

Fascinating.
OD

Another loss of our freedoms

2010-05-21T08:04:00.002-05:00

The Senate recently passed a bill (in a pretty sleazy way) to allow extracting DNA from any US citizen who was arrested on suspicion of a crime but NOT convicted of it. Read more here. What ever happened to "innocent until proven guilty"?

One of the most beautiful places on Earth

2010-04-30T12:10:00.001-05:00

Galicica national park around Ohrid, Macedonia.

Bah

2010-04-30T06:21:00.001-05:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10092320.stm

Oil slick off of Louisiana

2010-04-30T05:41:00.003-05:00

Disgusting is the word. Sadly, people here are so stupid and paralyzed with inertia, so dumb and glued to their TVs so much and they care so little. By tomorrow, these news will be replaced with some celebrity scandal and that will be it, all forgotten. Sad state of the American (wo)man.

Cob building

2010-04-29T14:49:00.002-05:00

A little post over at GoCountryRural about building with cob. I bought two books about it - very interested in getting my hands dirty (no pun intended).

Photos from Georgia trip

2010-03-09T21:36:00.002-05:00

Here they are

Enjoy!
OD

Visiting our horses

2010-03-05T12:43:00.001-05:00

This weekend we are flying up to Dacula, GA to visit our horses and get some training from Ed Dabney (http://www.eddabney.com).

Pics on return.

OD

New leaf

2010-03-05T12:40:00.002-05:00

It has been a while since I have had anything to say. It has been years since I have done anything with myself. I was meant to do something better than slowly die in a stupid office job I hate, surrounded by greedy, self-indulgent people. So, I am making changes. I will dedicate myself to what I think makes me happy and I wont care about what anyone thinks. That's a promise.

Don't be surprised to see a posting soon that says "I quit the dumbass high-paying job".

Oh, yeah, expect daily posts from now on.

OD

Mom and Dad here

2009-12-31T13:48:00.001-05:00

Mom and Dad arrived a few weeks back and Dad is now busy working the garden. The zucchini we planted is almost dead - eaten by some kind of a pest caterpillar. Dad has been busy preparing a corner of the garden for planting and some peppers and eggplants went in a few days back.

Fluxbox

2009-12-31T13:46:00.003-05:00

I installed fluxbox on my FreeBSD 8 running Sony Vaio laptop. I always liked it and after going through kde and xfce4, this is it.

Not to self for future reference: installing a background image using fbsetbg does not work as expected when done remotely. Namely, the lastwallpaper file remembers that the host screen was :0:0, not just 0:0.

heh.

Haskell platform and FreeBSD 8

2009-12-14T11:09:00.003-05:00

Alright - I bit the bullet and installed FreeBSD 8 on my Vaio. I have been learning Haskell for a while and decided to install it on the laptop. ghc comes in the ports and that part was easy. Then I downloaded the haskell-platform and tried to compile it. A simple gmake will not do since there is an issue with one of the packages in the platform - namely the editline-0.2.1.0 - it apparently depends on libreadline. I tried the one in ports and I tried this libedit but none of the worked. I fiddled with copying include files between /usr/local/include and /usr/include, making symbolic links beween /usr/local/lib and /usr/lib but to no avail. At the end, I deleted the editline subdirrectory out of the whole platform and I also removed it from the platform.packages file that comes in the .tar.gz. With this out of the way and with a bunch of OpenGL libraries installed out of the /usr/ports, the Haskell platform compiled happily.

Next was cabal. It compiled with no issues and installed itself in ~/.cabal/bin. I proceeded with cabal update and then cabal install cabal-install. My final goal was to do cabal install GLFW (a Haskell binding for glfw which I installed from /usr/ports). This failed with a complaint of a missing platform.h which was included from internal.h included from enable.c. The solution was to do the following: go into .cabal/packages/hackage.haskell.org/GLFW and do tar -xzf on the .tar.gz in there. This produced a subdirectory named GLFW-0.4.1, I went in there and then to its subdir glfw/lib. In there was the enable.c and internal.h. A change needs to be made to internal.h where #include "platform.h" is changed to #include . I then copied x11/platform.h to /usr/include (as root) and suddenly cabal install GLFW worked. Voila!

Bah

2009-12-07T15:36:00.000-05:00

For all of you who care, I have been suffering from some kind of pneumonia for a week now. It sucks.

The sky caught from my office during a storm

2009-11-27T22:48:00.002-05:00

An evening with Friends

2009-11-27T22:37:00.003-05:00

Some photos@Carmines with good friends:

First ride on Finality

2009-11-27T22:36:00.003-05:00

Here are some photos on Picasa of my first ride with Finality:
http://picasaweb.google.com/ognen.duzlevski/FinalityFirstRide#

Finality's first photos

2009-11-16T09:16:00.003-05:00

She is finally here:

Planting time

2009-11-16T09:06:00.003-05:00

A few zucchinis went into the ground today. We grew them from seeds (variety: Black Beauty).

Yard news

2009-10-31T14:30:00.003-05:00

Our Silk Floss tree, native to Brasil and Argentina, is finally flowering!

New bathroom finally done!

2009-10-31T14:08:00.003-05:00

Boss is supervising my yard work

2009-10-25T19:01:00.003-05:00

Alright, I hope this guy at least has a work permit...

You missed a spot....right over there!

Of horses, training and horse trainers

2009-09-08T08:09:00.009-05:00

I have been meaning to write this article for a while, just never got around to it. My horse experience starts in January 2008 - 21 months ago when Dacia and I adopted two horses from a local rescue. The rescue buys these animals at slaughter auctions and then adopts them out for a fee to people like me. Some would call this a business, not a rescue but that is not my call. Be it as it may, we each paid $1500 per horse plus $600/month in training fees. As many people soon learn, training is a very flexible term, in our case the trainer trained the horses by sitting in his golf cart, smoking and watching them run around on their own. On top of that, my horse who came in emaciated and ill was turned out with a particularly unfriendly mare. After a few weeks of her tutoring, this 3-year old got all the bad habits such as ear pinning at people around feeding time. We decided that the "training" method was not up to our standards and took the horses home. For a while we sat there and looked at them, acting as human food dispensers. My horse gained some weight and we decided to hire a local trainer to break them. You would be surprised at the plethora of individuals that will come to your place calling themselves horse trainers! One showed up with a pouch full of grain and treated the horse every time he did something right. Needless to say, she was ruled out. The next one got too close to Dacia's horse and got grazed by his kick. Needless to say, she was out too. One "trainer" would not even get into the paddock, he just looked at them and said "I will fix them up for you". "No thanks!" is what we said. Then our first farrier offered some training. We said "please stick to farrying". Finally, we ran into a normal person who lived about ten miles away on a ten acre property - she took them in and did three months of training, ponying them on local trails. When we got them, they were green-broke but ridable in a mechanical hackamore, which is what she used. We took them up and down the street and on a few trails and they did alright, but as anyone with any experience will know - once you start with a trainer you never really end. So, she was called in to our place quite a few times to fix this and that, charging every time per hour what you would expect a surgeon or a lawyer to charge. Needless to say, we were done with that quickly too (our decision was also helped by me being bucked off my horse when he reared after being asked to cross a puddle of water).

