Pure Walt, from Concentrated Thought
More target practice, and got to play with a laser sight this time.
Went out with Mike H. tonight to go target shooting. Tamara normally joins us, but she decided to stay behind and prepare the house for guests and the forthcoming bonfire party.
Used a Glock with a laser sight, though I think the laser wasn’t calibrated. Using the gun’s sights alone let me hit where I was intending.
Two years after my walkout on Bungalow Billards, I finally revisited the place. Nothing changed. Nothing learned. So, I’m walking out for another two years.
It’s been nearly two years since I’ve set foor in Bungalow Billards after the incident with the evil grey haired catus lady. And, to my surprise, she was still working there, so we avoided her — she was still doing her rude table pushing. I almost wonder if she wasn’t a reject from the Vienna Inn, where the service is deliberately rude, the place is horrifically smokey, but the tab is on the honor system.
Our waitress could have just as easily been called an abandonress. We ordered drinks, and a game of pool later, they arrived. We ordered food, and a game of pool later, they arrived. We needed refills from the heavy smoke, and they never came until we got the check, several games later.
Even with the credit card sitting right there, she passed us by three times in fifteen minutes, never picking it up, even though it was in plain sight.
Not happy with the service, not happy with the staff, I plan on making it another two years before stepping foot in the door.  …keep in mind, we used to frequent this place 3-4 times a week, leaving very, very, very generous tips. No more since their penny-wise pound-foolish management practices.
My wife happened to send me to a link on body painting while I was at work…
An unusal event happened, I was at work when my wife called. She had found an interesting site: The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Collection. But what had struck her, and why she called, was the body painting. They had painted swimsuits on the models and did a photo shoot.
Turns out Google has a lot of similar pictures of body paintings.
The first one I ever saw was an HP Printer add with a young lady in a swim suit, and you were supposed to tell which was the photograph and which was printed. Turns out, if you looked closer, you realized something was up. We contact HP and had their advertisement department send us some posters. They’re around here somewhere.
I’d wondered how they did these, figuring it had to be an airbrush system much like my wife uses for canvases. The problem is, how do you get a template to work on a 3D figure, such as a human body. Turns out, according to these visual instructions, it’s not that hard at all.
Finally made the switch from Slackware to Fedora Core 4. So now I’m discussing my irrational fears, my thought process for why I held back, and the real scoop of what happened when I transitioned….
This last weekend I migrated from Slackware to Fedora Core 4.
Let me start off by saying I grew up on Slackware when it was a brick of 20 floppy diskettes. I liked the complete and utter power of being able to hand compile anything specifically for my processor. I like that it didn’t bring with it a lot of bloat. I liked having my custom installed applications, data, and logs in /usr/local; this way if I upgraded, all my personal software stuck around. I had hand rolled Apache, PHP, and MySQL, setting our server exactly as I wanted it. I used sendmail, and bind, and a number of other packages. We had nearly every modern programming language out there. Silently, I’d look down my nose at anyone would relied on a package manager when the commands to build anything were usually: ./configure ; make ; make install
But all this fine-level granularity came at a price… it was a bear to maintain. Keeping up with all the service releases, security patches, and new updates was complicated, tiring, and difficult. Often a package would get upgraded that had horrible domino effects down the line, usually ending with some other package that wasn’t ready. It was this kind of insanity that lead to the ongoing myth that PHP5 won’t work with Apache2 (it does… we’re doing it… it required nothing special). Things fell behind, we couldn’t keep up.
See, I wanted use my system, not become a slave to maintaining it.
What held me off from switching distributions? Comfort level with what I knew, fear that going over to something Red Hat and corporately managed based was selling out on my principles, and the knowledge that the file system would have things in different places. This would have great manual consequences for porting our web over, and, admittedly at this date and time, there’s still bits and pieces needing tweaks.
The Reality
It turns out a total system rebuild with Fedora Core 4 wasn’t so bad, the installation is actually quite simple. Using the yum utility, which has a graphical version as well, it is possible to keep the system perpetually up to date by issuing: yum upgrade ; yum clean all
Every installed application gets patched to the latest version. Yum can also install packages, or, if you like, you can still hand roll source code yourself. I lost nothing, and gain far more!
Maintenance is just as easy with webmin, a web-based administration program. At that point, general system administration is a cake walk. I was pleased to see Apache2 with SSL, PHP5, the latest MySQL, and a ton of modules I’d have to coax into working are just standard now. For mail, we’re using postfix (a drip-in replacement for sendmail that’s secure, easy to configure, and has tons more features) and dovecot, which made it easy to add smtp-before-pop, procmail, fetchmail, SpamAssassin, and SpamProbe. Getting SSL/TLS as well as SquirrelMail to work was easy. Manging complex firewall rules is a snap!
And, to top if off, every evening I get a security report showing me problem areas of the system that are needing my attention.
