Alameda Creek

I live in the city of Alameda.

The city of Alameda is located in Alameda County, alphabetically the first of California's 58 counties.

Alameda Creek is also located in Alameda County, but it is nowhere close to the city of Alameda. In fact, they are about as far apart as it's possible to get, and still both be in Alameda County.

Like many California creeks, Alameda Creek is often barely a creek at all. In the summer and fall, it can be dry and barely a trickle.

But in the winter and spring, Alameda Creek is as beautiful as any creek you'll find.

The best way to experience Alameda Creek, in my opinion, is to pick a pleasant day in late winter or early spring, when the temperatures are in the mid-50's or low 60's, and the sky is clear and blue, and drive down to Sunol Regional Wilderness, one of the very nicest of the East Bay Regional Parks.

The road to Sunol Regional Wilderness is about a 10 mile dead-end; when you get there, pay your fee and find one of the parking spots at the end of the road. It can get quite crowded on a nice weekend afternoon, but there's always plenty of parking available.

The picnic tables are very nice here, so make sure you bring a nice picnic lunch.

Then, when you're rested up and packed away, set out on the Camp Ohlone trail. It's a wide and gentle gravel road of a trail that follows Alameda Creek upstream. Soon you'll be amazed that, after just a 30 minute drive and a 10 minute walk, you've found yourself in as beautiful a canyon as you'll find in the Coastal Range: here's a great picture.

You can go as long or as little as you want along the trail, but you should try to make it at least to the so-called "Little Yosemite" area, where striking boulders frame a delightful cascade.

If you're energetic, the trails from here run for miles; you can even arrange to walk all the way to Livermore along protected park trails!

That would be a long walk, though, so we were satisfied with our 3.5-mile Saturday afternoon hike, declaring it, all things considered, one of the best Saturday hikes we've been on in a very long time.

Rainy day reading

It was supposed to be a rainy day in the Bay Area today. Since it hasn't rained since 2012, that would actually be a good thing. But it barely sprinkled, in the end, so I don't think we can really call this a rainy day.

Still, if you were planning to spend a nice rainy day reading (or if you're somewhere else, and it's rainy where you are), you might find some of these articles interesting...

• On our normal morning commute together, my wife and I pass by the local Google Busstop. These are increasingly common here in the Bay Area, where giant high-tech companies nowadays provide not just employment, but food (company cafes), lodging (company-sponsored apartments, condos), services (on-campus child care, on-campus dental care, on-campus fitness), etc., and are now moving into the sphere of corporate-provided transit. Rebecca Solnit writes about the Google Bus in her Diary

  Silicon Valley has long been famous for its endless work hours, for sucking in the young for decades of sixty or seventy-hour weeks, and the much celebrated perks on many jobsites – nap rooms, chefs, gyms, laundry – are meant to make spending most of your life at work less hideous. The biotech industry is following the same game plan. There are hundreds of luxury buses serving mega-corporations down the peninsula, but we refer to them in the singular, as the Google Bus, and we – by which I mean people I know, people who’ve lived here a while, and mostly people who don’t work in the industry – talk about them a lot. Parisians probably talked about the Prussian army a lot too, in the day.

• James Hamilton reflects on the Super Bowl Power Outage of 2013: The Power Failure Seen Around the World

  Modern switchgear have many sensors monitored by firmware running on a programmable logic controller. The advantage of these software systems is they are incredibly flexible and can be configured uniquely for each installation. The disadvantage of software systems is the wide variety of configurations they can support can be complex and the default configurations are used perhaps more often than they should. The default configurations in a country where legal settlements can be substantial tend towards the conservative side. We don’t know if that was a factor in this event but we do know that no fault was found and the power was stable for the remainder of the game.

• I can't wait for The Performance of Open Source Applications to come out; I thought The Architecture of Open Source Applications was one of the better computer books I've read in the last 5 years. An early teaser is Ilya Gregorik's High Performance Networking in Google Chrome

  To most users and even web-developers, the DNS, TCP, and SSL delays are entirely transparent and are negotiated at network layers to which few of us descend or think about. And yet, each of these steps is critical to the overall user experience, since each extra network request can add tens or hundreds of milliseconds of latency. This is the reason why Chrome's network stack is much, much more than a simple socket handler.

