Information Hitchhiker

Serendipity

2009-06-09T00:56:00.001-05:00

I am still here on the planet. Just been too tired to do much other than work, tutor, work out on the treadmill or elliptical, and sleep. I haven't even played many video games lately.

I was playing on my media server remotely (laptop power cord stayed at work) and I downloaded a flash movie to play on my iPod. And I simply typed this:

ffmpeg -sameq -i file1.flv file2.mov

And the file plays on my iPod when I navigate to it using safari. With sound. Looks like I went overboard when I tried to do this before.

I still want to set up a VPN server on here so I can access the media server from my iPod.

Just taking a break

2009-05-11T23:56:00.001-05:00

I'm not doing much work on the media server lately. Ok just trying to relax, playing video games and playing around with the fam. One more thing I want to do with the media server is add pptp VPN support, do I can access it from anywhere using my iPod touch. I have the application emerged already, so it's just a matter of configuration.

More challenges

2009-05-11T23:52:00.001-05:00

I finally was able to work some on my media server. I installed a newer kernel on it, which I'm glad worked right out the gate, because I accidentally removed the older kernels to reclaim some disk space.

Back to trying to transcode. It appears to transcode videos faster (I only teanscoded a few seconds of a Fringe episode. ) But now the transcoded video has no sound. Ffmpeg doesn't even show an audio stream being transcoded. Time to take a debut at that. Once I have that taken care of, I am going to set the server to encode and serve flash videos

Busy Bee

2009-05-05T10:51:00.003-05:00

This past week has been mighty hectic, thus slowing down working on my media server. I'm still trying to get the transcoding to work at some level; over 10 hours for a vid and then getting it with no sound doesn't cut it in the least.

I was able to get another kernel compiled strictly for the Pentium II, so once I do that, and transfer all my media files to a larger hard drive, I'll get back to trying to optimize transcoding on that machine. I need to find a bitrate calculator.

Not much ado ok the media server...

2009-04-30T10:59:00.002-05:00

But I am working ok something else.

I have this nasty habit of testing out new techniques and technologies on real word events. I have been tasked with deploying respondus lockdown browser on our lab computers where I work. I'm trying makemsi to build a custom package I can deploy using either a active directory login script or group policy.

I already compiled the sample makefile, and it worked out fine. I intend to first add the installed respondus files into the makefile, then figure out how to register dlls and update the registry. More later.

Ffmpeg works now

2009-04-28T17:12:00.002-05:00

By recompiling the x264 ebuild (I tweaked the ebuild with --disable-asm flag) I was able to get ffmpeg to work on my media server, but it seems like now it takes literally forever to transcode a file.

I wonder if there are any magic settings to make this work.

Ffmpeg a wash

2009-04-28T17:03:00.002-05:00

It took over ten hours to transcode this lsttst episode of fringe, making my media center not the ideal place to transcode. That sucks, because I really would like to download and transcode fringe episodes so I can watch them, as I never have time to catch fringe at the time it airs.

Couple of things I still may try. I have a new kernel I want to try. I also left the resolution the same, so I'm going to change the resolution. Let's see what happens. If all else fails, I can disconnect the USB drive and transcode on another machine.

Xbmc a wash

2009-04-26T22:50:00.001-05:00

I tried to get xbmc to work on my media server as a way to improve the streaming from my laptop, and to try something else. Well, I had problems getting it compiled on my gentoo VM, primarily due to lack of disk space. So I'm charging that to the game.

I was able to tweak my portable mplayer settings so that I can stream iPod videos wirelessly to my laptop with ampache. So I am going back to transcoding vids with ffmpeg. That means I need to recompile my kernel to support MMXEXT option. More on that later.

Possibly a new direction

2009-04-23T22:48:00.001-05:00

In trying to figure out how to stream hulu videos to my iPod I looked at boxee, which was a fork of xbmc (xbox media center). While streaming hulu may be far off, I may consider using xbmc to better stream videos wirelessly. I am going to install it tonight to see how it works.

More tweaking to do

2009-04-16T09:13:00.001-05:00

Okay. Stage 4 backup. Check. Just need to verify by installing on a virtual machine, and I am good to go. So far everything is working okay, with some tweaking to do.

I used to be able to stream vids to my laptop using ampache/vlc/portable mplayer combination, which worked pretty well until I switched the media server to a wireless adapter. Assuming I need to keep this up I was thinking about possibly transcoding the bids to a lower bitrate. I tried to do that, but I get an error message about MMXEXT not being compiled into the kernel, so it's time for an upgrade of the kernel, and possibly adding some extra compile flags to my make.conf files.

To test the low bitrate idea I'm going to find some samples to test and see what happens.

Server update

2009-04-09T15:56:00.003-05:00

Well, I got hamachi running, so now I was able to log into my server from work and do "work" on my lunch break. I also was able to tweak ampache such that it will recognize avi files as well as mp4s. I am able to stream the mp4s to mplayer portable, and the avi files through vlc. I also found a faster bittorrent client, rtorrent. And it's MUCH faster.

I tried to kick off a stage 4 backup, but I lost my hamachi connection, so I will have to check it out when I get home.

Server update

2009-04-09T15:56:00.001-05:00

Media server TODOs

2009-03-30T09:55:00.002-05:00

I want to install Hamachi on the server so I can log into it from anywhere and do any streaming/remote administration that suits my fancy at the time. In order to do that I have to recompile my kernel to add TUN support to my laptop. No big deal. I'm emerging the source to my VM now, so I can start compiling at lunch. Once I do that, installing Hamachi should be no big deal.

I've done a lot of configuring/installing/tweaking of this server, so I need to get a stage4 backup of this server immediately!

I also want to get another hard drive. The one I'm using right now is several years old, and I don't want to wait until it dies and I lose all of my music/movies.