Lessons Learned
So, what changed…? What made my life difficult…? What would someone else going through this face that I could pass on some advice?
Well, first of all, I did a lot of work in /etc/rc.d … and it took a little getting used to that everyone now has scripts for everything. The big treat was learning that /sbin/service service_name command was much easier than hunting processes down by hand. Even nicer was /sbin/chkconfig service_name on|off|reset could control boot time configurations, no more editing. Even then, /etc/rc.d and /etc/init.d have the real meat, while everything seems to be controlled by symbolic links.
And, while /usr/local still lives on, Apache’s binaries are placed with the system’s resources, the configuration lives in /etc, as do other application’s config files (and even these are busted out into smaller, manageable pieces), and the content, logs, and things that change live in /var. For as much as I initially disliked the idea of an application being split all over the system, I have to say I have yet to have a problem finding anything. Even better, most configurations are similar now.
I did run into a kink when trying to install pine, it wasn’t in yum’s packages. And, while I could download the source an install it, I wanted to do it the maintainable way. That turned out to be quite simple by simply adding a resource for yum to use. And, according to The Perfect Fedora Core Setup page, adding apt gets you most everything that isn’t in yum.
The hardest part was overcoming the file permissions. We used to have users belong to a group called ‘users’ — however, now each user has their own private group. It hasn’t gotten it the way, but it did mean we have to go through an educational phase, letting users know that when they beam up a file for the web server, they must also give it permission to read it.
Aside from that, the change over was far less painful than I imagined it would be. And, I can’t believe I’m saying this within that than a week, I really think I like it more.
As an owner of Bryce 3D v5.5, I, like many other people, ran into problems with OS X 10.4 came out — Bryce stopped working. Worse yet, the version 5.5c upgrade to fix the problem had its own installation problems. And, even worse, getting tech support to recognize the problem was real was impossible. “Uninstall and Install again” doesn’t cut it.
So, I made a movie about it. And, after making the movie, I figured out a simple little hack to fix the problem.
Last year, I happened to purchase the latest Bryce3D package from DAZ3D. All was going well until I upgraded to OS X v10.4.
See, unlike Microsoft, Apple isn’t afraid to move the operating system ahead in terms of features and security patches even if it breaks something. They’re good about letting their developers know something agressive is coming out, and that they’ll need to fix it.
Take a case of memory management. In Windows, you could request some memory, use it, and then release it (so it’s not yours anymore), but some applications continued to use that memory (by accident!), and by sheer dumb luck, the application still ‘worked. ‘ Windows is wrong, because the specification and implementation should never allow that; the application designer is wrong because they have a serious bug. But in this example, the two problems appear to cancel themselves out.
Now, fast-forward to the next release of the operating system — Microsoft has fixed the problem. However, users pulling an old game off the shelf would quickly find the game crashing. And, who do they blame? Microsoft. The should be blaming the game designer, but from their stand point, that’s not what changed because it ‘used’ to work.
Here’s the bad and ugly. Microsoft’s solution has been to maintain backwards compatability for the user. They make a special exception in their operating system that says if the user is trying to run that specific old application, then re-emulate the buggy behavior so the thing will work. This creates bloat and future security holes.
Apple does not do this. Apple fixes the problem so things work as they are supposed to, and the application developer is quickly forced to correct the problem. Suddenly we find the application is well behaved, and not only does it work on the new operating system, but it works better on the old one. It’s a win-win. And, yes, it’s true there are cases where one library is replaced with another not-so-similar library that has enhanced features, but this event is rare and not impossible to deal with.
Such was the case of Bryce 3D. The latest OS improvements exposed a problem, and that problem was easily fixed in terms of an update. Problem was, many users were having a terrible time getting the Bryce 5.5c update to work.
Like many cases of support, sometimes when you have a small handful of users having a problem, and a large body of users who don’t have the problem, it isn’t cost effective to go digging out what’s happening. Let’s face it, the majority of those kind of problems are often user created. But what happens when it is actually real?
While I can’t prove it, I think that’s the case with what happened with Bryce’s installer. Something about the patch’s install doesn’t quite set up the files as they should be. To document this, I made a humorous little movie of the actual Bryce 5.5c upgrade install process happening. You get to see that things aren’t right when it’s done.
Luckily, I managed to figure out how to twiddle things back with a simple hack, rendering the software useable again. I hope DAZ3D investigates and corrects the installation process, if that’s where the problem is.
I’ve decided to try running a pure FreeBSD installation from total scratch and using it as an experiment. I’m comparing how different the experience is to that of Linux.
Tonight I’m letting TiVo do it’s thing, snarfing up the Friday sci-fi lineup off the SciFi channel, while I do other things. In this case, installing a fresh copy of FreeBSD from scratch to use as a stand-alone server.