So, we decided to seek out a "reputable trainer with a certification of some sort". We had already invested a few hundred dollars in John Lyons DVDs and it seemed logical to just go that route. After all, John Lyons is "America's most trusted horseman". Every year he handpicks a group of people and they pay good money to get certified under him and to have the right to use his good name with clients. However, everyone gets the certification at the end and John is not really responsible for what people do with that piece of paper.

After interviewing a few certified trainers, we zeroed in on one across the state, about 200 miles away from home, in Bradenton, Florida. This particular trainer teaches the clinics with John and Josh Lyons in Colorado and seems (or seemed) to be reputable. We came out for a private clinic (cost us about $900 for two days) and he did an evaluation with our horses. As one would expect, after the evaluation the conclusion was that both horses and us would need training. He had just the solution for us - an apprenticeship, $5,000 per person that spans six months, includes 15 "core days" and up to ten "study days" a month on his property where during core days both our horses and us would get undivided attention of the trainer. After a few horror stories about what happens to untrained people with untrained horses on trails, we were scared and hooked. We thought to ourselves, "what idiots we were to go on trail rides untrained!". We thought, "here is a guy who offers a methodology that is almost scientific, it is a question-answer communication with the horse, it all makes sense". Together we spent a few hours at the end of the weekend laughing about backyard trainers who know nothing but take your money, old cowboy "daddy taught me and his daddy taught him" horse training methods - the kind of discussion you usually have when you hire a plumber and he sees your setup at home and asks "what idiot plumber did this one???".

Anyways, the six months came and went, there were a lot of weekends of driving across the state with our horses, staying at hotels and eating out. Being that we both work, weekends were our only options, with a possibility of a dedicated vacation down the road.

However, by the end of the apprenticeship, it became apparent that weekend training in the arena was not going to cut it. (We didn't know it yet but we were coming to learn an old truth: you need to use your horse every day to get him to really bond with you and respond to you.)

At the time, we didn't know that. So, we decided to take a two week vacation and finish our apprenticeship there - we would work every day with our horses - that should make them better, right? To accelerate our progress we even left our horses with the trainer for a month prior to our vacation - so that they could get ahead with the training. Notice that the original sales pitch was that in six months we would train our horses no matter what! Well, once you get invested in the process you can't just stop. You forget what was promised and because you spent so much time and money already, it comes natural that you should spend more money, do the right thing and have the trainer work with your horses before you show up for your two weeks. The logic is that you want to come there and the horses should be maximally ready for you to learn on them.

I will not go into the gruesome detail of what happened during the vacation, but will mention that by this point the trainer had a group of people in the apprenticeship with their own horses and problems and he had also gone into a starting of a business where he would buy quarter horses from Idaho, train them at home and sell them to people as finished horses for quite a handsome amount of money (he was actually gone to Idaho for a week out of the month we paid him to train the horses - his hired apprentice supposedly worked with our horses that week). During that process he had maybe lost some interest in us being that we were the pesky little people with constant problems and questions. Compared to training his horses in peace and quiet and selling them for handsome profit, we probably looked pretty unappealing.

When we showed up at his property, it was dead of summer in Florida, our horses were sitting in a small round pen in mud up to their knees, covered in flies and my horse had lost a huge amount of weight - he looked like a rescue case again. Being nice and polite that we are, we did not say anything. We did get the trainer to move my horse into a shaded stall and he slowly gained back some lost weight. Needless to say, the whole property was filthy, overgrown with grass, covered in huge puddles of water from the excessive rain we had received and most of the horses looked filthy and plain pitiful.

After my horse spent a few days of our vacation just resting and eating, we started on the work. The remaining days were alright for one big exception: my horse would rear when frightened. We put him through a few basic situations and were able to bring out the behavior. I complained to the trainer but he dismissed it by saying that my horse is the best horse on his property and that he would always pick him for the trail ride if he had a choice. Being a beginner, I believed him. My wife's horse had by then had a problem he had always had - pulling on the bit in a direction opposite of where my wife would ask him to go. The trainer blamed my wife's lack of riding skills on this one. She apparently had "below average timing". At that time we never went back and questioned him on his statements that a truly trained horse should "move automatically when I pick up the rains, no questions asked". He claimed our horse was trained so this should be the expectation, right? Well, being beginners, we did not dare question our fearless trainer-leader.

At this point I need to mention that all the horses on his property also had bad feet and were constantly lacking water - to this day it is not clear to me if this was his training method (break their spirit by withholding water and food) or was it pure negligence.

To top our experience off, the trainer took us to the trail head on the last day. We got there, he told us to leave the horses in the trailer (it was around noon on a hot Florida summer day) and he took us on foot to show us the trail (why? I don't know!). 45 minutes later we came back to the trailer (we were starting to worry about the horses in the trailer boiling in the heat but he wasn't worried at all so we went along thinking he knows better than us), we got the horses out and mounted them. Finally, we thought, a trail ride! We had trained for this in the arena for months! Well, it was not to be. We rode around the trailer a bit to get the horses accustomed to the new situation and then "called it a success" as the trainer put it, and went home.

When we got back to his place we decided to leave the horses for two more months of training at his property. At this point, the trainer swore, "they are ready to be trail ridden". However, to get the most of their training, it would be wise to leave them for at least a month or two. We opted for that and with the $2,100 for that month, our total bill with this trainer was around $14,000, without all the expenses of every single trip across the state (gas, hotel, food etc...). We thought, one more month and we will be enjoying the trails!

Well, a month later we had another $900 private one day clinic (see, that's excess of $100/hour the man charges for his services!) and we went to the trail one more time. You guessed it by now, we never rode on the trail, just around the staging area and the trailer. But, we took our horses home, happy and thinking that we will be on the local trails soon!

What happened next was interesting. A few days into our horses being back, we started riding them in our backyard, where they live day-to-day. I decided to take my horse through a puddle, he braced and I could feel he got very nervous. Not wanting to provoke another blowout I dismounted and proceeded to put the halter and lead rope on and asked him (using a stick) to go through the water. To that he violently reared twice and kicked out at me, missing me by a foot or so. I decided to not dare devil anymore and call it quits so I started walking towards the barn. As soon as I made another step, he reared up again. So, there I was, at least $22,000+ later in training fees (first and second trainer together) and I have a rearing, violently dangerous horse! My wife did not fare better either, her horse is not spooky but braces on the bit and pulls in the opposite direction every time when asked to turn in a trot. He has learned this behavior so well that he is willing to take the rider into obstacles, trees, bushes, rocks etc., knowing that the rider will soon give up on the request and the horse will be let off the hook from working. In my opinion, both behaviors are almost equally dangerous, only my horse's rearing is very violent and looks very scary.

