Midori & Ozgur Aydin at Stanford's Bing Concert Hall

This past Wednesday Midori Goto and Ozgur Aydin took the Bing Concert Hall Stage for a fantastic show for the Stanford community. As a photographer for Lively Arts, I was situated in the recording studio for the entirety of the performance so as to not disrupt the delicate nature of the concert. This presents so interesting photography challenges in that I am accustomed to moving around the venue for differing viewpoints. The concert was incredible with Midori and Ozgur playing Bach, Beethoven and Brahms consecutively. 

Glenn Kotche at Stanford's Bing Concert Hall

As a photographer for Stanford Lively Arts, I often get  to photograph some fantastic concerts, now made all the more special by the new Bing Concert Hall. Two weeks ago Glenn Kotche of Wilco fame gave a special performance for students and the community alike as part of the Bing Concert Hall's opening series of concerts. There were three distinct components to the act, each of which were dramatically different in tone and purpose. Here are just some of the photos from the event.

SSL Configuration with Heroku, Zerigo, and DNSimple

As the story goes in the programming world, everything is thought to be carefully explained until you actually try to implement it in the real world. As usual, I found it much harder to find a solution to this specific problem than need be, so hopefully this post will clarify some things for those also looking for a solution.

Problem - My problem was in implementing SSL across an application I am working on Heroku, where I have utilized Zerigo for DNS and DNSimple for the domain. I could not find clear instructions on when to concatenate which certificates, how to upload them, which options to change in Zerigo and why. So hopefully this will give you a step by step process for implementing SSL on Heroku.

Register/transfer your domain to DNSimple (Affiliate Link) -  Or if you know your current registrar/hoster will work after reading the rest, no problem. DNSimple has been fantastic, especially coming from 1and1, which is archaic by comparison. The following instructions work for DNSimple, but I will try to keep things as generic as possible.

Buy SSL Cert & Download Cert Files - Follow the instructions in Heroku's Dev Center Article here, until you reach the point after you have downloaded the rapidssl_bundle.pem file from RapidSSL. Essentially purchase the SSL certificate and download the files as specified. I will assume that you have saved the files in the same names as Heroku specifies, eg (Private Key -> server.key, Certificate -> server.orig.crt, Root CA Cert -> rapidssl_bundle.pem). 

File Check -  You should have 3 files at this point: server.key, server.orig.crt, and rapidssl_bundle.pem. Alright, got the three? Lets get to work.

Remove SSL Password - Fire up your favorite terminal/Git bash/Heroku toolbelt command line, open a prompt and navigate to your directory with all of your files. We now need to remove the password from your server.key, as discussed here in greater detail. Feel free to name your new key anything you want, just something else so you can differentiate the key with a password (server.key) and the key without a password (server.new.key). So, use the command below:

openssl rsa -in server.key -out server.new.key

Combine Certificates for Maximum Profit - Heroku's article here tells you to combine the certs, but it fails to tell you about the previous step until a different page here, which I thought was unintuitive. So to combine the certs, open a prompt and navigate to your directory with all of your files. You should now have 4 files: (server.key, server.orig.crt, and rapidssl_bundle.pem, server.new.key). Entering the following into your command prompt will give you your bundled site certificate necessary for use on Heroku.

cat server.orig.crt rapidssl_bundle.pem > server.crt

Heroku Configuration - Now that we have all of our files, lets get it up on Heroku. We can now follow Heroku's instructions here from the point of Add Your SSL Add-On. First, log in to Heroku in your command prompt. Now we want to add the app addon SSL endpoint to your application, note that there is a $20/month charge for this service. So we want to enter:

$ heroku addons:add ssl:endpoint --app your_app_name

This adds the Endpoint SSL addon to your application, where yourappname is just the subdomain.heroku.com that you see in your Heroku dashboard. If the above throws an error, you can directly follow Heroku's instructions as well, which are simply the following. I have a feeling I may not have been logged into my app specifically and only Heroku via the command line, hence my need to specify above.

$ heroku addons:add ssl

They should both work, and you should see a confirmation message stating that it has added ssl to yoursubdomain.heroku.com, and that you should add your certificates next, which is what we will do after we add our secure sub-domain.

Configure Your Domain - If you are using Zerigo for domain configuration, this is super simple. Just enter the following for whatever subdomain you purchased your certificate for eg secure.yourdomain.com would be the following:

$ heroku domains:add secure.yourdomain.com --app yourappname

OR

$ heroku domains:add secure.yourdomain.com

Upload Certificates to Heroku - Finally, we can now upload our certificates to Heroku via the following:

$ heroku certs:add server.crt server.new.key

Certificate Testing - You will now want to follow the Heroku instructions from the point of Testing Your Certificate on this page. You do not need to test locally if you don't want to, I skipped it, but if you are curious, its there.

DNS Configuration - We now need to set up our DNS correctly in two places: Zerigo and DNSimple. 

• DNSimple/Domain Registrar - We need to set-up a CNAME record to our new SSL subdomain at Heroku, so in my case it was the following. First go into the advanced editor for your domain, your subdomain should be whatever you bought your certificate for, in this case secure. It should point to herokugivensub.herokussl.com, the secure version of your app. You can find this in the command prompt by typing heroku certs.
• Zerigo - We now need to change our CNAME record for the secure.yourdomain.com we just added above. Change the field that says proxy.heroku.com to herokugivensub.herokussl.com

Celebrate - This should be everything, you should now see https when you go to your secure subdomain and if you click on the certificate it will tell you where it was certified and when. I hope this tutorial has helped and feel free to comment.

Additional Resources - Below is every article I used at some point in my reading, if you so desire further reading.

• Heroku SSL Endpoint, Heroku SSL, Heroku SSL Certificate Purchase & Download
• SSL Password Removal - Heroku (See right under Acquire SSL) & Blog
• General Instructions Similar to Above - Here, For Wildcard, For WIldcard Too, 

Solar Decathlon Model

One of my good friends is an architecture major and also the lead on Stanford's Solar Decathlon team. It is a fantastic project and you can find out more about it here. Suffice it to say, I had the chance to contribute to a model they were building for the competition last night and it was a blast. It is being shipped off in the hopes of additional sponsor dollars as I type, but I happened to snag a couple of photos before it left the Stanford campus.

New Website Design

As you may have noticed, content has been sparse and I haven't been around much. That has definitely been true. I have been off programming other websites instead of my own and I thought it was about time for me to change that. It has been a couple of years since a site redesign and I have been itching to make it a simpler, more beautiful user experience. Let me know if you find anything that doesn't look right. At this point I consider it a solid beta release!

SiCA 2011 Party on the Edge

The best arts party of the year at Stanford, Party on the Edge, was held all the way back in October and I am finally getting around to posting the photos I took for SiCA during the event. Have a look at last years as well, it was just as incredible.

Habitat for Humanity Home Run at Stanford

Now that finals are done, I can finally start posting all the cool photography gigs I was able to shoot over the quarter. 

One of my favorites was the Habitat for Humanity Home Run at Stanford on November 13th, 2011. You can find more info on their website here.

The event was enormously successful. The volunteers were great and the runners were oh so fast. A very late congratulations to all of the winners.

Embedded slideshow below or view a full screen version in a new window by clicking here.

Stanford Lively Arts Merce Cunningham Dance Event

I have also started working for Stanford Lively Arts this year as a photographer, which means I get to go to even more awesome Stanford arts events. Courtesy of Lively Arts, this event on October 31, 2011 had Stanford dancers dance excerpts from several of Merce Cunningham's works, formatted as a Cunningham Event, with special guests Alastair Macaulay, Chief Dance Critic of the NY Times, and Carol Teitelbaum, former MCDC company member and teacher of this MinEvent. The photos barely do the fantastic student dancers justice. Photo slideshow embedded below, as well as on my photography site here and on Lively Art's Facebook page here.

Photo featured in North Cascades' National Park Map

So two summers ago I had the privilege of working as a staff photographer in North Cascades National Park and they recently redid the park map to highlight some of the new photography myself and others have contributed to the park's library in recent years. Two of my photos made the final cut, one panoramic photo looking off of the trail near the top of Sourdough Mountain and one featuring a friendly little critter known as the hoary marmot. A scanned copy of the map is below as well as the original photos. After visiting so many of the national parks on the west coast, it means a great deal to me to give something back. Enjoy!

PDF Scanned Copy

Original Photos

View from Sourdough Mountain

Hoary Marmot

Staffing at Stanford in Otero

While I decided and interviewed for the position last year, this is the first year that I have been a staff member in a dorm at Stanford. I am currently the Resident Writing Tutor in Otero in Wilbur Hall and so far it has been a blast. The freshman are incredible and put my class to shame. Going on band run and to football games has been just as much fun as during my freshman year. My other staff members have been pretty incredible as well and is a testament to how Stanford chooses its staff. Looking forward to continuing a great year!

Summer 2011 - My Time on the Buy Side at SKIRITAI Capital

So this past summer, in addition to running a marathon, I also had a day job. Ever since I started watching bloomberg in 5th grade, I have wanted to at least try my hand at investing professionally. I was extremely fortunate to land a job at a long/short hedge fund in San Francisco called Skiritai Capital. It was a fantastic experience building excel models, examining 10K's, and trying to create value for fundholders each and every day. I researched over 55 different positions in my time there: from oil refiners to headphone makers, the variety was pretty incredible. The quantitative and qualitative crash course I received from the team at SKIRITAI I will be forever grateful for. Thanks also go out to all the individuals on the sell side, who not only humored an inexperience kid from Stanford asking them questions, but offered their help and guidance whenever needed. This past summer was truly fantastic. Thanks again to everyone who was a part of it. Already looking forward to what next summer will bring!

San Francisco Marathon 2011

So a week ago, as part of my do one really crazy physical event every summer challenge (2 years running), I ran my first marathon. As I have been working in San Francisco since early June, and training in San Francisco, I figured that the San Francisco Marathon would be a great event to try out. Last Sunday, I got up around 4am to go run my first marathon. It was an incredible experience and I will never forget running over the Golden Gate Bridge with 24,000 of my closest marathon running friends. I finished in 3:55:34 and if you want more detail, they had digital tags that kept track of our time thoughout the track, find em here. Congratuations to all the other runners and thank you to all of the volunteers who gave me gatorade and cheered me on. Couldn't have done it without you. Couple of pics below.

MS&E 152 Decision Analysis Term Paper

As part of my Spring 2011 schedule of classes at Stanford, one of my favorites was MSE 152, or more informally Decision Analysis. The basic premise of the course is to improve decision making skills via analytical and quantitative methods of analysis. As part of the course, we needed to write a term paper in accordance with the courses' methods that analyzed a real world decision making problem. While we could fabricate the companies and ideas involved, as you will see, our analysis needed to be based on fundamental concepts learned in the course. I chose to base my paper on a medical marijuana dispensary known as Strawberry Fields Forever and whether they would choose to open a new store under certain conditions. Take a look and let me know if you have any questions.

Stanford Students - Please Note The Following

If you are currently a student in MSE 152, it is an honor code violation to view the following materials and utilize them in any substantive fashion without attribution. Please do the right thing.

MSE 152 Term Paper - Final Paper for Web

MSE 152 Term Paper - Final Decision Diagrams & Trees

MSE 152 Term Paper - Final Revenue, Cost, NPV Calculations in Excel Model

Photos Published in Problematics 2011 - An Undergraduate Anthropology Journal

As I did last year, I submitted a couple of my photos that I took on my trip to Tanzania last year to Problematics, an undergraduate journal of anthropology at Stanford. Fortunately they were accepted for publication alongside some fantastic journalist work by others. Thanks again to the editors who worked feverishly to make the journal a reality this year.

Direct Link to PDF @Stanford

Link to Previous Years Journals @Stanford

PDF Uploaded to Scribd - Check Pages 13-14

Problematics Spring 2011 - Photos From Tanzania

Larger Photos of those Published

SiCA 2011 Photography Roundup

Throughout the past year, I have been working as a photographer for SiCA, Stanford's Institute for the Creative Arts. It has been a blast and I have seen some great performances. Without further ado, I finally got a chance to upload all of my photos from the year. I have included links from SiCA's website if they have been uploaded there as well. Take a look and enjoy!

Stanford 2011 Earth Day Celebration

Mozart's Seven Deadly Sins

DIY Musical Tailgate Party

Victor Gama Performance November 2010

SiCA Link

Jerry Growtowski & Allen Ginsberg Performance

SiCA Arts Party November 2010

Stanford's Sea People

Stanford's Nimbleweed

North Cascades Scenic Loop Publication

While I have yet to get around to putting up all of the posts from my past summer in the North Cascades, I just wanted to do a quick post on a publication that is using one of my photos. You can see a scan of it below. It is being printed by The Cascade Loop, a non-profit that provides travel guides for the Washington State Scenic Loop Highway. They are printing 105,000 copies of it and I am extremely excited to have my photo on the front cover. Hopefully I will get some of my trail guide up from last summer this summer!

Do Citizens Have the Right to Record the Police?

As part of my recent MS&E 197 class at Stanford, which is essentially an examination of morality and ethics through a logical framework, I took a look at some of the new ethical issues surrounding the proliferation of recording devices and their use in recording police. Take a read and let me know if you have any questions.

Picken's Plan - Presentation of Research

As part of my research project regarding the Picken's Plan that I finished up last quarter, I also created a powerpoint presentation to showcase the potential of the plan. This presentation is embedded below along with the script that I used to give my presentation to the class. I spent a great deal of time on designing the slides in this presentation, so feel free to email me with any questions as to how I created them. 

Stanford - It Will Keep You Busy

I am still alive and well despite a lack of postings for the past 3 months. I have really busy with school and creating new stuff in the real world. Now I finally have some time to put in all online and take a breather. More content coming soon.

A slide deck and script for the Picken's Plan presentation I put up last quarter.

Comprehensive research and agurment analysis of citizen recordings of police operations - an analytical report.

Details on the startup that I am involved in that is going to revolutionize community service (hopefully sooner rather than later, we just launched!).

Much much more, just have to type it all up.

The Pickens Plan - Boone or Bust?

My latest research project (as of November 2010) is in the form of a report on the feasibility and rhetoric of the Pickens Plan. The Pickens Plan is a proposal by T. Boone Pickens to wean the United States off foreign oil while at the same time creating more sustainable energy sources, namely wind and natural gas, right here at home. The rhetorical strategies employed by Pickens are as fascinating as the plan itself.  You can find more info about the plan in my report here or on the Pickens Plan's home page. My report is also embedded below.