ODDREE.COM

I STILL BLOG.

2011-12-29T15:07:00.003-05:00

It's been ages, and I mean ages since I have blogged anything. Mostly because I have nothing to share that anyone would want to read. I have somehow managed to fill my days and nights cooking, cleaning, doing home improvement projects, and sleeping. As for spare time at work - I don't have any. I am too busy working. But as I am wrapping up work orders that I have had for months and my phone is not ringing, I am feeling a slight sigh of relief.

I suppose I could work on my Android projects, but they aren't really making me much money any more, and I have for the most part abandoned them. I had high hopes that PVault would do better in the MiKandi market. But after a few attempts to revitalize and update the app, I am not really seeing any reward from it. Some of the worst apps I have ever made still bring me the most money. And for the record, we are talking about a few cents a day. ;-)

I have been looking into streaming media players to replace my Wii as my primary Netflix device and it looks like I will probably be buying a Roku sometime soon. Yesterday I noticed that they have a development kit and it got me excited about the possibilities for building my own "channels" for streaming content. But I'm not sure I have the desire to run out and learn an entirely new language so that I can pay someone to stream my content to the masses - and then wonder if advertisers are ever going to pay me.

So hey, Ray is still alive and well. And he may (or may not) be thinking of new things to do with this site to justify the hosting fees.

Google Market Account Banned (Happy Thanksgiving)

2010-11-24T17:59:00.004-05:00

Well, congratulations to all of you assholes who went through the trouble of downloading my applications only to flag them, and/or leave retarded comments such as "Flagged". I'm not sure why people feel the need to play policemen (or policewomen, or in the case of Cashelle, police-transexual), but consider yourselves a special breed of asshole and take this day to congratulate yourself between your bible readings, hating of gays, and watching recorded episodes of Fox and Friends on your DVR. THIS ... is YOUR day.

By the way ... you are aware that for $25, I can be right back at this? And I can easily make $40 a day in advertising revenue, per application. But hey, enjoy this moment. Because I am going to take some time off to enjoy the holiday and work on some all new and ultra-offensive applications - just to piss you off.

In the new year I will be working on getting some new applications on the MiKandi market (which allows mature content) and I will be restoring all of my old apps there to bring them back to life. Be sure to check out my stuff there.

In related news ... Google now has content ratings to ensure that you are targeting your applications to the right audience. The categories are "All", "Pre-teen", "Teen", and "Mature". That would indicate that you can create applications with mature content, right? Wrong! All the same guidelines apply that applied before. So if your application contains something to do with gambling, it should be rated mature. But only play-gambling. Not real gambling. And if your application deals with adult-ish content, it should be rated mature. Just make sure it has nothing to do with pornography, nudity, or ... anything sexual. Yeah. I don't get it either!

Look for an update here soon folks, and HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL YOU TURKEYS!

Dr. Zoidberg Soundboard

2010-08-22T10:54:00.003-04:00

After creating my Professor soundboard and updating it several times I decided it was time to branch off and attempt to create a new soundboard using my existing design. With that, I created the long awaited Dr. Zoidberg soundboard for Droid phones.

If you are a Zoidberg fan (or even a Futurama fan) you need this on your phone.

Coming soon - Zapp Brannigan!

Good News Everyone!

2010-08-07T21:37:00.007-04:00

I have posted my first application to the Android Marketplace. The "Ultimate Professor Farnsworth Soundboard". I have spent countless hours pouring through Futurama episodes these past two days and then had to figure out how to package them up. You actually have to pay to publish apps to the Google Market and so I am asking for a very nominal fee of $.99 for it to recoup my 'investment'.

I actually still have a lot of episodes to go through so I plan on updating this one as well as putting out a few others (Bender, Zapp, and Zoidberg). In the meantime ... if you have a Droid phone ... get on over to the market and buy my app!

Cracking the "DROID CODE"

2010-07-18T11:49:00.005-04:00

Recently, the folks at Verizon/Droid started airing a new Droid X commercial featuring a couple of astronaut types exploring some sort of moon-like base. It's pretty creepy and cryptic - and it ends with an obvious clue around frame 0:59.
The code is "JXYDAQWQYD". Some clever folks over at Droid Life figured out that there is a place to put these codes on the droiddoes.com website. When you enter this code into the box, you get the "transmission log" from the astonauts. Pretty neat.

Is there more to the code itself? It seems like a really easy crypt of some sort so I got out some scrap paper and tried to reverse it. The code actually says "THINK AGAIN". And with that - I made a simple letter chart. What you will find is that the words that they chose to reveal the code actually leave letter gaps and made it VERY easy to crack. Here is a letter chart which you can use to perhaps crack "future codes".

I have to assume that there is more to the "secret page" so I started looking for additional clues. The page iteself drops some interesting word clues such as "Shaefer" (who must be the unfortunate astronaut whose cracked and damaged helmet they pass). And also some numbers in the form of an energy blast that passes the new crew (+240, +46, +0). It seems like GPS coordinates so I tried my luck at that and didn't get very far.

Google maps took me to a place in in the UK called "MotorSolve". I didn't think it was at all related. But the address of the place is 64 Cecil St. One of the astronauts in the commercial is wearing a helmet with his ID of "C-64" stamped on the side. This could be a far stretch. Perhaps I am conspiring too much. ;-) Also, I have been at this all morning and I need to shower now.

If anyone can find other codes that work - share your findings with me!

USB Serial Adapter Drivers for Chromium

2010-06-29T22:27:00.004-04:00

A few weeks ago I downloaded Chromium OS Flow and tried it out on my netbook using a jump drive. I really liked it a lot, although the USB device was slow and had a tendency to stall out. So I pulled out an 8GB SDHC SD card that I had been hoarding and installed Chromium Flow to that. And all I can say is *WOW*. This OS is awesome. It boots (and shuts down) on a dime. The interface is quite slick. And it has a full screen terminal with apt-get and a lot of installable software.

But then I ran into a problem. Lately I have been resetting a lot of router passwords using a console cable (don't ask). To perform this technique, you need a serial port. No laptop or netbook made in the past ten years has a serial port on it so I usually get by with a USB to serial adapter (aka "a serial dongle"). We happen to have one at work, which was lucky. Except it didn't work at all in Chromium.

Long story short ...
1) I had to use gparted on a jump drive to resize some partitions. Chromium Flow is a 2GB "image". So I needed to move some boundaries to take advantage of all that empty space on my SD card.
2) I had to relocate /var/cache/apt. The tiny slice that the directory sits on didn't leave much room for installing software. I moved the directory to /, and then created a symbolic link to it.
3) I installed the build-essential and kernel source (2.6.31) packages.
4) I unzipped the kernel source, turned on all of the USB serial drivers as modules, and then built a kernel.
5) Now I have a little stack of kernel modules for a slew of USB to serial adapters.

I can load it with insmod ./pl2303.ko. If I do a dmesg | tail I can see that it loaded properly. Now when I plug in my dongle, it gets a serial device assignment whereas before all I got was a notice telling me that it was plugged in.

If you are in need of a USB serial adapter driver for Chromium flow, just use mine. This should save you a couple of hours. ;-) You can download the bundle of kernel modules here: http://www.oddree.com/rayhaque/usbserial.tgz

Tomorrow I can fire up minicom and start rocking out Cisco console ports with my little netbook and not have to drag around a 25 pound P.O.S. with Windows XP and Hyperterminal! Hooray!

** EDIT ***
I guess I should tell anyone who might download this how you should use it.
1) Get the file downloaded. From terminal ...
wget http://www.oddree.com/rayhaque/usbserial.tgz
2) Untar/zgip it...
tar -xzvf usbserial.tgz
3) Move the directory into the right place alongside your other kernel modules ...
mv usbserial /lib/modules/2.6.31-4-intel-menlow/kernel/drivers/usb
4) Change to that directory and optionally rename it to what it would normally be...
cd /lib/modules/2.6.31-4-intel-menlow/kernel/drivers/usb/usbserial && move usbserial serial
5) Make the kernel aware that there are new modules out there ...
depmod -a
6) Now, load your module. If you were using the same one as me ...
modprobe pl2303
7) Check the dmesg output for clues as to whether or not the driver is working ...
dmesg

ENJOY! :-)

"Too long WEP key" Problem Resolved?

2010-03-31T19:52:00.003-04:00

I know many of you using IZ2S have had trouble with getting your Zipit to accept a 128-bit WEP key in hexadecimal format (26 characters).

I may have traced the problem to the use of double quotation marks in the configuration file. It seems that wpa_supplicant assumes that if you are wrapping your key in quotation marks, then it must be ASCII.

I have made some changes to the wifi script which will now ask the user if they are inputting a Hexadecimal or ASCII key. Ideally it would be nice to have the Zipit figure this out on it's own and not even have to ask the user. But I am providing a quick fix for those of you have been struggling with this.

First, you will want to get the latest version of IZ2S which at present is the BETA. If you are all ready running the BETA, don't re-download it. It's unchanged.

http://www.oddree.com/zipit/Z2S-v205-BETA.zip

Then, you will want to grab this new script ...

http://www.oddree.com/zipit/setup-wifi.sh

Put it in /mnt/sd0/bin or the "bin folder" of your SD card. You can replace or overwrite the current file. Then, reboot and choose yes when asked if you want to change your wireless settings. You should get a new question after choosing WEP. If you have a long 26 character key, you should choose "H)exadecimal".

Please post your success and failures to me in the comments area. I can't do much testing here without reconfiguring my own access point (and my wife wouldn't appreciate that too much because she is using it).

Also - sorry for the absence lately. I hope to be back to developing soon!

All New Zipit Z2 Development Kit Released

2010-02-26T10:06:00.004-05:00

A while back I had released a virtual machine that included tools that would help folks build software for the Zipit Z2. It was thrown together rather hastily and it became frustrating to anyone who downloaded and tried to use it. Releasing a new version with some fixes include - was long overdue.

You can get the new image here: Zipit Z2 Development V2.torrent
Or here: http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5392949/Zipit_Z2_Development_V2

NOTE: The seeding is not going as well as I had hoped on this torrent. If you are able, you should forward a port on your firewall/router for your bit-torrent client to use. That will allow you to download from a connection I have set up which is seeding at 300k. Also - if any of you would rather just get a copy of this development kit by mail, I am going to offer that service to you. I will send a disc to anyone in the US for a flat fee of $10. That should cover materials, postage, etc. Just PayPal $10 to donations AT oddree.com. If you would like a copy and you are outside of the US, please email me (ray AT oddree.com) and we can try and work something out. I see there are some Swede's in my seeds. :-)

The release notes are below, but here is a quick rundown ... This was built for VirtualBox and the guest edition tools are all ready installed. Instead of trying to share raw files again (sorry about that) this is being shared as an "exported appliance". Which means you could also use this with VMWare if you wanted to. Also, because buildroot has proven useful in a few areas involving kernel modules, I have included that too.

It's been suggested that I include a few pre-built packages. But not knowing what people will really use this for, I didn't want to "muddy the waters" of an otherwise clean build environment. Rather, I will build some packages of my choosing and then perhaps find a way to share those in a way that you can drop them into your VirtualBox (if anyone is interested?).

If you are having trouble using this, or if you have questions etc. drop me a comment to this post. You can email me too at ray AT oddree.com, but leaving comments is preferable if it's something others might benefit from reading.

RELEASE NOTES:

ABOUT
This is version 2 of the Zipit Z2 Development kit. You can use this kit to compile your own software for use on the Zipit Z2 from Zipit Wireless.

Included is a virtual appliance exported out of VirtualBox v3.1.4. This image should also work with VMWare. However, if you are using VMWare you will need to install the guest tools and possibly remove the included guest tools for VirtualBox.

The image includes a configured and ready-to-use Scratchbox environment and also a buildroot environment that includes a patched Z2 kernel and ALSA (thanks again, GPSFan).

INSTALLATION
Download and install VirtualBox from http://www.virtualbox.org. Click File > Import Appliance and then point to this torrent. Adjust your memory as you see fit (256MB is about as low as you should go - 1GB+ is probably overkill).

After booting up for the first time, you should be auto-logged on as "zipit". This users password is "password" (without the quotes). Note that the root password is also "password" and so you should change those if you are going to attach this device to a network!

MORE INFO
For more information - see the README.txt file on the Desktop of the virtual appliance, and the README.txt in the root of the Scratchbox home directory.

Check out www.oddree.com for more details and post-release notes and linux.zipitwireless.com for more on the Z2 device.

Hack on!
-Ray Dios Haque
February 2010

Version 2.04 IZ2S Release

2010-02-04T19:15:00.003-05:00

You can download IZ2S v2.04 here: http://www.oddree.com/zipit/Z2S-v204.zip

I had originally called this version the "Christmas release". But somehow it ended up being February and I still hadn't done anything new with it. Thanks to the hard work of some other folks, there are some grand changes with this release. In fact, I had little to do with these improvements.

Wicknix has given us the long awaited bash shell. He also gave us a configuration file for links which turns it into a much more usable browser. With the font and pictures scaled down, it's about like surfing the net with a cell phone.

rkdavis has provided an all new busybox binary which includes all the stuff that was left out in the original Zipit Wireless shell. If you are curious and do some digging around you will see that we have a strange way of handling that with the logon script. Basically there is a symbolic link for nearly every command which busybox offers.

Most of the stuff I added to this release will go unnoticed. I rebuilt a few packages, consolidated some things, etc. Some other nice additions include: A new build of centerim which supports ALL IM protocols, the nano editor, the midnight commander file manager, curl, and even a "mostly functional" release of tcpdump!

I plan on the next release being very different. I'm going to take everything I have learned and apply it to a clean installation. That is, I am going to take the original stock shell and begin building the additional packages all over again. This will give me an opportunity to use shared libraries for everything, and loose some of the "bulk" of IZ2S. I'm not sure when that will get released. It may not be for a while. Work is hell right now, and I have a car parked outside begging for my attention.

Also rkdavis seems to be very close to having backlight and keyboard backlight controls working. Hopefully he has that working in time for "IZ2S v3.0". ;-)

Here are the release notes for IZ2S v2.04 ...

IZS - The "Improved Z2 Shell" (aka Shell with Benefits) v2.04

ABOUT
This collection was built by Ray Dios Haque out of sheer necessity. I wanted something that I could play with that would not effect the stock software that comes on the Z2. The easiest way to do that was to take the Z2 Shell that was built by rossimo from Zipit Wireless and expand upon it. I take no credit for the work of the Zipit community. If I don't claim to have built it - it's because I didn't. Thanks to all of you for your contributions over the years. I hope you enjoy my additions!

INSTALL (borrowed from the original README)
Format your SD card as a FAT or a FAT16 file system. Copy everything from this zip file onto the root of the card (preserving all paths/directories). Insert your SD card into the Zipit and boot it up. Note that you can only boot this image if you are running the Stock OS that came with your Zipit. If you have installed OpenEmbedded or Debian, then you have probably replaced the stock operating system which included a routine to look for the z2script.sh script. For legal purposes, I cannot provide you this stock operating system. Some of the smarter people in the Zipit community might be able to help you restore this OS (see CHAT below).

CHAT
Come chat with us! There is a thriving (?) community of the worlds best Zipit hackers who hang out in #zipit on irc.freenode.net. You can fire up 'irc' from this very image and come hang out.

CHANGES/ADDITIONS
RELEASE 2.04 (ALL NEW!) - Christmas 2009
bash (by wicknix, then rebuilt by ray), ~/.bashrc (provides defaults to bash), ~/.links/html.cfg (by wicknix, makes graphical links fit the screen better), centerim-4.22.9 (supports ALL protocols), tcpdump, nano, mc (midnight commander), zip, NEW busybox v1.15.3 (built by rkdavis), curl.

RELEASE 2.03 - Early December 2009
We have sound!! Thanks GPSFan! (alsaconf, alsamixer, alsactl, amidi, aplay, gawk, getopt, iecset), SHARED Library support (ldd, ldconfig, readelf), cmus (a wicked MP3 Player), matrix (ncmatrix), mpg123, mplayer-10rc2, ntpdate, gzip (gzip, gunzip, gzexe, zcat, zcmp, zdiff, zegrep, zforce, zless, zmore, znew), zz (script to run after ssh'ing in - use . zz (dot space zz))

RELEASE 2.02 - November 2009
cls (clear screen), centerim (ncurses instant messenger with AIM, Yahoo, ICQ support), irssi (ncurses irc client), links (ncurses), links2 (graphical browser!), sed (for scripting), tar, bzip2 (bzip2, bz2recover), coreutils (10MB's of binaries)

RELEASE 2.01 - Initial Release
wget, ircii-20090520 (irc), wireless-tools (ifrename, iwconfig, iwevent, iwgetid, iwlist, iwpriv, iwspy), ftp (ftp, /etc/services), unzip (unzipsfx, unzip, funzip), nmap (nmap, *new* ncat), wpa_passphrase, less (lessecho, lesskey), grep

LIBS CHANGES
Removed the worthless ncurses static libs to make way for all of the *shared* libs. Not listing all of them here. Just look for yourself.

STARTUP SCRIPT MODIFICATION(S)
REV 2.04
- Removed the "motd" from this script, since .bashrc displays it now.
- Removed coreutils, as the new busybox does almost all the same things with less space.
- Added a symbolic link script to support all of the additional commands that busybox provides.
- We now use your actual MAC address if available from /mnt/ffs/properties.txt (thanks rkdavis).
REV 2.03
- Stopped audio_pxa from loading, and then run /mnt/sd0/modules/alsa/loadsound.sh for ALSA sound modules.
- Added ntp protocol to /etc/services file.
- Added a line which will fix the time and date if there is a network connection available, and then display that time/date to you.
- From here on out, all libs will go into /mnt/sd0/lib which will be linked to both /lib and /usr/lib/.
- Hid all the gory details of wpa_supplicant, while adding some other stuff for verbosity.
REV 2.02
- Modified the PATH statement so that coreutils and /mnt/sd0/bin binaries will override the busybox stuff.
- Created a home directory for the root user which exists on the SD card. It holds your stuff.
- Added a routine that change your MAC address to something random the first time you boot up. This should prevent duplicate MAC problems if you own multiple Z2 devices.
- Added a /var directory that exists on your SD card. Some things (like dropbear) expect to find it. Had to fix a script error in the BETA (thanks rkdavis).
- Added an /etc/issue file which is displayed at logon time and to ssh connections.
REV 2.01
- Added a routine asking if you would like to configure your wireless card. This was not possible before as there was no scanning routine and the image lacked the wpa_passphrase utility. You can now scan for and configure your wireless settings entirely from the zipit (wording updated in 2.02).
- Added "cp /mnt/sd0/etc/services /etc/services" which gives the ftp command the port numbers it needs to function.
- Added "cp -R /mnt/sd0/etc/terminfo /etc", "export TERM=vt102", "export TERMINFO=/etc/terminfo" to help irc understand the screen layout.
- Added "ln -s /mnt/sd0/lib/* /lib" to make ncurses libraries usable, and any future libraries that you or I might add.
- Added "ln -s /mnt/sd0/share /share" for nmap and anything else that might require a "share" directory to be present to function.

OTHER MODIFICATION(S)
- Replaced the stock keyboard driver in /modules with one that was created by GPSFan (Ken) from the Zipit Yahoo Group. This removed all of the problems with keys not working, or repeating while typing. The original drivers remain, but have been renamed to *.orig.

COMING SOON?
- An *easier to use* mp3 player alternative to cmus (most require network socket support, which the Z2 kernel does not support).
- A script to download and install "packages" (zip files) using wget, unzip, and a "binary repository" on www.oddree.com. A similar system could provide updates when I provide them. I have not worked on this at all. Sorry about that.

IFAQ (InFrequently Asked Questions)
Q. Why are you wasting your time on this? The Z2 Shell is dead!
A. It may be 10x more work to get simple things built for it - the Z2 is very lean, and still very useful.

Q. How can I add my own binary/package?
A. There are several ways to go about this. The method I have used to compile everything is "scratchbox". Scratchbox is a program which let's you cross-compile applications. That means that you can build stuff for an ARM platform, even though you have a regular x86 machine. It can be tricky and complicated. Try reading up on what I have posted at http://www.oddree.com.

Q. Why did you *insert snarky comment here*?
A. If you find that I did something stupid and inefficient, do let me know. I don't claim to have any expertise in the area of building software. If you have some suggestions on how to improve things or would like to help with the next release of this improved Z2 Shell, email me at ray@oddree.com. I would love to collaborate with some folks who might be more talented than myself.

Q. Will you build *insert package name here* for me?
A. Probably. Unless you are asking me to build something that has an endless list of dependencies. In which case I will probably tell you to install OpenEmbedded or full fledged Debian. They all ready have all of these packages. I am only expanding upon the old Z2 Shell because I find it lean and useful.

Still Alive!

2010-01-24T11:00:00.002-05:00

I just wanted to drop a few lines and assure everyone that I am still very well alive. A couple weeks ago now I was putting the finishing touches on the next release of IZ2S when all hell broke loose just about everywhere. It's been a very, very, busy past couple of weeks at work. I have been battling new projects, old projects, phones ringing off the hook, upgrades gone sour, lost support, you get the idea.

Meanwhile, my car has been acting up. I have had some trouble getting the old VW started lately so I replaced the battery. That seemed to work for a day or two, and then I was right back to same issue. And so last weekend I replaced the starter. Let me tell you, this was NOT an easy task. In the process of working on the starter it appeared that I was leaking something. Oil? Gas? Of course I was laying in the wet street and I had some dirty old compacted snow stuck to my underbody. Once everything had dried out, it looked like I was in good shape.

A day or two later I was barreling down the road when my green dash light came on. Suspecting *another* electrical problem I got out the old multimeter and began testing my voltages. It appeared that my generator was putting out enough juice, and my battery was getting charged. Perhaps my voltage regulator was allowing too much juice through? I was getting about 17v to the battery, and that didn't seem right. Then as I was leaving work on Thursday my engine just stopped. And I mean, it stopped HARD.

That's when I realized that the green light on my dash wasn't an electrical problem at all. It was the "low oil" light. I did have a leak! I have seized my engine. Could this week get any better?

I tried a few quick fixes to try and get the car home, but I ended up having to pull out my AAA card and get it towed to my house. And now, I just wish it would stop raining long enough that I can pull my engine and get it into my basement. Of course, I will be doing all this while laying in the gutter on a busy public street because I don't even have a driveway for my house (let alone a cozy garage to work in).

So anyway, I am alive. And I miss developing for my Zipit. I hope to be able to get back to it soon.

Restoring your Zipit Z2 to Defaults

2009-12-16T10:46:00.002-05:00

A while back I bought my daughter a Z2 for Christmas. We got it off of eBay and my wife asked that I test it to make sure it works. About ten minutes later I realized that I had registered the device with Zipit Wireless using a nickname of my choosing. In effect, I just made this Zipit my own. But what if I wanted to "gift" this Zipit or sell it?

Quite simply, all you need to do to make a Zipit Z2 new again is to remove a few configuration files. You can do this using either my IZ2S, or even the vanilla Z2 Shell.

Boot up with your shell, and then do a "cd /mnt/ffs" and an "ls" to list the files there. You will see something like this ...

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 657 Dec 16 01:58 411.xml
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 112342 Dec 16 01:58 NeonGlow.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1519952 Dec 16 01:58 Resources.arl
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 3578680 Dec 16 01:58 Zipit2
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1921 Dec 16 01:58 properties.txt
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 4644 Dec 16 01:58 serversettings.xml
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 4644 Dec 16 01:58 serverstationz.xml
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 510 Dec 16 01:58 start.sh
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Dec 16 01:58 wpa_supplicant

Only a few of these files are really required, and the rest are files that get downloaded from Zipit Wireless when your Z2 connects up to their servers through the wireless network.

You can safely remove these files:
NeonGlow.jpg - This is my chosen background wallpaper. Whatever you picked will have a .jpg extension. You can delete any .jpg file here.
properties.txt - This file contains your device ID (serial number), your username, and some other important settings. Deleting this file removes your Zipit Wireless account association.
serversettings.xml - This file contains a record of your messaging limit(s), your chosen wallpaper, and some radio station data.
serverstationz.xml - This file seems to contain the same data as "serversettings.xml". Both files can be deleted and would be recreated when you connect with your Zipit Wireless account.

DO NOT REMOVE (or alter) THESE FILES!
Resources.arl - This is some sort of archive which likely contains data for your theme. Although it's compressed, and I don't know how. Leave it alone.
Zipit2 - This is the core application for the Z2. Do not alter this file, or your Z2 will no longer be any fun.
start.sh - This short and simple script is what allows for you to run a shell, as it looks for an OS on your SD card at boot time. It also runs the Zipit2 application. Leave this alone!
wpa_supplicant - This directory contains an executable of the same name. This is what connects the Z2 to your wireless network. Leave this alone too!

Just to recap ...
If you want to make your Zipit "new again", you should delete your settings files so that your /mnt/ffs directory looks something like this ...

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1519952 Jan 1 1970 Resources.arl
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 3578680 Jan 1 1970 Zipit2
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 510 Sep 17 2007 start.sh
drwxrwxr-x 2 root root 0 Sep 17 2007 wpa_supplicant

The next time you boot your Z2 (without the SD card inserted) you will get the "first time wizard". By the way, in case you forgot - one of your options in this wizard is to enter the credentials for your existing account.

Links2 (Graphical Web Browser) for the Zipit Z2

2009-12-15T11:28:00.002-05:00

This is links2 compiled along with directfb to provide a graphical web browser to the Zipit Z2 Shell.

You can download it here: http://oddree.com/zipit/links2-zipitz2.zip

Note that if you get the latest IZ2S image from this site - you will not need this program because it is all ready included by default. This is just provided for folks who want to experiment with the Z2 Shell in it's unadulterated, and naked form.

Here is the included README ...

** Links2 built with graphical directfb support **
** for the Zipit Z2 Wireless device **
** by Ray Dios Haque **

ABOUT
This is links2 built with graphical support for
all of the popular image types (png, jpeg, gif).
It utilizes directfb as a graphical driver, and so
there is no need for X11! This tooks weeks to get
running correctly. So I hope you enjoy it. :-)

Remember - this is a very basic web browser. While
you can do fun things like read blogs and check your
email, watching videos and running Flash is just out
of the question!

INSTALL
Copy everything in the bin folder, to the bin folder
on your SD card. That's it. Keep in mind that this
package is now part of the "Improved Z2 Shell" which
is available from www.oddree.com.

USING LINKS2
To start links2 in graphical mode, just run 'links2'
inside of terminal. This will actually run a script
which launches links2 along with some special and
required parameters (such as the screen rotator).

To visit a web page, press the letter "g" and then
enter a URL. To move around on the page, you can
hold down ALT and SHIFT (white up arrow next to ALT)
and then use your arrow/navigational keys to move
around the page. When running links, you are using
a special keymap that aliosa27 created. When you
exit links, your original keymap is reloaded.

NOTE: You can still run links in text mode, simply
by running 'links' (without the 2).

ALSA driver and utilities for the Zipit Z2

2009-12-15T10:22:00.003-05:00

A little more than a year ago, our friend GPSFan was able to get ALSA sound and it's utilities running on the Zipit Z2. This was quite an accomplishment, as it meant that you could now use all sorts of other programs that rely on ALSA sound. However, the tools could not run on the stock Z2 Shell because they were not built "statically". And so - I made it my personal mission to rebuild these tools in a static form and give the Z2 Shell the sound it deserved.

It took many late nights (and some serious help from GPSFan) but I was eventually able to recreate the environment that GPSFan used to create his modules, and then change it slightly to get things compiled in a static form. Then it was just a matter of getting the tools to cooperate with the Z2. There are quite a few tricks involved in loading things properly, and so I wrote an included script which does everything.

You can download it here: http://www.oddree.com/zipit/alsa-zipitz2.zip

Note that if you get the latest IZ2S image from this site - you will not need these drivers because they are all ready included and loaded by default. This is just provided for folks who want to experiment with the Z2 Shell in it's unadulterated, and naked form.

Here is the included README notes:

ABOUT
alsa-lib/utils-20091113 (snapshot) built for the
Zipit Z2 Shell by Ray Dios Haque on 11/24/2009.

These tools should allow you to use GPSFan's
Z2_Rec modules (playback/recording) on the Z2
Shell, or Rays's Improved Z2 Shell (IZ2S).

More information available on: oddree.com.

For information on how the modules were built,
please see ./orig-notes/readme.

INSTALL
There is a lot going on with this script, and I
wanted to keep it really simple for the purpose
of testing or simply screwing around with your
Zipit. Note that if you are running this every
time you boot your zipit, this is probably a
pretty bad practice and you should consider
giving all of these items a permanent home on
your Z2. Or - just get the latest version of
Ray's Improved Z2 Shell from oddree.com which
will include all of this stuff.

That said, simply run ./loadsound.sh from this
directory to install and activate sound.

The script will remove the native sound driver,
create a few new directories for configuration
files, copy over the needed configuration files,
insert modules into your running system, and
finally will run a command to load up the sound
state from a successful instance of ALSA.

You will need to copy everything in the bin
directory to the bin folder on your SD card.

Now you can play your MP3's. In fact, I have
included a build of mpg123 in the bin directory.

Adjust volume and other things with alsamixer.

THANKS
Many, many, thanks to my friends GPSFan and
rkdavis from #zipit on irc.freenode.net. We put
in a few late nights to get this going.

Version 2.03 IZ2S Release - SOUND and SHARED LIBRARIES!

2009-12-05T20:51:00.003-05:00

I am probably more excited about this release than any other, because it has opened up the possibilities for some things that just weren't possible before. We now have the ability to run applications using shared libraries. And the first application I decided to port over was "cmus". Cmus is a "small and fast text mode music player" which runs in a console. It's been built to support wav's, mp3's, and even vorbis ogg files. And best of all, it can play streams (that means streaming radio!).

This represents a lot of work on the part of myself, and my friends from #zipit on irc.freenode.net. GPSFan was nice enough to share some of his dark secrets with me pertaining to buildroot and ALSA. From there I was able to get the ALSA-utils built, and then rebuilt statically.

You can download version v2.03 here: http://www.oddree.com/zipit/Z2S-v203.zip

Here is a quick video demonstration of the new feature(s):

As always - here is the README file which is also included in the Zip file.

