You probably thought that the killer app for the iPad would be something related to books, newspapers, or games, right?  You’re mistaken.  Apple has something even more ground-breaking in mind!

On the back of this week’s New York magazine, we find the ad showcasing the feature that will change the world:

That’s right, it’s some guy (with his feet up, natch) who is using the amazing, incredible, revolutionary, multimedia machine that is the iPad to… send a short email.

Great.

A few years ago at Stanford, I learned about the movie Into the Wild from my roommate Eric.  He rented it, and I noticed a few seconds out of the corner of my eye.  Then it passed out of memory until the recent reemergence of my wanderlust

I finally got around to reading the book on which the film is based, which is itself an extended version of an article that first appeared in Outside magazine called “Death of an Innocent.”   It recounts the life and eventual death of Chris McCandless, who gave up a life of privilege after graduating from Emory and chose to live as a tramp.  Eventually, he ended up in the Alaskan bush, where survived for over 100 days before succumbing to starvation. (Coincidentally, Eric looks quite a lot like Emile Hirsch, who plays McCandless in the movie.)

Chris McCandless in front of the bus in which his body was found.

Although the book is well-researched, and the movie is enjoyable, I found it difficult to relate to the protagonist.  Chris is clearly a smart kid, with Harvard Law apparently within his grasp, but his thirst for adventure and extreme overconfidence serve to put him in situations that are intractable, perhaps even selfish.  I can’t see myself having the same disregard for my safety.

My experience in the wilderness (many weeks spent backpacking and canoeing beyond the range of cell phones) and education as a boy scout (Eagle Scout here) has led me to embrace minimalism in my gear, true, but I don’t go out there bare-skinned.  I give considerable thought to my equipment.  I bring topographic maps, I bring sufficient food, I bring clothing and shelter adequate for the conditions.  When I go, I am prepared.

My backpack during a trip in Big Basin, California

I will concede that there is a certain appeal to survive with little more than a sharp hatchet.  If you were to stick me in northern Minnesota — ill-equipped — and challenge me to survive off the land, I’m reasonably confident that I could pull it off.  In the worst case, other humans would never be more than a few hours away.   However, based on personal experience and watching lots of Survivorman, I’m doubtful that it would be a comfortable existence.  And if it were in a place less hospitable, like northern Canada, I’m not sure that I would make it out alive.

Survival, of course, is always my goal.  I want to experience adventure.  I want to go deep into the wilderness.  I want the reminders of civilization to be nothing more than the pack on my back.  I want to take risks and scare myself.  But I want to come home when it’s done.  Unlike Chris, I am not running from anything. When I go, I go for the sake of entertainment.

Looking out from a peak towards the Pacific in Big Basin, California

Chris entered the Alaskan bush near Denali National Park along the Stampede Trail.  He was intentionally ill-prepared, having neither the proper clothing for early-season Alaska nor a safe reserve of food.  He wanted to go somewhere “unmapped,” so he didn’t bring a map.   His only concession to reality was his provisioning of a rifle and ammunition, but even those were poorly chosen.

I mean, if hunting is to be one’s primary source of food, wouldn’t one want the ability to reliably take large game?  And if that’s the case, wouldn’t a high-power rifle be appropriate, like perhaps a .30-06?

Not for Chris.  Chris took a Remington Nylon 66, which fires a .22 LR cartridge.  Surprisingly, he managed to bring down a moose with a gun that’s better suited for squirrels — before losing the moose meat to flies and wolves due to improper preservation.

Remington Nylon 66 rifle (.22 caliber)

In the end, McCandless was done in by what biographer Jon Krakauer suspects was the fungus R. leguminicola.  That fungus produces the alkaloids slaframine and swainsonine that, among other things, interfere with digestion, ultimately leading to starvation.  He was found dead by moose hunters in August, 1992.

Was it arrogance that killed Chris?  Bad luck?  Would he have been so cavalier if he hadn’t discovered the old bus he used as a shelter?

I will endeavor to do better on my journey.

The more I value something, the more unwilling I am to risk damaging it.

Yet, I wonder if my unwillingness to gamble with what I value is itself the more corrosive agent.

