Matt O’ Rama

I’m in the process of setting up a club for hardware/electronics hackers and hobbyists in Albuquerque. It’s called the Idea Propulsion Lab. I’ve setup a site for the club at http://www.ideapropulsionlab.org. Check it out.

I’ve always loved the idea of getting smart people together and seeing what new ideas can be created. Everybody always thinks it’s weird but I always use the image of rubbing a bunch of brains together and seeing what sparks fly off, what fires can be created. The thing I really loved about going to New Mexico Tech was having a bunch of smart nerds in one place, building off each other, sharing ideas, challenging everything. So I want that to be a big part of the Idea Propulsion Lab, sharing ideas and teaching/learning about hardware, robots, electronic art, whatever.

We’ll be having regular physical meetings so people can show their projects or teach classes. I’d love to have classes where somebody can teach a bunch of people to solder, or make LED art, stuff like that. I want meetings to be live action Instrucables, if you’re familiar with Instructables.com (and if you’re not, you should be). My primary inspirations are MAKE: magazine and Instructables.com.

The most important thing to me is that I want this club to be for people of all skill levels. I just learned to solder in the last month and have only just started my explorations of all this stuff. I have no interest in just having a bunch of experts sit around and talk expert stuff that’s over the head of everybody else. I want club members to teach, to show people just how easy fooling around with electronics has become.

This is going to be fun.

Tags: Electronics, Geekery, Idea Propulsion Lab, Personal by matt
No Comments »

Man, 50 miles is a long way to ride your bike. I did a 50 mile ride on Saturday as part of the Albuquerque Century and it was hard. I mean really hard. It didn’t help that I hadn’t been riding my bike almost at all in the past 6 months. So really I had no right to ride that far and if the last 15 miles hadn’t been downhill or flat I don’t think I could have finished. But while I was unreasonably happy to see the finish line, I did it.

The main thing you forget when you don’t ride long distances for a while is how much sitting on a bike hurts your ass. That and my back muscles hurting from not being used like that for so long were what almost did me in, not my legs which is nice because it means I didn’t lose all my leg fitness. Now that I’ve done this insane ride I’m going to push myself to be ready for the 100 miles next year. That ride has 2 insane hills as well as big rolling hills on Tramway so there’s no faking that one. I’ll have to be ready for real. I’m also hoping to do some triathlons next year since I’ve been a slacker and don’t think I’ll be ready this year. We’ll see though.

I do have one suggestion for the ABQ Century folks: Do some kind of real finish line. I showed up at the finish to no applause, no picture, nothing. I figured I was just late since it took me awhile to finish but some other people there said there had been nothing the whole time they had been there either. Now to a lot of people, doing those long rides might just be another weekend but the rest of us would appreciate some kind of atta-boy or something. I don’t even need a plaque or anything. Hell, a whoohoo and a congrats would have sufficed.

But overall it was great. The food/rest stops were very well done and the route was mostly well marked. Hopefully next year some of the roads with no shoulder will be widened but that’s up to the city, not the ride people. I’m glad I did it and I look forward to going again.

Tags: Biking, Personal, The Big Blue Room by matt
1 Comment »

I just implemented a new whitelist system for my email that has pretty much eliminated all the spam I was getting into my Inbox and I’ve discovered a weird side-effect. I’m a lot less popular than I once was. I used to keep my home webmail open all the time and every time I’d flip over to that tab in Firefox I’d have a bunch of email to go through. Now that I’ve gotten this whitelist going and only email I specifically allow into my Inbox gets in there, I get a lot less real email than I thought I was getting. Now I can not check my home email but 2 or 3 times a day. The fact that I was seeing tons of email in my Inbox fooled me into thinking I was getting  a bunch of real email. Strange but very useful.

It’ll be a geeky post but soon I’ll go over my whitelist setup. It’s not something most people will be able to setup but it’s turned out very well so I want to share it. If you have Postfix with Sieve email filtering going this is a good compromise between getting a million spams and losing real email to a spam filter. Stay tuned for more details and some Perl code. Admit it, you can’t wait!

