February 26, 2007
Smothered Pork Chops
For those who thought I missed the Saturday night cooking session, I postponed it until this evening. My wofe and I were out shopping Saturday morning and ended up going out to lunch around 1:00 PM. We ate at the Elephant Bar and had meals that carried us over into Sunday.
I decided that I would make Sunday night dinner instead.
When we got up Sunday we went into the garage to do some woodworking. My wife had asked that I make her a tuteur for the garden. We ended up spending the whole day in the garage and it was too late to make dinner.
I decided that I would make Monday night dinner instead.
After work today, I headed into the kitchen and made dinner. The meal was quite good. There was a little too much thyme though. I don't like it when I can pick out a particular spice. At that point it is too overwhelming. I also made mashed potatoes and corn to serve with it. Here is a picture of the meal:
Down and Out In The Magic Kingdom - Finished
What I nice book. It has been quite some time since I have read a science fiction book and I don't remember why I quit reading them. The fact that this book talked about social media made the book that much better.
I sure hope that the future does not depend of 'whuffie' or anything like it. I lead a predominately solitary existence with the exception of my immediate family and a few coworkers. I'm sure I would be hurtin' for whuffie.
I also licked the concept of living forever and making periodic backups and using restores to get past fatal mistakes in your life. Thinking through this concept would cause most people to change the way they live their lives.
Bottom line, I would very much recommend reading this book. It is quite short at only 69 pages and should not take too much time to read. Certainly time well spent.
WinRAR
After reading Jeff Atwood's Feb 23 post on his Coding Horror blog, I had to take a look at WinRAR.
I have been a big fan of Zip since the beginning; and I mean the beginning. Phil Katz wrote PKARC in assembler back in the mid eighties. When he came out with PKARC, I switched from ARC to PKARC and never looked back. He later renamed it to PKZIP (and PKUNZIP). Fast forward to the recent past and WinZip was born using the same compression technology. I never thought about considering something else.
Reading Jeff's entry got me thinking about the compression that I do today. I commonly compress files that are tens of gigabytes in size and move then around the network. I back these up on to other hard drives for archival purposes. When I saw the increased compression available with WinRAR, I downloaded the evaluation copy and tried it out.
I took a small backup I created on Friday. The file itself was 1,310,544KB. The file produced by WinZip was 1,002,247KB. I thought that the backup process itself compressed the data so there was little more that WinZip could do. Using WinRAR I ended up with a file size of 871,384KB.
That is a huge savings as far as I am concerned. I was going to try it on a 45GB file but after the savings I already saw, I am just going to go ahead and convert the processes over to WinRAR.
Thanks, Jeff!
February 23, 2007
I Have Completed All Oblivion Achievements!
Tonight I finished the main quest in Oblivion. I still have many minor side quests to do, but as of tonight there are no more achievements to get. First time I have ever completed everything asked of me in a game.
February 22, 2007
Apache is running
I worked on getting Apache running on whitney this evening and everything was going great until I hit an issue with the IP address of one of the clients.
I happen to be running a mix of static and dynamic IP addresses and one of the static IP addresses came on line when one of the dynamic addresses had already taken the address.
When I went to change it I hit another active address. I thought that this was odd so I went out to the router to look at what machines were connected and all it showed me was the MAC addresses.
One of the things that I knew I had to do was create a map of my local area network. I was pretty low on my list. How hard could it be to keep things separated? Oh well.
I started to use MS Word on a Windows machine to create boxes containing the information of each machine. I then thought that maybe Visio would be a better choice. I know it is installed somewhere. I then thought that there might be something on the Mac or maybe even Ubuntu.
I decided to just gather the information this evening and then I will create the presentation layer tomorrow. I determined that the information needed was machine name, MAC address, IP address, and machine makeup. I also migrated all machines to static addresses as well.
So; Apache is running. That is as far as I got...
February 21, 2007
Down and Out In The Magic Kingdom
I feel like I have missed a piece of pop culture. Over the last several months I have heard numerous mentions of the book mentioned in the blog title. It was written by Cory Doctorow.