In the past, I’ve tried FreeBSD and found the experience slightly frustrating compared to Linux. However, after a number of emails with a FreeBSD-loving friend, he’s answered some fundamental questions and got me all excited about trying the new release of FreeBSD.
This is actually an interesting excercise for me. I want to see what it takes for a Linux person to setup and migrate a system over to FreeBSD. If all goes well, I should have a pretty exotic development server when I’m done.
Looking for an absolutely killer flight simulator? Check no firther than X-Plane.
A friend turned me on to X-Plane a few days ago, and my copy just arrived, and I’m in awe. Total awe.
This is like the flight simulator to end all flight simulators. It has gobs of air vehicles from real planes to science ficition ones, it has totally fantasic topographical data, amazing imagery detail laid over that, and can utilize incredible input devices. So good is it, I’m given to understand the FAA will allow time in the simulator to count as flight time.
Even more impressive, the software was written on a Mac so that it is capable to work on Linux and Windows as well. The price is cheap, cheap, cheap …like in the $59 ballpark. For that you get seven DVDs jammed packed with the software and detailed world images. The rendering is more realistic than any other simulator I’ve seen. And you can add real-time current weather! Plus, if you want to splurge, for an additional $15 bucks or so, you can get two moer DVDs with the full topographical and image data for Mars. Yes, Mars. Fly a plane, or even the space shuttle, around Mars.
A downloadable demo is available online, and honest to God, undoctored screen shots are presented on the site. The software even lets you make movies of your flight, plus the software is deliberately networkable and hackable, so you can play with other people, beam your data to programs, or have your software control the planes.
And that’s not all, if you like dog fighting in the dark verse, snag a free copy of Space Combat. All platforms supported!
Saw King Kong this weeked. Long, kinda nifty, nothing made me thrilled.
Saw King Kong this weekend at the huge AMC in Tysons Corner.
The general reviews are correct, the 3hr movie is about 1hr too long, primarily because there are several side plots that aren’t all that relevant to the story line and could easily be dropped on the cutting room floor to give the movie a faster pace. That said, I’ll probablly get the DVD and be hunting for the extra footage and deleted scenes.
What I don’t get is the 5 star ratings it’s getting. It was visually appealing, but it struck me that the video compositing in Narnia were more ground breaking.
True, Kong has never been done in this scale or level of detail before. I just didn’t get emotionally pulled into the movie, having a hard time identifying with any particular character.
Three things were distracting to me. First was when Naomi Watts was being whipped around by King Kong — her image moved, but the physics of what would happen to her body didn’t, worse, her hair didn’t even obey the laws of gravity. Second was when King Kong kept changing sizes in my mind: first he’s 25 feet tall, then he’s towering against a dino, then he sits near Naomi, then he climbs a huge wall, then he smashes though an enormous gate, then he’s taken down by a few men, then he’s in a theater, then he’s three stories tall climbing a building — maybe I’m wrong here, but mass and scale just seemed to shift depending on shot. Third, super human speed by average humans; I’m pretty sure than in a stampede I’d be trampled in moments, and I’m fairly certain that in a race between me and a moving car, I’d not be able to keep up for long.
Many of the movie’s scenes were far over the top, too many happenstance chances. There were too many places where falling rocks, stomping monster feet, or ultra-deep chasms were at the right place, or had the right vine, or missed by just inches. People were getting picked up, thrown into the air, landing on rocks, sliding down rock faces bare skinned, and coming out no worse than when they started. I don’t know about you, but I can’t walk out to get the mail barefoot without my feet getting stabbed by twigs or sharp pebbles, yet these folks can run through a historic forest barefoot and not get a scrape.
Kong’s relationship, like many movies, happened too fast to almost be unjustifable. And, when Kong dies at the end, there are many wet eyes in the theater. Maybe I missed the point, but did everyone forget the pile of bones from helpless sacficed women that Kong previously brutalized, or the many innocents that were injured or killed as he rampaged through the city? With Kong gone, even Skull island is safer. Like I said, I think I missed the point. Maybe because Kong never seemed to me to be in love, but rather say Naomi as a novelity or amusement, or dare I say pet.
But, fiction is fiction, and it was an enjoyable theater experience none the less. Go see King Kong. See it on a big theater. Just do it at discounted ticket prices. I give it 3 stars out of 5.
In a previous bog entry, I mentioned I might be tempted into getting a video iPod… well, I went down that slippery slope and got a happy surprise.
Previously, I mentioned that I might be getting a video iPod. Well, I went to the Apple store to pick up the latest copy of iLife (photography manager, movie creator, dvd creator, music creator, and web page creator tools) iWork (better-than-PowerPoint presenter and Page Layout for making books, magazines, news letters, and so on). While there, I broke down and got a Video iPod to see what all the fuss was about.