IZS - The "Improved Z2 Shell" (aka Shell with Benefits) v2.03

ABOUT
This collection was built by Ray Dios Haque out of sheer necessity. I wanted something that I could play with that would not effect the stock software that comes on the Z2. The easiest way to do that was to take the Z2 Shell that was built by rossimo from Zipit Wireless and expand upon it. I take no credit for the work of the Zipit community. If I don't claim to have built it - it's because I didn't. Thanks to all of you for your contributions over the years. I hope you enjoy my additions!

INSTALL (borrowed from the original README)
Format your SD card as a FAT or a FAT16 file system. Copy everything from this zip file onto the root of the card (preserving all paths/directories). Insert your SD card into the Zipit and boot it up. Note that you can only boot this image if you are running the Stock OS that came with your Zipit. If you have installed OpenEmbedded or Debian, then you have probably replaced the stock operating system which included a routine to look for the z2script.sh script. For legal purposes, I cannot provide you this stock operating system. Some of the smarter people in the Zipit community might be able to help you restore this OS (see CHAT below).

CHAT
Come chat with us! There is a thriving (?) community of the worlds best Zipit hackers who hang out in #zipit on irc.freenode.net. You can fire up 'irc' from this very image and come hang out.

CHANGES/ADDITIONS
RELEASE 2.03 (ALL NEW!) - December 2009
We have sound!! Thanks GPSFan! (alsaconf, alsamixer, alsactl, amidi, aplay, gawk, getopt, iecset), SHARED Library support (ldd, ldconfig, readelf), cmus (a wicked MP3 Player), matrix (ncmatrix), mpg123, mplayer-10rc2, ntpdate, gzip (gzip, gunzip, gzexe, zcat, zcmp, zdiff, zegrep, zforce, zless, zmore, znew), zz (script to run after ssh'ing in - use . zz (dot space zz))

RELEASE 2.02 - November 2009
cls (clear screen), centerim (ncurses instant messenger with AIM, Yahoo, ICQ support), irssi (ncurses irc client), links (ncurses), links2 (graphical browser!), sed (for scripting), tar, bzip2 (bzip2, bz2recover), coreutils (10MB's of binaries)

RELEASE 2.01 - Initial Release
wget, ircii-20090520 (irc), wireless-tools (ifrename, iwconfig, iwevent, iwgetid, iwlist, iwpriv, iwspy), ftp (ftp, /etc/services), unzip (unzipsfx, unzip, funzip), nmap (nmap, *new* ncat), wpa_passphrase, less (lessecho, lesskey), grep

LIBS CHANGES
Removed the worthless ncurses static libs to make way for all of the *shared* libs. Not listing all of them here. Just look for yourself.

STARTUP SCRIPT MODIFICATION(S)
REV 2.03
- Stopped audio_pxa from loading, and then run /mnt/sd0/modules/alsa/loadsound.sh for ALSA sound modules.
- Added ntp protocol to /etc/services file.
- Added a line which will fix the time and date if there is a network connection available, and then display that time/date to you.
- From here on out, all libs will go into /mnt/sd0/lib which will be linked to both /lib and /usr/lib/.
- Hid all the gory details of wpa_supplicant, while adding some other stuff for verbosity.
REV 2.02
- Modified the PATH statement so that coreutils and /mnt/sd0/bin binaries will override the busybox stuff.
- Created a home directory for the root user which exists on the SD card. It holds your stuff.
- Added a routine that change your MAC address to something random the first time you boot up. This should prevent duplicate MAC problems if you own multiple Z2 devices.
- Added a /var directory that exists on your SD card. Some things (like dropbear) expect to find it. Had to fix a script error in the BETA (thanks rkdavis).
- Added an /etc/issue file which is displayed at logon time and to ssh connections.
REV 2.01
- Added a routine asking if you would like to configure your wireless card. This was not possible before as there was no scanning routine and the image lacked the wpa_passphrase utility. You can now scan for and configure your wireless settings entirely from the zipit (wording updated in 2.02).
- Added "cp /mnt/sd0/etc/services /etc/services" which gives the ftp command the port numbers it needs to function.
- Added "cp -R /mnt/sd0/etc/terminfo /etc", "export TERM=vt102", "export TERMINFO=/etc/terminfo" to help irc understand the screen layout.
- Added "ln -s /mnt/sd0/lib/* /lib" to make ncurses libraries usable, and any future libraries that you or I might add.
- Added "ln -s /mnt/sd0/share /share" for nmap and anything else that might require a "share" directory to be present to function.

OTHER MODIFICATION(S)
- Replaced the stock keyboard driver in /modules with one that was created by GPSFan (Ken) from the Zipit Yahoo Group. This removed all of the problems with keys not working, or repeating while typing. The original drivers remain, but have been renamed to *.orig.

COMING SOON?
- A better mp3player or a front-end for mpg123.
- A script to download and install "packages" (zip files) using wget, unzip, and a "binary repository" on www.oddree.com. A similar system could provide updates when I provide them.
- I still want to get an image viewer working. DFBSee 'almost' works.

IFAQ (InFrequently Asked Questions)
Q. Why are you wasting your time on this? The Z2 Shell is dead!
A. It may be 10x more work to get simple things built for it - the Z2 is very lean, and still very useful.

Q. Why does nmap (or some other binary) run so slow?
A. Because everything has to be built "static" to run on the Z2. That means that where you might normally have hundreds of shared libraries on a linux machine, the Z2 Shell must embed the libraries into each running binary. It makes for some bloated inefficient stuff. But, it works. If you want a better system - start writing it! Otherwise, try to limit the actions of what you are doing. For instance, use an address range or port range with nmap. Don't start long running scans on entire networks. This is a Z2 we're talking about. The resources are pretty lean.

Q. How can I add my own binary/package?
A. There are several ways to go about this. The method I have used to compile everything is "scratchbox". Scratchbox is a program which let's you cross-compile applications. That means that you can build stuff for an ARM platform, even though you have a regular x86 machine. It can be tricky and complicated. Try reading up on what I have posted at http://www.oddree.com.

Q. Why did you *insert snarky comment here*?
A. If you find that I did something stupid and inefficient, do let me know. I don't claim to have any expertise in the area of building software. If you have some suggestions on how to improve things or would like to help with the next release of this improved Z2 Shell, email me at ray@oddree.com. I would love to collaborate with some folks who might be more talented than myself.

Q. Will you build *insert package name here* for me?
A. Probably. Unless you are asking me to build something that has an endless list of dependencies. In which case I will probably tell you to install OpenEmbedded or full fledged Debian. They all ready have all of these packages. I am only expanding upon the old Z2 Shell because I find it lean and useful.

Happy hacking! Next release ... keyboard backlight support? It's hard to chat in the dark. :-( I am seeking help from the Z2-Zen master, aliosa27 for that project.

About The "Improved Z2 Shell?" (IZ2S)

2009-12-05T15:42:00.004-05:00

QUICK ABOUT
The Improved Z2 Shell (IZ2S) is an expansion upon the Z2 Shell that Zipit Wireless released for general experimentation.

WHY USE IZ2S?
I built IZ2S out of necessity because the hardware was perfect for what I needed, and the stock OS had some limitations. I started by building add-ons, but some of them were a bit complicated and so it turned into full standing releases. There are lots of reasons to use the IZ2S, but here are a few highlights ...

IZ2S loads from an SD card just by having it inserted, as this is how the folks at Zipit Wireless intended you to use their shell. You do *NOT* need to flash anything, hook up and special hardware, or perform any activities that might otherwise :brick: your Z2. You can return to the stock OS at any time simply by ejecting the SD card and rebooting.
IZ2S contains most of the features that you find in the stock OS, but improves upon them (such as a much better keyboard driver and the ability to pick your own radio stations).
IZ2S is very lean. It boots in 4 seconds and running multiple applications at once is perfectly fine. You can effectively chat on IRC in one window, instant message your buddies in another, and be listening to your favorite streaming radio station in a third window (thanks to the magic of 'screen').
IZ2S offers applications that are not available for the stock OS, such as a graphical web browser (links2).
Ray is building and releasing new applications all the time, and installing them can be done on the device itself - or by copying files onto your SD card from within MS Windows.

LIMITATIONS

IZ2S is "text based" meaning that everything happens from a terminal console. If that is not your cup of tea, you might consider installing Debian or OpenEmbedded. Keep in mind though - that those installations have their own kernels which will require that you remove the stock OS.
IZ2S has an instant messenger, but it will not offer you cellular texting. For that, you need to return to the stock OS so that you can be connected to your paid Zipit Wireless account.
IZ2S does not yet have any controls over the display brightness/contrast, or the keyboard lights. We are hoping to have these features included soon thanks to the work of the Z2 community.
IZ2S has an "idle screen sleeper" that looks like a bricked device. This seems to be the result of the kernel trying to put a display to sleep, and the display driver doesn't respond correctly. It's a problem that we inherited from the Z2 Shell from Zipit Wireless, and we haven't been able to fix it yet.

WHERE CAN I GET IT?
You can download the Improved Z2 Shell by following links from this very site. This site is actually a great big Blog, and I always tag IZ2S releases with the tag "IZ2S". Therefore, you can always find the latest release with this link: http://rayhaque.blogspot.com/search/label/IZ2S. The newest/latest release should always be the first thing that shows up.

New IZ2S Shell - Coming Soon

2009-12-04T21:04:00.003-05:00

I am probably days away from releasing another version of my Improved Z2 Shell. Since getting the ALSA sound package working, I have been working on getting a good MP3 player to use. I found that there are quite a few console (ncurses based) MP3 players to chose from - but they all shared a common problem ... *SHARED* libraries and plugins.

I have never really challenged the restriction that comes with the Z2 Shell which is "your binaries must be static". I assumed that this had something to do with the way that the kernel was built - and I was partially right. Since working with GPSFan on getting ALSA going, I have been getting familiar with "buildroot" which makes building the Z2 kernel really easy. Not that I am interested in replacing the kernel (because I don't want to harm my stock OS) but I *am interested* in re-creating the kernel. In that process that builds the kernel, you are given a chance to turn enable options, add modules, and then build software against the final product. I found that uClibc had some issues with "pre-loading shared libraries". This pre-loading process typically also contains a cache which is created at boot time, or on demand (such as after building and adding new libraries). So caching and pre-loading are broken. But ... the ldconfig, and ldd tool could still be built. That means that shared libraries can still be used provided that "ldconfig" has been run before the application that needs the libraries.

With that, I went to work on building cmus for the Z2. I had spent the previous couple of days trying to work the plugin files into "static binaries" which was quite a contradiction being that they were created in the form of .so files. Now, I could drop all that nonsense and build the application as the developers intended. With the binaries built, I began the process of getting libraries copied over and putting the shared libraries where they belonged. To my absolute delight - it worked!

And so, in the coming days I will be releasing the latest and greatest Z2 Shell which includes the highly anticipated ALSA sound modules, and a new line of applications that previously were not possible.

I am also trying to figure out how we can get the keyboard backlight working, but I will definitely need some help with that. Your friend and mine, aliosa27 has offered his assistance and so I am much more confident that we can come up with something now. You may have heard that sweetlilmre' has been successful in getting this working with the latest kernel source, but it will be tricky trying to apply his same tactics to an older kernel version. Additionally, we will have to do the whole process with modules and daemons (without touching the core kernel).

So check back soon folks. In the mean time, I will be BETA testing all this stuff I have thrown together latetly. If you aren't all ready doing so - get into #zipit on irc.freenode.net and join the discussion.

Version 2.02 IZ2S Release (aka Shell with benefits)

2009-11-23T20:56:00.011-05:00

I am pleased to present you with my very latest Improved Z2 Shell version 2.02. This release is a grand improvement over the last, and provides you with a new *color* irc client (irssi), a multi-protocol instant messenger (center-im 4.22.8) and a graphical web browser (links2 with DirectFB). And thanks to the wonders of "screen" you can run all three of these new programs and more in the comforts of your Z2 Shell.

Here is the download link: http://www.oddree.com/zipit/Z2S-v202.zip

VIDEO
I have created a video to demonstrate some of these neat new tools and features.

Improved Zipit Z2 Shell v2.02 - Now with graphical web browser! from Ray Haque on Vimeo.

ABOUT
This release represents several weeks of maddening code hacking. After getting Center-IM working I went straight to my goal of creating a graphical web browser for the shell. Initially I went after trying to get something going with "MiniGui". This was used to create a graphical web browser for the original Zipit device. However, the folks in #zipit on irc.freenode.net turned my onto the DirectFB project. It took about two weeks of off and on hacking and poking, but I was eventually able to wrangle all of the dependencies into submission and slap all the parts together into a single static binary. The biggest challenge there was to make the screen display correctly. As you may know, the Z2 uses a screen size of 240x320, which is turned sideways. This meant that DirectFB had to be rotated. But when rotated, it no longer fit the screen! In the end, a kind fellow in the UK (from the DirectFB mailing list) suggested that I alter the application (in this case, links2). From there it wasn't that difficult to alter. I just had to tell links to ignore whatever size DirectFB reported to it, and set it to 320x240. Another challenge was to get the keyboard to be usable in links2. Links2 wants to use the ALT key to control menus. But on the Z2, the ALT key is used for every single non-alpha key! I was exploring some complicated solutions when rkdavis (from #zipit) found that simply using a different keymap, this whole problem was avoidable.

Here are the release notes:

IZS - The "Improved Z2 Shell" (aka Shell with Benefits) v2.02

ABOUT
This collection was built by Ray Dios Haque out of sheer necessity. I wanted something that I could play with that would not effect the stock software that comes on the Z2. The easiest way to do that was to take the Z2 Shell that was built by rossimo from Zipit Wireless and expand upon it. I take no credit for the work of the Zipit community. If I don't claim to have built it - it's because I didn't. Thanks to all of you for your contributions over the years. I hope you enjoy my additions!

INSTALL (borrowed from the original README)
Format your SD card as a FAT or a FAT16 file system. Copy everything from this zip file onto the root of the card (preserving all paths/directories). Insert your SD card into the Zipit and boot it up. Note that you can only boot this image if you are running the Stock OS that came with your Zipit. If you have installed OpenEmbedded or Debian, then you have probably replaced the stock operating system which included a routine to look for the z2script.sh script. For legal purposes, I cannot provide you this stock operating system. Some of the smarter people in the Zipit community might be able to help you restore this OS (see CHAT below).

CHAT
Come chat with us! There is a thriving (?) community of the worlds best Zipit hackers who hang out in #zipit on irc.freenode.net. You can fire up 'irc' from this very image and come hang out.

CHANGES/ADDITIONS
RELEASE 2.02 (ALL NEW!) - November 2009
cls (clear screen), centerim (ncurses instant messenger with AIM, Yahoo, ICQ support), irssi (ncurses irc client), links (ncurses), links2 (graphical browser!), sed (for scripting), tar, bzip2 (bzip2, bz2recover), coreutils (10MB's of binaries)

RELEASE 2.01 - Initial Release
wget, ircii-20090520 (irc), wireless-tools (ifrename, iwconfig, iwevent, iwgetid, iwlist, iwpriv, iwspy), ftp (ftp, /etc/services), unzip (unzipsfx, unzip, funzip), nmap (nmap, *new* ncat), wpa_passphrase, less (lessecho, lesskey), grep

NEW LIBS
ncurses (libform.a, libform_g.a, libmenu.a, libmenu_g.a, libncurses++.a, libncurses.a libncurses_g.a, libpanel.a, libpanel_g.a)

SCRIPT MODIFICATION(S)
REV 2.02
- Modified the PATH statement so that coreutils and /mnt/sd0/bin binaries will override the busybox stuff.
- Created a home directory for the root user which exists on the SD card. It holds your stuff.
- Added a routine that change your MAC address to something random the first time you boot up. This should prevent duplicate MAC problems if you own multiple Z2 devices.
- Added a /var directory that exists on your SD card. Some things (like dropbear) expect to find it. Had to fix a script error in the BETA (thanks rkdavis).
- Added an /etc/issue file which is displayed at logon time and to ssh connections.
REV 2.01
- Added a routine asking if you would like to configure your wireless card. This was not possible before as there was no scanning routine and the image lacked the wpa_passphrase utility. You can now scan for and configure your wireless settings entirely from the zipit (wording updated in 2.02).
- Added "cp /mnt/sd0/etc/services /etc/services" which gives the ftp command the port numbers it needs to function.
- Added "cp -R /mnt/sd0/etc/terminfo /etc", "export TERM=vt102", "export TERMINFO=/etc/terminfo" to help irc understand the screen layout.
- Added "ln -s /mnt/sd0/lib/* /lib" to make ncurses libraries usable, and any future libraries that you or I might add.
- Added "ln -s /mnt/sd0/share /share" for nmap and anything else that might require a "share" directory to be present to function.

OTHER MODIFICATION(S)
- Replaced the stock keyboard driver in /modules with one that was created by GPSFan (Ken) from the Zipit Yahoo Group. This removed all of the problems with keys not working, or repeating while typing. The original drivers remain, but have been renamed to *.orig.

*STILL* COMING SOON?
- A script to download and install "packages" (zip files) using wget, unzip, and a "binary repository" on www.oddree.com. A similar system could provide updates when I provide them.
- I have been working on getting GPSFan's sound modules working on the Z2 Shell. The modules load, but the alsa tools do not build properly with a static flag. I am hoping to get this resolved soon. GPSFan has been very helpful in troubleshooting this.
- I still want to get an image viewer working. DFBSee 'almost' works.

IFAQ (InFrequently Asked Questions)
Q. Why are you wasting your time on this? The Z2 Shell is dead!
A. It may be 10x more work to get simple things built for it - the Z2 is very lean, and still very useful.

Q. Why does nmap (or some other binary) run so slow?
A. Because everything has to be built "static" to run on the Z2. That means that where you might normally have hundreds of shared libraries on a linux machine, the Z2 Shell must embed the libraries into each running binary. It makes for some bloated inefficient stuff. But, it works. If you want a better system - start writing it! Otherwise, try to limit the actions of what you are doing. For instance, use an address range or port range with nmap. Don't start long running scans on entire networks. This is a Z2 we're talking about. The resources are pretty lean.

Q. How can I add my own binary/package?
A. There are several ways to go about this. The method I have used to compile everything is "scratchbox". Scratchbox is a program which let's you cross-compile applications. That means that you can build stuff for an ARM platform, even though you have a regular x86 machine. It can be tricky and complicated. Try reading up on what I have posted at http://www.oddree.com.

Q. Why did you *insert snarky comment here*?
A. If you find that I did something stupid and inefficient, do let me know. I don't claim to have any expertise in the area of building software. If you have some suggestions on how to improve things or would like to help with the next release of this improved Z2 Shell, email me at ray@oddree.com. I would love to collaborate with some folks who might be more talented than myself.

Q. Will you build *insert package name here* for me?
A. Probably. Unless you are asking me to build something that has an endless list of dependencies. In which case I will probably tell you to install OpenEmbedded or full fledged Debian. They all ready have all of these packages. I am only expanding upon the old Z2 Shell because I find it lean and useful.

WHAT'S NEXT?
Right now, I am focusing on getting the sound modules working correctly on the Z2 Shell. Long ago, GPSFan developed some kernel modules and utilities for the Z2. He did so for the replacement shell(s) which are able to load dynamic libraries. I have been working to get those same tools to load in a static environment but I have run into some obstacles. Thanks to GPSFan, we determined that the broken alsa-utils I kept creating were actually due to bugs with the alsa-libs and alsa-utils packages themselves. Meanwhile, I have been successful in compiling an older audio tools called "aumix". While it can recognize devices and change sound settings ... I still have no sound! It's a work in progress! If any of you talented Z2 developers are lingering and lurking out there - get your asses in to #zipit and help me. :-)

centerim for the Zipit Z2!

2009-11-11T13:48:00.004-05:00

One of the first things I noticed about the Z2 was that the keyboard driver for the stock application was downright broken. On the top of my list of "things to compile for the shell" was a multi-protocol instant messenger. But that ended up being quite a task.

Most people probably would have given up and just installed a new kernel or a new OS to the device such as Debian or OpenEmbedded. But I actually like the stock operating system, and I don't want to break it (despite the lousy keyboard driver). And so ... I have been enslaved to Scratchbox for the past two weeks trying to build this application for the Z2 Shell. There were some pretty deep pitfalls. Namely that MSN and Jabber require a few encryption pieces which didn't like being built into a static binary. But before I get carried away with the details ...

Here is the binary if you would like to try it: http://oddree.com/zipit/centerim-zipitz2.zip

Here are the release notes:

** centerim-4.22.8 for the Zipit Z2 by Ray Dios Haque **
**     http://www.oddree.com          **

IM ME!  AIM: rayhaque - Yahoo!: ray_haque - ICQ: 12003044 

ABOUT
This is the centerim instant messenger from http://www.centerim.org
compiled for use on the Z2 Shell image for the Zipit Z2.  It was a
nightmare to build this due to the long running list of dependency
libraries and applications.  Note that the enourmous file size is
the result of building in all of these static libraries.  This binary
was built with AIM, Yahoo, and ICQ protocols.  I removed everything
else to keep the size low and my sanity in check.  Also note that 
MSN and Jabber were removed due to their dependency on GPGME which I
could not successfully build in a 'static' manner.  If you want these
protocols added back in, please build it yourself and then tell me
how you pulled it off.  :-)

INSTALL
Extract the contents of bin to the bin folder on your SD card.  These 
files will be located in /mnt/sd0/bin after you have booted.  You will 
not need a path to run them as your PATH variable should include this 
directory.  Just run "centerim" to get started (it takes a few seconds
to load up).

Extract .centerim to the root of your SD card.  It will be mapped as
/mnt/sd0/.centerim.  This folder will house all of your contacts, 
logs, settings, and perhaps your account passwords if you elect to 
save them (default).

USAGE (to get you started)
centerim - starts the messenger.
g - will bring up a menu which you can navigate with the circular 
arrow keys on the zipit.  You can set up your accounts here.
ESC (smiley key) twice - exits whatever menu you are in.
*Read the official documentation at http://www.centerim.org for more*

MODIFICATION
I noticed that the "servers" being used for the AOL and Yahoo plugins
were very old, and didn't answer requests any more.  I have changed 
them to reflect what is used when I run Pidgin.  If you can't get AIM
or Yahoo to connect or log on, it could be that these servers have 
been changed again.  It could also be that the protocols have been 
intentionally broken by the vendors to prevent people from running
applications like this one.  Check www.centerim.org for details.

I also set the margins to what I think is an appropriate height and 
width.  If you don't like them, you can change them in the main menu
(accessed by pressing 'g').  Any changes you make will be saved to the
config file which resides in /mnt/sd0/.centerim.

Earlier in the week I wrote up a blog post about compiling gettext to give you all some indication of why I have pulled out all my hair. In that post, I pasted my "dependency tree" which I created so that I could keep track of where I was in trying to build a library - which needs a library - which needs ... you get the idea.

When I was done, this is what that dependency tree looked like, complete with notes. I am sharing this partly so that you can see what all was involved here - but also in case I am every crazy enough to try and build this again (which could happen if AOL or Yahoo! decide to re-write something with their protocols or logon processes).

I am pasting a picture, because the HTML here keeps slaughtering all of my tabs and white-space. If you actually want to get to the text - I have put it here.

So there you have it - an application that took two weeks of my life away and will probably only be used by me. This will also make it's way into my next "IZ2S" Shell image which should drop in a week or so depending on what else I might build in the near future.

HACK ON!

Magnify Your Zipit!

2009-11-11T08:55:00.007-05:00

Mcavity from #zipit on irc.freenode.net has finally found the cure for strained eyes when you are running a terminal console on your Zipit. You just need to magnify it. After doing some shopping around, he found a site that sells a Gameboy screen magnifier for $0.69.

The magnifier is a flip up - flip down model that you can put up and out of the way when you are not using it. This morning he shared some pictures of the attachment in action.

And here it is in "flipped up mode".

Now, with magnified eyes!

Another before and after ...

Mcavity says that this works pretty well, especially for having spent less than a buck on the idea. I don't know that he was thinking large enough though. When he shared his ideas about getting one of these, I kind of had a scene from the movie Brazil in my head.

"Has anyone seen Sam Lowry?"

Fun with the Debian ARM collection + Building with Scratchbox Part I

2009-11-09T15:36:00.004-05:00

There have been a few packages that I simply cannot configure for the ARM platform. These past few weeks I have attempted to build some rather hefty applications that have dozens of dependencies. The way things go, I usually get about three or four dependencies deep when I hit one that just won't 'make' without a pile of errors. Being the non-programmer that I am, I do what anyone else would do. And that is to run the error message through Google and then read through whatever mailing list or forum that I come across. At the end of the day, I usually end up with a pile of compiled and installed libraries - which don't do me any good.

That is, until I found the Debian ARM ports collection. This collection of software includes packages, source code, and patches. Naturally, just taking a compiled binary and dropping it onto the Z2 is not going to work. It's not that easy! And I don't mind building things from source code ... when the source code builds correctly. That's were the source code and patches come into play.

Take for example: gettext. This old GNU utility builds pretty easily on most platforms. But the ARM branch of Debian (and the Zipit Z2 Shell) were built with ulibc. ulibc is a work-alike clone to GNU libc (aka glibc). But there are those little nuances that get under your skin. I found myself beating my head against the wall Saturday afternoon because ulibc doesn't support some sort of program error checking routine. The result is that you cannot build gettext without modifying some code which is well beyond my capabilities. The ulibc folks could probably fix this. But they throw the blame at the glibc folks for supporting a routine which really serves no purpose. While they are busy fighting like a bunch of children (this argument is a couple years old) I still don't have a working gettext!! Surely there are people out there who are smarter than me and who can fix this broken code. There are. And *maybe* they have fixed it. Here is where I go next ...

First, I browsed out to Debians Etch package page for the ARM platform. You can find it here: http://packages.debian.org/etch/arm/.

After some browsing around (DANGER: the search at the top of the page leads you away from the ARM platform stuff!!) you might find that gettext is available from the "Development" category. Here is the page where the source code was located: http://packages.debian.org/etch/arm/devel/gettext. Take a look at it now. On this page I can see that gettext has some dependencies which are displayed with a red bullet. While it may be lousy that I have another couple dependencies to install - at least I know I can build them without errors! Time, I have. Development skill - not so much. Assume that we have satisfied all of it's needs (ignoring the libc needs, since Scratchbox provides ulibc for us).

On the right side of the page there are several links for downloading the chunks of code. There is the package itself (some pre-compiled binaries that "might" work, but probably won't). There is the original source code (the tar-ball has the word "orig" in it's title). Most importantly, there is the "patch file" which will always end with "diff.gz". The patch file is what will correct the source code for us so that we can build it properly for our Z2 ARM platform.

If you haven't figured this out yet - it helps to be connected to your Scratchbox development PC in a terminal window, with a browser opened on your regular PC. Then you can copy and paste links directly into scratchbox without weighing it down with whatever else you are running (like the web browser).

So, we would start up Scratchbox and fetch the files we need:


wget http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/pool/main/g/gettext/gettext_0.16.1.orig.tar.gz
tar -xzf gettext_0.16.1.orig.tar.gz
cd gettext-0.16.1

Now before we start building anything, we need to patch the source code for the Debian ARM platform:


wget http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/pool/main/g/gettext/gettext_0.16.1-1.diff.gz
gzip -d gettext_0.16.1-1.diff.gz
patch -p1 < gettext_0.16.1-1.diff

At this point we would run './configure', and then when it was complete we would run 'make' or 'make install'.


./configure
make

But it's not that easy. Gettext *STILL* won't install. Even with the patches. Why is that? Well, because the Debian folks didn't use ulibc. They used the full fledged GNU libc, or glibc. You are still going to get those damned error messages. Grrr! But hey, someone else had to have gotten these errors before. And if you start Googling around you will find what fixes it, which are these two pages:

http://osdir.com/ml/linux.lfs.hardened/2007-07/msg00041.html
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/patches/hlfs/svn/gettext-0.17-uClibc-1.patch

Here are what the patches entail. Note that these patches were created for version 0.16.1, which was the version I was attempting to build. If I was using the latest and greatest gettext from the folks at GNU, I might have to do some further digging or investigating. As it was, I was able to read the patch snippets and make sense of them. Here are those snippets.


--- gettext-0.16.1/gettext-tools/src/msgfmt.c 2006-11-27 17:02:08.000000000
+0000
+++ gettext-0.16.1/gettext-tools/src/msgfmt.c 2007-07-18 20:12:58.000000000
+0000
@@ -194,6 +194,7 @@
static void read_catalog_file_msgfmt (char *filename,
catalog_input_format_ty input_syntax);

+void (*error_print_progname) (void) = NULL;

int
main (int argc, char *argv[])

And ...


--- gettext-0.16.1.orig/gettext-tools/gnulib-lib/error.h 2006-11-27 18:14:50.000000000 +0100
+++ gettext-0.16.1/gettext-tools/gnulib-lib/error.h 2007-06-20 13:29:32.000000000 +0200
@@ -50,7 +50,10 @@ extern void error_at_line (int __status,
 /* If NULL, error will flush stdout, then print on stderr the program
    name, a colon and a space.  Otherwise, error will call this
    function without parameters instead.  */
-extern DLL_VARIABLE void (*error_print_progname) (void);
+#ifndef __UCLIBC__
+extern DLL_VARIABLE
+#endif
+void (*error_print_progname) (void);
 
 /* This variable is incremented each time `error' is called.  */
 extern DLL_VARIABLE unsigned int error_message_count;

To apply the snippets you can:
1) Create two files, with these snippets and save the files as somefilename.diff. Then run 'patch -p1 < somefilename.diff'.
2)

Now, since I had all ready started building my application and bombed in the middle somewhere, I should clean everything up and start over.


make clean
make

Ten minutes or so later, you should be done. And if you didn't get any errors. You can now "make install".

That's it! You are one step closer to compiling some giant peice of software. Now, where was I in the list of dependencies when I got stuck trying to solve this? If you get lost or sidetracked, you might never make your way back to where you were when the problems started. For that reason, I often create a running list for myself. If I try to install one program that requires three more, I document them and use simple tab indentation to indicate what is a dependency. Your end result will be a big messy tree that gives you some indication of how many frustrating hours it will take to get this all done. It's also good to document what you have had to do that is "special" to get something to build. If you have to start over later, it might be good to have those notes.