Do you want to guess the reaction of our trainer when told about our problems? Well, you don't have to - I will tell you. To paraphrase him: " I am proud of the training I did with your horses, they are good horses. You should not have played roulette by asking your horse to go through a puddle.". He also got very offended that I was questioning his expertise. Gee, you think $14,000 later I would have the right to ask what was done with my horse during the two months of training at his facility. To this day I received no answer - he was pretty unwilling to share what exercises were done with our horses during the training. From what anecdotal evidence we have from other apprentices, the horses were always ridden by his hired help, not him. He denied that claim too, saying that he personally works with every horse on his property. Funny as it may sound, during our two weeks vacation there, he never worked with anyone's horse. In fact, come to think of it, we only saw him ride a horse once or twice.

Conclusion

My wife and I think we did the right thing by seeking to educate ourselves and train our horses. We sought out trainers, paid them handsomely and put in our time (you can imagine our house was in disarray most of the time since we traveled every weekend to train and worked throughout the week, we had also packed on some weight due to lack of time to exercise). It is not like we paid people to train our horses and went off to the beach or sat on the side and whined all the time.

So, here is a list of things I have learned in the 21 months of horse ownership:

1. Just because someone says they are a horse trainer, does not mean they are.
2. Just because someone has a certification in horse training, does not mean that piece of paper carries any weight.
3. Just because you pay someone a lot of money does not mean they will do a good job.
4. When your trainer does not show up on time or shows up on time but starts late with your session, it is a red flag - you are paying him for this time and he is using it to do something else.
5. Next time you enter into a deal with someone, get all the details right - in our case a "core day" was actually three hours of training time. We heard that now the trainer shortened the core days to 1.5 hours length. You got to wonder why it is called a core DAY, don't you?
6. When you show up at someone's facility and your horse has lost 200 lbs and looks pitiful, call the authorities and take your horse home. Take lots of photos of everything and later you should probably consider legal action against the trainer, if nothing else just to teach them a lesson.
7. Your trainer's facility should always be in tip-top shape, clean and inviting. The grass should always be cut, the manure should always be cleaned out of pasture or it should be spread to dry. Lack of any of these is a red flag and shows disrespect for the paying clients.
8. Your trainer's truck should be neat and clean - not a pig sty. It shows attention to detail on his/her part. The only reason I mention this is because the trainer asked us to drive his truck once and boy, I got to tell you, my horses stalls looked cleaner than that.
9. The appearance of the training facility is a direct measure of the respect the trainer has for his clients. (see 7. and 8.)
10. Even though you think you are a beginner, don't let someone walk all over you with their "knowledge and experience". When things don't sound right or you have a gut feeling about something - go with it and voice your concerns.
11. Don't be worried about looking like the typical whining client that everybody hates. Remember, the squeaky wheel gets all the grease.
12. When you see someone else's horses without water and food, assume the same thing will happen to your horse tomorrow when you are gone. To lazy trainers you are not special. They will feed and water your horse on time just because you are there. Once you leave, the practice will stop and they will revert back to their routine.
13. Maybe your trainer does not believe in brushing or bathing the horse once he or his helpers are done riding. They may not believe in picking/cleaning their hoofs either. But, if you do, make that known to the trainer and demand that it happens. If not, leave.
14. Any trainer who will not email you or call you daily to report on the progress of your horse's training is not worth your money. The trainer should be able to produce a log of daily exercises done with your horse and demonstrate these on demand successfully.
15. Beware of promises. When the trainer says "your horse will do this when he is done with training", write it down and ask for the trainer to show you what has been taught before taking the horse home. Or show up periodically to check on the progress yourself by asking the trainer to demonstrate the exercises worked on. It is very easy for the lazy, dishonest trainer to promise a lot and deliver nothing, as in our case.
16. Horse clinicians are people who scare you into spending money on DVDs and clinics. Most of them barely ever ride. My trainer's horse had not been ridden in months and was only "tuned-up" before demonstrations and clinics. He who does not ride every day...
17. Most of your horse's problems come from lack of use. Use your horse!
18. Do not be a human food dispenser. Don't make your only interaction with your horse be the act of feeding him/her. It will not end up well for you.
19. If you can, have a pasture for your horse. That way he can feed himself and you are eliminating the "love for food" portion of your relationship with your horse.
20. There are good horses out there. But, the majority are bad and spoiled and definitely not worked enough.
21. Trail training starts in the arena BUT it does not end in it. Beware of any trainer who tells you that he/she can train your horse for the trails in the arena. They are either incompetent, lazy or plain lying.
22. You need not tippy-toe around a truly trained horse. They should do what you ask them to do without any fuss. Beware of the trainer who is constantly keeping you only in "safe" areas where the horse is dull and bored. Once you take the horse out to a new area, it might be a new horse you are dealing with. They should be trained everywhere!
23. Everyone is doing natural horsemanship now and most of these people laugh at the cowboys working cattle on ranches. Apparently these brutes beat their horses into submission. I don't know what is the truth (never been on a ranch) but I do know that a cowboy spends days in the saddle and comes home at night to tell about it. Whose horse would you rather have, the arena clinician's or the cowboy's?
24. Ask your trainer to video-tape his sessions. He should invest in a good, inexpensive camera - if he is truly competent he should have no problems showing you what he did day-to-day.
25. Go with your gut feeling. This applies to people and horses.

My $0.02.
Ognen

Healthcare reform - my $0.02

2009-08-12T09:58:00.010-05:00

This is a public reply to John Mackeys' op-ed in WSJ (can be found at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052970204251404574342170072865070.html).

Sir, some of your suggestions sound alright. However, your company is hardly the measuring stick for the whole country: every time I have gone to WholeFoods, the pace is relaxed, the employees are under no pressure or stress, they are all fit and thin and I am betting they don't kill themselves with overtime either. They also have access to healthy foods, I am betting at better prices than the rest of us. The root cause of obesity and general lack of health in America is not lack of exercise or a lifestyle choice (as you so over-simplistically make it sound), it is the following quartet of reasons:

1. Most Americans are slaves to their jobs. I need not look further than my wife - she is an educated veterinarian with a BSc in Biology. In her field/job it is common to work 12 hour days, leave the home at 7 am and come home at 7 or 8 pm. When she does get home, she is drained of any desire to work out, especially after not having the time to eat lunch! (You would think with all her degrees she would have a choice, what about the majority of America without a college degree?). Even though her official work hours are 8-5, she NEVER EVER gets home on time. She is also on-call at night, one week of the month. This is her third job with the same hours. Find one employee at Wholefoods that has these hours, please. However, most of America is doing this, juggling children and maybe working an extra job to be able to afford something like a vacation or basic medical care. So, do not tell me it is a lifestyle choice. The solution to this, in my opinion, is to legally prevent employers from making their employees stay at work after 5 pm. The employee should be able to stay IF THEY WANT TO and get paid for it too. But don't just offer me a choice of getting paid for the extra time or getting fired for not wanting to work the extra hours. Only then will it be a lifestyle choice.

