Rodney's last name is a Joke

How to get a diff of current changes in a VIM buffer before saving

2010-12-29T16:20:00.001-05:00

:w !diff % -

Ubuntu and offline software installation

2009-03-06T14:45:00.002-05:00

I often find myself working with systems that are not connected to the internet. Many of these systems are running Ubuntu and I find myself wishing I had installed a particular package after the disconnect has occurred. Since network access is not an option, I was looking for an easy approach to identifying all dependencies for a particular package, downloading them and burning them to a CD for offline installation. It turns out that this is not as easy as one might like.

The first problem is package dependencies can be recursive. If A requires B and B requires C, then a recursive dependency search is required. Software installation apps such as apt-get and aptitude are adept at resolving these dependencies, but it is not helpful to me since the target system is offline. I took a look at http://packages.ubuntu.com and indeed, the package descriptions do offer dependency identification based upon distribution version as well as architecture.

I went about developing a script that, given a package name, an architecture, and a distribution version (i.e. hardy), gets a list of all first-order dependencies. From there, it pulls in the dependencies recursively until a complete list has been developed. Given this list of dependencies, I can extract a download URL for the package of interest as well as all dependencies.

Unfortunately, there is a significant problem with this approach. First, most packages have dependencies such as libc and glibc that are common to even a minimal Ubuntu install. In some cases, these common default packages can inflate the dependency list substantially. Since my offline system already has these packages, I would like to avoid tracking them if possible.

To avoid this problem, I modified the script to only list package dependencies from the "Universe" repository. Since it is easy to acquire a DVD containing most packages from the "Main" repository, this should allow the script to only identify packages that would not likely be in a base install without burning the entire Universe repo to media.

In any case, the script is located here: http://github.com/rmjokers/helpful-scripts/blob/1085f5419bea93df0ca06cdbfffb6fa202c3ed0d/uupd.py

It is a work in progress, but serves its purpose for me at the moment :)

Update: After a few use cases, I have decided to remove the Universe-only dependency resolution. It does not identify packages from Main that are not in the default install media, which are required for offline installs.

New version here: http://github.com/rmjokers/helpful-scripts/blob/7e389a83e469e06f57d72b0f085a70b4c8955bef/updr.py

SSH on Inspiron 910

2008-10-20T22:07:00.001-04:00

Just received my Dell mini running Ubuntu Linux 8.04 about a week ago. Everything has been working great except for SSH over wireless. I found a description of the problem, as well as a fix here:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-restricted-modules/+bug/259816

Essentially, this command fixes the problem:

sudo iwpriv eth1 set_vlanmode 0

Apparently, a patch has been checked into the kernel upstream :)

More on the HVR-950

2008-10-02T20:31:00.001-04:00

Starting with Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex, support for the Hauppauge HVR-950 is included directly in the Linux kernel. This means that the lengthy procedure spelled out in my previous post are no longer needed to enjoy HD OTA television on your desktop. Unfortunately, the firmware is not included, so you must follow these instructions to download it, extract it, and move it to the correct directory:

http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Xceive_XC3028/XC2028#How_to_Obtain_the_Firmware

Much thanks to this post for steering me in the right direction:

http://www.mail-archive.com/em28xx@mcentral.de/msg01522.html

With this fix, I can now use the tuner on my backend MythTV setup!

McCain's Tax "Decrease" compared to Obama's

2008-09-14T10:04:00.003-04:00

One of them looks more like millionaire charity to me. Can you tell which one? Thanks to the Washington Post for putting together this graphic :)

Don't forget the fudge!

2008-08-18T11:45:00.002-04:00

To set up a local NTP server, these two lines are very important:

server 127.127.1.1
fudge 127.127.1.1 stratum 8 refid NIST

US Airways Sucks

2008-08-15T09:48:00.001-04:00

After spending 1 hour on the plane waiting to take off because there were thunderstorms in the area 4 hours prior, I thought my red-eye flight home couldn't be worse. However, with 15 minutes remaining before boarding the flight home, I heard an announcement that the "first officer" was still waiting to board his flight from PHOENIX to LAS VEGAS, so we would be waiting for at least an hour. Apparently the flight from the adjacent gate had most of its crew aboard that flight as well, so they were also delayed an hour. Thanks US Airways for wasting 400 man hours of time!

saving bandwidth

2008-06-13T09:18:00.001-04:00

Installed a new tool today called apt-cacher. This tool acts as a proxy for apt and related tools, caching all Debian packages downloaded. Thus, when multiple clients download the same package, it is only downloaded from the internet once, speeding up the process and keeping the internet fast.

DVD Issues

2008-05-30T23:52:00.001-04:00

Well, I just purchased a Philips DVP5990 DVD player last weekend. It has some nice features, including the ability to play DIVX movies from an external USB drive.

I spent the past 2 hours trying to connect the player to my TV through HDMI. I tried 3 different cables, all of which gave me a horrible picture that looked like something out of an old four color CGA monitor from the 1980s. I tried upgrading the firmware, jiggling the wires and changing settings all to no avail. Finally, one step away from returning the player for a replacement, I tried unplugging the unit for a few minutes. After turning it back on, all of the color problems have disappeared. The player appears to be functioning normally. Apparently, not even a reboot after upgrading the firmware was sufficient to fix this bug...

Compressed Time

2008-05-09T14:30:00.003-04:00

I've been having trouble with VMWare guests losing clock ticks to the extent that the guest OS clock runs approximately half-speed compared to the host. This is with an Ubuntu Server host OS and a Debian Etch guest OS. I found that adding these settings to /etc/vmware/config:

tools.timeSync = "TRUE"
host.useFastClock = "FALSE"
monitor_control.virtual_rdtsc = "FALSE"

Fixed the timing issues as well as the boundless supply of timing errors showing up on the host in /var/log/messages:

rtc: lost some interrupts at 512Hz.

Thanks to the following for inspiration:

http://jackshck.livejournal.com/117486.html

misunderstandings

2008-03-27T09:58:00.000-04:00

This is a wonderfully written statement:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/hopewagner/gGBRVV

What is it about human nature that inspires us to pass judgment expediently and without regard for consequences? I wonder if anyone anywhere can claim that no 20 second sound byte over the span of their entire life could be construed as offensive, particularly when taken out of context?

addendum

2008-03-19T22:05:00.001-04:00

I'd just like to go on record saying that I vote democrat, but if Hilary somehow steals the nomination from Obama, I will be voting for Ralf Nader or none-of-the-above :(

negativity

2008-03-19T22:03:00.001-04:00

The conservative movement in this nation never ceases to amaze me. One of the most remarkable speeches of the 21st century was delivered yesterday and it fell upon many deaf ears. What is it about fear that a near majority of people in this country find it so enticing? It is the same fear that allowed popular opinion to sway toward the lies of our fearless president, whose trillion dollar mistake is commemorated today. "The troop surge is working." You have nothing to fear. Except black ministers...

Invalid Checksums

2008-02-07T11:10:00.003-05:00

Apparently, there is a checksum offload engine in my laptop's network card. Unfortunately, this engine doesnt work, at least with the latest Ubuntu release (Gutsy).

The problem manifests itself as a continuous stream of bad UDP checksum errors when monitoring network traffic with Wireshark. In particular, every DNS request my system sent had an invalid checksum error. I did not bother to check for the same problem with other traffic types. In any case, I found a bug report describing this exact issue:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libpcap/+bug/31273

Apparently it is very easy to turn off the checksum offload feature using this command:

sudo ethtool -K eth0 rx off tx off

After this modification, my packets are no longer broken!

Linux and the HVR 950

2008-01-10T20:10:00.002-05:00

Just purchased a Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-950, which is essentially a small USB device that acts as an analog / digital television tuner. Not only can one tune into new digital over-the-air broadcasts, but also HD programming as well. Using a home-made DB2 antenna, I am able to pull in 31 digital channels including 6 HD channels. This was a very pleasant surprise :)

My ultimate goal is to connect this tuner to my PC and the PC to my old HD television so that I can get over-the-air digital channels and rid myself of cable. I attempted to get the tuner working with Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy) using this guide ( http://lunapark6.com/usb-hdtv-tuner-stick-for-windows-linux-hauppauge-wintv-hvr-950.html)

This guide ( http://parker1.co.uk/mythtv_ubuntu.php) was also helpful in my attempt to set up MythTV. Unfortunately, I did not succeed in getting the software to work. I may try again at a future date. I was able to get the tuner to work with a few simple command line utilities though. I installed the following packages in Ubuntu:

dvb-utils, dvbsnoop, dvbstream, dvbtune

These utilities allowed me to scan all digital channels identified by the receiver. The scan takes a few minutes, so be patient. Also look at the other example scan files in the dvb-utils directory. Another may be more directly applicable, depending upon your location and interests.

sudo /usr/bin/scan /usr/share/doc/dvb-utils/examples/scan/atsc/us-ATSC-center-frequencies-8VSB > channels

This gives output like the following to a file called channels:

WBFF-HD:665028615:8VSB:49:52:3
Good TV:665028615:8VSB:65:68:4

Dont be surprised if you get allot of output on the command line...it complained about every unavailable channel for me. The information above includes the name of the channel, frequency, and encoding. To tell the tuner to tune into a channel, use a command like the following:

azap -r -c channels "Good TV"

Note that we are using 'azap' (for ATSC digital programming). See http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Zap for more information.

Finally, the following command will stream the output of the tuner directly to mplayer for display on the screen:

mplayer /dev/dvb/adapter0/dvr0 -cache 8192 -framedrop -vo x11

I have successfully tuned into standard and HD digital broadcasts using this simple technique.

Installed Packages

2007-12-14T13:31:00.001-05:00

I've been searching for an easy way to itemize all installed packages on a Debian / Ubuntu system, but just found it today. To list all installed packages,

dpkg --get-selections > installed-software

Now, you can use this list to re-install an existing system or duplicate its configuration on a new system:

dpkg --set-selections < installed-software

Finally, run deselect to make the selection changes take effect!

dselect

Thank you to Ubuntu Forums for the answer: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=261366

Finishing my previous thought

2007-12-03T17:17:00.001-05:00

After expanding the virtual disk and the partition, simply run resize2fs on the device of interest and the filesystem (EXT2 or EXT3) will be expanded to occupy the full extent of the partition :)

Virtual Disks

2007-12-03T09:47:00.001-05:00

Expanding a virtual disk in VMWare is very simple:

vmware-vdiskmanager -x 10GB myDisk.vmdk

Just remember that you still have to expand the partition and the filesystem living on that partition as well. Thanks to http://4sysops.com/archives/expanding-a-virtual-vmware-disk/ for the information!

a simple reminder

2007-10-29T16:25:00.001-04:00

Two things today...first, a simple way to determine how much work you are causing your laptop harddrive:

sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda | grep Load_Cycle_Count

Apparently anything above 600000 means your drive is about to kick the bucket :(

I've always wanted an easy way to pop up a reminder message at some point in the future from the command line on a Linux system. I wonder why it took me so long to find the answer?

echo "DISPLAY=$DISPLAY zenity --info --text='go home'" | at "5pm"

another vim trick

2007-10-25T18:51:00.001-04:00

Just found this amazing tip which allows VIM to automatically open a GPG encrypted text file, edit it, and save it back to disk in encrypted form without writing the unencrypted data to a buffer. Thank you Wouter Hanegraaff!

The Internet from Afar

2007-09-14T08:51:00.001-04:00

I recently attempted to fire up an instance of Firefox on a remote system that I was connected to through SSH (with X forwarding enabled). I remember doing this back in the day with no problems. However, Firefox apparently has a "feature" now that checks the DISPLAY settings and starts the process locally if you attempt to run it over the remote connection. This behavior seems to be counter-intuitive and unwanted. Someone somewhere decided to start treating users as idiots. Now for the fix:

firefox -no-remote

Of course this option is not mentioned in the help menu...

Where have I been?

2007-08-28T20:36:00.000-04:00

This is pretty cool...

create your own visited states map

A Challenge

2007-07-12T23:33:00.001-04:00

I often wonder if the number of hopeful days balance out the number of hopeless days. Has anybody ever tried writing down how they feel each day and doing an analysis on it? The patterns one finds could prove very interesting. And why does hopeful only have one L?

Random Thought

2007-04-24T23:15:00.001-04:00

It is interesting and disturbing how few quiet places there are in my world. The loss of power always seems to leave a ringing in my ear...

Partition Fun

2007-04-16T09:32:00.001-04:00

I recently made the mistake of installing Linux on a single disk partition. As a result, my home directory and all of my settings were stored on this partition and I was long past due for an OS upgrade. Luckily, a utility called RESIZE2FS for resizing EXT2/3 filesystems exists. With this tool, I was able to shrink the root filesystem from its original 60GB size down to approximately 20GB:

resize2fs -p /dev/sda1 20G

At this point, I could manipulate the partition table, resizing the first partition to 20GB and creating a new partition which would serve as my /home folder in the unused space. As long as the first partition is large enough to encompass the root filesystem, this should not cause any problems.

Finally, I could create a new filesystem in the new partition and copy my home directory there:

mke2fs -J /dev/sda2

At this point, I can install a fresh OS, formatting the root filesystem and still preserve my user settings :)

Sometimes print is bad

2007-03-25T23:12:00.001-04:00

I wrote a simple Ruby script that, given a connection request on a particular port, opens a connection to a remote host on a particular port and forwards all packets from one to the other, a very simple packet forwarder. For debugging purposes, I was printing some text to standard out for each packet received / forwarded. I set up a simple performance test running the forwarder on my local system and generating packets using /dev/zero...something like this:

ruby forwarder.rb 20000 10000 localhost

nc -l -p 10000 -c "cat /dev/zero" 

nc localhost 20000 > moo

After running this test for 15 seconds, the output file "moo" reached a size of 48MB on my laptop, indicating a throughput of over 3 MBps. Although this was sufficient for my purposes, it was much lower than I expected given that transfer should only be limited by the speed of my laptop harddrive in writing the output file.

By simply removing all "puts" calls for output, the performance increased dramatically. With the same 15 second run, the output file "moo" reached a size of 350MB on my laptop, indicating a throughput of over 23 MBps!

I suppose that when writing an application that handles a large amount of data, all debugging should obviously be turned off. However, it wasnt obvious to me that it could have such a large impact on performance. Hopefully this will help me not make the same mistake in the future.

Ruby Trix

2007-03-15T14:22:00.001-04:00

I've been having a number of problems in Ruby of late with error handling in Threads. In particular, any time I encounter a problem in a thread, I was given no indication that something went wrong. It turns out that by default, an unhandled exception simply kills the current thread and you don't even hear about it unless you issue a "join" on the thread that raised the exception. I suppose proper coding practice would be to handle my exceptions appropriately, but for debugging, it is nice to know when something has gone wrong. The simple snippet of code:

Thread.abort_on_exception = true

takes care of this problem. With this modification, any unhandled exception kills all running threads and yields readable error information.

Don't Fall In

2006-11-13T14:21:00.001-05:00

Shocking proof that women, and even some men are afraid to admit that they go number 2...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6128738.stm

I wonder what they did in the olden days before bathroom stalls offering doors and some semblance of privacy existed? Not only that, but what does this say about other things these people might be hiding from themselves and others? Denail and self-consciousness knows no bounds.

Dont let the tabs control you!

2006-11-07T13:09:00.001-05:00

The biggest shortcoming of the epiphany web browser in my opinion is the inability to dynamically modify the size of tabs so once you have too many open, you cant see them all at once. Fortunately, epiphany has an amazingly simple interface to create browser extensions to modify its behavior. Save the python code below in the .gnome2/epiphany/extensions folder as tabs-left.py


#!/usr/bin/env python

"""A simple extension to move the browser tabs to the left."""

import epiphany

def attach_window(window):
      notebook =  window.get_notebook()
      notebook.set_tab_pos("GTK_POS_LEFT")


def detach_window(window):
      notebook = window.get_notebook()
      notebook.set_tab_pos("GTK_POS_TOP")

And save the code below in the same folder in the file tabs-left.ephy-extension. Restart Epiphany and you will have a new extension appear under tools. Once selected, browser tabs will appear along the left side of the browser window rather than the top, allowing for a much larger number of tabs to be visible at once at the expense of some screen real estate. A fair tradeoff in my opinion.


[Epiphany Extension]
Name=Tabs to Left
Description=Moves the browser tabs to the left side of the window. Also, tabs can be closed by middleclicking.

[Loader]
Type=python
Module=tabs-left

The Golden Path

2006-10-31T09:23:00.001-05:00

Just found out today after a few hours of banging my head against a wall that in every version of Windows, you cant have a file path longer than 260 characters. Thanks to Microsoft's neverending support for the original Win32 API, this bug is not really fixable. More info can be found at:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/fileio/fs/naming_a_file.asp

Maximum Path Length

In the Windows API, the maximum length for a path is MAX_PATH, which is defined as 260 characters. A path is structured in the following order: drive letter, colon, backslash, components separated by backslashes, and a null-terminating character, for example, the maximum path on the D drive is D:\<256 chars>NUL.

The Unicode versions of several functions permit a maximum path length of approximately 32,000 characters composed of components up to 255 characters in length. To specify that kind of path, use the "\\?\" prefix.

Of course when you are running a ruby script inside of cygwin inside of windows, getting at those Unicode versioned functions might not be so easy :(

confusion

2006-09-07T00:37:00.001-04:00

As the title says, this post is a big heaping pile of nonsense that most people would be better off just skipping completely.

There seems to be an endless supply of interpersonal interactions in life that I don't have a clue how to handle. How did I ever make it to this point without mastering, or at least familiarizing myself with these skills?

Case in point...names...I cant remember them for the life of me. I know that this situation could EASILY be remedied by making a point of saying the person's name every time I talk to them, even if it is a bit odd at first. Perhaps some sort of word association would also help. Rather than fix the problem I stick to my regular routine of never saying names in fear that I might forget one someday.

There are countless other examples, but I don't care to enumerate them at this time...

ernesto strikes

2006-09-05T00:15:00.001-04:00

With much needed rain and a cool breeze, Ernesto moved through on Friday. Left behind was a path of leaf destruction and a power outage in my neighborhood...what a surprise! Fortunately, as I mentioned earlier, I purchased an oil lamp for just such an occasion. Since I had never used one of these archaic devices, it took me a while to get it going (apparently, you have to let the oil soak into the cloth wick thingy which takes forever). Burning cloth also sets off fire alarms pretty easily, so if you have a hypersensitive one like I do, might want to rip it out of the socket and throw it at something before you proceed. Anyways, I survived my fourth night without power this summer with neither bumps nor bruises...and managed to read a few chapters of my latest book in the process :)

planes crash sometimes

2006-08-28T11:48:00.000-04:00

So I am scanning my news feeds this morning when I suddenly notice that there was been a DOMESTIC plane crash...yesterday...killing approximately 50 people. The first thing that pops into my mind is: how did it take so long for me to hear about this? I generally consider myself pretty well informed about the news so I head over to CNN to get more details. Once again, I am shocked to find that this story isn't even the headline on their website.

I just have to wonder how much bigger this story would have been if some "terrorist" had decided to blow up the plane rather than whatever stupid mistake happened resulting in the plane taking off on the wrong runway. Would the bombing had made air travel any less safe than this tragedy? Just another example of how retarded the news industry has become. Hopefully the Homeland Security people will effect an immediate ban on short runways to prevent this tragedy from ever happening again. Might as well bulldoze a bunch of houses and make them all 10 miles long...can't be too "safe".

wireless is easy?

2006-08-23T14:22:00.001-04:00

Just received a used Dell laptop as my official work laptop since I was too impatient to wait my turn to get a new one. The official specs are Dell Latitude D610 with a high resolution (1400x1050) screen and built-in wireless. There are a few issues running the latest version of Ubuntu (LTS) on it. First of all, the display does not work at full resolution for the built-in monitor, or for my external monitor at work. The best I can do at the moment is 1280x1024. The second issue is the wireless card does not work out-of-the-box. Since a network connection is far more important than fixing fuzzy fonts, I set out to get wireless working first. Here is what I found...

Step 1:

Determine what kind of wireless device you have built into your sytem. The easiest way to do this is look at the output of the command "lspci" and search for something wireless-ish. On my system, I have the following line:

0000:03:03.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)

Step 2:

Search google for detailed instructions from someone else who has already got this device working :)

A simple search directed me to this HOWTO with some very useful information:

http://bcm43xx.berlios.de/?go=Home
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/bcm43xx/Dapper

Step 3:

It appears that the Broadcom chip is already supported in the latest linux kernel provided by Ubuntu. However, the firmware is proprietary and cant be distributed. Therefore, you have to install a package called "bcm43xx-fwcutter" and manually download the firmware. Once you do that, simply run the extraction tool:

sudo bcm43xx-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware <downloaded file>

and reboot. Suddenly your wireless card is automatically working :)

Step 4:

Get a nice network connection tool like NetworkManager installed so that you can automagically switch between wireless and wired connections when appropriate.

sudo apt-get install network-manager-gnome

phily

2006-08-16T22:07:00.000-04:00

Parents came, they saw and they left. The pic you see pretty much sums up my visit to this city...minus the sewage smell that meandered among the city streets.

Had a good time overall. My hosts were gracious and accomodating. My only real complaint is the horrible design of the turnpike systems. Has noone ever considered adding a turnaround area ever few miles? How about ever 5 miles?

Terrorization

2006-08-10T14:15:00.000-04:00

How much longer will it take for people to realize that the real "Terrorists" in this world are news organizations and government officials who over-hype and sensationalize every issue they can get their hands on? I'm not belittling the efforts of those who seek to inflict harm upon others, but when you stop and think about it, there has been more damage resulting from irrational and unprofessional behavior by news organizations than there ever was from real destruction of life and property (I have no solid proof of this...just speculation :P). It might be nice if these organizations invested minimal effort to become less the tools of the criminally insane and more the purveyors of logic and reason. Is there no money to be made in reporting facts?

