Source: back of a napkin

The morning started out normal enough- a sunny Sunday morning with pavement waiting to be ridden on. About 25 members of the Impatient Triad Riders met at the usual spot, the Shell Station in Oak Ridge at 68 and 150. There was a great turnout for this ride in memory of Mason Levin, one of the founders of the group, who lost his life from injuries from a ride on July 18th.

So we rode out and hit Highway 66 near Danbury for some twisties and stopped here at the shack for a short break and then began the ride up to Hanging Rock.

When I got to the end of Lynchburg Rd I became increasingly concerned that, unlike a minute or two before, there were no riders in my mirrors. I hesitated (and shouldn't have) for about a minute and turned around to find out what was up.

It wasn't instantly apparent what had happened when I arrived on this scene, but I knew it wasn't anything good.

To make a long story short, the rider behind me, Chris, had a Tree Fall On Him!

His reaction to this completely random flying timber was absolutely spot-on. He cracked open the throttle, hunkered down, and hugged the gas tank as closely as he could. With his side mirrors ripped off and helmet scuffed, he miraculously kept the bike up.

Next in the formation, Richard, wasn't as fortunate. Seriously, what are you supposed to do when a tree falls into your line of travel? There is no amount of experience to prepare you for that kind of thing. He did all he could with the brakes and limited stopping distance and reaction time, and laid it down before impacting the unexpected tree. He sustained some leg and knee injuries, but still made it out relatively unscathed for such a strange chain of events. He was taken to Baptist Hospital for treatment of his injuries.

Overall I was extremely impressed with how the other ITR members reacted on the scene before and after medical personnel arrived.

Kudos guys, you're a top-notch bunch!

All photos

Find nearest object query with LINQ

While LINQ simplifies your DAL in myriad ways, this seemingly simple query made me stop and think about how to properly explain this to the query engine

Problem: Given an input of a current location (latitude and longitude) find all objects in the database within a specified radius

Disclaimer: This is using a bounding box hack rather than an accurate radius forumula, use at your own risk as there is some loss of precision.

     /// Find all courts within a specified radius (in miles) to a point (latitude & longitude)
     /// <param name="latitude">degrees(decimal)</param>
     /// <param name="longitude">degrees(decimal)</param>
     /// <param name="radius">miles</param>
     /// <returns></returns>
     public IQueryable<Court> FindNearbyCourts(decimal latitude, decimal longitude, decimal radius);

The first order of business is to convert miles to degrees of latitude and longitude, respectively.

     decimal radiusLatitude = radius / 69.04;
     decimal radiusLongitude = radius / 59.96;

Once we have these conversions in place, we are ready to build our LINQ query:

     IQueryable<Court> nearbyCourts = from court in _db.Courts 
          where (Math.Abs(court.latitude - latitude) < radiusLatitude) 
          where (Math.Abs(court.longitude - longitude) < radiusLongitude) 
               select court;

Return the IQueryable object nearbyCourts you just generated and you're all set.

How do grilled BBQ Ribs, a Cauldron of Brunswick stew, chicken, hotdogs & hamburgers sound for a Saturday in Spring? I thought it sounded great, so I'd like you to join me this Saturday for the festivities. Slated to be an extravaganza of southern food, your tastebuds will not soon forgive you for missing out.

Saturday, May 9th at 7pm

Please RSVP if you have not already

Some suggestions for items you might want to bring:

• Chips / Dip
• Sodas
• Beer
• Any Adult Beverages you might like (some will be provided)
• Smores ingredients: Marshmallows, Chocolate Bars, Graham Crackers
• A Blender (i have the stuff to make Margaritas, but a broken blender)
• Anything else you might feel inclined to bring and share
• Or, just bring yourself and a guest if you like

Looking forward to seeing you!

~Chris & Bridget

Google provides a Charting API with a host of useful charts. I spent a few minutes playing around with the map chart section to create a color-coded map of the states I have visited in the USA.

The Venn Diagram was an interesting option that I had not expected, but good stuff.

If you are building a dashboard, the Google-o-meter might come in handy

I find myself spending quite a bit of my spare time on Stackoverflow in recent weeks, and decided I wanted to display my current rep on my blog.  A few days ago I built a dynamically generated (and cached for 2 hours for traffic's sake) user ranking report, since my request for this on Uservoice was not approved.

HtmlAgilityPack has been my weapon of choice in recent days.  It was a good fit for this project and the end result looks like this:

And in case you might ask "Show me the code!" here you are.  Feel free to use it for your own project if you like.

<%@ WebHandler Language="C#" Class="Badge" %>

using System;
using System.Web;

public class Badge : IHttpHandler {
    
    public void ProcessRequest (HttpContext context) 
    {
        string includeLogo = !string.IsNullOrEmpty(context.Request.QueryString["useLogo"]) ? 
                              context.Request.QueryString["useLogo"] : string.Empty;
        string userId = !string.IsNullOrEmpty(context.Request.QueryString["userid"]) ? 
                              context.Request.QueryString["userid"] : "1551";
        string jsMode = !string.IsNullOrEmpty(context.Request.QueryString["jsMode"]) ? 
                              context.Request.QueryString["jsMode"] : string.Empty;
        PageRetriever pr = new PageRetriever("http://stackoverflow.com/users/" + userId + "/");
        pr.GetPage();
        User userBadges = pr.ExtractBadge();
        if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(jsMode))
        {
            context.Response.ContentType = "text/javascript";
            context.Response.Write("document.getElementById('stackoverflowRep').innerHTML = '");
        }
        else
        {
            context.Response.ContentType = "text/html";
        }
        
        if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(includeLogo))
        {
            context.Response.Write("<div style=\"height:40px\"><div style=\"float:left\"></div><div style=\"float:left;\">");
            context.Response.Write(<img src=\"http://www.chrisballance.com/so/resources/stackoverflow-logo-250.png\" />");
        }
        context.Response.Write(userBadges.Rep);
        if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(includeLogo))
        {
            context.Response.Write("<br /><a href=\"http://stackoverflow.com/users/");
            context.Response.Write(userId);
            context.Response.Write("\">");
            context.Response.Write(userBadges.Username);
            context.Response.Write("</a></div></div></div>");
        }
        if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(jsMode))
        {
            context.Response.Write("';\n");
        }
    }
 
    public bool IsReusable {
        get {
            return false;
        }
    }

}

Since I could not find a chart of some sort showing current rankings on StackOverflow.com, I decided to roll my own.  The link that follows points to a static cached version of the page that will only update manually for now.  Enjoy, and feel free to give your feedback or suggestions for improvements.

Current StackOverflow.com Rankings