thunderkeys.net
Mon, Dec 17 2007
Thu, Dec 06 2007
So this year my brother-in-law Andrew did the christmas lights at my parents' house. He used some computer gate arrays and Lights-O-Rama software to drive them to six songs. I videotaped them and am putting them up on youtube. I am still working on some of them, I will update this post with the youtube links when they are done. I also plan on taking some pictures of the "infrastructure" in the house, it looks pretty impressive.
For inspiration and technical guidance, he suggests PlanetChristmas.com.
Fri, Nov 09 2007
Trying to sell my Dell 1905FP and Samsung 940BW. If you're interested, let me know and I'll give you the blog reader discount :) Update: Sold. Craigslist rocks.
Fri, Oct 26 2007
Ok, so I finally have gotten a bunch of pictures off the camera and up in the photo galleries! Here are the new ones:
Pictures of the Kids, July-October
Trip to Cox Farms
Steelers vs. Bills
Deep Creek
Florida/Disneyworld
Tue, Oct 16 2007
Ever want to verify an installed Debian package against the original md5sums, ala rpm -V? In Debian, use debsums(1).
Fri, Oct 05 2007
Attention Retailers:
It is not Christmas.
It is not Thanksgiving.
It's barely Halloween.
So stop playing farking Christmas music in your stores in OCTOBER!
Fri, Sep 14 2007
So I don't know what happened, but my xorg.conf stopped working again. I found a new trick to get it working, adding the following lines to the Screen section:
Option "metamodes" "CRT: 1920x1080 +0+0" Option "TVStandard" "HD1080i" Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
Sat, Sep 01 2007
I updated my MythTV box for the first time in a while (to support the new SchedulesDirect program guide source). After the upgrade, the new 100.14.11 Nvidia drivers' 1920x1080_120i built-in modeline stopped working properly with my TV. I found a new modeline that works pretty much the same and updated my xorg.conf and all is good again. I've also disabled the glx driver as it was causing troubles with LiveTV and HDTV.
Other changes to my setup include using the builtin NIC (8139too driver) now that I have an ethernet jack near the TV (thanks, Steve :)
Here's the diff to xorg.conf if you just want the changes:
--- xorg.conf.20070130 2007-01-30 22:11:09.000000000 -0500
+++ xorg.conf 2007-09-01 10:14:03.000000000 -0400
@@ -31,7 +31,7 @@
Load "dbe"
Load "extmod"
Load "fbdevhw"
- Load "glx"
+# Load "glx"
Load "record"
Load "freetype"
Load "type1"
@@ -87,11 +87,11 @@
HorizSync 33.75
VertRefresh 59.94
Option "dpms"
- Option "ModeValidation" "NoVertRefreshCheck"
+ Option "ModeValidation" "AllowNon60HzDFPModes, NoVertRefreshCheck, NoEdidMaxPClkCheck, NoHorizSyncCheck"
Option "UseEdidDpi" "FALSE"
ModeLine "720x480" 27.000 720 736 798 858 480 489 495 525 -hsync -vsync
ModeLine "1280x720" 74.25 1280 1390 1430 1648 720 725 732 752 +hsync +vsync
- ModeLine "1920x1080" 148.35 1920 2008 2052 2200 1080 1085 1090 1125 +hsync +vsync
+ ModeLine "1920x1080__60i" 74.18 1920 2008 2052 2200 1080 1084 1094 1124 +hsync +vsync interlace
EndSection
Section "ServerFlags"
@@ -119,7 +119,7 @@
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
- Modes "1920x1080_120i" "1920x1080" "1280x720" "720x480"
+ Modes "1920x1080__60i" "1280x720" "720x480"
EndSubSection
EndSection
Fri, Aug 17 2007
My company (Noblis) is looking to hire within my team. We're located in Falls Church, VA in Fairview Park - right next to the 495N/US50 interchange. I do not have any salary ranges for the position, but you can preview our benefits package.
If you're interested, you can apply online (requisition number 1920). You should also send me your resume to bma[at]thunderkeys.net, so I can grease any wheels in the application process.
Here's the specifics on the job responsibilities. The position is for a Lead Programmer/Web Developer.
