I read 17 works of fiction during 2011. This number is down from the previous two years. Family, running, and the new job has cut into my reading time. I am doing my best to make more time for reading every day, mostly by spending less time squandering my time away on the Internet... but that also means less time for blogging. Hence, I find myself summarizing 2011 in the middle of February.

Well, here it is, the list of Fiction that I read during 2011:

A few months ago I started standing at work.

I've been tweaking my desk area and this is where I am today, version 2.0 of my standing workstation:



The upper LCD shelf is made from a cheap melamine shelf with CAPITA legs from IKEA. So far it is working well, and the third LCD monitor is a nice addition.

ClusterSSH is a nice tool for manipulating multiple *nix machines simultaneously. For example, if I want to run some commands on two Linux machines named server1 and server2, I could:

# cssh server1 server2

And I will get two xterm windows that I can control simultaneously by typing into the cssh command window. Since cssh will send keystrokes to both servers, any series of commands can be run, including editing files, etc. I have found that my daily patterns of behavior make cssh preferable to similar tools such as pdsh. Also, cssh uses very similar options syntax to the ssh command, so I don't have to remember different options (I frequently use -l and -p).

I might want to tail the logs on all of the machines in the cluster, but then focus in on one particular machine after I have identified a particular cluster node of interest. Similarly, I might work out a long command line on a single node before running it on the rest of the machines via the cssh command window.

In Debian and Ubuntu, cssh can be installed with:

# sudo apt-get install clusterssh

Cluster SSH is also available for Mac OS X (http://code.google.com/p/csshx/).

A clusterssh package seems to be working its way into Red Hat flavors via Extras or 3rd party repos such as rpmforge.

After running cssh for the first time, you will have a .csshrc file in your home directory. This file can be tweaked in various ways to make connecting to groups of machines easier. To save a group of machines into a list that you can re-use, cssh can use a plain text cluster file.

To use a cluster file:

 

 

I spent time over the holidays in Austin, Texas. Austin has some wonderful trails and greenways. I entered the Barton Springs Greenbelt at its Zilker Park trailhead, parking the car near the Barton Springs Pool facility.

I have to digress and mention that Zilker Park is just great. Children and adults alike can entertain themselves for hours. Besides the wide open spaces and nature trails, there is an awesome playground, ball fields, a train, and even climbing rocks. Notable events that happen there include the Zilker Park Kite Festival and the Austin City Limits Music Festival.

So back to the running... I had not traveled very far along the trail before finding rocks sticking out of the path. At this point I was already glad that I had opted to wear my Altra Lone Peak trail shoes. It turns out that these scattered rocks were only a small taste of what was to come.



And then the trail became rockier...

The other day I snapped a photo of the awesome wall of shoes at Lloyd Clarke Sports:





This really deserves a wide angle lens rather than my little smart phone camera.

The shoe choices are amazing and include many minimalist shoes. I continue to hope that they will start carrying Altra Zero Drop shoes.

A few people have asked how many shoes I have. Ever since running became one of my primary recreational activities, shoes have become a significant hobby of mine. I used to spend money on things like video games and computer gadgets. Now I spend money on shoes.

Here is a picture of all of the shoes that I originally bought for the purpose of running (Oops! Missing from the photo are Nike Free Run+ which I gave away. Also missing are my bare feet!):



Pictured Top Row (from Left to Right): Mizuno Wave Universe 3 (MWU3), Vibram FiveFingers (VFF) Bikila, New Balance Minimus Road MR10, Adidas Kanadia 3, Invisible Shoes huarache sandals

Pictured Bottom Row (from Left to Right): Soft Star Shoes RunAmoc DASH Smooth, Soft Star RunAmoc LITE, Soft Star Moc3, Inov-8 Bare-X 150, Altra Instinct, Altra Instinct black, Altra Adam, Altra Lone Peak

And here is the mileage that I have on each shoe: