Money pit

The Jeep is a money pit from which there is no escape. Need to take back this incorectly purchased O2 sensor. Jesse made a point that there is probably something wrong with the fuel pump. Neato, since on my model that requires removal of the entire gas tank.

Should just ditch the whole factory fuel system and go with a fuel cell setup. This just keeps spiraling into brokesville.

Automount nirvana?

I'm still having issues with mounting of storage devices automatically in Gentoo Linux. This was really easy in Ubuntu Linux.

Each distribution has things that I like about it. Ubuntu worked very well for many things, but there were some glaring deficiencies that forced me over to Gentoo for my main office workstation. Cheif among them was video encoding and editing package support. I need to deal with a lot of wierd video formats throughout my day, and Ubuntu for licensing reasons does not have support for many popular codecs. Gentoo is great for that, with a wealth of command line tools and codec packages that make my life much easier.

But when I just need to do some basic stuff like use a scanner, or automount a USB flash key or camera SD card, I have to drop into root and create a temporary mount point in Gentoo, copy the files to my home directory, chown them to my user account, then unmount the device. It's a major hastle, and takes away all the benifits of nautilus file browsing. I know that work continues on automounting support in Gentoo, but I have yet to find a cohesive guide on how to get it working like the Ubuntu system.

Nathan joins the blogosphere

Nathan D0v has started blogging. I'm glad to see him finally start posting his ideas since I know he has been living in the trenches as it were for many years in the IT game. I learned quite a bit working with him at SNL and have great respect for his abilities and writing skills.

Make sure to keep an eye on his blog. Still waiting to see what direction he is going to focus the blog, although from his first post it seems that he will be at least covering windows related IT news. Will report more once he starts filling out his blog.

Godzilla and times past

Still suffering from sleeplessness, and watching some old Godzilla movie on the SciFi channel. It really blows my mind how these actors can keep a straight face when there is no freaking monster there. They have to imagine what is in front of them and try to react to it. While you may think that this is a problem that is long past, in the bygone era of B monster movies, it's become a real issue again in modern times.

Especially with the SFX hungry megapictures, with almost entirely green screen photography to get the actors into large digital landscapes. Acting against something that isnt there is not natural, and most actors, even the good ones have a hard time of it. That's part of the reason I've felt that the Star Wars 1-3 movies were plauged by less than stellar acting. Often the characters have such blank faces. They dont have the awe and wonder that people in their situation might have. Also, their personal interactions feel stunted. Looking at the later episodes in star wars it felt much more real, even though the special effects generally sucked.

Back to Godzilla. I remember the very first time I saw a Godzilla movie. I was at my friend Archie's house and we were watching tapes. He happened to have a fairly decent collection of the Godzilla classics, probably obtained by his dad or mom. Great movies to start watching at a young age. Other random video store rentals from the time included the Critters movies. My friend Fabian's dad picked up the movies for us, and they were badass. Little space gremlins of sorts.

I wish I had seen Tremors back then. That whole series kicked ass, and I moderately enjoyed the TV show as well.

Got any other older movies I should check out?

Lamborghini Police Car

I know I probably didnt spell Lamborghini right, but this police car has a really cool color scheme. Would be cool to use it on a website. These cars have such interesting geometry that it's hard not to look at.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=aXv1DwT_O6M

Makes me want to go play some more Need for Speed: Most Wanted on the XBOX. I hate the cover logo they have on Wikipedia, but that's not their fault. The BMW? that the main character drives at the beginning and end is stupid. What is badass is the Porche and the Lamborghini Gallardo that are in the game. Those are truely amazing cars. The Aston Martin DB9 is also quite amazing.

Unpimp my ride

I remember this guy from Minority Report. He's in a fairly funny VW Commercial: Unpimp my ride.

Nash bridges sucks

Okay, if you havent realized by my increased post frequency tonight. I'm up late unable to sleep. I guess i'm excited, since I just moved the entire company over to a new e-mail server. Tomorrow morning is definately going to bring with it a lot of support calls with users needing to update their server settings and needing help doing so in their e-mail client of choice.

Back to the title of this post. Being without a TiVo, and adding insult to injury, only having my TiVo remote (which cant change channels on my TV), I am watching the dumbest show ever while listening to ads about Term Life insurance for seniors. Nash Bridges is a crappy crappy show, that utilizes a completely stupid soundtrack. A gunfight in the show was set to the same thing the US Navy is currently using for their recruitment campaign "Godsmack - I'm alive". Can you really tell me that the old folks who actually watch nash bridges are big Godsmack fans.

I sure as hell dont give a crap about the aging Miami Vice star, Don Johnson. Perhaps the only person in the show that I could give a crap about is Cheech Marin, but only out of respect for his past work in the comedy duo of Cheech and Chong. This show is almost as bad as Viper, but at least that show had younger acters, hotter girls, and a much nicer car.

Life SUCKS without a TiVo

If you've gotten used to having a TiVo, living without one can be a total nightmare. The TV is doing what it wants, and i cant pause anything. This is madness. The TV is rebelling and showing me all sorts of crap, including blatently untargeted advertising.

You know, at first I complained a little bit about the ads that your TiVo would display at the bottom of the main menu, but at least they seemed moderately appropriate, and even more importantly were unobtrusive. I definately checked out many of the movie trailers that it suggested. But now I realize how spoiled I was to be able to skip over the commercials of my favorite programs.

Why the hell should I give a crap about femine products, or microsoft windows advertisements. These ads are a waste of time for me. Why not show me ads for Linux powered embedded devices, internet music radio stations, or offroad components for my increasingly modified 1988 Jeep Cherokee. I dont mind ads, i just cant stand it when someone wastes my time with ads that are completely inappropriate.

Take for example, Pandora.com. It's an internet radio station that plays music based on your opinions of songs it suggests for you. On the right of the player you have a seperate screen which displays music advertisements. This is advertisement that I can deal with.

How about going back to my jeep hobby. Why not, while browsing Jeep websites, only show me ads for parts that will fit my jeep. Does it make any sense to be selling me toyota axles that wont fit on my vehicle?

V for Vendetta

Ebert had mixed feelings about a movie that I very much enjoyed. V for Vendetta, even for someone not familiar with the graphic novel from which it was loosely based, is a very entertaining film.

I enjoy movies where there is a price to be paid. In this movie the price of security was the almost total elimination of human rights. The extension of power to the extreme and the lack of transprency in government leads to the natural exploitation of power. The human condition is a flawed one. We are capable of so much good, and yet at the same time have evil in our hearts. This movie shows what happens when power is concentrated in the hands of a single individual.

The story takes place in London, year 2020. A virus has swept the world, leaving many of the world's superpowers in ruins. England, whose pharamacutical companies were lucky enough to have found a cure, managed to stem the flow of deaths after about 100,000 had perished. After this people frightened allowed a government of ever increasing power to take hold, giving up their basic human rights in the process. The dictator who came to power gradually shed any illusions of balanced governing as his power grew, and after twenty years had established complete and total control over the entire populace of england, eliminating those whom he considered undesirables. One man who was born out of the chaos that spawned the current state of affairs is a year away from completing his twenty year plot to overthrow the corrupt state, and this movie tells the story of that year.

If you enjoyed 1984 or "A brave new world," this is definately a movie to check out.

Trying out Dapper Drake on the laptop

Marco recently posted about his experiences with the yet unreleased Dapper Drake 6.04 version of Ubuntu Linux. He has a fairly high opinion of it, and coming from a laptop user that means a lot, since hardware support is generally far less mature for mobile platforms in GNU/Linux systems.

I will try out the new version on my laptop before I move my home workstation over. This laptop is a Dell Inspirion 1000, which is my favorite out of the entire inspirion line. Ultra basic, and very reliable.

For the marners and the chis'es

I present DJ SICK

Javascript user interface script timeouts

While working with Zimbra today on a fairly loaded machine, the user interface was timing out for me in Firefox. Basically every 5 seconds or so I would get a warning that said "this script is making firefox run slowly, press cancel to stop it".

