“Vampire Sucks Life Out Of Drive”

That’s the headline I would write for my 500 Gb hard drive.

I bought this machine a few months ago. And, within a month the 500 Gb hard drive was completely full. Now, I know I am something of a data hoarder. I keep everything, and I have a large number of video and audio files on my machine. Not to mention the development software I use. But, come on, really, 500 Gb in one month? How could that be? I would have to have been downloading day and night from multiple sources.

Well, I found it irritating, but didn’t really have time to look into it. I ran the system tools to clean things up, off loaded some of the media, and called it good to go. In a few days I had the same problem, a warning from the system to clear out some hard drive space.

Hey, what the *&%$ is going on? I just cleaned this up, the total memory of the media files are not that large. And, this is supposed to be my super-duper, excellent, smoking-fast system, able to run multiple apps with ease. What gives? I ran the system tools again, and started the hunt with wooden stake and silver bullet in hand. What could be doing this?

This was my first experience with running my own Vista machine. I’ve helped other folks setup or use theirs, but not used it myself. I intentionally bought it at a time when a free upgrade to Windows 7 was included in the package. I hadn’t received the upgrade yet, and I was tired of cleaning the system every few days.

After some time spent with the great oracle Rav Google, here is the Vampire cast of characters:

System Restore – He will suck your hard drive until there is nothing left. Read more »

I live in Israel and love it. I love learning Israeli culture and, in contrast,  learning about mine. One point of divergence between our cultures  is how Israelis give directions.

Here in Israel it’s a common thing for people to ask other people for directions. At corners and stop lights, or in the middle of traffic, taxi drivers ask other taxi drivers, drivers ask people walking or driving for directions, walkers ask other walkers or drivers.

But, I find the answer to “Where is…?” a problem.  Ask an someone on the street where someplace is or how to get there and the likely answer will be, with a hand wave: “yeshar”.  Roughly translated it means: “Straight ahead”. Of, course, if the route is a little more complicated: (hand waving forward and left) “yeshar, yeshar, yeshar, smolah”, “Straight, straight, straight, left”.

Of course, the person you asked may really have no idea.

What I want from the question “Where is..?” is a certain degree of detail lacking in a “yeshar”. Finding addresses in Jerusalem is an adventure. Most addresses are for the whole building, not individual businesses in the building.  My apartment has 3 different numbers above the entrance. Only one of those is correct.

A business can be anywhere top to bottom, side to side,  back to front in a building with little, no, or outdated, signage to help. Or, it could be in a little warren of lanes and walking alleys, making it very difficult to find the place. “Yeshar” just doesn’t give me enough confidence that I will find the place.

I’ve discussed with friend the possibility that a “yeshar” has a certain distance associated with it. But, I’m not sure how far that might be. Is one “yeshar” a block, a few blocks, 500 meters? Are multiple “yeshars” additive or just indicate it’s more than one “yehsar”?

Late one night, on my way home from a night out with friends, a big panel truck stopped beside us and the driver asked us how to get to Tel Aviv. A friend gave some directions . Satisfied with the answer the driver made a three-point turn on our two lane street and headed off to Tel Aviv.

After he was gone, we thought to respond ( with the appropriate hand waving): “Smolah, yamina, yeshar, yeshar, yeshar, yeshar, yeshar,yeshar, yeshar, yeshar…………yamina”; “Turn left, turn right, go straight for a long, long, long ways, then turn right off the freeway ramp”. I think that would approximate the 60 km trip from our corner to Tel Aviv.

Today I implemented an Rss and Atom syndication feed as a sample for my portfolio site WebDataDesigners.com. It’s a simple feed that outputs a list of ads clicked. The feed, Ads Clicked, uses data the site writes when a visitor clicks an ad in the sample ad rotator.

In this case the ad is a photo in the AdRotator sample on my site.

Before I get to deeply into my story, I’d like to offer sincere thanks to Scott Mitchell of 4GuysFromRolla.com. for his excellent article, How to Create A Syndication Feed For Your Website .

I know that there are a plethora of free or for fee sites that will generate feeds for you. But, I wanted to implement my own in the app.

Creating and consuming syndication feeds is a new skill for me. I started my process, as I usually do, with Rav Google, the developer’s oracle.
I found many articles and blogs about creating and consuming syndication feeds. Most had dates in the mid 2000′s.  But, I was hoping for something in framework 3.5 technology.