The book has been released into the public domain via the Creative Commons license. Cory is a huge advocate of Creative Commons, the author of the very successful blog boingboing, and a fellow of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
This book was his first book and it is classified as Science Fiction.
I will let you know how it is.
February 20, 2007
Satellite Radio Merger - Too little too late
It seems that the big news today is that Sirius and XM satellite radio companies will be merging in one $13B deal. While I don't have an opinion on whether the new company will be better or worse than the two existing companies, I think that the advantages that satellite radio technology brings the average user has been surpassed by bigger and better technologies.
I always thought that satellite radio brought two advancements to audio content delivery. The first was that you could receive the feed virtually anywhere. Don't discount the advantages of picking up a radio station while driving across the Great Basin. The second advancement was that you could receive specialized content. Nascar, MLB, NPR are examples of this. Little did they know then, but the satellite providers were satisfying the 'long tail' before it was in vogue.
Fast forward to today and both of these advancements are handled with newer technology and for less money. (Isn't that the way it always is?)
For the price of a head end unit for the satellite system and a one year subscription, a customer can purchase an iPod or any other MP3 player. The customer can preload the player with the music or information of their choice and take this with them on long trips. Most new cars come with, and all older cars can be outfitted with, an auxiliary jack for connecting the player to the existing car stereo system. This satisfies the majority of the first advancement I mentioned above.
What owning a player does not address is how current the content is on the player. This technology is still evolving. For those you are willing to pay for it, you can get cellular coverage on most major highways. With the cellular companies data plans, you can download current content that will rival anything that the satellite companies provide. Sadly, the costs for these data plans are quite high but are coming down and should drop substantially over the next year or two.
The second advancement is completely superseded by the Internet. There is no better place to find long tail content than on the Internet. There are millions of blogs with audio content, podcasts, and web sites that provide audio feeds. You can download these to your player and listen to your hearts content. There is no way that the satellite companies could keep up with the sheer volume of content available on the Internet.
This also brings up an advantage that the player brings to this issue. Video. Satellite companies are audio only. With technologies like PVRs, SlingBox, and other devices, your TV content can go with you on your trips. (Of course, you shouldn't be watching the player while driving...) This is also the huge bank of content from places like YouTube and Google Video. Most players have enough storage space that you can also download movies and play these for the kids. This also negates the need to purchase the DVD systems for the car as well.
Bottom line, while I'm sure the merger will boost the revenue of the new company in the short term, I suspect that the industry as a whole will fade away over the next five years or so.
February 19, 2007
Bill Walsh
My father let me borrow a two DVD set entitled "The San Francisco 49ers - The Complete History" and while there was a lot of good content on the DVD's there was one section called "Quarterbacking by Bill Walsh" that was the most impressive video I have ever seen about football.
Bill was explaining the quarterback position. His pupil was Joe Montana. He also had Roger Craig, Jesse Sapolu, and Dwight Clark. It appeared that it was filmed around the year 2000 so all players had retired.
Bill explained a half dozen or more plays in detail. He also talked about the footwork necessary for each type of throw. He showed how different 'reads' are made and how to fool the defense with head movement and fake hand-offs.
All the while he is making Joe throw the ball to Dwight or Roger or he is handing off the ball to Roger. Bill went into great detail about the pass to Dwight Clark in the 1981 Championship game. He showed the play as it was diagrammed. It was supposed to go to Freddie Solomon, but Dwight was open as the alternate receiver. The play had been designed to be throw high so that if Dwight could not retrieve the ball then no one would be able to catch it. According to Joe Montana, they had spent many, many hours practicing that play throughout the season. The play worked exactly as planned.
I really, really enjoyed this segment and I encourage anyone who enjoys the game of football to watch it. It does not matter what you think of the San Francisco 49ers.
February 18, 2007
Abolish The Daylight Savings Time Shift
There was a time and a place for Daylight Savings, but I feel that that time has passed. Back in the day when farming was more prevalent and when people depended more on daylight it seemed like the right thing to do.