My initial thought at the store was “my, what small packaging you have.” My initial thought at home was “my, what small software you have.” My initial thought after plugging it into the computer was “my, what amazing features you have!” Why didn’t I make this purchase sooner?
See, I already have an MP3 player. It was one of the very first to come out. It’s the Nomad Jukebox (model DAP6GO1) by Creative. I got it at CES a number of years ago when this was cutting edge technology. It’s got all kinds of whacky sound processing features and exotic menus that eventually were deemed fairly advanced for the average music listener who’s on the go. And, given that I didn’t use it all that much, why get another? Originally, I got it for the PC, but I was surprised to see it’s still supported and apparently integrates with iTunes natively.
One of the fundamental problems I have with Apple is that they don’t flaunt all their features, you get them as surprising extras. This is certainly the case with OS X, where it looks at first glance that they do only 4 major things, though on closer inspection, you see it’s really more like over 200 new features. The iPod did the same thing.
My impression, from just marketing, was that it plays MP3s and videos you download from iTunes on a very small screen, and once stuff is on the iPod, you can’t move it back. Podcasting? That’s just downloading a file. Big whoop. I was wrong – I didn’t get it.
The iPod has an enormous amount of room in it, 60GB, more than enough to hold the majority of most DJ’s music collections, though my own collection pales in comparison. When the iPod was beaming over my music, and quite quickly I might add, it also moved over 6000 photo graphs. It also copied over my contact list from my address book. It captured my calendars. Everything I usually try to keep sychronized with my PDA and Sidekick. Not to mention, it gave me a file system where I could store files and take them with me as easy as a USB flash drive.
The integration with iTunes was beyond seamless, I was even able to take Uncle Danny videos and make them look awesome on the iPod. That screen that I thought was too small turns out to be sharp and very high quality, and looks the perfect size while holding the device. Using HandBrake and iSquint, it’s possible to get anything onto the iPod. Using JHymn, it’s possible to get anything off again.
While listening to some music, which magically used the same organization schemes I use in iTunes, I was pleased to learn I could visit other functions of the iPod without interrupting the music. Walking through those 6000 photos was a snap, they flew by as fast as I could run my finger around the ring. In slideshow mode, the transitions were as professional and as beautiful as those found in KeyNote.
The iPod had a clock that was sychronized to my system, had an area for notes, a stop watch, screen lock, and games. The games were your standard break out, solitare, shoot the falling object, and a music trivia quiz where you had to guess the right song based on selections from your own library.
What I really liked the most, oddly enough, was the pod casting. The very feature I was dismissive about. I found a PhotoshopTV pod cast of tricks and tips and have gotten hooked. It works like this: anyone produces their own radio or television show, informs iTunes about it, then iTunes acts as the distribution media for it. From my perspective, it acts like TiVo for iPods. Things that I like, and therefore subscribe to, are pulled down and stuck in my iPod for me each time I connect it to recharge. Stuff I watch goes away. So, without having to do much of anything, my iPod acts as a portable entertainment center.
And, while I was at the Apple Store in Tysons, I also picked up the iPod AV Cables, which let you use the headphone jack to send stereo audio and video to your television, meaning I don’t even need a computer to watch stuff on the big screen. And, unlike my Nomad which is the size of portable CD player, the Video iPod is exactly 15 credit cards heigh.
Found something kinda funny when a coworker brought me lunch from Chipotle. On the bottom of the bag was a unit conversion table. It’s worth a closer look.
If you’ve gotten in on the IPO for Chipotle stock (NYSE: CMG) and enjoy the upward growth, you can thank me personally. I eat there a lot.
That said, it should come as no surprise to you when I mention that a coworker came into my office and dropped of a Chipolte bag with my internet order in it on the way back to the office.
It came in a decent sized brown bag with handles, and when the empty bag toppled over, I noticed text on the bottom of it in a small table. I thought it was one of those “this bag made by” or a “please recycle” blurb.
Nope. It was a unit conversion table.
I ignored it for a split second and then wondered what that might be there; could it be the fault tolerance of the bag, listing volume, dimensions, and lifting capacity?
Nope. So I went to give it closer inspection. And, it’s reasons like this I like Chipotle. Here’s the table:
| Burrito Qty | Unit | Equivalent Weight |
| 1 | miligram | 566,999 milligrams |
| 1 | gram | 566.999 grams |
| 1 | kilogram | 0.566999 kilograms |
| 1 | grain | 8,748.80 grains |
| 1 | ounce | 20 ounces |
| 1 | pound | 1.2488 pounds |
| 1 | troy ounce | 18.14398 troy ounces |
| 1 | pennyweight | 364.58 pennyweight |
| 1 | carat | 2,834.997 carats |
While cute, I wondered why 566.999. What happened to that other lone milligram?
The answer, I suspect, lies in whoever did the conversion, most like using the program units, or web version that does the same thing, ended up with a rounding error and didn’t recognize it.