A man out of society. Lost in his own world.
It’s time for one of those long chatty posts about goings on at Chez Geek, where obstacles are overcome (and reestablished), perfectly working solutions are broken, and equipment is flung about.
Today’s challenges – getting yawl to play with the other machines nicely.
Continue reading “Roadblocks Overcome – Samba, LDAP, iTunes and Authentication”
One of the things I love dearly about Radio Paradise is the constant exposure to music I would never have found under other circumstances.
A couple times I’ve heard tracks from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and sometimes they’ve hit pretty hard, but the one that got me today is the track “There She Goes My Beautiful World”. It came up on rotation on my laptop while coding, and I had to pause to listen… which naturally made me look around for the lyrics (it’s a long song and doesn’t suffer from the common “there’s really only 3 verses in this song, we’ll just yammer them over and over again” beat so prevalent in modern music.
I decided to do a little googling, and found the lyrics on songmeanings.net (a little heavy on the ads, but some remarkably good commentary from listeners). The song is about someone longing for their muse – their inspiration and their drive to share, express, and excel, coupled with release and need.
Interested? Video and lyrics after the cut… I recommend headphones. Cave is an expressive and intense presenter, though no one would call his vocals beautifully melodic. The arrangement on this track, with the backing singers, is wonderful…
Continue reading “Nick Cave – There She Goes My Beautiful World”
As shared with me by some friends tonight.
See IronicSans.com for the full dirt.
452 points, so you achieved position 347 of 82048 on the ranking list
You type 562 characters per minute
You have 106 correct words and
you have 0 wrong words
I ran it through twice, improving the second time (from 95 up to 106). It takes a full minute of fast typing to make it work, and I feel silly chalking off my day in one minute increments just to get a higher ranking 🙂
The silly little “past this code!” thing is:
106 words
I do a lot of work on MySQL as part of the CONGO project (oh, and incidentally, as part of my full time job), so I was somewhat stymied when, after my upgrade to Snow Leopard (aka OSX 10.6.0), I was unable to start my local MySQL server – I’d get this:
yacht:~ dbs$ sudo /Library/StartupItems/MySQLCOM/MySQLCOM start Password: Could not find MySQL startup script!
It turns out that as part of the MySQL upgrade, the path to the MySQL installation changed (or a symlink was removed, or something to that effect) – at any rate, /usr/local/mysql no longer existed.
Easy enough to fix, just put a symlink in:
yacht:~ dbs$ cd /usr/local yacht:local dbs$ ls -ldt mysql* drwxr-xr-x 17 root wheel 578 Sep 1 00:31 mysql-5.1.37-osx10.5-x86_64 yacht:local dbs$ sudo ln -s mysql-5.1.37-osx10.5-x86_64/ mysql yacht:local dbs$ ls -ldt mysql* lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 28 Sep 2 12:52 mysql -> mysql-5.1.37-osx10.5-x86_64/ drwxr-xr-x 17 root wheel 578 Sep 1 00:31 mysql-5.1.37-osx10.5-x86_64
After making the symlink, the startup script ran just fine:
yacht:local dbs$ cd /Library/StartupItems/MySQLCOM/ yacht:MySQLCOM dbs$ sudo ./MySQLCOM start Starting MySQL database server yacht:MySQLCOM dbs$ _
I share this to ya’ll for the betterment of geek-kind. 🙂
I think Lovely Listings is my new favorite blog. Someone is collecting awful pictures from real estate listings and posting them, with great commentary.
Chalk out an hour to get caught up. There’s some doozies in there.
Updated to fix broken URL. Sorry!
There’s an amazingly good post over on Slashdot that points out this article on TechCrunch regarding Apple’s rejection continuing review of the Google Voice application. The TechCrunch article does a good job summing up my reaction to Apple’s response to the FCC.
I feel that Apple has stumbled badly here, and is facing a public relations nightmare. Google is widely… well, if not adored, certainly respected (perhaps not by Steve Ballmer of Microsoft) – and while there may be legitimate reasons to be concerned over Google’s continued growth in the industry, making flat out lies about Google Voice (a product that’s getting enormous amount of attention) isn’t going to win Apple any points.
Aww, what the hey. Here’s my icon from MadMenYourself.com. Whadya think, accurate? My mom spent a long time fiddling with it to get it ‘just right’.