[tags]email,spam,postfix,sieve,whitelist[/tags]

Tags: Geekery, Personal by matt
No Comments »

“A quote by George Santayana, “My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety toward the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image, to be servants of their human interests.”

From this article on a PBS series on atheism.
I’ve always liked what Frank Lloyd Wright said when asked about his personal religious belief: “I put a capital N on Nature and call that my church.”

I love how the people in the article speaking out against this series and atheism argue that this is anti-Christian and shouldn’t be allowed based on that. Just showing an alternative to religion doesn’t say anything one way or the other about religion. The idea that you can’t show or learn about something because it might offend people who don’t believe it is just stupid. And as I always think, if your religion is so weak that you have to be afraid of people learning about an alternative, you need to reexamine your faith.

[tags]atheism, religion, pbs, santayana, spinoza, frank+lloyd+wright[/tags]

Tags: Personal, Religion by matt
No Comments »

Kurt Vonnegut, Counterculture’s Novelist, Dies NY Times

Dammit. I’m as sad about this as I guess I can be about somebody who I never met. Like a lot of his fans, Vonnegut’s work meant a lot to me. More than most writers, even ones whose work I also love. I did feel like I knew him at least a little bit, based on how much of him was in his work. I started reading his work because I’d heard he was a science fiction writer, during the period when I was young (probably no older than 12) when I read only science fiction. Of course his work ended up being much, much more than just sf, without the nose-in-the-air refutation of the genre you get from people like Margaret Atwood. He always said he was glad when his work was finally removed from the science fiction drawer since people tend to mistake that one for a toilet. Slaughterhouse 5 was his best book, but I always loved Breakfast of Champions. BoC was a fun book, as dark as it is in some parts. The part near the end when Vonnegut, in the book as a character, remembers that the other character is supposed to be a speed reader and quickly makes him have taken a speed reading course so he can speed read the book he’s holding just blew my writer’s mind when I was younger. The sheer audacity of that impressed the hell out of me.

One of the things that makes me even more sad about his death is that he had to die during the Bush administration. Those people made him so angry and just confirmed his worst feelings about the darkness of humanity that I’m sad he never got to see their consignment to the scrapheap of history. I hope he did see things turning around though, as I think they are.

Luckily for us, we still have his heart, spread around through the characters and books he created. Even still, I’ll miss having him around.

So it goes.

EDIT: Jessica at Indexed (one of my favorite new sites) has such a great memorial to Kurt Vonnegut I have to share it. She nailed him completely.

[tags]kurt+vonnegut,vonnegut,death[/tags]

Tags: Books, Personal, Writing by matt
No Comments »

I wanted to take a Java programming class for work so I signed up for one here in Albuquerque. A week’s intensive class in a new language sounds like a good time to me, as weird as that sounds. So I was surprised and for a minute I was sad when they called me and said the class here was canceled due to low attendance. Of course I brightened up when the woman continued talking and said if I wanted to go, they would pay for my flight and hotel to take the class in San Francisco. Uh, sure, yeah, I can do that. Whoohoo!
San Francisco is one of my favorite cities, I fell in love with the place after taking a bus tour with my family when I was younger. I’m going to be in class most of the time I’m there so it’s not really a vacation or anything but the free trip is just an awesome opportunity. Besides being away from Kim and the kids for the week (the longest I’ve ever been gone), I can’t wait just to be back in SF for awhile.
[tags]san+francisco,java,class[/tags]

Tags: Geekery, Personal by matt
No Comments »

I’ve been doing my triathlon training, although my inability to get up early enough in the morning has been hindering my attempts somewhat. I’ve been swimming and running more than I ever thought I would, but I haven’t been back on my bike much. I’m bringing it to work tomorrow and I’ll get a chance to do a good ride since we get to leave early (a guy I didn’t know passed away so we’re closing early).

I’ve decided to do either the Socorro Triathlon or the Bottomless Lakes Triathlon. The Bottomless Lakes race is in a big lake I visited once before and I’d like to do that but being my first tri, I think it might be a good idea to do the Socorro one since it’s in a pool. I’ll have to decide soon so I don’t miss my chance. Both of these races are Sprint distance, which is good with my lessened training schedule.

I’m excited. I think I can do it, with my least confidence being in the running. The Sprint tri includes 3 miles of running, about 3 miles more than I’ve ever run at one time. :) I’m getting better but it’s going to take a lot more pavement pounding.

Tags: Biking, Personal, Triathlon by matt
1 Comment »

So it looks like the triathlon I was planning on attending is cancelled. I found this out in the newsletter for a New Mexico based Triathlon club, The Outlaws. So that sucks, but I found a triathlon club I might want to join so that’s a silver lining. Although from reading about some of the members, I don’t know if I’m up to snuff. One of them does 150+ bike rides, for pete’s sake. I’ll keep an eye on them though and see how my training goes. I’m going to sign up for one of the other triathlons around the same time as the defunct one soon.
Speaking of training, I’m doing a lot better than I thought I would. I’m swimming a lot farther already and I’m getting better at breathing. I’m trying to keep to the techniques I read about in the book Total Immersion, which I recommend if you’re into swimming and want to get better, or if you’re like me and have no old habits to break and want to get better. I’m also running more and walking less in my training runs. Next is to get my flat bike tire fixed and see how much of that fitness I’ve lost not riding for 6 months. It’s probably going to be pretty pathetic. And I’m anticipating my ass hurting, a lot. That’s the price you pay for not riding.
[tags]triathlon,training,running,swimming,cycling,new+mexico,albuquerque[/tags]

Tags: Personal, Triathlon by matt
No Comments »

I found a site called We Endure through a typical internet round-a-bout way (a comic book writer whose forum I used to frequent’s wife had a link to it on her site) and I’m really happy with it. While the site’s name is kind of strange, it’s for endurance sports training so it fits. You add all your training to it: how far you ran, what much you swam, etc. It also does a countdown of days until the events you specify so now I know I only have 149 days till the Triathlon. Yikes. But anyway, if you’re interested in training for some endurance event, I’d recommend using We Endure, it really helps to see all your training laid out in front of you.

My site is available here, if you’re interested.

[tags]weendure,endurance,triathlon,training,exercise[/tags]

Tags: Personal, Triathlon by matt
No Comments »

Ever since I first heard of the author Po Bronson’s shared Writer’s Grotto office space I’ve thought it would be extremely cool to set up a shared workspace. There’s a new thing coming up called Coworking that’s focussed on geeks that I would love to get into. The idea is that you get a space and outfit it with desks, chairs, couches, wifi internet access, a fridge, etc., and get people to work there instead of in coffee shops. You either pay for a day’s use of a desk or longer-term. The ideal place would have the same kind of cool vibe as a coffee shop without the random crowds and noise. Cheaper than paying for a regular office, plus with other people around doing stuff for inspiration, ideas, etc.

My dream is doing programming for myself, hence the creation of Mattorama Heavy Industries, and if I get the chance to make money doing that, I’m seriously considering setting something like this up. My only fear is having to deal so much with running the space that I don’t get to work on my own things but that’s probably the business equivalent of premature optimization, worrying about things that won’t end actually being a problem. I don’t think it would take much money to get started either, which is a bonus.

For more info, check out this NYTimes article on a space focussed on writers, and this blog post about ideal working environments. If you’re in Albuquerque and have think this is a good idea, please comment on this post. I’d love to hear there’s a ton of interest in this type of environment here in town.
[tags]coworking,Albuquerque,working[/tags]

Tags: DIY, Geekery, Personal, Writing, coworking by matt
3 Comments »