• Dan Lyons on the latest Dell financial news: Michael Dell Goes To Hell

  Deals like this are where big companies go to die. Michael Dell has gone to hell. He's now in bed with a bunch of ruthless private equity guys whose role in this world is not to build things, but to take them apart and sell the pieces. They're corporate chop shops.

• Ross Anderson writes about quantum cryptography: Hard questions about quantum crypto and quantum computing

  We argue that quantum entanglement may be modelled by coupled oscillators (as it already is in the study of Josephson junctions) and this could explain why it’s hard to get more than about three qubits

• Speaking of Ross Anderson, did you realize that the entire second edition of Security Engineering is available online? Security Engineering — The Book

  When I wrote the first edition, we put the chapters online free after four years and found that this boosted sales of the paper edition. People would find a useful chapter online and then buy the book to have it as a reference. Wiley and I agreed to do the same with the second edition, and now, four years after publication, I am putting all the chapters online for free. Enjoy them – and I hope you'll buy the paper version to have as a conveient shelf reference

• As long as we're talking about computer security, see if you can make heads or tails out of this confusing article about Silent Circle: The Threat of Silence

  The technology uses a sophisticated peer-to-peer encryption technique that allows users to send encrypted files of up to 60 megabytes through a “Silent Text” app. The sender of the file can set it on a timer so that it will automatically “burn”—deleting it from both devices after a set period of, say, seven minutes.

• Returning to online textbooks, I've been taking Introduction to Electrical Engineering on Coursera, taught by Professor Don Johnson of Rice University (no, he wasn't on Miami Vice!). It's a superb course, but even more amazing is that he's made his entire textbook available online: Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering I

  Whether analog or digital, information is represented by the fundamental quantity in electrical engineering: the signal. Stated in mathematical terms, a signal is merely a function. Analog signals are continuous-valued; digital signals are discrete-valued. The independent variable of the signal could be time (speech, for example), space (images), or the integers (denoting the sequencing of letters and numbers in the football score).

• I continue to try to understand Software Defined Networking. Brad Hedlund tries to explain it to me: Network Virtualization: a next generation modular platform for the data center virtual network

  In a network virtualization platform, the fabric is the physical network – which itself could be constructed with modular chassis switches, or perhaps a distributed architecture of fixed switches. Either way, the physical network provides forwarding bandwidth between all of the virtual Edge linecards. And the fabric for network virtualization can be supplied by any switching vendor – similar to how hardware for server virtualization can be supplied by any server vendor.

• I love this follow-up journalism done by USA Today, looking back on the great "Arsenic-based life" incident of 3 years ago: Glowing reviews on 'arseniclife' spurred NASA's embrace

  Basically, the reviewers took at face value the fundamental claim by the study authors that the GFAJ-1 bug was growing without any phosphorus, says microbial ecologist Norman Pace of the University of Colorado. "Once you accept that, everything else follows," Pace says. "You just have to have a certain expertise to know that is nearly impossible; removing phosphorus is just very hard."

• Finally, if you, like me, are finding that your copy of Mozilla Thunderbird has become more and more sluggish and more and more frustrating to use as time passes, here's a suggestion. A colleague suggested that I go into the Thunderbird preferences and uncheck the "Enable Global Search and Indexer" checkbox. I did so, and it does indeed seem to have dramatically improved things. A search for this feature indicates I'm not the only one who benefited from the advice.

  This is a new feature, and large inboxes and mail folders take a while to index. My understanding was that Tb 3.1.x was supposed to fine tune the feature to turn off while you were doing something, so it didn't get in the way. It appears in your case, that fine tuning didn't happen.

This may mean absolutely nothing, or ...

... it may be the absolute BEST news of the year!