2. The environment is polluted with all sorts of chemicals outside of our own individual control. Just because the coal company swears its products are safe and just because today's science says the paint in my bedroom is not toxic, does not mean it is true. We have been shown over and over that what science thought was harmless at a point t in time proved not to be true at point t+x in time. Nobody can measure the effects of our surroundings on our bodies and clearly that needs to be factored into the lifestyle. Most Americans cannot afford the wall-paint that you can, they also cannot afford to move far away from the county garbage disposal facility, the county water treatment plant or the local pig farm that seeps antibiotic and hormone infested manure into their soil or water. Most of us also have no control over the amount of pesticide and chemicals that go into our food chain simply because we do not produce our food. We also cannot control the acid-rain that goes into our garden or water supply or the amount of sewage that seeps into our water table.

3. The price of organic, healthy food is much higher than the conventionally grown food. You should know, you are making billions off of the backs of "health-conscious" Americans. I consider myself to be a middle-class professional who can afford the organic foods you sell but honestly, how many of us can, on an everyday basis, especially families of four or more? My bills at Wholefoods are almost twice what I pay at the local grocery chain and oftentimes I come home with less food! So you tell me, how am I to make that healthy choice if I can barely afford rent and gas? Add to that the cheapness and the overabundance of the processed junk out there and the choice for many is clear. Oh yeah, isn't the basic reason d'etre of Wholefoods the abundance of the cheap processed junk? If organically grown food was as cheap and accessible to everyone you really would not have much of a business model now, would you?

4. Urban planning: have you ever noticed how people in New York City, Boston, Chicago or Seattle just look slimmer? Well, they walk a lot! So do all the Europeans we so much cite for their health. You cannot expect to build a suburb 40 miles outside of town and basically create vehicle-bound invalids out of everyone living there, making them spend half their day in traffic, work overtime, only to expect them to find the time to exercise afterwards. Sorry, ain't gonna happen. Even if you are a stay-at-home Mom with three school-age children, the amount of driving you would have to do in one day to get them all to their schools and practices and all the other activities in INSANE. Fix that first, allow people to walk everywhere (work, school etc.) and you will instantly get an exercising nation.

You talk of the need to have transparency in medical treatment charges. That means you must have looked at a bill or two in this department. Assuming that you have, show me one industry where a pill of aspirin costs $10 in a hospital when I can buy a bottle of 50 in my grocery store for $4? My calculator says that is a hospital profit of 12500%. If that is not price gouging I don't know what is. But yet we all turn a blind eye to it and the insurance company pays the bill. You know why? Cause I as a consumer will pay it at the end. The winners in this "war" are always the insurance companies and pharmaceutical manufacturers. Hey, Aspirin is a 100-year old medication and it still sells for $4-5/bottle. You would think by now it would be $0.5/bottle.

Show me one industry that makes the profit margins that the pharmaceuticals do on the volume that that industry has. If your car manufacturers had those margins - your average Honda would probably cost $4 million a piece. Also do not forget that a lot of drug research happens to be funded by tax-payer money through University programs only to end up producing wild profits for the pharma companies for years to come. Don't you find that a bit perverted?

You speak of the market regulating itself to a correct solution and you also sound like you believe that the correct solution can be reached if the market is left to itself. Well, let me ask you this question: if the processed food is so bad for you and the organic food is so good for you - how come the market has not regulated itself to the desired position of all of us eating cheap organic food? I mean, the correct solution would be to have healthy and cheap food for everyone, right?

I also see you want to allow people to donate money to the less-fortunate uninsureds. Sir, I already pay taxes! That should count for something (I consider that my "donation" to society).

Finally, I ask you, why not lower your own profit margins at Wholefoods and help the nation eat organic and healthy? Make the lifestyle choice for the rest of us easier.

Bathroom work

2009-08-08T16:31:00.003-05:00

Here are some pics after we demolished most of the bathroom. The new impact window is in and now we are off to leveling the floor which is severely out of level. After that I will be building a standalone composting toilet - no sense in wasting drinking water to put out waste back into the same drinking water supply onto to have to purify it to be able to drink it. Plus, our waste makes great compost!

Garden growing

2009-08-04T06:50:00.003-05:00

Well, we have been hard at work at growing our garden! Bought another avocado tree, two citrus trees, a fig tree, a raspberry bush and a muscadine grape and a small pineaple plant. Yesterday was the big planting day and we did some new flower beds. Dacia is a smartie artist and she asked me to not give up my old tires - instead she created flower beds out of them!

Some photos are at http://picasaweb.google.com/ognen.duzlevski/GardenPhotosAug2009#

We also had this guy to assist us!

Cheers,

Some riding photos

2009-06-22T08:13:00.004-05:00

Some riding photos from Bradenton this Saturday. The horses are doing great and we can't wait to finish the training and set off onto the trails...I think I am ready to become a wrangler ;)

This is more like it

2009-06-08T08:27:00.002-05:00

Nasty, nasty weather outside

2009-06-05T15:09:00.001-05:00

We are under thunderstorm watch (what's new?) - this is the view from my office now (usually you see the rich people on the yachts in the ocean).

Where is Cash?

2009-06-04T10:20:00.002-05:00

There is a guy called "Cash" from Dallas, TX. He used to call us to see how we are doing but no more?

I love this one!

2009-05-28T06:15:00.003-05:00

I was playing with the camera this Saturday and caught Coyote in this photo - hope you like it!

Memorial day weekend in Bradenton

2009-05-28T06:06:00.005-05:00

The new Billy Cook saddle makes a lot of difference both for me and Coyote!

I like this one - there are a lot of us in it :)

Finally, Dacia is happy playing with Flippee too

The rest of the photos are here

Nasty, nasty weather

2009-05-23T07:36:00.002-05:00

It has been raining for the past week NON-STOP!!! Could not go running, could not go riding, nothing. We are prisoners in our own homes.

I bought a new saddle so the two ones I own are now up for sale on e-bay. The Australian saddle is really nice but just did not fit Coyote. Speaking of whom, he has some discharge coming out of his right nostril again so on Tuesday we are taking him to Ocala for a recheck.

