My Gorram Frakking Blog

California High Speed Trains Projects—Not as Cool as It Could Be

I got spam from California High Speed Trains identifying me as a business leader (clearly I’m on a mailing list somewhere). The information on the website is sketchy. It’s really just trying to convince visitors that high-speed rail is a good idea.

But I’m watching a video produced by KQED Quest. From what I can gather, they are not planning to build the awesome maglev train used in Shanghai. It looks like conventional electric rail, with a supply wire hung above the track. The video also shows more conventional trains running on the same tracks. In all, pretty lame.

The Shanghai Maglev technology (developed by Transrapid) is superior in every way. The track is typically slightly elevated, preventing wildlife from having their habitats cut in half. It needs no structure above the track, making it much more attractive. It’s much quieter, because there is no mechanical contact between the train and track. For this reason, the ride is also smoother, and faster (430 km/h vs. 354 km/h for the proposed system; the maximum design speed is 550 km/h).

Japan also has a maglev train, but their approach is different. The trains must roll on wheels until reaching a critical speed, and require more power. It also requires superconducting electromagnets.

The California project is expected to require $42 billion and take 12 years to implement. It’s a pity it won’t be state-of-the-art when complete.

Electric Motorcycle Project

I’ve decided to convert my old motorcycle to electric. This involves ripping out all the gas-related parts, and putting in an electric motor, batteries, and associated control electronics to make it all work. I’ve started a new blog for the project, go check it out:

Electric Motorcycle Conversion Project

The cure for “meh”

Follow these steps (even if you seen some of this before):

1. Watch the wonderful Discovery TV Commercial.
2. Read XKCD (and read its whole archive).

3. Watch this:

   
   Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

   Not all Americans suck.

Will Smith is a Scientologist? Shit.

I can’t believe it. Another actor I enjoy watching has stepped off the deep end of some nutjob crackpot religion. Will Smith joins Tom Cruise and Mel Gibson in this sad trend. I was going to go see Hancock, now I think I won’t.

The article says he hasn’t admitted to actually joining the church, so maybe I can rationalize it that way.

Feh.

Update: Maybe he’s okay after all, claiming not to be a Scientologist.

Image Upload Utility Idea

A quick entry to record an idea I had for a useful utility. A droplet application that takes the images dropped, makes a set of thumbnails, and uploads them and the originals to a server, and then puts markup on the clipboard.

It could be enhanced to pop up menus for frequent destinations, and image sizes. It could even pop up a crop editor, which could provide constraints for common aspect ratios/sizes/widths/heights. These could be set by destination.

University Satellite Delfi-C3 Successfully Deployed

The Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands successfully launched and deployed a 3U Cubesat called “Delfi-C3”, into polar low-Earth orbit. Because it carries no batteries, it only operates when not in eclipse. We on the West coast of the United States, and those in Alaska, were the first ones able to hear it. I was unable to hear it on its first pass at around 0455 UTC (2155 local), but they encouraged me to try again for the second pass, at around 0631 UTC. I finally heard it at 06:39:08 (give or take a second or two). (Pictures of the satellite.)

I had almost given up, when I remembered to try the backup frequency, and voilà! There it was! I was able record audio (received by an ICOM IC-R1500 connected to my Mac via USB, recording into QuickTime Player at the device-native format) and send it to the team.

…

And I just got off the phone with Wouter! He called me to thank me for sending them the audio file, and to tell me that it was, in fact, Delfi-C3, and that I am the first person to hear it. He says this confirms that it is operating in Science mode on the backup frequency. Sadly, it appears that my recording was too noisy to allow any telemetry to be decoded.

What a rush! I’m so thrilled for those guys, and thrilled to have suddenly been a real, if small, part. Wouter tells me they are all very happy to hear that their satellite is alive and well.

Congrats, guys!

iPhotos of Saturn

I snapped these by holding my iPhone, with its crummy, scratched-up lens, up to the eyepiece of my little telescope. The cold wind was shaking the scope and making me shiver. The actual view was much better, but I was surprised enough to get these that I decided to post them here.

I tried with my digicam, but gave up too soon; I couldn’t get it to show up at all.

My first amateur radio contact ever, with Astronaut Dan Tani aboard the International Space Station

On February 6, 2008, I had the great honor of making radio contact with Astronaut Daniel Tani, as he flew overhead aboard the International Space Station (ISS). This was one of the most exciting and awesomely cool things I’ve ever gotten to do. It was my first voice ham radio contact ever, and after a great deal of help from the tireless Kenneth Ransom, Dan and I finally managed to schedule a time to chat.

Today I received permission to post publicly a photo, taken by Cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, of Dan while he was talking to me:

Almost as cool was the email I got from space when I was first trying to schedule the contact with Dan. It was a bit of a challenge, because you need line-of-sight in order to establish radio communications at the frequencies we were using (144 MHz, also known as 2 meter). This means that the contact has to occur during a pass. Since ISS orbits the Earth once every 90 minutes, and the Earth itself rotates during that time, it’s only overhead during certain times of the day, and those times are different every day.

Add to that the fact that Dan is an incredibly busy person up there, so we had to find a time when he was both off duty and ISS was in sight. Around 1600 PST on February 6th that finally happened (I think Dan stayed up late to make it happen, and for that I thank him). We were able to chat for about 9 minutes, and it was great fun.

Thanks again to Kenneth Ransom, Yuri Malenchenko, and Mike Kobb (who assisted on the ground as my antenna tracker).

I had the privilege to go to Florida to see Dan’s first shuttle mission launch (STS-108). I lack the words to express my extreme appreciation of Dan, for making that possible, and for taking the time to do this with me. From the bottom of my heart, thank you, Dan!

Using dd to write floppy disks on Mac OS X

At work I had the need to write a bootloader directly to a floppy disk. In-house we use dd on Linux to do this, but it was giving me trouble on Mac OS X. I finally figured it out. Here are the instructions I wrote up:

These steps work on Mac OS X 10.5.2. They probably work on earlier versions, too, but I haven’t tried it. This works with a TEAC FD-05PUW USB floppy drive that I picked up at Fry’s (sometime in 2008-02).

When you plug in the USB floppy and insert a disk, the Finder will mount it on the desktop (if it’s formatted) and create a couple of entries in /dev like /dev/disk1 and /dev/rdisk1 (the actual numbers corresponding to the drive will depend on how many other drives are attached. Be sure you’re working with the right one!)

You would then be tempted to execute something like the following. Unfortunately, you’ll get an error:

If you try using the raw device instead, you get a different error:

In this case, the file is actually 195936 bytes in length. I’m not sure why it seems to write some of the bytes (I’m not sure it actually even wrote that many).

Using the buffered device (/dev/disk1 is correct, but it’s busy because it’s mounted by the Finder. If you simply unmount it via the Finder, then all the entries in /dev for the device go away, and you’re unable to tell dd what to do. The solution is to unmount the disk using diskutil unmount, which leaves the /dev/disk1 entry in place, and then you can use dd correctly:

After that, I think it’s safe to just unplug the USB drive, but I’d feel better if I knew how to completely unmount the device before doing so. In any case, the OS didn’t complain like it would if a volume were mounted and online.

DNS Standards to Support Wide-Area Bonjour

Over the past few weeks I’ve been trying to move my DNS services to third-party DNS providers, like DreamHost, FreeDNS, and DynDNS. So far, I haven’t found a provider that accepts arbitrary data for the various resource records’ values (including spaces), severely limiting how nice wide-area Bonjour can be. I’ve been able to advertise services, they just look bad.

For more information, consult these pages on Bonjour and Wide-Area Bonjour.

Here I’ve tried to collect relevant parts of DNS-related RFCs to provide evidence that DNS service providers should support arbitrary characters in their DNS records.

Summary: there’s no reason a DNS provider should restrict the content of any resource record name or data field, except for its length. Those providers who use HTML forms for configuration can also make it easy to use UTF-8 text by just accepting what’s entered into each form field, and handle conversion to BIND configurations themselves (if that’s their implementation).

Uneffingbelievable. San Carlos is suing a man for having no trash

I couldn’t believe the article when I read it. I live here. I wish I lived in a house so I could do the same thing (I’m in an apartment ‘till my house is built).

Uh…Windoze in Space?

I’ve been watching a lot of NASA TV lately (always do when the Shuttle visits the ISS, although probably more this time than previously).

One thing I’ve noticed a lot more this trip than any other: lots of stupid issues with Microsoft Windoze software. Problems getting email, problems getting printers to print, etc.

Now, I’ve seen lots of Macs in use at NASA. You can see them in Mission Control on NASA TV. You can see them in photos of the various labs all over the country.

Why aren’t they using Macs in orbit? I know Macs have their share of problems, too, but seriously. Email, word documents, printing…this kind of stuff works much, much better on a Mac than it does on Windows (if you don’t think so, you’re a fucking moron and should be sterilized to keep you from reproducing). Plus, you get the benefits of a virus-free OS. I know if I were in space, that’s what I’d want.

Update: Time Machine

Feh. Time Machine sucks. After a painful setup process, I left Time Machine to do its thing. I just saw it mount a disk image that it created on the remote volume, so I know that all the speculation about enhancements to AFP (and possibly HFS+) are bunk. If it’s going to create disk images, it could do the same thing on any kind of file server. There’s no excuse for the AEBS not working.

That, I’m sick, and it’s pretty clear Cal’s going to lose to ASU. Fuck, what a shitty weekend.

Update: Feh. Time Machine does not estimate time remaining nor current data rate. I seem to be getting about 28.92 GB/h (over wired gigabit Ethernet).

Update: Time Machine really consumes CPU cycles. When the MBP is idle, the fans are not audible. Since Time Machine has been backing up, they’ve been continuously audible. The average data transfer rate has dropped to 16.9 GB/h. I have spent a few minutes of the last two hours watching streaming video, and doing a little bit of other work, but mostly it has been running undisturbed. mdimport is also running, not sure why.

Update: The combination of Time Machine and Leopard on the client and server make for some seriously fast network volume mounting! Whereas SuperDuper! takes ages to mount a network volume served by a Buffalo GigaStation NAS (first the volume, then the disk image on that volume, a process that takes several minutes), Time Machine and Leopard get the disk image mounted in seconds. After clicking on the Time Machine icon in the Dock, most of the time spent waiting for time machine to actually engage (with a tip of the hat to Picard) is waiting on the server’s drives to wake up.

I have yet to see how well the whole system does when I sleep the MBP, go to another network, and wake it up again. Maybe I’ll try that this afternoon. For sure I’ll try it when I go to work tomorrow.

One other note: When engaging Time Machine, the network volume does not mount; only the disk image mounts. Not sure how they pull that off, but maybe that’s one of the enhancements to AFP in Leopard. Hardware Growler reports both the server volume and the disk image mounting; just the network volume is hidden from the desktop (even though I have configured things to show mounted volumes).

When Time Machine begins an automatic backup, it does not display the floating progress window. Opening the System Preferencs panel shows a progress bar, though.

Update: Time Machine doesn’t deal well with lost servers. I engaged Time Machine, let it mount the backup volume (disk image), closed the lid on the MBP (it took a minute or more to sleep, but this is not new behavior in Leopard for me), and went to a breakfast place with free WiFi. There, I opened the MBP, saw the Time Machine screen still up, waited for Hardware Growler to indicate that the system had self-assigned an IP address, and then started moving through time. After a bit of back-and-forth, Time Machine appeared to hang (although the starry background animation continued). After several minutes (5 - 10), I decided to force-quit Time Machine. Pressing Command-Option-Escape had no effect, and after pressing it several times, Time Machine suddenly disengaged and there was a server-disconnect dialog on the screen.

Also, during the time that Time Machine was up, a dialog was presented asking if I wanted to join one of a couple of networks, including the free one at at the breakfast place. However, I was unable to click on any of the networks to select them, and hence, was unable to join a network (the window could move, and the “Other…” and “Cancel” buttons worked fine). Feh. Feh.

Time Machine, AirPort Extreme and ZFS

First, the good news. It’s not new news, but it’s still good. Leopard shipped with a read-only implementation of ZFS. To get a beta version of a full read/write ZFS, you need to have an Apple Developer Connection account (the free Online membership is enough). Look in the “Mac OS X” section of the downloads area. I’m using v1.1.

Now, the bad news: you can’t use ZFS storage pools as your Time Machine Backup drive. Sigh. I’m not surprised, but I had hoped. Eventually, it makes sense for Apple to move to ZFS as the default file system, but who knows how long that will take? For the time being, HFS+ (Mac OS Extended) file systems store meta data about files that other file systems can’t handle natively. I suspect this is true of ZFS, too. You can hack your way around these limitations, by simply creating additional files on the system and storing the meta data in there, but that’s ugly. My hope is that Apple will enhance ZFS to support HFS+’s metadata natively, and that will be that.

Time Machine has other limitations, too. I’m not too upset that I can’t yet use ZFS for my backups (so long as Apple fixes this in the next six months or so), but I am upset that I can’t use the AirPort Extreme Base Station as a backup file server. It was said, in the months leading up to the release of Leopard, that Time Machine could back up to the AEBS. In fact, it’s the reason I bought the AEBS: I couldn’t be sure that a non-Apple file server would properly support AFP, and I had it on good authority (Apple) that the AEBS would do the trick.

I can speculate as to why: other Mac backup solutions, like SuperDuper!, create a disk image on the target volume to work around limitations in AFP. Although I’m not certain of the precise limitations, they have to do with file ownership and permissions (for example, a user ID on one system is not necessarily the same as a user ID on another system). From what I understand, Apple has enhanced AFP in Leopard (and by one account, HFS+, or at least the filesystem API) to accommodate the needs of backup software.