Nowadays, most people conduct their lives independent of the location of the sun. This fact alone minimizes the advantages of Daylight Savings. When you also consider the actual time change and what it does to people for a few days, there appears to be no advantage to Daylight Savings at all.
Lastly, this slow migration to increase the amount of Daylight Savings is causing more trouble than it is worth. It would be best if the government picked a time period. Be it Standard time or Daylight Savings time and stick with it going forward.
February 17, 2007
Steak Fajitas
I went with a Mexican do-it-yourself dinner tonight. There wasn't much to learn this evening. The only things that I did that I had not before was to cut meat on the bias and to flesh out an avocado.
I used a flank steak for the meat. What a crappy cut of meat. Even cutting the meat on a bias, which is supposed to produce a cut of meat that is more tender than any other way to cut it, resulted in bytes that were far more difficult to chew then necessary.
While it sounds like the meal was not that successful, it was actually pretty good. I was just expecting more out of the meat.
I also made a filling comprised of red peppers, onions, chili powder, Tabasco sauce, Serrano peppers, and cumin.
Here is a shot of the ingredients that were presented at the table:
Here is a close-up of the meat and the filling that I made:
February 16, 2007
CDs Are Downloaded!
I finally have all of my 225 CDs ripped to the Ubuntu Server. Just over 11 gigabytes. I did a few at a time and it seemed to go relatively painlessly. Now to set it up so all machines access the same music store.
February 15, 2007
I Have A Problem
In this day and age information comes at us constantly. I know this is no great revelation but I think there are times when the amount of information exceeds the ability to process it. I suspect that I am at that point.
I am sitting on my couch looking at my TV. It is off because we are on our way to bed. We spent the evening watching shows that have been recorded on the PVR. We choose to watch TV because we were almost out of room on the hard drive of the PVR and we did not want to lose any prerecorded shows.
The last few nights we have played Oblivion.
I received a train video in the mail today. When I took it out of the package, I placed it by the DVD player. This is where I place videos that need to be watched. There are at least 20 DVDs there. No they are not all train videos. Yes, I want to watch them, but the TV seems to be busy doing other things.
There is something different about video.
If I look at my RSS reader, I can skim the headlines of the articles and only read the ones that interest me. If I am behind, I can intellectually raise the bar on what is interesting in the spirit of getting through the content.
If I look at my podcasts, I can multi-task while listening to them. If I hear a particular portion that interests me and I was involved in something else, I can pause, rewind and listen to it again.
If I look at my magazine pile, I can treat it similarly to the RSS reader.
I can not come up with a way to efficiently process video. I can not fast forward it because I lose the audio. The audio is as important as the video usually. I can not skip over parts that don't interest me because there is no mechanism to break down a TV show by part. Also, while all of the other categories I mentioned above are done by me alone, my wife and I watch TV together.
If we are not watching TV together, someone is probably playing on the XBox 360. Unless of course we are working around the house, out, etc.
All the while, I seem to be getting farther and farther behind on my videos. Help!
February 14, 2007
Another Great Night of Oblivion
I only have two more achievements left in this game to complete it. Of course, you never really complete Oblivion. I am now the head of the Dark Brotherhood and the Fighter's Guild. I am the Arch Mage and am also the Grey Fox.
It amazes that after all the time I have played this game that I ended up playing for about four hours this evening and had a great time the whole time.
February 13, 2007
Awards
I am not a big awards ceremony watcher. I am only casually interested in who wins the Oscars, Grammys, etc. What really annoys me though is what has happened with the Dixie Chicks over the last couple of years.
I am also not a big fan of country music so I only know the popular songs from the Dixie Chicks. When the singer decided to make disparaging remarks about President Bush a few years ago, I thought it was in poor taste but I didn't think that it reflected on the quality of the music being put out by the band.