Cash, if you are reading this - did you lose your cell phone? ;)

OD

Interesting CS reads

2009-05-11T14:40:00.001-05:00

Funny history of computer languages:
http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html

Something a bit more serious:
http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html

OD

Coyote and Flippee get to do some work

2009-05-11T11:37:00.011-05:00

So, this weekend we did a lot of work with our horses. James is the best trainer ever, he explains everything so that anyone with some common sense can understand why the horse is doing what it is doing. Since Dacia and I are not bronc riders, we would like to have a safe and predictable experience with our horses.

Here we are getting ready for the trip:

Very focused on getting the truck ready...

The boys are snacking happily on the way to James.

We even found some time to do some jogging in Lakewood Ranch. The area is quiet and pretty, so we could not resist Starbucks after our jog.

We even saw someone else exercising near Starbucks!

Some nice dinner time after an afternoon of horseback riding and exercise.

Scared in Sarasota:
You don't say!!

Yeah, yeah, got it....
Check the teeth for food leftovers...
Every great horseman always holds his horse's head in his armpit:
Look at that alert student!!

Some other stuff from Sunday ride:

Ready to go home:

Bradenton - riding

2009-05-05T08:33:00.001-05:00

Weekend was great! I got to ride Coyote on Sunday for an hour or so, finally (!) after three months. He did great. Last night I rode him at home and he did very well. Next weekend we are planning on going back and doing more training. Hopefully this time we are back in the saddle for the time to come.

Coyote is doing better!

2009-04-29T09:43:00.002-05:00

Finally!

We are going to Bradenton this weekend to work again on training and riding. I can't wait!

Ognen

Update

2009-04-24T11:28:00.001-05:00

Coyote is doing well, so far so good. I am starting to work with him again, after two months of not being touched and being handled by different people, he is a bit wild. But we are slowly making progress. He just seems to be one of those grumpy, sour horses who don't like people and/or anyone in their space. My gut feeling is that he will take some time to habituate to people and start tolerating them.

Weather is weird. Cool at night, hot during the day.

We are working on renovating our bathroom. It is almost completely gutted and waiting for that new hurricane impact window, stained concrete floors and other magic. This weekend will be lots of work.

Garden

2009-04-11T09:02:00.001-05:00

Here are some photos of the garden!

Horse update

2009-04-08T13:42:00.003-05:00

We have decided to seek 2nd opinions on both our horses. Coyote is not getting better and this Friday we will be in Ocala seeing vets more interested. We will be seeing Peterson and Smith in Ocala, FL.

Weather has been funny here in Palm Beach, cold front in April??? This morning it temps were actually down in the 40s?!

Garden is doing alright. I am really worried about my little man Coyote, don't want him to be put down over such a stupid thing as wound infection.

Coyote is back home

2009-04-07T08:04:00.002-05:00

So, my horse is home again. He is on two antibiotics, one of which we squirt into his behind with a big syringe. He is a sport about it and does not complain. His face is still swollen but Dacia said yesterday that there is less pus coming out of the wound. I guess his diagnosis right now is infection of the bone. I am considering doing some hyperbaric chamber treatments, they are expensive but apparently helpful (I am grasping at straws here). Dr. Casas is coming out to check on him tomorrow. We also have a natural hoof care farrier coming out tomorrow. Coyote has also started working with the saddle on - he is doing fine and being the nice guy he is....

Coyote's surgery update

2009-03-30T09:49:00.001-05:00

The surgery happened on Friday afternoon, they went in and drained the abscess and removed several small pieces of bone that were infected. Supposedly, this is it, he should recover fully. Can't wait to bring him home.

Another surgery

2009-03-27T10:47:00.002-05:00

Coyote is going into another surgery today. He took a turn for the worse last weekend and has been with Reid and Associates since Monday night. The surgery is scheduled for this afternoon. I hope they do it because if they don't, I am taking him somewhere else.

Coyote update

2009-03-22T19:19:00.003-05:00

He is looking worse and worse. I am starting to lose patience with the vets responsible. Tomorrow I am calling to request that he stays in the clinic until his condition fully resolves. His face is all deformed and I am really worried.

Parents leaving

2009-03-22T19:17:00.001-05:00

My parents are leaving us on Wednesday, March 25th. It has been a 4 month visit. We met up with Dacia's parents today to say goodbye. Some photos here...

Weekend

2009-03-16T10:26:00.001-05:00

Krista and Alan visited with us from Canada. Here are some pics.

Little things you can do to improve your health

2009-03-13T12:48:00.002-05:00

Alright, people don't have time or will to do heavy exercise or whatnot. So, here are some little things you can do to improve your muscle tone, body posture, immune system and overall health:

1. When getting up in the morning, take 10 minutes to do push-ups and sit-ups. As time goes on, do more in the same time frame. Spend extra 5-10 minutes to stretch.
2. Replace sugar with honey in your breakfast. Halve the salt intake in your diet.
3. Bag your lunch: it is cheaper and it is also healthier. You know how much fat and salt you put in your meal. You also know how clean your kitchen is and that your hands are washed.
4. Have a cup of coffee (or tea) to wake you up - it is good for you.
5. Drink water throughout the day but do not overdo it.
6. Lose the sodas from your diet.
7. Do not overeat at night. Breakfast can be cereal, nuggets, wheat bran, oat bran, honey, milk, coffee or you can have bread, eggs, bacon (in moderation) etc. Lunch can be anything really. Snack smart: eat healthy stuff like bars, nuts, fruits, vegetables. Dinner should be a light salad or small piece of fish or something you know will digest before you hit the sheets.
8. Avoid processed foods: the more you prepare your food from fresh ingredients, the cheaper it is and the healthier it is. Processed foods have bad stuff in them: high-fructose corn syrup, salts, fats etc.

People say that cooking takes a lot of time. It does not if you know how and it helps if food is prepared on a weekend and then eaten throughout the week. Remember, no matter what you eat, it comes out by the end of the day and it all looks the same...

Peace out.
OD

Photos of Coyote's surgery site to today

2009-03-12T08:47:00.002-05:00

So, Coyote is slowly getting better. I have posted some photos of his surgery site since day one to a few days back. Looked ugly, I know...

(Technology & Life) What to do?

2009-03-10T08:52:00.002-05:00

I drive to work every day, about 45 min each way, an hour and a half a day. Monthly that results in about 30 hours, yearly about 360 hours or roughly 15 full days (4 %) of my life spent in the car. We are in the 21st century and we are still living a nomadic existence where time is spent on pointless tasks such as getting to work.

Here is my dream life: live on a property in the middle of nowhere, be energy independent, grow my own food and work on technological and scientific ideas that will really make a difference. So many people spend their lives doing meaningless things they hate, just to survive and have a life. To me, being energy independent and growing my own food would remove the reasons to have a job I don't care for and allow me to spend time with my family, my animals and think about things that are really important.

