| Wedding planning, the countdown begins |
[Apr. 29th, 2008|09:38 am] |
We have about nine weeks to go! Invitations are being labeled and prepped for shipment, the menu is being finalized and the ceremony is being scripted. Really, the only things left to do involve tying together small details and I think the bride might just be scheming to plan someone else's wedding, just for the fun of it.
Since we have a website with some measurable traffic, I installed Google Analytics to, you know, keep track of things. This diagram shows the states from which we've had a visitor to our website:
You can't really tell (except for Washington) but darker shades of green are used to indicate the number of visitors (or pages viewed, or kb loaded, or whatever) from each state.
We've even had some visitors from Europe. Both Dublin and London have appeared in there. Note to friends in Europe, India and Japan: make yourselves known! |
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| Backups with Time Machine to a network fileserver |
[Mar. 29th, 2008|05:41 pm] |
Time Machine is the best thing about Leopard. But I recently became annoyed that I had to plug in an external USB drive to use it. I have a file server running Ubuntu in the bedroom under a couch that has all of my photos and music and valuable data on a RAID array, so why not put my laptop backups there, too? This turns out to be a bit more complex than expected:
1. Install netatalk and avahi on the Ubuntu box. apt-get is your friend.
2. Set up an AFP share so that you can view it in the Finder. Use AFP, not SMB.
3. Open a terminal and enter:
defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1
4. Open the Time Machine preferences and change your backup disk to your AFP share.
If you've done this correctly, you'll get an error when Time Machine starts: "The backup disk image could not be created." So, now for the fun part:
5. Fire up Disk Utility and create a new disk image on your AFP share called "ComputerName_MACAddress.sparsebundle.dmg", substituting your own computer name and MAC address (without the colons, of course). Make the disk image large enough to hold backups (in my case, the bare minimum size was 36 GB--your mileage may vary). For "Partitions", choose "No partition map". Creating the disk image takes several hours.
6. Once your disk image has been created, start a Time Machine backup and it should "just work" (ha ha).
I am a tad disappointed that I had to do this much hacking to get my backups working over our wifi but now that it does work, I'm quite happy with the setup (and it sure beats paying $275+ for a Time Capsule!). |
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| Coincidence? |
[Feb. 6th, 2008|09:06 am] |
There have been five separate cases of damage (either cuts or power loss) to the undersea cables that carry internet traffic to/from the Middle East. Coincidence? I think not and others agree.
Something shady is going on here. |
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| Leopard |
[Nov. 2nd, 2007|03:13 pm] |
This has pretty much been blogged to death throughout the interwebs so I won't bother adding much more noise on the subject except to say that I continue to be impressed by Apple software. I upgraded to Leopard today, and as usual, it was a painless process with significant improvements (whereas Tiger was underwhelming, Leopard is a quantum leap). Time Machine is probably the most valuable user-facing feature in the whole package--you just plug in a drive and back up, so when (not if) your primary drive crashes, you no longer have any excuses.
Here is the only Leopard review you'll ever need.
My big beef so far: what is the fascination with translucent windows/toolbars? A little bit of that can go a long way, and Leopard takes it way too far in the Vista/Aero direction.
I don't use the Dock much, thanks to Quicksilver, so I don't have nearly as much of an issue with the UI changes there.
Otherwise, Leopard is pretty awesome. |
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| Meltdown! |
[Mar. 13th, 2007|10:07 pm] |
So last weekend, my linux mini-server decided that it hated its external hard drive. This is bad, because said external drive contains just about every digital photo I've ever taken as well as my entire iTunes library. I had been thinking about buying a second external hard drive and rsync'ing the contents of the two of them each day, but various things stopped me:
- The Lacie drive I have doesn't have a fan, i.e. I can't leave it turned on all the time without worrying about it catching on fire or something. I'm not too keen on adding a second uncooled drive to the mix.
- The existing drive has developed a weird clicking sound that scares the bejeezus out of me.
- I'm running Debian and Debian is about the most inflexible thing on earth. I was really worried about adding a second USB drive and then spending two weeks trying to recompile the kernel and figure out why other random peripherals stopped working.
- I don't get a warm fuzzy geek feeling from my current setup.