So, at the last minute, Apple tells us that you can’t use an AEBS as a backup server, but you can use Personal File Sharing on another machine running 10.5. I have an older PowerBook sitting around, so I decided to buy a FireWire external drive and use that as my backup solution (for now).

I bought a Buffalo DriveStation Duo. I chose it because Fry’s had it (I could get it right now) and I was able to verify that it can operate in JBOD mode. I wanted to try using ZFS first, and if that didn’t work, the DriveStation supports mirroring.

I followed the directions in the Apple ZFS Readme’s Getting Started section. As described in the readme, it was necessary to repartition the drives to use the GUID Partition Table. I had a bit of difficulty with this. The volumes mounted when I first connected it, and I used the Finder to unmount them. I tried to make a ZFS pool before repartitioning, which ZFS did without complaint, and which subsequently caused a new volume to mount. I unmounted that, but attempts to repartition resulted in “resource busy” errors (the other drive repartitioned fine). Disconnecting the entire DriveStation and reconnecting it seemed to fix it.

I built a nice ZFS mirrored pool out of the two drives, shared it via Personal File Sharing, and mounted it on the other Mac. Time Machine refused to recognize it as an acceptable backup volume. I briefly considered making a disk image on the drive and trying that, but decided I disliked that solution enough that I didn’t want to use it even if it worked.

Attempting to use the ZFS pool on the local machine also doesn’t work.

The next step was to reconfigure the DriveStation as a mirrored array, with an HFS+ volume format. I tried to do this with the RAIDSetting application from Buffalo, but it failed with complaints about the “The old volume lable [sic] is not valid. Delete volume label by using disk utility.” After half a dozen attempts to repartition the drives as PeeCee drives, I still can’t get RAIDSetting to function without complaint. The front of the DriveStation shows a green #2 and a yellow flashing #1.

Also note: the RAIDSetting app from Buffalo only works on PowerPC Macs. Basically, the Buffalo DriveStation Mac support is crap, and I would recommend strongly against using it (if you want to use their RAID support).

I finally decided to just play through the pain, and ignore the error. It seems to set the drive into the right mode, so we’ll see what happens.

As I write this, I’ve mounted the new, shared HFS+ Backup volume on my MacBook Pro, and Time Machine is “Preparing.” I’ll try to post an update if it works.

Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) First Impressions

Well, I’ve had 10.5 installed for about 24 hours now, and so far, it’s not really worth the money. In day-to-day use (as a developer), none of the new features has yet to significantly impact my life. Sure, windows look a little different, and settings have been rearranged, but so far I don’t feel like I’ve gotten my money’s worth. For reference, I chose to “Upgrade” my system, rather than “Archive & Install.”

A few things are better. The variety of user interface styles has been reduced, and brushed metal is gone, replaced by a nicer-looking gradient (the Menu Bar looks a bit too much like a title bar, and I thought something was wrong with it until I realized it was transparent, and I was seeing the stars in the default desktop image through it).

Xcode has at least one improvement: it shows error messages in the editor window, directly underneath the offending line. It also complains a lot more about implicit conversions from double to float, but I can fix that.

One thing I’m not sure I like is that many standard icons have changed. Some have changed dramatically, like the System Preferences icon (it now looks like the iPhone’s Settings icon), and others have just been modified. These kinds of changes leave insecure users (like my parents) feeling disoriented, and I think they’re generally a bad idea.

One big fix: Apple Mail no longer seems to break long URIs! It has taken three or four major releases (an unacceptable delay to fix a minor, but very annoying, bug), but non-Mail clients can finally use long URIs sent by Mail without having to hand-edit them (Mail used to break them in a way that destroyed the URI for non-Mail clients).

Hardware Growler still works. My ARM development tool chain still seems to work. The Keyspan USA-19HS USB-to-serial adapter still seems to work. The FTDI USB-to-serial IC on the Sparkfun EM406 SiRF III Evaluation Board still works. ZTerm still works!

In the next post, I’ll talk about my experiences with Time Machine, the AirPort Extreme Base Station and ZFS.

People Should Stop Whining About Cell Phones

A recent story about the U.K. possibly allowing cell phone use on airplanes quotes someone saying, “It would drive me absolutely mad if the person next to me was using his phone.”

Now, some people speak more loudly when they’re on the phone than when they’re talking to someone next to them. Those people need to learn to quiet down.

Putting that aside, the only reason to be annoyed by a cell phone conversation is because you can’t eavesdrop on the whole thing. You only get half of it. You know what? Tough shit. You’re not a part of the conversation. Why don’t you concentrate on your own business?

As far as the safety concerns with cell phones, I’m unconvinced. I’m both a pilot and an electrical engineer. I’d be surprised if a cell phone caused any real interference with flight-critical systems. Certainly everyone’s heard the DSSS noise leak into amplified audio channels, and that could conceivably make its way into the pilots’ comm radios, but I doubt it would actually prevent communication. In any case, it should be generally allowed, and each pilot should decide on a case-by-case basis when to prohibit their use.

If ON Air’s system really can allow cell phones to work without interference with aircraft systems, then by all means, allow it!

Don’t forget, without special help, most cell phones won’t work at typical flight altitudes.

I’m Buying a Townhouse

Yesterday I took the first step toward buying a townhouse: I wrote a check for nearly $17,000. This check reserves my specific townhouse unit. On Monday I go in and sign the sales contract, a 1" thick document. I’m very nervous about the whole thing.

The townhouse (legally, a condo) is a KB Homes Cielo at Terra Serena Plan 5. As of this writing, the base price is $562,000, plus options, with a $50,000 incentive, which I can use to pay for a lower interest rate, buy options, or pay closing costs (I can’t use it to reduce the sale price below the base price, however).

I’ve posted some pictures of the framing work.

It’ll be done sometime around November, but move-in is scheduled for May. They (the sales office) say this is because the City of Milpitas does not allow move-in when adjacent buildings are still under construction. After spending some time with a Milpitas building inspector yesterday, I think this is true, but he was difficult to understand (I wasn’t sure he exactly understood my questions, either). He said that landscaping work is acceptable, as there’s little likelihood of falling objects and no deep excavation into which one might fall.

I’m going to the KB Design Studio on Saturday morning to pick up my options price list, and have a look around. Apparently July 27 is the framing choices cutoff date, meaning that certain options must be selected by then (however, Leona? at the Design Studio said they often give a few extra days to a recent buyer). These types of options include the type of stairway bannister rail, whether or not you want arched doorways, the built-in appliances you want (like a trash compacter) and most importantly, additional outlets and other electrical options. I’m most concerned about the latter, and hope that I can make my choices known in time. I have an official appointment on Tuseday the 28th, so we’ll see then.

Why Buy?

There are a lot of things going on in the nationwide housing market today that would indicate one should wait before buying right now. Record foreclosures as subprime borrowers (borrowers whose credit worthiness is below average) default on loans, or forced sales because borrows can’t make their rising mortgage payments, suggest that more homes will be on the market and that prices will fall. In fact, they’re falling in many parts of the country.