When Hollywood and the entertainment industry basically shunned the group and they started getting booed off stage, I thought it was a little harsh but it was their peers doing chastising so I thought it was acceptable.
When the Dixie Chicks won all of the Grammys this last Sunday night, I was very disappointed. Their latest CD has a good song or two on it but by no means did they deserve the accolades that they received. I feel that this was simply Hollywood and the entertainment industry saying that they were sorry for the way they treated the group earlier.
It saddens me to think the politics has now encroached into the Grammys. As far as I am concerned, the Grammys are now tainted and there is no value associated with them.
Next thing you know, we are going to hear that you can buy a Nobel Peace prize, oh wait, you can do that too... sigh.
February 12, 2007
AJAX
It appears that the distance from XHTML and CSS to AJAX is a bit farther than I thought. While I am able to follow the browser side of the process, the server side appears to be quite complex.
In order to create a web page that is truly an AJAX page, there has to be XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, and AJAX on the page. On the server there needs to be a SQL database, which would typically be MySQL, and PHP code that interacts with the database and of course JaveScript as well.
Luckily, I have programmed in the past so this is really just learning new syntax for new languages but there is a whole lot more here than I first thought.
Today, I did create a simplistic AJAX page that queried a remote database and updated two fields on a web page without updating the rest of the page. I have been following along in the Head Rush AJAX book. Yes, I said Head Rush. It appears that the Head Rush books present a more accelerated version of the process than the Head First books.
February 11, 2007
I Delayed It As Long As I Could
For six months I have not played Oblivion on the XBox 360. Up to that point I had played for just under 200 hours. (My wife is closing in on 350!) This weekend, due to the rain and the fact that I pushed it a little too hard yesterday, I spent the day on the couch playing Oblivion. Sure I did other things as well, but the major portion of the day was spent saving Cyrodiil.
In the last six months Bethesda has released several new quests for the game. Of course I had to purchase these quests vis XBox Live and install them. I have finished a couple of the easier ones but still have a two of the more difficult ones ahead of me.
I have never played a game as much as I have played this one. The storyline is quite engaging. The best part is that you can pretty much do what you want when you want. Much like the Myst franchise. If you feel like first person shooting, you can do that. If you feel like exploring, you can do that as well. If you feel like making potions, you can also do that.
The hardest part of this is going to be what I do this week. If history is any indication, my evenings will be filled with Oblivion.
Hard to think of a better way to spend the evening...
February 10, 2007
Sweet & Sour Chicken
Tonight I tried my hand at some oriental food. Well, Americanized oriental food. While I like the spicier dishes, I have always been a sucker for sweet and sour chicken or pork.
I had never really thought about what it took to make the sweet and sour sauce. When I looked at the recipe I was surprised at how easy it was to make. The sauce was simply red wine vinegar, sugar, orange juice, and ketchup. I would have never thought of that combination. When I read those ingredients I had my doubts.
I thought I would break from tradition and show a picture of the ingredients before I began to cook them:
As you can see, I am a big fan of 'Mise en place'. I think that it reduces the anxiety of trying to get things ready while cooking. While this might be because I am new at this, I think it is something that I will continue to do as I get more comfortable in the kitchen.
I was very surprised at how easy this meal was to cook. It only took me about 45 minutes to prepare this from start to finish. For me that is quite quick! I also did not have any issues while cooking it.
I decided to serve this on a bed of rice and used a rice cooker for the white rice. Once that started cooking I started cooking the chicken. I then mixed the pineapple, onions, and spices together with the chicken and the sauce. Here is a picture of the meal once it was plated:
The meal was quite good. In fact, it was better than the last time I had this dish at the local Chinese restaurant. I will be making this one again.
February 08, 2007
Dumb Luck
When I installed Vista last week I ended up with an installation that had no sound. I researched the sound issue and found that Creative did not have Vista drivers ready and that their beta drivers were very suspect.
I was resigned to having no sound until March when the production drivers were scheduled to be released.
