East Moore Lake Drive

While only a tiny stretch in length (it only spans three blocks), E. Moore Lake Drive has serious girth. This section of road feels strangely disjointed from its bookends. West Moore Lake Drive and Rice Creek Road which extend to the west and east (respectively) are both 2-lane roads, while E. Moore Lake Drive is a 5-lane stretch that badly needs to be put on a road diet to improve safety, and at the same time, capture value.

There are many fine businesses nestled on this tiny stretch of road: Ax-Man Surplus, Dave’s Sport Shop, Fantasy Gifts (for the naughtier bunch :)), an Asian food market, a couple of restaurants, a day care center, a dentist… the list goes on. Fridley, being the “Suburban Hell” that it is, had little (or no) foresight into how people without automobiles would patronize these businesses – they simply assumed that it would never be the case.

Continue reading

There has been a lot of talk recently about WordPress (.org and .com), Automattic, WordCamp, and the GNU Public License. Hopefully without beating a dead horse, I can offer some constructive suggestions to the community so that the playing field at least appears level.

Continue reading

Thinking outside the box

Jim Collins, author of Beyond Entrepreneurship (recommended by Cory Miller of iThemes at Pressnomics), suggests that budding entrepreneurs can innovate by studying something that may seem completely unrelated to your craft – “thinking outside the box.”

Lately I’ve been interested in cycling. When I’m riding, rather than putting my mind on auto-pilot (like many drivers do), I find that my mind is more alert. It’s partly due to the fact that I’m trying to avoid getting killed by drivers on auto-pilot. But it is also because I’m going slower, exposed to the air and the elements. I can hear a deer in the passing woods or smell fresh bread from the bakery. It turns out that “slowing down” is an excellent approach to problem solving. In my case, “thinking outside the (computer) box” had just become “thinking while outside.”
Continue reading

This article assumes you fave a few things:

  1. A Linux server with:
    • root SSH access
    • BIND installed
    • a domain already set up and working with BIND
  2. An OpenWrt router at home to send updates

The OpenWrt router isn’t strictly necessary.  You could, of course do the dynamic DNS updates with a cheap Linux firewall, but I’ll cover the configuration for OpenWrt.

Continue reading

My friend poked fun at my bike saying it looks like a “cop bike.” I took stock and realized he had a point. From the cop bikes I’ve seen, I’d say mine fits most of these criteria, which is to say cop bikes are really just city-going mountain bikes:

  • Flat handlebars
  • Rack/trunk bag
  • Knobby tires sometimes replaced with semi-slick tires
  • Useful lights front and rear

cop_bike

Continue reading