But the San Francisco Bay Area is a special place, and it seems that, while prices are holding steady, or even falling a little, declines are not nearly as dramatic here as in the rest of the country.

I got a new job in San Jose. I hate my current crappy one-bedroom apartment in San Carlos, and didn’t want to commute to work. So I started looking around the area (primarily Santa Clara) and found that rents for a nice, new (or nearly new) two-bedroom apartment ranged from $2200 to $2400 (including the ever-so-enraging pet rent they all seem to be charging now). After running some numbers, it became clear that a $500,000 to $600,000 property would end up costing me only a few hundred dollars more, including the property tax, HOA fees and insurance. It seemed clear that I should buy.

My friend Bob, who’s been in the market for over a year, showed me some manufactured properties (like the KB Homes stuff—there are many others). I’m drawn to the fact that they’re band-new, and generally have nice interior layouts (although, for some unfathomable reason, they rarely lend themselves to large entertainment systems with a couch opposite—there’s always a fireplace, or stairway, or door, or dining room preventing optimal viewing).

More importantly, KB Homes is offering very compelling financing incentives, and thanks to that I’m abel to get into a nice, if not perfect, home with very little money out of pocket. This lets me keep my stock portfolio in the market, making me much more comfortable about the whole thing. If I lose my job (and the stock market doesn’t tank), I can live comfortable for a year, longer if I scrimp. Because of the higher interest rate I’d have to pay going with a different lender, I’d have to put more money down up front, and that leaves my portfolio uncomfortably small. I plan to move in five years, but can stay longer if forced to. All in all, I think it’s the right move to make.

iPhone Success!

After help my my good friend on the iTunes team, we determined that my account was still registered as a corporate account, rather than an individual account (iPhone only works with individual accounts). This was the result of me being a customer for more than 10 years.

I called AT&T back, and the CSA very quickly took some action to somehow finalize the conversion of my account from business to individual. Apparently, this final step had not been taken by the previous CSA. As soon as she did that, I was able to activate my phone, and my number ported within the hour (probably faster; I didn’t check it until an hour later).

Thanks to everyone (especially Mike W.!) who helped set this mess straight.

So far, I’m blown away by the phone, but there are some peculiarities. First and foremost, I wish all list views could have entries deleted by gesturing, rather than having to enter edit mode. Perhaps Apple will refine this sort of thing soon.

More to come, I’m sure…

iPhone Activation Woes

Feh. I’m sitting here with my beautiful new iPhone, trying to go through the activation process. iTunes keeps reporting to me how sorry it is that AT&T has determined that my current account cannot be used with the iPhone. It provided me a number to call, or offered me the option of creating a new account, which is really not what I want to do. I’m sitting on hold with a very kind Canadian customer service agent for AT&T.

Apparently I am on a promotional rate plan that is incompatible with the notion that all existing Cingular/AT&T customers can upgrade to iPhone. Okay, fine, after several attempts, he was able to switch me to a non-promotional plan.

Then, it turns out, my account is a business account. This is very strange. I’ve never asked for a business account. I’ve had my Cingular (the new AT&T) service since it was called Pacific Bell Mobile Services. Not once have I ever been told I had a business account. I’ve always used the “personal” account avenues when contacting Cingular (personal account contact numbers, the personal account link on the web page, etc.)

So, the poor Canadian CSA is waiting on hold with the AT&T business account division to convert my business account into a personal account, which should then allow me to activate my iPhone. Apparently the benefit of having a business account is that only a poorly staffed call center can handle your specific issues.

Sigh.

Wow. Shit is going overboard

Ugh. What incredible bullshit. A high school senior was arrested for something he wrote for class. All the conservative, uptight fucks in this country need to go jump in the ocean and leave.

Boo. SpaceX Scrubbed for the Day

As of 1712, they are beginning scrub procedures. This means they will not launch today, and it sounds like they may not launch for 24-48 hours. They will begin de-tanking (removing fuel) shortly. Sigh.

Damn. SpaceX Abort

Demo Flight 2 has been aborted with less than 3 minutes to go. The rocket was secured (a pretty exciting process to watch and listen to), and the countdown stopped at T -00:01:02. I’m still waiting to see what the outcome is.

They’re just now saying they’re going to spend the next 10 minutes to assess why they aborted.

SpaceX Launch in 5 Minutes

This is very exciting. I’m watching the webcast right now. I hope it goes well…

New AirPort Extreme base station

Well, I just finished installing my new AirPort Extreme base station. This is the one shaped like a Mac mini. The new software is very nice. They added the client signal strength graph feature, something that used to be there, then wasn’t, and is now back again. They’ve also added link status lights to the ports on the back (although no indication of connection speed).

There were a couple of things that caused a fair amount of difficulty. One was that the new admin software has been renamed. The old one was called “AirPort Admin Utility.” Thew new one is “AirPort Utility.” I kept trying to upgrade my software before I realized the difference. When I was on the phone with Apple tech support, the agent told me this was a frequent source of confusion.

The other problem I had was that Comcast’s cable modem seems to not assign a DHCP address to a new MAC address without being rebooted (this is what initiated the aforementioned support call). The AEBS behaves as if it can’t get a DHCP address from Comcast, which is exactly what’s wrong. The fix (in my case) is to unplug the cable modem for 30 seconds or so, and plug it back in. (Note: the Apple support agent wanted me to unplug it for 5 minutes, but I told him I’d try 30 seconds first—it worked).

I have yet to hook up a drive, the whole reason for getting it in the first place. I want to find out if they’ve improved AFP enough to where applications like SuperDuper! can back up over the network without needing to create a disk image first.

Now, to get an MBP with 802.11n networking in it…

Carbon Application Development in D

D is a very nice programming language by Walter Bright. Carbon is a very nice API for developing Mac OS X applications. I wanted to develop Carbon applications in D, so I created an open source project to let others do the same. Please check out Darbon, and let me know what you think!

This is what I want next: iPhone

This is the best phone ever, and I want one. The Apple iPhone.

Sandel SN3308 and Garmin GNS530 Config Issues

I’ve had a Sandel SN3308 EHSI and a Garmin GNS530 panel mount moving-map GPS in my plane for over 5 years. They’ve never quite worked right, thanks to the botched installation by Eagle’s Nest Aviation in Ukiah, CA. The most recent problem: the Sandel/Garmin wouldn’t stay in GPS mode; they would automatically switch back to VLOC.

I spent over $3000 having a different outfit rewire the panel, and it finally seemed to all be done right. However, there was one small, show-stopping issue: if you selected the GPS from the SN3308 (or from the GNS530), after two seconds it would go back to VLOC. It didn’t matter if it was tuned to an ILS or not (if it were tuned to an ILS, you wouldn’t get it out of VLOC mode at all, presuming the GNS530 was configured to auto-switch to the VLOC if an ILS is tuned in).

After getting Sandel on the phone, we went through some configuration checks. Turned out the GNS530 wasn’t properly configured. I wish I could remember specifically what it was, but it’s several pages into the configuration (which you get to by holding down the Enter key while powering up).