As I continue my migration to my new Mac, I need to figure out how to fill in the holes for tools I’m used to having under Linux. At the moment, I need a tool to edit pictures.
iPhoto seems to be pretty capable for cataloging and uploading, but I’ll need photo editing. My default tool is Gimp, but I’m wondering what I should be using on the mac. I’m trying to avoid dumping hundreds of bucks into things like Photoshop (particularly when I feel Gimp is as capable as Photoshop). But is there a tool I should be looking at before I install Gimp?
I include the photo above as an example of spiffy pics I’m taking that I need to do minor editing on (this one needs to be rotated about 10 degrees).
Suggestions?
I’ve blogged before about being tempted by Macs, and in some ways my iPhone could be considered something of a ‘first taste’ of Apple products. But until now I’ve fought hard against really going whole hog into the Mac world.
Until now.
I’m the proud owner of what can arguably be called Apple’s top of the line laptop – a Macbook Pro 13.
This is a huge step for me. I am not only investing a significant amount of money into a small device that could easily be considered a ‘toy’, but I’m changing over to an environment I only have a passing familiarity with – OSX.
I’ve owned it for about 24 hours, and I will say – I’ve never worked with a sexier implementation of high end computing in my life. This is by far the fastest computer I’ve ever owned, let alone as my personal workstation, but with all it’s screaming horsepower, it is beautifully designed, with an operating system and environment I find… different, but not irritating. There are things I don’t know how to do, but I’m figuring them out. I have not had a single “oh that’s just plain idiotic” moment. I’m sure they’ll come, but so far it’s just been a series of “Hmm, that’s interesting… what if I… ah, that did it. Cool.” moments.
I’m still installing things, and still setting up my tools. This machine will be my life and blood for the next 3 years, so there’s a lot of work to do to bring it into full functionality. So far I have mail and chat and web stuff working fine, next will be my development environment. After that, virtual machines for running some of the business apps I’ll be using.
A particular thanks to all the people I talked to while making this decision. There was a lot of fantastic feedback and good commentary. It helped me affirm that I’m making the right decision.
Now, off to download Eclipse and get things set up so I can work on CONGO !
As is common on one of those ‘weekends in Cohousing‘, there’s rarely a lot of ‘sitting around, relaxing, and being bored.’ Yesterday started out fairly domestic, with a Metric Buttload of mowing. The grass and weed around here are growing like… well… like weeds. High humidity, warm temperatures, and a lot of rain will certainly do that. Right now we’re at the “need to mow every 2 weeks” stage. Thank goodness for electric pushmowers and simple garden tractors.
Cat and I got about half the property mowed – with me planning on attacking the field today (though the weather looks like it might not cooperate). Right now I’m wishing for a decent battery powered mower. One of my fellow cohousers managed to cut through the power cord already. A simple repair, but managing the cord is certainly tedious.
But we’re not through yet! Under the backdrop of Zach being sick (he’s been running a low grade fever for 3-4 days – we’re taking him to the doctor this morning), Beth and Tim convinced me to go on a bikeride.
Now, I have NOT been keeping up with my riding this summer. Small jaunts on the Giant bike around the site and up the road a bit, but almost no long distance rides on the Haluzak ‘bent. My brother in law had done a full tuneup on it recently, so it was ready to go, I just hadn’t taken the time to get out there. The other factor was I wanted to test a route to work – with the goal of occasionally bikeriding into work. Google Maps gave a decent route that totalled 14 miles each way. Workable.
So we rode it.
In retrospect, it might have been a bad idea to attempt a 40+ mile ride on the first day out. I ended up NOT making the entire ride – clocking out at 22 miles, and asking for a rescue from Cat. She and Steph and all the kids met the 3 bikers at Kimball Farm for ice cream and dinner, and I opted to ride back home in the car rather than bike it. I was wiped out.
Still, I’m pretty happy with doing 22 miles without completely disintegrating. The route was fantastic, with only 2 Killah hills (one of which I hiked up). The jaunt from my office to Kimball Farm is very simple (about 3 miles), though was probably the ugliest of the ride (riding along Littleton Road is not particularly fun, but it was the shortest of the legs).