Here is the "tree" as it looked when I was building gettext. An "X" indicated that I completed it. Question marks mean that I think something might be required, even though the Debian pages didn't mention it as a requirement. In other words, there were massive build failures and I had to take a guess at what I was missing. Your notes and abbreviations may vary.


centerim (4.22.5-1~bpo40+1) - http://packages.debian.org/etch-backports/arm/centerim
 libcurl3-gnutls  (>= 7.15.5-1) 
  libgnutls13  (>= 1.4.0-0) 
  X zlib1g  (>= 1:1.2.1) 
  libcomerr2  (>= 1.33-3) 
  libidn11  (>= 0.5.18) 
  libldap2 - (configured with: CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.2/include"
                LDFLAGS="-L/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.2/lib" ./configure,, make depend,, make
                install)
   X ?? (undocumented requirement) gettext (0.16.1-1) http://osdir.com
                              /ml/linux.lfs.hardened/2007-07/msg00041.html
    ?? (undocumented requirement) intltool - installaed intltool-0.40.6
     X XML::Parser
      X ?? expat - installed expat-2.0.1
    ?? (undocumented requirement) iconv - installed libiconv-1.9.2
   X libgnutls13  (>= 1.4.0-0) 
    X libgpg-error0  (>= 1.4) 
    X libgcrypt11 (1.2.3-2)
     X libgpg-error0  (>= 1.2)  
    X liblzo1
    X libopencdk8  (>= 0.5.8) 
     X libgcrypt11  (>= 1.2.2) 
     X libgpg-error0  (>= 1.4) 
     X zlib1g  (>= 1:1.2.1) 
    X libtasn1-3  (>= 0.3.4) 
    X zlib1g  (>= 1:1.2.1) 
   X libsasl2-2 (2.1.22.dfsg1-8+etch1) - installed to /usr/local/lib/sasl2
     X libdb4.2 (4.2.52+dfsg-2)
     X (undocumented requirement) libssl0.9.8 (0.9.8c-4etch9)

Stupid Zipit Trick - Changing the wallpaper in the Stock OS.

2009-11-02T12:23:00.005-05:00

I found it odd that with the stock operating system on the Zipit Z2 there is no method of uploading your own wallpaper image. The current method of theming or customizing the Zipit's appearance is to visit the web site and use their online tool. From there you can pick your wallpaper and a theme which will be "delivered" to your device. But why can't I upload my own wallpaper?

In a conversation with some folks in #zipit I became aware that you can get your hands into the partition that hosts the stock operating system by booting up in the Z2 Shell and exploring the /mnt/ffs directory. It was there that I found my wallpaper image. It was right in the root, and it was named Neon_glow.jpg.

So here is how you can change the wallpaper in the stock OS.

1) Boot up your Z2 Shell.
2) 'cd /mnt/ffs'
3) 'cp yourwallpaper.jpg /mnt/sd0'
4) Remove your SD card and insert it into your PC.
5) Copy your wallpaper over to your PC and open it with an image editor such as Gimp.
6) Open the image of your choosing and resize it to roughly 320x208. Copy this image, and paste it over top of your wallpaper image in your editor. This will ensure that you retain the correct size, color bit depth, etc.
7) Save the image to your SD card under the same name as your present wallpaper.
8) Boot back to the Z2 Shell.
9) 'cp /mnt/sd0/yourwallpaper.jpg /mnt/ffs/'
10) 'poweroff', remove your SD card, and boot up the stock OS.

Fun right?

There is no telling how long this wallpaper will "stay put". I would think that eventually the zipit will re-grab the correct wallpaper from their website. But perhaps it will hang around until you replace it by selecting a new one using the web site? Who knows. My current wallpaper has survived several hours and several reboots.

Hack on!

Introducing the Improved Z2 Shell (aka Shell with benefits)

2009-11-01T12:55:00.006-05:00

I have been cranking away on my Zipit doing all sorts of neat things with it. I want to first thank all of the folks in #zipit on irc.freenode.net and of course the fine people at Zipit Wireless (namely rossimo). They have all been a tremendous help in putting this new image together! Also - big shouts to Hunter Davis (the Zipit hacking pioneer).

Today I am releasing the first of what will probably be several versions of the Zipit Shell with some added binaries. The Z2 Shell is freely available for download from the Zipit Wireless "linux hacking" site. I have taken this shell and added all sorts of interesting new compiled binaries (irc, nmap, etc). I have been amassing a growing collections of add-ons to the generic Shell image and some of them required slight modification to the z2startup.sh script. This script is rather touchy, and screwing is up will render your Shell image useless. Rather than make people download and assemble all of these little code snippets, I decided to create my own "Shell with benefits".

You can download it here: http://www.oddree.com/zipit/Z2S-v201.zip

Here is a "demonstration" video which was poorly shot and narrated by myself.

IZ2S - The "Improved" Z2 Shell v2.01 - (aka Shell with benefits) from Ray Haque on Vimeo.

Here are the release notes from the included README file ...

IZS - The "Improved Z2 Shell" (aka Shell with Benefits) v2.01

ABOUT
This collection was built by Ray Dios Haque out of sheer necessity. I wanted something that I could play with that would not effect the stock software that comes on the Z2. The easiest way to do that was to take the Z2 Shell that was built by rossimo from Zipit Wireless and expand upon it. I take no credit for his work. Be it known that if I don't mention adding it, it was something that Ross built for us. By the way, thank you Ross. This image has been a lot of fun for me and I hope that by releasing this image of my own I can give something back to the Zipit community.

INSTALL
Format your SD card as a FAT or a FAT16 file system. Copy everything from this zip file onto the root of the card (preserving all paths/directories). Insert your SD card into the Zipit and boot it up. Note that you can only boot this image if you are running the Stock OS that came with your Zipit. If you have installed OpenEmbedded or Debian, then you have probably replaced the stock operating system which included a routine to look for the z2script.sh script. For legal purposes, I cannot provide you this stock operating system. Some of the smarter people in the Zipit community might be able to help you restore this OS (see CHAT below).

CHAT
Come chat with us! There is a thriving (?) community of the worlds best Zipit hackers who hang out in #zipit on irc.freenode.net. You can fire up 'irc' from this very image and come hang out.

NEW BINARIES
wget, ircii-20090520 (irc), wireless-tools (ifrename, iwconfig, iwevent, iwgetid, iwlist, iwpriv, iwspy), ftp (ftp, /etc/services), unzip (unzipsfx, unzip, funzip), nmap (nmap, *new* ncat), wpa_passphrase, less (lessecho, lesskey), grep

NEW LIBS
ncurses (libform.a, libform_g.a, libmenu.a, libmenu_g.a, libncurses++.a, libncurses.a libncurses_g.a, libpanel.a, libpanel_g.a)

SCRIPT MODIFICATION(S)
- Added a routine asking if you would like to configure your wireless card. This was not possible before as there was no scanning routine and the image lacked the wpa_passphrase utility. You can now scan for and configure your wireless settings entirely from the zipit.
- Added "cp /mnt/sd0/etc/services /etc/services" which gives the ftp command the port numbers it needs to function.
- Added "cp -R /mnt/sd0/etc/terminfo /etc", "export TERM=vt102", "export TERMINFO=/etc/terminfo" to help irc understand the screen layout.
- Added "ln -s /mnt/sd0/lib/* /lib" to make ncurses libraries usable, and any future libraries that you or I might add.
- Added "ln -s /mnt/sd0/share /share" for nmap and anything else that might require a "share" directory to be present to function.

OTHER MODIFICATION(S)
- Replaced the stock keyboard driver in /modules with one that was created by Kenyon from the Zipit Yahoo Group. This removed all of the problems with keys not working, or repeating while typing. The original drivers remain, but have been renamed to *.orig.

COMING SOON?
- A script to download and install "packages" (zip files) using wget, unzip, and a "binary repository" on www.oddree.com. A similar system could provide updates when I provide them.
- rkdavis from #zipit would like me to add sound to this. I will as soon as I add something to this collection that needs it!
- A terminal based image viewer. I have been messing with a couple, but much of what I have experimented with requires X11 libs. Without X11 on this image that results in some very large and slow moving kludgey code.

IFAQ (InFrequently Asked Questions)
Q. Why does nmap (or some other binary) run so slow?
A. Because everything has to be built "static" to run on the Z2. That means that where you might normally have hundreds of shared libraries on a linux machine, the Z2 Shell must embed the libraries into each running binary. It makes for some bloated inefficient stuff. But, it works. If you want a better system - start writing it! Otherwise, try to limit the actions of what you are doing. For instance, use an address range or port range with nmap. Don't start long running scans on entire networks. This is a Z2 we're talking about. The resources are pretty lean.

Q. How can I add my own binary/package?
A. There are several ways to go about this. The method I have used to compile everything is "scratchbox". Scratchbox is a program which let's you cross-compile applications. That means that you can build stuff for an ARM platform, even though you have a regular x86 machine. It can be tricky and complicated. Try reading up on what I have posted at http://www.oddree.com.

Q. Why did you *insert snarky comment here*?
A. If you find that I did something stupid and inefficient, do let me know. I don't claim to have any expertise in the area of building software. If you have some suggestions on how to improve things or would like to help with the next release of this improved Z2 Shell, email me at ray@oddree.com. I would love to collaborate with some folks who might be more talented than myself.

Q. Will you build *insert package name here* for me?
A. Probably. Unless you are asking me to build something that has an endless list of dependencies. In which case I will probably tell you to install OpenEmbedded or full fledged Debian. They all ready have all of these packages. I am only expanding upon the old Z2 Shell because I find it lean and useful.

Review: The Asus 1005HA eee PC (I hate Windows 7 Starter Edition)

2009-10-31T08:40:00.007-04:00

My wife has never had a new computer. Ever. Two years ago I refurbished a junker from the basement by loading it up with a new motherboard, CPU, etc. Two months later it died. She was so jaded and angry with the whole thing that she didn't want a new one. She just accepted a cash refund for the parts and spent it on other stuff. Since then, she has been through a few more hand-me-downs and at the end of the day she usually sits in bed with a hand-me-down laptop that sounds like Chernobyl melting down.

This year I decided to get her a new PC. I wanted it to be something that she could take up to bed with her and keep away from the kids. So I took the logical route and got her a netbook. The guys at the office questioned my choice and reminded me that for another $100-$200 I could get her a full fledged laptop. But my wife has very limited needs when it comes to computing. She really just wants a working browser, and a Word processor to use every now and then. I have had an Asus eee PC for a couple years now and I have really enjoyed it. It was a logical choice to get her the latest in Asus technology.

I went with the Asus 1005HA. This was a pretty good fit for what she needed. It had a lot of storage for a netbook (250GB), a decent amount of RAM (1GB), and ... a processor. The CPU is nothing to write home about, but let's face it - she won't ever put this to it's full potential. Also - it came in colors. And I was able to get her a pink laptop.

There was some risk involved in buying this for her as I bought it on the release date. Nobody had really seen this thing yet other than some douchebag bloggers who were paid or gifted things. And you can't really trust those guys (you know who you are). So I took the plunge and ordered it. I figured that in the worst case scenario that it completely sucked balls - I could return it to NewEgg and trust that I would get my money back. There were other perks buying it from NewEgg. There was a free shipping deal (slow, but free) and also a free gift! The gift is an Asus USB transfer cable which tethers two PC's together. It looks handy. I haven't used it.

About a week later, the netbook showed up on my doorstep. I decided I wanted to let my wife be the one to open it rather than try to set everything up before hand. That might have been a bad idea.

After unpacking the laptop and admiring it's overall look, we were both pretty impressed. My eee PC is rather boxy and old fashioned looking. My wifes was very sleek, with smoothed out edges and a beveled lower half. The bottom vents are angled in a way that you can sit this thing on your lap without choking it out. The keys are BIG! While I have little "chicklet" keys on mine, this model has a very REAL keyboard. The only thing I would have liked to see changed there is the arrow keys. The up and down arrows share a single key-space. Why?

The touchpad uses that new "multi-touch" technology which is pretty neat for scrolling, zooming in and out, etc. It's also flush with the wrist rest. In other words, there is no telling where the touchpad begins and ends because it all runs together in the design. The continous mouse button bar of course tells you where you should begin your multi-touching. Design-wise I was very, very, impressed.

Then we booted it.

Please wait a moment while I climb aboard this soapbox and speak directly to the fucking idiots at Microsoft for a moment. This is for you, Ballmer.

WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING WITH WINDOWS 7 STARTER EDITION?!?!?! I mean, are you SERIOUS with this SHIT?

My wife sat down, and booted her laptop for the first time ever. Her first challenge was finding the language we speak. English, was at the bottom of the list. It's frustrating when you are trying to figure out a new mousepad and use the oddly placed arrow keys. It's equally frustrating to watch someone else do it (knowing that if they accidentally pick French, it's going to be a rough night of re installation). After going through the usual series of prompts asking for things like "your name" and timezone, it told us that it was "Initializing". At this point there was no indication of progress. Just a hard drive that buzzed along and looked like it was doing something.

40 minutes later. I REPEAT - FORTY FULL MINUTES LATER ... Windows 7 began to boot up for the first time. My wife wasn't there to celebrate this majestic beginning with me because she had other shit to do and had left the room after the first 30 minutes of waiting. What the hell was all that waiting about? It was installing updates. I know now, because the first thing it did (after finishing a very, very, VERY slow boot process) was tell me that Windows had "recently installed updates". It would have been nice to know that instead of just seeing "Initializing" for all that time. But, I digress. I watched patiently while my wife explored things.

Despite my best efforts to get my wife to use something other than Internet Explorer, she always goes back to it. It's not so much a problem any more as Internet Explorer 8 has improved quite a bit when it comes to security. She launched Internet Explorer. And waited. Before her eyes, it was as if a team of "paid by the hour" painters showed up and began to paint the display for her. They may have stopped for lunch sometime after the Favorites bar was up.

This was not a good sign.

She clicked the Start Menu. And waited.

She loaded a web page. And waited.

Waiting seemed to be what Windows 7 was good at. And every time she clicked on anything (menu bars included) there was a delay while Windows appeared to go out to lunch. At this point I thought something might be horribly wrong. She handed me the reigns.

I poked and prodded a few settings. I tried to see if there was Antivirus agent slowing us down (but it was a trial from Trend which hadn't been activated). I thought maybe some add-on software was running amuck in the background. It wasn't. Things were relatively normal. But SLOW. Then I decided to go into the PC Properties and see how Microsoft rated this machines performance on the "5 point scale". There was not yet a rating established, so I clicked the link to run the wizard. But there would be no rating today. I was told "Windows 7 cannot rate this model". Why is that? Afraid of the embarrassing score you are going to get on brand new hardware?

Also - there were more updates. My wife always shuts her laptop down. She doesn't need to. But she has that nagging feeling in her mind that if you aren't using it, you should close it down and put it away. I get that. But every time she has shut this laptop down there have been updates. EVERY TIME. This netbook has averaged between 2 and 8 updates every time it's shut off. Microsoft ... WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?

Then came the final insult.

She wanted to change her wallpaper. That seems simple enough. She went out to NFL.com and pulled up one of her favorite players. She right clicked the image and chose "Set as Desktop Background". But then it wasn't there. She did it again. Still no wallpaper. No matter what she chose, she was stuck with an ugly blue Windows logo for her desktop wallpaper. At this point I started search. Lo and behold - YOU CANNOT CHANGE YOUR DESKTOP WALLPAPER IN WINDOWS 7 STARTER EDITION!

I thought the whole idea of Windows 7 Starter Edition was that it was crafted for netbooks, right? WRONG. The concept of Windows 7 is that Microsoft gives it to you for a "reduced price" (resulting in a cheaper laptop) but then removes key features that you would want to use. Starting with ... no desktop wallpaper.

Remember Windows 95? You could set desktop wallpaper on that. Remember that horrible Windows Me OS? That had desktop wallpaper. Of all the fucking things to TAKE AWAY from a user .... you take away the ability for them to personalize their desktop? FUCK YOU MICROSOFT! Here is a new ad campaign I came up with to replace the terrible commercials that you come up with. It's based on the film Goodfellas and it goes something like "Fuck you, pay me". Want to change your wallpaper? Fuck you, pay us!

At this point, I told my wife - "if you want me to reload this with something else, I will gladly do it". We decided to let her go on a few days with what was loaded on it because perhaps we were not giving Windows 7 a chance. After all, I had run a Beta of Windows 7 on my desktop PC and I rather liked it! It actually ran faster than XP had and the features were downright fun.

Here I am almost a week later, installing Windows XP.

This is where Asus gets a saving grade for selling this netbook. While other manufacturers might not give you the option or the drivers to "downgrade" a brand new netbook like this one - Asus does. A quick visit to their website allowed me to download EVERY required driver that I needed. For that matter, I can even download all the additional software that came preloaded (some of which is very useful, like the "hyperdrive" application for speed/battery usage adjustment).

Asus, I love you.

While it may not be easy installing XP to a netbook with no CD/DVD ROM drive, or floppy drive, I do have the external drives from the office to help me out in that department. I just happened to loan them out over the weekend in anticipation of what was probably going to be quite the job.

It took a couple of hours but I was able to get all of the drivers from the Asus site and merge them with a Windows XP disc I have using the freely available nlite utility. With that disc and an external DVD drive, installing XP was a cinch. Although none of the utilities I downloaded would install. Most of them looked like they were damaged zip files as nothing had an icon associated to it. Perhaps someone uploaded them as "ASCII" files. Who knows. The only utility that I absolutely HAD to have was the Super Hybrid Engine (which turns up the speed for your CPU when you are plugged in, and dumbs it down when unplugged). I found that I could use the utility from an older generation Asus netbook and it worked just fine.

Being that things turned out the way they did, it's hard for me to give this netbook a raw score. The hardware is really spectacular. But the operating system that shipped on it is absolute dog shit. People are going to be getting these things for Christmas and I really feel sorry for them.

Sometimes I wonder if Microsoft has unknowingly hired moles from Apple who write really bad code, and make really stupid marketing decisions. If so, congratulations Apple. It's working!

My Zipit Z2 + IRC on the Zipit

2009-10-25T08:08:00.004-04:00

My wife and I bought a Zipit Z2 for my daughter for Christmas. I was tasked with making sure that the device works since we bought it off of eBay. It works! The problem is that in testing it, I attached my profile to the device and activated the free year of text messaging. Woops! I guess it's mine now. Oh well. They are only $50 which is a pretty good deal for how sweet this thing is. So I bought another one. I will leave that new on in the package.

Anyway - I was impressed with the software that comes on the Z2. It's more or less for messaging your friends, and maybe listening to some music. Or - both. The screen is exceptionally nice (which is weird because it was built for texting). The built in speaker isn't bad either considering what a tiny little device this thing is. I went onto the Zipit Wireless web site and proceeded to theme my device. It seems backwards. But the idea is that you sit down to a PC with Internet access and log into your account. Then from there, you pick your wallpaper and your favorite streaming radio stations (the list is pretty long, but some of the stations are broken). You can also pick an overall "theme" which consists of different colored borders and transparent backgrounds for your pop-up windows. Niiiiiiice. After picking your theme and such, your device is sent the "go get it" message and downloads and installs everything. Easy! And pretty damned cool.

I loved the installed software so much, I really don't want to change it. At least not yet. While I could put the OpenEmbedded OS on it, I would rather keep the stuff that the engineers intended for it to run. At the same time I would like to add the one thing that the Z2 is missing - an IRC client!

The problem with the native OS that comes on the device is that the source code for it is not available (and probably never will be). The Zipit Wireless folks are fine with you hacking their device, and they even seem to give you some guidance on how to do it - but their OS is off limits. Most likely because it was developed contractually. So I would like to add some functionality, but not scrap the fun little OS. And it can be done! The Zipit folks have given you the ability to boot directly from the SD card slot on the front of the device. And they have created a few downloadable chunks of executable code to try it out.

By using scratchbox from the development VirtualBox that I made I was able to compile the ncurses library, and ircii for the Zipit's ARM processor. When I built them, I added the --prefix=/home/zipitdev/opt to the end of ./configure. That way when it was all done I could merge the built stuff with the Zipit Shell image which is freely available. In the end, I merged my stuff with the bootable image stuff. And now all I need to do is to copy it onto a Mini SD card and fire it up.

Here's the problem. I have a 2GB Mini SD card, but the SD adapter that it fits into was broken up by the intern at work. No problem, I thought. I will just buy another Mini SD card or a new adapter. But people are running out of stock on these cards and not ordering more. The price has gone up on them. What should be old and obsolete is "rare" and "valued". Geesh. Maybe I will venture out today and see if I can find a card, or a USB adapter from one of the dime stores up the street.

In the mean time, if anyone wants to try out my "Z2 shell with links and irc" image you can download it here. Until I say otherwise, this is untested. So don't be mad at me if it doesn't work.

Also ... late into the night I started reading old IRC logs for the #zipit channel on freenode and I could see that there is all ready an ircii client compiled for the Z2 under the Debian image (also widely available). Ooops. :-)

I WAS ON AOTS!

2009-10-01T19:53:00.007-04:00

Okay, I myself was not on AOTS today. But I sent in a fax and they printed it, and handed it to Olivia. My terrible 30 minute MS Paint job made it onto cable television! She even tried to pronounced my name, Ray Dios Haque (which by the way is pronounce ray-dio s-hack - or Radio Shack).

Here is what I faxed to Kevin and Olivia ...

What's fun about faxing something is that it looked pretty awesome having been converted to grayscale and deprived of good quality.

Here is what it looked like in Olivia's hands ...

There are all ready clips up on the web site from today's show, so here are a few to prove that I really am this famous. REALLY.

Also - if you still don't own a Zipit, you should buy one and help me earn one by buying it using my link! Please?

Zipit Z2 Development "Kit"

2009-09-28T10:40:00.008-04:00

I was reading over the weekend about how you could install "scratchbox" and use it to build software for use on your Zipit Z2. I do not own one of these yet, but when I get one (and I will) I will probably want to go right to work on developing new applications or compiling existing ones to experiment with.

If you don't all ready have a Linux box set up, it could be quite a bit of work to prepare a development platform to use. I opted to create a VirtualBox for this purpose. Assuming that other folks are going to be building Linux boxes just to compile applications, it only makes sense to share my VirtualBox creation.

I have created a Torrent which includes a Debian 5 VirtualBox image which had scratchbox installed and configured out of the box. Unpack it, boot it, and get to compiling! Note that this is a compilation of entirely *free* software. No funny business or illegalities here.

The torrent can be found here: http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5103140 and because TPB has been having "issues" lately you can also get it here: http://isohunt.com/torrent_details/133678149/?tab=summary

Seeding this first day is going to be slow. Tomorrow I will bring the Torrent into the office with me and kick up the bandwidth a bit.

If you haven't seen the Z2 in action yet, check out this site.

You need a Zipit

2009-09-27T11:51:00.006-04:00

I just signed up to be a Zipit Wireless Affiliate.

The Zipit is a little wireless gadget that looks like a hand-held laptop and provides you a method of texting your friends (through cellular networks), Instant Messaging your 'buddies' through various IM protocols, listening to your music (it has a Micro SD card slot), playing Internet Radio ... and more.

The creators of the device built it around an open source Linux kernel, and encourage application development. It's a pretty brilliant idea.

Also, the things are only $50. So you need one, right?

I plan on putting together a page dedicated to these hot little gadgets once I get my "affiliate kit" and such.

** EDIT : The affiliate program appears to be done and over so I have removed my links to the now defunct web site. There is talk of a new program starting up and I have asked to be involved. If it ever develops, I will Blog about it. **

Using Vista Webcam Drivers in Windows 7

2009-08-23T14:27:00.002-04:00

Back when Windows 7 came out in BETA I was quick to download and install it. I was not at all surprised when my webcam didn't work with it as I remember this being a problem with Vista. I think I ran Vista for about 1 month at home and work before giving up on and going back to XP. But now Windows 7 is right around the corner as a "real" operating system. So why would they still not have a driver for my webcam?

Ah, the wonders of capitalism. Could they create a driver for my old webcam that would work with Vista? Sure they could. But they would have to pay someone to sit down and develop that code. And that money would be a waste, because we expect our drivers to be free. Since this is a device that I all ready own and have owned for a while, there is no sense in spending money on new driver development. But whatever happened to customer service?

Today I decided to give this webcam driver issue another try. I went out to Creative Labs web site and downloaded their "Windows Vista" driver for my webcam. When I ran it, the installer did an OS check and said "we don't support this version of Windows". So then I opened the .exe file with WinRAR and extracted the files into a directory. From there I was able to right click on the setup.exe file and run it in "troubleshooting mode". This mode in Windows 7 allows you to try and run things as if you are using an older operating system. In my case I faked like I was running Windows Vista. The install completed, and the driver seems to work. I immediately fired up Skype and was told "you have working video".

A big thanks to the developers of Windows 7. And a big "up yours" to Creative Labs. Looks like it will be another couple of years before you get any more of my money. ;-)

The Great Health Care Debate!

2009-08-12T11:01:00.002-04:00

This whole battle for health care reform might be a little easier if folks would sit down and read the house bill that congress has suggested. I have always been one of those guys who would rather read "the straight dope" than take a fools word for it. So I wonder why so many fools are crowding into town halls and attempting to thwart this latest house bill. For that matter, people are making some really, really, really ignorant comments just about every where. Like Facebook!

Why do we need a nation wide health care system. Why not leave it to the states?

How is your state doing financially? You have an 8 in 50 chance of them not being over budget as of today. Are they going to invest anything into fixing health care? No.

Why not try medical savings accounts like in Singapore?

We have those plans here. Unfortunately small businesses end up having to use these. Go to your bank and tell them you want a "Health Savings Account". They will gladly give you one. This plan should be called "pay for everything yourself" - with tiny contributions from your employer". Good luck trying to pay for cancer treatments without any financial help. I recently had 5 stitches on my hand and it cost me $1,000.

Sounds like Acorn, doesn't it?

Does it? Let me spend 30 seconds researching this. Here's what I have: "ACORN is the nation’s largest grassroots community organization of low- and moderate-income people with over 400,000 member families organized into more than 1,200 neighborhood chapters in 110 cities across the country." Health care reform sounds like ACORN? No. Stop watching Fox News, idiot.

Politicians hold town meetings to have a "dialogue" with the people in their communities, but when people in their communities disagree with them the politicians just want them to just shut up.

Maybe you should be watching the entire clips, and not just the ones that your particular news outlet is showing you. The politicians are being drowned out, booed, and intimidated by protesters. These town-hall meetings were assembled with the idea that people might be civil and respectful to each other. I have yet to see a politician tell anyone to "shut up". Unless you count the case of the idiot who stood up and spoke out of line. Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that the un-named politician replied that "everyone present just witnessed real democracy".

let's all take a deep breath, take some time to read the bill, yes, actually read the bill. Insist that the legislators we hire actually read it too. Those who said they would vote for it without reading it should be voted out next election.

This came from someone who is opposed to the bill. I applaud his educated decision. Although, this coming after some rather ludicrous comments about "looking like ACORN".

we have the most expensive health care system in the world, folks. we rank 37th in mortality rates.

Woops. Facts are emerging. Stop that!

cuban healthcare is free - but the cuban doctors are buying boats and escaping to the good ole USA. of course michael moore is quite enarmored with the cuban system

What is it that they say on 4chan? Obvious troll is obvious.

And just think, this was all from a single thread. Seriously folks, if you want to have a say in this discussion you should start by reading the actual house bill. Then perhaps you can show up to a discussion with your local representatives (without a sign or an insulting t-shirt) and address your questions in an orderly manner.

Although, if you want to play the roll of "stupid fucking facebook troll", jobs are available. Speaking of jobs ... what the hell do these assholes do for a living? I have to take a day off to find time to Blog shit like this!

The No-Nonsense Guide to XBOX 360 Backups

2009-08-12T08:57:00.004-04:00

Long, long, ago I wrote a how-to guide for installing Windows SharePoint Services. I was teaching a class at the time on the subject and there didn't seem to be any good resources on how to install things correctly. The guide served two purposes. One was that I could promote myself as an instructor who brought his own supplemental material to the class as a fill-in for where Microsoft went wrong with their training materials. Secondly, I hoped to sell the book online to make up for some of the time it took to put the guide together. To my surprise the book went on to sell many copies grossing almost $200 in sales. This may seem marginal, but I figure that it at least paid for the short amount of time I spent writing the guide.

Last week I decided to write a new guide. I have spent a lot of time lately backing up XBOX games for my son. In the beginning, I wasted a lot of time trying to figure out the process. Part of the problem is that the so-called "experts" on the subjects are younger folks that write in incomplete sentences and often leave out important details of the process. Some guides that I read were just plain terrible.

With that, I have written a new guide on how to backup your XBOX 360 games. It's on sale at LuLu.com for the low, low cost of $6.25 (that's $5 profit for me). I no longer have to wonder if I will sell any copies, because my first copy sold a day after it was posted. And the buyer gave me a full 6 out of 6 stars in a review. And that buyer was NOT my mother!

If you would like a preview of the book I have extracted a few pages as a sample.

If this is something you need, please buy a copy and support ODDREE.com.

If I can find the time, I will also be writing a "No-Nonsense" guide on how to modify your XBOX 360 (to play the games you create). This guide is probably needed more than the one I just wrote, but I know it will take considerably longer to do - and will require frequent updates.

Can I get an update on that?

2009-07-31T12:23:00.012-04:00

There are two things that I find very frustrating in todays technology age. The first is when someone makes a terrible product full of bugs. But even more frustrating is when the problems get fixed, and the fixes don't get delivered. Here are some examples.

A few years ago I got a new phone to use for work. It was an HTC Apache phone. Of course, every time I called my Sprint technical support about one of these phones (which was often) they always acted like they didn't know what I was talking about. I would say "I guess you guys call this a '9700'" and they would respond with "oh yeah, it's not called an Apache". This would result in my schooling a recent high school graduate in why it would make better sense if Sprint would just stick to the model names and numbers assigned by the manufacturer rather than make up their own clever nicknames. But I digress.