There’s an LOC / GS / ARINC page. On it is a setting that can be something like ARINC 429, or several other things. It should be ARINC 429 Graphics w/Int (or something like that).

If I get a chance to look at the plane again, I’ll get more details and update this post.

When Do My Favorite Shows Start?

(Originally published: 2006-05-30 19:57:02; I update this periodically, and I’ve decided to repost it as current each time.)

This is a nearly-complete list of the shows I watch. Some of these are very good, others I’m tring out to see if they’ll last. A couple aren’t yet on here, because I’m freakin’ tired of making this list (Standoff and Smith).

It’s incredibly difficult to find out when the new season of a show starts. I don’t know why the official sites don’t have it in big letters at the top of the main page. After far too much Googling, I found a list that has some info. I’ve copied the relevant entries here (who the fuck cares about all those shitty reality shows?):

The highlighted shows below I consider to be outstanding.

4400, The, Season 3 (“one hour special presentation”)	2006 06 03 2100
Dead Zone, The, Season 5	2006 06 18 2200
Stargate: Atlantis, Season 3	2006 07 14 2100
Stargate: SG-1, Season 10	2006 07 14 2000
Eureka, Season 1	2006 07 18 2100
Prison Break, Season 2	2006 08 21 2000
Bones, Season 2	2006 08 30 2000
Family Guy, Season 5	2006 09 10 2100
House, Season 3	2006 09 12 2100
Heroes, Season 1	2006 09 21 2200
Grey’s Anatomy, Season 3	2006 09 21 2100
Six Degrees, Season 1	2006 09 21 2200
Ghost Whisperer, The, Season 2	2006 09 22 2000
Numb3rs, Season 3	2006 09 22 2200
Veronica Mars, Season 3	2006 10 03 2100
South Park, Season 10	2006 10 04 2200
BattleStar Galactica, Season 3	2006 10 06 2100
Lost, Season 3	2006 10 11 2100 (projected)
O.C., The (only ‘cause my friend is in it), Season 3	2006 11 02 2100 (projected)
24, Season 6 (“one hour special presentation”)	2007 01
Psych, Season 2 (1.5?)	2007 01
Kyle XY, Season 2	2007

Great New Show: “Heroes”

I just watched the pilot of “Heroes.” I’d venture to say it’s one of the best new shows to come along in a long while. I’d put it somewhere behind “Battlestar Galactica” and “Eureka.” It’s very well written and acted, elegantly designed, beautifully shot, and it sucks you in within the first ten minutes. It has a lot of elements of “Six Degrees” (another show I’m keeping my eye on), which I’m finding very appealing.

I believe it normally airs on NBC Mondays, at 9 pm. They are repeating the pilot tomorrow (Tuesday 9/25/2006) at 8 pm (7 central). Watch it, decide for yourselves.

Followup: MacBook Pro Kernel Panic with External Monitor

Some time ago I wrote about how my shiny new MacBookPro crashes whenever I plug in an external monitor. Turns out, Apple displays don’t make it crash.

I wrote a bug about it, and Apple responded well. They gave me a tool to use to record information about the monitor.

Interestingly, I no longer have privileges to read or append to the bug I originated, and neither does my friend at Apple. I finally wrote a new bug referencing the old one to try to get some info, but it’s been four months (and a few updates) without a fix.

Also, I’m on my third MBP since then, and it still crashes, so I’m fairly certain it wasn’t a hardware defect (but it could be a hardware design flaw).

A Season is 22 Fucking Episodes

NBC (USA, Sci Fi), your so-called “seasons” of The Dead Zone, The 4400 and Stargate (both series) are a joke. 10 episodes? 12? 13? Cheap bastards. Those are good shows, they deserve to run for a consecutive 22 (or more) episodes.

Advertising and ratings suck.

You know what else sucks? “Pro” wrestling. That crap doesn’t belong on the Sci Fi channel. Put it on the channels that the trailer trash who watch that shit watch. Fox, or QVC. Fuck you.

Tesla Motors

I’ve added a clickable ad for the Tesla Motors electric sports car. I’m not getting any money for doing this, but I believe very strongly in this thing. It’s incredibly fast, beautiful and has excellent range for a high-performance electric car. If I had $85,000 to spend, I’d get one in a heartbeat.

Leopard

There are some cool things coming in Leopard (Apple’s newest version of OS X). I recommend you take the time to watch the Keynote Address. As usual, there’s a bunch of eye candy/fluff in Leopard, and it’ll be interesting to see if they fix any of the numerous bugs that have been around since day one.

Mail

So, they’ve added a bunch of wizzy stuff in Mail that I could care less about. The ToDo thing might be cool; we’ll see. I really want to know if they fixed the URL-splitting bug. My insider friend tells me that bug is fixed in Leopard, but it wasn’t mentioned in the keynote (had it been, it would’ve received the loudest applause).

More

There’s tons more cool shit. Watch the video.

Watermelon…surprise

Between the packing, and the commuting to work, and the general funk, I’ve been ignoring the watermelon halves in the kitchen. I go in there maybe once a day, and otherwise the door is always closed to keep the noisy-ass refrigerator out of mind.

Anyway, I’ve been noticing the little civilization growing on the watermelon the last couple of days, but was stunned to see how it has evolved in the last 24 (48?) hours. The grey-green puddle of toxic sludge is the most fascinating. At least now I know what fermented watermelon smells like…

Packing weeeee

Not. I’ve gotten this far. It’s almost all books, so far. 20 boxes of books. 20 very heavy boxes…

Muir Hiking, Napa Wine Tasting, Sonoma Food Eating

Yesterday I went hiking with some Cal EECS peeps in Muir woods. Been there before, but it’s always nice (except for the part where I bit my tongue).

After that, some of us went to Benziger winery and took the tour, then tasted wine. You’re allowed to try tiny samples of two wines from a list. Then you coax them into giving you one or two more tries. Then you wait ‘till they walk away and ask the next helper for a recommendation. They’ll usually give you two or three things to try, also. And even if the tour guides tells you that the vineyard owner’s personal stash isn’t available for tasting, you can probably get one of them to let you try that, too. Wine tasting can be fun. I’m sure everyone was very impressed with my record-breaking 8 trials.

Benziger recommended a restaurant called Doce Lunas. Delicious food, and the sweetest, cutest server (Jolene) one could ask for. They offer family-style (combo) and a la carte versions of most of their entrees, and their Sticky Toffee Pudding dessert was amazing (it needed more ice cream, but everything does).

All in all, Saturday was decently salvaged, despite having imploded the day before.

I Graduated!

As of today, I have officially graduated from UC Berkeley, with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. It only took me 19 years to finish.

Pictures

Fun Fact about Air

If you put a cylinder around the Eiffel Tower just big enough to enclose it, the air inside the cylinder (from the surface to the “edge” of the atmosphere) will weigh more than the tower.

A Thief Stole Our Secrity Cameras

Apparently this loser

stole two security cameras from our garage. The irony is not lost on me.