Clearly, the recipe for the above is to buy land somewhere cheap (rural), pay for it in cash and then build a home from the ground up without hiring contractors, unless absolutely necessary. Cutting out the middleman and doing things myself would make a huge difference in the cost. If the house has off-grid solar, has a well and septic and I grow my own food and there is no debt (no mortgage to pay monthly), then life is free and true independence is achieved. The day that happens, I will cancel all my credit cards and noone will hear from me again, until I am ready to reveal my new book or paper or the scientific idea that will be the mother of it all...

'Til then to all my brothers and sisters in chains, I only have to say: Strive to be independent and not someone's (banks, credit card companies, mortgage lenders....) monkey in training...

Peace.
OD

Coyote update

2009-03-10T08:44:00.003-05:00

Alright, so it has been a while. Coyote is doing better, the wound is slowly closing and it is still oozing a bit of pus and blood, three weeks later. He was taken off SMZ yesterday since it has been three weeks and Dr. Casas thinks that the primary sinus infection is gone. Dacia took a swab from the wound and submitted it for culture: it came back with two identified bacteria: e. coli and enterococcus, both responsive to only two (expensive) antibiotics and resistant to many others. Dr. Casas put Coyote on Baytril, gave him his first shot yesterday and we are to continue oral dispension today. Hope he gets better and does not colic! The woud is also granulating more than necessary so we are putting Animex on it (steroids) so that it does not overgrow. Boy, what a problematic recovery :(

Nokia N8x0 usage

2009-03-05T10:11:00.002-05:00

I posted a question on the maemo-users mailing list - what do people use their Nokias for? It seems to me that I am not really using mine much, at least not enough to justify my expenditure. Well, from the looks of the responses, most people don't use theirs much either. From what I gathered, mostly it is used as a web browser for simple sites while sitting on the couch (out of laziness, not to have to get up and fire up the laptop), e-book reading, ssh or vpn or vnc connections to servers, maybe some TV or radio usage, occasional, GPS, Skype and that's it. Maybe I expected much more out of the device, maybe my expectations need to scale down? Anyways, the thread is here.

Week in retrospect

2009-02-27T09:59:00.002-05:00

I noticed this morning that the tomatoes started sprouting from seeds. Yes!!! We had to sedate Coyote this morning to clean his surgery site. It is not looking pretty as the skin seems to be dying off. That means that it will all get filled with scar tissue (which is fine) but it will take more time.

Weather has been strange, cold at night and in the morning but warm(er) throughout the day. We are looking at a cold front next week, no freeze though.

Dacia is working this weekend, I think I am taking my parents to the Morikami Japanese gardens for a visit and lunch.

It is Monday

2009-02-23T15:41:00.002-05:00

Weekend was fun. Did a lot of work around the yard - planted the first of the raised beds, planted New Zealand spinach (2 rows), cherry tomatoes (1 row), radishes (1 row) and butter lettuce (1 row). The bed was prepared by first removing a layer of soil, leveling it and then putting down a weed barrier. We then put some aged horse manure on top and then a lot of cow manure, topsoil and potting soil. The mix was then leveled and the seeds planted. Let's see how it goes...

Coyote is not doing that great. Yesterday we noticed that the skin next to his stitches had split open and there is liquid oozing out of it. We are supposed to be cleaning it and putting swat on the area but as you can imagine, he is not happy to be touched there....

Coyote is back home

2009-02-19T09:33:00.001-05:00

We brought the horses back home last night. They appear to be fine. Coyote is on antibiotics for the next 21 days. He looks good and healthy but the next few days will be critical.

We got the strawberries, grapes and the cherry tree. They have all been planted. This week the raised vegetable beds are next.

Coyote's surgery

2009-02-16T15:37:00.000-05:00

Coyote is out of surgery. It turns out he had a cyst in his sinus, filled with hardened pus. The vet said it was a cottage-cheese texture. The cyst was cleaned up and he should make a full recovery. I just went to see him and he was standing and looking alert. Poor guy.

Backyard work

2009-02-16T13:11:00.002-05:00

We finally got around to making a nice gravel path around the barn. It was a day of work but we got a weed barrier going and gravel and dirt on top. The dirt parts will be used as flower beds. So, this way when the rains start in the summer, the feeding trip to the stall will be a bit easier to cope with. Here are some "before and after" photos.

Android is cool

2009-02-12T17:00:00.002-05:00

I have been playing with Google's Android and Eclipse. As much as I don't like Java, I must confess that it is a pretty nice setup, Eclipse and all. Android looks to be a very well thought out platform. I am itching to just go and get a G1 from T-Mobile but I think I will just wait until Android takes more hold on the market. So far iPhone looks to be the king but I am not happy with the fact that you need to fork out $1200-$1300 to buy a Mac, then $99 more to be a developer and then all the hassle of asking Apple to allow you to put apps on your own phone... Apple sucks...

Self-sustained lifestyle

2009-02-11T12:48:00.002-05:00

We are subscribed to Mother Earth News at home and I have to say, it is an eye-opener. People do all sorts of interesting things in their gardens and homesteads to ease their footprint on the planet as well as eat and live better and cheaper. Dacia and I have always been pretty independent people and we always wanted to be self-sustained. Our yard is about 1.3 acres and it seems only logical to try and grow our own food. We live in south-east Florida so the planting season is really any time ;).

The plan for the path to self-sustenance is:

1. Plant a vegetable and fruit garden
2. Build a jungle/rain forest room
3. Build a solar water heater
4. Switch the house to an off-grid solar electricity source
5. Buy a bio-diesel processor and produce our own fuel

These are costly plans and they will take time to reach. The jungle room is basically our patio turned into a rain forest environment and screened so that we and our birds and lizards can enjoy it permanently. To do that, we need to cut out and remove the concrete patio, level the ground and plant trees and plants of choice. After it has all been done, we will screen it and create a nice little green-house nook. An added benefit will be that the lush vegetation will act as a temperature leveler - in the winter we will be warmer and in the summer, we will be cooler.

The solar water heater is not difficult to build, it would appear. Mother Earth News had a few articles about it and they can found online. The cost of a new water heater is about $300 for a 50 gallon tank. We need to build an insulated box for it and find a sunny location to put it on. Finally, a plumber needs to connect the thing into the water system. I estimate the cost of this project to be in the $600-800 range. For comparison, a roof mounted solar water heater runs at about $4200-$5200 with state/federal rebates bringing down the price to about $2500. Still a bit pricy!

Switching the house to off-grid solar electricity is a major cost. I am estimating at least $35-40,000 minus a lot of rebates but still in the $20,000+ range.

