Music to do Ashtanga Yoga to

I googled another term that hasn’t yet reached the www. While I’ll bet I’m one of three people who search for it, ’tis the second time I’m looking for this.

I’d like to start compiling a list of great music for vinyasa yoga. Its easy to find a million titles related to some sort of magical transcendence. I’m really looking for something more cosmopolitan to appeal to my adult preferences. Don’t get me wrong, if you like ethereal chants, that’s great. However, the closest thing to a chant I had in my culture, growing up, was Ozzy Osborne stepping on a cat. It’s just not a good fit for me.

The attributes I find highly compatible with Ashtanga or vigorous vinyasa Yoga are the following:

The best music to Yoga to has a medium paced, light-hearted rhythm that doesn’t over-power. It should make you feel lighter and it should help you stay focused when you reach your edge and reinforce the rhythm of your breath.

The singing must not make you listen to it. When you are practicing, you should not find yourself listening to the words. No vocals is good but the singing voice is arguably the most powerful musical instrument and, used skillfully, can be an amazing sub-conscious motivator. I find that foreign music works best (because I don’t understand it) but some artists are wizards at not overcoming the song. Paul Simon comes to mind. I once tried to Yoga to AC/DC. Didn’t work out so well.

Music that is more complex with lots of poly-rhythm tends to last better. Simple melodies and beats will become monotonous quickly. Its not ideal to change music in the middle of your practice!

My Present Yoga Music List

• Gigi - Africa. Probably my all-time favorite. Her voice is mesmerizing! This music drives without taking control
• Paul Simon - The Rhythm of the Saints. Never gets old. If you know it, then you know. If you don’t, it’s not the Paul Simon you’re used to.
• Leon Parker - Awakening. The album Awakening is a mix mash of percussion and bass that keeps a pleasant, groovy pulse. It’s an unusual, “world” music-ish sound (by slim)

I’ll add to this, or continue to post, as time goes on. Please let me know if you found this post andhave suggestions!

Posted in Yoga | 2 Comments »

Customizable Route with Google Maps

I noticed somethingnew on Google Maps yesterday that absolutely thrilled me… Customizable Route!

I was visiting to get directions for my wife and noticed a new action appearing when I noused over the path

So I dragged it

…and I was able to create the route I wanted to take. This is HUGE! In Atlanta, traffic sucks, period. I find myself all over the city, trying to avoid congestion, prefering back roads that move consistently at 25mph to interstate highways that stop dead for hours at a time.

thanks google bunney!

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Blogging Using Email and WordPress

Well, It apears that GMail not only does NOT provide the pop access required by WordPress (or should I say WordPress can’t meet the requirements for GMail pop3?), but the message format is unrecognizable to WordPress. Bummer there…

Initially, I tried to set up a GMail account. Unfortunately, they require authentication and the WordPress wp-mail.php does not provide that option. It seems like this would be a fairly trivial enhancement. However, it was easier to set up an account on my domain email then it was to change the php.

My post was missing the body. I will try another test using Outlook and see if that works. I sure hope so.

So, gmail / WordPress mashup : no dice.

Tip: if you have your email account set up and your WordPress options configured, you’ll see the message:

< br />
There doesn’t seem to be any new mail.

You should be good to go!

To configure, log into your admin section, choose: Options > Writing and scroll down. Configure your pop access. That’s it!

Now you have to call /[WordPressRootDir]/wp-mail.php to retrieve the mail. One suggestion was to include an iframe in the main page. I think that’s a little bit short-sighted. I plan to add a kron, of sorts, to get the job done. You might opt to write a little time based script to include on your main template or possibly set up an rss link. Sky’s the limit…

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realTinyMCE is undefined wordpress

What should have been a five minute plugin turned into a waste of my entire Sunday.

I tried to install the Simple Tagging plug in but it didn’t work correctly in the version of WP the WebHost4Life installs. I spent several hours backing up and replicating my WordPress install to a local copy so I could try the upgrade in safety. Unfortunately, I failedto update the config file on my local copy appropriately and it updated the DB on my real blog. Everything looked fine, fortuntately, so I proceeded with the update on the real blog. That’s when I wrote my I hate FTP post. Since my blog was down, I wrote that in notepad…. Several hours later (of course, I had child care responsibilities and some meals to cook), I had all the files copied across and verified.

Unfortunately, when I attempted to post my FTP Sucks post, the wysiwyg editor was not loading with the “‘realTinyMCE’ is undefined” error showingon my status bar. Same thing in FF. Carumba!

I tried getting the latest source form wordpress svn, no help. Once again, 30-40 minutes of FTP nonsense.

So, at this point, I cannot edit using an editor and, look to your right, no tags! Ah! turns out I added the wrong function call. Tag cloud working… Now I just need to blog more

losing my editor really blows!

WordPress - 1

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FTP Sucks

Why I Hate FTP

1. It’s ridiculously slow!
2. It times out
3. It behaves differently depending on what type of file system you are targeting
4. When making mass updates, failures leave things in an entirely undeterminable state
5. It gets confused

1) It’s ridiculously slow!

I get, typically, about 1-3 seconds per 30k text file using.  That’s just a guess but I think I’m close.  So we’re talking around 10k/sec.  Considering this is typically from a multi=MB/sec connection, I can’t quite figure out what the hold up is.  This is true of just about every host I deal with.  By contrast, when I use subversion to update the same files, it brings down 5-10 files per second.  Once again, but relatively, its close.  I have never really had to use FTP in a professional capacity (until briefly this year) and I sure am glad I have had better alternatives.

2) It times out

For no apparent reason, FTP will timeout on large updates.  There’s no problem with TCP/IP, it just craps out for no reason.  (see 3 for why this is such a PITA) 

3) It behaves differently depending on what type of file system you are targeting

When the file system is of the linux variety, even through a windows OS, folders tend to duplicate themselves, not delete completely, misreport, etc.  I frequently see the folder I just deleted hanging out where it should be gone. Navigate in, files still there.  Try to delete them, error.  Copy the file, reports two files with the same name!  WTF?

4) When making mass updates, failures leave things in an entirely undeterminable state

This is where Ireally get annoyed!  When something goes wrong, folders are all created, recursively, for a mass update.  However, files stopped somewhere.  No message that “timeout occurred trying to send [filename.php]”.  Instead, you either have to start ove or manually inspect the folder tree to find what made it across and what did no’t. 

Tip: ftp will create folders in order that you send them and them recurse through them in the same order, copying files.  Be in the habit of sorting alphabetically so that you can inspect directories until you find the last one copied and resume your copy there.

It gets confused

Files that are deleted but report as there, same file listed twice, etc.

Cure?

I’m sure there’s someone itching to tell me that this is a windows problem.  That may be true, I don’t know.  I have two questions, however:

1. Why do we still need FTP?
2. When are we going to standardize an HTTP PUT protocol?  (or make it available)

For now, I recommend, quite strongly, using Subversion for all your source control and deployent.  Simply export from your svn directory to your website.  If something goes wrong, export from a previous version.  I actually use Svn natively on the web server.  Sure, there are twice as many files, due to the .svn directory, but you get all the benefits of a subversed directory and visible change indication with TortoiseSvn.  Just go into TortoiseSvn settings and check the option to only show iconsfor explorer.

Posted in Programming | 1 Comment »