Nevertheless, if you do happen to know anything about this guy, please contact either me or the Berkeley PD: 510-981-5900. Thanks!

Neat Scrolling Trackpad Tricks

So, if you use the index fingers on opposite hands, and put them far apart on the trackpad, you can hold one still and move the other and watch things scroll (sort of). Sometimes it helps to make initial contact with the trackpad simultaneously. If you move one up and the other down, they can cancel each other out.

Cinema Display Seems to Work

I just tried plugging in my 22” ADC Cinema Display (via an Apple DVI-to-ADC adapter), and it did not cause a kernel panic as did the Princeton LCD19D monitor. Hopefully, the school projectors will work, too, or I’m screwed.

Lest You Think I Have No Sense of Humor About New Technology

In my head, Jason is suggesting not buying one of the new machines because he read about my problems, so maybe this is still bitter and annoyed:

However, I don’t think that Apple should’ve released these new PowerBooks without more testing. I don’t think I’ve done anything particularly esoteric so far, yet my experience has been less than stellar.

Don’t get me wrong, when the new MacBook Pro works, it works very well. But for the amount of money I’ve spent, and the sacrifices I’ve been willing to make (e.g, not being able to run “mixed-mode” apps, like in the 68k-to-PowerPC transition days), I feel like things should work better.

4 Cycles, 5446 mAh Capacity

After a “proper” recharge-full discharge cycle, my MacBook Pro battery is reporting 5446 mAh capacity.

MacBook Pro Kernel Panic with External Monitor

Followup

Wow. I keep finding more things wrong with this Intel machine. Now, if I plug in an external monitor (something I had not yet tried at home with my Cinema Display, but which I just tried now with a Princeton LCD19D flat panel display), I get a kernel panic. If an external monitor is plugged in when I reboot, I get a kernel panic. I’ve sent the crash report to Apple, but who knows if anyone will ever see it? Meanwhile, I’m now stuck without being able to use my big screens.

Here’s the crash reporter info and the unfriendly message I sent along with it to Apple (I have no tolerance for crap like this):

MacBook Pro Sleep Seems to Have Issues

I decided to run my battery down to do the calibration as suggested in the MBP manual. I got one warning about imminent sleep, and dismissed it. As I was copying a folder, the Mac went into forced sleep right in the middle of playing the “copy complete” sound. It repeated this sound a half-dozen times before the system finally went to sleep.

It darkened the screen, the little white LED came up dully (as it does when the screen’s asleep), and then eventually it went into full sleep mode.

I tapped the shift key, to make sure it was really asleep. On my PowerPC AlPB, this is ignored. On this machine, it woke right up. I used it for a few more minutes, and then it completely shut down losing anything I had not yet saved. This was pretty bad.

I’ve now launched XBattery and plugged it in. Let’s see if it gives us any more juice. Currently: 5419 mAh capacity, 3 cycles.

Busted the Cat!

My cat knows better than to walk on my desk. But, because the office is so messy, that’s her preferred way to get to the window sill.

So, I’m sitting in the living room, and she comes over, so I pick her up and turn her upside down, as I’m prone to do. I notice a little piece of paper stuck to her belly. It’s the “activate this card” sticker from a credit card I just got, which I had left smack dab in the middle of my desk.

Busted!

More Migration Difficulties

I reinstalled the OS (via “Erase and Install”, removing unneeded languages, printer drivers and apps), completed the Setup Assistant without migrating. Then I allowed Software Update to run, updating to 10.4.6, and updating 9 other apps. Finally I ran Migration Assistant again, and it ran into the same problem: Apparently I have more than 60 million gigabytes of data in my home directory.

I’m currently on the phone with Apple support, but I am not hopeful that they’ll resolve this issue (update: nope).

I tried before to remove all of my movies & images, but I had left music and sources from work in there. Maybe I should remove all four of those and try again. Here goes…

My New MacBook Pro

Yesterday I picked up a shiny new 2.0 GHz MacBook Pro. The packaging was expectedly beautiful, and the thing came up immediately after I powered it on. Nicely, Apple didn’t insist that I charge it overnight before use; instead, they said to do the charge calibration steps sometime in the first week. It was 3/4 full when I got it. The beauty ended there…

I made sure it was plugged in and charging, and got started. I’d head good things about the Migration Assistant, so I opted to let Tiger migrate everything from my old PowerBook to the new one (via the Setup Assistant). I put the old one into FireWire Target Disk mode, and let it rip. After a few minutes, it had determined that there was in excess of 60,000,000 GB (yes, sixty million gigabytes) of data in my home directory to be transferred over. Unfortunately, I opted for the 100 GB hard disk (thinking that would’ve been enough), and so all the stuff on my old (80 GB) drive wouldn’t fit.

Note the computed sizes of my home directory data to move (sorry about the utterly crappy photograph). Click for a larger image.

The other unconscionable thing the Setup Assistant did was go to sleep before finishing (mind you, it was plugged in and powered). I tried again later with the Migration Assistant directly, and it had basically the same problem. I’m guessing there’s either a 32-bit int where there should be a 64-bit int, or someone forgot to swap bytes (I hate little endian, and this is one of the biggest reasons i hate Intel architecture, but since the old Mac is mounted as a drive on the new system, I doubt this is the real problem).

I’m now reformatting, reinstalling, and trying again. I’ll post again after that’s over.

Engrish? Wow.

My friend was looking at craigslist posts for a place to live. She came across this gem:

NiCe HoMe RooM - 4 - ReNt - AnD YoU CaN((( SaVe $$$ ReNt is NeG))) (milpitas)

Reply to: ZaMBaKusa@aol.com
Date: 2006-04-09, 10:49PM PDT

@@M 4 _ Rent

PLEASE read the whole post.
& if it sounds good to you, please reply to the Questions below.

I lil give for the good roommate for good deals.
And good For Hess levying to help to that person long is ho is good and deserve for good living.

And A+plus good dependable friendship Maybe even comes to be som day better than may be even three own family.
I do have good hart And I do like helping to pupil.
The way I have bin brood up.
And I have be tech from my own loving family.

NICE ROOM FOR RENT FOR (MALE ONLY) rite (female may be so to)
CARPETED
SIZE OF 11X12
BIG CLOSET
(bedroom has a full bathroom inside the room) all moused p/exit way to coming to the house
$ — WITH UTILITIES INCLUDED (neg.)
$ —SECURITY DEPOSIT (neg.)
CABLE HOOK UP IF YOU LIKE AND WAN WE A GRE
PHONE LINE
SWIMMING POOL
KITCHEN PRIVILEGE NEW RE DECOR/
DINNING ROOM PRIVILEGE NEW FURNISH
REFRIGERATOR, TOASTER, MICROWAVE ALL NEW
VERY QUIET AND CLEAN HOUSE
QUIET AND SAFE NEIGHBOR
AVAILABLE NOW OR SUN
2 - WINDOW`s IN ROOM
VERY CLOSE TO FREEWAYS 237,880,680 AND 237 . 101
ALL SHOPPING CANTER NEAR BY TO

•Well, this is it. I have a room that will be available wan we talk over and agree whit EC other.
•Everything in the house is newly remodeled
in a single family house, Good size-room and House, is newly remodeled and new furnish whit everything.