Portal, the Movie: Valve, J.J. Abrams Team Up for Future Games, Films

Abrams and Newell made the surprise, succinct announcement at the end of their keynote speech, which took the form of a carefully rehearsed discussion between the two creatives about the strengths and weaknesses of games and movies as storytelling mediums.

The wheels of justice turn slowly...

... still, isn't it somewhat shocking that it took SIX YEARS for this to occur? S&P expects US lawsuit over its mortgage ratings

According to a report in the New York Times, the lawsuit will likely be brought this week after settlement talks between the Justice Department and S&P broke down last week. The talks collapsed over federal authorities' insistence that a settlement involve at least $1 billion, the Times reported.

I think that this is the "report in the New York Times": U.S. and States Prepare to Sue S.&P. Over Mortgage Ratings

The case is focusing on about 30 collateralized debt obligations, an exotic type of mortgage security. According to S&P, the mortgage securities were created in 2007 at the height of the housing boom.

Kentucky Route Zero

Kentucky Route Zero looks like my sort of game.

Kentucky Route Zero is a magical realist adventure game about a secret highway in the caves beneath Kentucky, and the mysterious folks who travel it. Gameplay is inspired by point-and-click adventure games (like the classic Monkey Island or King's Quest series, or more recently Telltale's Walking Dead series), but focused on characterization, atmosphere and storytelling rather than clever puzzles or challenges of skill.

But I just bought The Cave, and am still neck-deep in Kingdoms of Amalur!

What am I to do?

Need to find more hours in the day to play games...

Woof!

The East Bay Regional Park District is one of the greatest urban treasures in the country. We've been visiting these parks for decades and still find new places to explore.

Here, apropos of nothing more than a beautiful February weekend, is Bryan's list of the Top Five Places To Go With Your Dog In The East Bay:

• Briones. Briones Regional Park is one of the crown jewels of the East Bay parks. It is simply enormous: you could visit dozens of times, spend hundreds of hours, and there would still be huge sections of the park you've never visited. On a fine spring or fall afternoon, there may be hundreds of people in the park, but it's so immense that it never feels crowded. On a brisk winter weekend, you may feel like you have the place all to yourself, with views reaching for miles.

  Briones has both on-leash and off-leash sections; the more popular trails are on-leash, but there are plenty of off-leash areas too. At certain times of the year, you want to pay attention to the cows; Briones is used for stock grazing in the winter, and if your dog isn't comfortable around cows, you'll need to take some precautions.

• Point Pinole. Point Pinole Regional Shoreline is one of my favorite parks. Both you and your dog will love the park. There are many trails for dogs to explore, while humans will find both the historical aspects of the park and the breath-taking views over the San Pablo Bay worth the hike. A fun thing to do is to take the shuttle bus down to the picnic area at the far end of the park by the fishing pier, then walk back along the shore enjoying the views.

  Once we were at Point Pinole when there was a Vizsla fan club having a meet-up; you haven't lived til you've seen 25 Vizsla prancing and bounding around the meadow.

• Morgan Territory. Morgan Territory Regional Preserve is a bit of a drive from our house, but boy is it worth it! Another of the larger parks in the system, Morgan Territory has extensive trails to explore. For a dog that wants to explore, Morgan Territory is the place; just make sure you're current on your tick medicine, because the grass can grow rather high.

  Morgan Territory is one of the more remote parks, and kind of unpredictable; if you visit in August it can be 107 degrees, and we've had a few December visits when it was in the low 40's with a howling wind, and we stayed only a short while before heading home. But on a mile March afternoon, when all the wildflowers are in bloom, it's hard to imagine a more pleasant location for you and your dog.

• Diablo Foothills. Diablo Foothills park is adjacent to Mount Diablo State Park, and the trails inter-connect. Diablo Foothills has some very nice trails, with lots to see, and it's quite dog-friendly.

  You never quite feel like you're out in the wildnerness, but if you're looking for a great 2-hour hike without a 2-hour trip to get there, pop the dog in the van and head to Diablo Foothills.

