Wow, I’ve managed to leave my blog to rot for over a year. It really isn’t suprising as I’ve been extremely busy with the business and when not busy with the company, I’m either traveling to/from Houston or spending time with the family.
Maybe it’s time to start posting again?
Over the last two months I ‘ve added a few new toys to the shop. Mostly I needed a Jointer, so I picked one up from Harbor Freight during a sale and added the 20% off coupon to bring it to under $160. It’s not the nicest jointer, but it beats the crap out of what I had: None.
I also added a Ryobi AP1300 Thickness Planer. I managed to grab it when Home Depot was bringing in the new AP1301, which seems inferior to the AP1300 (no cutter head lock, no re-plane, no thickness indicator). As always, I looked for a deal and talked a manager at a Home Depot in Houston into selling me the floor model (complete, both knives, no manual/box) for $155 for a $280 planer.
Since I got the jointer and thickness planer I’ve expanded my woodworking fun to include some 4/4, 8/4 and 5/4 Walnut, Africian Mahogany and Cherry. I’ve got to admit, it’s great fun taking rough stock and making dimensioned lumber out of it, regardless of savings.
I had to add a couple of software extras to this via learning Google Sketchup and buying CutList Plus to help me design and layout my cuts on my sometimes weird dimensioned lumber. Both are highly recommeded.
Finally, I added my my much desired Rockler Router Table #1 package that I’ve been wanting for over a year. This will get my Hitachi M12v out of my tablesaw and into a proper table of it’s own. I’ll be building the Router Table cabinet this weekend (if it stays dry) and will post my Sketchup .skp file when I’m done.
Other recent addtions: Incra Precision Jig from Rockler ($59 vs. standard $120) for dovetails and all manner of precision router work and a All-in-one 50″ clamp. I mention the clamp because it’s changing the way I work with sheet goods and even long stock. It’s a clamping straightedge which allows me to run my circular saw, router, whatever all the way across a 4×8 piece of plywood in a precise manner. This means that I essentially have a low volume panel saw when I add 2 2×4’s and a couple of cross 2×2’s to my saw horses.
Now if it will just stay dry I can make some sawdust!
It was a HUGE week for Maddie!
After close to 3 years with my Treo 600 I finally updated to the new Treo 700p.
I’m quite impressed with the critter. Beautiful screen, lots of memory, excellent keyboard and a decent browser.
Unfortunately, it got some software issues which make the Bluetooth marginal and the app switching speed is bad. Hopefully we’ll see an update soon.
We love the new camera, the 630 was the right choice for us. We are carrying it just about everywhere and have some amazing pics and video of our daughter. One the issue with the camera is that it captures video in MJPEG (yuck!), which leads to huge file sizes. I did some searching and cobbled up this script to do the conversion for me. It requires mencoder, but who doesn’t have that installed on their Linux box?
Anyways, here is the script:
#!/bin/sh
#
# Set the bitrate
BITRATE=1800
#
# Remove the log if it’s there
#
if [ -e divx2pass.log ]; then
rm -f divx2pass.log
fi
#
# Loop through the mencoder process twice for dual pass
#
for i in 1 2; do
/usr/bin/mencoder $1 -oac mp3lame -lameopts preset=medium -af-adv force=1 \
-mc 0 -channels 1 -srate 11025 -ovc lavc -lavcopts \
vcodec=mpeg4:autoaspect:vbitrate=${BITRATE}:vpass=${i} -o MPEG4-${1}
done
#
# Cleanup
#
rm -f divx2pass.log
Since I’m carrying a bigger laptop around these days with enough room to have a dev environment and real desktop replacement work environment I decided that I needed some way to secure my confidential data. I found this link (Encrypt /home and swap over RAID with dm-crypt) and used a subset of it to encrypt my /home directory, at a minimum. It just seems like “The Right Thing(tm)” to do where you might have sensitive data that could be stolen.
I was able to bypass some of the step since I’m not using a RAID array. Here is the gist of what I did:
Create the logical volume called “sec”
lvcreate -L 16G -n sec vg0Fill it with random noise
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/vg0/sec bs=1MDo the crypt setup, setup the encryption, create the /dev/mapper/device
cryptsetup -y -c twofish-cbc-essiv:sha256 create sec /dev/vg0/secMake a filesystem on the encrypted device.
mkfs.ext3 -b 4096 /dev/mapper/secEdit the startup script to taste.
vi /etc/init.d/encrypted_home.shRun the script and mount the volume
/etc/init.d/encrypted_home.sh
I also linked in the /etc/init.d/encrypted_home.sh script into /etc/rc3.d and /etc/rc5.d so my machine prompts me for my crypt password on boot, which FC5 handles quite nicely.
Well, the last guy who got this way ended up getting run over and being killed. This guy definately took the “triple dog dare” to a new level. He was twice the lethal limit and DRIVING A TRUCK.
On Friday morning I missed capturing my daughter, Madeline, enjoying the intro song to the Backyardigans and that started the quest for a new camera. We have a Canon S300 Digitial Elph which has been a great camera, but it’s getting a bit dated, being CF and all. I went looking to see what was the latest and greatest. I found that the Canon SD line looked pretty much like the best deal these days (much as it was when we got our S300) I was able to narrow it down to the PowerShot SD600 and PowerShot SD630 which seem identical except for the LCD on the back. The SD600 has a 2.5″ LCD and a viewfinder while the SD630 has a 3″ LCD and no viewfinder. One feature we really want to use is the 640×480x30fps video, which is AVI, but MJPEG…but conversion to AVI/MPEG4 isn’t all that difficult.
We took a trip to Best Buy to browse the cameras and played with both a SD450 and a SD630. We (my wife) decided that the viewfinder was of almost no use to use anyways so that made it a go.
I found Beach Camera had the best price and free shipping, so I orded it. Much to my suprise, it shipped about 4 hours later. I also hit Newegg for a 2GB SD and a spare battery.
Our daughter, Madeline (Maddie), rolled over yesterday. Unfortunately, I was out of town and my wife was out of the room…so we both missed it! Maddie started crying, so Melissa went in to check on her and discovered her latest triumph. Now if she can just learn to roll back, we’ll be set.
I recently picked a Dell Precision M50 laptop. It’s a nice machine, P4M 2.2GHz, 1GB RAM, 60GB 5400RPM drive and Nvidia 64MB Quadro 500 GoGL card driving a 1600×1200 display. It’s quite a contrast with my Sony Z505 Vaio, but I’ve been thinking of a paradigm shift in laptops anyways. I now carry my Treo which allows me to SMS, IM, Email all on the go without having to open up my ultra-portable laptop. Since the Treo means I only need my laptop for real computing (Hotel room, customer site demo, presentation or technical work) why not have a desktop replacement with plenty of guts?
I have built it up with a 2915 802.11a/b/g Mini-PCI card for wireless to complement the internal Ethernet and have added an extra battery to replace the floppy (floppy is dead, really). I ended up loading the machine with the required Windows XP + SP2 + Office 2k3 (our standard load) and then put on Red Hat Fedora Core 5. I hadn’t run FC in years and thought it was about time to come around and see where it stood. I’ve been very impressed and think that I’ll be leaving this as a FC machine for the duration.
More info to come as I carry it more.
I’ve recently been in a minimalist mood as far as themes go so I decided to try creating my own GTK+ and XFWM4 theme to see if it was a workable solution.
My reasoning is why use up so much space and cycles drawing what is nothing more than a functional item (scrollbars, buttons, etc.). We all know how to use a scrollbar and push a button and having a gazillion “pretties” around it doesn’t change it functionality, so why? I talked to systemx a bit in IRC and he gave me some great suggestions.
Anyways, HERE is the screenshot and HERE is the actual XFCE+GTK theme.
Please note that it’s 0.01 and still has a few funky colors that I’m hunting down and the proper attribution isn’t in there yet.
I have been following my Texas State Representative race with some interest as we have Carter Casteel, the incumbent, being challenged in the Republician primary by Nathan Macias. As I watch the race unfold a couple of things are becoming clear.