My HTC Apache was a piece of total dogshit! This is not just my opinion. Everybody returned these phones. What I ended up finding (after months of screwing around with that brick) was that the Operating System was to blame for most of it's problems. What OS? Windows Mobile 5! At the time the phones were delivered to us, Windows Mobile 6 had long been released. So I called Sprint and said "I would like to upgrade my phone". "Easy!", they said, "you just need to call *228". But that updates the list of cellular towers, not the phone's operating system. After a lot of arguing with various people (including our sales account representative) I was told "we do not provide software updates to our phones". That's interesting. This is the equivalent of buying Windows XP and being denied access to the service packs for it. Never mind that a software update for the phone would have saved the account we had with them. We have since switched to Verizon and our local Sprint "business" division bit the dust (HARD).

I am not just picking on Sprint. My Verizon phone is an EnV2 which I really like. The only complaint that I had about it was that it only takes one button press to unlock the phone and start dialing. That one button, is the "OK" button. Needless to say, the call volumes from the inside of my pocket shot through the roof my first week of use. I tried calling Verizon and they gave me a similar song and dance telling me that I would have to lock my phone with a password to prevent butt dialing. I suggested that I am a "smart-ass" and my ass might guess the bad passwords that I always use. They disagreed.

After a bit of searching on Google I came across a group of angry phone users who had the same problem. It seems that the manufacturer of the phone, LG, had long since released an update for the phone which allowed for a two-button unlock method. Verizon (of course) did not support this update, nor allow users to perform it themselves. Well, FUCK YOU Verizon, I downloaded it from a bit-torrent along with the software that your in-store staff uses and I performed the update anyway. Since then, I have been very, very, happy with my phone. An no more butt-dialing.

And here I am at example number two.

The past few days I have been copying mass amounts of medical records to my PC so that I can archive them to DVD. This will satisfy a backup requirement that I have, but also takes a lot of time and patience. We are talking about burning 3TB's of storage, at 2.4x speed. Ugh. I can handle all this burning. What I can't handle is my PC locking up on me and requiring a reboot. After about the 10th time I locked up this week, I narrowed the crash down to deleting mass amounts of stuff. If I selected a number of gigs and tried to delete it all at once, my OS (Ubuntu Jaunty) would freeze.

A bit of searching lead me to a long running bug report which explained that this is a problem with the kernel I am using and the ext4 file system. What is the fix? Installing a newer kernel. Being the wise guy that I am, I always check for and install updates when I have problems like these. So why didn't I get the fix? Because Ubuntu didn't release it ... yet.

I guess it's not just vendors being lazy, stupid, and greedy that account for problems like these. It also happens with open source software.

This is one of those times that I really hate technology, and how we use it.

I'm sorry, did you have a question?

2009-06-29T16:44:00.002-04:00

This country has finally managed to elect a president who is somewhat trendy and has the ability to operate electronic devices. He listens to you. He actually wants to make good choices to improve your various shitty situations. Starting with a really badly broken health care system.

So what do you do when given the chance to ask questions about his plans for health care? Throw out insults. Mock your fellow Americans. Drop sneers about North Korea. I even caught some remarks about "missing birth certificates".

You can see for yourself but comments are now disabled (which is a real shame). The original video was posted to get a conversation going about health care so that we (as Americans) could trade thoughts on how to improve things.

I want to be angry with my fellow countrymen right now, but I don't have it in me. I think I am more disparaged than anything else. It's sad to think that this country is so bitter, and angry that they can't imagine it's possible to fix or change anything.

I'm reminded of a ReHaB song, "Drinkin' Again" which I wish I could share through a web link. It's just not a popular song. I will just quote it for the benefit of those who haven't had 'the pleasure'.

Looking for things to do to pass the time between birth
And becoming part of the earth
Working, playing and laying, staring, comparing
That over there to this
I'm blaming those in charge cause after all there's nothing else to do
Money pays for things that don't really belong to you

Film Review: The Hangover

2009-06-28T18:15:00.003-04:00

My wife and I went for a late showing of this film and we knew we were in for a treat. As the previous show ended and people walked out of the theater, they were all laughing. An older woman said "that was a little too over the top at times". Another older guy said "I don't know that I could recommend this film to many people". That was not a slam on the film, but rather an acknowledgment that recommending this film to friends might tarnish his intellectual reputation. Again, we were expecting fun.

This film seemed to have just the right balance of characters for a comedy. You had the protagonist played by Justin Bartha who is probably best known for a bit part in the National Treasure movies. There was Ed Helms, a former Daily Show correspondent. There was Bradley Cooper who will probably never live down his awesome role as the bully douche-bag boyfriend of Rachel McAdams in Wedding Crashers. And then there was the accidental star of this film, Zach Galifianakis.

Without dropping any spoilers, here is roughly what goes down. The protagonist, "Doug" is getting married and he decides to take his two friends and his fiances brother (Zach G.) on a bachelor party trip to Vegas. The story moves pretty quickly to get us to the party which oddly never takes place for the viewer. They start drinking on the roof of a hotel, and through the magic of film we are fast forwarded to the following morning. This is unheard of in a raunchy bachelor comedy because surely the best jokes would occur while everyone is hammered and things are getting out of control, right? Wrong! Funnier, would be to have these characters trying to figure out just what the hell happened the night before. At this point, Bradly Coopers character "Phil" now becomes the protagonist who leads the three man pack on a journey to retrace their steps and try to find their missing friend (who, by the way, is due at his wedding tomorrow morning).

While better jokes may have been written for that 'heat of the disaster moment' they weren't needed to support this film. The cast did an excellent job of reacting to the events that are unfolding, and to each other. Zach G. who is the undisputed king of awkward physical comedy does well to keep everyone else on the set reacting. I have seen several comedies in my time where I had to think that the funniest stuff on the film happened off camera, or when the actors just did what they wanted with the material and the director cut it out. With this comedy, I had to believe some of the dialogue was improvised with the cameras on (Zach G. makes several comments about children which leave everyone else cringing). Kudos to the director for letting comedy unfold while the cameras kept rolling. You may know another of his films which had that same flavor, it was called "Old School". If you look quick, you will catch him playing a bit part in this film as the weird guy in the elevator going down on his girlfriend.

The best way to enjoy this film is to walk in knowing nothing about the story other than what I have told you and what you see in the trailer. And congratulations to the director for figuring out how to put the funniest part of the film into the credits. A sure way to get people to leave the theater laughing.

I give this one an A, and you probably will too.

The Worlds First "Mobile Device" Automobile

2009-06-28T11:13:00.004-04:00

If you watch TV (at all) you have surely been treated to a commercial for the all new Nissan Cube. This car has all the characteristics of a phone or an MP3 player, but you can drive it places. The advertising campaign definitely shows us that there is a new generation of people buying cars, and they need to be sold on the "cool factor".

This is nothing new. Toyota motors has tried this with their new line called the Scion which has proved pretty successful with the younger car buyer. Build a car that can only be described as stylish, and hip, and then blitz the media with flashy advertising. It works for phones and MP3 players, why not a car?

So what makes the new Nissan Cube so cool exactly? Mostly, it's all in the accessorizing. Of course you are going to get airbags, a decent stereo, and a nice brake system. But the extras include aluminum alloy wheels (optional), a stereo upgrade (optional), and a bluetooth option for your phone and MP3 player (optional). Other fun "factory" options include some interior lighting which can be changed depending on your mood. How about a ring of fuzzy shag carpet on your dash (this is a "soft grip" to hang onto loose objects while you drive around)? This car even comes equipped with a ticket holder, which is basically a rubber band stretched over flat plastic in the door. Ho-hum.

But the first, and probably the last thing, you will notice about this car is it's bizarre back end. Nissan decided to go anti-symmetrical and totally wreck the rear of this car with a one sided wrap-around. People aren't quite sure what to make of this, and it will likely end up being a trend that we all laugh at 30 years from now. What excited me about it, was that my wife suggested it might be a wrap around back seat (like a corner-fitting living room sofa). It was enough to get me to go to the website. But then I could see that it's just a regular bench style two-seater that folds down (they claim it seats three ... but you would have to have small friends). Which is good. Because after you have bought this car and driven your friends around in it a couple of times, the novelty wears off an you will be folding those seats down to make room for groceries and wishing you had bought a vehicle with a trunk.

BAD IDEA #105

2009-06-27T23:58:00.002-04:00

I really want to write a TV show. Or a movie. Of course, nobody would want to put money into it except for me because I think it would be awesome. I have had this idea for a show about career criminals. A pack of nerds with varying skill levels. A group of guys who met up in college and then dropped out of college and started up a business in corporate espionage.

I actually wrote about three quarters of an episode in script form at some point. I just poured out all these thoughts I had. Now, I have no idea what happened to it. It was a plain text document stored somewhere on my desktop PC or my laptop (both of which have been reloaded several times over). But I still have it in my head I suppose.

I should really just start blogging this stuff so it's not entirely lost. Also - so I can come back and read it several years later and have a good laugh about what a terrible idea it was.

ODDREE REGIRTH

2009-06-27T15:50:00.002-04:00

Wait - What? No, no. That's a typo. That should read "rebirth". I'll fix that later. Welcome back to the new ODDREE.com. What is ODDREE? It was a magazine. I say that it was a magazine simply because it's literally been years since I was working on a new issue and I doubt I will ever write that "issue 3" that I had planned.

Since the closing of the second issue I have sunk my good hard earned money into keeping this domain name and website alive, while not really having any idea what to do with it. This is actually a routine for me. I register a site to feed some stupid idea that I have, then I abandon it, then I try to reinvent it somehow years later when nobody visits the site any more.

What will I do with it now? I would like to use it as a place to post stupid ideas that I have. Most of my ideas never actually amount to a "project" because I either get bored with it, or I decide not to waste the money on it. Traditionally I put crap like this into a Blog post - or bury the idea all together.

This reinvention is designed in part to encourage comments, feedback, and support from you. That's right. I want you to be on board for this idiotic ride toward the bitter end of ODDREE.com. You can start by commenting on ... this post!

ODDREE.com Makeover

2009-06-27T14:49:00.004-04:00

ODDREE magazine has long been abandoned and probably is not coming back any time soon (if ever). Rather than let the web site sit around in a broken state I have decided to merge it with my Blog. Then at least if someone visits the site, they can see that I am still alive. Also - because I am lazy and I will probably never write another issue, this is a way for me to keep the spirit of the magazine alive in "blog"-format. I will still post stupid ramblings about my life here for those who are interested(?). But I will also be posting clippings here that I would otherwise withhold for a dead magazine. I hope you enjoy this new format.

Also I started writing up something nice to post here as a notice of "rebirth" but it's on my laptop and it's incomplete. I will post that later.

Time Warners Customer Service Sucks

2009-06-23T08:47:00.003-04:00

I hate that my favorite channel, G4, looks like utter shit on my uber high quality HDTV. I pay all sorts of money to have the benefits of a digital signal broadcast in "true HD" so that I can watch CNN with borders ("this is HD!") and reruns of friends with black stripes down the side. Awesome.

So far, the only show I have watched that was actually recorded and broadcast in HD is American Idol. And I hate American Idol.

Filing a complaint with Time Warner is hopeless. Even if you get to that "I'm canceling my service" point, they really, REALLY, don't give a fuck. That said, I sent them an angry note about how shitty G4 looks.

Category of Your Question: Cable/Video Questions
Comment/Question: Why does G4 look like crap? It's the only channel I tune into religiously, and
it's a total waste of a digital box. I don't expect HD quality, but this station comes in like it
was filtered through an 8-bit game system. When there are close-ups of hosts, their freckles and
pimples seem to scatter around on their faces.

I realize that you are Time Warner, and this is a Comcast channel. But you can't tell me that they
send the feed to you in this condition.

And the awesome reply that I got back:

Thank you for contacting Time Warner Cable Email Support.

I understand that the picture quality of the G4 channel is not as desired.

I apologize for the inconvenience.

I do understand your concern and will address the issue to the best of my ability.

I do under the frustration and be rest assured that the G4 being a Comcast channel has nothing to do
with the picture quality.

I have checked the signal strength of the cable modem. The signal strengths are within our
acceptable levels.

I have refreshed the signals from our end. Please reset the cable box (digital receiver). To reset
your digital receiver, unplug the power supply from the back of the receiver for at least 30
seconds. This will force the receiver to reset. If this does not resolve your issue please let us
know and we will be happy to assist you in any way possible.

We value you as a customer.

If you have any further questions or concerns, please feel free to E-mail us again or contact our
Live Chat at the following link:
http://www.timewarnercable.com/CustomerService/chat/chat.ashx

Customer Support is available 24/7.

Sincerely,
Ron

Time Warner Cable Online Customer Service

The only element of this email that wasn't form-letter driven was the badly written part that needs a fucktard translator to fully understand: "I do under the frustration and be rest assured that the G4 being a Comcast channel has nothing to do with the picture quality".

Customer service for cable companies these days is a fucking joke. It's like the old character that Lily Tomlin used to do - "we don't care, we don't have to, we're the phone company". Direct TV has a good thing going with all the brainless CEO's sitting around the board room table talking about how they can get rid of angry customers, or confuse them to keep them around.

The FAIL MACHINE.

2009-06-22T13:29:00.003-04:00

What do you do with an outdated Internet Appliance (the 3-Com Audrey) that no longer has purpose? You turn it into a "fail machine", of course.

We had tossed this idea around the office of having some sort of machine with big buttons on it that we could press any time someone makes a costly or stupid mistake. The buttons would trigger sound effects. Basically, we wanted a public soundboard. But making a soundboard in Flash and emailing it around the office is just not acceptable. We needed a geekier solution.

Here is what I ended up with:

The Audrey has a pretty lousy looking display, but it is a touch screen. So I created the application with four great big pushable buttons.

1) Keyboard Cat - This plays the world renowned "play him off, keyboard cat" jingle. This may be used either when someone leaves our department, or is asked to leave.

2) The Price is Right - This is the losing trumpet sound that the show is famous for. We play this sound quite a bit to signify a minor failure. Now it's always at arms reach.

3) We'll do it live! - Any large project project involves a test system. Then you end up with a test server (or test database) and a production server (or production database). We found that any time we are referring to making changes to the live production stuff, we couldn't resist saying "WE'LL DO IT LIVE!". Now, there's a button for that.

4) EPIC FAIL! - When someone screws up so very, very, badly (never me)... it can only be described as an "EPIC FAIL". This was a tough sound clip to find, but it's totally worth it.

The hardest thing about this project was learning how to build applications in "PhAb", aka the Photon Application Builder for the QNX Operating System. For that matter - finding a really old version of the QNX Operating System (version 6.0) would be difficult too ... but I happened to have it in my collection of obsolete operating systems. I had planned on installing this to a virtual machine only to find that the old OS didn't support modern processors. Yes, it's *that* old. I ended up borrowing an old P3 Dell that was on death row to use as my platform.

I had built a similar application for my Audrey many years ago that just launched a few commonly used applications so that I could use it as a simple jukebox in my kitchen. But that was at least 5 years ago, and my memory went blank when I start up the PhAb program.

There were other complications too, such as the lack of a "play sound" ability within the code. I ended up using the native media player for QNX, called "phplay". But then phplay would stay running after it's done playing a music file. In the end, each button triggers a shell execution of something like "phplay -Si failbutton1.mp3 & sleep 31 && slay phplay". This says "play a sound clip" and simultaneously "wait until it's done (30+ seconds)", then "find and kill the phplay application". The "-Si" switch tells phplay to play from the system tray and not pop up in it's application window form.

What I ended up with ... is an over-complicated soundboard. But if you should ever want your own fail machine, and you happen to own a 3-Com Audrey, I am sharing my code with you. You can download this mess from here.

Happy hacking. Now, play me off Keyboard Cat.

Film Review: S.Darko

2009-05-13T20:33:00.002-04:00

A while back I had heard that there was going to be a Lost Boys sequel. Everyone knew what was coming. A straight to DVD re-telling of the original story with the obvious cameos by the "two Coreys". When it debuted, I rushed to watch it, and it was about what I expected. Although the producers of the film weren't aiming to make a masterpiece. The end result was a decent vampire movie which almost parodied itself. It wasn't bad!

So how would you go about making a sequel to a strange arty cult classic like Donnie Darko? You wouldn't. At least you wouldn't if you were writer and creator of the original film, Richard Kelly. He apparently wanted nothing to do with this turd. And who could blame him? When you make a confusing film with multiple interpretations, and then don't fully explain the premise, how would you follow that up? Perhaps the better route would have been to make a prequel of sorts and go a new direction.

Using just the characters from the original film really allowed them to go anywhere with the story. But producers knew that they had to capture the same flavor as the original film if they wanted to sell it to that 'cult following' group. The original film felt claustrophobic, paranoid, and creepy. Richard Kelly says that this represented his childhood fear of "the bomb". But the imitation didn't quite hit that same vibe. There were the same long running shots in a party with sped up and slowed down film. There was the whole haunting thing going on with future/past dead people. There was the flowing watery stuff running out of various peoples chests. There was very intentional and awkward dialogue.

This movie is a generic box of cereal. It's cheap, and it looks about the same, but it doesn't quite taste right.

There were so many things duplicated in this movie unnecessarily that it really didn't add up. Why the same soundtrack? Why the same low budget effects? Why find a guy who looked so much like Donnie Darko, and then cast him as some other random character? Why re-insert the whole "they made me do it" nonsense with new characters?

What this film demonstrated, is that nobody does a Richard Kelly film like the man himself. Which at least somehow lets me form a compliment out of an awful and unwatchable disaster such as this.

Glenn Beck is still a douche!

2009-05-02T20:24:00.008-04:00

A few years ago I was surfing through news channels and I came across a fresh new face I hadn't yet seen or heard. He was smug little man sprayed into a tight suit, and he kind of looked a Pee-Wee Herman doll inflated with hot air. He was in the middle of a discussion about what lazy filthy pigs Mexicans are. He went on to berate and disparage the entire culture as a bunch of border jumping job thieves. This rant was played over footage of "Patriots" patrolling the border, guns strapped to their backs. It about made my heart sink to think that there are dumb-fucks out there leaning forward off the recliner and giving Glenn long distance high fives. But then I figured, how long could a douche like this stay on the air? Eventually, someone would raise a stink about the shit coming out of his mouth and it would be all over. It turns out that you can build a fan club and build a career out of stupid (yet faithful) nightly viewers. But who knows right, Don Imus finally got what was coming. It just took far longer than anyone had imagined (including the secretary that he regularly called *the N-word*).

I will spare you my rant about Glenn becks latest comment about the Pittsburgh shooter. But I suggest you take a look at this. Okay, I will give you a short rant. Glenn seems to think that spouting racist remarks, encouraging anti-government, and portraying Obama as a self-proficizing messiah - has no effect on the public. Welcome to real fucking life idiot. This coming from the same guy that blamed television for the doubling of the homicide rate in the 1950's.

What is Glenn up to these days? He's still on the air. And he has a new book coming out. It's called "An Inconvenient Book: Real Solutions to the World's Biggest Problems". Oh, I get it. It's a joke on Al Gore's documentary about how we're melting the planet and sending ourselves to an molten hell. But nevermind that. Let's continue to make jokes about Gore because he claims he invented the Internet.

If you order his book now on Amazon, you can get free gift wrapping!

Might I suggest you wrap it in toilet paper? What's fun about this book, is that Glenn is only half-kidding when he titles the book with "real solutions". This reminds me of those General Electric commercials where they claim that the are going to build a smarter car, or electrical socket, or - whatever. Allow me to play the protagonist here. If you could build that shit - you would have all ready built it, put it in a box, and sold it to me. That hasn't happened yet. So shut the fuck up all ready with these commercials. And fuck you Glenn Beck.

What else is Glenn selling these days? T-shirts! Here's a heart warmer ...

What? Is this a joke? I mean ... obviously it's meant to be funny. But ... he supports drilling in Alaska. I would expect to find this shit on T-Shirt Hell where people would buy this and wear it to offend those on both sides of the issue. I guess this comes down to Glenn's roots as a member of the religious right who don't seem to value the life of anything that wasn't created in God's image. Polar bears don't have souls. So fuck em'!

Here's another one for you ...

I want to congratulate anyone who buys and wears this shirt. I'm going to encourage this one. It will help me identify you in public, so I know not to speak to you.

I have saved the best item for last.

Here is Glenn perpetuating the right-winged talking heads idea that Obama thinks he is Jesus. I really don't know where this whole thing started. Perhaps with Oprah calling him "the one". Or perhaps with the poor bastards who had given up hope after seeing the disaster that our nation is in, and who got excited at the thought of a new outlook for Washington. God forbid we should believe in our president, and not a dead Jewish carpenter from Israel. God forbid ... I made it funny, right?

As much as I hate Glenn Beck, I really want to own one of these for my car. This is sort of like his t-shirts. If I have this on my dash and I still have a "BUSH/CHENEY 2004" sticker on my car, a gun rack, an American flag window sticker, and a NASCAR number (with autograph), I am obviously making fun of Obama. If I have one of these on my dash, and an Obama sticker on my bumper - I am making fun of people who still think a dashboard Jesus is a good idea.

While I am on this serious Blog roll here - let me take a moment to talk to another member of my community.

Dear stupid bitch in the Lexus who gave me a dirty look today for my Obama and "COEXIST" stickers ...
As you were leaving your -excuse me- MY parking spot on your way out of church, I was coming home to get cleaned up. While you were sitting your fat ass in church praying for society, I was cleaning up all the trash at your local park. While you were headed home to sit on the coach, eat ice cream, and watch Glenn Beck, I was leaving to go out and help build a house for a family in need. But go ahead and continue to judge me. I just wish in the end, there was a big set of pearly gates, and some douche standing there to judge YOU. So good ol' Saint Peter could give you a kick in the cunt for wasting all of your good years on your knees - instead of getting the fuck up and doing something useful with your time.

Speaking of doing something useful with your time ... why am I still sitting here ranting?

Fuck.

Infomercial Time

2009-05-02T18:39:00.001-04:00

Informercials are really stupid. Also stupid: artists who sing everything through a vocalizer. But when you combine the two, something magical happens.

Film Review: Wolverine X-Men Origins

2009-05-02T08:59:00.004-04:00

Since the first X-Men movie, and especially after the third one we have all been waiting anxiously for Hollywood to crank out a Wolverine movie. The last X-Men film alluded to a side story when at its end when Wolverine leaves the mutant compound in search of his past. But that storyline might as well have been null and void, since this movie is a prequel to the others.

Which reminds me ...

I have read several reviews for this film, and none of them have been good. But critics these days are like journalists. They have been raised in a copy and paste world, given community college degrees, and aren't at all familiar with the term "investigative journalism". So when they trash a film, they generally miss the whole purpose of the review. I for one would like to stand over them like a third grade teacher and say "that's very good Lisa, now tell us why you think it sucks". Which brings me to this. Three of the reviews I have read went on to trash the film for being a prequel and not a fourth film in the franchise. This might me one interesting point in a film review, but should not be the filling of it.

So I am going to give it to you straight. This film would have been *great* had it been directed by someone more experienced. Short sighted direction has a certain flavour to it. When watching the film you get certain vibes. Those are: a) bad line delivery, b) unnecessary actions or dialogue, c) giving the viewer unnecessary clues, d) and an unnatural flow to the whole thing. This is why this film has not reviewed well. The cast was great. The story line was pretty good. The special effects were awesome. The direction ... not so good. Some are more forgiving than others when it comes to poor directing. I have seen some critics give this film a B+ while most of the others give it a C- or worse.

Another strange vibe was the extreme violence, and then the lack thereof. At times there are events which seem out of place and extreme. In other portions of the film the violence takes a back seat to bad line delivery. Is this another example of bad direction? Or rather, was the studio battling with the rating system? We won't know until the DVD of the directors cut lands in stores.

Wrapping up ... likely, you are going to go out and see this film regardless of what the critics said. But just understand that you are probably not going to be satisfied with it's delivery.

My final score? Somewhere between a B- and a C+.

Tuck in your shirt!

2009-02-09T08:03:00.002-05:00

A while back I started getting e-mail from Wyndham (the hotel chain). At first I was marking it as SPAM because it looked like that form of SPAM where it tries to legitimize itself by making you take a second look. But now I can see that they just have someone's email address recorded incorrectly. In the mean time I am getting an interesting look at the inner workings of Wyndham. And now, you will too!

Here is a recent one I got about how safe drops are performed. Normally this is probably privileged information.

And here is a another recent message to let everyone know that you are expected to clock out for lunch. Also - tuck in your shirt.

Wyndham: Right now would be a good time to consider getting inter-company e-mail like a normal company. Perhaps you should not rely on Yahoo and G-Mail accounts for your employees.

Updates to your eee PC - In Chinese!

2009-02-02T20:33:00.015-05:00

My good friend "Discount Man" came over this weekend and he brought his dads new eee PC. He bought the 900A model which has some advantages over my old 4G surf. Both models have the same processor, and 512MB of RAM. But the 900A has a larger screen, and a nice pearly smooth finish. The downsides were: he didn't get the one with the webcam, so there was a vacant hole in the top center of his lid with a sticker covering it. Lame! Also, while the pearly finish is nice ... it had all ready been scratched up a little bit under practically no use. Also - his dad had managed to bork the sucker after only a few hours of use. He had borked it so badly, that the F9 restore wasn't even an option any more. Hence, why it came to me.

I was able to use the restore CD to build a thumb drive re-installer, and transfer a fresh new linux install to the laptop. But I was more than a little upset when I could see that he had much newer software than I did. In all my experimenting, reinstalling, and general "fucking around" with my eee PC, all I have really wanted is the default OS with a newer version of Firefox. If I use my restore CD, I end up with Firefox 2.0.x. And after updating, I still have Firefox 2.0! What a crock!

So I did what any good hacker would do. I installed the 900A series restore image to my 701 model to see what would happen. Amazingly, it installed without any problems and booted just fine. As expected, neither wired nor wireless worked at all. Also the touchpad was almost impossible to control since the one on the 900A was much larger in size. Then I started brainstorming about how I could get the source code for the 701, and transfer pieces of it to a new installation of the 900A's image. But this was really complicated, and I kept thinking that I shouldn't have to do this. Why didn't ASUS do this for me? Where are my updates damnitt?

Then I stumbled upon an interesting web site which I haven't seen before. http://www.xepc.org/en/ It seems to be run by some eee enthusiasts and not the Asus company itself. Yet there are screenshots there of "what they are working on" so I can only assume that this is the blog of an employee. This site is also really hard to follow because it's written in Chinese, and then translated by Google (and they are rough translations). But I found what I was really looking for ... a NEW restore image for my eee PC which featured (amongst other perks) a Firefox 3.0.4 browser!

The bad news is ... the image is in Chinese and it's just an ISO. I was able to burn and install from the CD using an external CD-ROM I rigged together. But ... everything is in Chinese.

This makes things really interesting. I struggled through the installer, usually guessing at what I was being asked for based on experience with the English installer. After booting up, the interface seemed familiar but all the labels were in Chinese lettering. Thanks to some well written documentation in an EEE wiki, I was able to get things to show up in English.

Now, some obligatory "screenies" ...

Check this out - newer Firefox, updated Skype, and some extra stuff! Web Storage? Don't get too excited. This is for 900-1000 users only. And that eee Download feature is stupid.

How about the crappy MS Word clone? What's this? It's Sun Star Office! Nice touch. This is a nice application and it loads really fast. And, it's in English!

Some other tabs ...

And now the bad news ... configuring your wireless in Chinese dialogue is pretty tough. Where there would be Chinese glyphs, you see squares.

What does the file manager look like? Oh no!

It seems that most of the applications can be switched to whatever dialect you throw at it. But the OS itself has it's mind made up when you install it. The outcome is ... I can tolerate a spot of Chinese now and then until Asus can get off their dad ass and release this to the eee loyal in English!

And the surprises keep on coming. There are Firefox updates, updates to your updates, Web Storage update (for those who qualify), and more!

Updates aside, the applications you can add are nothing to write home about. But then those have always kind of sucked. The most interesting update I suppose is the ability to exchange your native Antivirus client (ClamAV) with something called NOD32. This is a commercial client you would normally have to purchase. Not that you really need an AV client for Linux but ... it might be useful to scan Windows PC's remotely, or to disinfect your friends thumb drives. I'll give it a shot.

And now back to exploring. See you later.

Stupid Linux Tricks : Create Puppy USB Stick without a CD-ROM

2009-01-11T09:53:00.002-05:00

These past two days I have been experimenting with Puppy and entertaining the thought of using it as a primary OS for a "kiosk" machine that belongs to a buddy of mine. I downloaded it and went right to work trying to find a way to put the ISO onto a USB stick, but all the instructions I found lead to burning a CD-ROM first. Well I didn't want to do that. For one, I was trying to work off of my eee PC which obviously has no CD-ROM. Secondly, this is a disc I would never use again. And I have a LOT of discs stored away like that.

Not really finding any good answers online, I opted to experiment using an old trick that I have used for various Ubuntu releases.

Step #1 - Download puppy.
It doesn't matter which one. If you want something flashy, try the famed MacPup release. You will end up with an ISO image.

Step #2 - Mount the ISO.
Open up a Terminal and browse to the directory where the ISO file is located. First create a directory for the ISO to mount to: "sudo mkdir /mnt/iso". Then: "sudo mount -o loop nameofisofile.iso /mnt/iso".

Step #3 - Copy everything to the USB stick.
Go ahead and insert your USB stick now. It should be partitioned and formatted as a FAT file system. You should do this in Linux, since there is quite a difference in the way that Linux creates a Windows file system! Also make sure that when you create your partition (probably using fdisk) that you mark it as bootable. Now, simply copy everything from /mnt/iso to /media/disk (or whatever your USB stick is mounted as).

Step #4 - Syslinux your USB stick
Don't have syslinux? Do a: "sudo apt-get install syslinux" if you are running an Ubuntu/Debian release. Or if you are doing this from Windows, you can use the Win32 equivalent. Just do a "syslinux /dev/sdc1" where sdc1 is your USB stick. Make sure you know what your drive name is. Do a "dmesg" in terminal if you are unsure.

