Joe Auricchio

Another personal post. Last weekend (8-10 Nov) I went with UCSD’s Outback Adventures to Joshua Tree National Park for a weekend of rock climbing. Joshua Tree is a world-renowned destination for climbers, and it’s easy to see why: the northwestern part of the park seems to be composed solely of steep and interestingly-textured rock faces to climb up and beautiful vistas of the high desert to look out upon.

The Outback Adventures folks were experienced, taught us what we needed to know, encouraged us to do our best, and generally had their stuff together. I would strongly recommend any of their outings based on my experience.

I’m still very new to climbing. This quarter I started going to the climbing gym on campus once a week with a friend, and a month ago I went on a day trip with OA to Mission Trails park and climbed on actual rock. This weekend was the test for me: is climbing something I’ll keep on doing once a week at a gym, as a form of exercise I enjoy much more than lifting weights? Or is this a serious hobby I’ll put time and effort into? The answer is clear to me after this weekend: I really like climbing, and I want to do it as often as possible. To that end I’ve purchased a harness and shoes (thanks Craigslist!) and I’ll try to go to the gym twice a week.

The next step is to find a climbing partner who has the equipment and experience to set up top ropes on actual rock. It seems to me the rope and protection gear would cost $300-500 (new list price), and that’s an investment I’m not ready to commit just yet. I wouldn’t know how to use it either. So I have to find someone willing to set up climbs and teach me how to use the gear. To show me the ropes, if you will. Sorry.

On a more introspective note, I’m still amused by my newfound enjoyment of The Great Outdoors. My family was never the outdoorsy type, and we never went camping or hiking or anything like that. Until this summer I’d never been camping at all. But so far, I’ve been enjoying it a lot. Was I always an outdoorsy person, but I never knew? On the other hand, it’s possible that I’m developing a taste for camping simply because I’m experiencing it at this time of my life, going with these people, doing these things. Were I occasionally dragged on yet another family camping trip all throughout my childhood, would I have a different opinion? Nature versus nurture: am I a person who likes camping and hiking but never discovered it until now, or do I like camping and hiking because of the ways I’m experiencing it now? It’s unknowable, of course.

Scott and I got ice cream today at the cafeteria. I had Ultrachocolate¹ and Banana. Scott got Mint Chip and Concord Grape.

As I picked up mine, he asked “Did you just take my ice cream?”.

Scott is colorblind.

Hi everyone. I’m still alive.

I’m in the Bay Area, living with a bunch of neat people in a neat house. Not sure what I think of the area. On the one hand, it’s exciting to be in a setting so infused with the tech industry. On the other, Menlo Park is really not my style. I think I’ve found someplace even more rich and poncey than La Jolla. Some other areas seem a lot more suitable, though. And I love the expressways and freeways up here - off rush hour, driving between cities is a joy.

I’m interning for VMware. I’m working on internal debugging & profiling tools, trying to improve the VMX startup time. The early effort of tool-building is starting to pay off, and in the last few weeks my mentor and I have some really good changes ready to check in. If you run large ESX instances on contended SANs, and your VMs startup a lot faster in future versions of ESX, that’s all me. I met a lot of great folks here: on my team, on adjacent teams, and all those crazy hosted-ui kids over in the Xerox buildings. I’ve gained a glimpse into the workings of a Medium-Sized Software Company. And I’ve learned a hell of a lot.

I’ve kept pretty busy outside of work. I’ve hiked at Castle Rock State Park, bicycled for 20 miles down Foothill Expwy and around Menlo Park, gone to house parties in Berkeley with old friends from Cambria, became a semi-regular at a hookah bar on University, rode a motorcycle for the first time, drove from Santa Cruz to Palo Alto via Half Moon Bay, clubbed in San Jose, and watched the Perseids from the top of Mt Hamilton.

I went to Vegas for Defcon. That was cool. Vegas is a lot better when everyone in your group is over 21. Lots of stuff happened there. And stayed there. (wink)

A few weeks ago I went camping and hiking at Mammoth Lakes with some friends. This was actually my first time camping. Had a good time on the whole, and discovered that I may be more of an outdoorsy person than I thought. Hiking and scrambling up rocks is really really fun. I may pick up rock climbing as a hobby, once I get down to SD with the convenient climbing wall on campus. We’ll see.

I’m looking ahead to grad school. I still have another year to finish off the B.S. before the grad program actually starts, but until then I’ll try to spend some time working/researching with profs. Only trouble is… there are three professors I want to work with, each with interesting projects, each with different styles of research, each with different industry & academic connections, each with different things to teach me. How do I decide? Oh well. I suppose this is the Right Problem To Have.