Media server updates

2009-03-30T07:25:00.001-05:00

Media server is going well. I have been able to now upload my music into it now, and have been constantly updating its software. Jinzora didn't work too well (took too long to load anything,) and after some quick google searching, I found another app I could use: ampache. Nice part about this is that it was in portage, and after an update of a few other packages it installed well. I'm really impressed with the fact that even though ampache depends on mysql it runs very smoothly on a Pentium II with 128MB RAM. After setting up the database I was able to add all my music and movies in no time.

It's almost done!

2009-03-18T23:32:00.003-05:00

I've been working on setting up a media server of sorts; basically it's a file server I use to serve up my audio and video files, preferably by streaming to my iPod.

This machine is an old Pentium II laptop with 128MB of RAM, with 4GB of hard disk space, no Ethernet or wireless adapter. A perfect candidate for installing Linux on it, especially Gentoo.

Since I have more powerful machines than the laptop that I can compile software on, I set up another Gentoo installation in a virtual machine so that I can initially set up the OS and software, and tar up the installation using the stage4 method outlined on gentoo-wiki.com. I set the virtual machine up months before I got any of the hardware I needed to put the laptop on the network.

I bought a USB ethernet adapter from TrendNET (TU-ET100C) that has drivers readily available in Linux. I also bought a Belkin Wireless G USB adapter, that uses the zd1211rw driver. Once I used the SystemRescueCD to extract my stage4 tarball onto the laptop I compiled the kernel to allow wireless access using instructions in gentoo-wiki.com. I was able to get the wireless adapter working flawlessly, by emerging (installing in Gentoo-speek) the firmware for the wireless adapter, setting up wpa_supplicant, and editing the /etc/conf.d/net (The file for setting up ethernet and wireless adapters in Gentoo.) I now have an Internet capable laptop.

Next I installed Apache, Samba, and PHP. I downloaded some scripts to take a folder of fileiles and generate a .m3u playlist, andI found a script that takes a m3u list and turns it into a RSS feed. This allows me to stream audio to my PSP, as well as allow me to download movies over my network at home. I also downloaded and installed SQLite and Jinzora, because I want to make that work, also. Right now I'm having time out issues with Jinzora, probably because I have such a slow machine. I'm going to tweak the scripts some to get around that.

Relevant links

http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Wireless_Networking
http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Custom_Stage4#Introduction
http://www.doughellmann.com/projects/m3utorss/

Another project

2009-03-07T00:42:00.001-06:00

It's been over two years since my last post. But I have another project I am working on.

I got a laptop from a student whose Internet I fixed, and I am working to put gentoo on it right now

Massive update

2006-07-11T16:50:00.000-05:00

Well...lots has happened since I've put a post..

For one I lost my broadband connection, and have been put down to dialup. So no native linux anymore, although I created a Gentoo Virtual machine(VM) I can use with VMWare player under windows (the best thing since beer in a can!) I also have been using VMWare player to try out Ubuntu. It's pretty cool. I may use it instead of Xandros as my second distro on my desktop. Just for kicks, I'm going to set my Gentoo machine up such that it's got the GNOME desktop again. Now the vmware tools doesn't work too well under VMWare player, but I haven't played with it too much. Not only that, my laptop I house my VM under shuts down when I try to compile software in it, so I set up my office machine so that it will create binary Gentoo packages for me, and I set up my Gentoo VM so that it goes to my office machine to downoad the binary packages and not compile from source. It's cool. My objectives then are to get the VM just like I want my desktop to be like, then create a stage 4 archive to put on a desktop I'm going to salvage...sound like another masterpiece, which I haven't forgotten my pervious masterpiece. it works, for the most part.

Is Ignorance Bliss?

2006-05-23T17:01:00.000-05:00

A funny thing happened to me at work today. I received a call from a lady trying to submit an online work order. She was complaining that her password didn't work. She said when she typed her password little dots showed up where her password was. I know I was wrong for this, but I could hardly contain my laughter on the phone when I had to explain to her that that was to keep people from looking over her shoulder to steal her password. Sometimes I talk to my mother about some of my experiences at work, and I"m always reminded of the fact that not everyone's into this computer thing. But SHE has been on the computer since I've interacted with her, so I would have expected her to know better.

My Masterpiece...part 4

2006-05-05T22:06:00.000-05:00

I used SLAX to create a live cd of the DSL installation I customized for the lady. She told me to take my time because she was broke...oh well...soon as I get some CDs I'll burn a copy for consumption...but I realize now that the CD player doesn't work, so I'll install it on the computer the same way I did it last time: I had to slave the drive to another computer while I performed the installation from a live CD, only this time, instead of using DSL , I'm using a remastered SLAX-frodo CD.

My Masterpiece...part 3

2006-04-18T16:41:00.000-05:00

I tried to burn a CD-RW of openoffice to install on the lady's computer, but the CD-RW didn't work on that old ass computer, so I created a VMWare virtual machine mirroring the lady's installation, where I'll add what I need to get the thing going. I tried using mondo/mindi, but I didn't get mindi to make the boot floppies, so I'm just putting a network card and copying the files over the network.....only thing I need to set up is the internet, which I will discuss with her, since she's in a dormitory with no ethernet :(

My Masterpiece...part 2

2006-04-11T20:40:00.000-05:00

Im trying to install Openoffice 2 on this machine, so the lady can work on office files. I'm having a problem with a MyDSL package, so I may have to try other ways of getting this on here. Also, I may need to get CD-RW discs, as right now that's the only way any software's getting on this box....

My Masterpiece...part 1

2006-04-10T23:31:00.000-05:00

A lady was given a computer and wanted me to see if I could do something with it... It was an old Pentium computer with 32 MB of RAM, and a busted hard drive.

Now what could I do with that???