Step #5 - Perform magic.
If there is indeed a "trick" to doing all this, here it is. The trick is to go into your USB stick and rename isolinux.cfg to syslinux.cfg. Now it will boot, and you can install Puppy FROM a USB stick.

DISCLAIMER:
This will not likely help you install from a USB stick TO a USB stick. It will also probably not help you install from a USB stick to an SD card or similar removable storage. The reason being that grub will have different drive labels from the time you are installing, to the time you try to boot with your new OS. While I have been successful in repairing a broken system that is in this predicament, I would never try to walk someone through the process. If you should end up in that situation, do yourself a favor and find someone who has an external CD/DVD drive. It will save you hours of hair pulling.

Free Magazine Hack!

2008-12-26T20:35:00.001-05:00

Want to read magazines on your computer and pay nothing to do it? You can if you own an iPhone. The folks at Zinio have teamed up with Apple to give iPhone owners free access to a selection of modern publications. The catch is, of course, the whole iPhone thing. I don't have one.

But now comes the hack. Some clever hacker has figured out that you can simply change a setting in your browser so that you look like an iPhone user when visiting the magazine site. Normally, this would be a pain in the ass and you would find yourself constantly changing your "user agent settings". If you set up Firefox to think it's an iPhone, many websites load in a "portrait" style format to try and accommodate you. But we can use another little hack to make this easier - the User Agent Switcher Firefox Add-On.

Go get your add-on here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/59

Next, click Tools > User Agent Switcher > Options > Options. Now you are going to Add a new user agent. There's not a lot to this.

Name it something like "iPhone" and then paste this into the User Agent box:

Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419 (United States)

Now, select your new user agent by clicking Tools > User Agent Switcher > iPhone.

Now, browse to the magazine site: http://www.zinio.com/iphone

Read some magazines.

Props to whoever figured this out. It wasn't me. I'm just passing along this awesome little hack.

My Favorite Firefox Extentions and Add-Ons

2008-12-13T18:49:00.001-05:00

Firefox is a pretty good web browser. But when you start putting in a few add-on's it becomes a GREAT web browser. Here is a short list of the extensions which I rush to install after putting a fresh PC image together.

1) Ad-Block Plus - Blocking out advertising is essential for surfing the web these days. Ad-Block basically filters out advertising and shows you everything else. You will no longer be subjected to those "pop-over" ad's. MySpace pages load on a dime. You need this.

2) StatusBar - I don't know why Firefox doesn't just include this feature as part of the browser. Rather than having a separate download windows - this add-on will keep your running downloads in the status bar of your browser. That way you can see how much longer you have to wait on something and keep surfing. You will no longer need that damned notification pop-up that locks up the browser momentarily.

3) Stealthier - Apple's Safari web browser has always had a "private surfing" feature which basically lets you surf the web without keeping any history, cookie, or cached files. This is great for using public shared terminals, Internet banking, surfing for bit-torrents at work, etc. If you want that same functionality in Firefox you can use this add-on. You check the box when you want to start surfing without history, and un-check it when you're done. There have been other add-ons with this same concept in the past, but this was the only one of them to keep up when Firefox 3.0 came out.

4) Classic Compact Theme - I use a little Asus eee PC for a lot of my web surfing. The screen is tiny, so real estate is very valuable. To maximize that little screen, I remove the bookmark bar and status bar. I usually also use the "small icons" feature of the navigation bar. But if you are counting every pixel, you need this classic compact theme.

5) GSpace - GSpace turn your Gmail account into file storage. That being said, it makes a huge mess of your mailbox and you should consider opening a new Gmail account to use just for this purpose. My friend and I share an account and often share music, applications, pictures, and more using our mutual account with Gspace. You can also use it as a way to back up files for safe keeping. I don't know how happy the Gmail folks are about this obvious abuse of their service - but I have been using this for a couple of years now.

Hey Recession, EAT IT! (Part 1)

2008-12-06T19:23:00.003-05:00

My wife and I have had some "tough times" in the past. And when I say tough, I mean trying to eat for a week on $5 (Ramen noodles anyone?). These days we are a little smarter. Not really any wealthier sadly. But we have a lot less debt, and the knowledge of how to shop and eat cheap. Which is good, because we have two growing kids who can really put it away.

I am going to share with you some of my favorite cheap recipes. These may not be good tasting meals. They are certainly not good for you. But they are cheap, and easy to make. I promise that when you are done eating them, you won't be hungry any more.

First some general shopping rules:
1) Shop at Aldi's. If you don't have an Aldi's store, you should have something like it. These grocery stores make you put a 25 cent deposit to get a cart, charge you for bags, and make you do all the bagging when you're done. If you can find cheaper food - I don't suggest eating it. I have found their "private label" or generic stuff to be of pretty good quality. I like it better than Wal-Marts generic crap. Check their prices against Wal-Mart. Always lower prices, always Aldi's.

2) Make a list, and combine meal items. My wife and I are still perfecting this science. It's called "working together". Many married couples are losing sight of this tactic. It works like this. I want to make pizza, and I tell her what I need. She reminds me that we have half an onion and some olives in the fridge. We just saved about five bucks right off the top.

3) See what you have in the pantry before going out. Think of what you could add to what you have to make a meal. Sometimes, you don't need anything. Leftovers are fair game.

4) Try new things. Sometimes I handcuff my wife, and she dresses up like a nurse. No wait! I was kidding. What I meant was 'try new recipes' for meals that everyone likes (the kind of stuff you order out for).

Recipe #1 - Pizza
You can spend a lot of money making great pizza. Or you can spend a little money and make eatable pizza. It's better than the frozen stuff, and much cheaper than getting delivery. The key to making it cheaply is to make your own crust, and get cheap (but good tasting) cheese.

This will make two X-large pizza's!

For Dough:
1 bag of flour (NOT self rising).
Sugar and salt.
2 packets of FAST RISING yeast (they sell them 3 at a time, so save one!)
Olive Oil (buy it from Aldi's, or you are paying double what it's worth)
Air-bake pizza pans (you will have to get these from Wal-Mart, but they are cheap)

For Toppings:
About 9 cups of cheese (three bags of 3 cups each, you pick)
Pizza Sauce (Aldi's doesn't sell it, spaghetti sauce works though)
Your choice of: olives, green pepper, onion, ham, etc, etc.

To make your Dough:

Preheat your oven to 460 degrees.

Don't be a wuss and buy the pre-made dough. Get yourself a big mixing bowl to start this in. You can also make this on a counter top without dirtying a bowl. I have done it, but it takes some skill. So put 4 cups of flour in your bowl. Then dump in 1/3 cup of olive oil. You can use a little less if you want. That will make your dough less sticky and you can stretch the olive oil out that way (it's not cheap). Then dump in two yeast packets. Add two heaping tablespoons of sugar (you can guess if you don't have measuring spoons). Add a little bit of salt, and throw it to the side of the bowl - avoiding the yeast. Yeast does not like salt! Now add 1 1/2 cups of hot water. You don't have to heat it on the stove. Just get some hot water from the faucet. Dump the water over everything else in the bowl.

Now get a fork and start stirring the mixture together. Pretty soon the fork will not help you stir any more. So dump your dough out on the kitchen counter and start kneading it. This means you flatten it, double it over itself, and put your weight into it. Do this until it looks like ... dough.

Sprinkle some flour out on the counter and split your dough ball in half. You can push and pull your dough into shape, or if you have a rolling pin, you can roll it flat. Careful that you don't iron it to your counter-top. Make sure you sprinkle flour around so it doesn't stick. Ironing pins are expensive for some reason. I have found an empty wine bottle works just as well if not better, so save one from a party that you are invited to. You can tell the host "I'm keeping this because I liked it and I want to remember the brand". Then they won't know what a broke ass you are.

Lay your flattened dough into your air-bake pizza pans. These are usually coated with anti-stick stuff. If that is the case, do not coat them with cooking spray. If you insist on using cooking spray, use the pure vegie-oil stuff. The butter flavored stuff will leave a sticky stained blob on your pan that is impossible to scrub off.

I will spare you the details of how to decorate a pizza. You know what you like. But here are some general topping tips!

1) Avoid "low moisture" cheese. This stuff has NO taste. In Ohio, we have Krogers stores and they try to sell you this stuff in a purple bag. They remove almost all the milk from the cheese in the name of good health. The truth is, they are cutting the cost of the product by watering it down. UGH. Get your cheese at Aldi's. It tastes far better, it's more finely shredded, and it doesn't taste like ass.

2) Compensate with strong toppings. If your cheese is cheap, use strong tasting toppings. I made some pizza today and I used a combination of green and black olives. They were left-over from a Thanksgiving table garnishing plate. Onion helps here too.

Once your toppings are on, throw your pizza into the oven one at a time. It will be done pretty quick (15 minutes or so). Don't get busy with something else. Check it often. I like to start mine on the bottom oven rack. After 10 minutes or so I move it to the top rack, and I yank the pan out from under it (so it cooks directly on the rack). This little trick gives you a brown bottom to your crust so you don't have to worry about gooey stuff in the middle (yuck!).

When your cheese starts to brown up on you, pull it out of the oven and let it cool on the counter. Cut - and SERVE.

You will have a lot left over from this recipe. You should still have a rather full bottle of olive oil. You will have 2/3rds of a bag of flour. You will have a single yeast packet. Next time you make pizza, it will cost you even less. Oh, and you will have a lot of spaghetti sauce left. My wife uses it for "johnny marzetti". Which is basically elbow macaroni with sauce on it.

See how this little system works? See you next time, with another cheap recipe.

RSS Doesn't Appeal To Me

2008-12-02T10:57:00.002-05:00

A couple of years ago one of my faithful blog readers (I used to have a dozen or so) asked that I enable a feed option in the control panel of my blog so that he could use his RSS reader to read my blog amongst others. I had no idea what it was, so I went out and got an RSS reader and added a few blogs. Then I got bored with the concept, and went back to reading blogs and news sites "the old fashioned way". These days, RSS is built right into your browser and allows you to create "Live Bookmarks" of your favorite sites.

Recently I decided to give RSS another chance. I went out to several of the blogs which I frequent - all of which have an RSS feed. I added the feed to a live bookmark. For a week or so I tried using those live bookmarks in place of the regular bookmarks.

But here are my problems with RSS.

Using a live bookmark takes you to one story at a time - I'm sure if I used an RSS reader of some sort this would function better. As it is, I have to load one story or posting at a time. And I am going to read all of them anyway.
Feeds don't reflect the blogs design - I actually like to see how people decorate their blogs. Some are pretty simple and stick to the templates, barring any photographs, videos, etc. Others go all out on spicing up the site design. But that is all stripped away with an RSS reader.
Going straight to the story is like going straight to what you need at the auto parts store - I like to go to the counter, inspect the part(s) I have ordered in, and then wander around for a bit. Then I remember to pick up all the little items like brake cleaner and a fuel filter. When skimming over a blog you might pick up a story that interests you which you may not have otherwise seen.

So there you have it. Why RSS is a lousy idea in my opinion.

I woke up this morning with a splitting headache which is no doubt a result of the drastic weather change we are having here in Ohio. It's been switching from heavy rain to light snow and then back again for several days. Last night I sat in the rain for a couple of hours working on the brakes on my Bug. It probably didn't do any favors for the sinus buildup. And although the "brake-line surgery" was a screaming success - bleeding the brakes was a complete failure. It seems that I lost all liquids overnight to a slow drip, which allowed air to fill up in the drivers side of the Bug. I can't bleed the wheel cylinder on that side, because the small bleeder screw has been beaten to a pulp by old age and rust.

I woke up first thing this morning to order a new cylinder. Now I wait. It should be there in a couple of hours.

And I will probably sit in the rain all night again installing it, then have to go to work miserable.

The things I do for that car. :-)

Crazy Television

2008-11-30T00:17:00.002-05:00

I was watching some stupid cable show with my wife today and there was a clip that I had to look up about garbage floating around in the ocean and forming small islands (plastic mostly). It lead me to a web site which has fascinated me into the early hours of the morning.

http://www.vbs.tv

This web site has a lot of small clips that connect together to form a show. It's a nice style of documentary film making that appeals to people with short attention spans - and advertisers. The ad's are pretty unobtrusive since you can skip them at will and they only play at the beginning of a show.

Check out the videos about North Korea, and Eel Sex while you are there.

Detroit's Built the 6000 SUX

2008-11-27T10:11:00.002-05:00

Remember the newest "luxury car" to come out of Detroit in the movie Robocop? It was intended to parody what would happen in the future when the "big three" would turn away from the short-lived compact cars of the 1980's. Unfortunately, this ad is too true to be funny.

Boasting under 9 miles to the gallon, the 6000 SUX was "An American Tradition". It came to us in the form of SUV's.

This is why you're broke Detroit. You can't always give the people "what they want". Sometimes people are stupid - and you have to give them better options.

We are not going to change American automotive with money alone. You need a regime turnover. As a smart co-worker once told me "people don't change, which is why you change the people involved". It's a fact of business. When business fails, you throw out the CEO and try something new. Why haven't the shareholders at GM done this?

Give the gift of *GIVING*
This Thanksgiving, why not give thanks to your country by volunteering? The Obama-Biden Transition Team is asking for volunteers for a new program in which you can serve your country and your people - right here at home. New programs are being created to improve our schools, health care, clean energy, and veteran programs.

By helping out you may be rewarded with $4k in college tuition.

Sign up now - and be the first to know about upcoming programs and events. I did.

Oh, and HAPPY THANKSGIVING.

FIX MY HEALTHCARE! (or at least let me complain about it)

2008-11-25T20:11:00.002-05:00

I stopped by Change.gov earlier and stumbled upon a great discussion on health care by regular people. You have elderly folks, nurses, health care providers, etc. all jumping in and laying down their concerns and suggestions.

While there is probably more complaining than anything else ... there have also been some good recommendations and suggestions. For that matter, mere observations have really impressed me. As someone who works in health care, I wonder how many people realize just how badly health care providers are being TOTALLY MILKED by corporate piggies (the drug companies, insurance "providers", and even technology vendors). By reading some of these comments I can see that there are a lot of people out there who know full well that we are being taken advantage of.

This is a really good start. Keep talking folks.

Sadly, they grow up. :-(

2008-11-25T18:25:00.002-05:00

The night before last I had crawled into bed and fallen asleep for about 5 minutes before getting a call from the hospital. The operator declared that the sky was falling because "all the computers were going black". By "all" she meant two. And the solution was to reboot one, and shake the mouse on the other. Grrr. Then I couldn't go back to sleep. I was up until midnight.

Then last night I put on football - and about 30 minutes later I entered a deep coma. This slumber would not be interrupted because I was finally off of my on-call duty. I slept so hard. I had one of those deep, colorful dreams that can only exist in a state of total REM.

I dreamed that my daughter was a toddler again. A short, stubby, fat little baby. She was sitting on my lap, and I was lifting her up and letting her flail her arms around. She giggled and flopped around. And I rubbed her soft bald little head.

When I woke up I just wanted to cry. It was a nice sentiment. A throwback buried away in the back of my brain. It was so sweet and yet so sad. I think I must have gone to sleep thinking "my kids are all grown up".

I guess you never forget the way your kids were at that age.

My mother recently told me a story about my grandfather. As he went senile, he would have very vivid dreams which he could no longer separate from reality. On one visit he told her "there were two babys here ... right on the floor ... they were playing and rolling around on a blanket". In his senility he was having a flashback to his young twin sons who were long grown up and have children and grandchildren of their own.

I can only hope that when I finally go senile, that I will still have those memories buried away.

Leggo' My Software!

2008-11-20T16:48:00.002-05:00

I was exploring old Firefox bookmarks today and I came across one for PostPath. PostPath was a play-a-like Exchange server. That is, it was a Linux based mail server which emulated an Exchange server environment. This struck interest with me because it overcame many of the limitations with Exchange server and yet would allow you to sneak it into an environment and still make mail accessible by use of Outlook.

But - Cisco fucking ATE IT.

By their own words, "PostPath will work with Cisco to enhance the existing email and calendaring capabilities of Cisco's WebEx® Connect collaboration platform". Huh? What this means to you as a customer is "we will merge this with other stuff, rebox it, and raise the price to something ridiculous".

In the process, I see that they have also acquired Jabber. This breaks my heart. Jabber was the worlds first standardized instant messaging protocol and platform. While AOL, Yahoo, and ICQ all fought to obscure instant messaging protocols to protect their advertising revenue, Jabber fought to unify instant messaging. But alas, Cisco has fucking bought the company and will likely just choke the life out of it.

I know that this is a two-fold problem.

1) CEO's and startups selling out. Not that I wouldn't. If I had this great idea and I was struggling to run some business, I would surely sell it for a few million.
2) These days, good ideas are not "dreamed up" - they are auctioned to the highest bidder and then marketed to inflate stock values (regardless of how they might even HELP a company do business).

I probably shouldn't even bring it up, but does anyone remember when Palm bought the Be corporation back in 2001? That was money well spent, eh Palm? What have you done with that code exactly? I loved that operating system and Palm ate it. Palm, I hope your company dies the horrible death that it has coming to it.

How the fuck is Palm still in business any way? Their stock has been under two bucks for like a decade.

Confession(s)

2008-11-16T18:53:00.003-05:00

My friends,

I have a confession to make. Many allegations were made about me during election season. There were a lot of things said behind my back. I want to be clear that I did vote for Obama and I stand with him. That being said, I also share many of the same values and beliefs as the President-elect. Namely, we share some common beliefs in socialistic economy tactics.

The rumors are true.

I am a MARX'IST. I have been since 1987. It don't mean nuthin.

I wanted a Volcano Taco

2008-11-15T18:37:00.002-05:00

I went into Taco Bell tonight to pick up dinner. I wanted one of those spicy Volcano Tacos that they have been advertising excessively. But when I tried to order two of them, the girl at the counter said "oh, we don't have those any more". What ... the ... hell? I just saw them advertised on TV. Today! How can they be off the menu all ready? This is the third time now n the past few years that I have gone to order that new item from Taco Bell only to find out it's gone. Why would you advertise a new item right up to the minute that it's taken off the shelves.

This is like promoting a television show that has all ready been canceled (which the major networks are all guilty of).

It seems that this method of marketing only succeeds in pissing off your clients.

I know it's trivial. But it's a blog. This is the kind of mindless crap you are supposed to blog about.

I Can Almost Smell ...

2008-11-15T11:57:00.002-05:00

Long ago, a guy by the name of Van Morrison made a nice song called "T.B. Sheets". The song was a little obscure and bluesy, and did not become a hit by any means. It could be that it was completely forgotten thanks to another song by the same artist called "Brown Eyed Girl". You probably know that one.

T.B. Sheets is a depressing tale about coming to visit Julie in the hospital, who is no doubt dying of tuberculosis. While he wants to feel something for Julie and relate to her pain - all he can really think about is getting the f*ck out of that hospital. He repeats throughout the song "I can almost smell ... your T.B. sheets". Gross.

This horrible, depressing song makes a good metaphor for our failing economy. The banks are failing. American auto companies are failing. We want to feel bad. We want to do something about it. But all we are really doing is looking for an exit. Turn the channel. Read the headlines of todays paper through the glass in the machine. Drive by the signs at the side of the road where retail shops assure you "we're still here", but grasp your wallet while saying "I'd better not".

WTF Is So Interesting About Sarah Palin?

2008-11-13T17:55:00.002-05:00

Now that the election is over, everyone wants to hear from Sarah Palin. But I am not exactly sure that I understand why. There are some great stories for her to respond to, and we all have a couple of questions to ask her. But the answers are going to be rehearsed, and we all ready know the truth thanks to angry campaign workers who spilled the beans. Case in point: the clothing issue.

Sarah denied that she ever owned the expensive wardrobes that everyone was in a fit about. True.

Sarah criticized the "main stream media" (I hate this fucking term) for not asking what Obama and Biden spent on wardrobes and make-up. Fair.

Sarah stated that the GOP kept the clothing, and she never had any intent of leaving with it. False.

In early post election interviews Sarah claimed that the clothes never came home, and there were no GOP folks coming to look through her closets. Yet her father made a comment to the press about the reality of things coming to an end and how they had to dump out all the clothes in the living room and sort them out. The clothes therefore did actually leave "the belly of the plane".

Now, I digress. Is this really an interesting story that we need to know more about? Who really gives a shit about Sarah Palin? She lost, and now she has to slide into vice-presidential loser obscurity along with every other guy (and that one girl) who ever held the short-lived title. In a year she will still be a punchline to jokes and the news outlets will be onto better stories.

What kills me is that the "main stream media" (ugh, we need a new term) want to imply that she has a chance in the 2012 election. This will never happen. Ever. You must be crazy if you think that the GOP would throw everything they've got to put Sarah Palin in the big house. First, let's examine the obvious. SHE LOST. Losers don't get a second run. If you don't get the vote the first time, your party is going to start looking at better candidates. Secondly - she tanked her campaign. McCain needed swing voters to win this election and he lost them in high numbers thanks largely to Palin. The only fools who thought that Palin was a good pick (or even a decent person) were all ready voting for McCain. I'm not speaking from opinion here, these are consistent and undeniable poll results.

I should note that my wife was depressed by the Palin run. She feels that Palin just set women back 20 years for presidential considerations. I would like to think she is wrong, but I have to agree with her. She cited that Jesse Jackson jumped into a presidential race and made some serious mistakes to set blacks back. We didn't see any serious black potentials for a while, did we?

You know the GOP would NEVER run Palin on their primary ticket. So why are people all ready printing the T-Shirts? Why is her face splattered all over the damned news? Keith Olbermann, you disappoint me. Larry King ... well you're Larry King. Fox News ... I'm not going there. Sean Hannity is probably still scouring the net looking for the definitive Palin look-a-alike porn star.

Can we talk about the new guy a little bit? We're all excited about what he is putting together. Let's give a rest to all the stories about rednecks making racist comments. We can stop giving the spotlight to southern folks and their empty assassination threats (I'm including school children here). I for one would like some uplifting news!

The only good stuff I can find is what's on change.gov. But hey, this stuff ain't bad. Make sure you're staying informed. Maybe when the new guy takes over we can get a technology upgrade for that awful WhiteHouse.gov site. That design makes my eyes sad.

Your Retirement Account = Empty!

2008-11-11T17:57:00.012-05:00

I got a statement in the mail the other day for my "retirement savings". It was a sad and measly $803. These days there is so little left there that the bank is charging me to gamble it away. As I was stuffing the statement into my desk drawer, I pulled out statements from better times. Ah, the good old days. I once had $26,000 in that account. But then came the "dot com boom" followed by ... well ... the Bush administration. This got it down to about $18,500. The rest is - blog history.

Here is a quote from myself from just about 2 years ago.

In an attempt to satisfy the mortgage company I cashed in on my retirement account. There’s very little left. A thousand bucks, or so. With the money we paid off our tax debts with mounting interest, our car which was nearing repossession status, and all of our utility bills which were starting to come to the mailbox in festive orange colors. That ought to do it, I thought. I put it all in front of the mortgage company. In my naivety I guess I thought that they would be willing to help me lower my payments. But the response instead was “that’s great, but you still don’t make enough money”.

I used to wonder how many others there were out there in the same situation. Now I don't have to wonder - because we all know. When the banks started to lose records amount of money, and a couple were writing off record losses I had an interesting conversation with my dad (an accountant and banker since about ... birth). I asked "what the hell causes something like that dad?" and he said "people like you, son". And there you had it. The start of the collapse of the big banks. Or as we look back on these events, the "inevitable".

I used to feel pretty lousy and put a lot of blame on myself. I thought I was smart about things. Despite a lousy credit history I was able to negotiate a decent fixed mortgage rate. I held off "Dominion Homes" on every stupid luxury they tried to sell us (carpet upgrades, designer paints, etc). We built a budget based the mortgage payment that we were promised. But them some interesting things happened. That first mortgage payment was almost twice what they told me it would be. I never got the raise I thought I had coming. I eventually got laid off. I would never make it back to the level of income that I was at eight years ago. These days, I still make less and everything seems to cost twice as much. Well, it doesn't seem that way. It IS that way.

But this year, I am getting the best birthday and Christmas gift of all time. Hope. As Obama prepares to take office, he is out gathering the best talents that he can lay hands on. He is preparing for war on this big, broken, horrible mess.

As we all look ahead I wonder what will become of this broken economy. I wonder about all those people who gave up everything they had saved to start over. At 32. At 50. At 65. I think about all the families who have lost it all, and yet still manage to hold some sort of hope for themselves, and this country.

I know that the economy is not going to "bounce back". We aren't going to wake up tomorrow and find great big stimulus checks in our mailbox. We aren't going to get letters in the mail telling us that we can all come back and live in the homes we gave up. Our lost retirement savings are not going to replenish themselves.

No. We are in for a long and bitter battle. But we have hope. My hope is that I can look back on my Blog many years from now (as I often do) and high five my "past self" for thinking the way I do now.

Why so optimistic?
- We put the RIGHT GUY in the White House. Never mind that he is black (I know what a big deal this is). But, he is the right guy for the job. And WE elected him! Thanks America!
- Obama says thanks but no thanks to lobbyists YOU GO BHO!
- Hard hitter Rahm Emanuel chosen to join White House Chief of Staff White House staff, prepare to GET TO WORK.
- Arnold Schwarzenegger (a Republican!) continues to fight for the rights of gays. Arnie, we're with you.

Why so sad?
I know there are some folks out there who actually think that McCain was the right guy for the job. All I can tell you is: shut up, and watch how this is done.

YES YOU CAN ...

2008-11-08T17:42:00.003-05:00

... HAVE A HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

I made this cake for my wife today. It took a lot of blue food coloring and careful tedious lettering. Underneath all that cream cheese frosting is - a carrot cake!

Tina's birthday is November 12th. Be sure to give her a shout in the comments. ;-)

Post Election Guilt

2008-11-08T11:18:00.002-05:00

I got stuck working on a project Friday which I could have probably delegated. For that matter, one of my co-workers asked earlier in the week "why are we having a network engineer work on this"? He was right. There are certain things that I find myself doing which I should be delegating to the PC technician we recently hired. But the truth is - I can get it done right, and I can get it done faster. Alas, I digress.

So I am knee deep in on of the dumbest networking setups that I have ever had the displeasure of bearing witness to. A couple of "vendor representatives" (I equate them to lobbyists) had just stopped by to install two new workstations. They couldn't wait to leave, and just about the time I was getting started running some cables they asked that I stop while they took photos of what they had installed. He explained to one of the nurses "we have been asked to document what we install, because there have been problems with sites that - when we return to them - have been entirely rearranged". Well, I could understand why they would need to re-arrange things. After they darted out the door I spent a good half an hour trying to figure out what the hell they had done.

1) Two workstations were plugged into an 8-port switch with POE features. This makes little sense. POE is typically used for wireless access points which might be stuck on a wall or a ceiling. It was completely wasted on two PC's.

2) There were two cables running from the 8-port switch - to a 24 port switch on the other side of the room. Why two? I have no idea what the fuck they were thinking. On a low level switch such as this one, you end up creating a routing loop. Aside from the two cables nonsense, they had hooked into a switch which was placed there for a separate medical system which "chats too much" (hence it had it's own switch).

3) Each workstation has two network cards. One is a "private network" which is shared amongst the medical devices. The other is to connect it to our own network so that these overpriced Dell workstations can also be used to check e-males and surf the Intarwebs. Both network cards were configured with 10.x.x.x addresses and a 255.0.0.0 subnet mask, but with different network ID's. For the technically included, you should be aware that this does not and cannot ever work.

When I was done fixing all that shit I wanted to leave up a web site as proof that my work was successful. I figured I would load the software that the techs had installed, and show that it actually works correctly now. But I also wanted to show that these workstations all had Internet access. But what web page would I load and leave up? Still ringing with pride I wanted to put up an Obama page. But should I really do that? I don't want to seem inappropriate.

Wait -- why would I be embarrassed to show support for Barack Obama? I live in a largely Catholic, and Republican town which all showed up to vote against me (screw you guys). But, Obama won Ohio anyway. And he won the country by a landslide margin. He is our President-Elect! He is the next President!

No longer do I have to hide my support for the guy that I have long thrown my support to. He won. Now, even those Right-winged nut-jobs have to support him. Or will they retracts those remarks they have always made about Bush? To bash the President is "un-American". I still see fools driving around with bumper stickers that say "I stand with President Bush". I am always curious to see who is driving one of these cars, because I want to see the face of the 20 some percent that still approve of this awful and damaging administration. Well, get some new stickers gang. Now you have to support the new guy.

In the end I decided I would leave up an Obama page to show my patriotism. I typed in the URL and struck enter. Blocked. The damned page was blocked by the web filter which I have to manage. Reason being? Politics/Opinion. Well, I suppose that is accurate. I settled for whitehouse.gov, which for now is still focused on the Bush "administration". You see how I had to throw up "dick fingers" around "administration"? Who could still take them seriously at this point.

For some more on Obama's plans, check out his new site Change.gov Kudos to Michael for comments to an earlier post where he dropped the URL. I was not aware of the site.

The Landslide

2008-11-05T19:32:00.002-05:00

Tuesday was a tough day for me. I spent my work day surrounded by people who were one by one going out and voting for McCain. I know only one other co-worker who voted for Obama. I know I shouldn't take it personally. But I do. McCain's "plan" was to continue on the same thing that he thinks actually works. Let the free market regulate itself. Feed everything else to that free market including health care and social security. He's a gambler, like the administration he serves as a lap dog. He stared a broken economy in the face and said "so what ... this plan works". He stood for dirty politics, greed, and broken promises. His tactics for winning were to sling mud at the other guy to win. We can thank Karl Rove for that bullsh*t. Yet, those around me run out and vote McCain. What are those "values" that he holds that are so damned important?

I tried to keep busy Tuesday, and that was easy because there was just too much on my plate. I have been trying to cover for my wife who has been down with a recent knee surgery. Our Orthopedist got a scope into her knee cap last week and declared "she has the knees of an 80 year old". Surgery was not "well" to her. She has a fear of pain pills (both the adverse side effects on her disease, and dependency problems). But she was taking those pills ... and I know it was bad. So I have done well to keep my mind off of the election by getting dirty up to my elbows. Cooking, cleaning, laundry, all that stuff that my loving wife typically does for the family. My hat off to her. It's a lot of work. And on her ailing body, it's even *more* work.

Tuesday night I stopped by the grocery after work to pick up dinner items. I decided that it might be fun to make pizza, which I haven't done in ages. It's serious business for me. I make my own dough, and the whole bit. As I headed up and down the aisles, I stopped off for ... wine! I don't drink alcohol any more. I stopped that years ago. Partly because I adopted Buddhism - and partly because it's expensive and I don't need it. But this night might be celebrated. Might be. I bought a bottle of the best "cold duck" I could find. Alcohol removed, three years aged, dark Merlot. Mmmmmm!

After pizza had been cooked and consumed, it was time to start watching and waiting. My network of choice, Fox News. Hah! Kidding of course. I flipped on MSNBC which I have watched pretty consistently in the past few weeks. A couple of times I would flip to the other networks - but their anchors and special guests were all crap. I just wanted election results on a big wall board. After a couple of hours things were looking ... as expected. McCain and Obama were pretty well tied. My heart was beginning to sink, and I was starting to doubt my fellow Americans.

Do these people really think Obama is a terrorist? Seriously? Fucking idiot sheep.

A socialist? A Marxist? You fucking idiots don't even know who Karl Marx is! And tell me something about socialism. ANYTHING. No? IDIOTS!

Joe the plumber? He makes $40,000 a year and owes back taxes. And he's supporting McCain? Joe - you're a fucking idiot. A vote for Obama is a vote for the death of Israel? Normally I would laugh at off color remarks like that. BUT YOU IDIOTS ARE SERIOUS. God help us.

Do you think that you can actually buy your own health care plan for $5,000 a year? Have you even LOOKED at what you AND your employer pay for these plans? I HAVE. DO YOUR HOMEWORK.

Then something awesome happened. Votes started coming in for Florida and Virginia and it looked like they might be leaning to Obama. I didn't get my hopes up. I've been disappointed before (see 2000, 2004). But then Obama took OHIO. My home state - made the right choice. That was huge. It was big for me because my home state was in serious trouble in 2004 - and it went for Bush anyway. I will never understand what people were thinking. Ohio redeemed itself.

Then came some of the northern states. They were blue. Keith Obormann started doing the math out loud. He noted that if things kept going as the polls had suggested that there was going to be a landslide. I was on the edge of my seat for hours. At about 10:45 it was clear that Obama had won the 270+ needed electoral votes and this election was in the bag.

I was still a little in shock. Camera's placed around the world reflected cheers which rang for nearly ten minutes of open air. There wasn't a dry eye amongst them. Obama had won. WE had won. I slipped downstairs, and poured the wine. My wife didn't drink much. I had to wake her up as she was passed out cold with a couple bags of frozen vegetables on her knee and a good shot of pain killers. We tipped our glasses and watched. Not much was said. There was nothing to say.

About 40 minutes later McCain took the stage to concede. As the camera panned around the audience, I saw a lot of wealthy older white people who were all pretty upset that they couldn't steal another election. At the mere mention of Obama's name, they jeered, shouted, and booed in disgust. He made a few attempts to silence the crowd and noted that his adversary had fought a long hard and honorable fight to the end. But the crowd wouldn't have it.

Then the word came that at midnight, president-elect Obama would speak to the nation. It was a moment I will always remember. In a speech which will mark the ages, Obama told us that we had a lot of work to do. There is a lot that needs to be fixed, and he will need our help. But that this was our day and OUR victory. And it was.

In the aftermath we have a president who I believe will bring this country back together. A president who is all ready assembling a bi-partisan cabinet containing LEADERS with a history of success and progress. WE elected a black man for president. That's a pretty big deal for all generations. The "blacks" didn't elect Obama. WE the country did. Of course there are still those who didn't want him elected. I wonder what they are left to think.

McCain probably thinks he can walk away from this whole mess and let the people figure out that Obama wasn't actually that bad a guy. He just ran with the wrong party. But what are those disenfranchised souls left to think? That the country failed them and voted a terrorist into the white house?

These are dark, dark, times for our little Nation. If anybody is going to lift us out of this mess - it's going to take a leader we can believe in like Obama. It's going to take a lot of money (we're looking at YOU corporate pigs). It's going to take a staff of intelligence and humbled public servants (he's making those calls).

For the first time, in a long time, I look forward to what tomorrow brings. I believe in my country. I'm truly proud to be an American.

The future begins - now.

Why I Voted Obama

2008-10-29T21:46:00.004-04:00

In the past I used by Blog as a vent for things that were happening in my life. Mostly bad things. Depending on the era you browse through in my archive, you might think I was a horrible depressive mess. But I have learned by reading my old blog entries that I tend to post more when things aren't going well and that may not reflect well on my life. Who knows how long this stuff will remain online. In a time like this, I owe it to myself to take some time and write a bit about this election.

I have all ready voted for Obama. I live in Ohio which thankfully offered early voting through absentee ballots this year. During the last presidential election I stood in line nearly four hours to cast my vote for Kerry, who ultimately lost after a close race. The night that it was announced that Bush won his second term I was devastated. I didn't understand how it could even be a close race. Bush had done a terrible job. His administration had started a war "against terrorism" with the wrong country. Our nation was sinking in debt. And I was wondering how I was going to pay my mortgage because I was making less and paying more for everything ... than I had in five years.

My wife and I sat down and had a very serious discussion about leaving this country. In the end I think we came to the same decision. That we couldn't leave the place that we had been born and raised. Where our family lives. Where our kids had friends. Where everyone spoke the same language. But it was clear on election day that the country wasn't with us. I imagined a very dark future for the country, and for my family. Unfortunately I was right about what the Bush administration would do with another four years.

In 2004 I worked for a small training center which had been acquired by another small training center. I was about to be laid off and I can't say I didn't see it coming. My area of work had taken a dive in previous years and just never came back. When I was laid off it was almost a blessing because I was about at the end of my rope with my employer (see old blog posts). My wife and I decided to start our own business and try to find that "American Dream".

In the years that followed I watched my wife struggle with a disease that we couldn't afford to treat. I watched my family learn to get along without a father, because I was always on the road trying to keep my business alive. I continuously made deals with my mortgage company in an attempt to save my home. With each "deal" I extended my mortgage, and ultimately raised my payments beyond any affordable means. I went from drinking irish liquor to drinking 40oz's alone in various Motel 6's around the country. In the end I gave up: drinking, my business, my home of six years, and $27,000 in retirement savings. Things got really, really bad.

This is real life folks. I'm not some punchline on Fox News. I'm not some "fool who didn't calculate mortgage rates". I had one of those fixed rates. But it didn't matter. I worked my ass off balanced a couple of jobs, and I lost it all anyway. Using the last bit of my retirement money I was able to keep my car. A Honda with 150,000 some miles on it. Well technically, I used the last little bit to pay what I was taxed for having withdrawn all that money to try and save my ass. The cost of withdrawing retirement savings early: 40%.

In the end I escaped with my family, and a car. And we started over in a new town.

So there is some history. Here is why I have voted Obama.

On Health Care
This is the most important issue to me. Because Health Care needs fixed. As regular readers know, my wife suffers from a chronic and progressive disease which has no cure. Treating the symptoms of this disease can get expensive. I took a job in a hospital first and foremost - so that I could take care of my wife. In years past, she has suffered through some nasty Lupus flares because we simply could not afford to treat her. At one point we were paying $400 a month for her medication, and we had a hard time finding a way to pay for her to see a rheumatologist (which was a requirement for the medication). These days, the symptoms have not gotten any better. But I'm thankful that we can get her some help. McCain's plan for health care is to give you $5 a year to go buy your own healthcare. While some of you may think this is a good idea, just hope you don't ever get sick. Under McCain's plan - I could not afford the insurance I currently have. His plan is reminiscent of when a past employer of mine cancelled our health care package and gave us a "health savings account" instead. The company contribution to this health savings account was $20 per paycheck. It absolutely killed me that the owner of the company had the money to afford better insurance, but decided to put that money into his own pocket instead.

Taxes on the Middle Class
Obama wants to cut taxes for everyone making less than $250k a year. Folks, I know some "small business owners" who have exceeded that. And let me tell you - they will NOT be hurt when they have to pay extra taxes. Do you know what small business owners do with that extra money? $150 haircuts. $2,000 campaign contributions. $80,000 luxury cars. Multi-million dollar homes. This is just what I have seen first hand. Now, how could they better spend some of that money? How about by giving their worker bees a little wage increase once in a while? How about buying into some better health care options? These so called "small business owners" need to be called for what they are. Upper class, wealthy, and greedy white guys. Tax them more. Tax us less. Do you know what I did with my last "stimulus check"? I fed it to back taxes from my "small business" - which only grossed $40k my last year of operation. Note that I paid 38 percent in taxes on my business. You do the math.

The Economy
Do you know what corporations do when they find themselves with an excess of money? They build more buildings. Hell, they make more buildings even when they aren't doing well. They gamble stock. They try new things. If it works, they make more money for their executives. When it doesn't work, they can shut the whole thing down, pay themselves severance and nail all those little drone workers with the damage. That's not right. The first fix for this is for this country to admit it'd greed and gluttony. People should be held accountable. And while that is being fixed, how about we improve the financial situation for the working middle class. Let us have some money and we will waste it on things like FULL tanks of gas. And FULL gallons of milk. I can't afford those things right now. And I'm not alone.

And now I am out of battery juice in the old laptop. I'm also getting a little cold here working above the covers. Electric blankets beat gas bills in an old house like this. I'm going under for the count. I will blog more later.

The iMac Torrent Machine - Part I

2008-10-18T10:12:00.035-04:00

I had this great idea. I wanted to build a torrent machine. The idea is that this machine would sit in my basement and download all my favorite TV shows for me. Then when I want to watch them I could connect up to them over a network share and stream them to my XBox (running XBox Media Center or XBMC). As far as hardware goes, there is not a lot to choose from in my basement of horror. When my wife and I moved to a new town I decided to part with 95% of my "basement junk". I don't regret it. But when I decide to go build myself a computer out of spare parts, I find that I am running short on spare parts. It only seemed logical to make use of an iMac. I actually have two of them, and enough PC-100 RAM to stuff in them to get almost a full gig!

My efforts on this project were thwarted in a serious way when Xubuntu Linux failed to install easily to my iMac (see previous blog rant). This morning I changed gears. Screw putting Linux on an iMac. It's too much trouble. I will stick to what works. And that is - OS X! More specifically, I went with OS X Pather. Why Panther? I had a copy. It was what used to be on the iMac before I began hacking it. Starting the installation was easy, but I ran into some trouble. Halfway through blanking out the drive and undoing my Linux disaster, the Disk Utility hung up. After a reboot, the drive stopped responding. When I think back to the history of this drive, it's a shady one. It turns out that this drive is dead. Woops. Maybe this is why Linux was running so pathetically slow. Into the trash with you. To quote Fry on Futurama "I should have left you in the toilet where I found you!".

After installing a different 40GB drive - I proceeded to install Panther. Not a lot to say here. The installation was pretty simple as you would expect. Since I chose to "Customize" my installation I was able to uncheck all the stuff that I don't want or need (iCal, iTunes, Asian Fonts, Printer Drivers, etc). Next was the selection and installation of all the software I would need.

The Software
Firefox - I like Safari as a web browser. It works. But Firefox really kicks it's ass when it comes to speed and functionality. The problem is, Firefox 3 does not support older versions of OS X like the one I am using. It's also worth mentioning that newer versions of OS X like Tiger and forward - do not support old iMacs like mine (there are work-arounds, but screw all that). That being said I was happy just installing the last supported version of Firefox 2 (version 2.0.17) to my iMac. I will not use it very often. Mostly I will only use it to download the other stuff on my list. If you are "following along" with this you can get Firefox 2.0.17 in English for the Mac here: http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/latest-2.0/mac/en-US/Firefox%202.0.0.17.dmg

Java - Java comes with the OS (and gets it's updates that way). So to get Java you must first get your OS up to date. At the time of writing that was about 130MB of space, and about 40 minutes of my time. And that only updates your OS core. You will then have to reboot, and re-run the software updater to pick up Java, and it's three or four updates. Then, you need to restart again, and re-run Software Update again to pick up yet another update. In fact, repeat the update/reboot process until you are no longer able to find a Java update in the list. During these updates I unchecked all the stuff I didn't want or need (iCal updates, ipod updates, etc) and it still took an hour+ of my time to chew through. Yuck.

Azureus - In the past I would only run Azureus (mostly on Windows). It's a pretty nice client, despite being based on Java (fuck you IBM). It was the first client that supported rich features like a speed-scheduler through the use of Java plugins. These days I try to use thinner clients that don't take all my resources away! But this computer will sit in the basement and do nothing but download and seed my torrents. So it can have the resources and run a muck with them. I don't care. Theoretically you should be able to grab Azureus here http://azureus.sourceforge.net/download.php. - but I had some trouble. There were only three mirrors for the OS X version and none of them worked. I ended up doing a Google search and revealed this working link. Note that you cannot install any version of Azureus (now called Vuze) past version 3!! That is because version 4 and later all require Java 1.5 (or later) which is not available (and never will be) for OS X 10.3 or earlier. Aren't limitations fun? There are more upcoming. I downloaded Azureus/Vuze 3.1.1.0 and that is what I will focus on here.

Configuration
When you start up Vuze/Azureus for the first time, it's like waiting in line at the BMV. A long 3 minutes or so later, you will get this ugly iTunes-ish interface which will populate with all sorts of pictures and crap. Your first step should be to click the Advanced button in the top right corner. This will give you a much cleaner look. . If there is some stupid "friends bar" that the bottom, you can kill it. You don't need that.

Now click on Vuze (from the menu bar) > Preferences. Drop down the Interface category and select Start. Now uncheck everything. Most of these options are for getting new versions or reminding you of new versions. You can't use any of them, so screw em'. You might want to keep "Show splash screen" checked (so you know what it's doing while you are waiting for it to start). Also, make sure you check "Start in Advanced View". Then you won't load into that stupid iTunes look any more.

Next expand Plugins and then click on Plugins on the left. Note that there are a couple of clickable links for the Plugins directorys. Click the top one, and a folder will open. Now, there are two plugins you will want to download and put in this directory. You should create two folders. Call them something like "azspeedscheduler" and "azrssfeed". Then grab the plugins which will come in the form of zipped Jar files. You will copy the Jar files into these folders you just made.

Get the plugins from here:
Speed Scheduler (you need this specific outdated version): http://azureus.sourceforge.net/plugins/SpeedScheduler_1.4.jar
RSS Feed Scanner: http://azureus.sourceforge.net/plugin_details.php?plugin=rssfeed

Plugins copied into their respective folders? Good. Restart Azureus! You can do this by clicking Vuze > Restart Vuze. Now wait.

Next we will set up your speed schedule. Click File > Plugins > Speed Scheduler. How you set up your schedule is your preference. For me, I simply say "Limit upload speed to 20kbps" from 6:00AM to 24:00PM, all week long. While I am sleeping, I will do a little more seeding. In the daytime, I want that upload bandwidth because my Cable Modem provider limits me to only 60k or so.

Next, set up your seeding preferences. Ideally we would like to Automatically Remove a torrent once it's been seeded a couple of times. However - the AutoStop plugin for Azureus was dropped a long time ago! While I was able to find a mirror of it on SourceForge, it required newer Java than I could handle. With that, let's just tell Azureus that you want to seed everything to 200%. Click Vuze > Preferences. Expand Queue > Seeding and then select First Priority. These settings are rather confusing which only makes me miss the auto-stop plugin even more. Change the "A share ratio under" to 2:1. This makes you a "legal" seeder. Ideally you should set this much higher (eg 8:1) if you have the bandwidth (I don't). Make sure you click the Save button. The effect of this is that you will seed to 200 percent, and then the Torrent will just sink in the list and get "Ignored".

Remote Access
I want to drop this junker onto a shelf in my basement and forget about it. But I still need to log on once in a while and add new shows. For easy remote connectivity I suggest using Vine VNC. You have to get the older version (v1.2) if you are running older versions of OS X (like 10.3): http://www.redstonesoftware.com/downloads. Yes, I tried the newest version and NO - it did not work.

Adding Shows
Your best bet for adding shows to your RSS feed is to read the documentation provided here: http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dgsf923m_2d6k97n. Pay close attention to that "Pass/Fail" value that they cover. Their first example is for setting up Torrents that you do NOT want. In my case, I skipped out on Exclusions all together, and I have been operating just fine. This process took a little bit of trial and error. After about half an hour or so I was all ready downloading shows I wanted. If one of the shows you want to download are in the latest RSS feed - it will get added to your list right away. That's great for testing. In fact, you may consider looking at the RSS feed (the plugin will let you peek at it) and then just pick a show randomly from that list to test with.

Use your Imagination
From here the possibilities are pretty endless. I enabled Windows File Sharing in OS X System Preferences and I am storing all my torrents in the Documents folder (each show has it's own subfolder). So when I browse to \\TV\rayhaque\Documents\torrents I get a folder for each of my shows. Next I am going to map this on my XBox so I can fire it up, and just start watching. I have tried streaming the shows from the iMac right to VLC on Windows and Linux and it works really well (no stuttering, buffering problems, etc). As always - your mileage may vary.

As the days/weeks go on, I will probably post a second half to this experiment. In the mean time, I have some shows to watch. Bye now.

Go To Hell IBM

2008-10-17T22:11:00.002-04:00

It's been a while since I dropped a nice rant post. I actually started writing a long rant a few weeks ago, but it never left draft status. When I go back and read it now, it's a long and hateful liberal job which doesn't do much but insult the religious right. Basically, it was completely unnecessary so I shelved it. But IBM will not be so lucky.

I spent a long couple of hours last night getting Xubuntu Linux installed on an old iMac. I have this idea that I will put a PC in my basement which I can remote into and select my favorite TV shows, and then it will download those shows for me as they come out. This is pretty easily accomplished thanks to the efforts of the pirating community, RSS feeds, and Java based bit-torrent plugins. I had countless problems with getting the OS installed which seemed to stem from a long history of mistakes with the PowerPC branch. Going through bug tracker reports and Ubuntu forums I detected a history of video card and IDE module problems which spanned three consecutive releases. I find it odd that it was never corrected. For that matter, it never will be corrected. The Ubuntu community has discontinued support for the PowerPC models (7.10 was the last).

Alas, I was able to get Xubuntu installed and it was even booting without my interaction. Woo-hoo! So today I focused on getting a bit-torrent client installed. I wasn't really out to install a Java based program ... but the more popular TV torrent RSS programs are written in Java. How hard could it be to install Java, right? Very difficult. Here is why. Ubuntu for the PowerPC has no Java package. Why not? Because Sun made Java, and they didn't care to provide it. This is a lot like there being no Flash plugin for a PowerPC running Linux. Why not? Adobe doesn't give a shit.

But wait ... IBM also created the iSeries which used the same processor architecture. Would a Java run-time package for that platform work on my iMac? Yes! So I headed over to IBM's website to download it. I was in for a treat.

IBM was pleased to tell me that this site was now under the direction of "Lenovo". Oh boy! That is the Chinese manufacturer who churns out cheap trash and attempts to market it as a hot name brand. But ... all I want is the download. I was asked to register. No problem. I fill out the form. It's rejected. I check all the fields and hit submit again. It's rejected. Why was it rejected? Who knows. There is no indicator of what field you have filled out incorrectly. After some careful reading I noticed there was a link titled something like "why should my ID be an email address?". Oh, so when you say "Choose your ID" what you meant was "Put your fucking email address here". Thanks for the clarity. I can see the same idiots in China that make your laptops have been fast at work building your electronic forms.

Then comes page two of the form. They want my street addresses. Both work, and personal. They also want multiple phone numbers. Are they kidding? And my password had to be 8 characters. Exactly 8 characters. I hope that's not because they are using DES encryption. Because that was cracked so many years ago. At this point I am so annoyed that I am forming my address out of expletives. And finally I come to the bitter end where ... I am asked to login, and then taken to some bizarro page, leaving me scrambling to relocate the page that I started on with the download link on it.

I select my download. This madness is almost over. I agree to their multi-page license agreement. I click the download button. What do I get? A pop-up box which is trying to run .... a FUCKING JAVA APPLET. Now here is where it gets funny. I am on their page trying to download the Java run-time and Java plugins and they are telling me that I will need Java installed to do that? What the fuck is wrong with these people? I click the "help" link because clearly I am mistaken. Their MUST be another way to get these files. But, there isn't. When you go to the help page, you get a very long explanation of why you should want to install their super duper downloader thing. It's fast! It's secure! It requires Java. Of course there is nothing to find in the way of actual help, and good luck contacting anyone about a problem like this. They really don't care. And why should I? This is where I give up.

IBM: You are fucking stupid. STUPID. Do you know why people build applications in Java? Because the majority of developers are incompetent retards who either flunked out of community college, or just caught a flight from India. Java is a crutch for talentless programmers. How often do you download a piece of software and say "Oh good! It's Java based!".

Okay. That's the end of my rant. I quit on you Java, and I quit on you Ubuntu for the PowerPC. You can both rot in hell.

The Patriot Car - Solving the Energy Crisis

2008-10-08T15:13:00.002-04:00

My wife and I were watching the presidential debates last night and I was struck with an idea. We have several different intertwined problems in the US right now which could be solved simultaneously. This would not require any particular party to succeed in the election and could in theory be funded by private money. But let's run down some truths:

American-made car companies are in trouble - With factory jobs on the line, we have seen many American jobs created in foreign car companies. While this has created jobs, and allowed us to create great machines - it doesn't help our pride in American made goods. Ford, and GMC are dying a slow, painful and agonizing death. They need something to pick themselves up before the Hondas and Toyotas of the world completely drive them under.
We are neck deep in an "energy crisis" - It seems silly to say that we are just now getting into a crisis when we long ago predicted that oil would run dry within 80 years (I heard those figures when I was in grade school). Everyone agrees about what needs done when it comes to gas consumption. We need to use less. So let's get serious about designing lightweight electric vehicles and stop with the enormous SUV hybrids.
Nobody can afford a new car - This is a really bad time to get folks to start spending money on cars. With the current financial crisis under way, we are all watching what little retirement money we had - roll out into thin air. The joke now is, "most of us will retire at 81, if we are unlucky enough to live that long". If anyone is going to spend money on a car, it would have to be cheap ... or free.

Here is how we win. The Patriot Car. The government goes to the American car companies and makes them a deal. Build a small, electric powered, and safe vehicle which can transport four average sized Americans (or at least 3 fat ones). If your car is a success, we will buy them by the millions.

The car will be funded by the government in the form of taxpayer money. That is, at the end of the first year of the program each family will receive a voucher for their new vehicle. The price and payment is government controlled, so there is nothing additional that the new owner will need to pay other than local registration fees. You go to the local car depot, pick out your favorite color, show some proof of insurance where applicable, and drive away. That' one less gas guzzler on the road.

Why would people drive this car?

It's the Patriot car, and it's AMERICAN MADE.
You are reducing gas emitions and foreign oil dependence.
It's a FREE car. Everyone has one. Go get YOURS.
You were spending $100 a week on gas. Now you spend only a few bucks a week for electricity.

So that's it. The Patriot Car. It could do for us, what the Volkswagen did for the Germans.

EEEPC: Going back to Xandros

2008-09-28T15:42:00.005-04:00

So I have been living on the bleeding edge for a while, running the latest and greatest code that Ubuntu has to offer. That being said there are some nasty problems trying to run Ubuntu Intrepid on the eee PC 701 series. Here are the problems I had.

No hotkeys - None of my hotkeys worked. That means that I couldn't use the Fn+Key combos to enable/disable wireless, control volume, or suspend. Brightness hotkeys worked fine.
No suspend feature - What I thought was a hotkey problem was actually a suspend to disk issue. It seems that owners of the 900/901/1000 series of eee PC are not complaining. The new eeepc_laptop driver works just fine for them. But for a 701 owner, you are out of luck. From what I see, only one or two coders are looking at this under the Red Hat Linux team. Will the change make it into the Ubuntu branch any time soon? Probably not.
New wireless driver - The good news is that Intrepid provides the new Ath5k driver for wireless. This will replace the madwifi driver which Ubuntu use. But upon loading the OS my wireless didn't work because it was using ... an old madwifi driver. What the hell? After disabling the "vendor specific" driver and rebooting the ath5k came to life. It worked FAR better than the madwifi drivers I had been using. Now I was able to pick up distant networks, but the strength or quality was still not accurate.

Rather than continue to bitch about how this new stuff doesn't work I thought I could try the OS that this laptop shipped with. I only gave it about 10 minutes of my time when I unboxed it, and it worked just fine if I remember right. So I drug out the restore DVD and created a restore USB drive installer. Then just minutes later I was running the default OS ... an outdated copy of Xandros Linux.

There's a lot to like with this OS. It's very small providing you with lots of free space when the installation is complete. It comes with everything you need (or almost everything). The wireless driver works VERY well. Of course, all of the hotkeys work so you can suspend it and bring it out of sleep easily. It boots on a dime!

Now the complaints: it took FOREVER to update. And after I bricked it for the third time in a single day trying to install Firefox I decided to find a work-around. The eee PC (like any other Debian Linux install) stores it's downloaded .deb packages in /var/cache/apt/archives/. So I ran through the process of installing all the updates and then copied everything in /var/cache/apt/archives/ to a directory on my SD card. Then, the next time I reinstalled I just linked all those deb packages to the directory where the OS looks for them. It looked like this: ln -s /media/D:/updates/*.deb /var/cache/apt/archives/. The result is when you install an update, it's instantaneous.

Then I went to install the overclock module that I love so dearly which gives you a full 100Mhz of power on your FSB. But there was a problem ... nobody has compiled it for the Xandros installation. Long story short I found that a French fellow had provided a patch to make the code compile cleanly. I was able to compile it, and I have made it available. So if you are running Xandros, and you want the eeepc-linux module you can grab it here ...

http://www.oddree.com/rayhaque/eeepc/eeepc-linux-2.6.21.4-eeepc.tgz

I should note that I have not needed that module too much, as the Xandros install runs pretty well without it!

My only other chief complaint is that the version of Firefox which comes with Xandros is really old 2.0.1). I have found several different threads on installing Firefox on your Xandros install, the most notable being one written back when version 3 was in BETA. Typically you can just download Firefox and extract it to a directory. But that doesn't work for the eee PC because Xandros is using GTK 2.8 and Firefox 3 requres version 2.10. One solution was to install the newer GTK 2.10 library and a slew of other packages that went with it. I was a little uneasy about mixing and matching new and old libraries together. But I tried it anyway. The result was an inoperable browser and an unstable operating system. Reload!

Then I found that another user had been successful in downloading the newer libraries but not installing them. Instead he had extracted them to a directory and then modified the Firefox startup script to point to that directory. This makes far more sense to me, and I gave it a shot. In no time I was running Firefox 3.0.1 without any problems. But I was all ready out of date. The newest is 3.0.3. Good news, that worked too. I decided I would write a script to quicken the process of installation which I will share with you now:

#!/bin/bash
mkdir /home/user/firefox303
cd /home/user/firefox303
wget http://apt.linex.org/linex/gtk-2.10/libgtk2.0-0_2.10.13-2~bpo.1_i386.deb
dpkg-deb -x libgtk2.0-0_2.10.13-2~bpo.1_i386.deb gtk2-10
wget "http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-3.0.3&os=linux&lang=en-US"
tar -xjf firefox-3.0.3.tar.bz2
cd /home/user/firefox303/firefox/
sed "2i\\
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/home/user/firefox303/gtk2-10/usr/lib"" /home/user/firefox303/firefox/firefox > /home/user/firefox303/firefox/eeefirefox
cp /home/user/firefox303/firefox/firefox-bin /home/user/firefox303/firefox/eeefirefox-bin
ln -s /home/user/firefox303/firefox/eeefirefox /home/user/runfirefox303
chmod 755 /home/user/firefox303/firefox/firefox-bin /home/user/firefox303/firefox/eeefirefox-bin /home/user/runfirefox303
wget "http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/current/install_flash_player_9_linux.tar.gz"
tar -xzf install_flash_player_9_linux.tar.gz -C /home/user/firefox303/
ln -s /home/user/firefox303/install_flash_player_9_linux/libflashplayer.so /home/user/firefox303/firefox/plugins/libflashplayer.so

Here is the play-by-play. A directory is created in your home directory called firefox303. Then we download GTK version 2.10 and extract it there (NOT install it). Then we download Firefox 3.0.3 and extract it to /home/user/firefox303/firefox. Next we use 'sed' to insert a line into the script which starts Firefox. This line tells Firefox where to find the GTK library files and will prevent the error you would otherwise get. Notice that we call the new file eeefirefox. Because that file name becomes a working variable, we also need to habe "eeefirefox-bin" file which I created through a copy process (a symbolic link would have probably worked too). Next I created a symbolic link so that the user ends up with an executable script in the root of their home directory called "runfirefox303". Lastly the script grabs the latest version of Adobe Flash Player and installs it for you (because everybody needs it).

I also shared this script with the eee PC community here: http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=45742

Now you would think I would get some kudo's for my work on this project, but I've got nothing but crap from the user base. I'm not going to troll my own threads, but I will use my Blog to vent a little bit here.

Well, the other method worked fine for me! - Oh good. Because I spent several hours trying to make it and ended up reloading four times. Which is why I took the time to put this new method together. By the way, to "make it work" you totally tainted your system when you *INSTALLED* the newer GTK libraries to Xandros.
I didn't taint my system - Yes you did. When you start downloading packages that were built for a different version of Debian Linux you have tainted your install. You are driving full speed into dependency hell. Especially when you want to compile something new and you need those dev libraries.
I didn't taint anything, it still works - You tainted it. See the above.
No I didn't - Yes you did! Get out of my head!
I get a message telling me that GTK has to be 2.10 - You have to run the link that was left conveniently in your home directory. It's called runfirefox303. Vote Palin/McCain in 2008!
I have to start this from a terminal every time? - You could link a button to the startup script. It's not that difficult. Like foreign policy. Simple stuff.
Why didn't you make a package? - Because these all ready are packages, which I am hacking together to make work. I'm not going to re-package other peoples packages. I'm pretty sure that violates the terms of use from Mozilla any way.
Firefox 3.0.3 locks up! - What do I look like, the application developer? Report that shit to Mozilla. I have found some bugs too and I'm not talking about this hacked-together crap I'm pulling. It crashes in Windows too. That just gives us something to look forward to in Firefox 3.0.4! :-)

Okay, okay. That's enough user abuse for one day.