There’s someone I miss very much. I wonder if she’s still reading this? Much of this summer has been a journey to find the meaning of “complete” again without her. I’m not doing very well.

This happened a few weeks ago, while I was biking home from work. I thought it was neat. That’s not a camera artifact, there really were two rainbows. It hadn’t rained a drop that day and the sky above was blue.



Apologies for the low quality, all I had was my phone. I’m no photographer anyway (Kim, I’m looking at you!)

I’ll try to update more often.

So now I’m in Palo Alto. (But that’s another post). Guess what supercar I was in front of last night, on Arastradero toward Central Expwy.

Go on, guess.

A Carrera GT.

Life gets stranger and stranger.

I work in downtown La Jolla, right opposite the Ferrari/Maserati dealership. AMGs, M-series, and Porsche Ses are everyday sights. Jaguars are like Toyotas. I’m tired of seeing expensive cars. But sometimes there’s something a bit more interesting than usual…

One day on the way to work I saw someone picked up in front of a particularly large house by a chauffeured Maybach. In the words of James L. (wherever you are), “Must be nice…”

A few weeks ago I saw a Ford GT in downtown La Jolla. Really, with gas prices up to $5/gallon, you’re driving one of these? You and Jeremy Clarkson both.

The US Open is in town this week, at Torrey Pines. It’s practically across the street from campus. There are a lot more interesting cars here this week—somehow the AMGs and M-series are even more abundant than usual. I found this BMW Z4 with the German plate “BMW Z4″ nestled behind CVS. An odd place to park what I assume is BMW’s touring show car. As I drove out of the parking lot, I saw a brand new SL63 AMG and a DB9 Vantage.

I don’t say any of this out of envy, merely commentary. I don’t particularly want any of these cars.¹ In fact, I still haven’t figured out what kind of car is right for me. Fast or a smooth ride? Four-door? Hatchback? FWD, RWD? Manual or auto? Low-slung or tall and roomy? I have only the vaguest of preferences.

For now I drive my dad’s trusty old Volvo S70 T5. I say “old” because the car is well on its way to 200,000 miles, but she’s only ten years old, and she looks and feels like a young girl of only 60K.² It’s zippy enough that I can have fun on late night jaunts to campus or wherever; but it’s a Volvo, so it’s comfortable enough that I don’t really mind the six-hour nonstop service from SAN to SBP for holidays and vacations. Plus it has five cylinders, which is just neat. It’s my car and I love it.

Then again, with gas going up and up, these may be the last days of the automobile. Maybe I was born in the wrong decade? Ah well. Bring on the public transit and high-speed rail.

One of these is not like the others…

No, these are not the ingredients of a wicked new cocktail. We just needed Drano too.

Last night Scott, DJ, and I took part in DefCamp, “BarCamp’s Little Slice of Defcon”. DefCamp is a security contest, like Defcon’s Mystery Box, masterminded by Viss with help from Billy (?). The contest had three phases: First, a set of web pages and online clues to decode. Second, a booby-trapped box to open. Third, an embedded system to build then modify.

The first task was solving the web page challenges. It was a security mish-mash: lots of binary or hex to/from ASCII conversions, rotation and substitution ciphers, some simple password breaking, QR codes, sound spectral graphs, steganography in JPEGs. All the while with other teams trying to shoulder-surf us, and us trying to overhear them. Each puzzle led to a letter that spelled out a word.

Once we got the word (it was “IZZARD” as in Eddie), we went to Viss and he gave us The Box. The box (I didn’t get any pictures but someone else probably did) was a set of physical and electronic puzzles. Rules of the game are: no tilting, cutting, drilling, or breaking the box. If you mishandle the box or cut wires incorrectly, it makes a loud alarm. The top of the box is studded with nails, sharp side up. There are a handful of wires coming out from the back of the box, with alligator clips on the end. When the wires are connected to most of the nails, they trigger the beeper briefly. When you get the right combination of wires and nails, though, a relay flips and a set of green LEDs go on. Now we can cut some of the red wires and open the box.

Inside the box (which is actually a plastic tool box with a drawer inside), the next obstacle is an old padlock, keeping the drawer in place. We all suck at picking locks, so we spent about half an hour with DJ’s lockpicks trying to get it open. We finally realized we were turning the ‘key’ the wrong way, and then we got it open with another five minutes of fiddling.

