The Ro Factor

Useful hack for running scheduled tasks at a higher frequency than daily in windows xp

2009-04-30T14:56:00.001-04:00

http://www.randomtree.org/eric/techblog/archives/2004/09/the_windows_task_scheduler_is_not_a_secondclass_citizen.html

uni2ascii

2009-04-29T11:25:00.002-04:00

If you are ever having issues with g++ compiling code cut and pasted from a website, specifically stuff like "stray \200 on line" or other similar errors, then uni2ascii is for you.

Just take the problem file, and do the following

cat problem.cpp | uni2ascii -B > problem_clean.cpp

The uni2ascii program will do it's very best to convert unicode to ascii where possible.

The new file should compile okay. Remember the -B, if you forget it, you will have lots of random unicode escapes in your output.

cifs mount in centos

2009-02-18T09:05:00.002-05:00

Trying to follow the "Better Method" steps in this guide http://wiki.centos.org/TipsAndTricks/WindowsShares

Not going so well. The mount completes properly, but the directory is always empty when I do an ls.

Not quite sure what could cause this.

Update: This was an artifact of an incorrectly configured DFS setup. The instructions work perfectly.

SSH Login times taking forever

2008-12-18T02:10:00.003-05:00

this article saved me a lot of hastle.

I log into a lot of hosts by IP with SSH for embedded linux development, and for some reason it seems like my SSH login times had become unbelievably slow. It could take around 60 seconds to get a password prompt, which I find unbearable.

The article above details how to use ssh -v to watch what is going on during a login, and indicates that if you are getting GSSAPI errors, you should consider disabling it or fixing the root cause of such errors.

Disabling it sped my logins right back up.

Thanks again random internet person.

Gamestop has xbox 1's for $39, it's xbox media center time!

2008-11-28T18:46:00.002-05:00

With Xbox 1's now at rock bottom prices, it's time to grab an xbox 1, man up, and softmod that xbox into an ass kicking media center.

All you need is a simple PC, a cd burner, and an extra IDE cable.

Read this excellent guide carefully, and get going!

XBMC - Xbox Media Center on Mac OSX Rules!

2008-11-01T19:22:00.002-04:00

XBMC is such a perfect fit for the Mac Mini. It's completely incredible.

The mac mini's remote can do quite a bit under XBMC, especially once you get used to it. It will feel very natural after only a short time.

I'm currently watching 28 days later on the mac mini's vga output to my LCD TV. It looks great and it's easy to control.

The iTunes integration with the iTunes library on the Mac Mini is pretty decent. I havent quite figured out if I can use library mode or not, but at the very least I can play back music without issue.

Great news as well, it works on Linux and Windows too.

Download XBox Media Center Here - It's not just for the xbox anymore!

Laptops as Development Workstations

2008-10-06T18:47:00.002-04:00

I've tried off and on over the years to maintain a laptop with a copy of my development tools, but time and time again I am disappointed by the horrific I/O performance. Hopefully down the road solid state disks will help, but at the current time i'm just a little bit depressed about how long my installation of FC8 updates is taking.

And if you are wondering why I'm running this now outdated distro, it's because it matches up well with a particular compiler kit I'm using at the moment.

Soon I will finish rebuilding my development network, which generally includes a WIndows XP Professional PC, an FC8 Tower Workstation, a file server (terrastation) and a laptop. The laptop is ONLY used to remote desktop into the other two systems when I'm working remotely.

I miss Zimbra

2008-10-06T18:40:00.001-04:00

Exchange is overly complicated. It's a system designed by committee. It's not that bad, and it has tons of great features, and when it works it's amazing. But when it goes wrong, it goes very VERY wrong.

I miss Zimbra and it's ability to run from a single box and support hundreds of users with zero issue.

If it hadn't been for the crazy timezone issues that were affecting every major calendaring system at the time, we probably would have stayed with it.

I'd definitely use Zimbra again though, and encourage anyone setting up a new startup to give it a shot.