Responsibilities
- Design, develop and maintain web-based applications written in PHP, Ajax and Javascript with database backends
- Basic database administration
- B.S. in Computer Science or related discipline
- At least 5 years of programming experience
- Fluent in C/C++, Perl, PHP, Javascript, and SQL
- Familiarity with software development in a Unix/Linux environment
- PostgreSQL databases, PL/pgsql stored procedures
- Debian GNU/Linux
- Subversion or other source code control system
- Telecommunications technology and terminology
- System Administration
Fri, Jul 27 2007
Hope all my fellow sysadmins out there are having a good day.
Mon, Jul 09 2007
So while flipping through the latest SysAdmin magazine there was a note that this would be the last issue and it was ceasing publication. Very sad - the only magazine I find worth subscribing to bites the dust. I will miss it.
Wed, Jul 04 2007
Recently there was an interview with Peter Walsh on unclutterer.com. It prompted me to purchase his new book, It's All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff. I've found it to be a great read - not only does it talk about how to get rid of clutter but also tackles the reasons why it gets there in the first place, how to prevent it in the future and the "hidden" costs of keeping it around.
Definately worth a read if you're like me and feel overwhelmed by your "stuff" sometimes (ok, most of the time).
Hope everyone is having a good Fourth. We sure are!
Tue, Jul 03 2007
Today's trip to Walt Disney World went pretty well today. We got to the park around 9:45 or so. We got a spot right next to the Trolly pickup/dropoff site, which was sweet. We headed straight to Epcot. First thing we did was buy some ponchos as the weather report called for scattered thundershowers all day (chance of precip 60%). We figured by buying them a) it probably wouldn't rain and b) if it did, we wouldn't be trying to buy them at the same time as everyone else. We didn't go on any rides at Epcot due to waits.
We had lunch at the Garden Grill in "The Lands" district. It was surprisingly quite good! Usually theme park food is so-so, but here it was really tasty. Served family style and they were happy to bring you more of whatever you wanted. We didn't leave hungry (well, maybe Alex did; but it's his own fault for refusing to touch anything on his plate). Something we didn't catch until halfway through our meal - the restaurant floor (circular) rotates around!
One of the bonuses of eating here was the "Character Dining" - they had several of the characters walking around, which saved us from standing in lines at the park to get pictures. Chip (or Dale) played peekabo with Alex and Pluto dropped by too. Mickey dissed our table twice (skipping us after seeing the table next to us directly), Alex was crushed. But Mickey eventually came around and things were good. I'll have pictures up after we get home.
After lunch, Alex passed out pretty much right away. Our "Pal Mickey" started acting possessed, so after buying some Liquid Gold batteries (at least, that's only what I can imagine what was in them at $5.86 for 4 AAs), I performed some minor battery surgery. Old and busted "special edition" Pal Mickey was no longer busted; and still had better threads (tux) than the new "Sorceror's edition" that was being sold at the park. We then took the monorail over to Magic Kingdom.
By the way, those little squirt bottles with the fan were great. It wasn't THAT hot today (maybe low 90s) but certainly enough to make you feel the heat if you weren't in the shade (where it was pretty pleasant).
The rides in Magic Kingdom weren't much better in terms of waits. We did the "fast pass" thing at Space Mountain at 2:30pm, and it told us to come back between 5:35-6:35pm (and that we coulnd't do another FP until 4:30pm). So, that wasn't all it was made out to be (more on that later). We went back on Alex's first ride (the Teacups) and the train that goes around. At this point the clouds started to appear on the horizon. It was at this point that I lost some sanity. I sat in a line for the Peter Pan ride for at least 50 minutes (the posted wait was 70 minutes) - this for a two minute ride! While I wasn't too thrilled about it, and bellyached more than I should have, we did make it through and Alex seemed to enjoy it.
Still no rain. After Peter Pan we hit the flying Dumbo ride (El-phalant in Alex-speak), another 30 minutes or so - but not as bad, since it was in an open space and had some fans going. I think Alex enjoyed the ride more than the Peter Pan one, personally (well, so did I. :)
At this point our Space Mountain fastpass was good. We got there around 5:50 or so and Karen went first. She got out around 6:20. So much for fast. She said the fastpass line wasn't much shorter than the regular line, but it moved faster. Apparently the "regular" line waiters get pretty screwed by the fastpassers - something I observed at Peter Pan when the line would grind to a halt (the cars on the ride move continously, so there was no reason for abnormal line movements). Maybe it was just because the park was so busy, but I think they have some bugs to work out in the whole "Fast Pass" system - I was not impressed.
