Basic OS functionality? There's an app for that.

I was playing around with the sketchbook app, and made a bunny.

[pause for chorus of applause]

Technically I made two bunnies after the first one disappeared when the iPad crashed, but-- Ok. She wanted me to send her the file, so instead of setting up one of my e-mail accounts on the iPad, I just logged into gmail from Safari. I composed an e-mail and clicked to add the attachment... Except I couldn't browse the file system... Weird. Well I guess they want me to use their e-mail tool instead of doing it my way. Figures. Instead, I browsed to imageshack to do the upload so I could just send her the link... Except I couldn't browse the filesystem... Huh. Could it be that safari truly doesn't have an internet browser based file system browser? I think a moment, and remember Flickr. Flickr! Flickr is all Web Two-point-oh-y so it has to have functionality on the super hip Apple OS. I browse to Flickr, and I can't do any uploads. This was after I browsed the Flickr pool of other people's sketches they did on their iPads. How were those people uploading? Oh! There's got to be an app for it. Then I realized why there had to be an app for it.

The reason there are so many apps for doing tiny, menial tasks such as uploading files, using social networking sites, and almost any site with ajax involved, was because the OS couldn't do any of those things.

But why would they make an OS that had that basic functionality built in, when they could remove it, and sell an app for $0.99 that adds the functionality they clearly went out of their way to disable?

Amazing. I am both disgusted and impressed.

Hope you weren't scheduled to build a server last night

Called a few friends to confirm, they got the same error.

Scheduled maintenance?

I didn't get any e-mail...

Ubuntu major upgrade a major breeze

It's true what they say about the plumber's sink.

Our home laptop runs Ubuntu because I don't want to have to deal with it. I don't want to have to tweak it, I don't want to have to fix it, I don't want to have to spend days dicking with config files to get it working on the non-standard hardware the laptop runs on.

Consequently, the Ubuntu version was severely out of date, and I didn't want to have to deal with the upgrade.

Eventually the lack of software support for the older version made it necessary to pull the trigger. I checked a few sites that promised me I needed only click a few times, and reboot.

I opened the update manager and clicked to check for a new version. I clicked upgrade, and literally clicked under 10 times through the course of the upgrade (including the reboot), and it was done.

Microsoft had better get their shit together.

My Workspace

I've gotten a few comments on how I run my work computers, so I think I'll go over my work setup. Normally people like to talk about their hardware setup, but I think I've found a seriously productive and versatile software setup.

Two boxes, one Windows, one Linux.

The Windows box has a dual monitor setup, and all inputs (mouse, keyboard) connected to it. The task bar is set vertically to increase the amount of windows it can display while showing title title text. Horizontally the similar programs either clump into one item, or shrink until only the icon is visible. The vertical bar lets me see everything. Windows taskbar lets you set your own shortcuts, and in the vertical position, I have some width to fit shortcuts to all the programs I use easily. I very rarely have to use the start menu.

The Linux box is a Red Hat flavor that runs headless (has no monitor/mouse/keyboard, only network connection and power), and runs GNOME for simplicity. It runs a VNC server that I connect to from my Windows box, and full screen on the entire left monitor.

VNC is a remote connection software that gets a bad rap from people who use it on windows (I was one of them) because on windows it's slow and annoying. Using it on anything other than a LAN connection meant "painting" the screen with your cursor every time you click on something and other annoyances. VNC servers on linux, however, are more like RDP. Seriously, you can watch youtube videos with it. The VNC fullscreen is a true fullscreen, and catches all keypresses and combinations with no latency on a LAN. (But make sure you match your duplex settings. On auto I experience lag)

At first, my GNOME desktop ran four virtual desktops (four separate screens you can flip through on your one monitor) that I rarely used. But after I assigned a keyboard shortcut to switching left and right through virtual desktops it became much easier to flip between different programs on different desktops.

My resolution is actually rather low. Because the LCDs I work with max out at 1280x1024, I had to make the most of the limited space by using multiple desktops on my Linux box, and the vertical taskbar on my windows box.

The amount of desktops I had on my linux session gradually grew. As it became easier to move between them, it just made more sense to put different windows on different desktops to keep different types of work separate. Compared to alt-tabbing or finding and clicking on the taskbar, finding the windows I want is much easier when I know what desktop they're on.

I currently run with 10 virtual desktops.


I do most of my work on my linux box, so my windows box rarely has to be rebooted, but my linux box does have one problem... Firefox.

Since I tend to run my PCs hard, it's very common that I'll have many windows of firefox with many tabs open on each, that I'll leave running for days at a time. The reason I don't leave them open for weeks at a time, is because Firefox will eventually crash, peg my CPU, hog my memory, or just lag intolerably. I've hit every update they've released, and tried every fix I've read. Same issue. I've come to the conclusion that Firefox just wasn't meant to be run like this.

