Category: Geekitude

It’s ’80’s movies no one would ever watch’ week here!

I’m having fun sitting down and going through some of the “old bad” 80’s movies I have in the collection (about 400 titles right now), and I’m dusting off some of the oldies but goodies that it would take a true SF / Fantasy nut to sit down and purposefully put on the DVD or LD player to watch.
2 days ago when I was sick in bed, it was The Sword and the Sorcerer circa 1982, with Lee Horsley, the stud that he is, as the avenging warrior. Good stuff. Demons, big goofy swords, tons of palace guards to slice through, and a couple hottie peasant chicks and princesses. Mmm, good stuff.
Tonight, it was The Keep, Michael Mann’s 1983… err… SF? story about an imprisoned demon in a Romanian fortress. Apparently the book this movie is based on is outstanding, I’ll have to dig it up, but the movie is beautifully shot, and ranks up there in ‘my guilty 80’s movies pleasures’.
Aaand, what’s this? The Keep has some trailers at the end of the laserdisc. A trailer for The War of the Worlds (fantastic movie), and… Barbarella?!? Weird.

Palm toy recommendations?

So I’ve had my Kyocera 7135 palm phone for a month or so now, and I’m pretty well settled into it. Syncing with Evolution on my desktop is working perfectly, installing apps via Gpilot-Install-File (okay, not hte most intuitive or gui-yummy way to do it, but it works), and backing up via the Evolution conduits is all working grand.
I’ve installed my basic handful of apps, headed up by CodeJedi’s ShadowPlan (an application I an’t recommend highly enough. If you like to do project/task tracking via a hierarchial ‘todo’ list, with expand/collapse and organizational tools, this puppy is for your). Other important things are, of course, Bejeweled and the ever-addictive PictureLogic (a Nonogram game).
But what else should I be looking at? I haven’t been heavily immersed in the Palm world for a couple years, so what goodies have come along that I should take a look at? I’ll probably get a new Launcher at some point (though it appears there’s no longer a good free one).
(and has ANYONE gotten Kppp or pppd configured to work through the Kyocera to the 1xrtt network I’m connected to via Verizon? Can’t quite get the swing of it.)

Nifty little tool – X2X

I’m working at my desk int he office for the first time in a while, mostly because I need the open desk space, and need to build pu the new server for CONGO. Since I’ve been doing most of my work on my laptop, using a desktop machine again has been a little tricky, mostly because I have everything tuned ‘just so’ on the laptop.
What I wanted was a way to attach my laptop and my desktop screen together. I knew it was possible using X2VNC, but that required VNC on the target machine- something not yet possible with X (or actually, I think it may be working now, but reqiures some fiddling).
Enter X2X a little tool that simply forwards keyboard and mouse motions to a second X server. Now, with the mere command of ‘x2x -to 10.0.0.65:0 -west’, I can slide my mouse off my primary desktop onto my laptop screen, just to the left of me. X-Selections work, mouse motions are working, yay!
For those who want to try this, there’s a hidden trick. If you’re running GDM (which most folks do), it is configured to, by default, not allow remote TCP connections to the X server. Edit the file /etc/gdm/gdm.conf, and look for the line ‘DisallowTCP=true’. Change that to ‘DisallowTCP=false’ and restart gdm (cd /etc/init.d; ./gdm restart). After logging in, make sure you have external connections enabled (I used ‘xhost +’ but that’s fairly insecure. man xhost for details on allowing individual remote hosts)
Now all I need is a way to slide a full window from one screen to another. Ahhahahah!

Neato weather station thingy

At the MIT Swapfest a couple weeks ago, I chanced upon a GE Weather Station. This little toy has a wireless sensor you mount outside, and a display to sit on the shelf inside that displays inside/outside temperature, humidity, time, high/low temps since last reset, etc etc.
The best part of tihs is that I picked it up at the flea for a mere $9, rather than the $44 I see it online for. It’s sort of neat to note that this technology has gotten so common that it shows up in flea markets (new in packaging!) for basically pocket change.

XGameStation: Opensource gaming platform

As reported on Slashdot, the XGameStation is “the world’s first video game system development kit designed for education. The kit comes with an assembled XGameStation console, a controller, all necessary cables, a CD containing all system software and tools necessary to develop for the system, and of course, an extensive eBook that explains how the system was designed and how it works from the ground up.”
Dude. A gaming platform that doesn’t require a $20k investment in software and development tools just to write Breakout for it.
Hmmmm.

A very good coding night.