While I am on the subject, why are Christians so afraid of dying?

Who needs electricity?

2006-08-08T11:54:00.000-04:00

Another month, another night without power. That makes 3 for the summer now. With the last storm, I could understand because it brought ferocious winds that knocked down a number of trees in my neighborhood. However, the storm last night was highly localized to the extent that the other side of my street never lost power at all and it didnt rain at APL, as evidenced by the brown cracked dirt and yellow grass. Given that there were no widespread power outages, why did it take BGE until 6:30 a.m. to restore power to my apartment? This is a reminder to myself to go buy some girly candles so I have enough light to read the next time this happens.

Long Time No Post

2006-08-07T14:19:00.000-04:00

Its been a busy few weeks! But on my flight home from Vancouver I ran across an intereting little brain-teaser I thought I would share. Suppose a man with two children tells you one of them is a boy. Given that the probability of a child being either male or female is equal (50%), what is the probability that the other child is a boy? The answer is so easy it hurt my brain...

Making Pretty Pictures

2006-06-02T15:25:00.000-04:00

I was recently faced with the problem of converting a single-page PDF document into a nice high resolution image. Now I'm sure some company out there has created a fancy expensive tool to do this quickly and easily. However, I am not the type to spend money on such tools. Also, I was doing this at work on my Linux box, and chances are most software wont work on this platform. The question is, are there any tools available for Linux to easily accomplish this? Turns out not surprisingly the answer is yes. The ghostcript tool GS is very well suited to accomplish this task. Just give it the resolution, input file, output file and output type and you get an image with no hastles.

gs -r300 -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=jpeg -sOutputFile=moo.jpg moo.ps

I created a nice ruby script to gather the relavant options and run GS for me:

# Need to create commands like this:
#
# gs -r300 -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=jpeg
# -sOutputFile=arp-activity-per-20-minute-interval.jpg
# arp-activity-per-20-minute-interval.ps

if ARGV.length < 3
puts "Usage: ruby imageconvert.rb <input> <output> <output format> <dpi>"
exit
end

# Get the command line arguements we need
input = ARGV[0]
output = ARGV[1]
format = ARGV[2]
dpi = ARGV[3]

if (!dpi)
dpi = 100
end

puts "Input file: #{input}"
puts "Output file: #{output}"
puts "Output format: #{format}"

puts "Running: gs -r#{dpi} -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=#{format} -sOutputFile=#{output} #{input}"
system "gs -r#{dpi} -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=#{format} -sOutputFile=#{output} #{input}"

Vacation Time!

2006-05-25T13:37:00.000-04:00

There is no better place to spend your valuable vacation time than at a car dealership waiting 3 1/2 hours for the maintenance guy to tell you he cant reproduce your problem. I should have known this would hapend, but I figured they would just ignore my complaint and send me on my merry way after completing the oil change. At least they updated my car's computer software...how long could that have taken...5 minutes?

In any case, I will be on a real 4 day vacation with my sisters in town starting tomorrow, so hopefully I will find a way to make better use of my time :)

The Carpet Guy

2006-05-18T11:17:00.000-04:00

I made an appointment to get my carpet cleaned last night. The rude secretary told me that a time slot was available the next day...sweet! So I scheduled an appointment for 8-10 this morning. At around 9:55 I was starting to get impatient as you can imagine. Of course just as I was about ready to leave for work the doorbell rings and hes ready to get busy. I always love burning 4 hours of vacation time because of someones incompetence. At least he seemed knowledgable, could speak english, and did a good job with the carpet. Hopefully Ms. Peanut will be a bit more forgiving on it this time. Its supposed to be off white, not yellow!

Post Horsey Mortem

2006-05-11T23:53:00.000-04:00

Well my fears of sore legs after the horse riding excursion did not come to fruition. However, there was another sort of pain during the ride but I'll spare you the details. Needless to say, the greatest impediment to me running well in my race the next morning at 8:30 was the lack of sleep and the number of beers I had the night before.

Race Details

In any case, the race was by far the largest I have ever been involved in. The organizers said there were approximately 6000 run/walkers and I have no doubt that this was true. It was truly inspiring to be able to pass so many people at the start of the race. What is better motivation than racing a bunch of slow walking people? Anyways, here are my results...about what I expected.

235 35/103 1992 Rodney Jokerst 26 27:24 24:30 7:54

Now I just need to find one more race to run at the end of the summer...inspiration to keep myself in shape and just enough time to train to be my 24:30 time :)

Horsey

2006-05-03T23:07:00.000-04:00

I've been getting alot of feedback recently that my horseback riding expedition on Saturday is going to make my 5k race on Sunday miserable. Well, I am ready to take on this challenge. I think my ass is well suited to handling anything a horse might attempt to throw at it. Bring it on. Just be gentle on the other stuff down there.

Redhat 9 Sucks

2006-04-05T00:32:00.000-04:00

I spent the better part of 3 hours at work on Friday trying to figure out why my Perl script wasn't working. I had an arbitrary collection of binary data skimmed from the network that was perfectly coherent and viable when stored in a hashtable. However, as soon as I decide to write this data to a file, random garbage was interspersed with real data, resulting in a file on disk that was much larger than the file in memory, in addition to it being total garbage. Since my work is on an isolated system, I cant post details of what I was seeing. Nevertheless, it was a very perplexing problem. Perplexing that is until I remembered having a similar problem a number of years ago with Perl on a Redhat 9 system...back when Redhat 9 was relatively new and still in favor with me.

