I have no current plans to port BSQ Sitestats to Joomla 1.5 at this time. This is the result of several factors, the first being that I have not been involved in the Joomla community since late 2006, when I thought a 1.5 RC release was imminent.

The second factor is time.  I have been given more privileges and responsibilities in my career, and I plan to follow and fulfill to the best of my abilities. Also, we are now finally in spring at the 45th parallel, and I will be biking at least 5 days a week until October (when I’m not working on my career).

A third factor is lack of help. Maintaining a popular extension is a very time consuming task. PHP applications have the misfortune of being M x N x O x P complex where M is the CMS version, N is the PHP version, O is the database version, and P is the extension version.  System programming is much easier: you either have POSIX, Linux, or Win32. Doing all of these complexities requires several very educated users running some of the combinations of M X N x O x P. While a lot of extensions have this kind of help, I never have, making remotely debugging the simplest problem difficult.

If somebody wants to take over the port of BSQ Sitestats to Joomla 1.5, I’d be glad to help, but I cannot lead this effort. Thanks for all of the usage on Joomla 1.0.

If you live in Hale-Paige like I do, you’ve got Portland/Park for north/south and Minnehaha Parkway for east and west, but there really isn’t a way to get to edina or the U of Minnesota. without going on major streets. That’s just one example from one of the 400,000 residents of the actual city of Minneapolis (no…living in the suburbs is not living in Minneapolis).

This project seeks to make biking more friendly, encouraging more people to commute by bike. Through this, we can continue to lead our top-5 healthiest state in the country (since 1990), reduce traffic congestion on busy roads, and reduce our overall fossil fuel consumption.

Here’s an article with more information.

Murphy-Hanrehan is a park reserve in Burnsville, MN where previously, an unmaintainable several-mile loop existed. The old trail basically consisted of ruts from the bulldozer that cleared its path every year. The hills were so steep that you’d often have to brake to keep your speed under 30 MPH, only to switch to first gear for the next hundred foot climb.

The new trail is completely different, built professionally and sustainably by contractors hired by the Three Rivers Park District.  The new single track is as resiliant as Lebanon Hills or Theodore Wirth.

Here is the trail map as a reference. 

The course starts off with about a mile of single track through an open field (green on the map).  At the end of this you can loop back to the parking lot or take the intermediate loop onward.

The intermediate loop is actually closer to expert than intermediate. You immediately descend into tight S-turns with little embankment, making you lean and sometimes brake to avoid washing out. Following the descent (from marker 53), there is a LONG sustained climb from marker 54 to 57, similar to the big climb before the expert loop at lebanon. Warning: you need to keep a pace of at least7-8 mph on the climb due to the grade. If you don’t, your front tire will come up on you. Lean forward to compensate. The intermediate loop is more work than fun, but don’t worry. The reward is coming up in the expert loop.

At the end of the intermediate (where blue meets gray), there is an obstacle that you can simply walk over (see picture). This is supposed to be a qualifier, but it really qualifies you for something else than what you are about to ride on the expert section.

The expert section is epic. I haven’t done the Mah da Hey or other epic rides outside Minnesota, so my statement is qualified by the courses I’ve ridden around the Twin Cities. Be prepared for steep rolling climbs between tight trees while hugging the hillside, sharp descents around turns, and a few blind obstacles that could end your summer.

Speaking of obstacles, I was pleasantly surprised to see that there weren’t many, most of which had ride-arounds. Some of the trail segments have become obstacles though, but I’m sure that will change after opening weekend. From the looks of the trail today, there were a lot of rolling descents where people had slipped off the sides of the hills, which is understandable. Don’t be afraid to go slower. You definitely don’t want to go down the side of a hill there.

You might start feeling dead around mile 5.5. Don’t worry though; you’ve reached the top of the course. Check out the elevation map John Lundell made for an idea of the terrain you are facing. You can see that the entire first half of the trip is one long ascent with lots of ups and downs throughout. Be prepared to white knuckle and climb. Unfortunately, all of that elevation you worked for comes out pretty quick between mile 5.5 and 7.0. Make sure to stay behind your seat to not go over your handlebars.

My favorite part was somewhere around mile 7 where we did at least a half mile of cruising through open fields. It was great to actually be able to do >10mph uphill for once in the course after all of that arduous climbing.

It’s hard to describe what you feel like after 7 miles of expert with 683 feet of climbing/descent. It’s a different sort of tired. If you get back to the expert loop junction and are considering another lap, consider that you are committing to another 9 miles of riding. That’s over two intermediate/expert laps at lebanon, not even accounting for the insane terrain of Murphy.

Overall, it was a really fun ride. I’ll probably save this ride for weekends and when I have lots of steam to blow. I’ll definitely be chuggging a gatorade and a cliff bar before next time.

Since even the intermediate is very tough climbing, don’t go to Murphy when you just feel like cruising. That’s not what you’ll get.  For now, I’ll keep doing my lunch rides at Lebanon Hills, Salem Hills, and Terrace Oaks.

Thanks to the Minnesota Off-road Cyclists for putting together such a great trail.

Other links to check out:
Official MORC trail review with photos.
Other Twin Cities Metro Trails

Sure enough, there were a few hidden slick spots, one of which I ate. I was able to clip out in time to not get stuck under the right side of my bike as it washed out from under me. Unfortunately, my front wheel landed on a tree, breaking my right front brake.

So, here I am, bikeless for the weekend (beautiful out btw) and staring at my scraped up knee. Hmmmm…maybe I can get a rollerblade injury in before this weekend

Before we dive into the database, let’s talk about where the database actually lives. Your filesystem, whether it is NTFS (Windows) or ext2 or ext3 or ReiserFS, is a series of sectors on the disk. When you update a row, table, or combination of the prior, the result will be a series of writes to one or many disk sectors.

Disk sectors are small. They could be 512 bytes or 4096 bytes or some other number. During normal operation, your file system can most likely guarantee that a single sector is written to disk or isn’t. That is, the write of a single sector is atomic during normal operation. However, during a power failure, you can’t guarantee that the single sector was written or wasn’t because you can’t be sure if the underlying drive does atomic writes. Journaling filesystems can protect against this by saving extra information about the sector writes elsewhere to guarantee that each individual sector either makes it or doesn’t make it to disk. File system journaling strategies are a topic for another post as well :).

Given the uncertainty of the underlying filesystem and the incosistencies among different filesystems’ journaling strategies, it is best for the DBMS to not assume anything about the underlying filesystem or its ability to atomically commit a series of sectors to disk. Instead, the DBMS maintains its own journal that is specifically designed to maintain the atomicity and durability of a series of database tables (as opposed to the filesystem’s journal of sector writes).

Database transactions are the data element that is stored in the database’s journal. Each transaction could be a single record insert/update/delete or a series of them. When you use the BEGIN TRANSACTION and COMMIT or ROLLBACK keywords, you are creating an entry in the database journal that will guarantee that your transaction is either fully-in-effect (or committed) or not in effect at all (ROLLBACK). The beauty of the DBMS is that even if you send a COMMIT to the database for a transaction and the database server crashes, the transaction will still be either fully-committed or fully-ignored, based on the state of the DBMS’s journal. For you, as a programmer, that means that your program must put every dependent operation into a single transaction because any one transaction in a series of transactions could fail or succeed.

So how does the database journal database guarntee consistency? Each DBMS is different but similar. I will describe one approach. In this approach, the journal contains a list of instructions about which rows to change in which tables in which order. Often times, the journal will contain a list of reverse instructions, which are to be executed before the forward instructions in the instance of a drive failure, in order to go back to where the database was before the transaction began. Let’s use an example.

I want to drive from Minneapolis, MN to Dallas, TX. Doing so will require going through Des Moines, IA and Kansas City, MO. My transaction will only succeed if I get all the way from Minneapolis to Dallas, but I need to pass through the intermediate cities on the way.

My journal looks like this:

1. Drive from Minneapolis to Des Moines
2. Drive from Des Moines to Kansas City
3. Drive from Kansas City to Dallas

My reverse journal looks like this:

1. Drive from Dallas to Kansas City
2. Drive from Kansas City to Des Moines
3. Drive from Des Moinces to Minneapolis

If we get in trouble somewhere along the way, all we have to do is: execute the reverse journal to get back to a consistent state before the transaction (Minneapolis) and then execute the forward journal to commit our new transaction. This will guarantee that we are either in Minneapolis or Dallas.
Post questions, and I’ll write a follow-up.

Post comments here. I don’t want to answer them in two places.

The clips (below) are cool because they allow me get an extra 50% torque on my pedaling by being attached to the pedals and pulling up when you are resetting for the next push. Instead of mashing the pedals, you do a circular motion with your feet because you are always attached, and it’s very even. The only caveat is that you MUST CLIP OUT when you stop, or you will fall on your side and look like an idiot.

It’s even worse when you go over your handlebars with clips on. I saw a guy catch his bar ends on a tree last year, go over his handlebars with clips on, and land on his face with his bike still attached to his feet. It was not pretty. Believe me, I will be keeping that in mind when I’m riding.

Fixing my broken seat was a no brainer, but I wanted to solve the sore ass problem at the same time. My bike has a front suspension but not a rear one, so wasn’t able to go over bumps sitting down, which required a lot of energy to do over and over on very technical courses. Plus, when you’re standing, your center of gravity is much higher, making you vulnerable to the endo. Along comes the flexible seatpost to save the day.

The flexible seatpost (seen below) actually flexes when you go over bumps to absorb the shock. Instead of being a pogo stick, which would amplify turbulence, it actually flexes horizontally, which is much easier on the old back.

To further protect myself, I actually picked up biking shorts, which have a padded ass, to protect from the wear of the seat on a long ride.

I took my new toys out for a 6 mile ride yesterday, which was nice, but now we got snow again. Stupid april in Minnesota!!!

My transactions were almost complete when I remembered that I wanted With a little help from my friends from. That turned into several Joe Cocker songs, which turned into purchasing his entire anthology. In listening to the demos, I realized that his style has a lot in common with Neil Diamond, the 70s singer who my parents listened to while I was growing up in the 80s….the time when Monster Ballads were in full bloom, thanks to Neil’s lead.

OK. The gloves are off. Who’s the better singer: Neil Diamond or Joe Cocker? That’s right. I’m not an 80 year old woman, even though my 85 year old grandma had Neil Diamond tapes in her car. Damn you Itunes, you enabler.

Neil has some sort of weird 1970s appeal to him. You’d probably throw your soda at him if you saw him dancing on the street corner in a creepy silk shirt, but you’d promptly apologize when you heard his 3-packs-a-day vibrato. Plus, he actually did Saving Silverman, which either really makes fun of him or props him up as some sort of musical god. You decide. Neil has tons of hits which don’t even need mentioning because they’ve been on every radio station your parents listen to hundreds of thousands of times. They’re also on my Itunes list

Joe’s got a lot of emotion, and he doesn’t always sing about some chick. He sings about chicks sometimes, but not as much as Neil. Joe’s also very much into his music. Check out this video from woodstock if you doubt that:

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He looks really stoned, but I guess that’s just his stage presence.

Winner?

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This weekend were the divisional playoffs for the WCHA, the division the University of Minnesota Gophers play for. Since the tournament is usually dominated by Minnesota, St. Cloud State, UND, Wisconsin, and other regional schools, it’s held at our beautiful Excel Energy Center in St. Paul, MN….nothing like a 20000 person capacity hockey arena in the middle of largest city in the state of hockey.

After winning their first round game against the Wisconsin Badgers, the Gophers played their final match against the UND Fighting Sioux. Both teams  played extremely well, and the score was 2-2 at the end of regulation.

A couple minutes into the first overtime period, the Gophers broke out from a defensive play and sent Blake Wheeler a long pass down the side. He dove down to the ice to beat the icing call. Had the puck reached the red line before he touched it, it would have meant a face off in our zone. He touched it perfectly so that it went over the left shoulder of the UND goalie and into the far corner. We didn’t know this yet. We were just cheering because he had sprinted to beat the icing.

Suddenly, there was a loud roar (120 decibels), and the goalie judge’s light lit up as Blake Wheeler sprinted into the corner with his team right behind him. We looked at each other in disbelief that the entire tournament had been decided by what seemed like an impossible, yet spectacular goal. Check out the video.

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Congrats, Gophers.