So, after a trip to Fry's and some Bittorrent'ing, I ended up with a whole new system. I installed Ubuntu Edgy Eft (is that the gayest name for a software release ever, or is it just me?) and set up software RAID-1 on two identical 200 GB SATA drives. The OS is installed on a separate 20 GB drive and the RAID array is used for photos, music, important documents, etc. If one of the two big drives fails, I can hot swap in a new one. The odds of data loss have been significantly reduced if not eliminated. I'm not sure what I'll do with the old 250 GB external drive...maybe use it for swap or something.
The Ubuntu install was, hands-down, the most painless linux install I've ever experienced (by which I mean it only required TWO complete installs, from scratch, before it worked the way I expected). However, the Ubuntu server edition doesn't come with some software that I expected--namely, emacs (it does have vi--bias?), Java (not even a JRE much less the JDK), Ruby/Rails (what freakin' year is it again?), and OpenSSL Server (who needs sshd on a SERVER?!). You do get perl, Apache, MySQL and PHP with the base install, which is pretty sweet. So far, I think I've got everything I want installed and working as expected. The only thing left to do is finish copying the contents of the old external drive onto the fancy new RAID drives and figure out how to set up file sharing with my Mac via Samba or something like that. |
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| Geek stuff |
[Feb. 18th, 2007|03:42 pm] |
One of my New Years resolutions was to cancel my land line and DSL and replace them with a cable modem to save $50 per month. I've found that I'm much more psychologically attached to the idea of having a land line phone than I ever expected, but I've gone ahead and hooked up the cable modem and I'll be canceling the phone and DSL on Monday. I'm amazingly anxious about this, so I'm recording the event here in hopes that I can look back in a few months and laugh at myself. |
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| Macbook first impressions |
[Oct. 19th, 2006|02:47 pm] |
I signed away my old iBook yesterday and picked up my new Macbook. Now I have a bunch of iBook stuff to give away, but I suspect the vultures at work will swoop in quickly. As for the Macbook:
1) Apple kindly copied the contents of my home directory and my Applications folder, so I don't need to reinstall anything and I lost no documents. However, they did not copy the developer tools nor did they update the OS with the most recent updates. Little things, I know, but the first thing I had to do upon getting my new computer was spend four hours downloading software updates. I also got rid of Sidetrack and reinstalled X11 (which doesn't work yet for some reason -- its xterm segfaults). Oh, and I had to re-add my entire network to /etc/hosts.
2) The screen! I thought the iBook was nice -- I remember watching a movie on it and being impressed with how much better than my TV it appeared, but on the Macbook widescreen, it is amazing. I'm also really liking the 1280x1024 resolution as it makes it much easier for me to wean myself away from having multiple desktops when I can see a corner of every app I'm using.
3) I count the number of Dock bounces it takes to open a given application. Firefox opens in < 3 bounces, compared to > 15 on the iBook. Eclipse pops up in under 10 seconds. But once you have one app open (like, say, Firefox), opening others takes a few seconds longer. One the whole, though, the computer is significantly faster than the iBook (which is to be expected given that it has twice the RAM and a 2.0 Ghz Core Duo in place of the 1.2 Ghz PowerPC).
3) The "chiclet" keyboard blows. I already miss my iBook keyboard, which was the nicest keyboard I've ever used. I suppose I'll get used to it at some point but for now, I don't like it. It is too easy to bump the wrong key. And while I'm pretty good at touch-typing, I find myself looking down at the keyboard a lot more now because you don't get a good sense of where each key ends and the next key begins.
4) The magnetic power adapter thing is also cheesy. It falls out when I pick up the computer to use it. It falls out when I put the computer on my lap. I just moved my leg and it fell out. It seems like a valiant idea that wasn't well-implemented.
5) The built-in iSight camera has, as someone once said about Google, "theoretical future usefulness".
6) I haven't noticed the heat that other users have complained about. It certainly hasn't gotten as hot as my iBook used to get.
7) I can't wait to test out the CPU/RAM power difference by trying to encode a movie. But that will need to wait until I get back from Vegas.
8) It picks up a ton more wireless networks than the iBook. I've got six of them listed here now, whereas the iBook would usually show two. And Bluetooth actually works!
In summary, I like it. It's hard not to like a computer that is significantly better than your old computer and cost $200. |
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| Today was a good day |
[Oct. 12th, 2006|04:07 am] |
I just booked a trip to Las Vegas for next week. I won't be there very long but just long enough to get some good food and quite possibly lose everything I own. I'm staying at the MGM Grand because it was the cheapest "reputable" hotel room on the Strip, but I'm not looking forward to the 1/2-mile walk from the elevator to the hotel room, or the $10.99/minute wifi, or the trek to the Studio Cafe for $30 breakfast. But I'm sure a couple of tequila slurpees in the Studio Walk and a big-ass cigar at Delmonico will change my attitude quickly. Is this becoming an annual ritual? Only time will tell.