First, I had never heard of Nathan Macias. That’s not a huge suprise as I’m not big on keeping up with the comings and goings in the local political (or any) arena. A little poking turned up that it’s even less of a suprise: He hasn’t been around here for years. Mr. Macias just moved back to the area in the last 2 years…which I -think- is the minimum amount of time one must be a resident of the district to run for the office. I say -think- because it might only be 6 months, but regardless, that’s not much time to have a feel for our neck of the Hill Country and its very diverse sub-culture.
I’m not sure where he gets his money, but they are pouring it on. I could be completey wrong, but I don’t think that a retired Lt. Col. is typically going to have the cash to run close to a million dollar campaign. Hey, maybe I’m wrong…wouldn’t be the first time, but that’s a ton of Georges to be plopping down within short order of arriving on the scene.
Finally, the most interesting ‘data point’ to me (born in the Hill Country, grew up there, married a woman from there, live there, daughter born there, plan on raising my family there.) is the whole mess about ’someone’ acquiring some of Carter Casteel’s campagin notes. I guess I can almost understand some wide-eyed Carter ‘hater’ or Nathan ‘fan’ thinking they were helping by snatching them for/against their person, but what followed concerns me deeply. From my understanding, the Macias camp took those notes, which were obviously not theirs, and used it as some kind of pre-pre-emptive strike. It seems to me that the honorable thing to do would have been to have called Carter and told her that they someone had sent them something that obviously didn’t belong to them and asked what she would like done with it…kind of like when you find your neighbors cattle in your pasture.
Each of those items alone doesn’t seem like much, but when I put them all together it just makes me wonder if Mr. Macias really “gets” where and how we live. If my mind wasn’t already made up in this race, the actions of Mr. Macias and his crew have clarified it for me. Like Carter or not, at least you always know exactly where you stand and she’ll tell you that anytime you ask…and call you when your cattle get out.
I’ve been using this hacked up WP theme for a couple of months now and I decided to tar it up in the off chance someone else wants to see it. It’s heavily based on Borderline Chaos which is based on Benevelonce which I think is a Kubrick derivitave. Anyways, here it is: Rob’s BC 1.0
I’ve been working a new project with a customer and I’ve transitioned to a early (5:30am) wakeup and pre-7:00am arrival. I’m reminded that it’s actually kind of nice and how much you can knock out before lunch. I may actually change to a 6:00am arrival so I can bust out early to tend to other customers in the PM.
Well, they managed to pull it out, but it sure didn’t look as good as last weeks rout against the Eagles. It’s a win, I’ll take it, but the late game craters are getting to me. They had the Giants down around 160yds of total offense until the last 5 minutes of the game and ended up giving up 270yds of total offense (and the lead).
A disabled man flees the hurricane and heads to Kansas City with his dog, Shuma. He finds refuge at a shelter which doesn’t allow animals. Man has to put dog up for foster care. Man goes to return to home and find foster will not give his dog back and since he signed a release, she will likely keep the dog because “She has grown attached to him.”
There is a special place in hell for this woman. Yes ma’am, it can get worse than living in a run down trailer in Kansas City with everyone around you being disgusted at your selfishness.
I’ve used the Morphix 0.4.1 distro on 8cm (mini-cd) disks for a handy fixit or debug system for a year or two now. What makes this distro so nice is that I can put my 8cm (mini-cd) into almost any sysytem and reboot it and have a fully functional Linux system with X + XFCE + fully loaded kernel + network and fs debugging and probing tools which doesn’t touch the system hard drive. Tell me that’s not handy for forensics and/or getting some real work done when all a customer has is a few dozen Dell desktops with Windows on them.
Now there is a Morphix 0.5 light, but it’s 256MB and won’t fit on a 210MB 8cm mini-cd. This wouldn’t do for my handy utility 8cm system so I went hacking and have created a 170MB Morphix 0.5 based distro and the ISO can be found here.
Our daughter was born yesterday afternoon @ 1751 CDT. Mom and daughter are resting nicely and I’m just amazed and almost speachless. It’s just an amazing thing.
Have I mentioned I hate drywalling? Well, it’s not the actual drywalling I hate, it’s the taping and floating that I abhor, unfortunately for me, it’s requird to finish off my office. I’ve managed to destroy two seams and had to start over after laborious sanding and even now it has peaks and troughs that rival Everest. My wife came out and did two corners with me and they, of couse, look as close as drywall mud can to glass…in one pass, no less. She says it’s like frosting a cake.