Another tivo updated

2008-08-11T11:43:00.002-04:00

I was really bored on Sunday, so I decided to upgrade one of the Tivo units to make it that much easier to record ALL of the Olympics.

Added a 320GB drive to the existing 120GB. Now rolling with approx 512 estimated hours of recording capacity.

I had done this once before with mixed results. I now think that my new bracket system is going to be better, as it offsets the placement of the second hard drive above the first, so that they are not completely flush, hopefully providing some additional room for air to get between them for cooling.

The last time I did this I had problems with stability when both drives were really spinning. Way too much heat. We'll see how the new setup proceeds.

MFSTools is an awesome package, and so easy to use.

New Otherton

2008-07-21T08:53:00.002-04:00

Cool pic of "New Otherton" the village of the "Others" in the Lost TV show.

http://flickr.com/photos/69398923@N00/2511420523/

Prevent nautilus from opening a new window

2008-07-19T23:57:00.001-04:00

It often becomes irritating on some gnome installs that nautilus will open a new window for every folder. My desktop quickly becomes cluttered.

The following post describes how to disable this "feature"

http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-361989.html

For the impatient, the following commands will probably do the trick for you.

gconftool-2 --type bool --set /apps/nautilus/preferences/always_use_browser true

gconftool-2 --type bool --set /apps/nautilus/preferences/always_use_location_entry true

so true, linux reliability and Ubuntu.

2008-07-19T23:06:00.002-04:00

http://www.linux.com/feature/141546

Our computers really can be reliable, i promise! Thanks Ubuntu!

And PS, when XP just starts to suck a bit less, we switch to vista.

XP was the suck we can live with.

zee plane boss, zee plane!

2008-07-18T23:44:00.001-04:00

2008-04-30T01:19:00.000-04:00

Simple sleep timer for audio in Ubuntu

jonnyro@jonnyro-desktop:~$ amixer sset 'Master' mute

jonnyro@jonnyro-desktop:~$ at 2am

warning: commands will be executed using /bin/sh

at> amixer sset 'Master' mute

at>

job 1 at Wed Apr 30 02:00:00 2008

jonnyro@jonnyro-desktop:~$ ps -A | grep atd

7882 ? 00:00:00 atd

cooling device with no moving parts

2008-03-19T21:49:00.001-04:00

As paris would not say, thats not hot

Cooling device with no moving parts - this article describes what they say is a revolutionary advancement in cooling. Fun read. May help with those micro sized laptops of the future.

The world has lost an amazing author

2008-03-18T21:08:00.002-04:00

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23697230/

A.C. Clarke has passed. I can still remember the first time I read Rendevous with Rama, and City and the Stars.

He will be sincerely missed.

Booting a m0n0wall with PXE and NFS root filesystem

2008-02-16T23:13:00.004-05:00

Found an interesting article on booting a m0n0wall with PXE, presumably so you can rapidly test customized versions of the m0n0wall software.

http://people.freebsd.org/~nik/m0n0wall/pxe%2Bnfs/article.html

For those unfamiliar with m0n0wall, it's a software package commonly run on Soekris embedded computers. The m0n0wall site is here. I highly recommend it. It's very stable and easy to administer.

I really want to learn more about PXE booting. I've got some embedded boards I do development for. I want to be able to have the m0n0wall point these boards to a TFTP server on the network that has the development root filesystem exported via NFS. Looking at the undocumented config.xml options may help. This is for development of non m0n0wall software, but similar in spirit to what the article above is talking about.

So much to learn, so little time.

dreams

2007-11-12T07:41:00.000-05:00

my most recent dream starred cast members of Stargate, Sequest DSV, and quite possibly Jaws. I am never ever, eating barbeque before bed again.

I woke up terrified at around 5:40AM.

Good plot line though, it was definitely an interesting dream, involving alien artifacts, deep sea monsters, killer dolphins, and a shark hand puppet.

webdot problems again

2007-11-12T07:36:00.000-05:00

Upgraded to Bugzilla 3.x, and had of course, additional problems getting dependency graph generation to work.