This evening I was messing around with the options and properties of the existing driver and accidentally ended up with sound! Unfortunately, I was not performing any type of scientific method so I have no idea what I did in what order to achieve sound.
I also did not completely resolve the issue. While I do have sound, I only have two channel stereo sound. This coming from a 5.1 surround sound setup. But any sound is better than no sound at all.
February 07, 2007
Dish Network Allows External USB Drives
The Dish Network announced at CES that they will allow off the shelf USB external hard drives to be plugged into their Model 622 HD DVR for 'off receiver' storage. This external hard drive will have a proprietary file system and will only be able to be transferred amongst the receivers in the house.
Events stored on the hard drive can be played from the hard drive or copied back to the receiver for playback. Should a hard drive get full, another hard drive can be connected for additional storage.
February 06, 2007
Head First HTML With CSS & XHTML
I mentioned earlier that I needed to learn several technologies for a new expansion at work. Most of the technical needs for this new product center around a state of the art web site. I felt I needed to first refresh my memory on HTML and then move to the newer technologies.
I came across the book mentioned in the title above which searching Safari. I talked about Safari previously. I have heard a lot of good things about the Head First books so I thought I would take it for a spin. Hopefully I will learn about CSS and also pick up on the advances in HTML.
After finishing the book, I have to say that it exceeded my expectations. The text was easy to read, the examples easy to understand, and I was able to create my own free form web pages on what I learned as I went through the book.
While I don't think I am now an expert, I certainly am comfortable enough to write my own XHTML and CSS. Now I am off to java and ajax. Luckily, Head First makes a book about these technologies as well. I just hope the new book as good as the CSS book.
February 05, 2007
Basic Rsync Success
After playing around with Rsync for awhile, I have been able to get the daemon loaded on the whitney server and have created a script that can be executed on the shasta machine that copies one directory and all of it's subordinate directories over to the server.
This copy preserves all file attributes and on all subsequent copies will only copy what has changed.
Sounds easy, but it took quite a while to accomplish this. For the first hour I could not figure out how to execute a script. I eventually found out that the PATH variable was not set to include the bash shell.
Oh, I also had to select an appropriate shell to write the script in. After some reading it seems like bash will be my shell of choice.
Once I had the shell running, I was getting permission errors on the copy. I still have not resolved this issue but was able to get around it by having the same user who created the script have only their files copied over to their directory on the server.
Getting the script to run successfully allows me to ignore all of the parameters on the rsync command. I just need to continue to research the usage of groups. It seems simple, but what I am trying to do is not written anywhere where I can find it.
I am trying to create a user who only has the ability to copy files from one machine to the other. This user will not be able to execute anything but the script and maybe rsync. The problem is when this user tries to copy files that are not theirs I get a permission error. My thinking is that I could create a group that would be superior to the user groups that I would assign this one user to. This group level security would prevent this user from executing anything. Sadly, I can not find anything relating to a hierarchy of groups.
I'm beginning to think I am asking the wrong questions...
February 04, 2007
We May Have A Problem...
I few months ago my wife and I purchased a Select Comfort bed. The one where you can select your 'sleep number'. Our previous mattress and box spring were over 10 years old and it was getting time to replace them.
Ordinarily, this would not be a big deal except for the fact that I have grown accustomed to new mattress and am truly sleeping better. This was all well and good until I tried to sleep the last two nights in the fifth wheel. Each morning I have awoken to stiff necks and sore backs. It is not like the mattress in the trailer is bad. It is about two years old but has only been slept on about 75 nights. That's barely over two months.
I am going to optimistically chalk it up to just a couple of bad nights of sleep and see if I have the same problem the next time we take the trailer out. If it happens again, we may have to buy another Select Comfort bed for the trailer.
Now, if you don't mind, I have just set my side of the bed to '50'. It's time to go to sleep.
February 03, 2007
The Ultimate Cheeseburger?
As you know I am not at home this weekend. But, that did not stop me from cooking this evening. In honor of the fact that we are in the RV I decided to make one of my favorite all time meals. Cheeseburgers!