After Space Mountain we realized there was no real place to eat that wasn't packed (should have made dinner reservations, too). So we did the sensible thing and had some ice cream instead. :) We went to the shops afterwards to pick up some stuff and realized Alex really woulnd't make it another 1.5 hours to the fireworks (or 2.5 to the Light Parade). This was disappointing, as we both wanted to see it; but with the heavy clouds and occasional sprinkle overhead it was not a guaranteed thing anyways so we decided to head back to Karen's parents' place.
I doubt I'll ever go back in the middle of summer. September was a much more bearable atmosphere with less crowds and heat around. We'll be shooting for that timeframe in the future; at least until Alex has to deal with pesky school schedules.
But, all in all, it was a good day that I think Alex enjoyed a lot - more so than his last trip when he was 10 months old. He passed out shortly into the car ride, and seemed very peaceful in sleep. Which is where I'm heading to now as well. :) I hope to not be too sunburned or footsore tomorrow. Adios!
Sat, Jun 30 2007
We're in Florida through next week on a much-needed vacation. We're going back to Disneyworld with Alex on Tuesday, I think he'll enjoy it a bit more than he did 2 years ago :)
Tue, Jun 05 2007
Late nights at work suck. But at least most of the stuff I needed to get done, got done. Now to get some sleep before a 10am meeting tomorrow... sigh.
Sat, May 19 2007
...running water, which we've been without since last night.
Seems the wire going down the well to the pump had several shorts in it. The guys from Bell Pump & Well were very helpful in straightening it out (replaced the wire, which wasn't exactly cheap, but not as bad as having to replace the well pump itself).
An annoying (but necessary) side effect of pulling out the well pump is that the well had to be re-chlorinated to kill any bacteria, and it takes a little bit of time to flush that out of the sytem. But, we can at least flush the toilets again, and should be able to bathe in/drink the water by tomorrow morning.
Fortunately, we have a decent supply of 5 Gallon water bottles that got us through the worst. The shower tomorrow will be long overdue, though.
Both me and the wife are pretty tired of the whole well thing. Although I do actually prefer it to city water in terms of taste and quality (and no water bill is nice too), between spending $4700 on a radon treatment system, having the water run out when we do too much laundry/showers/dishes/etc, and now this, we'll likely not be purchasing another property with a well again if we can help it. That said, municipal water supply can have it's own set of issues.
Thu, May 03 2007
Wed, Mar 28 2007
RFC 822, DO YOU SPEAK IT?!
A note to everyone doing web forms that do email address validitiy checks: Having a '+' in the username is VALID. For example bma+spam@thunderkeys.net is a validly formed email address. Don't make me hate you by having your web form tell me otherwise.
Or better yet, just use the Email::Valid perl module.
Tue, Mar 27 2007
I tweaked the picture gallery stuff a bit today to base it off of Stephen's version of my gallery code, which doesn't use a database backend. Should make doing new updates a little easier :) All of the old links should still work, but let me know if you run into any problems.
Tue, Mar 20 2007
Sometimes, you just have to laugh... because otherwise, you'll cry...
Update 3/20: In case anyone was wondering, it's pretty much impossible to get out completely. It is, afterall, waterproof...
Thu, Mar 01 2007
So we got some new flooring (BR-111 Brazilian Cherry hardwood where possible, engineered on areas that were over concrete slab) installed today on our main level (except in the bathroom and laundry room area, which are - or will be - tile).
The installers showed up around 9:30am and finished up around 5:30pm (just before the rain came, yay!).
Of course, I took some pictures of the process.
We used New York Carpet & Rug (based in Springfield) and were very happy with both the price and service they delivered. Highly recommended.
Sun, Feb 25 2007
Finally, we get some real, honest-to-god snow. It started out as a 'wintery mix' but now it's just pure big-flake goodness, great for packing too. Weatherman was saying earlier we could get 3-6" before it's said and done...
