Russ Nelson's Home Page

• Some lunatic politician says his local newspaper can't use his name.. Kirby Delauter, Kirby Delauter, Kirby Delauter. They are laughing at him, and so am I.
• My daughter Rebecca Nelson is volunteering with Trama Textiles, a 100% worker-owned women's weaving association in Quetzaltenango (Xela), Guatemala.
• My friend Richard Palmer has written many articles on the days when stagecoach travel was the only way to get around. He's publishing them on his blog as "Stagecoach Days.
• My google profile. It's also available via http://russnelson.com/+.
• Celebrated my 53rd birthday last week. Was born March 21st, 1958. First day of spring!
• I'm working with Jim Bonner on the RA-TES (Research, Applied-Technology, and Education services). project.
• I worked from January '09 through July for Cloudmade on their Community Ambassador team, working to promote OpenStreetMap. I ran OpenStreetMap mapping parties around the Northeast United States.
• I'm twittering as russnelson.
• claims that you need their permission to use their trademark to link to their website. I call bullshit. We have free speech in this country: you may use a trademark truthfully.
• T-Mobile claims this color: as a trademark, and says that you can't use it. Well, tough titty: I am.
• Danese Cooper is famous for knitting in public. That's not so very controversial. But she knits at meetings! Of course, anybody who knows anything about knitting will realize that it's always safer to have a knitter knitting. Keeps them out of trouble.
• So there's this librarian down in Pennsylvania by the name of Zhanna who chases old railroads, geocaches, goes for mountain bike rides on old railbeds, documents survey marks, is an INTJ, and still plays with her Legos. The overlap in our interests is uncanny. She has even visited the first benchmark I ever saw, in Shohola, PA. Somewhere among my effects is a rubbing of the benchmark.
• I thought I'd make a listing of Unfinished Railroads of New York State. These are railroads that started construction, but never had tracks.
• Georeferencing MP3s
• Nelson's Dictum: there is no such thing as a problem; there are only unmet business opportunities.
• I'm interested in the RUF, and you should be, too.
• My good friend Isabel Walcott Hilborn now (finally) has a blog. Instead of hearing journalists report what she said, we can read what she says directly. 'Magine that! It's almost 21st century!
• I'm now blogging on general subjects at blog.russnelson.com.
• I wonder if Google will index my mailing list archives. I've heard that it doesn't because all of the links are given as [link]. We'll find out. UPDATE: It doesn't. I'll have to try another method. UPDATE: trying complete generation via Apache SetHandler script.
• Do you need to print W-2 forms using open source software? I wrote a Python program which generates Postscript that prints values in the correct spaces on the sheet-fed (aka laser) dual Form W-2 Wage and Tax Statement. It's called print-form-w-2, naturally enough. You'll need to adapt it for your own purposes. I'm sure you'll need to adjust the values for the two translate statements to get the form to print correctly on your printer. Please send a copy of your modifications for me to share with others.
• I'm running on my Linksys WRT54G access points.
• My friends at the Northern New York Library Network have scanned a whole pile of newspapers into .PDF form, and then OCR'ed them with the text in the .PDF file. So you can do plain-text searches on .PDF image files. Well done!
• Working on software that takes a GPS track and produces a map that's just big enough to encompass the entire track. Making progress on it. Now using it on my blog's bicycling section.
• I'm using the Crynwr Email Confirmation algorithm for my email. If I haven't whitelisted your email, you'll get an autoresponse. If it bounces, I delete your email. Sorry. I've also found that about half of my spam email simply disappears if I have a higher distance MX record that rejects all email. In time it won't work so very well, but it's useful for now.
• Got pestered into uploading my OSCon 2004 pictures.
• Just say "NO!" to internal passports
• Reason Magazine's cover (inside cover, inside back cover, and back cover) were printed using a technology which lets the publisher customize anything. The front cover shows an aerial photograph with your house circled.
  Or, almost: .
• I used to row crew in the Grateful Oars rowing club.
• My email always has a signature block, with a quote or quip off to the right of it. I've saved many years of my signatures and archived them.
• I'm keeping notes on my Brother MFC 3820CN and my Linux desktop.
• RB Donnelly.
• Nasreddin Hodja on business ethics.
• My daughter Rebecca has her own web page now. So does my son, who goes by 'Grath' online, and my wife, Heather Nelson.
• My blog, The Angry Economist.
• ident is not of use to servers.
• Pictures from OSCON6
• Weekend Fun
• Clam Fritters
• 155 reasons why people donate to the Red Cross
• WTC pics, sucked off a webcam
• Before the Ice Storm of '98
• After the Ice Storm of '98
• Some of my long-term projects
• Our house
• In memory of my father, who died January 16th, 1995
• In memory of my mother, who died November 22, 2002
• How Crynwr Software got started (and other stuff)
• Family photos
• Pacifist postings of mine
• Pictures of our land on Pleasant Valley Rd.
• My company (Crynwr Software)
• My hotlist(lots of interesting and outdated stuff here)
• My PGP key
• My first RFC, MSP (That's Message Send Protocol)
• My second RFC, MSP 2.
• My third RFC, Notes on POP3
• One of the oldest .html files on the Internet -- dated Jul 31 1994.
• FWOMPT
• Copyright is dead as long as we can publish random bits.
• Robert Novak, d/b/a Pets Warehouse is suing his customers.
• My first Usenet posting. Thank you, Google.
• Borland didn't like it when I fixed a bug in their code.
• Stuff I do to help make the net a better place:
  • Translated the DNS RFC (1035) into HTML at my rfc1035 page.
  • Host the wifi JFDI site.
  • Executive director of the Public Software Fund
  • Host a bunch of .us community web sites.
  • Run an anti-spam tester. Works for the RBL, DUL, IMRSS, RRSS, ORBS, DSSL, and SSSL DNS-based blocks.
  • Host the mgetty mailing list.
  • Host the lego-robotics mailing list.
  • Host the quickcam-drivers mailing list.
  • Host the Free Software Business mailing list.
  • Served as a board member for 13 years and as president of the Open Source Initiative.
  • Wrote Freemacs (the first programmable editor for the 80x86 architecture) which some people apparently still use.
  • Write packet drivers (yes, still!)
  • Sell support for qmail.
  • Host the boa web server homepage.
  • Serve as a czar for the Usenet II net.computers hierarchy.
  • Host the Linux-supported Hardware web page.
  • Maintain the Linux Winmodems site.
  • In my spare time, I'm the webmaster@quaker.org.
  • I distribute a copy of DeCSS, and you should too.
  • I have a patch to gif2png.

Railroads

• New York State Department of Transportation did an inventory in 1974 of all the abandoned railroad right of ways. They were published as typewritten documents, and so never existed as text on a computer. They're currently available as PDF files. But Google seems not to have found those files, which is no surprise, because they're hidden behind a search box. OOPS! I'm taking the liberty of turning them into HTML documents and reposting them on the web: NYS DOT inventory of abandoned railroads.
• I have a comprehensive listing of the rail-trails of New York State. They follow the paths of abandoned railroads in NY which are officially open. Many other disused railbeds in NYS are informally open for hiking, biking, snowmobiling, and some for ATV riding. Trail owners tend to get grumpy at ATV riders more than snowmobilers because of the damage that the off-road tires do to the trail surface.
• I'm now publishing my database of New York State Railroad Routes.
• Started a web page on the Rutland Trail.
• Hmmm.... I seem to have forgotten to link to my page on Mike Kudish's excellent book Railroads of the Adirondacks. If ever there were tracks on the ground anywhere in the Adirondacks, Mike has a chapter on it.
• Some railfans have visited the Norwood & St. Lawrence railroad. That's the working end of the railroad labelled 'C' below. I visited it on 9/23/04, and found several interesting things. First, that they moved OBPA#1 to a point on the former mainline underneath the power lines. I suspect that they did this to remind the power line folks that they have a railroad underneath their power lines. Also, I found the place where the tracks end.
• Finally started a page about the Clifton Iron Mine Railroad.
• Rob Logan found a wonderful poster entitled "New York State Railroad Network". It was published by Frank E. Richards, Phoenix, New York, and copyrighted 1958 (fair use claimed). Prepared by R. J. Rayback, and drawn by J. A. Peterson. I did a five-part scan of it and stitched it together badly (yuck). Still, it's better than nothing. There's a small one (1333x1200, small is relative) and a very large one (6666x6000 pixels, 3MB). Mapmakers traditionally insert a small discrepency into their maps so they can detect derivative works. I believe that I've found an error which is likely their inserted discrepency. They claim that there is a railroad heading east from Pavilion, NY. It would have to cross an impossibly steep hill, and I can't find it on either topographic maps or aerial photos. I contacted Virginia Rigoni, Town of Pavilion Historian on 11/13/2005 and she assures me that the only railroad in the town of Pavilion is the well-known north/south B&O line.
• There's a rail-trail just north of Syracuse called the Oswego Recreational Trail. Nobody else has a web page with any good information about it.
• Clifton Iron Mine and wooden railroad. Not much on the railroad yet, but I'll get it there in time.
• Potential and existing rail-trails (1.1MByte image) in St. Lawrence County.
  • A is the Rutland Trail.
  • B is at least partially publicly owned by the town of Lawrence. Sections are privately owned; some are posted. See the Rutland Trail page for more informaiton.
  • A and B are not connected because a major bridge was removed in the village of Winthrop. B is also disjoint at North Lawrence.
  • C is privately owned. I have ridden it from the west bank of the Racquette near Raymondville. Several portions of it have been sold to the surrounding property owners, who have merged it into their parcel. This is not a good sign. On the other hand, all the bridges are still in place, so if enough cooperative landowners can be found, then the uncooperative ones can be bypassed.
  • D is the Maple City Trail for 2.2 miles at the north end, and portions are ridable the rest of the way. Unfortunately, the Lighthouse Point Corporation sold it off in bits and pieces, and like C, the railbed has been legally merged into the surrounding parcels. That does not bode well for a continuously ridable trail. The Ogdensburg Agreement was signed by Roosevelt and King on this rail line in 1940.
  • E is ridable at least for some portions. It seems not to be ridable where it's close to 37. In 2001, St. Lawrence County sold off 17 miles of E for taxes. Pretty dumb, eh? E continues into Jefferson County to Redwood. Starting in Redwood, it is being maintained by the Rivergate Wheelers ATV club. They have put substantial effort into ensuring that it's ridable all the way to Rivergate, and thence back to Clayton or on to Philadelphia.
  • F is ridable from Newton Falls to Clifton Mine. The rails are still in place from Newton Falls to Benson Mines. A portion of the railbed closest to Newton Falls is privately owned as a separate parcel. The rest of the line is not now and maybe never was parceled out from the surrounding property. In any case, once you get into the town of Clifton, there is a New York State recreation easement. Unfortunately, it's gated close to the Clifton Iron Mine end when you get to the Clifton Hunt Club property.
  • G (which isn't on the map) is ridable from Conifer to SR3 west of Sevey's Corners where it turns due west.
  • H (also not on the map) is the Brandy Brook Trail.
  • I (are you starting to detect a pattern here?) is ridable if you're willing to push through brush, carry your bicycle past beaver flooding, and hop over fallen trees. In other words, it's not very ridable. However, it would be a nice trail into Cranberry Lake if it were maintained.
  • J, K, and L are all logging railroads which head south from Wanakena, Benson Mines, and Aldrich.
  • M goes from DeKalb Junction to Hermon but is either farmer's fields or brushed over.
  • N goes from Eddy to Pyrites but is somebody's driveway, then farm roads, then somebody's driveway again at the Grasse River crossing. No bridge, no hope.
  • P is the wooden railroad that went from the Hermon-DeKalb Central School to Clifton Mines. So much of this railbed was built using trestles that no real right of way exists; just a few linear humps.
  • Q is the Edwards Recreational Trail, which heads west from Edwards for about two miles. It could probably be extended to Emeryville (except for ownership problems) because a crucial bridge is still in place.
• The Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburg Railroad
• The Sackets Harbor & Ellisburg Railroad Company
• Carthage Watertown & Sackets Harbor Railroad
• The Bombay & Moira
• Bicycling the Rutland Northern Division
• NYC North from Malone
• NYC South from Malone

Here's my contact information:

Crynwr Software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd..
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213
nelson@crynwr.com
+1 315-600-8815 cell