Now, I have quite a few messages in my inbox, so I dont really fault Zimbra for taking more than a couple of seconds to deal with it, so I went looking for a way to disable this warning. I documented it in a Firefox Script timeouts wiki entry in the RoWiki

Ruby Introduction

D0v sent me an instant message earlier about a good Ruby tutorial. Going to check this out later.

http://www.poignantguide.net/ruby/chapter-1.html

Movie Review: Crocadile Hunter Collision Course

If you havent noticed already, I have been reviewing a lot of older movies. This is because I use Netflix to rent movies and there is a lot of stuff out there that I havent seen yet. generally I would prefer stuff more in the guy movie category, but the netflix list has descended from a democratically controlled partnership between two housemates to one of a dictatorship, so I get stuck watching girly movies/comedies. Thankfully it's mostly comedies.

Crocadile Hunter: Collision Course is a family movie staring Steve Irwin, who is well known worldwide as the Crocodile Hunter. I remember watching this guy for the first time on my dorm room TV when my roommate told me, "you have to see this guy, he's crazy." Admittedly much of the attraction of the show was waiting to see if a crocodile or snake would actually bite him, since he came damn close on his adventures. This generally did not happen, and I came to appreciate his love of animals and generally friendly nature. His wife, Teri (sp?) is cool as hell too. She's also not a girly girl, with some wicked huge arms and a fearless nature.

In Collision Course, Steve is just roaming about trying to help a crocodile in trouble, that is in danger of being killed by a local farmer who is trying to protect her cows. During this rescue he crosses paths with US intelligence agencies trying to retrieve a fallen satellite component, which coincidentally the croc steve is trying to save has swollowed. I dont consider this a plot spoiler because it happens in the first five minutes. It's definately a worthwhile rental, with tons of adult humor peppered in there that the kids will never notice.

The wounded knee

My knee was seriously being a pain in the ass this morning. I had scraped the hell out of it rollerblading earlier in the week, and while it hurt at times, it was generally fine. I woke up this morning in excruciating pain and noticed the bandage had fallen off my knee. I guess being exposed to the air caused the wound to dry out or something.

All I could think was, tylenol now. It helped eventually, but the 40 minutes or so it took to kick in was a nightmare. I am definately wearing knee pads when I go rollerblading now.

WTF, gmail chat disabled by who?

I got this wierd message in my GMail chat window today. What is the deal here?

Disney Airport Deal and the Magic Express

The Magic Express is a service by Disney World that lets people check their baggage at their home airport and have it directly delivered to their hotel rooms. No more irritating wait around the baggage cart to find your luggage. A shuttle shows up from Disney and takes you right to your destination.

Walt Disney world pays a certian amount to the airport for each person to facilitate the baggage transfer. The end result is that the tourist arrives happy and care free at their hotel, right smack in the middle of the Disney World universe. This has some people mad because Disney is already fairly good at keeping people inside their zone, much better than Universal or Sea World, since those parks are right in the middle of easily accessible areas.

Disney World on the other hand has all it's parks and hotels fairly deep inside their borders, with the exception of the partner hotels near Downtown Disney. Now, with things like the Magic Express, it's even less likely that a tourist would need to leave the property. Tough break for the limo and taxi drivers, but it's what the customer wants.

Link to the rojo page for the article

Direct downloading of Java files

Whatever idiot over at sun that thought their stupid direct downloading policy was a good idea, I hate you. Stopped a large compile process dead in it's tracks because of the stupid freaking Java download.

emerge (16 of 230) dev-java/java-sdk-docs-1.4.2 to /
!!! j2sdk-1_4_2-doc.zip not found in /usr/portage/distfiles

!!! dev-java/java-sdk-docs-1.4.2 has fetch restriction turned on.
!!! This probably means that this ebuild's files must be downloaded
!!! manually. See the comments in the ebuild for more information.

* Please download j2sdk-1_4_2-doc.zip from http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/download.html and move it to /usr/portage/distfiles

Random wireless links

got bored, and started looking up mesh networking stuff again.

Some links from SeattleWireless:

• MeshNetwork


• CommunityWirelessNetworks


• MIT Roofnet

Would be neet to make a roofnet for jeeps, so we could send data between vehicles, like webcam images and photo's, all on the fly.

Inkscape Tutorials

found some really cool Inkscape tutorials.
The Site is called Popolon Graphical Blog 2.
I have been wanting to learn more about inkscape to help correct a very lacking portion of my skillset, illustration.

Browsing around the internet

Found a pretty cool Rammstein video.