EEE PC: Speed boost with modern kernels

2008-09-13T15:48:00.004-04:00

If you are at all like me, you are probably not satisfied with the 70mhz "front side bus" speed of your eee PC 701 (2G/4G Surf). These has long been a module available which you can install to control the fsb speed and crank it from the default 70mhz to the full 100mhz. The difference is noticeable *immediately*. Especially of you are running Firefox with a streaming video (like YouTube clips).

Lately there has been a lot of talk about Ubuntu Intrepid. This is the next generation of Ubuntu, still currently in development. A week or so go I installed Intrepid and took it for a spin. While it seems to "work" on the eee PC there were still a few glitchy items. Such as, the Atheros WiFi nick is supported "out of the box". But for it to work, you have to disable the vendor specific driver that it chooses as a default. The new WiFi driver of choice is "ath5k". This is replacing what will soon be the deprecated madwifi driver. I must say, this new WiFi drive alone was worth the upgrade. But what about that eee.ko module for my higher bus speeds?

First, know that the code for the FSB speed boost is completely experimental. The author of the code warns that overclocking can cause undesired performance (such as freezing) and could also overheat your system. For that matter, the same code can be used to control the speed of the one and only system fan. Bottom line: do not slow it down!

You can get the code here: http://code.google.com/p/eeepc-linux/

If you are running the 2.6.27-2 kernel aka the 2.6.27-2-generic you will have issues. I did some digging and found this discussion taking place in a bug report. It seems that you can compile the module by changing all occurences of "&proc_root" with "NULL". I went through these steps and was able to compile the driver cleanly. If you would like to just download my module for the 2.6.27-2 kernel, you can grab it here. Or, to read the conversation I had with other folks in the eee User forums, you can check this out.

But then yesterday I ran an update check and saw that there was a new kernel released. I just had to have it since I am living on the bleeding edge of technology. Of course, I had some concerns about being able to compile my front side bus hack again. And as it turns out, I was justified in my paranoia. With the new kernel installed (and my 4G of flash practically gone) I was not able to compile the eee.ko module. Piss!

Now this kept me up a bit late last night, but I was able to get it to work. When compiling, I was being told that I was missing an include file called "bounds.h". It seems that this is only generated when you actually build a kernel. Now, this is usually included with your kernel-headers package because they know you need it to build a few things. Why was it left out? It must have been an oversight. After all, this is all experimental.

In an effort to generate that bounds.h file I downloaded the kernel source, ran a "make mrproper", a "make oldconfig" and then a "make". Then I made my way off to bed. When I woke up ... my build had failed because my drive was out of space. Piss! But then I found that the one file I needed had been generated. Woo-hoo!

Now, if you came here for the eee.ko module built against the 2.6.27-3 kernel, aka the 2.6.27-3-generic kernel, you can grab it here. That archive includes the bounds.h file which is only about 10 lines long. I don't think anyone else has been crazy enough to mess around in this realm, butI shared my findings with the masses here.

Links of interest on this topic:
eeepc-linux-2.6.27-2-generic.tgz
eeepc-linux-2.6.27-3-generic.tgz
An old but still very useful Blog post about this driver

Sunday War-Sitting

2008-09-07T11:04:00.003-04:00

You can't really call it War-Driving when you are sitting in a Lay-Z-Boy with your favorite drink (generic grape Gatorade, aka "DRANK"). So this Sunday, I bring you the first War-Driving story in many moons. Here's the setup ...

This past week I started reading about the new Ubuntu Intrepid alpha releases which among other cool improvements contains the "ath5k" driver which is built right into the latest kernel, 2.6.27 (still in development). The new breed of ath5k driver supports the Atheros card used for the Asus eee PC (horay). So I have installed the latest Xubuntu to my eee PC 2G surf and I have al ready noticed some grand improvements in my WiFi strength. While the "quality" is still not at all accurate, I am now able to connect to distant access points which wouldn't even show up in my list before. Thank you ath5k developers, for saving me from lacking madwifi support. Now on with the show.

This morning I sat down and connected to a nearby school which I had previously only explored from my bedside using "Audrey II" (my old iBook). Installing Wireshark (from their network, thank you) I revealed some interesting packets. Namely ... these right here ...

There were half a dozen packets every thirty seconds or so in broadcast form (hence the destination address ending in .255). In the data portion of the packet was "SynchronEyes". Not having any idea what this was, I did some Googling about it. It ends up that this is some software which teachers can use to set up live exams for their kids. How hard could it possibly be to find a copy of this to download and use? I Googled: intitle:"index of" synchroneyes. The to search result was someones accidental mirror of what I was after.

For this, I went back to my home network and downloaded the software. I also took a copy of that activation key text file. That will come in handy. And while I am at it, I should figure out how I am going to run Windows software on my eee PC running Xubuntu. So I went into terminal and did a "sudo apt-get install wine". Next, I ran wine against the installer.

I opted not to install the Internet Explorer toolbar, thankyouverymuch.

Hooray, ready to launch.

Uh oh, why do you need an e-mail address? I'm not giving you that.

It says that it can't connect to the Internet and my registration is no good. That's fine, because it still opens and runs. With the teacher console I made some ill attempts to start connecting to things. My first attempt was to connect to that address that I first came across sending out the broadcast packets. Still watching with Wireshark I could see that it told me to get lost in the form of a "RST" packet.

Oh wait. I think I understand it now. This is a student looking for a teacher. Let's see what my packets look like when I go searching for "a class to join".

Oops. We're all students waiting for a class I guess.

So I did the obvious thing. I made myself a class and waited for the student to join me. No dice. In Wireshark I could see that the student workstation recognized me as a teacher, but would not automatically join the class I had just created.

This little software package could be a lot of fun if I were to join it during school hours. Then I could create duplicate classes and derail students. Or perhaps I could join as a student, and begin asking insulting questions of the teacher. But then I will be at work while school is in session ruining the possibility of any fun like that.

There is still a lot of network to explore here, but I don't expect I will spend much more time on it. For one, when this particular private network ID looked familiar I did some research on what I was connecting to. It ends up that this school is managed by my old employer who performs network monitoring and security services. When I worked there, I had many conversations with the admin of this network. He is over-stretched, over-worked, and most definitely under-paid. It would be well of me to inform him that he has an unsecured wireless network here which I am sure he is not aware of.

But I will send that e-mail later. I still want to explore a bit.

Kismet Newcore

2008-06-17T21:12:00.004-04:00

I was downloading and building Kismet once again today. I have done this a lot lately, because I keep blowing up my OS and having to reinstall.

I decided to go all out and install the "newcore" distribution. This version is available through svn and basically represents what the developers want. It's been built from the ground up to offer easier development, add-ons, and better configuration for the user.

I only really used it for 10 minutes or so. It works. It looks little odd. I'm not sure the graphical representation of packets is really necessary, but of course you can customize all that.

My buddy DM thought it looked a little like Atari 2600 graphics. That got me to thinking about my favorite childhood game "Adventure". That lead to a Google search where I learned that someone made a homebrew Adventure II for the Atari 5200 emulator. Just about the time I got the game to play I had to get back to work.

Also - I joined twitter as "rayhaque", so if you are a fellow twitter feel free to stalk me. I read about the service ages ago and I didn't really understand what it's for. I still don't really get it, but I expect I will figure it out soon. :-)

EEE PC - Migrating to 8.04

2008-06-17T11:06:00.005-04:00

Being haunted with some rather odd driver issues I have been thinking about moving to Ubuntu or Xubuntu 8.04 for a good week now. Yesterday I bit the bullet knowing full well that this installation would cripple most of my drivers and leave me fumbling to restore all my broken functionality. But you know ... it wasn't *that* bad.

Creating a Live USB stick of Xubuntu 8.04
This was a bit more challenging than I had imagined. eeeXubuntu (release 3) came with this nice little shell script that does all the work of making a thumbdrive/jumpdrive into an installation source for you, so you can skip out of some lengthy tutorial steps. That script is not part of a standard Xubuntu release, so this is what I did.

1) I needed a copy of mkusbinstall.sh from the eeeXubuntu 7.10 disc. Ths involved booting it up, and copying the file onto a thumbdrive. You can also get it from here. I mirrored it for anyone else attempting this.

2) Next I downloaded and booted up Xubuntu 8.04, and inserted my thumbdrive. Then, I copied the script my thumbdrive out to my home directory.

3) Next I prepared my thumb drive again with fdisk and mkfs. This process is documented very well in this blog entry.

4) You need "syslinux" installed for this script to run. One of the magical factors of Live distributions is installing software. Open up a terminal. Go ahead and do a 'sudo apt-get install syslinux'. This will take a moment or two, and you will be done.

5) Now in your terminal, run the script you copied over earlier like this 'sudo ./mkusbinstall.sh --autodetect'. The rest should be smooth sailing as you just wait for copying to complete. You *will* get a few error messages about symbolic links. But don't mind those.

6) Boot your eee PC up to your thumbdrive and get to installing.

Keep in mind, you will need to install madwifi drivers from source to restore your wireless settings. And there are far more tweaks and hacks to fix the remaining stuff. Since I combined about three different methods myself ... I will not try to offer advice on that topic.

Check the eeeUser.com forums for more info.

Additionally, since installing the latest svn source for the madwifi driver - I am getting about 15 percent better signal quality with the built in Atheros WiFi card. It was enough boost to allow me to connect to a network up the street from my house without using any external cards or antennas. Awesome?

EEE PC - Almost Wardriving

2008-06-13T09:03:00.008-04:00

After all my failures yesterday I came to the realization that I would have to find a plan B and execute it. An external USB WiFi adapter might be just what the doctor ordered. Luckily I have access to an entire drawer of Linksys USB WiFi adapters which are just collecting dust.

These adapters use the rt2500 chipset which is pretty well suported thanks to the efforts of this project. I plugged the card in, and it was detected. Simple, right? Well not quite.

It seems that the OS wants to load the rt2500usb driver for this card, even though the card in reality is an rt2570. That would be fine if I wanted to *use* this card to join access points and gain Internet access. But my end goal is to use this as a weapon of wardriving. For that, it did not seem to work well. I set my source in Kismet as "source=rt2500,wlancantenna" and started it up. It detects about 3 wireless devices, but cannot seem to see the high powered b/g cisco devices which are everywhere around me.

This seemed to me to be a driver issue of sorts. Heading back to the project download page I found that there was a stand-alone driver for the rt2570 chipset. I downloaded it, built the module, and installed it - all rather easily. The problem is, when I plug in the card the OS still detects it as an rt2500. This can be fixed by opening up /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist (as root) and adding "blacklist rt2500usb" to the bottom of the file. Note that if you blacklist "rt2500" you will likely end up with a non-functioning setup.

Now, with the card removed and *ALL* "rt" related modules removed - I can reinsert the card and this is the result I get.

Note that while Kismet (in the background of this shot) picks up *EVERYTHING* - the OS now doesn't know how to read the signal levels on what it has found. I'm not sure if that is really a problem. I can live with it.

I have also taken one of these cards, gutted it, and through the miracle of duct tape I have merged it with a single cable cantenna design. It's not a pretty site, but I will take pictures at some point.

My New Toy
I am a bit destracted with this little project this morning because I got a slick new toy for fathers day. It's a Garmin Nuvi 200 which is a GPS "driving assistant" (with lot's of additional toys and uses).

Last night I unboxed it, turned it on, and started immediately setting it up. Yet, everytime I got to the part where it hooks up to satelites - it shut off. It seems that they don't send these out of the factory on a full charge. Thankfully this unut can be charged from USB (unlike some of the competitive models). There is a wall charger accessory which you can buy but really don't need. It comes with a nice mounting kit for your windshield or dash, and a 12v socket adapter too.

I went online and registered my unit, and since I am entitled to a free map update I went ahead and started that up. Alas, it needed to install a browser plugin so I had to reboot into ... Windows XP. :-( I installed the plugin, it warned me that the file download could take hours, I laughed, and started it up. But then I saw that this could take hours - because the file was 2.04GB. Meanwhile Windows XP is asking (for about the fifth time) if I would like to reboot. It had to go and install a bunch of updates and it wouldn't shut the fuck up about them. Knowing that Windows will eventually reboot my PC against my will - I rebooted it myself.

But then when I tried to go through the registration and map download again it said "you all ready got your free maps - now beat it" in so many kind words. I HATE YOU WINDOWS. After some hunting around in the web site I was able to find where I could re-download the file. But when it was completed, I had to wait another 15 minutes while Windows copied 2GB from my Temporary Internet Files - to the Desktop (why do they STILL do things this way? Firefox doesn't!). At this point I was happy to reboot back into Linux where logic still prevails.

This morning I popped out the ashtray in my bug and used my tie clip to lock the GPS onto my dash. Then I drove to work. It's two miles down a straight road and I haven't gotten lost yet (not even once) - but I was itching to see how well this thing works. As I came to where the street splits in all directions it shouted "turn left in zero point one miles" and then when I hit the spot it said "turn left". Nice. Then as I cruised down the road it told me "1.7 miles remaining". As I approached the hospital I decided to throw it a curve ball and I took a sharp right to head up the back of the hospital (opposed to going to the front door lie a visitor would). The Garmin saw that I had turned off and a moment later said "recalculating!". With that, it had a new path for me (which is the way I was heading).

I must say, this is a nice little unit. It will be fun to play with this when we head out to a cabin 350 miles from here for vacation. In the mean time, I wonder if I could rig this into my laptop and use it's GPS capabilities for wardriving?

EEE PC - Replacing the WiFi Card

2008-06-11T15:55:00.005-04:00

Over the weekend I went onto eBay and bought myself a Dell TrueMobile 1390 b/g wireless card for my eee PC. I am out to replace the Atheros that comes with it, which just doesn't seem to cut the mustard when it comes to wardriving. I bought the card Sunday night for $15 (shipping and all) and it was in my mailbox Tuesday morning. Thanks US Postal Service! :-)

Back at work I got out my set of screwdrivers and went to work. Installing the card was not difficult, but it was time consuming and a little tedious. As you can imagine, everything in the eee PC is small and fragile. I found this particular forum post to be most helpful in determining how to get the lid off and expose the bottom of the motherboard. With everything back together, I booted it up.

I didn't get the "blue light" on the eee PC which was a little concerning. I hadn't thought of how I would get the card to interact with the buttons or quick keys on the eee PC. Once booted I could see that I had ... no wireless card. Not that I expected the driver to load and for everything to work that simply, but it sure would have been nice.

The first thing I tried to get it working was to look for drivers to install. I ran an apt-cache bcm43xx and I found a utility of sorts which helps to load firmware onto a Broadcom card. Why would I want to play with firmware? It seems you have to. The way this card was designed you have a file available which is used to load the card every time it comes up. This is done pretty simply in Windows using Broadcom drivers. Linux it seems, is another story.

There also seems to be a newer style and older style driver. There have been two projects over the years to make these cards work. The old bcm43xx drive has been written off as a "legacy driver" and everyone seems to be using the new b43 driver instead. All sorts of good information on the topic can be found here. I dove feet first into the instructions on the project page and about midway through realized that while I was not getting any error messages, I was having zero success in getting this to work. Additionally, I was skimming through the instructions and really had no idea what I was doing.

Also I noticed I still had no blue light. I wondered if my "hot key" still works. I did a Fn+F2 - and the light came on. Hooray! But that means all the screwing around I had done trying to load drivers was in vain, because my card was turned off the entire time. Duh. Rather than continue on with my path of driver destruction, I opted to back up my home directory to an SD card and re-install the operating system. My hope was that in reinstalling eeeXubuntu the card would be magically detected and the driver would be loaded for me like the Atheros card was when I installed the first time.

And the survey says ... NO DICE.

A fresh and clean Operating System would not find it. Perhaps an up to date Operating System would find it and use it. Next I performed a "dist-upgrade" knowing that I would probably break a ton of other stuff in the process. The dist upgrade took the better part of four hours. Yes, FOUR HOURS. When it was done, I had new versions of everything - but none of my hardware worked any more, not even the on-board wired NIC. Downer.

After having no luck getting drivers to work I began to wonder if the hardware was even being detected. After all, loading the driver didn't give a single error. I ran an 'lspci' and compared the results with what would see with an Atheros card installed. No wonder, the Dell Broadcom card wasn't being picked up at all by the BIOS. This whole thing had been a waste of time, and $15.

With that, I went downstairs, got out the screwdrivers, and put the Atheros card back in. Then, I reinstalled the eeeXubuntu OS to put me back to ground zero. Ugh.

I am not ready to give up, but whatever I come with is going to have to be external. I did some searching around for information on using the Intel 3945 in the eee PC and I was brought right back to the eeeuser.com forum to find some more bad news. That slot it seems, will not detect anything but an Atheros branded card.

For my next trick ... I am thinking of getting an external USB wireless card and making it part of a cantenna. Then the antenna connection would go right into the can - and a single USB cable would come down to the laptop. More on this revelation later.

EEE PC - Wireless Comparisons

2008-06-09T14:23:00.003-04:00

Today, just for giggles I grabbed a spare USB Linksys WiFi b/g adapter off my desk and plugged it into my EEE PC. It was imediately recognized and available for use which I wasn't really expecting. Generally in Ubuntu to have to go through driver hell to make one of these work.

But then ... I couldn't actually join any networks that I found and I really didn't care to. What I was interested in seeing was what the signal strength looked like in comparison with the internal Atheros card. This was easily viualized simply by showing the list of available networks. As you can see by the screenshot here, the external USB was about 20+ percent more powerful.

EEE PC - Updating your MadWiFi driver

2008-06-07T15:36:00.004-04:00

I've been doing a little hacking with my madwifi_g driver. I have not been at all impressed with the reception of the card. It seems my old iBook can pull in two more access points than my eee PC ,and at double the signal strength. Thinking that it could be the card, I have found a few ineffective "hacks" to control it's settings. Even though they didn't work, here they are.

Increase your transmit strength
Did you know that you can turn up the transmit power of your Atheros card? Did you know that it's all ready turned up all the way? You can check it with the following command:

ray@eee-q050805:~$ iwconfig ath0
ath0      IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"ODDREE"  Nickname:""
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.462 GHz  Access Point: 00:90:4C:7E:00:64   
          Bit Rate:5 Mb/s   Tx-Power:17 dBm   Sensitivity=1/1  
          Retry:off   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=23/70  Signal level=-72 dBm  Noise level=-95 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:1552  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

Where it days Tx-Power: 17 dBm, that's your current settings. To turn it down, you would do this:

ray@eee-q050805:~$ sudo iwconfig ath0 txpower 16

The only reason to turn it down is to save on battery. Otherwise, you are just limiting your "reach" and your speed. Theoretically you could turn it up with a value of 18, but 17 is the best the card can do ... which is pretty weak.

Change your Antenna
You can also change the antenna that your card is using. It has two and the driver decides how it uses them. They call that automated balancing "diversity". If you want to force the driver to use one antenna or the other you have to turn off diversity. I wrote these three shell scripts to change the settings around - but I was never able to make it work any better. You would have to run these with sudo.

#Use antenna 1
/sbin/sysctl -w dev.wifi0.diversity=0
/sbin/sysctl -w dev.wifi0.txantenna=1
/sbin/sysctl -w dev.wifi0.rxantenna=1

#Use antenna 2
/sbin/sysctl -w dev.wifi0.diversity=0
/sbin/sysctl -w dev.wifi0.txantenna=2
/sbin/sysctl -w dev.wifi0.rxantenna=2

#Use diversity to choose
/sbin/sysctl -w dev.wifi0.diversity=1

Update your MadWifi Driver
This is not a good idea. At all. But I had to try it. If you do this procedure you may ruine your wireless driver beyond repair (not knowing your skill level in linux). That said, here is what I learned.

The madwifi_g driver and the future driver "ath5k" do not have support for the Atheros card used in the eee PC. If you download new, old, or even "svn source" it will compile cleanly and then not work at all. Digging through a forum I found a guy mentioning that the kind folks at madfifi.org have created a patch to make the code work for us eee PC users. Ths patch is also incorporated into the nightly builds for the driver releases. That means you can download it, compile it, and put it to use.

Download the latest patched source code from: http://snapshots.madwifi.org/special/

Look for the newest releast for madwifi-ng, which is labeled for ar5007 (this is the card that the eee PC uses). Download the source, and then do a 'tar -xzvf filename.tar.gz". Next, cd into that directory in a terminal, and then do a 'make'. If your make fails, ensure that you have installed the 'build-essential' package. Now do a make install. It will probably find your existing driver and offer to remove it for you. Allow it to. Then reboot. You will be using the latest driver, and probably won't notice anything different about it.

Conclusion
While not really accomplishing anything, I think I have pretty well proved that the real problem with the lack of signal strength is because the hardware sucks. For my next project, I am going to look at the specs for the other cards which fit the mini-PCI-express slot (for which there are only two or three manufactured).

When is Proxim going to give us a mini-PCI express b/g/n card?

Edit: A little more research on card strength
It seems that there are really only two other contenders for wireless which have the mini PCI express architecture. Those are the Dell Truemobile 1390 and the Intel 3945. The Intel of course uses an Intel chipset while the Dell uses the popular Broadcom chipset. Both seem to be equally compatible, but as far as "which one is better" I still can't tell.

Perhaps I am silly for wanting to know how powerful a card is as the manufacturers don't seem to really advertise these figures. Dell says "this card makes the Intenet work on the computer" (it's not tht dumb, but nearly). Intel says "15db - depending on power usage" (but doesn't tell you the max possible).

I used a Google tactic to get some information. I searched for "dell 1390 tx-power=" and "intel 3945 tx-power=". I found a lot of sad and disheartened users who couldn't get WPA to work, didn't know how to renew an IP address, etc. But what I really was looking for was a dump of their wireles card statistics. Here are two examples of what I found ...

intel 3945
wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"xxxx"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462 GHz Access Point: 00:17:9A:52:1A:93
Bit Rate=54 Mb/s Tx-Power=27 dBm

dell 1390
[root@localhost ~]# iwconfig wlan0
wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:off/any
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Bit Rate:54 Mb/s Tx-Power:32 dBm

If these statistics are accurate, it means that the Intel card does another 10 dBm's of power more than the Atheros card ... but the Dell TrueMobile 1390 nearly doubles up on power. With the low cost and high availibilty of the Dell card, I may need to invest in one.

EEE PC - eeeXubuntu Install Using Thumbdrive

2008-06-05T21:35:00.016-04:00

So, you want to install eeeXubuntu to your eee PC - but you don't have an external CD-ROM. Or perhaps you are in the same boat as me. I have an external HP burner that a friend gifted me a few years back, but the eee PC won't recognize it or boot from it. If you have a thumbdrive that's at least 512MB, then you are in luck. In this blog entry I will show you how to turn your thumbdrive into a bootable installation "disk" which you can then use to install eeeXubuntu to your eee PC.

Step 1 - Go download eeeXubuntu. You can find a complete mirror list on the main support page for the distribution - http://wiki.eeeuser.com/ubuntu:eeexubuntu:home

Step 2 - Backup your thumbdrive. If you intend to keep what's on your thumbdrive now, it would be wise to back it all up, because we will be wiping it clean of all data. If you don't want to back it up, or don't care to lose everything - move to Step 3. To make a backup, hop onto your "everyday Linux PC". If you only have a Windows PC this can still be done, but may be a little trickier. See this page for deatails.

On your Linux PC, open up a terminal. Insert your thumbdrive, and then wait about 8 to ten seconds. Now in your terminal, run 'dmesg'. Your results should look something like this ...

Note that your device name should appear here several times and probably starts with 'sd'. Mine is 'sdc'. Knowing this, we can back it up using dd. dd is really simple. You tell it what to use for input ("if" means "in-file") and output ("of" means "out-file"). Now run 'dd if=/dev/sdc of=/home/yourname/filename.img'. If your thumbdrive is large, this may take a while. We are creating a block-by-block or exact duplicate of the device. It will look a bit like this ...

Now we have a complete backup of your thumbdrive and we are ready to proceed.

Step 3 - Prepare your thumbdrive. Burn your iso, and boot to it from your "everyday" computer. This is a live CD, so it doesn't matter what OS you are running when you use this disc. Additionally, this CD will not install anything unless you tell it to do so! As it boots up, choose the top option to "start or install Xubuntu". Then wait until it comes up to the desktop.

Once you are booted up we have some preparation work to do on your thumbdrive. First, we need to remove all of the partitions it presently has. Plug in your thumbdrive, and wait 8 to 10 seconds. Your thumbdrive will probably pop up in a window, and you will see it's contents displayed. Close this window. Then notice that there is a new icon on your desktop for your thumbdrive. Right click on this icon, and choose "Unmount Volume".

Open up a terminal with Applications > Accessories > Terminal. Now, in the terminal window, do a 'dmesg' as you did earlier. Note your device name of your thumbdrive which usually starts with 'sd'. It will look something like this ...

Now in your terminal, do 'sudo fdisk /dev/sdb' where sdb is your thumbdrives device name. At the prompt, type 'p' to have it print a list of your partitions. In my case, I had only one. Some thumbdrives will ship with four or more which contain all sorts of encryption software or special utilities. If you have multiple partitions, you will have to specify which one to delete. Type a 'd' and if prompted, enter the number of the last partition from the list. If you have more than one, repeat option 'd' for each partition until they are gone. Then do a 'p' again to make sure it's empty.

Now do a 'n' for a new partition. Then 'p' for primary type. Then a '1' for the first partition. For the starting and ending cylinders, just hit enter to take the defaults. Lastly, do option 'p' again to see what it looks like. Notice that you now have a partition number after your device name. In my case it's /dev/sdb1. Make a note of this 'partition name', you will need it shortly. Before leaving fdisk you must make two more important changes. First change the partition type. Do option 't' to change the type, and when asked for the "Hex code" enter the letter 'e'. This will give you the old-school "Windows 95 FAT16 Partition" that the installer wants. Lastly, enter option 'a', and when asked for a partition number enter '1'. This will make your thumbdrive bootable!!

Now is a good time to enter 'p' one more time and make sure it looks something like this ...

You are done, so use option 'w' to write out your changes. It will do some 'syncing' and quit the utility for you. But you are *NOT DONE*.

Step 4 - FORMAT your new partition. The second time I ran through this, Xubuntu got confused and remounted my filesystem after I quit fdisk. You may want to check your Desktop for what looks like a mounted thumbdrive. If you have one, right click on it and choose to "Unmount Volume". Then wait about 10 seconds. The icon will probably remain, but don't worry about it. Now, in terminal run 'sudo mkfs -t msdos /dev/sdb1' where '/dev/sdb1' is your new partition which you created in fdisk. Do not fudge the device name or you may end up wiping out the contents of your "everyday system". This process runs remarkably fast - and is completely irreversible. It should look like this ...

Step 5 - Use the Xubuntu thumbdrive installation creator utility. It will work like a champ now that your thumbdrive has been *properly prepared*. To run this utility, in terminal do 'sudo /cdrom/mkusbinstall.sh --autodetect'. It will tell you to remove your flash drive and hit enter. Do that. Then it will tell you to reinsert it. So put it back! It should detect your thumbdrive and show you the device and partition name. If it's the same from before - we are ready to go. It will ask if you want to continue. Say 'y'. What happens next is a lot of copying to your thumbdrive. The CD will spin like wild, and your thumbdrive light (if you have one) will flicker for a while. Go get some coffee and wait. You may get an error or two in this process, such as "cannot stat `/cdrom/md5sum.txt'". If you get more like 5 to 10, then something is wrong. If you get some message about resizing partitions on your thumbdrive - you definitely did something wrong and you should repeat the process of removing and re-adding your partition.

Otherwise the process should finish nicely like this one did ...

Now you can remove your thumbdrive, and reboot your everyday PC. Make sure you remove the installer disc now. Keep it around, you never know when you might want to use it again.

Step 6 - Install eeeXubuntu. Insert the thumbdrive in your eee PC, hold down the ESC key, and boot it up. Then use the USB:USB Flash Disk as your boot device. The rest is smooth sailing. If you need help with general installation - refer to the main installation page here.

Step 7 - Restore your thumbdrive. Now that you have installed eeeXubuntu you may want to restore what was on your thumbdrive. Boot up your "everyday Linux" box that you used to make the backup earlier, and open a terminal window. We are going to simply reverse the 'dd' command we ran in Step 2 so that the "if" is your thumbdrive image, and your "of" is your thumbdrive device. Go ahead and plug in your thumbdrive now. It will probably get auto-mounted and pop up in a window. Close that window. Then go to your desktop and find the icon for it. It will probably be called something generic like "1.0 Gig Media". Right click it, and choose "Unmount Volume".

Now open a terminal and do a 'dmesg'. Make sure the device name of your thumbdrive has not changed. It should be the same as it was before. Next do 'sudo dd if=/home/yourname/thumbdrive.img of=/dev/sdc'. Your thumbdrive will be busy for a while, churning away while everything is restored. Go get more coffee.

When it's done, you should be able to unplug your thumbdrive - wait a few seconds - and then plug it back in. It will get auto-mounted and everything will be restored, looking as it did before you made it into an eeeXubuntu installer.

I sincerely hopes this helps a few folks out there. I ran into many obstacles in getting my eee PC up and going with eeeXubuntu, but it was well worth the efforts. If you find any errors, have suggestions, or you found this useful - please drop me a comment.

EEE PC - Meet iPod Nano

2008-06-05T12:35:00.004-04:00

It was only a matter of time before I introduced my eee PC to my iPod Nano. If I plan on listening to music with my eee PC, it only makes sense to play it from my iPod (rather than eat up limited space with duplicate files). I have tried a lot of software for linux which plays music, but none works better with the iPod than Rhythmbox.