I took a few pictures already.
Tue, Feb 20 2007
And the CEO spake, declaring "from this day forward, thou shalt no longer call The Company 'Mitretek', but rather 'Noblis'." And the New Logo Schwag came down upon the employees, and it was good.
Mon, Feb 12 2007
So went furniture shopping this weekend and ordered a new sectional and bedroom set. It should be here in about a month. We're psyched, especially about the bedroom set. We've been looking for a set that we both like, comes in a King size and isn't discontinued for over 5 years. And the couch has recliners and cupholders ... hello lazy Sunday afternoons.
Sat, Feb 10 2007
Ran across this at xkcd.com. It made me laugh (the whole set of comics is pretty darn funny, in fact).
Fri, Feb 09 2007
If it's not one thing, it's another. This morning we awoke to find we had no hot water. Looks like the plumber is about to get another check.
Update: $200 to replace the heating elements. We have hot water, Houston.
Thu, Feb 08 2007
The busted outdoor spigot was fixed this morning by Woodbridge Plumbing to the tune of $94. Not too shabby.
We also discovered today that it's likely the prior homeowners drywalled over the front hosebib shutoff valves when finish the basement. Great.
So we got a bit of snow last night... but most of it melted by this afternooon.
Finally got my HDTV Myth box built and up and running. It's purty, and mythcommflag makes me happy. Some pictures are here.
By default, AAC support is disabled in the Debian mythmusic package. There used to be a libmp4ff distributed with the libfaad* packages, but upstream's makefile no longer installs it so it looks like it got dropped out of the debs. To get AAC support working again, I had to rebuild the faad2 source package with the following patch to debian/rules (download):
After rebuilding the package, install it and restart mythfrontend and you
should be good to go.
So I had to do a bit of tweaking in the MythTV themes I've been using to account for overscan (the guide and program info, etc were getting cut off a bit). I updated the following files in /usr/share/mythtv/themes:
I've cut over to a new server today. Everything seems to be working, but let me know if you discover any issues with the site.
So today we had a suspicious package show up at work and it ended up having the Fairfax County Fire/Police and Bomb Squad show up. They even had the bomb robot. We ended up getting evacuated from the building around noon and sent home. Quite the productivity killer, these suspicious packages...
I setup things at work to auto-pause amarok when I lock the screen using kdesktop_lock. There were some example scripts that worked by checking the screen blank status using dcop in a never-ending while loop and sleeping, but I didn't want that many dcop calls constantly being spawned. These steps need to be done as root, unless you have some custom setup.
So Richard was wishing that my blog had comments. Since Haloscan took all of a minute to setup, now it does... you're welcome :-)
And what better way to start it off with some delicious Indian food that I haven't had in months. We took a gamble that the food would still be hot after the 35 minute journey from Centreville to our house. Absence does indeed make the heart (and belly) grow fonder.
Drywall, meet Mr. Drywall saw.
Wed, Feb 07 2007
So we got a bit of snow last night... but most of it melted by this afternooon.
We got home to find a message letting us know that one of our outside spigots was leaking. For the life of me, I can't find a shutoff valve to it in the house. So we'll just have to shut off the well pump and wait until morning to call a plumber. In the meantime, the ice caused by it looked pretty cool.
Finally got my HDTV Myth box built and up and running. It's purty, and mythcommflag makes me happy. Some pictures are here.
The most difficult part was finding a 1080i modeline that work with my TV. Eventually, a stock one from the nVidia mode pool worked out the best (1920x1080_120i, using the 8776 drivers). The overscan was compensated for with the following values in the mythtv settings:
+----------------------+-----------+ | value | data | +----------------------+-----------+ | GuiWidth | 1750 | | GuiHeight | 976 | | GuiOffsetX | 90 | | GuiOffsetY | 34 | | GuiSizeForTV | 0 | | GuiVidModeResolution | 1920x1080 | +----------------------+-----------+I also set it up so that DVDs are played back at 720x480, as it looks way too jaggy at 1920x1080i.