Commence laser dodging

I had a great evening at the office today. Managed to get a 3 axis stage to do what I wanted, at least I think I did. Was having some crazy problems with labview so I opened up the manufacturer included VB.Net example in SharpDevelop, and it loaded it up just fine. Modified the example to follow a path routine that I made up, and hit the Go button. It definately moved the stages, but I'm not sure about the absolute difference traveled. Will have to do some further analysis on the path algorithm I came up with to make sure that it's doing what I think it's doing

Labview is seriously pissing me off today. I grow tired of expensive stuff not working perfectly.

Attached is a silly graphic that I created after watching Juggernaut B*tch. I was just bored. Beware, the juggernaut link is not kid safe.

Sleepy but satisfied

 

Finally got to drive the silver jeep to an Orlando Jeep Club meeting. It was very well recieved by all. It's been many months since I joined the club with a stock jeep. I kept coming by and having people ask me how the other one was coming along.

I cant wait to try it out on a club campout. 

Body saw's rule

I got to cut off the front fenders today on the jeep with the use of Chris Baron's body saw. It takes a bit of practice, and my cuts werent perfect, but chris was nice enough to round them out with the grinder.

So much clearance for turning, I might not even need the wheel spacers. still would look cool though :)

Since the lift came off of Chris' old jeep, the coils up front have the front of the jeep about 2.5 inches higher up than the back of the jeep. This will compensate nicely for any larger bumpers I put on the front. Would like to make my own bumper in the same style as James has done

Jeep Pictures on 35's

The Jeep is up on 35's. Been driving it around for a few days, working out bugs.



We think we have a transmission fluid leak fixed. Now I need to work on getting the windows replaced.

Beef O'Brady's

I went to Beef O'Brady's the other day with some friends, and I have to say aside from the service, I was really quite disappointed.

The waitress greeted us promptly, kept the drinks going, and the restaurant had plenty of televisions displaying a wide variety of programming. A blend of sports bar and family restaurant.

The table had two types of jalapeno poppers, including chedder and cream cheese versions. Both were excellent. The queso dip and chips appetizer was also decent, but I could have gotten the same thing from a jar in wal-mart. Definately not up to the standard of Chili's queso dip.

I ordered for my meal a Bleu cheese burger with onion ring toppers. The meat was okay, but for $7, it was definately not as good as Chili's similarly priced offering, nor were there bleu cheese crumbles, just a slab of something that tasted like a cross between bleu cheese and ranch dressing. My drink was a Dr. Pepper, which was a pleasant change from the prevalent Mr. Pibb served in the are a (also called Pibb Xtra), Pibb being the Dr. Pepper ripoff.

Total came out to $16 with tip. There's some money that could have been better spent on a burrito from Chipotle. Far better spent.

Studying in the Garden

I've been trying to round out my skillset. One area which I am lacking considerably is in the area of CSS.

Since I dont learn very well by reading tutorials, I am going to approach it from the reverse direction. Mapping out and trying to understand some of the best CSS designs out there is the way i'm going to do it.

Check out some of those designs at CSS Zen Garden, a showcase of what can be done with CSS design.

Given that my target audience for one of my ongoing projects is both Firefox and IE based, i'm going to have to set up a windows machine to do some IE testing as i work on my new layout.

Inkscape

Managed to create some cool warning graphics at work today in inkscape.

They are really basic, but after learning how to use keyboard shortcuts it is just a dream to work with it. If you need to create any vector format graphics, for logos or images for manuals, this is the program to use.

sysutils on ubuntu

Since I occasionally have to deal with files authored on a windows machine, I have to deal with files that use both CR and LF at the end of every line. Instead of the standard linux line feed. In vim it comes out something like

Line 1 ^M
Line 2 ^M

If you need to convert a file like this. Just install sysutils in Ubuntu. It's just a collection of small programs, amongst them the programs dos2unix and unix2dos. Just run them with the file you want to convert as an argument and it will deal with the conversion of those carriage returns for you.

dos2unix dostext.txt

unix2dos unixtext.txt

Enjoy. By the way gedit can automatically detect whether a document is formatted for dos or not and deal with it intelligently. So can vim too most of the time. It's autodetection doesnt always work though.