To install Rhythmbox, open a terminal and do a 'sudo apt-get install rhythmbox'. There are a bunch of dependencies - go ahead and let it install those. One thing I found, is that I was unable to play *any* of my music. That's because Rhythmbox does not incude the gstreamer libraries needed to play them. To add the missing libraries, go to your terminal and do a 'sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly'. Note that there is also a gstreamer0.10-plugins-good and a gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad set of plugins which may be required to play other obscure non-mp3 formats.

So now I can plug in my iPod, open up Rhythmbox, and start rocking out. I noticed my album art is missing, but I don't know that it bothers be enough to fix it. Maybe I will work on that later.

EEE PC - Screen Real Estate

2008-06-04T18:06:00.005-04:00

The screen on the eee PC is pretty damned impressive. The tiny screen on my old 3-Com Audrey was just about the same physical size as my 4G Surf, but it packed in about half the pixels. These days you get an easy 800 pixels across in such tight space that my old eyes simply can't count the dots.

Of course, you are still taxed with a 'short' display. It's not a problem in Terminal or in your web browser, because you can scroll. But sometimes you get a window that's too big and you can't get to the close or okay buttons. The fix for that by the way, is to hold Alt while clicking and dragging the window around.

Looking for more space in Firefox? - Open up Firefox. Right-click the toolbar somewhere such as over-top the Stop button. If you don't use the Bookmarks bar (I never do) you should uncheck that. Also notice how big the buttons are in Firefox? You can downsize them. Right-click the toolbar again and choose 'Customize'. In the window that pops up, look to the bottom for an option to 'Use Small icons' and check that box. You have just increased your browsing real estate. You may even decide to part with your status bar (but I like mine too much). To remove it, click View and uncheck Status Bar.

Want more space in your taskbar? - Taskbars are always over-crowded but the eee PC has a little less horizontal space than you may be used to. How about getting rid of the word 'Applications' on the Application button? An eeeuser.com forum poster, Red Penguin found this remarkably easy method. Simply right-click the Applications button, and click Properties. Now just uncheck the option 'Show title in button'.

Another space eater is the Desktop Switcher. It looks like four big boxes in the right hand corner. This is handy if you spread your windows across separate spaces (one desktop for work, and one for games?). I have never really made good use of this feature and you don't need the switcher panel to switch desktops anyway (you can press Ctrl+Alt+Arrow Key and get the same effect. To get rid of the desktop switcher panel (it's actually called the "Pager") right-cick it and Remove it.

I am still collecting space saving tips myself - so I my add to this topic in the future. In the meantime here is what my tight-on-space desktop looks like.

EEE PC Network Manager Replacement; wicd

2008-06-04T16:02:00.005-04:00

It was a really busy day at the office. But thankfully a third of my work today was waiting for software installations to finish. In this minimal off-time I was able to try out an alternative Network Manager for eeeXubuntu called 'wicd'.

The default network manager is "not bad", and it looks a little something like this ...

I have a few complaints.

1) It seems to lie about the signal strength, and sometimes it really drags when connecting me to a network or obtaining the IP address.
2) It doesn't give you a lot of options or additional information about the networks it finds. It's almost too simple.
3) It's connected to the Keyring application. That means it saves all of your WEP/WPA passwords safely - but every time you log in you are prompted for your master password. I made mine really long too. Woops.

With that, I went off in search of an alernative network manager. I found one mentioned in the eeeuser.com forums called 'wicd' which seemed to be well liked. The installation instructions were not very clear - so allow me to elaborate.

1) Open terminal and do a ' sudo mousepad /etc/apt/sources.list'. Then scroll to the very bottom and add these lines (the first is for your reference only) ...

# WICD.longren.org
deb http://wicd.longren.org gutsy all

2) In terminal, do a 'sudo apt-get update'. This may take a few moments.
3) Next, do a 'sudo apt-get install wicd'. Note that you cannot have *two* network managers, so you are going to lose network-manager and network-manager-gnome in the process. If you have stored away WEP/WPA passwords ... they will be saved in case you want to go back to the old manager. They will not however, be 'ported' to the new application.
4) When you say 'Y' to continue - the NetworkManager will *crash* and generate error messages. Because it is being removed. Don't panic. It's no big deal.
5) You may need to reboot. But try clicking Applications > Network > Wicd and launch the interface. If it's blank - reboot. Otherwise it will look a little like this ...

One thing was obviously missing, and that is the 'tray icon' down in the bottom right corner. Surely it has one, right? Of course it does, but you will need to add that to your 'Autostarted Applications' list.

6) Click Applications > Settings > Autostarted Applications. Then the 'Add' button. The name and decription can be whatever you like, but the Command box must read '/opt/wicd/tray.py'. Refer to this screenshot ...

7) Log out, and log back in. Now you should have a tray icon, and you can go to work.

I was not all that impressed with wicd, and at the end of the day - I went back to my default network manager. Here are my dislikes for wicd.

1) It's slower than the default manager, and it takes forever to scan the network and show you the results.
2) When it strikes an error or a problem joining a network - you are put on endless hold. There is a cancel button which *does* cancel the connection - and that is a plus.
3) It does not consolidate wireless networks. This was a dealbreaker for me. If I have 6 access points in range, all with the same 'SSID', it shows all 6 of them to me. I don't want to see all those, and it takes time to query and report on all of them!
4) This also lies about signal strength which tells me the driver is the root of that problem.

If you want to go back to the default manager:
1) Open a terminal and do a 'sudo apt-get install network-manager network-manager-gnome'. It will automatically remove 'wicd' for you, as you can't have both.
2) Remember to go into Autostart Applications and remove the wicd tray applet.
3) Perhaps reboot, although it may not be necessary as your old tray icon is probably back and functional again.

A note of caution - if you return to wicd a second time you may have issues. I found myself removing wicd, deleting the entire /opt/wicd directory, and reinstalling it again just to create some screenshots for this blog entry.

EEE PC Day 2 - Wardriving Attempts

2008-06-03T19:20:00.006-04:00

After some late night last minute attempts to make Kismet work last night, I was actually graced with some a bit of minor success. Kismet loaded, and displayed some accurate capture information.

Now if only I could get my "production network tool" to play nicely. It seems to only want to connect to my home network, and disregards everything else it sees. When I search for other networks it finds them by name - but shows a very weak signal for them and won't seem to commit when I tell it to connect. It's a tad annoying, because I can pull out Audrey II (the Mac) and jump onto any one of these networks without a problem.

I am assuming the problem is:
1) The way the driver was written.
2) The utility demands a certain level before it will connect.
3) Power limitations to the card keep it running weaker, but longer on battery.
4) The card just simply is not that good.

It could be a number of those factors run together. I spent some time tonight searching for an option in the driver or with a wireless tool like iwpriv which would allow me to step up the power consumption to get a better wireless reach. I came up empty there. I guess my next step is to see if I can't find a replacement for this native wireless network manager. I hope to have these training wheels off soon. I am anxious to get back to wardriving.

The EEE PC Day 1

2008-06-02T22:43:00.004-04:00

I was walktzing down the hall today at the hospital past the supply man with a cart of stuff, and he had something for me. My EEE PC had arrived a full four days ahead of schedule. As busy as this day was I still managed to find some time to play with my new toy.

Out of the box, I was pretty impressed with this little device. I have the 4G Surf model which has the smallest screen and keyboard of the bunch, but with 4GB of SSD flash versus 2GB. The default Operating System was "not bad", but it had all the makingd of kids computer. If Webkinz made an OS it would probably look a little like that. There were great big buttons spread amongst four tabs or so for launching applications. These ranged from Instant Messaging and multimedia stuff to limited "work" applications like Abiword. If this was the OS you were stuck with, these little machines would have never taken off.

Within 10 minutes or so I had decided that I was ready for a real operating system. With that, I got a copy of eeeXubuntu and ran through an installation. It was a bit cumbersome because I was unable to boot to my external CD-ROM drive as I had hoped. Instead, I had to use a thumbdrive to install from. This involved getting everything off my thumbdrive and creating a backup with 'dd'. Then I booted up to the eeeXubuntu live disc using a PC on my desk. Next I repartitioned and formatted my thumbdrive as a FAT16 drive - and ran a script from the CD-ROM to create a bootable and installable thumbdrive. From there - the install to my EEE PC was cake.

While the installation took the better part of an hour, once it was complete I was quite impressed with the speed. Booting seemed to take less than 30 seconds or so, and running applications was pretty pleasing. I've never spent much time using the default window manager 'xfce' but I will probably hold onto it a while. It's very thin, and there's not much eye candy. But the speed that you get is amazing.

With a good functional OS I tempted fate and installed all available updates. I did not do the 'dist-upgrade' as I have heard that certain things will be broken if you move up to the hardy release (current eeeXubunt runs gutsy 7.10). My updates finished at 5:00PM and I was out the door.

Since then, it's been a battle getting kismet installed. I am anxious to get back to wardriving but a wifi scanning app is essential. There are all sorts of issues with Kismet, madwifi, and the eee PC in general. From what I have read, people have got it working by mising new and old libraries and deb packages. I'm not sure I like that idea, so I have stuck to attempts. I got the latest Kismet source and built it pretty easily. It runs, detects my card, and gives no complaints ... but then it doesn't display anything. Of course, it also cripples the wireless driver which is rather typical for putting a device into monitor mode. Doing some more reading I found someone had posted a command to put things back in order and save a reboot ... 'wlanconfig ath0 create wlandev wifi0 wlanmode sta'.

And now, as I get ready for bed I thought "why not break this thing in and Blog a bit". The keyboard is definitely awkward being so small ... but the first keyboard I ever used was a lot like this (TRS-80 Color Computer). I think the 3-Com Audrey keyboard was also about this size. I'm probably chucking out typos a-plenty - but fuck spell checking. There also seems to be some running joke about finding punctuation marks on this thing, but since it's marked so well - it shouldn't take you any more than 10 minutes to become acustomed to the layout.

I look forward to the adventures I will have with this little toy.

*EDIT* It's tough to go to bed with a job unfinsihed. After reading a few entries to the Kismet mailing list, I found that my madwifi driver needed an option to be passed to it at the time it is loaded for Kismet to run properly. I will spare you the bloody details. If you are interested however, you can read this post from the eeeuser.com forums.

Tomorrow - we wardrive.

Blog Upkeeping

2008-06-01T17:36:00.002-04:00

I was digging through a drawer a few days ago and I came across a "web server backup" that I had made in late 2005. At that time, I was still administering a web server from work which I used to host Gloop.net. The domain name, and the server, have both long since been dead and forgotten. With them went a lot of pictures that I had put in my blog over the years. I have always been a little sad that my older blog posts are now photo-less and plagued with dead link boxes.

Vowing to fix the image problem, I slowly began to work my way through old blog posts identifying the images that are now dead, and fixing them by uploading them to Blogger (which actually uses Picassa to store them). Hopefully Blogger.com will outlive me, and I never have to worry about repairing dead links again.

I was only halfway through the year 2003 when I realised that my Blog has some other problems. Namely that my commenting feature has always been hosted by Haloscan.com. At the time I started my blog, the Blogger service did not have a commenting feature. This of course predates when Google bought them ... and it was before Wordpress ever came into existence. In it's hayday, Haloscan served me well. These days, their servers are slow as hell and add what seems like a 45 second delay to my page loadings.

I have spent a good two to three hours copying those Halsoscan comments and pasting them into my Blogger entries. So if you are rolling back in time and reading old Blog entries they will appear in the post as "Historic Comments". Future comments will now be hosted by Blogger! I could have just switched to Blogger comments, and dumped the old ones. But I love reading those old comments from my friends. :-)

I also dropped a new theme overtop of the old one, which I have probably had for at least 3 years .... maybe longer. It's not what I want - but I will work on that later. Now, I need to cook dinner. I'm making Strombolli!

2008-05-27T21:06:00.003-04:00

The Audrey Legacy

Long ago my wife and I each took $100 to buy ourselves something. She bought herself ... shit I forget. But I went right onto eBay and bought myself a 3-COM Audrey. I had a lot of fun with that damned thing. I would sit up in bed with it with the kick-stand down, and the tiny little keyboard on my belly chatting with a Jabber client that I had compiled to run on it, and irc-ii. Good times. I called it "Audrey".

After a while I got bored with my little network appliance, and I needed a meaner toy. I was in the market for something that had wireless capability so that I could explore this phenomenon known as "war-driving". I bought myself a Mac off of eBay. It was a toilet-seat iBook model. In fact, it was the original iBook. I drug it *EVERYWHERE* and I still use it every other day or so to check e-mail or surf the web from bed. It became my new best friend, and I nick-named it "Audrey II" (a play on the broadway show and film, Little Shop of Horrors).

Many years have passed, and I have not since had an electronic gadget great enough to carry the Audrey nickname. But that is about to change.

Today my boss called me from her office, which she does often. It's a little strange, because she sits about 10 feet away from me. But she doesn't like people bothering her, so she often locks herself into her office to get work done. When she calls one of us, we all hear both sides of the conversation. This is humorous, but not relevant to this story. My boss says "I need to order two laptops, but I have no Windows XP option ... so I may have to get them with Vista". I said "that's fine, but get me one too would ya?". She laughed and hung up.

Then I drafted an e-mail to her. I told her that I desperately needed a highly portable laptop which I could take on runs with me around the hospital. It would have to have a decent battery life, a small display, and if possible a non-mechanical hard drive. I chose the Asus EEE PC with a 4GB flash drive. I sent her a link with all the purchasing information she would need to buy it for me. I have sent her requests like these before and she usually just deletes them. But today - she called me into her office. Then she called my cohort into the office and had him look at it. She asked my cohort, "does he need this?". He took a look and replied, "oh yeah ... absolutely ... that would be perfect for what he needs". And with that, she processed the quote and ordered me one.

I really need a small laptop for making small network changes, and for remotely connecting to servers while standing inside wiring closets. But I also need a new toy which I can take on war-driving expeditions.

Don't tell my boss, but she may have just bought me Audrey III.

Ray might be back in the game. Stand by for details.

Historic Comments
We had someone bring one of these over to the office a month or two ago and it was a lot of fun. The display is a little crowded by the flash memory is fast. Just be careful when traveling with one because the TSA get nervous when they cannot hear the hard drives!
Rich | 05.29.08 - 11:11 am | #

I don't think anything could make the TSA more nervous than Audrey II.

http://www.oddree.com/rayhaque/a...que/ audrey1.jpg

I just got word today that my unit was ordered, and it should arrive by *next* Friday.
Ray Dios Haque | 05.29.08 - 4:37 pm | #

2008-05-15T19:57:00.004-04:00

Victories in Life (yet, not in death)

Getting to sleep has been really tough lately. The tossing and turning is mostly attributed to tasks unfinished. And perhaps a wave of hypertension and manic depression which I sometimes just cannot vanquish despite my best efforts. I have taken on a few projects at work which have unobtainable outcomes. Such as correcting issues with an Exchange server which were created during a migration which took place almost four years ago.

The Exchange Issue
It took recreating my server environment with a host of VirtualBox servers, beating them to death, rewinding them, and starting them over again before I started to make any progress. For days I tore through forums, newsgroups, "knowledge bases" and the like. I found an old book on Exchange 2003 server, and read three fourths of it. I stayed up until 3:00AM a few nights working on the server while nobody was around to complain about it being off line. Using a few oddball development tools with huge disclaimers I came across some interesting clues. It seems that the migration was a "bust". When Public Folders were migrated, half of their contents went right out the window in the form of database errors. Permissions were tangled up and handed away to non-existent users. Most importantly, the Free/Busy was duplicated, renamed, and completely crippled until I stumbled upon the problem years later.

Having devised my own plan, I carefully backed up all the permissions for the folders - carefully removing the permissions for the system folders so that the problem wouldn't reoccur. Then I simply dumped the Public Folders into a PST file using Outlook, so as to avoid a recovery disaster with Veritas which would rely on "SIDS" of System Folders which I wanted to recreate. Then - I blew it all away, forced Exchange to give me a new set, and I put all the permissions back. It was ... glorious. My boss was pleased (but not overjoyed, because she really didn't understand why I was so dedicated to solving it).

Certificate Issues
One day I got a call from a user who couldn't access the hospital e-mail. It's a common call, and it's usually because the user is incapable of following simple instructions. But just to make sure that there really isn't a problem, I always remote to my home PC and try to log in myself. Alas - there really *was* a problem. I had no idea how deep it ran. This became another case of something that hadn't been set up correctly to begin with, but had waited nine months or so before becoming a real problem.

A day and a half later, I had resolved the issue. Not only had I fixed it, but I had documented the whole procedure. I was careful to document the details because the certificate would be expiring soon and we would have to repeat this whole process. My boss, who doesn't speak tremendously good English, had come to agreement that I was "her pappy". She wasn't quite sure what that meant exactly, but after shouting "who's your pappy?" repeatedly from my desk - she emerged from her office with the answer.

It's hard to describe that feeling. When you have spent endless days working on an issue, and you resolve it, there is a moment of peace. But it doesn't last, and I am quick to jump onto something else to bring my brain silence.

Math Problems
Aside from the array of problem solving at work, I have had several weeks of torturous math problems at school. I had enjoyed my last class. The reading was quite a lot of work, and writing the end report took a lot of energy. But in the end, I got an 'A' in that class. I've asked around with some of the other folks that took the class with me. They got 'B's. Math class seemed a lot harder. It was supposed to be an introductory class to other bigger mathematical concepts. What it ended up being was a hodge-podge of everything crammed into a six week course. Each week there were four new chapters to read (and therefore four new concepts). Homework usually ran about 10 to 12 pages, and took upwards of 15 hours. Spending all weekend studying and trying to learn math from a course book was frustrating.

The professor had a few issues too. He often derailed discussions, demonstrating his 'old Jedi math' on a chalkboard while we all looked on dumbfounded. Running short on time the past four weeks of the course, he resorted to dropping on quiz all together, and changing the last two so that they wouldn't cover concepts that we hadn't learned in class. I was really dreading the final. I had done well on the mid-term (I aced it). But by the time the final had come on the last night of class, I was very unprepared. The instructor allowed us to have a cheat sheet, and I thought I had made a pretty good one. He even gave us a few hints about what we could expect. And then ... he delivered something wholly other. The first question asked for a demonstration of Egyptian multiplication through addition. This was a concept we had seen and used only once during the course. Most other questions related to complicated scenarios involving odds. A concept which still does not compute with me.

I spent the entire amount of time allotted taking the final exam. I ended up being one of the last two students out of the room. "Where was that geometry?", I asked him. He says, "I didn't want to put a lot of that on there". I indicated that I would have liked more geometry and less odds theory. He said I must be a visual person. I agreed. I left feeling pretty defeated. I had really given that exam my best, and by my own calculations I probably scored a 60 percent at best.

But just today, my grade for the course finally appeared. I have been checking the web site every hour or so for the past week and a half waiting to see what I got. And then ... an 'A' showed up. Relief. I think I know how it happened. 10 minutes into the final exam, a few folks had all ready finished. I know that even working feverishly at 100 percent brain utilization, you could not have completed that exam and have shown your work in that amount of time. I think most of them had simply given up on the class at that point. I'm wondering if he didn't have to curve the class scores to get a few 'A's. I know at one point, I was got one of the five 'A's on a quiz for a class of 30 (there were few B's and C's in that group). I don't think I even care what I got on that final exam. I passed ... with an 'A'.

I can sleep.

Death
There are a few things in life, which remain unconquered. It is the impassible which haunt me most. As I watch my wife take long drives to the city to see her ailing grandfather, I know that each trip might be her last. I cringe every time the phone rings, as we're all expecting bad news. I watch her constant state of unrest. She sometimes tosses in bed at night and grabs for my hand without ever really waking up. We both wait for an influx of imminent pain and depression that will follow the death of her grandparents. But the pain arrives slowly, in carefully prescribed doses. Waiting for bad news is a sure fire way to lose sleep.

Busy hands find no comfort.

I can't sleep.

Historic Comments
Math hates me as well.
Hello | 05.15.08 - 9:52 pm | #

2008-03-15T16:03:00.004-04:00

Home Alone

Yesterday my wifes grandfather was having surgery, so I took the day off of work to free her from kids and school duty. After getting my daughter off to school, I was home alone. That doesn't happen all to often, and I have to admit I didn't know what to do with myself. I blogged quite a bit, which I hadn't done in ages. I did some laundry, which unfortunately I also rarely do. I installed OpenOffice to my daughters computer so that she could do a report for school. Then I realized it was only noon. I wanted to work on my term paper at least a little bit, but I just wasn't in the mood.

So I hopped into the Bug and ventured off to find my local library. I looked it up on a map, and saw that it wasn't even half a mile from my house. I could have easily walked there, but it was raining off and on. I was impressed with the size of the place. It was easily just as big (if not a little larger) than the library back in my home town. Yet, my home town had a "main library" which was several floors. This place *is* the main library for this small town, and the smaller towns around it. Still I was impressed with the selection of materials. And hey, I found two books to use for my term paper. Woot!

Then I went to Wal-Mart. I was looking for a pre-paid phone that I could use, so that I can give up this brick of a "smart phone" that I carry around now. The problem is, these pre-paid plans really suck. I would be dumping about fifty bucks into an old Nokia, and an hour or so of minutes. Nah. I guess I will hold onto this brick until my employer decides that it's not good for me to hang up on hospital staff. As of yet, that doesn't seem to necessitate her getting me something different. In the mean time I changed my cell phone greeting to "if you are calling during business hours, kindly hang up and call me at my desk".

My local Wal-Mart has a nice Clearance aisle full of worthless shit. One such item, a "snake bite kit" made by Coleman. At only $1.50 I was tempted to buy one and do something random with it (like inter-office mail it to one of my co-workers without explanation). But then I found a clearance item of significant magnitude.

HEELIES FOR MEN.

Now I know what you are going to say. They don't make those things for grown men. You would be correct. What you are looking at is half a roller skate with a little elastic strap to hold them to your feet. Instead of a single heel, you have wheels on either side of you feet at about the same logical place. The amazing thing was that they fit my enormous size 14 Converse shoes.

I got home, busted them out of the box, and next thing I knew I was rolling through my kitchen on these bad boys at high speed. Of course, when my kids came home from school they were equally as impressed with the toy. They spent the next several hours performing death defying stunts, and testing every inch of patience from our two dogs. Quite simply, the best $7 I have ever spent.

My wife returned with good news. The surgery was an easy success, without any problems whatsoever. Grandpa was sent home the same day.

We ended up going out for dinner to a nice Italian joint up the road. We haven't been out in ages, which is probably a good thing (or at least a healthy, and cost saving thing!). I just love *real* Italian ravioli. That's good eatin' there.

It was a pretty good day.

Today we learned that Grandpa is right back into the hospital with a high fever and they suspect it's an infection. So that news, is not so good. It looks like tomorrow we return to "the big city" (my old home town) to do some visiting with the grandparents and perhaps some thrift shopping.

Oh, and I typed up about 5 pages of my term paper so far. I only need 8-10. I'm thinking I may have a hard time shrinking this thing down, as I feel that I should only be about 1/3rd done.

Historic Comments
Kudos to you and your wife for furthering your education.

FWIW, I took some upper-level Philosophy classes that ended up being the most interesting classes I had in college. We had great discussions in nearly every class. Had it not been my Jr/Sr year I very well may have changed my major.

Glad to see you're blogging again.
Best wishes to your wifes grandfather.
Michael | 03.18.08 - 11:14 am | #

2008-03-14T11:23:00.004-04:00

Alive in 2008

I'll bet you thought I had perished. But then, who are you and why are you still reading this awful Blog? I have been living, rather well I might add, in my new small town working my small part in a big hospital. I love it. Since my last post - ages ago - quite a bit has transpired. My wife passed her GED exam with flying colors, in record time. I followed her lead, and jumped into school myself to begin working on a degree. One of the perks of working where I do is that a small sum is paid to me each year which I can spend educating myself. My goal, is to put my wife into a position where she too can begin working toward a degree.

Back to School

I never had a vision of going to college. After I left high school, I was able to land myself in several job opportunities which were rather well paying. I was on a mission to prove that you didn't really need an expensive certificate to prove yourself worthy of a skill. Even if that skill was a highly technological skill, or set of skills. I have done all right. Of course, there have been lay-offs. And I have been denied work, due to complete lack of any college education. So now that I am in a good position, I should probably prepare for a day when I may not be so lucky. And heck, it might be fun?

I was sent a course list from my recruiter and asked to choose whatever I desired. You had your typical math, English, philosophy, etc. You also had a fair share of courses on Christianity and faith. Interesting. I could certainly learn something in those courses as well, but not being a ma of faith myself, I don't know that my views would be welcomed there. Then, a course on technology caught my eye. I expressed my desire to take the course to a co-worker who is also attending the same University. "Oh, you don't want to take that" he said "it's just a whole course on bashing technology". Awesome! I enlisted.

The class was not quite what I expected. It's been shaped around a single book, Technopoly, by Niel Postman. Postman has written the book from the perspective that Western society is putting too much stock into technology. We create problems with technology, and try to solve them with technology. It has redefined our world view. It has removed essential elements for a strong moral "narrative". And so on, and so forth. While I disagree with Postman in a few areas, I agree with him for 90 percent of the book. Perhaps worse, I understand him.

I consider myself to be fairly anti-technology. I have a rotary phone on my desk (because it's a testament to good quality). I drive a 1968 Volkswagen (because I can, and have, rebuilt the vehicle myself). I am about to trade in my cell phone for something without a keyboard, camera, etc. (because I need a phone that doesn't lock up when someone tries to call me). I have become this way, because I have lived in an area where I see greedy corporations taking over the world. Their tool, is technology. And not good technology either. Quickly developed, cheap, and garbage-like stuff. My class, does not see it.

During an in-class discussion, I made a statement about a video we had watched. An MIT professor claimed that "my children and grandchildren will not have to work as hard, because technology will allow them more time for family and entertainment". I balked. I said "how could he claim to be an expert and yet be so naive?", and "he is working the same amount of hours as his father did, and studies would show that we actually spend more time at work now than 50 years ago". Ah, but I was challenged by a younger student in the class. She disagreed. She countered with this story.

"I work for an insurance company. We are joining a new program called TEAM. I forget what it stands for ... it's an acronym. With this new program, we are joining forces with other agencies so that we can work fewer people, fewer hours, and yet still accomplish the same amount of work".

I of course wanted to know how that had worked out. Admittedly, the program had not yet been implemented because "not everyone at the agency was on-board". I wanted to slap her. I wanted to shake her around and tell her not to be sold on an acronym. Nothing is that easy.

This is the problem. Management types need to justify their existence. What better than an acronym. What better than a new process that removes labor, and adds profit. Technology is the cure to the problem. Whatever that problem happens to be. We will build a software package to manage the people. But of course, you will need a database to store all that information. You had better use Microsoft SQL. It's going to cost you, but it's all we support. What, you don't have a database administrator? You had better hire one. He or she will need to be skilled at this application, and staying current will mean training them. While on the subject of data, how are you going to back up this information? You do realize that this application will need it's own server too, right? We don't share our server with other applications. Perhaps you could virtualize that server, and "go green". Have you considered hiring a consultant who can reduce your energery consumption? What will you do if the power goes out? You need to purchase some components to generate power, for when the power fails. And so on. And so forth.

I understand what this class is about. But I fear that the instructor and I are the only ones. There have been a few times where we disagreed on some fairly good points. That makes for good discussion. There are very few of those which involve students. This was apparent in the first class, where the in-class discussions kept skating off toward discussions of "faith" and "God's plan". While I am not opposed to hearing discussions on how students feel that God plays into technology - it should hardly dominate the class. The instructor allows such discussions, but often reminds us to "stay on topic with the book". After my first night of class, my wife asked how it went. I told her that I thought either the students weren't actually reading the book, or simply did not understand it. Now that I am one class away from completing the course I would say the latter is true.

Yet ... last night, our Instructor asked the class to name elements that make for a good community or society. The goal would then be to ask if technology was what we needed to attain it. A young student behind me (who seems to be highly intelligent) offered "a balance between good and evil". I was taken aback. That was quite a bit deeper than the other items that had been chalked up, such as "better cars", "more family time", etc. The instructor countered. "Is evil necessary at all?". I backed her up. I stated that while we were asked to focus on Western society for this course, the entire Eastern culture would be in agreement with this statement. The Instructor had fun with this issue. He put it on the board, but off to the side as if not to consider it as a real answer. He proposed some interesting questions such as what good did the holocaust do? When atomic bombs were dropped at the end of World War 2 (or the beginning of WWIII depending on your warped view of history), what good was done by killing millions of men, women and children? That's pretty heavy for the class we are in, and the questions were meant to be rhetoric. But it was obvious that this student was all ready thinking above the discussion, and was probably above this course. Perhaps I am too.

Most students have been fulfilling their homework each week by summarizing the authors points from each chapter onto a single sheet of double-spaced paper. To me, that is not *nearly* enough space to encapsulate his best thoughts. I need at least two sheets. I don't think anyone else would agree with me. They seem to be running short on a single sheet. At times, I have seen students say that they agree with the author on an issue, where it was clear to me that the author was going "the other way" with the argument. The instructor encourages us to counter each other, but most of the time - nobody would understand the point being made.

Now, I should be working on the paper I need to submit for this course, and not blabbing about this dreck. But, it sure is a good vice isn't it? I dump out this lump of thoughts from my brain - to a machine. Which will kindly store it, sort it, make it searchable, and one day deem it worthless before archiving and deleting it.

In the mean time, I wonder how my wife's grandfather is doing right about now?

Historic Comments
Next post in six months then? :D I've always wanted a cellphone that just made and received calls. All that extra crap does is run the battery down. Some tech companies just don't understand the Keep It Simple Stupid rule.
Hello | 03.15.08 - 3:35 am | #

just wondering about your book

Working Title(s): Invasion Of Privacy / Home Invasion
By Ray Dios Haque
Draft – Last Revised 12/29/04 - Version 1.1

tell me , how much further did you go with the research, is it an old copy or new, it says 2004

my hobby after work is cracking wifi nets, once i get access i test the connection and go to another one, every single wifi network i´ve scanned has been cracked by me, companies, homes, schools etc , i havent come across any challenge yet , anyways, just thinking if you´re into this stuff , would be great tpo share ideas, coming across you pdf book
sweden | 05.07.08 - 12:02 am | #