In other news, my stupid iBook died again. For those keeping score at home, that's FOUR logic boards in less than a year. I took it back to the geniuses and suggested, as politely as possible, that we not bother trying to replace it again. They agreed but with the caveat that "The Supervisor" would need to call me to determine how to proceed. I braced myself for an argument. I expected them to offer some crappy $200 hardware credit. So imagine my surprise when "The Supervisor" (AKA Elise) called and read my repair history back to me. "This has been a horrible experience for you," she informed me bluntly, and then offered me a 1.83 GB Macbook as a replacement.
I was stunned. Apple was, for all intensive purposes, offering to replace my two-year old laptop with a more expensive, significantly faster computer with twice the disk and twice the memory and a Superdrive. So being the tightwad that I am, I promptly asked for an upgrade to the 2.0 GB model with 1 GB of RAM. "No problem," said Elise. "I'll have to order one for you but we can have it in a few days, and you can just pay the difference."
So I just got a brand new $1400 Macbook for $200. Something tells me that Dell wouldn't have done that. I don't want to be one of those cultish Apple freaks, but I'm blown away by this one. I'm still anxious about the quality of Apple's hardware--four catastrophic hardware failures in less than a year isn't ideal by any stretch. And I think Steve Wozniak is a bit of a knob. But their software is top-notch. And I'm beyond impressed with the treatment I've received throughout this ordeal. Apple rocks. |
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| Losing it |
[Aug. 24th, 2006|09:09 pm] |
I've had incredibly good luck with computers over the years. I've never lost data...until now. My iBook died again last week, so as usual, I toted it back to the Apple store for another logic board replacement. The same genius who helped me last time took it from me again with a shrug and a "maybe the third time's a charm?" comment.
I picked it up today only to find that the technicians had replaced the logic board, the upper case, and reformatted the hard drive. I lost everything, which really only includes some photos that I'm pretty sure are backed up and my tax return from last year, which can be easily recreated using Turbo Tax. There were some text files and random writing projects in my home directory that are gone forever. Too bad, because there was some good stuff in there.
So now, I'm reinstalling everything. In the interest of a permanent record:
Sidetrack (for which I can't find my registration email...grr)
Quicksilver
Firefox (including tons of plugins: Greasemonkey, TabX, AdBlock, BugMeNot and rikaichan are must-haves)
Adium
Chicken of the VNC
iPhoto Buddy
iTerm
Eclipse
Phex
ReplayPC
RSSOwl
NeoOffice/J
Bittorrent
Textmate
Transmit
Apple Developer Tools (XCode, etc.) |
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| Geek gruntle |
[Aug. 19th, 2006|09:23 am] |
I've finally found something to complain about with Ruby which has become my scripting language of choice for the various mini-projects I keep brewing at home to stay entertained. But what the hell kind of error message is this?
jeffreyp@manhattan:~/projects/ruby$ ruby ./scruffyTest.rb
/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/scruffy-0.2.1/lib/scruffy/renderers/base.rb:21:in `render':
uninitialized constant Scruffy::Renderers::Base::Builder (NameError)
from /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/scruffy-0.2.1/lib/scruffy/graph.rb:150:in `render'
from ./scruffyTest.rb:14
jeffreyp@manhattan:~/projects/ruby$
To fix this, I had to open a library that is part of a gem I'd downloaded and find out that it depends on another library. If I require that second library in my script, it works like a champ.
But my script doesn't require it...the library does! WTMF? Is it not reasonable to expect that my script should only need to include libraries that it will directly invoke? Having to provide requirements for an external library seems really shady to me. Those gems should be black boxes...I shouldn't even need to know where on my filesystem they are stored, much less ever have to open and possibly edit one.
At the very least, the error message should say something about unsatisfied dependencies or missing includes or something, and the script should die right away instead of waiting until you call a specific method in the library to puke. There is definitely something to be said for compile-time checking over run-time barfage. |
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| Training, take 2 |
[Jul. 15th, 2006|02:05 pm] |
If all had gone as planned, I'd be riding STP today having cranked out a century ride every week since June. Unfortunately, surgery conspired to slow down my progress.