Turns out this time that when I installed the graphviz rpm's from graphviz.org that the config file was not automatically generated.

Running "dot -c" from the terminal generated the needed config file. The error I was getting when running /usr/bin/dot before was as follows.

Hb6Hdotneato_args_initialize: Assertion `v' failed.H1NlH1.png

If it's working properly, you should get no output, as dot will wait for input if you pass it no arguments. Just CTRL+C out of that one.

Also, the graphviz rpm was complaining about libltdl.so.3 not existing, but I did a locate for libltdl* and found the source code was already on the system. A quick .configure, make, and make install, and I was almost there. Had to create a symlink from /usr/lib/libltdl.so.3 -> /usr/local/lib/libltdl.so.3

Additionally, you will want to do a view source on your graph dependency display page in bugzilla to see what whacky URL prefix it is using. On my system I had to do an Alias directive in the apache config to redirect the data/webdot URL's it was using to the actual directory on the server.

Remembering, how to redirect output and stderr to null

2007-10-13T22:08:00.000-04:00

info found here

./example.pl > /dev/null 2>&1

Sapiens application launcher for OSX

2007-10-13T21:35:00.000-04:00

Looks neat. A way to easily reach for the app you want through mouse gestures. Supposedly it becomes better at it the more you use it.

Sapiens

My 30GB iPod 3G is dead, sadness

2007-10-05T18:27:00.001-04:00

My 30GB Ipod, third generation with the buttons on top finally bit the dust. Getting the folder with exclamation sign warning, after listening to the hard drive spool up for a while.

Still divided on whether or not to buy a new ipod classic 80GB for $250 or just replace the hard drive with a used one for approx $75 off of ebay. I figure even if the first drive I get off of e-bay is bad, i'm still ahead of the game if I have to buy a second one.

Shrug, but if I get the new $250 ipod classic, I get a warranty and double the original capacity of my 3G.

We'll see how I feel after this weekend, when I go on a flight without an ipod. Oh the suffering! This is the one piece of electronics it always feels like I "cant live without!"

Update: it may have just been the connector coming lose where the hard drive attaches to the motherboard. The oversized battery i'm using may have caused the hard drive to sit unevenly in the ipod, and caused it to rock the connector slowly loose. I used a paper shim (a cut up portion of a Kubuntu Linux CD sleeve to balance out the hard drive's placement with the upgraded battery. I placed it between the hard drive connector extension and the hard drive itself.

The hard drive immediately became easier to seat with respect to the motherboard and the connector snapped right in. The ipod powered right up without errors following.

Twitter - being connected, all the freaking time

2007-10-05T18:20:00.000-04:00

Check out Twitter if regular blogging does not provide you with the sense of immediacy you crave.

Maybe we're all at the point where we cannot form coherant thoughts that span the length of a proper blog post, but still, I enjoy the hell out of it.

Verizon BroadbandAccess Rev-A Card

2007-10-05T18:17:00.000-04:00

This Verizon BroadbandAccess (Rev-A) card is amazing. It's plenty fast for the rapid web browsing that I do. It detects the wireless network easily, and with a reasonable price for an unlimited data plan, it does everything I want.

I had previously used PdaNet from June Fabrics Software to get online using my Treo 700p smartphone. But over time the usb cable and terminals on the bottom of my 700p became unreliable. I think they corroded a bit easier than they should. Even on the best of days, it was generally a crapshoot as to whether it would connect to the internet through the phone without problems.

This new broadbandaccess card is incredibly reliable. I could not be happier.

2007-10-05T03:05:00.000-04:00

Had the strangest dream. Was rollerblading with hot french dancer chick, then went to a party where I met everyone I had ever known, in high school.

Perhaps the dream was triggered by a running copy of beagle on my new ubuntu system, which was steadily cataloging all my digital memories.

I distinctly remember waking up, and thinking it odd that my hard drive on the PC was clicking steadily. I thought I might have been hacked and someone was slowly copying off all my data. But turns out that beagled was running on my new Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon system. Glad to hear i'm listening to the hum of my computer in my sleep.