Simple! The lady just needed something to type papers on, so I'm going to hook her up with Linux and OpenOffice.org. She's a beginner, so I should have no trouble hooking her up with some linux knowledge. I've already completed the first step, which was install DSL on the hard drive I provided for her. Now it's on to getting OOo on the computer. How to do?? just use CD-RW. I'll work on that tomorrow when I get home from my second job...

Back in business!!

2006-01-20T03:34:00.000-06:00

I finally took the time to finish getting my desktop computer restored. All I really had to do was get the X working again and reconfigure the VMWare services, and I was good to go, thanks to the stage4 procedure on Gentoo wiki. The only problem is that my home directory backup was not complete, letting me know to test my backup before I rely on it. More later...

I'm using the program Synergy to share my desktop's keyboard and mouse between my desktop and laptop computer, and it's a sweet program...

Sweetness!!!!

2006-01-07T11:14:00.000-06:00

I was able to use Amarok to transfer songs to my iPod Shuffle...the procedure was pretty painless...just mounted my Shuffle, connected and transferred the songs via Amarok, disconnected and unmounted the Shuffle. Voila!

That's really cool, since now I'm one step away from needing to use VMWare Workstation to update my iPod through iTunes. I've set up Amarok to download my regularly heard podcasts. With all the things I can do with the computer, mostly tweaking, it's hard for me to ever be bored with using the computer and technology :)

rm -rf *

2005-12-22T05:12:00.000-06:00

That command spelled doom for my desktop machine at work. Somehow my home directory for root was changed to /, and when I tried to remove some files to get some space back. Well, that took out my /bin directory before I realized that it was taking out my whole filesystem. No matter. just back up my home and etc directories, and restore from the stage4 backup I made last night on my laptop.

Life Experiment, Day 6

2005-12-22T05:09:00.000-06:00

Day 6, and I'm itching to get back online.

I said that I'd replace chatting with gaming, but I've been so tired from my second job I haven't the energy to do any gaming. Does that mean chatting is done for good? Maybe...maybe not.

Life Experiment, Day 5

2005-12-21T04:34:00.000-06:00

Well, 5 days without chatting online, and it's not been life-threatening. I'd like to hurry up and get back on to see what I've missed.

Entering this stuff in Flock has been really nice. Speaking of which, I've gotten back into using thunderbird for my email, coupled with MrPostman for my web mail accounts. Refreshing return.

Life Experiment

2005-12-15T14:25:00.000-06:00

http://www.blackamericaweb.com/site.aspx/Praise/challenge/valorie121305

This link takes me to this page where you're asked to devise a life experiment for a week. What I may consider doing is fasting on chatting for a week and see how that works.

What will I do in its place? Gaming! I haven't done that in a while, so it would be a cool change.

technorati tags: life

Flight of the Flock

2005-12-15T13:27:00.000-06:00

I'm using Flock now, and so far, it's pretty neat. What I'd like to do is take my bookarks from furl and put them on del.icio.us. I don't know if it will take hold of my desire for Firefox, but I'd use it ocassionally.

Blog replies

2005-11-14T10:12:00.000-06:00

I can't believe I actually have comments on my blog! I had this up for years, and this is the first time I actually got comments. Pretty cool I can see how this can be used to find and communicate with other people with similar interests.

Midlife

2005-10-30T18:53:00.000-06:00

My coding sucks! I am working on a report where I have this huge text file that I have to munge, so I tried writing a program in Java. So far it got some of the information I wanted, but when I even look at the small piece of code I wrote, it's like the coding of my algorithm is just bad and brittle. Sounds like I need to practice more.

Happy Birthday, me!

WOW!

2005-10-20T16:39:00.000-05:00

I haven't been here in a while!!! Guess the blogging bug has gone. A lot has happened, but maybe not worth blogging about.

I had the nice pleasure of getting my own laptop for work, and having a laptop for me would be the next best investment of my money, besides getting VMWare Workstation. I was able to put Xandros and Gentoo on it along with windows, the I put SUSE 9.3 in place of Xandros, then I just used the extra space for my Gentoo installation. I have been using this machine for some interesting ventures, including setting up LVM partitions on it and my own email server for some work related tasks. I plan on consolidating all those partitions into one partition, soon as I get some of this work out of the way.

One thing that I found was really cool is the fact the newspaper of my Alma Mater has gone completely online, and guess what??? RSS FEEDS! When I saw that I was like "Whoa!" It's really simple to do, I'm sure, but to see my alma mater have such capability is refreshing.

I've been furling a lot lately. It seems like when I find a site that interests me, or has some information I want, I furl it, no questions asked. If you'd like to see where my mind has gone, I'll share my list of sites, once I find out how.

bye bye LXR

2005-04-26T19:56:00.000-05:00

I was on the #gentoo forum today, and I found another tool I can use to look at code. One of the people there told me about global, another code marking tool. I guess I could have used ctags as well.

Another Reason I Enjoy Computing, Gentoo in particular.

2005-04-26T08:52:00.000-05:00

A really good article on Linux Journal's web site highlights some of the reasons Gentoo is a really good distribution. With source-based distros the reported advantage is maximum optimization of the resources of the machine, but the author highlights some other goodies I've tried on my Gentoo boxes at work and at home.

Since I installed Google Desktop on my WIndows box at home I've looked for something analagous to Google Desktop on Linux. My search led me to some pretty good alternatives, most notably Aduna AutoFocus and Beagle, both based on a project called Lucene, hosted by Apache. Beagle has a really nice interface, but the daemon stops communicating with the clients after a while. I was able to script around that such that every 15 minutes the daemon restarts. Also I couldn't get the web service for Beagle to work for some reason. AutoFocus has a nice interface, and a nice graphical display of your results, but I'd like something that interfaces with my web browser, like Google Desktop. It seems like AutoFocus has a companion called Metadata Server, but I haven't played with it enough to see if that meets my needs, and also, it requires Tomcat, so I don't know about the overhead.

Anyway I had a chance to work on modifying ebuilds in Gentoo, and also to create my own ebuilds. I made one for OpenSHORE, a tool that can be used to analyze Java code, among other things. It works fine, but I need to tweak it such that it points to the right Expat library. And the Binary is in German, so I'll have to tweak the ebuild to potentially compile the application in English.

One of the neat things about the ebuilds is you can do your own "version bumps," which is upgrading the version of the software without having to wait on Gentoo Foundation to put the ebuild in the official Portage tree (coolness.) It seems painless, but when I tried to do it for LXR, another code analysis tool, it didn't work out too well, because the way the program got installed changed. Not a problem. I now have an opportunity to use Subversion to make changes and keep track of them. I also need to get Bugzilla working, so I can pitch that as a help ticket system for my job.

Ideally I'd like to roll up my sleeves and work on some code for software I like and want to fix, and hopefully setting up some of this software will help me do it. Just a matter of choice and time.

Computing's just plain fun

2005-03-30T10:24:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I played around with creating and using SSH keys to log into my servers, and I really enjoy it.

I also "won," if you can call it that, some free songs from iTunes. Let me log in and see what I can get.

My work machine is a multi-boot box, consisting of Gentoo Linux, Xandros 3.01 OCE, and Windows XP. I primarily play on my Gentoo partition, and I just upgraded my profile to 2005.0. Now to recompile my kernel when I get a chance. Having SSH keys makes uploading all the packages I make to my PORTAGEBINHOST a snap. :)

I also experimented using distcc to help my compiles, with a reasonable amount of success. I used the distccKNOPPIX to set up another machine as a distcc node. I had to tweak a symlink for this to work with Gentoo, thanks to a person I was talking to on #gentoo. I may modify the CD to include a more up-do-date version of GCC

I started experimenting with different note-taking programs, and I've settled on tomboy. It has a nice interface, and reminds me most closely of OneNote.

Back on the Block

2005-03-08T15:23:00.000-06:00

Haven't been here in a while. Let's see what I've done.

For starters I was successfully able to distribute a modified Knoppix CD to use for one of my classes, and now I've gotten used to just booting one up for use in a computer lab when I can't get back to the office. Reminds me of graduate school days when I was able to get away to a unix lab when I wanted to. The administration of accounts seemed so much easier than making another image just to put a library on it.

I downloaded Solaris 10, but have yet to install it anywhere. From what I've seen in some reviews I expect to be impressed with it. Just another OS under my belt.

Speaking of OSs I run WS2003 in a virtual machine at work , and I have a problem rebuilding the Active Directory indices. It keeps making me reboot the machine. I was able to back up the virtual machine, but I think I may need to use Windows Backup on the machine and do a complete reinstall.

I read about some desktop search engines for Linux, and I'd like to give it a whirl on my computers. It's also be nice if I can also try my hand at making custom Gentoo ebuilds. they look pretty simple to do.

More Knoppix fun

2005-01-04T11:23:00.000-06:00

I bought a copy of Knoppix Hacks, and I'm really impressed with the book and the information contained in them. Over the holidays I've gone Knoppix crazy. I've downloaded other versions of Knoppix to try, such as GamesKnoppix, Knoppix-STD, Overclockix, and MediainLinux. I even modified and made a Knoppix CD of my own, that runs PostgreSQL instead of MySQL. I'm adding the dd_rhelp program and chntpw to the next CD I make. I also downloaded Quantian and will probably modify that for a class I'm teaching this semester. Much fun indeed.

Another Gentoo LiveCD tutorial

2004-12-09T14:37:00.000-06:00

I found and Furled another site that shows how to make Gentoo LiveCDs. I'm almost done with it, although I have a problem with the initrd I made. Just need to make sure I did that part right. Maybe I'll have some time over the holidays to work on it. I'd like it to have some multimedia utilities on it, as I may use a spare partition to store all of my media on, just for kicks.

Knoppix/Gentoo fun!

2004-12-02T10:55:00.000-06:00

I read about a book called Knoppix Hacks, which details some of the things you can do with Knoppix, and after looking at the preview at Safari.com, I wouldn't mind getting that book. I was able to configure the X.org setup on my home computer using Knoppix-STD, and I'm able to get a better screen resolution than when I just used xorgcfg. Nice hack.

Also, I gave up using catalyst to make my own live CDs in favor of a technique I found on one of Gentoo's forums. It works pretty well, and I'm able to archive the setup for whenever I want to make any more CDs.

Catalyst continues....

2004-11-12T16:16:00.000-06:00

So far the catalyst is chugging along :) It's nice to be able to remotely access my home machine so I can work on this while I'm at work. It's even more fault tolerant than the livecd-ng, and the instructions seem easier the second time around.

Just of kicks...

2004-11-12T11:35:00.000-06:00

I'm trying to build a Gentoo LiveCD that has VMWare workstation installed on it, kinda like the CoolLinux CD that was put out last year some time. I tried to do the LiveCD thing before with Gentoo's catalyst, but at the time I found that hard to follow, and up until now, implement. I found some instructions on Gentoo-Wiki.com using livecd-ng, and that seems easier to set up. I had to tweak the script some to actually get it to work, and even then I ran out of space before the script finished compiling all the software. I might try catalyst now. More in a minute

VMWare goodness

2004-11-11T21:24:00.000-06:00

I finally broke down and purchased a copy of VMWare workstation 4.5, and I am enjoying every minute of its use. I have been able to try out different Linux distros and some instances of Microsoft Windows working. Very cool indeed. I just got turned on to Arch Linux this way, and I want to install it independently of a VM. I want to replace Xandros 2 on my machine, but I might keep it there, just because I don't want to play musical partitions again. Good thing I got that copy ov VMWare :)

Endless Possibilities

2004-10-08T13:56:00.000-05:00

I'm fascinated with all the gmail and firefox goodies out there. It's nice to know that these goodies are mostly open source, so I can look at the code and find out how it's done. I just ran into a way you can skin the look go Gmail. Go here and find out!

More Firefox Goodness

2004-09-25T09:39:00.000-05:00

I was looking at Wil Wheaton's blog, and I ran across a site that has some Firefox plugins. take a look at this: http://extensions.roachfiend.com/index.php

Firefox 1.0PR

2004-09-23T10:38:00.000-05:00

I'm absolutely impressed with Firefox and Thunderbird! Live bookmarks, popup blocking, and countless additions make this the smoothest web browsing experience to date!

Blog burnout?

2004-09-16T14:30:00.000-05:00

Doesn't seem like I had anything to write about in the last month. It's not like I haven't had anything to write about. It's pure laziness.

I haven't had much time to do any more transcoding of any more Star Trek episodes, but I have an opportunity to record From the earth to the moon on some channel; I have to find out which channel.

I also found out that the individual whose computers I salvaged for parts wants his main computer back. That takes me back down in RAM from 512MB to 128MB of RAM I may have lying around. Looks like I'm investing in some lighter weight apps. Good thing I was looking at that article on Light weight linux apps.

2004-07-29T19:41:00.000-05:00

Another link to check out: http://platypuswiki.sourceforge.net/

Interesting find.

2004-07-29T19:38:00.000-05:00

I'd like to check this link out further: http://www.interactivetools.com/products/htmlarea/

Time flies..

2004-07-26T15:52:00.000-05:00

Haven't had much tiime to work on my computer at home. I'd like to set up a system to catalog all my CDs here and at home.

I found something to that effect. I also want a program to catalog my MP3 files, and Zinf doesn't work well on my machine, so I had to find something else. More on that later

Gee....

2004-07-23T17:19:00.000-05:00

I don't really have too much to say today... other than that I'll be looking forware to the opening of Aliens vs. Predator.

Media magnetism

2004-07-16T16:56:00.000-05:00

I snagged another ST:TNG episode yesterday. What I want to do now is the following:

Set up MythTV on my computer
write a user mode driver for this TV Wonder Card. That thing's the only reason I still use windows
at home

Transcode success

2004-07-15T17:10:00.000-05:00

I was able to transcode all of my recorded MPEG files to DivX format last night. I transcoded a Star Trek:TNG episode just for starters, and it worked out flawlessly, and I think the picture looked better than the MPEG version. I was able to script the transcoding to do Congo and a news segment I recorded.

Transcode

2004-07-14T11:11:00.000-05:00

I was ablel to record another show last night. I was able to catch an episode of Star Trek:The Next Generation.

The files I have on my hard drive are HUGE. In order to free up some more space for mor recording I'm attempting to use transcode to convert these files from MPEG to DivX files. Once I do that I plan to make VCDs from these shows and save them to CDs. Sounds like I need a CD-RW on this machine.

TV Wonder USB Burn-in

2004-07-09T16:13:00.000-05:00

Last night I got a chance to do some video recording on my computer. The movie Congo was on USA last night, and I was able to record it. The output format for the files (I stopped and started in midstream) is MPEG, and the files are huge. I tried to convert them to AVIs using Virtual Dub, so let's see how that's going this evening.

True to form

2004-07-09T15:54:00.000-05:00

I was thinking about the name of my blog, and I thought I'd give you all some insight as to where else I've been hiking on the Information Superhighway.

I keep my bookmarks on iKeepBookmarks.com. Check them out!

An interesting development experience

2004-07-06T15:40:00.000-05:00

This past weekend I had a laptop computer I used to do some development for my job. I didn't want to install any of the tools to do development with, so I opted to use the SLAX live CD and create the modules I used for development. The module creation was exceptionally easy, and I had a very pleasant experience this holiday, although I didn't get my work completed.

I used Java, MySQL, Ant, and Netbeans for development, and I like how I was able to use Netbeans for my work. I didn't realize how easy it was for me to create and modify databases with Netbeans. I learned a lot this weekend, especially how to set up a Java servlet to be accessed via the web, and how to set up MySQL.

As I haven't finished my work today I'll just commit the changes I made over the holiday and bring my work home.

Module issues

2004-07-03T13:49:00.000-05:00

I was able to install and run the SLAX modules I created already, with the exception of postgresql. I just made a MySQL module instead, and downloaded a JDBC connector for it. All in all I'm impressed with how SLAX performs on the laptop I borrowed. It's nice to be able to carry Linux around in your bag and use it on any computer.

Module issues

2004-07-03T13:45:00.000-05:00

I've made all the SLAX modules I was going to say in the last post, but the postgresql mod failed to run properly, so I just made a MySQL module in its place. That works, with some tweaking, but now I need to install a JDBC connector for MySQL. I got one today, so I'll be able to work on my database projects from anywhere, and on any computer.

SLAX rox!

2004-07-01T17:21:00.000-05:00

I got an opportunity to create a module for use with the SLAX live cd, and that has to be some of the simplest stuff I've seen to date when it comes to modifying bootable CDs. I made a java module based on a Slackware package I got from one of my Slackware CDs. Once I booted the CD I was able to use the module that I made! A really nice touch to that distro. I'll put the module up later when I get a chance.

Other modules to create.

Apache ant
Jakarta Tomcat
Postgresql
Netbeans
Apache - just for good measure

What to Do?

2004-06-29T15:20:00.000-05:00

What else to do on my Xandros machine at home?

Install Tomcat

Install blosxom

Install Bochs or qemu so I can play Descent

Test Post

2004-06-29T13:11:00.000-05:00

Until now I didn't know you could title posts in Blogger. Hmmmm......

2004-06-29T11:11:00.000-05:00

Got a lot done on my Xandros machine last night. I had to reinstall Apache so that I could use PHP with it. Then I also installed the PHP module for Apache, Webmin, Apache Ant, and PostgreSQL. I'm trying to set up my computer like what is on the server at work, so I can start bringing work home, because it seems like that I might need to to meet my deadlines.

2004-06-28T11:39:00.000-05:00

A couple of days ago I loaned one of our TVs to a friend of my wife, which only left us with one TV in the house. I have a TV wonder USB, which we used to watch TV in our room. That was pretty impressive to be able to do that.

2004-06-25T11:34:00.000-05:00

Another thing I like about Xandros is that when I compile software and install it using checkinstall it keeps track of it. Even packages I imported using alien were kept track of. Nice....

2004-06-25T11:16:00.000-05:00

Interesting.....

I've been using Xandros for some time now, and I'm getting used to using it more and more often. Last night I was able to install Diablo II on my Xandros machine last night as well as finally get my ZSNES installation working last night. My sound worked as soon as I hooked up some speakers. Hook up my joystick, and I'm in business.

2004-06-24T11:09:00.000-05:00

Keeping the blog alive :)

My Xandros machine at work is humming along just fine. I installed Mozilla on it, as well as Firefox 0.9 (which I accidentally trashed by installing a wayward extension), Xine, and I'm trying to get the dvdrip program to work. Zinf never worked on this machine, so I insalled Yammi for my audio library. That really sucked, too, for I liked Zinf for its ability to organize music.
Don't have Xmame, snes9x or zsnes yet, but that's coming. Also need to install Java/eclipse/Ant as well.

What about my home Xandros machine? Since I got it up and going I haven't touched it too much. I installed a WineX package I built at work. It works okay, but crashes if I leave it idle too long. Not a problem as long as I keep saving my Starcraft games often. I haven't had a chance to record any shows to computer or perfect my AutoHotkeys solution to setting up a timer for recording shows, yet, but that'll be in the future.

Some days it seems so hard to pick myself up and get any work done. There are plenty of things that I can tinker with on my computer that I allow myself to get distracted. I'm working on that.

2004-06-19T02:20:00.000-05:00

An interesting note-taking site.

A nice way to capture thoughts as they come to you.

2004-06-18T16:51:00.000-05:00

I was able to install PostNuke on my computer, after having to recompile apache and PHP so that they can talk to each other. Interesting concept. From my perspective, I think each user will have his/her own PostNuke installation. Now it's just a matter of figuring out how to configure the sites so that users can just log in, update their content, and most importantly, design the site the way they want.

2004-06-18T12:11:00.000-05:00

As a desktop machine, Xandros is cool, but for server tasks, I may have to go back to Gentoo or Slackware. I wanted to host a demo of ColdFusion and put PostNuke on here for testing, and I may still do that, since I need the environment in short order, but at my next opportunity I may put Gentoo back on my machine. I will still keep my Xandros setup at home, though.

2004-06-16T11:43:00.000-05:00

The Xandros works well. I like using it at home, and I'd like to put it on my machine at work. It's simply a matter of playing musical filesystems as I find out what I need and what I don't need. :)

I have a Gmail account! I didn't realize that as Blogger user I had an invitation. It's good that I have something like this. It's about to be on!

I also have the TV Wonder USB working on my computer at home. I can view and record movies now. I'm trying to automate the thing such that I can set it up to record shows at a certain time using ATI's program. I'm experimenting with AutoHotKey to try to do that.

2004-06-11T12:37:00.000-05:00

I was able to fashion a Celeron 500MHz computer with 512 MB Ram and a 40GB HD. I was able to install Windows 98 on it (so I can use my TV Wonder device for capture) and try out Xandros Desktop (Open Circulation Distribution) for usage on my machine. I like it so far, but my only beef with it is that if I want to be able to update software as easily as Gentoo I'd need to have internet access, which is what I will not have. So I will be stuck with creating stuff from source, or switching back to Gentoo or Slackware. I installed checkinstall, so when I compile stuff from source now I just create Debian packages for it for later. I really like the interface it has on it, so I may keep Xandros around a while. I will still keep Gentoo and Slackware around.

At one point I was trying to get a Live CD together with all the games I was able to put on it. I was using Gentoo's catalyst to put it together, and I was able to get to livecd-stage1 before I put that project aside. I found a LiveCD distro, SLAX, that will allow you to compile modules that you can add into the LiveCD on the fly. I plan to compile ZSNES, Snes9x, XMAME, and WINE so I can bring all my games with me on the road as I pleas. I think that'd be neat.

2004-05-18T16:50:00.000-05:00

I remember also a time where I tried to record a program using that TV Wonder USB device, and my computer kept crashing. I was using the software that came with the device, but now I may try using VirtualDub to capture video now; I may also use it for my tape collection. I can save the music as an AVI file, then strip the audio to make WAVs, then MP3s.

2004-05-18T16:49:00.000-05:00

My Gentoo installation process didn't work! :( The most frustrating part of it is that the installation usually choked on decompressing the tarballs or compiling the software. So I went about installing Slackware on the machine last night, which we'll see if that worked, since I had to go to bed before I completed the installation.

I found out today that there are some machines one of my fraternity brothers wanted me to look at. Maybe I can get some parts out of that thing.

2004-05-14T17:24:00.000-05:00

Now I just need to get blogrolling back.

2004-05-14T17:22:00.000-05:00

I like the new format of Blogger. more templates :)

I was finally able to get Gentoo installed on my machine at home. It would always choke when I tried to unpack any tarball. So what I did was unpack the stage 3 tarball and the portage tree I had, save that on a loopback filesystem, and copy the files from there when I got home. Now all I have to do is compile the rest of the stuff I want on there, and all's well. Why did the computer choke? Not sure, but I think it's got some hardware issues, and since I really can't buy a machine now, I'll do whatever workaround I need.

2004-05-12T11:58:00.001-05:00

post and publish

2004-05-12T11:58:00.000-05:00

I'm using blogBuddy...test 12 test 1 2

2004-04-28T08:58:00.001-05:00

I'm also thinking about putting blosxom back to work on making my blog.

2004-04-28T08:58:00.000-05:00

I copied the kernel and modules from the installation cd onto my Gentoo computer last night. That worked out fine. I'm still having problems with compiling software on it, althought I really think it's a problem with the motherboard or processor on the machine. As I don't have another machine right now, I have two choices: I can compile software on another machine, then install it on this one at home, or I can find a way to compile this software on this machine. It runs Linux (and Windows) pretty fast, so I'd like to use it as I want.

2004-04-22T12:53:00.000-05:00

Long time, no see! What's been going on lately? Well, here goes.....

I finally got my gentoo installation up and going on my Pentium 200MHz computer. I had openbox, apache, xmame, rox, openoffice, etc. running on my machine. I even had a little blogging tool called blosxom running on it as well.

Then a lot of changes occurred. First we moved into a new apartment. Then I got a newer computer. The computer I got was a K6-2 with 64MB of ram. I got it from a friend after I built another computer for her. The mobo didn't recognize the hard drive I had in my old computer (A Western Digital drive,) so I had to reinstall everything. So far I got Windows 2000 running on that machine, and now I'm getting Gentoo put back on. I have problems compiling software on this machine, though. I tried compiling the kernel with lower optimization settings, but that didn't work. so I tried to compile the latest version of GCC, to no avail. When I tried to update gcc, the computer flopped on compiling ncurses (it's a portage thing.) I thought about compiling this manually, possibly using the ebuild.sh script.

I also have an ATI TV Wonder USB edition, which I would like to get to run with Linux, but as of yet there are no drivers for it. Looks like I'll have to get that working myself. No problem with that.

2003-10-04T16:26:00.000-05:00

I got the stage 3 tarball installed. Now to installing the kernel and logging program. With a decent pair of speakers I plan on turning this thing into a MP3 server.

2003-09-20T15:14:00.002-05:00

I downloaded the GRP CDs for Gentoo Linux in an attempt to install it on my home computer again. I should have some time this weekend to work on it.

2003-09-20T15:14:00.001-05:00

Well, got my blogrolling thing back.

2003-09-20T15:14:00.000-05:00

2003-07-25T10:42:00.000-05:00

I've been trying to use distcc to speed up making packages for my system, but I keep getting an error when an ebuild (script for automating compiles for Gentoo) would try to generate libraries. I realize that since the other computer I'm using is my office computer (a Pentium 4 Windows XP system) is generating binaries and object files only understandable in windows. I'll need to tweak the Cygwin such that I can get Linux binaries and object files from it. I'm using this as a reference.

2003-07-24T15:26:00.000-05:00

Well.....My Gentoo machine is going smoothly :). Got Samba running, got Webmin running, Apache running, PHP. I'm in the process of putting MySQL on now.

2003-07-22T15:47:00.000-05:00

Haven't been here in a while. I was never able to install any packages onto my home machine, but after some time I was able to install the binary packages I made in the virtual machine onto this Pentium 120MHz machine I am converting into gentoo. I had to edit the /etc/make.conf file to make sure the PORTDIR and PKGDIR variables were set, and that I put the packages into the appropriate directory. I haven't given up on my machine at home, just need to find a place to put it.

I've used Macromedia Dreamweaver in the past, and they had a site management feature that allowed you to update your site via FTP. I dismissed it in the past, due to FTP's lack of security compared to SSH. I tried it today on my personal site, and I'm impressed.

2003-07-11T13:02:00.000-05:00

This is coolness! Right now I'm posting this blog from within a VMWare session running Gentoo Linux. Speaking of which, I'd betterget some more mileage out of this trial before it runs out. :) That software (VMWare) has got to be the most impressive software I've worked with in a while. Let me find out some more packages I can emerge into this session. I'm trying out this ratpoison package I made. It's good to be able to work in X without the mouse, since my machine at home doesn't have a working mouse. :) Now that I think about it, I need to start making packages to put on my other machines.

2003-07-10T19:03:00.000-05:00

At some point I need to get that distcc thing going again, so my compiles will be quicker.

2003-07-10T13:50:00.000-05:00

I was thinking about some itches to scratch, and I've come up with a few, which should sharpen some of my skill on many fronts.

At my current employer I get floppy disks of information to be put up on the web site. I thought about making that process interactive over the web. I think I can use a combination of XML, for the data and CGI with Perl to pull this off. The only problem now would be the authentication mechanism. I probably can find a Perl module to take care of that, too. More on that in a minute

I was also thinking of configureng screen scraper to download all of my Yahoo email. That's another itch to scratch.

On the way to work I was thinking also about how to migrate users from one computer to another (that's happening a lot now.) Usually I just copy files to a network drive, but being able to package those files would be helpful, as I can preserve the directory structure of the files I back up (or migrate.)

I have stopped working on putting Gentoo on my old desktop and laptop at home for right now. I was setting up the desktop for working on my web stuff. I found another neat way, in my opinion to utilize Gentoo in the meantime. I'm using it to generate Slackware packages for software that's not part of that distro, like ratpoison and Mozilla Firebird. A lot of the software I'd like to install at home isn't part of the Slackware distribution, so I can use Gentoo to compile a package for me to take home.

2003-07-09T14:16:00.000-05:00

I usually get those Linux Format magazines, and this issue had the DVD with the whole Linux Documentation Project on it, as well as a guide called RUTE. I'm burning a CD with that on it now. Speaking of which, let me download the latest FIRE (Biatchux Lite) CD.

