Too funny...

Having just implemented a permanent 301 redirect on my web server so that users who browse to criminale.com get redirected to www.criminale.com a co-worker shows me this:

It seems some other people think what I found cool to be stupid. That's the neat thing about the web, you can start a movement. And get people involved. You can make things happen. You can sway people's opinion and enlighten their minds. About really, really important stuff.

My only saving grace is that they say:

"...several websites choose to forward traffic from domain.com to www.domain.com for branding reasons and that's just fine with us. As long as they don't simply block all HTTP traffic on the bare domain name, they're OK in our book."

Thank goodness, looks like I'm in the clear. [deadpan]

For 'branding' (like I need that...) and for consistency and because I think it's kinda cool and old school like a classic car or something I wanted everyone that browses to criminale.com to get redirected to www.criminale.com. Here is what I did.

• In IIS, I changed the name of my site to www.criminale.com.
• In Properties > Web Site > Advanced I removed the criminale.com host header.
• I then created a new site called criminale.com and for now pointed it to the same directory as the www.criminale.com site. The only host header for this site is criminale.com.
• In Properties > Home Directory of criminale.com, I selected "A redirection to a URL".
• In the Redirect to: field I put http://www.criminale.com$S$Q. More about that below.
• I also checked the "The exact URL entered above" and the "A permanent redirection for this resource" boxes.

All done.

The $S tells IIS to take the subdirectory location e.g. /martin/cycling/training.asp and the $Q grabs the querystring. It seems intuitive not to check the "The exact URL entered above" box but if you don't you get a very different result.

Here is the Microsoft knowledge base article that I used as a guide:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/313074

When I was much younger my mother used to beak gingerbread and we'd spend some real quality time decorating it with candied fruit, nuts and icing. I remember thinking that the icing she made was so cool... it was 1) an incredible glue and 2) perfect for making icicles.

Well a few days ago Shelley got this authentic German gingerbread house kit and Wednesday evening Cameron and us put it together.

The icing was one egg white (beaten), as much powdered sugar as you wanted until the consistency was right and then a few drops of lemon juice for extra stickiness. It was surprising how easy it was to make and it was also surprising how many memories of my Mom came back just from whisking a damn egg white.

Anyway, I can't wait to eat this!

I also can't wait until I start using my digital camera instead of my phone to take pictures - man is that a ghetto shot.

Sometimes, after years of not finding what you want you come across it in the strangest way.

I was riding the bus home today and grabbed a copy of The Stranger to read on the trip. Now I love ads, often they are far more interesting than the articles in any magazine. So as I'm paging though the latest issue I saw a cool, little  black and white line drawing of an ad and promptly checked it out when I got home. It was for swrve cycling clothing. And they rock.

Ever ridden your bike in jeans? It bites. Seams rub you in all the wrong places, they bind and you have to roll them up so you don't coat them in grease or snag them in your chain and launch your self over the bars. And when your work place is close enough to home to make putting on the official cycling clown suite a humongous hassle I'm always looking for the perfect "ride to work and then still be able to wear it without looking like a fool" outfit.

I'm going to ask Santa for a pair of knickers for Christmas!

The half marathon is 6 days away. I've set the bar fairly low in an attempt to totally impress myself. In other words, my whole life philosophy. However, this weekend I felt excellent out on my long run Sunday despite freezing my nibs off and running for my life from a Ted Bundy look-alike (I think it was all that Thanksgiving Reading I did. Nothing like boning up on "The Stranger Beside Me" tucked all warm and tidy in your isolated cabin in the woods). I feel a touch of a sore throat coming on but my remedy for that will be total denial. Lots of juice, a vitamin and denial, people. That's the ticket. After all this, there is no way in H -E - double hockey sticks that I'm not going to claw my way across the finish line. There's going to be running Elvis' for crapsake. Elvi. Running. Can you even imagine the amount of chaffing that scenario entails? All the Bodyglide in the world is not enough. Lord love'em. And I will be there. If a wig-sporting, jumpsuit and jogging shoe wearing Elvis impersonator can do it, so can I.