In my search I found a brief reference to the .NET Framework 3.5 classes System.ServiceModel.Web and System.ServiceModel.Syndication.  Then, in an article by Scott, “Syndicating and Consuming RSS 1.0 (RDF) Feeds in ASP.NET 3.5″ on 4GuysFromRoll.com he sites his article on using the framework classes.

After a few hours of work rewriting and running through the code, I had a working sample. I prefer to rewrite the code. I feel that I learn more about the code by writing it than from simply copying it. It takes time to rewrite code. But, the learning from it is invaluable. And, saves a lot of time later when I need to revise or agument the application.

All went well. The only glitch was that my application did not have references to the the System.ServiceModel class libraries. It took a few moments of thinking to find the System.ServiceModel.Web dll.

Creating this sample gave me a taste of another framework technology that I haven’t used, linq.
I’m pretty happy with MS SQL. I’ve been creating databases and their objects for 10 years now. As a result, I haven’t seen the need for linq. I found it fairly easy to create the linq data. Maybe I will try out some more linq, too.

Can you tell me how linq is better than simply writing the code in my SSMS?

I spent the weeks of August upstairs in our house in my office. I had a contract to produce a piece of software. The days of August were long and hot and wonderful. I had put a window fan in the window close to my desk. Each day I would sit at my desk and write code as I listen to the sounds of my new home. This was a particularly auspicious time. The Cicadas had hatched and the boy cicadas were in the trees and rattling their love songs to the girls.

Several times a day I would stop working because I had once again noticed the cicada love song. Most times I would write a short email to a friend in Washington “The cicadas are singing”.

Summer is a much quieter time in Olympia, no cicadas, few crickets with few of the night sounds of insects.

The nights in Olympia are filled with the sounds of frogs. Much of Olympia is wetland and the frogs sing and sing and sing. Starting in early spring they pick up the melody they had abandoned as the days grew cooler the previous fall. Mornings and evenings the small birds join in with their own melodies. Each morning from November to February I listened to the stillness waiting for the return of the birds. Sometime in February I would be rewarded with the return of their song. Preparing for mating and raising the next generation to carry on their oral tradition from early spring until late fall.

Click this link to Listen to my Frogs

But, in August, the nights here are filled with the sounds I associate with my childhood in the South, crickets and cicadas. I have even seen fireflies in the early dusk as I stood out on the sidewalk in front of my new home. I had heard that the fireflies were gone, another casualty on the way to global warming. I’m warmed by their light and their persistence in the world.

As a little girl, on summer nights, I would be given a jar with holes punched in the lid. My cousins and I would run around the yard catching them in the jar. When we went to bed, I would put my jar on the table by the bed and watch them light up as I would drift off to sleep.

Chef Ken has vegetarian greens. You may think “Yeah, so?”, unless you know that Chef Ken’s is all about Southern food.

And, as you may  know Southern vegetables are not vegetarian. Some form of pork is almost always included in the ingredients in southern vegetables. It can be salt pork, bacon, bacon grease, fat back, ham hocks, side meat, or one of the many other creative ways the lesser cuts of pork and pork fat have been prepared or preserved by the people of the southern states. I should know. From the time I was 8, I cooked with these prepared pork parts. We always had a can for bacon grease sitting on our stove top. Yes, sitting on the stove top, day after day, not refrigerated, waiting to be added to vegetables or used to fry meats.
My corn bread was cooked with bacon grease as an ingredient and with bacon grease in the cast iron pan to season the pan and release the corn bread. The pan is put into the hot oven with a several tablespoons of bacon grease in it. After the pan is hot and the bacon grease melted pour the cornbread batter into the bacon grease. You will hear the batter sizzle in the grease as it hits the pan. And, you will see the edges of the cornbread batter cook. When the cornbread is done, turn the cast iron pan over onto a plate. The cornbread will easily slide out of the pan and have a crunchy, crispy crust, on the bottom and sides. Ho’ Cake is made the same way. A big, yummy biscuit made in a cast iron pan.

But, this post is supposed to be about Chef Ken. Ken is a pro chef with many years experience and many years training in his mother’s and grandmother’s kitchens. In 2006 he opened his own place, Chef Ken’s, at 7135 Germantown Avenue in the heart of Mount Airy, Philadelphia. He features healthy southern cooking, the kind I had to learn to cook after I left my parent’s home and was cooking for my family. My favorites are the greens, spare ribs, and blackened tilapia.

To learn more about his experience and wonderful restaurant watch this video: