How do I create a sequence file on my local harddrive?

[W.P. McNeill]

I want to create a sequence file on my local harddrive.  I want to write
something like this:

      LocalFileSystem fs = new LocalFileSystem();
      Configuration configuration = new Configuration();
      SequenceFile.Writer writer = SequenceFile.createWriter(fs,
configuration,
            new Path("/home/bmcneill/scratch/data.seq"), Key.class,
Value.class);
      writer.append(key, value);
      writer.close();

and not have to run it as part of a cluster.  Is this possible?  The
particular code above throws an exception in createWriter() because the
fs.conf is null, which makes me think you can only work with sequence files
within a Hadoop job, but I'm not sure and I haven't been able to figure it
out from the documentation.