Today while at the gym I saw him again. He's about 50 something years old and in pretty good shape really but...

• He always wears these hilarious black Tommy Bahama Fisherman Sandals instead of tennis shoes.

• All his shirts are really tight... Not so hot especially when your waist is not exactly like that of the Bowflex spokesperson.
• Although not a requirement for self-obsessed old gym prima dona, this guy is really, really hairy and obviously pretty proud of it based on the tight, v-neck shirts he wears.
• He spends as much time fixing his hair in the mirror as he does working out.
• His hair style of choice is classic John Travolta meaning it's HUGE, is incapable of existing without a blow dryer and requires lots of maintenance. Thank goodness he's up to that task.
• His hair, he keeps making sure every one is perfectly in place...
• Since it's all about him, of course he never re-racks his weights.
• Since it's all about how much you can lift, his form is atrocious.
• Since it's about chest and arms, well, he never does much of anything else. In fact, come to think of it, chest and arms are ALL I ever see him do.
• What's with the hair...? Enough already. You're at the gym and it's 5:30 in the morning! Who cares?
• He tans massively. Obsessively. Ridiculously. Two words: leather man. Two more: it's winter. Two more: nut bag.

About the only missing characteristic is an overpowering cologne but I have not been close enough to smell anything. That's a good thing I'm thinking.

Forget that plastic, wildly inaccurate, hard to calibrate pedometer you are carrying around - just remember where you went and then look up the distance on Gmaps Pedometer when you're done!

All it takes is a couple of clicks (or a few hundred if you went a really long distance) and bingo - you have your distance. Actually, you only have to plot half of your walk/run if you go for and out-and-back route.

You can even export the route as an external link which you can send to your friends to share.

The only bummer is you can only zoom in as far as Google Maps will let you so your route might not be exactly the same as the distance you traveled. But pretty damn close I'll wager.

Nice.

I am always needing to paste in code on my training diary and now it's super easy with the Text Template plug-in. You can name your templates and save them locally and anytime you want to use them there they are.

Nice.

I just found out that going to San Juan Island for Thanksgiving is a family tradition that started in 1970! Oh man, I had no idea... And you know, I can't readily think of a year that we have missed.

Some history - Bill used to have a position in the Department of Oceanography at the University of WA and this department owns the Friday Harbor Laboratories so it was an easy in. My parents liked it so much we kept coming and now it's 2007.

Here are the pictures.

This batch was taken on 22 November and are mostly of the four of us on the beach out by the American camp. The last couple of years Lucca has taken to building these enormous teeter totters. Two years ago we discovered that you can balance a board across one end of the teeter and markedly increase the danger factor. Of course that is now also a tradition.

On 23 November we went to the Westcott Bay Sculpture Park up by Roche Harbor. This place is pretty spectacular! Not only is it huge and does it contain about 100 sculptures but some of them are really interesting. One theme seems to moving parts. When the wind blows these movable pieces do some amazing things. And no material is off limits it seems, we saw pieces made of the traditional bronze, marble and granite and also pieces made of string and flags and even a bridge. I recommend you check it out.

Ever do something really stupid, realize it's really stupid and keep right on doing it? Right, me neither.

So here we are enjoying pretty much the only family tradition we have - going to Friday Harbor for Thanksgiving. This place is a research lab and along with cabins and apartments and a cafeteria and a dock and research vassals and and even row boats you can use and a day care facility now this place has Internet access. It used to be you had to go to the library and fire up one of the computers there but now they have wireless networks as well, two even. This morning I got online no problem; now I can't.

So what do I do? I keep trying. And waiting. And trying again.

The access points I was seeing this morning are not showing up at the moment and seeing as it's a holiday, they might just be turned off. But I keep sitting here, pretending to read magazine and stuff but really I keep clicking the refresh button on my wireless radio.

It's a sad state of affairs.

Oh I brought books. And I tried to build a fire (but I failed and Lucca had to take over), but what I really want is to [insert some lame reason here] online.