•Room is about 11X12 and 1 of the window has beautiful modern shaver .
•Nadnice mirer closet door Hill View and 2 windows all moist •All Moist Private Entrance and Very nice and quiet neighborhood, safe neighborhood Full use of the common areas including the kitchen is permitted include
•When you come home to have dinner, relax, and have a nice evening. I am very respectful and I expect the same from you, so no drama, party, or any crazy stuff.

If you really need a place to live and have respect for others in our home then this is a place for you. we do a lot of cooking whit are friends and in the summer a lot of BBQ, up ground pool. soon to come also

Remodeled kitchen, refrigerator, gas stove and a nofe cabinets to use for
and all other - facilities Clean, spacious & quiet home with 1 bedroom/ with your own private bathroom to rent. & $ _ we can a negotii/ includes basic utilities (water, gas, electric & garbage) use of laundry facilities and other parts of home (living room, kitchen,
dining room) also.. The house has a nice yard with a BBQ & patio and a good stocked kitchen some nice fish tanks and stuff. You will feel right at home. Everything you could need in this house you can use for it
& parking is available. As car > port or front parking.
Also, the has a pool open during the summer moths… . . home is a 2 bedroom/2 bath near 880 and 680 in Milpitas

-friendly male (discreet, clean, respectful, pet-friendly)

To>>> >>Share a nice clean house with a discreet, closeted professional >> (whit Open M/maile ) and you must be wary discreet, and clean, respectful >> Open mined >>( W/M.) I hope som one ho is European or italyan Latin .

And I am looking for a cool guys ho is wry respectful,
Clean Open minded Male to we can share as good friend lots of think to be whit.
Not jots as room maid .
Good body and family tips family orientate .
I am down to earth & I am looking for social out going person.
I do love cooking I am ex/ant cook and i love giveing som diner party som times .
And I love to joke I do have grayed hummer and looking the for ho has one to same whit as my room maid .

•I Prefer someone who works during day, home evenings (Senior or disabled be OK to help them to.
•Long is ho has good ATI Tu. and out look in there life)
this is a great opportunity for som adults looking for shared housing at a fair price. •The neighborhood is very clean, quiet and nice. located close to bus stop, shopping

•No smoking in the house and no pet .

•Rent is negotiable with rite person comes long whit Are you looking for a room in a great house.

•About Me
I’m a yung Europein Devours and (S/w/M ) ho is cleen fun, outgoing, considerate, neat, respectful, easy going, and appreciate similar qualities in the person to share the my home.
•Who I’m Looking For: Open Mien Male in the age is are 27 -35 and Gr/ up
age range may be until 50 or so long is person ho is clean and halt/ and in shape who is courteous, responsible, doesn’t smoke in houes or do have- Drug, likes to have fun but isn’t a crazy parties, can pay rent (on time), and who will say hello and talk to me when passing by me

(i am neat aaaaand clean freaks, and i am great cook just want someone who won’t leave food and dirty dishes around.. someone who will pick up food if they drop it, wash dishes after they use them, not leave food in the sink, & help keep common areas clean: like sweep if it’s needed, and take out the trash when it’s full)

• Friendly, low-maintenance and considerate.
• Stable and professional and ho can be hi and low key wan time and place rite whit others to
I’d prefer a person that has a good, clean, easy going atmosphere.
In my house.
And I am Looking for a clean, honest, easy going, friendly roommate(s). I’d have to say roommate chemistry is key.
You have to get along with your roommate and respect each other’s lives, stresses and everything.
I am looking for someone laid back. I would hope that we become friends and can hang out wan we are at home. It is important to me that we build a home; I don’t want to live in a boarding house. Whit boarding roomed

I am down to earth & I am looking for social out going people.
Looking for someone honest and responsible. I am a easy going, and some time a quiet.
I won’t mind washing your dishes that you may occasionally leave behind.
I am not your servant but am always willing to do a few extra dishes or share a meal
It is important to me that we build this a home together keeper up together i am looking for Open and young and strong responsible tenants to add to the home.
to som day that They can be Abel to come up as owners of this place to because i don `t have family in USA i am from over see that’s why

Let’s make this happen the Security deposit and rant is negotiable.
Minimum of time is 6 months rental
or One year lease preferred wan we meed and wan you are conferrable to do so maybe
after you are having meed whit me.

•My Current roommates is: Latino and ho he is age 60 or over person and he is disable I can say this.
He is alcoholic I can say.
I don’t know what he is we have nothing in commend and to talk for Anything.
He has bad and Nasty attitude all he doz.
And all he doz.
is locks hem self in house and in the room drinks all day long I don’t know he is life or dad lots time to in that room.
Orally in the morning some time he comes out in kitchen to get some ice cub for he drinks.

That’s why he like to do what he ones after wield living whit someone.
And than he also curries to breaks the rules and agreement what we have before to when he moved in
I am not going for that again whit any one.

•And I am not looking fore same types of person at all again.
And place be open about your self and anything whit me to lest meed up whit rite person now and on to OK.
And I lil say tanks for fu that to.

I am going to make my Current roommates move out from my house.
Because he takes to much alcohol Avery day and he has open hart serge/ to.
He takes hart Madison and + Alcohol I don `t wont hem to passed out som day or dying in my house I deer.
That’s why I feel sorry for hem but he dozen lessen and I have to do what I have to do.
For my self to the not to let that happened in my house thetas why.

And i hope to find the right person at the `s time to not go true to looking for roommate all the time again.
wan I do find the right person to fit into the household on a long-term basis i hope

•Room: Large RooM with private bathroom & large closets, in-room/cable with •Lines for cable TV and private phone hook up available in the room
Wall-to-wall carpet. Room can be furnished or unfurnished (negotiable).

What’s Needed to Move In?
• I am looking for a roommate to build and share a home together.
• First and last months’ rent are required to move in ($ neg.).
• Rent is due every fist of the month.
• One year or -to-do 6 month commitment;

•Sorry no pet, children, overnight guest or smoker.who is quiet and smokes outside

OK long is not in house.
• NOW, Month to month lease (long term commitment welcomed).
•Serious response only please.
Also what I can do is som times wan I do need som help may be in the house wan you do have time to do so also
• som-part of the Rent is can be a free in exchange for providing some help to that’s deepens to I am adding and still remodeling Som. Area in my house .

• About you:
• -male and open minded male
• -you pay the rent on time
looking for a kindhearted like my self , mentally and emotionally stable Guy who
• - pays rent/bills on time
and open /mien / guy and friendly
cleans up after himself!! seriously!!
• -your name & sex/gender
and i do >>(Puffer/ Whit Male or open / Guy / you must be as Latin Spanish or any one of as >European German Canadian > as American guy and
all that good pupils to know one to.
>>Gobbles America .