Sorry about the downtime, folks.  The server that runs this web site (and many others) experienced about 90 minutes of unavailability this evening.

Basically, Apache was tuned incorrectly, a particularly slow dynamic page was getting a lot of requests, and the number of Apache processes grew to a point where the system ran out of RAM.  In an unfortunate coincidence, that was almost exactly the same time that the MSN, Yahoo, Google, and Cuil crawlers all started hitting the site almost simultaneously.  The backlog of connections grew, the system was swapping like mad, and the load average hit triple digits.  Everything came screeching to a halt.

A few minutes later, when an automated alert tipped me off that something was amiss, I nearly had a heart attack trying to deal with the horribly unresponsive system.  Thankfully, I got a handle on the situation.

My initial fear of a malicious attacker appears to be unfounded.  I’m doing a thorough analysis to be certain.

Thanks to the people who emailed me about the outage.  Automated monitoring tools are in place, but when it comes to things like this, I’d rather get a few redundant messages than have the problem go undiscovered for hours.  If you happen to notice strange downtime in the future, please don’t hesitate to shoot me an email, IM, or text (preferred).

“Keacher! Where’s that status report?” my boss bellowed.

It was an unusually quiet bellow, completely inaudible to those around me, for in this context, my boss and my self are coextensive. No matter. It’s still a reasonable question.

I seem to like starting named projects:

• Keacher.com: Active. My personal blog since 2001.  At least one post per month for the past nine years.  Depending on my whims, at times a place for personal updates, and at others an outlet for thoughts targeted at general readers.
• BonnevilleClub: Dead. Site dedicated for Pontiac Bonneville owners. Founded it eight years ago, sold it two years ago. New owner killed it.  About a million page views per month in its heyday.  Lots of lessons learned about people management, product management, and asset sales.
• Tagg: Dead. Tagging physical objects with virtual identifiers. Project for a class at Stanford two and a half years ago. Never got traction. Didn’t continue after class. Valuable networking with entrepreneurs and investors.
• Zoitz: On hiatus since 2008. A capricious webcomic for engineers and scientists.  One of the many things I did during a period of unusual productivity in the spring of 2007.  Millions of views over the past three years despite having only a few dozen strips.  A good deal of attention on Digg, reddit, Stumbleupon, and Slashdot.  Still gets tens of thousands of views every month.  Confusion of early strips with xkcd material prompted a drawing style change.  A number of additional strip ideas are in my notebooks; haven’t gotten around to publishing them.  Never figured out how to monetize it.
• Nesota LLC: Active. The umbrella/holding company for my business activities.  Name comes from the final six letters of “Minnesota,” in the style of “Cisco” coming from the final five letters of “San Francisco.”
• Northstartup: Active. The official blog for Nesota, discussing entrepreneurship and topics related to Nesota’s products.
• Whitespacecomic: Inactive. An experiment in ultraminimalist art: just words, no drawings.  Or, put another way, each caption was structured so as to be the punchline for a blank white space.
• Photography: On hiatus. My on-again, off-again relationship with photography is currently in the “off” part of the cycle.  Not really a named endeavor, but I have it on the list anyway.
• Blurity: Active. My photo-deblurring startup, though technically Nesota is the startup and Blurity is a product.  I’m still working to improve the quality to a level that I find acceptable — a prime example of software projects taking longer than expected.  Still, it’s been under development for a solid nine months, and reactions to the initial prototypes have been positive.  I’m more confident than ever that I can pull it off.
• Stopping in Every State: Active.  A half-year road trip to visit and play hockey in every American state and Canadian province.  Scheduled to begin in the summer of 2011.  I’m currently writing the blog as a past-tense retrospective of what in reality are future events.  There is a temptation to switch styles to something a bit more entertaining, akin to my favorite account of a road trip: the “When You Wish Upon a Star” series from Chris Welty’s “Porsching” column.

So there you have it.  Throw in my other current hobbies, like baking, goaltending, backpacking, and writing meta blog posts, and it makes for a full plate.  Good; my productivity tends to increase when I have more to do.

Back to work…