Results tagged “old icedtrip net”

to the disappointment of my brother, there will be no downtime this weekend, which means i was able to fix my machine last night. yes, this also means i will not be forced to buy a new computer.

now, how i went about fixing the thing. last night i decided to start backing up all of my stuff in preparation for the weekend when i realized something. At the time, i was using carbon copy cloner (whose site is currently down for some reason) to do a complete backup of my boot drive when i remembered a trick that was used back in the mac os 10.3 days. The trick involved getting an os x install on a case-sensitive hfs+ filesystem. since it was not yet an option for formatting at the time, it was discovered that you could install os x on a drive, use ccc to back up the drive on another drive, reformat the original drive as a case-sensitive hfs+ filesystem using the command line, then use ccc to copy everything back over to the newly formatted drive.

the way that i figured it, i could use the same method, but in reverse. this would be my way of getting my boot drive back to regular hfs+. so i used the above method, but instead reformatted the drive to regular hfs+ so that i could give diskwarrior a shot. i had a feeling that this process may solve the problem anyway and sure enough, it worked (the whole process took about an hour and a half). i did however run diskwarrior to be on the safe side figuring it may find some issues anyway. it did, and i got everything repaired.

making sure it worked, i tested out some of the quirkiness that i had been seeing. safari no longer bombs out on the pages that it was doing so on, and everything appears to be perfectly stable again. i even used isquint to encode a folder full of shows overnight since this was the app that caused the stress that lead to the last kernel panic. this morning, no kernel panic, and isquint had completed its job. all looks well, but the last quirky thing i need to test out is a video chat with my father. i was able to do a video chat with my brother without an issue, but it would fail with my father even though my brother and father could video chat with each other. i will test that one out over the next few days. hopefully all will go well.

although i probably went into way too much detail, i know that at least my brother would be interested in knowing what i had done to solve the problem, so if for no other reason, i wrote all this for him and myself. also, you never know when a simple google search may bring someone here and help them out.

for all 5 of you.

the site will be taken down sometime this weekend for possibly an entire day. i do not know what part of the weekend, but I have some work to do on the computer. i have been having some serious issues with my computer recently that can only be described as quirky. safari blows up from time to time when it shouldn’t, the computer suffers a kernel panic when under a lot of stress when it shouldn’t, and other little quirky things that are just making me mad.

going through a few system utility checks it appears something is royally screwed up with the b-tree catalog file to the point that the apple disk utility program can’t repair it. usually this is no big deal as diskwarrior should be able to properly rebuild it, but i made a mistake when i first installed tiger; i chose the case-sensitive HFS+ file system. diskwarrior doesn’t work with this format and therefore won’t even look at the volume. i also turned to techtool pro to see if there was anything the file structure repair could do just to see it bomb out as well.

long story short, my only option right now is to reformat and re-install and re-configure everything. for me, this is about a 4-5 hour ordeal if i have a straight 4-5 hours to work on it. i need to get apache back up and running along with mysql, phpmyadmin, and all the basic stuff. however, this time i will not choose a case-sensitive file system as i need diskwarrior to work simply because i know diskwarrior would have been able to fix this problem. unfortunately, i do not have time to wait until alsoft updates it to make it compatible with case-sensitive file systems.

if you try to visit this weekend and you get a no hit on the site, wait a day or two. it’ll be back up. until then, i believe survival without icedtrip.net will not be a problem.

the weekend is almost upon us and although just a couple days ago I really didn’t have any plans, last night changed that.

first, we plan to continue our way through the “nightmare on elm street” series leading into part 5 of the series. looks like we may have more people this Friday night than have shown up in the past. about 5-6 people have been coming for the past 4, and it looks like we very well may have 10 or so this time around. looks like i may have to boil some peanuts this time like i did for the first 2. Friday will first begin at Saigon (a Vietnamese restaurant here in town), then to a friends apartment for some fun and games, later ending at my place for the movie.

second comes Saturday. although my day may consist of yard work, i will be going to a concert Saturday night. last night my cousin, trey, called me up asking if i wanted to go to the three doors down concert on Saturday because he had gotten some tickets. now, i am not a big fan of three doors down, but i do enjoy their music from time to time so i agreed to go. it will most likely be packed out since the band is originally from the coast.

and to finish the weekend off, more yard work on Sunday.

at least this beats the past couple of weekends painting, but now that the painting is done, my kitchen, breakfast area, and den look 150% better.

well, my brother is now starting to add video ipod capable home movies to his site. i for one will love this as it will easily allow me to place these on my ipod without having to do any re-encoding to get them to the right format.