After several futile google searches to narrow down the problem, I decided to try the solution that I remembered from my prior disastrous experiences...open the file in binary mode. Even though the documentation explicitly says that this is only necessary on broken operating systems like Microsoft Windows, this simple modification made my script work flawlessly. I am not in the mood to run this issue into the ground much further since I don't use Redhat products by choice anymore and this work project is nearing its completion. However, I did find out what the culprit most likely was.

At some point around the release of Redhat 9, Perl was going through its transition to Unicode support. Apparently, parts of the system were not completely functional for the Redhat 9 Perl release. In particular, it seems that the print function was converting my binary data to Unicode before writing it to the file, translating certain bytes to the extended form. This would explain why I had extra data in my file on disk. Doesn't make me any happier though :(

Divorcing Religion

2006-03-29T00:25:00.000-05:00

Ran across an interesting article that led me to this website:

http://www.barna.org

Apparently, these crazy folks have been doing alot of research on the religious affiliation of divorcees and some of the results are kinda sorta surprising. In particular those born-again crazies that always claim moral superiority have, at best, the exact same divorce rate (~35%) as most other religions including atheists. That's right...even the fear of Jesus Christ can't scare these people into suffering through the brutalities of a bad marriage. Interestingly, catholics had one of the lowest rates at 25%. I guess my former life as a catholic might be worth something afterall.

This blog sucks

2006-03-23T00:12:00.000-05:00

I don't understand why this blog doesnt let me have the ability to tag my entries. Isnt the whole point of a blog that you can add interesting metadata tags to your entries so that they can be easily searched? Oh well, I am too tired at the moment to set up my own blogging software on my home server, so I will have to live with this for now :P

In the mean time, I need to go back through my past posts and make them a bit more interesting...maybe add a few pictures or something?

Of course, if all of my freaking pictures are still on my old dead harddrive, how the hell am I supposed to do that? I need to work on being a better geek. Anyways, here is a picture from my last trip to the land of guys with big thingies...

No more tuesdays

2006-03-21T00:48:00.000-05:00

Well, today was my last day of Tuesday volleyball for a while. I've decided to just play one night per week in leagues to leave room for free play with the club at work. With all the extra money I save, I'll surely be able to retire in my 40's.

My first Ruby

2006-02-28T18:57:00.000-05:00

Well, I have been playing with Ruby for a few days now. I finally found something at work that I could legitimately use it for, so I had to give it a shot. To demonstrate its power, here is the code for a web server. Now, I don't have to install one each time someone wants to download a file from me since GAIM's file transfer mode seems to be broken. Anyways, try and you will like...GUARANTEED!


require 'webrick'
include WEBrick

if ARGV.length == 1
        s = HTTPServer.new(:Port => ARGV[0], :DocumentRoot => Dir::pwd)
        trap ("INT", proc{s.shutdown})
        s.start
else
        puts "Usage: ruby webserver.rb port"
end

For some reason, alot of the sources I found online didnt mention calling the proc function with the shutdown block. Without this, I was getting a segfault in the Ruby shipped with Ubuntu 5.10. Go figure. Maybe some day I'll be knowledgable enough to track down whats going on?

Typical Saturday

2006-02-25T18:49:00.000-05:00

It's kind of sad when you have to cheer against athletes from your own country because they make total asses of themselves. Sometimes I'm not so proud to be an american.

In other news, we finally had our whole team together today...at least most of it. Too bad I didn't play very well. Gonna have to practice a little harder.

against the law

2006-02-22T18:51:00.000-05:00

Here is your fun fact of the day...apparently this guy named Frank Benford noticed one day that the number 1 appears much more often than you might expect as the first digit in any numbers you are likely to encounter in daily life. Given some random numbers, you might think 1 out of every 10 would have the number 1 as the first digit...not so says Mr. Benford. In fact, if you look at things like census data, news papers, and even the Dow Jones daily average, the number 1 appears about 30% of the time as the first digit. A formal mathematical version of Benford's findings exists in the form of Benford's law, and is often used in statistical analysis to find cheaters and such. So, the next time you plan on cheating on your taxes, which is probably quite soon I would imagine, make sure you familiarize yourself with Dr. Benford or you might have the IRS kicking your ass.

absentia

2006-02-21T18:51:00.000-05:00

Ugh...

Spent the last two and a half days of work moving stuff from one floor to another in my building at work. What does this involve you ask? Well, since these are special areas, the movers arent allowed to help us move much of anything other than furniture. This means I have to disconnect all of the computers (about 40), move them, and set them up in the new labs. Ok...not too difficult. The fun starts when you realize that the new labs are half the size of the old labs. After rearranging the furniture layout, compressing everything, and smashing my fingers a few times, everything is pretty much in order. Now, I just have to wait for stuff out of my control to happen so we can actually get some network access. Funny how dependent I am on the internet these days. Time to pray for another lab-wide power outage to give me a little R&R...

Snow RoX

2006-02-12T00:25:00.000-05:00

Well, seems I have been negligent in my weather geekiness. Unforgivably so. After, or some might say in the midst of one of the worst winters in recent memory, we get a surprise snow storm that dumps more snow in my back yard than anywhere else on the east coast...with the exception of central park in NYC. How much snow do you ask? 21" measured by me personally and a whole bunch of other people around the Columbia area.