Particular thanks to Beth for motivating me to get off my duff and hit the road. Both she and Tim were really supportive when I was flagging. I drank gallons of water, ate some tasty ice cream at Kimballs, and slept like the dead last night.
Oh, the title? Well, Kimballs was PACKED. But they had a lot of activities going on as well. As soon as Zach and I sat down while folks were getting food, I glanced over, and LO, this woman had a ringtailed lemur on her shoulder! She was part of an animal show going on, and was very friendly, but it was certainly not what I expected to see. In addition, there was a balloon set up in the next field over giving rides. Not a hot air type – the gas bag is sealed, and it was well tethered to the ground – it certainly had a steampunk look. It was quite surreal seeing it appearing over the tree line during dinner.
All in all, quite a day. Today we have a doctors appointment, and if the weather holds out, I’ll haul the tractor out into the playing field to get that cut.
Well nuts. I was all set to write up a Geo Defense review, but gosh darn it if the game doesn’t keep FREAKING OUT ON ME
It’s your standard ‘creeps trying to get to the end, build the towers to stop them, yaddayada”, but with a nice twist of having a retro 80’s look to it (glowing lines, mechanical computer voice, etc).
However, at least once a game, it goes bananas. Stuff flies all over the screen, your defenses stop working, and the game becomes unresponsive. It sorts itself out in about 30 seconds, but by then I’ve probably lost the level. I’m beginning to suspect that this may be heat related, as I’ve seen an occasional twitch in other games as well, generally after I’ve been playing for a while, and cupping the phone in my hand certainly gets it warm. Hmmm.
If these bugs gets fixed, I’m all over the game. But right now I have to say “hold off until an update.”
Edited 8/2/2009
Generally I don’t post “my life” sorts of things on the blog, but it’s been quiet lately, so might as well chatter a moment.
Today was supposed to be part of a quiet weekend. Zach and Cat are up in Maine, and I have the house to myself. I figured I’d do a couple small projects, some gaming, some normal Cohousing socializing, and generally take it easy.
Today I:
* Dug a pair of holes where we’ll be putting up poles for clotheslines. I had some help, but boy digging through our rocky ‘soil’ ain’t easy. And the job isn’t done yet.
* Hauled out the weedwhacker and cleared grass from all around the hottub.
* Drove the pickup truck to the town transfer station to get a bedful of wood chips for the walkway to the hottub. Laid down cardboard and spread the chips out for the walk (thanks John and Kim for help!)
* Drove same said truck to Malden to buy and haul back a new couch for the common house living room (Thanks Kim and Stephanie for help!)
* Stopped by Arisia storage to dig out one of my badge printers so I can run badges for a convention I’m providing reg services for.
* Helped unload 3 truckloads of hay bales Beezy got for various horticultural projects around the community.
* Had a tasty dinner with John and Judy across the way (thanks guys!)
* Tested out the hottub to make sure it didn’t have sharks in it. (it didn’t). Ahhhh.
* Took a shower and now I’m relaxing.
Yikes. If this is a relaxing day, I’m worried what a busy day will be like.
I have to comment on the above picture. I grew up on a horse farm, and in horse and cow country. Driving, loading, and unloading truckloads of haybales were a fairly regular occurance. I certainly had some flash backs here, particularly since the truck in use there (not Mosaic’s truck, a different one), is probably circa 1978. Got to drive it a bit too. Was an automatic, but boy it had all the fixens of the old country, that’s for sure.
This morning we moved Homeport’s 3 servers, plus the blog host, over to their new home in Mosaic’s Common House. This is something of an experiment, as we’ll be seeing how well the Charter business cable handles hosted servers. So far so good.
The move went mostly okay, with a time overrun of about an hour and a half due to a mysterious firewall problem that we finally got resolved. All services are up and running now.
It’s nice to have immediate physical access to the boxes. I know I can go into the server room and make configuration changes, add new machines, whatever. The only real problem that has cropped up so far is noise. The 5 existing servers + network hardware makes a heck of a racket (though I suspect the Rackable server is making the lions share). We may have to do some sound remediation – I mean more than the blanket I nailed up over the door.
It seems like there’s a steady stream of games flowing into the Apple Appstore. Some are awful, some are obviously simple reskinning of existing games, but if you don’t mind sifting through the dross, you can find some true gems. “I Dig It” from InMotion Software is one of those gems.