Wow, what a great coding session.
I’ve been continuously frustrated with the look and feel of the web client that goes with CONGO. The client is called “Coconut” (special thanks to Mister Privacy for coming up with that one), and has been slowly expanding into a system that lets you do all the functions that CONGO can do.
The problem? It was UGLY. I mean really ugly. I couldn’t use it for advertising, and even though it ran beautifully in text mode for use at events, it just wasn’t nice to look at.
I even got a poke in the side from a friend who said “Nice product, nice web site, but what’s it look like? There’s nothing for folks to see!”
Well gawrshdurnit she was right. So today and this evening I sat down and learned something that I’ve been avoiding, namely how to set up nice looking webpages using cascading stylesheets. My blog uses them extensively (course, I didn’t -write- my blog), and I’ve edited other folks’ code, so I had an idea what it was like, but it was still a challenge.
All you old HTML geeks. Remember learning all the tricks and tweaks to get a table element to line up right? That is -SO- 90’s now. Go CSS. This stuff rocks.
I worked out a design, built my new stylesheet, and converted all of the Coconut pages over to use them.
Check them out here, here, here, and here.
I actually feel like I can take these and put them on the business site, and NOT die of embarrassment at how ugly they are.
Go me 🙂

If you use LiveJournal, check out this feed.

I realize a large portion of the folks who read my blog are actually on Livejournal, reading via the syndicated feed.. That’s cool, that’s what it’s there for. But if you use LJ as your aggregator, you should ABSOLUTELY add the Boing Boing Blog syndicated feed.
Boingboing is one of the best blogs out there – I have it added to my feed list (the rough equivelent of a friends list) in Sage, and it always has something fascinating available.
Tidbits from today’s postings:
Bed Saferoom – A bed that folds up into a saferoom, able to stop bullets, etc.
A history of watches – a link to a pictorial review of geek watches through the ages.
Enjoy 🙂

Firefox silliness.

As folks are well aware, I’m a big fan of Firefox – to the point of being of the belief that there’s no reason not to run it, and zillions of reasons to run it.
At any rate, I was noodling around with the privacy settings, looking to clean out my cookies cache, when I noted the… interesting comment in the dialog for the definition of ‘Cookies’.
Those guys crack me up 🙂

GM puts out a full size hybrid pickup

There’s been a lot of noise about Ford finally putting out the first Hybrid SUV, the ‘Ford Escape’. I’ve looked at these, and to me they’re sort of toy SUV’s. THey have poor towing capacity, poor cargo capacity, and are basically just stretched up small station wagons. What’s the win?
Then I noticed that GM has a full size Hybrid pickup. This is going in a great direction – this is a full size V8-based pickup that has an electrical assist / hybrid system within it. It does the same thing the Prius does (shuts down the engine at full stops, uses the electric motor for startups, etc). This also coupled with a full towing package, no reduction in cargo capacity or seating (it has a full extended cab).
One of the coolest things is the electrical system provides a 120v 20amp set of outlets that are available fulltime. If you have a need for onsite power, this is enough juice to run a house in low-use conditions (water pump, lights, etc). On a full tank, in theory it’ll run for about 32 hours (and automatically turns itself off before it runs the tank dry, so when you need to go to the store to get more gas, you have a small reserve 🙂
The mileage still isn’t earthshattering. Empty, this truck will do 13-15mpg. With the Hybrid system, they’re talking 12% improvement in mileage, which only raises things to 14.5 – 16.8 mpg. Better, and worth it, but until trucks get over 25mpg with the ability to occasionally tow big loads and carry cargo, I’m not going to be doing any handstands.
On the gripping hand, if I continue with my current endeavors, I’m not commuting anywhere (since I work at home or at a nearby office), the only time I need to drive anywhere is to move equipment to a show, or to haul any of the various trailers / boats we do, or to do work on the house. One of the houses we’re looking at it < 15 minutes from Zach's school, which is a tolerable drive in the truck on a regular basis. For longer trips up to Maine, we still have the Golf, which gets 42+ MPG.
Or maybe I’m just trying to talk myself into a new toy. Nahhhhh.

The well equipped Golf

I have to say, I love my car.
It’s a 2003 Volkswagon Golf TDI that now has about 36,000 miles on it. Having a Turbodiesel engine that gets around 43 MPG during the last couple months with skyrocketing fuel prices, this has just been a big win all around. Diesel stayed below $1.80 a gallon.
Anyway, the problem has been moving the bicycles around. Zach and I do a lot of riding, and I wanted a way to haul my Haluzak recumbent as well as Zach’s bike around without needing to use the station wagon.
The Brother in law to the rescue! I now have a complete (if someone frankenstein-like) bike rack system that holds both bikes perfectly. We used this to bring the bikes up to Maine this past week, and gosh what a win.
So, this brings my total accoutrements to a new level of geekery in this car. Not only does it carry bikes up on the roof in style, but the internal electronics include GPS, Ham Radio, CB radio, and a pretty decent CD/Stereo system (though yea yea, it’s going into the shop this week to fix an antenna problem. OTHER than that!).

Mobile car-desk!

Okay, this thing is pretty neat. It’s a tubular frame for parking your laptop in the passenger seat of the car. It was reviewed on NewsForge, with a generally positive bent on it, but I have to admit it seems awfully expensive for a couple aluminum tubes and a plexiglass tray. On the other hand, it sure would be nice to be able to use my new real-battery-equipped laptop as my MP3 host while driving about.
Wonder if I can build my own? Hmmm.