• Leona Canyon. Leona Canyon Regional Open Space Preserve is the smallest of the parks in this article, but it has a lot going for it. Drive up to the back of the Merritt College parking lot, find a space (don't forget to put money in the meter if it's a school day), and look for the hard-to-find Leona Canyon gate at the very farthest end of the parking lot. Within just a few steps, you'll be completely isolated, surrounded by canyon walls, following a wide peaceful trail down the canyon. In wintertime, the creek will be running, but even in summer time the trees will provide glorious shade. Although the walk is short, the complete immersion into the wild makes Leona Canyon one of our favorites.

  Don't forget to stop and admire the view of the bay from the college parking lot on your way back out!

You'll notice I didn't include Point Isabel nor Oyster Bay on the list. Those are the classic "dog parks" in the East Bay, and they're certainly nice. But with so many wonderful East Bay parks to choose from, you shouldn't limit yourself to those, so next time you're looking for a dog-walk, why not try one of these?

Got any other great suggestions for places to go with your dog in the East Bay? Let me know!

Stuff to read

I know, I know, there's a football game this Sunday (as my co-worker says, "it's the best day of the year to go shopping -- all the stores are empty!").

But if you're not sitting on a couch somewhere with potato chips within reach, you might find some of these links worth chasing. Or maybe not.

• Google explain how Google Street View was able to show pictures inside the Grand Canyon: Trekking the Grand Canyon for Google Maps

  On its first official outing, the Street View team is using the Trekker—a wearable backpack with a camera system on top—to traverse the Grand Canyon and capture 360-degree images of one of the most breathtaking natural landscapes on the planet.

• It's the 30th anniversary of Lotus 1-2-3. I was actually working in Cambridge during those days, just two blocks away from the Lotus headquarters, and I know many people who worked at Lotus during that time. Dan Bricklin reminisces

  It was written in tight assembly code, accepting the limitation of making porting to other computers more difficult (it couldn't run on Apple's 6502-based computers or many others) to get the speed needed on the soon-to-be-dominant IBM PC (which it helped make dominant).

• From the Harvard Gazette, a nice short article about the 100th anniversary of Andrei Markov's lecture to the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg: An idea that changed the world

  Markov added the idea of interdependence to probability, the notion that what happens next is linked to what is happening now. That creates what Hayes called a “chain of linked events,” and not just a series of independent acts. The world, Markov posited, is not just a series of random events. It is a complex thing, and mathematics can help reveal its hidden interconnectedness and likely probabilities. “Not everything,” Hayes told an audience of 100, “works the way coin flipping does.”

• The Verge looks at the ongoing arms race between casinos and would-be casino cheats: Not in my house: how Vegas casinos wage a war on cheating

  When you’re playing a game where decisions matter (rather than pure games of chance), cheating is simply a matter of having better information than your opponent. "If I know your hole card, I’m gonna beat you. If I know the flop, I’m going to beat you. It’s all information transfer. And that’s all everything in this room does," he says, sweeping his arm to take in the acres of electronics surrounding him, "is move information from one place to another. Information management is all it is."

• From Dr. Dobb's: Mobile as the Driver of Desktop Software Design

  Microsoft's error with Metro on the laptop and desktop is, in my view, simply a case of going too far too fast. It does not negate the fact that these platforms will eventually move to UIs driven by the mobile experience. A key part of that mobile experience is gesture recognition. As yet on business-style laptops and desktops, there is no gesture recognition capability, but that's beginning to change.

• Speaking of Microsoft, it's time to start learning about the next release of Office: Ars Technica takes us on Office for Home: A visual tour

  While the functionality of Office has been pulled into the world of cloud services and "app" stores, the look and feel of Office has been recast to make it more functional on touch devices and traditional PCs. The new themes echo the flatter look of Windows 8.

• I just studied spanning trees in Tim Roughgarden's class on Coursera, so I enjoyed: Computer Scientists Find New Shortcuts for Infamous Traveling Salesman Problem

  The shortest spanning tree was a natural starting point for efforts to build a short round-trip tour. But this approach also offered an opening for researchers trying to whittle down Christofides’ 50 percent guarantee. For although the shortest spanning tree seems effective at first, other trees may be better when it comes to the short-cutting process that converts the tree into a round-trip — for example, a tree that never branches needs only one added highway to become a round-trip.