• —age/ethnic background
• —what are you looking for in a house/housemates?
• —ideal cleanliness level for the house
• —will all your stuff fit in your room?
interests? job? music taste?
• —what do you usually do at home
• —frequency of and # of guests you usually have over
(we have people over occasionally, and of course you can too, but i hope we don’t want a dorm-like atmosphere in the house) thanks!
I hope you’re the right person, & I ‘ll get back to you.
• -you are respectful of common areas and noise

• So that’s a bit about everything. If you think you might be a good fit, drop us a line and tell me a bit about yourself. Any questions, feel free to ask. Wan we get on talephone confe/or if you can found better dii may be Good luck hunting!

• Interested?
•Please tell me a little about yourself and may be if you do have any of PICS.
your self even beter to that to the best way to contact you. whit your (( phone number)
I lill call you soon as i can OK.
•Place Not just whit e-mail writhing back and forth
•Place and asking so much of non sansei of Que/ OK i don’t have time for that OK.
if you are sive/ person do what it takes or spouse to be to do so OK .
•Tanks again .
• Serious only !!! and tanks Redding my add
• Reply to >> my email Tanks and good lack to began whit also and have great day

SpaceX Experiences Setback

The coolest company around made their first launch attempt today, but flight lasted only a minute. Nevertheless, I hope they succeed on their next attempt, and I sent them a small note of encouragement.

Coolest thing? I got a personal response (from the PR person, to whom I sent the note):

Thanks so much for your kind words of support. The entire team at SpaceX greatly appreciates it.

Best regards,
Dianne

Awesome. I want to work there.

Why Blog?

Soekris net4521 Single Board Computer

I got my net4521 a few days ago, and after borrowing a CF card (‘cause I stupidly forgot to get one of my own), I had it up and running Pebble Linux (from Tor Amundson) in no time. A few days later the CM9, miniPCI 802.11a/b/g card, arrived.

I’ve been poking at getting the 802.11 card up-and-running, and met with some success. Right now a kind soul is helping me learn how to use buildroot to build a Linux from the ground up for use on this box. We’ll see how that goes, and I’ll try to post the steps here.

Damned Hotlinkers

I discovered that the vast majority of the bytes I was serving was due to sites that hotlink, that is, sites that use image src URIs that refer to my site (thereby stealing my bandwidth), rather than copying the image to their own site and serving it themselves. Using Apache’s RewriteEngine, as described in this article, allows me to refuse to serve images referred by any page not my own.

Hopefully this will put a stop to the practice. I currently only FORBID the request, but I may serve up some obnoxious image instead. Not yet sure.

Cingular GPRS and Mac OS X

I just subscribed to the $20/mo, 10 MB/mo plan that Cingular offers. Unfortunately, while you can use your cell phone to subscribe, and they can give you all the information you need (although it’s like pulling teeth to get Mac info…like so many others, they only officially support Windoze), you can’t download the necessary modem script to enable the whole thing to work.

They recommend you download GPRS Script Generator, which requires that you pay the $10 shareware fee before you can generate the necessary script. Fortunately, a very quick search on Google turned up an article on how to configure the Mac for Cingular Motorola use. It provides a modem script that seems to work well.

I have a RAZR V3, and I modified the script to connect at 115200 bps (rather than the default 57600). It worked great!

This is all temporary, of course, ‘till I get my 3G card. We’ll see how smoothly that goes…

Is Big Brother Listening? I Have a Conversation for Him

My New HPI RS4 Pro 4 Hara Edition

I should’ve been packing, and then sleeping, before getting up at 0600 to catch a flight to the ’rents for the holidays. Instead, I spent the day (after work, of course) finishing the car, an HPI RS4 Pro 4 Hara Edition electric R/C. Three long nights, perhaps a total of 25 hours’ build time. Here’s a picture of the (more-or-less) finished car:

Click for a larger image

There’s also a large Gallery of pictures taken throughout the build process.

Overall the kit is well-crafted, with high-quality parts and a clear instruction manual. I do have a few complaints about the parts references, which caused me to waste a bit of time searching parts bags, but in the end, no necessary part was missing. I’ll try to post a more thorough review, along with descriptions of the specific issues I had.

This car will be my (actually, my team’s) entry into next semester’s EE192 class and next year’s Natcar competition. Hopefully the professor will allow us to use this car, and our intended processor, the Cypress PSoC.

Minigwen

Collegiate Solar Car Challenge

The North American Solar Challenge is a great race in which college students from all over the US & Canada build highly aerodynamic and efficient solar cars, then race them thousands of miles across North America.

I’m watching a bit of the race on INHD right now, and something ridiculous struck me: each solar car is trailed on the road by five or so gasoline powered cars! Irony in the extreme.

Wishlist

Okay, my family doesn’t know me very well, and they tend to get rather lame gifts (with the exception of my mom…she gets great clothes). So, here’s a little help for you guys. This list is roughly in “most-desirable” order.

• Tori Amos’ version of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” I believe it to be from the album Spark, but amazon doesn’t list that song among the ones for Spark parts 1 & 2. I don’t know where to find it. The only online link was broken.
• Freescale ZigBee Dev Kit, $209, OR Chipcon Zigbee Eval Kit, $140
• Agilent MSO6034A Mixed-signal Oscilloscope, $9,729.20.
  
• A machine shop, with a CNC Bridgeport Mill and lathe
• Agilent E3630A Benchtop Power Supply
• My Amazon Wishlist has more reasonable items on it, and yes, I really do want those books on the list! :-)
• Apple Intel MacBook Pro 15”, ~$2500

I’ll update this post as I think of more things to add.

Coolest R/C plane ever

I thought the A-10 was cool, but this beats it: An R/C A380, with four microturbine engines.

I am Supreme Nerd

Thanks, Alice. You had to go put it there, so I would click it, and learn the depressing truth.

Acronym Wars

I’m chatting with my friend Amanda, describing my sudden Haiku kick. She makes me laugh. You probably had to be there, and since you weren’t you probably won’t laugh. Here’s a transcript anyway:

Haiku #1

I should be studying for an upcoming EE128 midterm. Instead I’m working on office code.

Code streams from fingers

As iTunes plays The Police

My grades slowly drop

I need lots of practice…

Serenity

I saw Serenity last night. What a great movie. I won’t say more, for those of you who haven’t yet seen it, other than to say, Go fucking see the movie!

Great quote from the Serenity Official Visual Companion, out of a couple paragraphs from Nathan Fillion:

I remember when Joss called me, back when he’d just written the movie. He said, “I’m done, I’m done, I finished.” I said, “Read me the first line and the last line.” He goes, “Okay, the first line is, ‘Earth-That-Was.’ And the last line is, ‘Wow, sure was weird the way Mal died in the first act.’”

Personality Tests

They’re generally pretty silly, and often presume something about the test-taker (religious beliefs chief among them). Nevertheless, when the alternative is studying Fundamentals of Applied Electromagnetics, they can be a welcome diversion. Here are the results from one I just took (link to the test below results):