Not only was the snow abundant, but it came down incredibly quickly. The storm lasted approximately 12 hours, meaning we averaged almost 2" per hour during that time. At approximately 2 a.m. I was driving home during the height of the storm (dont ask me why) and I saw numerous flashes of lightning. My first experience with a true thundersnow storm was memorable indeed. Can't wait for number two...could it be next year?

give and you shall receive

2006-02-09T18:52:00.000-05:00

Learned something interesting today. If you start off a phonecall with a question to engage your audience, you are twice as likely to make a sale. If you give someone something, they are twice as likely to reciprocate when you ask for something in return. If I can somehow combine these two techniques, I will quadrouple my chance of convincing people to do things they wouldnt normally do. Now I just need to go read The Art of Deception...and figure out what I want to get...:P

insecurity

2006-02-08T18:53:00.000-05:00

OK...so I am attending this conference at work on computer security...and of course parts of it are supposed to be secure. Basically, I hand over my drivers license, they look up my name on a piece of paper, and give me a little badge to wear.

So lets see...whats on this badge...a little printout of my name and company. On top of that, they put a little circle shaped sticker that is the color of the day. This sticker is supposed to signify that I have special clearance to attend the sessions.

Lets pretend I am not really Rodney, but instead Odney from some evil place and that I want to attend this gathering. I can walk in, look at somebody's badge, pretend I forgot something like my license in my car, go to Walmart, buy $2 worth of supplies, and have a badge ready to go in 5 minutes.

What is the point of all of this security if the people responsible for making things secure cant even run a conference right?

oh the pain

2006-02-07T18:53:00.000-05:00

No posts in a whole week...whats the world coming to? Well in the past week, my football team lost (boo pittsburgh), my vball teams lost in a devastating fashion, and I am STILL sore from football practice on Saturday. Did I mention that football practice was fun, even though it was cloudy, rainy, and only half the team shoed up? Did I permanetnly damage myself? I dont know but I have to play volleyball tonight on legs that can barely stand up so wish me luck. Aside from that, things are good here :)

tgit

2006-01-31T18:54:00.000-05:00

Busy day today...work followed by happy hour, volleyball and my usual evening time-wasting activities. I dont know what I did to my shoulder @ vball but it hurts like crazy when I raise OR lower it :(

What is it about online relationships that makes people think they can treat others like crap? I'm sure my experieces are not among the worst out there, but sometimes you just gotta wonder whats going through a person's head. Like the great prophet Chapelle says, keep it real folks...

free the sunday

2006-01-30T18:55:00.000-05:00

Just in time for superbowl sunday, I am finally finished with my last Sunday night volleyball league match. It was a sad way to end the season going down in flames in the first round of the playoffs, but all is not lost! I now have time to make the most of my Sundays without fear of interruption. I was tired of skipping dinner plans and cutting short afternoon activities for something I could do any other day of the week. Now, I can do more than just french toast at Forest Diner and Starbucks at B&N...yippie skippy.

Unfortunately, I just found out today that I do have a match on valentines day...WTF? I think I might have to miss that one...assuming I can find something better to do :P

laziness

2006-01-29T18:55:00.000-05:00

Apparently in the past few weeks I have gotten more lazy with respect to posting entries here. I'm not exactly sure why that is...but I would like to propose a few reasons:

1. My fingers have a severe form of arthritis and I cant type fast anymore
2. I have been too busy playing World of Warcraft to make time for living my life
3. My dog ate my computer
4. I forgot my password
5. Nothing interesting has happened to me in the past week
6. I have been too busy saving the world from a secret alien power beyond your comprehension
7. My ninja training kept me "tied up"
8. My extra curricular activities kept me "tied up"
9. I had bird flu
10. I really did write interesting and thoughtful posts, but MySpace lost them somehow

I submit that one of the above is the true reason...see if you can guess which one!

Come to my superbowl party...the power of Christ compells you!

more mindless banter

2006-01-23T18:56:00.000-05:00

Just once simple observation today...

It seems to me that the more time you spend thinking about something, the more likely it is that something else will come along to distract you or the world around you in such a way that all that mental energy becomes just another waste of time...entropy in the void to keep the universe happy and balanced.

Of course, as the odds decrease the potential winnings increase so whose in for another round?

Snow Day?

2006-01-18T18:49:00.000-05:00

Thank you BGE for screwing up big time. I am off work today because of their incompetence. Apparently, the entire lab lacks electricity and it will not be back on until tomorrow at least. Since all I do is sit in front of a computer all day, I guess I can't do any work?

In the mean time, I be playing with some customization of my space. Apparently, you can add any HTML/CSS stuff you want into a particular information area. This is very useful for people who want a slick/slippery background or who knows what. Been a long time since I played with this stuff, so I have some catching up to do fur sure.

TV B Gone

2006-01-17T18:47:00.000-05:00

So, I'm browsing my regular list of news sites today and I come across this one: Story

Apparently, some Italian researcher has found that people who have a TV in their bedroom have half as much sex as those that don't. If this isn't a good reason to stop watching TV so much, I don't know what is. I currently DO have a TV in my bedroom. Maybe its time to put it back in the computer room?

You might be expecting my own personal commentary on my experiences with this issue, but I'll defer that to another day :P

Return to Sender

2006-01-15T18:46:00.000-05:00

Well, so far feedback on this blog is "your blog is really boring". Doh...I guess that is telling since this is supposed to be about the most interesting stuff that happens to me during the day...at least that I can write about in a public forum. Anyways...I know im boring and I thats OK :P

So, a few days after I came back from my week long trip home for the holidays, my wonderful mommy decides to mail me my Christmas gifts...the ones that I couldnt fit in my carry on bag for the flight. OK...I should get these packages a few days later, right? Well one arrives 3 days later...the other has not arrived yet...more than 2 weeks after it was sent. Apparently the Postal Service will just decide to keep your packages at their facility without telling you. They deliver my mail every day. Would it be so hard for them to give me a little piece of paper saying they have it? Why do they even have it? They delivered the other package...we paid them to deliver this package...what is their motivation to keep it in storage? Last I checked, storage space costs alot of money. Your tax dollars at work for me!