• The Mystery Hunt 2013 has just concluded; The Tech describes how the hunt went: A Hunt of Epic Proportions

  By Monday morning, the hunt had already been declared the longest hunt in history, surpassing the previous record, the 68 hour hunt created by the French Armada in 2004. On Sunday, HQ sent out an announcement that teams only needed to solve five of the six super metapuzzles to win. While many people had to leave starting Sunday night, there were still 25 teams that submitted answers sometime on Monday.

• Ars Technica on the patent battle between NewEgg and Soverain: How Newegg crushed the “shopping cart” patent and saved online retail

  The main piece of prior art used at the appeals trial was the CompuServe Mall, and Newegg's lawyers, led on appeal by Ed Reines of Weil Gotshal, argued that system hit each and every patent claim in Soverain's patents.

  At district court, the judge hadn't even let those invalidity arguments go to the jury, stating there wasn't "sufficient testimony" on obviousness, and that it would be "very confusing" to them.

  Soverain argued that CompuServe's system didn't include a "product identifier" as they define it in their patent, and that CompuServe lacked a "shopping cart database." Soverain also argued that its system was new and superior because it was adapted to the Internet, whereas CompuServe's system was a pre-Internet network.

• Datamation speaks the unspeakable: 9 Things That Are Never Admitted About Open Source

  Supporters like to claim that one of the advantages of FOSS is that it encourages diversity. Unlike Windows, FOSS is supposed to welcome new ideas and to be less vulnerable to viruses because most categories of software include several applications.

  The reality is somewhat different.

• Speaking of speaking the unspeakable, Seth Godin just nails it: Eleven things organizations can learn from airports

  Of course, this post isn’t actually about airports

• Amazon remains the most fascinating corporation in the world: Amazon Profits Fall 45 Percent, Still the Most Amazing Company in the World

  Amazon, as best I can tell, is a charitable organization being run by elements of the investment community for the benefit of consumers.

  Amazon, Apple, and the beauty of low margins

  Study disruption in most businesses and it almost always comes from the low end. Some competitor grabs a foothold on the bottom rung of the ladder and pulls itself upstream. But if you're already sitting on that lowest rung as the incumbent, it's tough for a disruptor to cling to anything to gain traction.

• From Scientific American: How to Lose $3 Million in 1 Second

  There are models that do incorporate illiquidity, or market freezes. These do so by adding rare, but large, discontinuous jumps in the price of assets. These models, however, are of a different breed than the non-jump models.

  The Real, and Simple, Equation That Killed Wall Street

  there is an equation one can point to and blame. This equation, however, requires nothing more than middle school algebra to understand and is taught to every new Wall Street employee. It is leveraged return.

• I think I've read about 25% of the entries in Conor Friedersdorf's 102 Spectacular Nonfiction Stories from 2012; I'm pleased to see Cory Doctorow's Lockdown in the list.

  These projects afford me the opportunity to read as much impressive nonfiction journalism as any single person possibly can. The result is my annual Best of Journalism List, now in its fifth year.

• Lastly, I can still vividly remember an incident during my second year of college in Chicago: quite unexpectedly, my grandfather had died, and I needed to travel to Cleveland on almost no notice. After class, I waited my turn to talk to my professor to tell him I'd be missing Monday's mid-term. Just as I was about to speak to him, I was stunned to hear the person in front of me say: "Uhm, sir? I won't be at the mid-term, because my grand-mother has died."

  Professor Dongwon Lee of Penn State investigates this phenomenon: The Dead Grandmother/Exam Syndrome and the Potential Downfall Of American Society.

  For over twenty years I have collected data on this supposed relationship, and have not only confirmed what most faculty had suspected, but also found some additional aspects of this process that are of potential importance to the future of the country. The results presented in this report provide a chilling picture and should waken the profession and the general public to a serious health and sociological problem before it is too late.