After that, we got to the final step: one of Lady Ada’s MiniPOV3 kits, ready to assemble. The mission: get it to display a custom message. Piece of cake, right? I know AVRs, this is like home turf.

Scott and I made quick work of the assembly: sorting the dozen through-hole parts, slotting them into the holes, and tag-team soldering (turns out soldering is a four-hand job). We followed the schematic to find the pins for the serial connector. At the same time, DJ and I started installing avr-gcc from MacPorts on Scott’s computer. We hit trouble though: avr-libc in MacPorts failed to configure, because it somehow kept trying to use the system’s PowerPC gcc instead of avr-gcc (oops). Apart from that, we couldn’t get avrdude on the Mac to talk to the board. DJ installed avrdude on his Linux computer, but it didn’t work either.

Turns out that when Scott and I buzzed out the PCB traces to figure out how to solder the serial connector on… the schematic we were working from didn’t match our board!. We got two wires backward! By the time we figured it out, it was too late: another group had already finished… our UCSD rivals Declan and Robert. After fixing the wires (turns out, the pad pattern on the board was a direct analog of the connector itself), we programmed it from Declan’s computer, since by then we’d figured out how to change the message and recompile. We finally claimed third place.

Our prize: Fry’s gift cards and the memories of a marvelously fun experience. Viss, you’re a mean-hearted fellow… some of those challenges were hard :D

I’m still disappointed I couldn’t bring home the top prize, an A2 Aviator. Iain, Viss says Aviators are red without exception, and to kill you for the offense against nature embodied in your green one.

Two hours till I give my talk…

I’m at BarCamp San Diego. I’m giving a talk on Sunday at 2:30 on: Trends in Processor Design (and why you should care). The BarCamp audience seems mostly high-level folks, not bare-metal programmers, so I’m not sure how well the talk will go over…

Update: I’ve caved into the diffuse yet extremely strong peer pressure and got myself a Twitter account. We’ll see where it goes. I still don’t get Twitter but I’ll see what the fuss is about.

Update 2: Here are my slides… They’re not quite finalized. trends-in-processor-design.key.zip (2.3MB)

Dear Lazyweb: I’m looking for something to manage my photos. For now, I use a hierarchy of folders to divide things up by date. QuickLook and Preview are my primary viewing tools. I only have a couple gigs, spanning maybe a hundred discrete events, so I’m not a very heavy user.

iPhoto uses 80% of my CPU at idle. Just sitting there, open. It only exports web galleries to .Mac, which is worthless to me. “Events” feels like a waste of code… they could have just autosplit albums on import and let albums optionally be strongly associated with dates. And I still don’t like how iPhoto hides all the image files in its bundle in the Pictures folder, making it nigh-impossible to find the files with any other tool. Verdict: Not interested.

Aperture 1.5 crashed on launch, repeatably. I’m hovering just above the minimum system requirements anyway. Shame, it looked decent. I haven’t ruled it out… but if it’s anything like Apple’s usual products it won’t run very well on my Powerbook5,4 anyway.

So what else is out there?

I used iView Media Pro a half-dozen years ago (yipes!). It was a bit clunky but it worked. Has anybody else used it more recently?

Bridge looks worthless to anyone who’s not heavily invested in Adobe products. Right out.

From what I saw, Lightroom looks more aimed at photo editing than organization—the opposite of iPhoto—which makes it a bit less suitable for me. It also looks heavy. But I’m still very interested in it. Does anyone around here have a copy I can fiddle with?

Not interested in Photoshop Elements; Save For Web isn’t quite enough to justify the endless you-must-be-an-admin-user style nightmares.

Scott liked my terminal style from yesterday, so I’ll reprise it.

heian:<<<umi-misc/pubkeys$ ssh cse125@neathat.com -p 14522 sudo ls \>/dev/null
[sudo] password for cse125: (echoed, which is unfortunate)
heian:<<<umi-misc/pubkeys$ cat djc_hmac_rsa.pub | ssh cse125@neathat.com -p 14522 sudo su -c \'cat \>\> ~djc/.ssh/authorized_keys\'
heian:<<<umi-misc/pubkeys$

Now DJ can use his key on that server.

The sudo ls is to enter the password and get the sudo authorization ticket. We can’t enter the password with the cat, because ssh sees its stdin isn’t a terminal and refuses to allocate a tty. A stupid workaround would be (echo "mypassword"; cat ... ); | ssh ..., but I like the two-phase solution more, for some reason.