I have not worked out regularly for almost two months. I've gone for a walk or two, and of course a hike but not much else. So this isn't even starting over, because I'm in worse shape now than I was in back in May when I started riding regularly.
So, yeah...I went for a ride today. Only 11 miles, confined entirely to the greater Magnoliastan area. I took many, many breaks because my left arm is really weak. I didn't realize how much I really do need the physical therapy! I found it very difficult to hold onto the bars with my left hand, and I couldn't apply much force to the left brake lever. Oh, and my elbow hurt like hell for the whole ride. Too soon? Maybe, but I can't sit here and let the summer pass by without a fight.
I'm rooting for Floyd Landis in the Tour de France since he has a busted hip and I feel his pain.
In other news, the fine folks at Apple are replacing my iBooks main logic board again. When I described the problem to the Genius, I heard a guy at the other end of the counter say, "He's got the same problem I have," while pointing to his own iBook. Why does Apple continue to insist that there is not a systematic problem with these things? Oh, well...I shouldn't complain because I'm not paying for it. But if I, er, should happen to come into any money soon (ahem), I'm gonna have a hard time not plunking down $1200 for a Macbook. Those things are sweet! |
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| One step forward, one step back. |
[Jul. 14th, 2006|07:24 pm] |
I had my post-operation follow-up appointment today. They removed my stitches and allowed me to show off my scar. It's nasty! But it could have been a lot worse. I also get to have some physical therapy to re-learn how to straighten my left arm, but the doctor was not surprised to learn that I have not yet recovered my full range of motion. Encouraging news all around...
I'd post a photo of the scar but unfortunately, my iBook croaked again. It won't even turn on, so I need to make an appointment with the geniuses some time this weekend. Seriously, Apple's software is so good that I'm willing to ignore the fact that their hardware blows ass and possibly buy a MacBook in spite of the fact that my iBook has failed catastrophically twice in 1.5 years. That's QUALITY. |
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| Today's random babbling |
[May. 15th, 2006|08:38 pm] |
Yesterday wasn't an effective rest day. I played baseball with my nephew and moved furniture, so today's ride was pretty low-key. I'll be taking a proper rest day tomorrow so I can attend a post-work function. 12 miles today puts me at 142 for the year. I can't believe that I even considered riding 1000 miles last summer. Talk about setting yourself up for failure!
In other news, I have my iBook back with a fresh new logic board (as well as a new battery). Everything is in order and the hard drive contents are fine. But the best part is that I didn't have to pay for it. I picked up the computer, signed the papers, and then asked the guy if I was supposed to take it to the main register. "What for?" he asked. I told him that I didn't think I'd paid for the service. He looked over the papers for a minute and then said, "Well, I guess you get a free logic board and battery then! Good night!" Then he turned around and started helping the next guy in line.
Oh, karma. |
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| Slow and steady... |
[May. 12th, 2006|10:07 pm] |
Ugh. The headwind today was as bad as ever, but I spun through it and kept a decent cadence. I also managed to make it up the Thorndyke hill in my second-to-lowest gear, which implies that I'm getting stronger (if not faster). I'm planning to crank out a longer (30 miles or so) ride this weekend and see what breaks.
Today:
~1.2 hours
~12 miles
This year:
~12.3 hours
~111 miles
In other news, I finally took my fried iBook to the Apple store. A logic board replacement is only going to cost me $280, which is about the same as AppleCare and significantly less than a new MacBook. I can't wait to get it back...the alternatives around here are pretty scary. |
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| This is a test |
[May. 7th, 2006|09:39 am] |
I hate web-based forms. They remind me of Hotmail. Let's see if I can post to Livejournal from emacs and qualify myself as some kind of superdork. |
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| Bad Apples |
[Apr. 24th, 2006|07:15 pm] |
My iBook started behaving strangely this weekend. First, the screen went crazy and displayed nothing but multicolored vertical bars. I rebooted, but had tons of problems getting the bastard to fire up. I also noticed that the fan was occasionally running loudly. Finally, I got it to start but it only ran for 30 minutes or so before the screen would go all nutty again.
Of COURSE the warranty is expired.
I tried resetting the PMU tonight. If that doesn't work, I get to buy a main logic board for $500 (or a Mac Book Pro for $2500). Whee.
Update: fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. PMU reset didn't work so I guess I'll be meeting the geniuses at the Apple Store and begging for mercy. |
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