Firefox aside, the linux box has been exceedingly stable at continuous running of mysql servers, terminal server connections, security scans, various scripts I run, and pretty much anything else I can throw at it. It's only a 1.2ghz box with 1gb of ram, but it runs like a champ. Every few months, I do get the occasional nautilus crash which is easily recovered from, and once or twice a year, I get a kswap0 freak-out that can only be resolved by restarting my X server, but those problems are nothing compared the stability I get on this configuration.

The windows box runs only the programs that won't run on linux or need to run locally. Most of my interface with the ticketting and database resources are done through the terminal server connection on the linux box. But the windows box is the only one with a soundcard, so the only browsing it does is online radio, media player, and the odd youtube video. This has kept the windows box running pretty strong. It will still get the occasional program run amok, but I'm quick on the draw with the end task button on the task manager.

I think it's a strong, productive, stable workspace that I've found perfect for processing work orders, engaging with customers, keeping research data available, writing and testing code, and pretty much any other odd job that gets sent my way.

Simple Math

      

            

The kluge is perfection

Kluge – noun Computer Slang.
A software or hardware configuration that, while inelegant, inefficient, clumsy, or patched together, succeeds in solving a specific problem or performing a particular task.

The Son of ITAPPMONROBOT

My techie sense is tingling!

One of our sales people was back in the noc talking to us about some such nonsense and one of my coworkers responded to the sales person's question. Half way through his reply he stopped, got a spaced-out look on his face and squinted absently upward, apparently stuck in thought.

Strange? Almost. We all did it at the same time.

Coworker: Did you just...?
Coworker: Yeah where was it?
Coworker: I don't--
Sales: What are--?
Everyone: SHHH! ...
Coworker: It just came back.
Coworker: Yeah... Ok, it was the CS server.
Coworker: That damn box.

Techies are like prairie dogs when the pitch of a room's collective computer fan hum changes

I love my job

Scrape



Scrape



Scrape



Spider



Spider



Spider






Snaaaaaaake!




I love what I do.

fsck will save your fscking life

fsck, or the unix/linux command "file system check" is the answer to that horrible pit-in-the-stomach feeling you get when you boot up your computer, and by no fault of your own, you get a message indicating your hard drive is buggered.

When I ran windows at home and at work I had experienced about 8 random cosmic ray-related hard drive buggeries. All 8 resulted in complete rebuilds and tearful attempts to recover data.

Since I've switched to linux I've experienced no less than 5 of these buggeries. fsck saved me from all but one (fucking Maxtor!). One of which occurred quite literally four hours before a large project was due.

fsck was there to save my fscking life.

Thank you fsck, and thank you linux.

Worst database structure ever...

The last version was pretty simple, so I didn't expect them to go nuts in the database with the new versions.

WRONG.

It's weird because very few functionality changes were made.

I gotta relearn the damn database all over again :X

I <3 Screen (again)

GNU Screen is civilization.
GNU Screen is god.

GNU Screen is godilization.

GNU Screen is GODZILLA!!!

I need to find out if it's legal to marry a computer program in California. (shit it probably is)

Maybe I'll just print the source code out, and bind it into a book so we can hang out.

And video tape it.

And dub over it with Best Friend.


...


....hmmmmmm...


Beloved Screen

TA-312 Field Phones

When I was helping my mom move, she asked if I wanted this box from my old room.

Click all images for full size
I eyed the box greedily thought, "These will be perfect for fast communication when the zombies* come!" My significant other looked in the box and said, "Oh no, I don't want more junk that's just going to sit there." Then she looked at the phones more closely, smiled, and said just loud enough for me to hear, "Ohhh, for the zombies*."
I love her.
* In this instance, "zombies" is a metaphor for a generic SHTF/dangerous situation. A metaphor which does not exclude zombies. <_<

I don't remember where I got them from, but I remember messing with them for a bit, then losing interest. (I was obviously young and stupid) Now I was a kid with a new toy (all over again). I got my tools, pulled out the camera, and got down to business.

TA-312 Field Phone


Click images for full size.

Battery powered portable phones that require only two wires to communicate with each other. The handset has a press-to-talk button on the side, and you can speak to listeners with it pressed, and vice versa. Unlike walkie-talkies, if both sides press their "talk" buttons, they can both speak and hear each other. (useful for long distance arguing!) Since the phones are completely dead (not using any power) while the handset is down, you can ring the other end of the line by cranking a small generator on the side. This will cause a small alarm clock type device to repeatedly hit a hollow part on the rear of the phone, and produce a *KLACK* *KLACK* *KLACK* sound. The volume of the ringing can be adjusted with a small dial.


As I reacquainted myself with the phones, I remembered these connection leads that are covered by a cap. (seen to the left of the wire leads)

The site indicates they are for connecting a touch-tone adapter for use as a POTS phone. I shorted some of the leads and managed to cause a clicking, but failed to produce any form of tone. Thinking about it now, the tone modulation probably takes place in the adapter. The leads probably only provide power and line connection.

As I cleaned them out and tested them, I found one that didn't transmit as loudly as the others. I opened it up and found it had spent some time at the beach.

(Note generator crank extended)
Rust and corrosion on most parts, and in the bottom of the container you can see some white; that's sand. It still works, a testament to how equipment can be made to last if people take the time.

Another phone lacked a KLACKer, and the generator crank didn't KLACK the phone on the other end. However, if you picked it up, you could talk on it fine. This unit also lacked all rubber weatherproofing. I opened it up and found nothing that appeared to be wrong. I began testing leads to make sure power was getting through, and one of the wires fell of the generator. There's your problem right there. I whip out the soldering iron and my amazing skills of shitty soldering, and manage to reattach the wire securely. As I continue my inspection, another wire falls off the generator. Another shitty soldering job later, things are looking better. The generator now rings the phone on the other end of the wire. I test the wires until I find the leads that went to the KLACKer, and try to figure out what to use to replace it. I try a small PC speaker and a clicker, which don't work, and I can't find the buzzer I used to have. I test it with a high-output LED, and it works well. Instead of just having the wires and the LED hanging out the hole made by the missing KLACKer, I rewire the leads to connect to the external power leads, and attach the LED there. (LED is the big clear/white thing below the top of the handset)

Not bad looking, and it's silent now. Just gotta figure out something to cover the KLACKer hole.

After a detail clean with a q-tip, here's a picture of the best-looking of the four.


Connecting the four in parallel turns them all into a party line. Since enough electricity is generated on the ring (generator crank), it would be simple to set up a central board and three remote phones with LED ring indicators. This way one person in the middle could watch for a blinking LED (a ring from a remote phone), and switch the local phone to converse with that remote user. With the central board, you could also make a party line switch so everyone could talk and hear at the same time. Also hadn't considered setting more wires than there are phones, and just having users carry the phones while roving. If something happens, they connect to the nearest set of wires, and relay their information to the central phone.

After creating the LED "ringer" I want to add a flip switch to choose between light and sound ringers. I'm still working out how the disconnecter works, but I think I'll wire the handset for a hands-free headset.

I only used a short wire for testing communication between two phones, but a receiving phone could hear but not speak if it lacked batteries, this is where I got the idea for an always-on headset that you could listen to, and pick up to talk back. However that might not be the case over longer distances. I suspect power will be required by the listener to amplify the degraded signal over a distance. Testing will follow.

I gotta get one of those touch-tone adapters, because at work we have a "Bat Phone" (which is just a red POTS phone) for testing land lines. It would be pretty awesome to have one of these as the Bat Phone.

Information is Power.
Fast communication is extremely valuable.

Toys and Tools

I bought my first set of vernier caliper on my lunch break for a project.

I quickly returned to my car and read the instructions on how to... measure stuff.

After my lunch break was over I returned to work, and found myself wishing I could measure the items around my desk.

Why? I don't know. It's just a tool for measuring stuff...

...To the hundredth of an inch!
With a dial for estimation to the thousandth!

I'm playing with it now. :D

such a geek

UPDATE: a widemouth can opening is about .924 inches wide. I was going to compare it to a regularmouth (???) can, but every can we have is widemouth. When did that happen?

On NASA

Space exploration seems hardly worth the investment compared to the return. While NASA has produced a number of inventions and discoveries which have improved our quality of life, we remain quite a ways away from floating houses on the moon.

Space exploration without the ability of faster-than-light travel seems a bit like masturbation to me. A great bit of fun, but ultimately pointless. At least masturbation doesn't cost 1.5 billion taxpayer dollars every time you fire off into space. (heh)

But when they release the most amazing pictures you've ever seen, and you can't help but gawk awe-struck as the vastness and beauty of the universe comes into brilliant relief, if only for one shining moment; you can't help but wonder if it just might be worth it.

Seriously???

They can put a fucking man on the moon, but microsoft can't make the COMPUTER IN THE PALM OF MY HAND update for daylight savings time?!

Fuck you guys.

HDD + Movement = HIGH SPEED LATHE

GENTLE!

Thought I was the only one

How many of you type "ls" or "w" on your console for no reason when you're bored and don't know what to do?

I type 'll' 'ls' and 'clear' while I'm thinking about the command I need to type..

Aaaaaand we're back!

