Author Archives: Jeff Fitzsimons
Getting to Thailand: Taking the Plunge
I’ve wanted to go to Thailand for several years now. The warm weather, world-renowned climbing, beautiful beaches, and unlimited mango sticky rice have been calling to me. But with a nearly 24 hour flight time over, it’s just not worth … Continue reading
Posted in Travel
Leave a comment
Mountain Bike to Cyclocross/Touring Conversion
I need a touring bike, and I’m on a budget. My old Barracuda AM2, aluminum-framed mountain bike frame is tapped for rear pannier mounts, so perhaps a conversion is in order. As I quickly found out, there’s a lot more … Continue reading
Finding the Black Rock Mountain Bike Area in Falls City, Oregon
Since I managed to get lost trying to find the Black Rock Mountain Bike Area in Falls City (despite being more or less a local), I thought others might benefit from a clear guide. This follows the route from Salem. … Continue reading
Posted in Cycling, Travel
Tagged Black Rock, Black Rock Mountain Bike Area, Falls City, mountain biking, Oregon, Salem
Leave a comment
Ecco Track Elite: Best Boots Ever
The Ecco Track Elite, model 24604, is easily the best boot I’ve ever owned. It’s far taller, and provides much more support, than any of the other Track series boots. Ecco’s soles are soft and comfortable. While this results in … Continue reading
Posted in Backpacking
Leave a comment
Bummer!
In addition to my Halloween plans falling through, I just found out that independent hiking on the Inca Trail is prohibited! Since June 2002 trekking independently on the Inca Trail has been prohibited. Regulations state that each trekker must be … Continue reading
Getting Squid (Internet Proxy) Working
Problem After configuring Safari and Firefox to use my local network’s squid proxy, I got the following error whenever I tried to browse to a page: ERROR The requested URL could not be retrieved While trying to retrieve the URL: … Continue reading
The Demise of CAPICOM
CAPICOM, a COM-based wrapper for the CryptoAPI library, is deprecated and on its way out. However, Microsoft has no time line for phasing it out, nor have they provided sufficient documentation of alternatives. Many CAPICOM pages contain a confusing, bright-red … Continue reading
Posted in Authenticode, COM, Cryptography, Technology, Win32
Tagged Authenticode, CAPICOM, code signing
Leave a comment
Unable to Connect to Localhost SQL Server Express Instance
Problem Connecting programmatically or by using osql failed with the following, generic error: error: 40 – Could not open a connection to SQL Server My programmatic attempt looked like this: string cs = “Data Source=localhost;” + “Trusted_Connection=true;” + “Initial Catalog=dbname;”; … Continue reading
Posted in ASP.Net, Technology
Tagged ADO, ASP.Net, c++, SQL Server, SQL Server Express
Leave a comment
GnuPG Plugin for vim Under Cygwin
GnuPG, GNU Privacy Guard, is a free system for encrypting files, emails, etc. The GnuPG plugin for vim provides automatic encryption and decryption of files within vim. If you attempt to edit a GnuPG-encrypted file with vim, it will prompt … Continue reading
Posted in Cryptography, Technology, Win32
Leave a comment
My Fantastic Contraptions
A collection of solutions for Fantastic Contraption: My Solutions: Tube – a minimal tube crawler. U-Turn – a floppy, crawling chariot. U-Turn (again)) – a simple cart which uses leverage to apply force on the ceiling. Back and Forth – … Continue reading
Posted in Fun, Internet
Leave a comment