We are awaiting delivery of six grown strawberry bushes, a grown cherry tree and three producing muscadine grape plants in the next few weeks. It will be so much fun to plant these and watch them grow and bear fruit.

A tooth abscess???

2009-02-10T14:09:00.002-05:00

Well, Coyote is going to surgery on Monday, Feb 16th at 08:30. Dr. Reid and Dr. Casas will be doing it. It turns out Dr. Reid looked at Coyote's X-Rays and thought it could be a tooth abscess after all. In that case, it could be a smaller hole and just punching the tooth out. We'll see....

Coyote news (not so good)

2009-02-09T10:54:00.002-05:00

Well, they found out what is wrong with Coyote and his constant discharge out of the right nostril - he has a mass on the right side of his face somewhere in the sinus space. A surgery will be required and we are pushing for it to happen as soon as possible. The prognosis is good so far. He will require at least a month of rest until the skull bones heal back so this put a wrinkle in our training.

This weekend we went back to Bradenton for some for horsemanship training, in particular bridle work. Both Coyote and Flippee did great and we think we did too. Here are some photos. Took my parents with us this time too.

Crazy weather!

2009-02-05T10:10:00.003-05:00

Yeah, it had to happen, our second hard freeze of the year! This time the windchill temps are down in the 20s. How far down south do we have to move to escape this stuff???

Equines are doing great - we don't believe in blanketing, they have grown their hair so we just stalled them and left plenty of hay to "fuel the internal furnace".

Coyote still has a runny nose, tomorrow is his Dr's appointment and skull x-rays.

Got my proporta.com Nokia N800 hard case and portable electronics bag. They kick ass - very good investment.

My first programming gig is moving on great.

Update (Feb 3 2009)

2009-02-03T16:00:00.002-05:00

Well, lots of stuff is happening these days. I upgraded one of my Nokia N800s to 32GB of RAM! Now I can store all the maps I need ;) and all the music and videos I ever wanted. Got a car mount for it too. Should be fun to use around on trips. I am trying to get my employer to add a data plan to the phone so I can connect to the Internet from anywhere.

I have also gotten my first programming gig as a contract programmer. Not bad pay too.

What else? Yeah, got a new truck! A nice 2006 GMC Sierra 2500 HD Diesel. It tows! It is all pimped out too, leather inside, nice wheels, tires, tinted with a spray in bedliner, 6 CD changer, On-star etc. I love it.

Dacia quit her job today. I say good for her. She needs to find something she really likes doing.

My parents are still in town, until March 27th. It has been a fun visit with its ups and downs but such is life with family.

It is tax filing season. Depressing.

New manure/compost bin and garden work

2009-02-03T15:36:00.001-05:00

Finally finished the work on the new concrete manure bin! My dad was instrumental in setting it all up. We are making various improvements to the property. The next one will be to make a gravel path behind the house, by the stalls and decorate around it with nice flowers. Will post some before and after pictures.

We are also getting ready to start our vegetable garden. Homesteading here we come! Photos to follow.

Coyote/Flippee training

2009-02-03T15:34:00.001-05:00

We worked with the guys last Sunday, got to ride them a bit. Coyote is still a bit weird with the halter. This weekend we will be in Bradenton again, working on various things. Can't wait!

Coyote will get a skull X-ray this Friday, hopefully it is a sinusitis that is easy to treat.

Training Coyote and Flippee - setback?

2009-01-30T16:46:00.002-05:00

Coyote has been sick for the past few weeks. He has mucus and puss draining out of his right nostril. It seems like it is the same condition as a few months back. He looks miserable. On top of that last night I came into his stall to halter him and he just wouldn't have it. I was retty disappointed. The bigger setback came today: the vet and Dacia were scoping him out in his stall and he suddenly went from his relaxed self to a rearing, pawing and kicking maniac in a matter of seconds! I am wondering if he learned that it is OK now to paw and kick at people to get out of situations.

One thing I did not mention about Coyote is that he has an ear pinning problem. He will see you coming and pin his ears. You will call him, he will come to you and he will have his ears pinned. Feeding time? Ears pinned. Riding time? Ears pinned. So, a horse like that kicking and pawing is not a good thing. We will see.

Training Coyote and Flippee (part #2)

2009-01-30T16:44:00.002-05:00

This last weekend Dacia joined me in the apprenticeship. It is fun working together. On day one we worked on basic exercises with our horses. Day two was much more work (and more fun too) as we got to do the passenger exercise. Basically, we were in an arena where the horses were trotted for 30 minute sessions and allowed to go anywhere they wanted. No steering was allowed and the only stipulation was to keep them going. It was nice being back in the saddle! Some photos here.

Training Coyote and Flippee (part #1)

2009-01-30T16:41:00.002-05:00

The first weekend in the apprenticeship saw me working with Coyote through the basic John Lyons exercises. At the end, James let me try and work with Coyote on makin him go into the pond and finally underneath a bridge. This was a great weekend. See some pics here.

Horses are amazing animals and actually very smart creatures. You got to respect them.

Training Coyote (introduction)

2009-01-30T16:31:00.003-05:00

Dacia and I adopted two horses, mine we call Coyote and her's is Flippee (photos). Coyote came to us emaciated and plain sick, fighting for dear life. Flippee was better but it turned out he has navicular disease. He now has special shoes to correct the issue. We hired a local trainer for three months where the horses boarded and her place and got training. We rode the horses on a local trail and around the neighborhood (photos). It is when I was bucked off Coyote that I realized that the horse needs real training. While our local trainer was alright, she did not have the expertise to do the real training. We turned to James Malcolm (website) as he is a John Lyons certified trainer. This blog will show our progress as we go through James' apprenticeship program training our horses and learning about them.

N800 on the way!

2007-12-04T07:09:00.000-05:00

I just ordered this puppy. Combined with an iGo stowaway it should be lots of fun. Runs modified Linux (maemo) and just overall looks cool. Tons of apps including Opera, Flash, mplayer, email, IM, ssh, python etc. Looking forward to hacking it.

Google has your life (maybe)

2006-09-14T13:46:00.000-05:00

There has been a lot of publicity lately about all the searches stored by big search engines. Aside from pure IP address storage that Google performs for each search, if a user is logged into the gmail.com account, all searches executed from the tabs of the current browser (such as Firefox) will be associated with that user and stored on Google's computers. This is not news.

However, there is another side to the Google mail system as well - people like it because it allows them a lot of space for storage but they also forget that their mail is searchable by the Google company. This means that if they make their gmail.com a primary email account, all their bank conformations, money transfers, airline tickets, reservations in restaurants, car rental confirmations, book purchases and a vast amount of other stuff people nowadays do online (all this stuff sends you an email confirmation) will be searchable by the "Do no evil" search engine company. This is basically all of your financial, leasure and other life data stored in one spot for someone to mine.