Wow. It's always surprising to me how fast a fresh install of XP is. I mean, I'm a big Linux fan, but it's still nice.

Of course, after the 3 hours of downloading updates, it's not as fast. But it's still impressive.

I give it about a week.

It'll be Fedora 8 for now. I might put Ubuntu on it if Fedora fails to impress. Now to see if dwarf fortress is any faster on a fresh install!

Rebuild time!

I decided I had been without a backup for too long, and fearing loss of my very imPORtaNt data, I bit the bullet and bought a big hard drive and an enclosure. I wound up with a Seagate 750GB. I've been burned by Maxtor before (I used to think you were cool!), and decided Seagate was the only way to go.

Right now it's backing up almost my entire hard drive (80GB), and after it's done, I'll be giving this laptop the rebuild it has been needing. The windows partition succumbed to who the fuck knows what (my guess, DLL conflicts/mismatches), and was so crippled it couldn't even ping itself without dumping trash in the output (which, btw, is pretty fucked up). Since the Linux partition was working so well, I saw no reason to bother rebuilding the windows side. (which would also wipe the hard drive during the system restore "sledge hammer for a tack" process, requiring another repartition, and a fresh Linux install) But my GF has been missing some of her windows apps, and dwarf fortress needs some OpenGL updates to run faster (yes, somehow it's a window only roguelike), so it's time to take care of business.

At least my Linux user files, preferences, and configuration will be 100% restored as soon as I copy my backed up home directory. I need only worry about losing the tweaks I did to get the system running smoothly (video card, ndiswrapper, external video, etc) so I'll try to catch everything before I rebuild.

Maybe I'll even try a new flavor a Linux.

I <3 my laptop

It's been about 5 years since I bought my laptop. I needed one, and best buy had a good deal on a bad brand. Except this brand had been recently acquired by Gateway, who proceeded to build the brand into something serious computer users would actually want. (you know, like FSB cache :p)

I bought an Emachines m5309.

The next model up had built-in wifi, and an extra 20GB. But given the price difference between the two, I went with the lower model, because it didn't think the next one up was as good of a deal.

It worked as my primary PC; and as a Linux user, a coder, a hacker, a gamer, and a tinkerer, trust me when I say that it worked HARD.

It played CPU intensive games for enough time to be measured in months, it stayed up countless nights downloading torrents and seeding, it has had at least 20 complete hard drive wipes and rebuilds, its hard drive endured many sessions of live repartitioning, it withstood different flavors of Linux challenging the video card with potentially dangerous settings, (that was mostly me :) countless bouts of tinkering by someone who loves to tinker, (I should note the difference between a dabbling tinkerer, and a professional tinkerer; the latter's hardware still works) it suffered jabs, rubs, and the occasional scrape on the LCD screen, for days it ran (legal!) scans and brute forces that I wrote myself (which meant multiple threads and maxing out resources), it survived a gauntlet of slides, slips, and downright drops (two really bad ones), and it did most of this while baking away on poorly ventilated, unforgiving surfaces with poor clearance (having given up its "feet" long ago).

It only has one flaw; the manufacturer made the elements on the heatsink too close together, and after prolonged use, they can become clogged with dust causing it to shut off during heavy usage. The manufacturer refused to fix it, so I've been popping it open and cleaning out the excess dust myself. I have to do it less than once a year; and it only takes 15 minutes with two tiny screwdrivers, and a q-tip.

It has cracks in the plastic and (cosmetic) pieces missing, the screen shows wear but still shows everything well, the CD whines a little when you use it;
but it keeps working.

I should note that this is what I expected of it.

Recently I've been feeling other peoples' pain when it comes to laptops. New Dells with honest-to-god bad RAM that they refused to replace or refurb hard drives they refused to acknowledge, Macbooks fresh out of the box with dead pixels or broken keys (!!!), Macs with bad hard drives being sent back again and again and again, and HPs and Sonys with all of the above times two (all of the above, except broken keys. That's pretty messed up of apple).

All these people having all these problems with all these different brands. People talking about extended warrantees on their laptops, and mailing it in twice or thrice for repairs.
Why wasn't I afraid of my laptop suddenly dying one of a million possible deaths?

Silly me, simply expected it to chug along merrily, all the live-long day.
Silly it, was happy to oblige.

Every time I look at its beaten case, or pick it up and listen to it creak, I entertain the idea of retiring it to some light server duty. But once I start using it, I wonder if it (or I?) would resent me for doing such a thing. Like an old mill worker, refusing to retire to a life of leisure. Purpose keeps him alive.

The purpose driven existence, and atrophy related dilapidation of tools. If we use them forever, they work forever. They never stop working, we just stop using them. If we don't use them, do they no longer work? If they are not broken, are we?

Maybe it's time to dig up some relics.