I had come across this recipe for what they claimed was the ultimate cheeseburger. The secret to their ultimateness was that they took grated cheese and incorporated it into the raw meat. That way when the burger cooked the cheese melted inside the burger as well as the cheese that was laid on top. Other differences include a chipolte pepper in adobo sauce and scallions added to the hamburger meat. I would have to say that the burger was good but it certainly was not an ultimate burger. Here is a picture of the burger as it was plated:
Here is the real reason I took a day off from work. My greatest love is the old Southern Pacific Railroad in the Shasta Division. This area is now owned by the Union Pacific. This division stretches from Gerber California (Near Red Bluff) up to Portland Oregon and also stretches out East to Winnemucca Nevada. The division headquarters is in Dunsmuir California. I spent the day chasing trains and taking pictures of them and their surroundings. I had a fantastic time up here and took hundreds of pictures. Here is one of them:
February 02, 2007
How Do We Do This Again?
It didn't seem like it had been that long since the last time we went on an RV trip but it almost seems like we are going on our first trip today. To add to the confusion, we have changed our procedures for leaving town. We added a couple of extra steps which made the beginning of the trip seem different.
The old way of leaving town was to gather the items needed for the trip and load them into the back of the cab and the bed of the truck. This includes the dog which gets crammed in the back of the cab with the other items. We then leave the house, stop for gas, pick up the trailer, and take off on the trip.
The new way added a few extra steps. I have a removable fifth wheel hitch and toolbox and I used to leave in the bed of the truck. I now store them in a storage area. Of course, this is a different storage area than the trailer... So there we were this morning at 7:00 AM loading the toolbox and hitch in 37 degree weather. Once that was completed we then went to get gas and continue the normal procedure.
Luckily, I am a pretty anal guy so I have checklists written for things like hitching the trailer because I had to really rely on them this morning. You certainly don't want to make a mistake with an 18,750 pound trailer. Once we arrived at the RV park it was like my wife and I were RVing for the first time. We seemed so unorganized that we ended up laughing our way though the setup of the camp site. We finished off our camp site setup with the obligatory margaritas!
I took today off to give us a three day weekend. We drove up to Redding, CA and are staying in the Redding Premier RV Resort. (Crappy website, to get to the Redding RV Resort you have to select Redding from the frame on the left) For those that follow the Good Sam park ratings, this RV park scored 10/10/9 which puts it in the top most tier of resorts. Sadly, I think we got the worst camp site in the resort. Normally, I would have changed sites but since we are only here for two nights, and it is pretty chilly outside, I don't think the downsides of the campsite will affect the trip in any way. Here are a couple of pictures of the trailer in the camp site:
Check out that crazy water connection! That is the first time that I have ever seen a water bibb connection go almost straight up. What you can't see in the picture is that right behind the back uf the trailer is a depression in the asphalt with gravel in it. Since this would wreak havoc with the leveling of the trailer I have pulled the trailer up towards the front of the site. What this caused me to do was add an extension to the sewer hose. Oh how I love working with sewer hoses :) You can also see how close my back slide was to the utility pole. Below is a picture of the other side. This is the side that enter the trailer and BBQ on.
February 01, 2007
Rsync
One the requirements of FieldsNet is to have a backup strategy in place that provides consistent backups of all machines.
My initial thought was to have the server initiate the backup process. I had determined that I could use the scp command via ssh to accomplish this. I even went so far as to create a dedicated user, 'filecopy', thats sole purpose is to copy files across the network. When I came up against the permission issue inherent to this process I went back to the books.
During my reading, I came across a command that I was not familiar with. It is called rsync and it's primary purpose is to keep multiple locations synchronized. Not only that but it uses ssh to connect to remote computers securely. What I think I like the most about it though is the ability for rsync to determine what has changed in the file and only transfer the changes.
So not only is this command better designed for backups than scp, it is also more efficient at it as well. Another advantage to rsync is that it is fully supported in unix, osx, and Windows. It is almost too good to be true.