Specifications (Updated 2/7/07):
- TV: Sony KP-57WS510 57" CRT RPTV
- Case: Antec Fusion
- CPU: Intel Pentium 4 3.2Ghz Prescott
- Memory: Corsair ValueSelect VS1GBKIT400 (2x512MB DDR400)
- Motherboard: Intel BOXD865GSAL
- Video: MSI nVidia GeForce FX5200 AGP
- Disk: (2) Seagate ST3320620NS - 320GB SATA
- Sound card: Turtle Beach Riviera
- Tuner: Air2PC ATSC-PCI
- Network: Linksys WUSB54GC (using these drivers)
- IR: irblaster.info receiver
- FireWire: SYBA SD-VIA-FW1E1H
- UPS: TrippLite Omni1000LCD
Configuration:
Sun, Feb 04 2007
By default, AAC support is disabled in the Debian mythmusic package. There used to be a libmp4ff distributed with the libfaad* packages, but upstream's makefile no longer installs it so it looks like it got dropped out of the debs. To get AAC support working again, I had to rebuild the faad2 source package with the following patch to debian/rules (download):
--- rules.orig 2007-02-03 18:52:28.000000000 -0500
+++ rules 2007-02-03 17:07:39.000000000 -0500
@@ -61,6 +61,10 @@
dh_installdirs
$(MAKE) install DESTDIR=$(CURDIR)/debian/${version}
+ cp common/mp4ff/.libs/libmp4ff.a $(CURDIR)/debian/${version}/usr/lib
+ cp common/mp4ff/libmp4ff.la $(CURDIR)/debian/${version}/usr/lib
+ cp common/mp4ff/mp4ff.h $(CURDIR)/debian/${version}/usr/include
+ cp common/mp4ff/mp4ff_int_types.h $(CURDIR)/debian/${version}/usr/include
rm debian/${version}/usr/lib/xmms/Input/libmp4.a
rm debian/${version}/usr/lib/xmms/Input/libmp4.la
Update 2/4/07: I've filed Debian Bug report #409648 on this.
So I had to do a bit of tweaking in the MythTV themes I've been using to account for overscan (the guide and program info, etc were getting cut off a bit). I updated the following files in /usr/share/mythtv/themes:
Sun, Jan 28 2007
I've cut over to a new server today. Everything seems to be working, but let me know if you discover any issues with the site.
Fri, Jan 26 2007
So today we had a suspicious package show up at work and it ended up having the Fairfax County Fire/Police and Bomb Squad show up. They even had the bomb robot. We ended up getting evacuated from the building around noon and sent home. Quite the productivity killer, these suspicious packages...
Wed, Jan 24 2007
I setup things at work to auto-pause amarok when I lock the screen using kdesktop_lock. There were some example scripts that worked by checking the screen blank status using dcop in a never-ending while loop and sleeping, but I didn't want that many dcop calls constantly being spawned. These steps need to be done as root, unless you have some custom setup.
First, create the following shell script as /usr/bin/kdesktop_lock.sh:
#!/bin/sh
amarok_status=`dcop amarok player status`
amarok_is_playing=`dcop amarok player isPlaying`
if [ "x$amarok_is_playing" = "xtrue" -a $amarok_status -ne 1 ]; then
dcop amarok player pause
fi
/usr/bin/kdesktop_lock.real $*
if [ "x$amarok_is_playing" = "xtrue" ]; then
dcop amarok player play
fi
This dpkg-divert stuff is just so debian package upgrades won't clobber the setup.
/usr/sbin/dpkg-divert --divert /usr/bin/kdesktop_lock.real --rename /usr/bin/kdesktop_lock
Then setup a symlink from kdesktop_lock.sh to kdesktop_lock, and fix modes on the shell script:
ln -s /usr/bin/kdesktop_lock.sh /usr/bin/kdesktop_lock chmod a+x /usr/bin/kdesktop_lock.sh
Now when you lock your screen an amarok is playing, it should pause your music. When you unlock the screen, it will automatically resume.
Tue, Jan 16 2007
So Richard was wishing that my blog had comments. Since Haloscan took all of a minute to setup, now it does... you're welcome :-)
Sat, Jan 13 2007
Mon, Jan 01 2007
And what better way to start it off with some delicious Indian food that I haven't had in months. We took a gamble that the food would still be hot after the 35 minute journey from Centreville to our house. Absence does indeed make the heart (and belly) grow fonder.