Random thoughts

2006-01-13T18:46:00.000-05:00

Do you ever get that weird feeling that you have something to say, but you don't have any idea what that might be? Well, thats how I feel right now. That probably means this will be one long paragraph of random gibberish, but who knows. Extra free time gives you an excuse to evaluate things...yourself, others and the world you have created for yourself. Of course, there seems to be a natural tendency to repel this free time, as if it is a curse or disease. The random bits of enlightenment uncovered by thorough evaluation can be unpleasant. Who wants to figure out that they hate their closest friends, themselves, or something worse? What scraps of the past are creeping in the shadows of an unfettered mind? Best not put in the effort to make such discoveries. I'm off to find something to keep me occupied :P

A Cat

2006-01-10T18:42:00.000-05:00

There is a stray cat living in the parking lot. Every day that I take Peanut for a walk, we see it lurking in dark places. Of course, curiousity is one of Peanut's strong points, so she is always interested in helping the cat out of its temporary hard times with a little "friendly" play. Of course I can never let Peanut near the cat because it will certainly tear her to pieces, being her equal in size and certainly possessing the lions share of "street smarts". The cat meanwhile is perched, vulnerable, waiting for the right moment. Sometimes on the hood of a freshly driven car, absorbing the engines warmth. Other times on the edge of the storm drain, prepared to disappear into its underground comfort at any moment. What is the point of all of this you say? I don't really know. I can't decide whether I should be inspired by or feel sorry for the cat.

By the way, LastFM is freakin awesome. Web2.0 will change the world.

hmm

2006-01-09T18:41:00.000-05:00

Well, today was a boring day. Traffic was really shitty too! I did find one interesting thing to read about though (thank you Wikipedia selected article of the day). Its called the omnipotence paradox. Basically, the question is how can an omipotent god exist and how can he be omnipotent yet still fit into the logical framework of the universe. God might just decide one day to make a bowl of icecream so big that he can't eat all of it...but that would mean he's not omnipotent...but if he can't make one that big, that would also mean he's not omnipotent. Therefore, he cannot exist. I guess this is just fun play with words, but it has some interesting implications.

First, any omnipotent being can only exist outside of a logical framework to avoid paradoxical situations. Second, this being has no way of explaining its own existence. Third, understanding this inherently illogical being would be very difficult, if not impossible. Oh well, such is life.

Congratulations! You've Been Selected! Free 42" Plasma TV

2006-01-08T18:40:00.000-05:00

Nothing makes me more upset than when people shrug off their own bad habbits, blaming fate or inevitability for the future consequences of their actions. My mom thinks that this behavior is somehow associated with peoples religious beliefs. I cant believe that either because I know that these people are, or at least claim to be christians. Christianity teaches that people ARE responsible for their actions, otherwise, there wouuld be no point in appealing to a god. Do these people even pay attention when they go to their church? In fact, I know of no religion that teaches complete apathy...how can someone function in complete denial?

Im worried about a friend...he feels responsible for a bad accident and he just cant seem to deal. His girlfriend of 14 years just left him and hes turned to the bottle...dunno what to do :(

what to do

2006-01-07T18:38:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm trying to find an online music store that meets my unusual personal needs. First of all, I want to be able to download music that plays in Linux and isnt "protected" by horrible Digital Rights Management. Second, I dont want to pay to much for the service because I probably wont be using it THAT much. Third, I want to be able to get files that I own, not ones that disappear when I stop using the service. It seems that most of the services out there use either Apples AAC encoding or Micro$oft's DRM protected WMP format. Its well known that the free format Ogg Vorbis kicks the other encodings butts, but its hard to find a player that supports the format, and you cant buy files encoded that way anywhere :(

I did find a russian site Allofmp3 that lets you download mp3's for just $0.02 per MB (thats about $0.10 per song!). I have heard good things about the service. The only question is, is it REALLY legal and do they pay the artists like they are supposed to? For now, all attempts by the music industry to shut it down have failed. Perhaps this is my best alternative?

Go Fetch

2006-01-05T18:35:00.000-05:00

People say dogs live good lives...at least the ones that are treated properly. But I think they have earned that honor because they give as much or more than they get in other ways. So before you wish you had your dogs life, remember how much effort it would take for you to be happy and cheerful all day every day.

A day like any other...

2006-01-04T18:33:00.000-05:00

What is going on with my peeps at work? Everyone seems to be dropping like flies. I hope things improve soon...I'm not a big fan of unpaid overtime!

Been having some discussions with a friend about an interesting sleep schedule...basically you sleep for about 30 minutes every 4 hours. Your body aclimates to it eventually so that you reach REM sleep almost immediately. Using this sleep pattern, you can sleep ~3 hours per day and be very well rested...the only question is, how do you get away with this at work, and what do you do with all of your free time. I dont think I'm in a position to try it at this time, but its interesting to think about.

Many more interesting life optimization ideas at Lifehack

Happy New Year!

2006-01-03T18:31:00.000-05:00

So, my belated new years resolution is to read a few books this year. This follows a complete failure to do so last year. Reading the first 50 pages of 10 books doesnt count. Started an online calendar because I keep forgetting stuff like birthdays. Maybe I can become a more considerate person? And wheres my freakin snow? Ugh.