I had seen these Stanley Panel Carry creatures at the local Home Depot and with me having to carry a bunch of drywall solo from the garage to the office, I thought I would give it a try. One of the best purchases I’ve ever made. It make moving 4×8 sheets of whatever very managable for just one person. One tip, when you unload your panels, make sure to put them on at least 2×4 (on edge) so that you can slip the carry under it without having to do any lifting. It makes life so much better, get one if you do anything with 4×8 sheets of anything!
We’re converting a 11′ x 11′ outbuilding we have to my office. I spent much of today finishing off the buried RG6(CATV) and Cat 5E runs. The buried power was already done and now I’m ready to caulk and seal up before laying down the vapor barrier and laminate flooring. Following that, I’ll get to do my favorite thing again: Hanging drywall and taping / floating. Luckily, that if followed by my second least favorite thing in the world, painting.
It is going to be nice though. We already have the A/C running and even not sealed up, it is very comfortable.
It also been a very good stress reliever with demoing out all the existing shelving and crap on the walls with a crowbar and a big rubber mallet.
I’ve finally managed to get around to updating my Cygwin -> Gentoo tool-chain. I messed with getting the current stable and patched gcc and binutils working on Cygwin without much luck, so I’ve turned to using Dan Kegel’s very fine crosstool scripts to build the chain completey on Cygwin. This is built with glibc-2.3.5, gcc 3.4.4 and binutils 2.15.(don’t remember). Since I’ve moved to using Dan’s script the install location has changed from /usr/local/cross-linux to /opt/crosstool.
You will need to make sure you have the distcc package installed under Cygwin as I’m no longer building it one off…no reason to now that it’s included in the Cygwin distribution.
The mkservice script has been updated and can now be found along with the distccd.sh wrapper in /opt/bin.
So here it is: Latest stable Cygwin to Gentoo tool-chain with distcc wrapper and script to make the service.
My wife and I have been looking for a Landcruiser for her for 3-4 months and have driven close to a dozen in various states of repair and wildy varying prices. We finally found our baby on Monday. It’s a ‘96 FZJ80, Green, Grey leather interior with 153k on the odo. The exterior is in very good shape and the interior is in excellent shape. It had three major issues which we used as bargaining points:
1) Cruise Control didn’t work
2) Check Engine light was on
3) Missing all back and 3rd row head rests.
We took it to our mechanic (Bob at Foreign Affair in Schertz, TX) and he plugged it in. Not good initially, misfire on cyl 6 and bad catalytic converter. He checked it out and it turns out the cat is fine and may have been marked bad when cyl 6 misfired. 6 is fine now.
We went back to the dealer and set our price and haggled. We hit an EXCELLENT price for (dealer or not) for a ‘cruiser in this shape and they found the headrests at the the trade-in dealer, so we were good to go. For the cruise control I hit the amazlingly useful Landcruiser forums at IH8MUD and found that I might try checking the brake fluid level indicator (float in the fluid reservoir) and cycling the actuator (motor attached to the throttle). That did the trick, so we dodged a bullet on that possibly expensive repair!
The bad news is that it needs new front brakes/rotors…ouch! But hey, we got our ‘cruiser and all is well with the world.
You gotta love a vehicle that has factory options for a snorkel, super-charger and heated front seats!
So it is now illegal to import a device from one country to another without the manafacturer’s consent…yeah freedodom! I assume that next it’ll be illegal to have pictures pictures printed or developed in a country other than the one intended, as it will be trademark infringment. Think how many people will be in Mexican jails…the horror of it all.
HP stops Expansys importing non-Euro PDAs | Channel Register
We’re having our 20 Year Reunion of the New Braunfels High School class of 85 this weekend. Melissa and I went last night to the Ice Breaker and had a excellent time. It was wild to see some of the folks I hadn’t seen in 20 years. Others I had seen off and a couple I didn’t even recognize. We passed on the cookout today, but we are going to the social tonight. I also thought about those that weren’t there and those who have passed in the last 20 years.
All in all, what a crazy 20 years it has been.