Additonally, many people think that their Gmail account is just another name in the Internet universe. However, once you start receiving email confirmations for various purchases and memberships, this "account" becomes associated with a physical address, credit card etc.

Many people don't think before they start storing their life online.

Solution?

R.I.P. Steve Irwin

2006-09-04T17:34:00.000-05:00

Sadly, today the world lost one of its best citizens - Steve Irwin died from a stingray sting while filming one of his documentaries.

Wikipedia link about Steve Irwin

Here is a quote from Steve that we should all remember (him by):

"These Hitlers use the camouflage of science to make money out of animals... So whenever they murder our animals and call it sustainable use, I'll fight it. Since when has killing a wild animal, eating it or wearing it, ever saved a species?

There are people who butt out their cigarettes in gorilla-paw ashtrays, with wastepaper baskets that were once elephant feet, who have ivory ornaments… who wear cheetah fur. Don't buy these things! Then there'll be no market and the animals won't be killed.

We have domesticated livestock raised for consumption and perfectly good fake leather and fur, so why must we kill wild animals to satisfy the macabre taste of some rich person"

Funny Bulgarians

2006-08-28T10:42:00.000-05:00

From the Bulgarian Black Sea coast, a stand selling spices:

ipw2200, ubuntu and wpa-psk

2006-07-15T23:12:00.000-05:00

Here is the content of my script that starts the wpa-psk wireless configuration using wpa_supplicant:

sudo wpa_supplicant -i eth1 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -D wext -B

Note that wpa_supplicant is using the wext module, NOT the ipw module.

Here is the contents of the wpa_supplicant.conf file:


ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
network={
        ssid="your ssid here"
        scan_ssid=1
        #proto=WPA
        proto=WPA
        group=TKIP
        auth_alg=OPEN
        key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
        #psk="your password here"
        pairwise=TKIP
        psk=your psk key here
}

The psk key above can be generated using the wpa_passphrase tool.

Ognen

Wolfram's New Kind of Science Conference and Summer School

2006-06-29T09:24:00.000-05:00

If you have not read Wolfram's book, it can be found here. It is a result of Wolfram's 20 years of work in the field of complexity and cellular automatons. In it, he shows how complexity can follow from simple rules applied to simple initial conditions. He then continues to state that most of modern science is about atacking complexity with complex explanations. Wolfram is a strange guy. If you get to talk to him, he really is one of those people who consumed a lot of scientific fields, almost to a point that he acts as a "live" convergence point for many of the principles and concepts of various sciences. Unfortunately, it seems like many people have not accepted his view of the world as a computer (at least not as a system of cellular automaton rules). People like Ray Kurzweil point out interesting things that Wolfram does not address (see the comment here. Kurzweil (like many others) thinks that it is fine that a cellular automaton rule like 110 is a universal computer, however, the secret to explaining the world is not in the computer, it is in the software. Kurzweil also (in my opinion validly) wonders about the order of complexity in the behavior of automata. Basically, the complexity never increases. The question is why not?

Wolfram Inc. (or whatever its full name is) seems like an interesting place to work at. It is headquartered in Urbana-Champaign (Illinois) but apparently his immediate surrounding NKS crowd lives and works in various places like Vienna, Paris, Italy, Boston etc. Seems to work for them.

I have a couple of pet-peeves with NKS. Firstly, for many complex problems in the "real" world, the sea of possible rules that could be applied to "fit" the data is almost infinite. One usually does not even know where to start. Wolfram states that in classical science we come up with a law or a formula only because the system we are observing is simple enough to be "shortcut". In real complexity we do not have the luxury of a shortcut but instead need to run the system to find out where it goes. However, if we look at our own reasoning processes as inherently complex (or at least we think so now), deciding on a subset of rules to apply based on some constraint or on what we know about the system is essentially shortcutting the process. So, does this imply that our reasoning is simple? If so, why have we not found a shortcut for it yet? Or have we?
Another point of contention, in my mind, is the fact that there is no real methodology to approaching the chosing of a certain rule to apply to a real problem. Apparently, NKS was invented to address Wolfram's dissatisfaction with the state of current science. But, it is not easier to solve an applied problem in NKS than in the traditional world (the problem of the enormous amount of rules that are possible to apply).

Currently majority of the NKS research is focused on the "pure" side of the science. People will come up with a rule and then expore its behavior (almost always graphical/visual analysis). Some more serious people will do mathematical and statistical analysis of the results. It is clearly easier to do this kind of "pure" research than to chase rules to fit real world data. However, every science needs basic research.

This post was initially about the NKS conference and the summer school held in 2006 at Brown University in Providence, RI. The conference was in Washington DC, June 16-18. I must say I left the conference disappointed - most of the presentations were on pure NKS research and they looked unfinished (or barely started). The authors saw some potentially interesting behavior, however, it seems like the tools and the methodology for the analysis of this behavior is in the eye of the beholder. One could definately benefit from some kind of a manual on the topic. Anyways, most of the presentations ended up with "I am confident that automata will yield such and such revelation when I continue my research". Suffice it to say, many people would yell "Show me the bacon!".

The summer school is somewhat more scientific. The people around Wolfram give lectures daily and it is not uncommon to see a line go by on the screen that says "All complexity in nature can be explained by simple rules". What such lines are missing is a big, red, flashing "HYPOTHESIS" word in front. Gentleman, we need to prove such grand statements. There are also people who are very serious and systematic in their study of classical science. These people tend to have more serious lectures. Wolfram's talks are somewhat confused. He is obviously a very knowledgeable man and it seems to make his discussions move from point to point in a Brownian fashion. His live experiments are similar but also full of speculation that is somewhat unfounded (at least to people like me). For example, one of the problems was to generate a certain imaginary crystalline structure from certain elements (constraints). Presumably, this could be synthesized in a lab as a novel material. This is fine and this kind of science is fascinating. However, Wolfram went on to speculate what this crystal would be used for, in his opinion, one of the uses would be filtration. His next statement was that it was essentially like a kidney glomerule. When he googled up an image of a glomerule, it was clear the two are completely unrelated. One has to wonder how many such wild speculations the man makes in front of people who are unable to google-challenge him or are unwilling to. My take on this is: stick to your specialty: physics, mathematics, automatons, whatever it is.

Finally, I will finish with the big question: WHY? If you manage to model DNA, stock market, social networks or whatever with an automaton rule - what does it say about the DNA or the stock market. OK, we fit the data but the question is WHY?

Welcome!

2004-09-09T09:39:00.000-05:00

This is a blog that is all about opinions with(out) any background.

Corripio is latin for "attack of a disease" or "to snatch up". So beware! Someone else's opinions can creep into your head and become your own...

Ognen