I've noticed that I don't have any programming itches to scratch. One thing I want to do now is get Gentoo installed on my 486 laptop (good luck, huh?) I came up with an idea on how I can accomplish this.

It seems like I just need to get a stage 3 tarball installed on the laptop, and install all of the packages. But how to put the stage 3 tarball on the computer. Sounds like a trusty floppy distro should work. But since I don't have a network connection (like ethernet) I have to go the parallel port route. Then I can use the same methods to install any packages I may want. First, lets create the binary packages to be installed. While the computer's making the packages, I'll test the plip connection at home.

2003-07-09T10:24:00.000-05:00

Home update: I finally got a chance to try to install Gentoo at home. Time to rethink my strategy. I was trying to onstall it on a UMSDOS folder on a FAT32 partition I have at home (I'm sharing that drive with a Windows installation.) In situations where file permissions were really important I haven't had much success with UMSDOS. So the next time I try it I'm going to make a loopback filesystem and go from there. Which means I'll need a ramdisk. Time to look at my documentation

2003-07-08T16:54:00.000-05:00

I keep hearing about getting "blogrolled" so I went to this site to try it out It's a place where you can keep track of all your blog links. Now I'm blogrolling all of the blogs I visit frequently, and some I don't :) Also you can put all the links you blogroll on your own blog using some javascript. Interesting.

2003-07-07T12:40:00.000-05:00

I finally got an opportunity to install Gentoo on my Pentium 200 computer, and what happens? I can't find the CD I made with the packages on it! Oh well...just make another CD with the packages on it and try again.

I tried installing a binary package I made inside this virtual machine, and it worked. So I shouldn't have any problems installing the binary packages at home. I've started creating binary packages for my main machine at work and my web server. While that's going on....back to work.

2003-07-05T16:26:00.000-05:00

Haven't gotten a chance to try out my newly made packages. I had intended to try it out on July 2, but all of the festivities of the 4th of July holiday made that impossible. Quite a lot happened. I got a chance to see my father this holiday, which was a plus, considering I haven't seen him in a while (try a year,) and I just realized this was the most time I spent with my mother and nieces in a while. If this thing works with my Pentium 200 computer I'm going to make packages for an old 486 Toshiba laptop I have at home. With Gentoo Linux you can just about make distributions of packages for any computer, old or new, with the same tools. True you can just get CDs or download packages for the net, but I'm just really impressed with Gentoo that I want to try it wherever I can.

I'm actually starting to make an effort to redesign my site. It's something basic right now, but maybe later I'll do something flashy with it.

2003-07-02T14:52:00.000-05:00

Well, I tried emerging other packages which have failed due to compiler issues, so what I'm going to do is grab what packages I already have and the portage tree, take them home, and compile some of them there (I have all of the sources on CD I've downloaded in the past.) I'm just anxious to see how my efforts went here.

I also want to turn some of my other computers to Gentoo Linux machines. I run the web server, which has Mandrake 8.1 on it now, and I find emerging packages a whole lot more convenient than installing RPMs if i needed to update my machine, so at a convenient point I want to install Gentoo on my web server.

As far as the compiler went, I'm going to update gcc to 3.2.2 later and see if that helps.

2003-07-02T11:19:00.000-05:00

I set up a file that had all the packages I wanted 'emerged' (installed) and ran this command to install all of them:

cat autoemerge.txt | xargs emerge

I was hoping to see at least 1/3 of it done, but my virtual machine ran out of space well before then, so I had to clean off some disk space and keep going.

Well, the virtual machine kept choking on building fluxbox and openbox, so I tried emerging IceWm instead. Let's see how that goes.

2003-07-01T09:33:00.000-05:00

For the last few days I've been trying to set up a Gentoo Linux installation at my house. As I only have a Pentium 200 MMX machine I've been trying to compile all of the software on my office computer, a 1.8 GHz Pentium 4, and install the resulting packages at home. I tried the stage 1 tarball, only for gcc to choke doing so; so I just tried a stage 3 tarball, with better results. However I have yet to finish compiling all the software, because 1) I tried to set up distcc so the I can use another machine I have in the office to do builds, but that hasn't worked out too well for me (I have been mucking around with the distcc settings, so I will have to play around with them some more.) and 2) I ran out of disk space. I use VMWare to make my "distro," so I won't have to do all this stuff on another machinel Hopefully this distcc and ccache thing works. I'll just let it run until tomorrow evening, burn a CD with all the packages I made, and take them home and have some fun.

2003-06-19T10:05:00.000-05:00

I downloaded a copy of VMWare Workstation 4 so I could try out Windows .Net Server 2003, and I'm really impressed with VMWare. I just hate the fact that it's so expensive. I'd like for some of the open source alternatives to be more up to snuff, so I wouldn't have to pay for it. TIme to roll my sleeves up and work on some of this code.

I also got a chance to try out FrontPage 2003 Beta, and I like how it's changed. One of the reasons that I liked Dreamweaver over FrontPage is that I could see the HTML and Preview my changes at the same time. You can do that now in FP2003. Another thing is that when I see the code and the preview at the same time I can click on an element in the preview and the cursor goes to the location in the HTML view.

Also, I'm thinking about setting up Plone or Movable Type to play around with setting it up and seeing how I can ease updating our web site.

I still gotta redesign my web site. I think this time I'll take the time to do it right and employ some design principles.

2003-06-12T14:08:00.000-05:00

Wow! I haven't been here in a while. I found a nice tool to allow me to access all my bookmarks from anywhere in the world. It's called Bookie, and you can find it at bookie.mozdev.org. I found it after using Mozilla Firebird for Windows.. I'm impressed. Right now, though, the client and server were not available for download, so I had to compile it from CVS, which was not a problem for me.