a suggestion that i made to my brother as a comment deals with making home movies into video podcasts. with podcasts still steadily going uphill, this is a great way to extend this beyond the traditional podcasting arena. with built-in podcast support in itunes, it would be very easy to create a video podcast that someone produces, with nothing but home movies, to share with family members. this would allow anyone with itunes installed (both windows and mac) to subscribe to the podcast, and anyone with a video ipod would of course be able to sync the videos with ease.

no, this would not be considered a revelation to the podcasting crowd, but rather a simple idea that just makes sense. podcasting isn’t just wayne’s world for the radio, but a method to deliver home movies to family members (and whatever other types of movies you want….legal of course).

just an idea. in the meantime, check out the most recent video on my brother’s site.

http://www.joshandkristee.com/Movies/HummerWheelie.htm

i had my power restored last night after it being out since Monday morning. its amazing how much we rely on electricity and air conditioning. i guess you could say that i should be used to it having lived over seas in a country where this was common and not having air conditioning for 7 years of my life. oh well, i have it back now. this also means that my site is back up too, which is a very good thing.

things have been tough for many. my company’s problems aside, people in my area have been out of power, waiting in lines at gas stations for 2 hours (if no one paniced this wouldn’t have been a problem, but too late now), fighting over bagged ice, not being able to find food in the grocery stores, etc. on top of this, we are 3 hours north of the worst of it. we were hit at a category 1 level hurricane, but looking at images and videos of the coast looks surreal. check out wlbt and watch the “skycopter” videos to see what is going on down there. i may head down there in about a week to help a friend’s family out, so i may be able to see the damage first hand.

for everyone outside of the affected areas, please try to provide as much support as you can through the different organizations and units that are providing food, water, cots, and everything else for the hundreds of thousands that are without a home right now.

i am fine as is the rest of my family that lives down here in the south, but there are thousands upon thousands that need as much help as can be provided.

in a day or two, i will put up pictures of my back yard and around my town just to show some downed trees, etc. this will show you what a category 1 does, let alone what a category 4 will do.

tonight i got a call to go out with some guys. there were 4 regular rex’s and one sti. we went out and went from one place to another, but did get some shots of the cars.

the canon elph did an ok job in the dark, but please forgive the graininess of the images. some are blurry and others are decent, but since i had to take the pictures with the flash off in order to actually get decent photos, they are not perfect. i have included in the gallery 2 shots of each photo, the original and a somewhat “enhanced” shot of the same picture. click on the thumbnails to enlarge them.

click on the image to the side to go to the gallery or click here.

smashsworld - I’m on Google Talk right now.

it looks like google will be announcing its new google talk client tomorrow, but as can be seen on the web, people are already using the service. my brother, andrew, and i have already given it a shot. looking at the above article, you will see that you can connect to the google talk service simply with a jabber client and your gmail account. applications like trillian, adium, gaim, and ichat have this pretty much built it, so it is a breeze to use. simply use the following within your particular client’s settings:

Server: talk.google.com Username: yourgmailid@gmail.com Password: yourgmailpassword

make sure you use the “@gmail.com” or it will not work. my brother and i have tried the audio and video over it with ichat and it works just fine as it does over aim. the actual google talk client will most likely be pc only, but since mac and linux users (not wanting to use wine linux users) can connect, all is happy and well in the world.

below are some other locations related to this topic.

TUAW eWeek downloadsquad

digg 1 digg 2 digg 3

Apple iPod Shuffle (4 GB) 4.1 GB MP3 Player - Find, Compare, and Buy Apple iPod Shuffle (4 GB) 4.1 GB MP3 Player at Shopping.com

i heard this on a podcast earlier today and decided to check it out. sure enough shopping.com has it listed as a product that is not yet available. this is one of the items that is rumored to be an announcement in the next couple of weeks at a france conference. the following places also have information on the 4gb ipod shuffle, but i first looked at shopping.com per the podcast.

engadget 1 engadget 2

macrumors

t3

this will be very nice if they can keep the price points the same. who wouldn’t want a 4gb usb key for $129? oh, and it plays music too!

“feel good inc.”

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Feel good, sh-shake it, shake it. (8x)

City’s breaking down on a camels back. They just have to go ‘cos they don’t know wack. So all you fill the streets, it’s appealing to see. You wont get out the county, ‘cos you’re bad and free. You’ve got a new horizon, it’s ephemeral style, In a melancholy town where we never smile. And all I wanna hear is the message beep. My dreams, they’ve got to kiss me cos I don’t get sleep, no…

Windmill, windmill for the land Learn forever hand in hand Take it all in on your stride It is sticking falling down Love forever Love is free Lets turn forever you and me Windmill, windmill for the land Is everybody in?

Laughing gas these hazmats, fast cats, Lining them up like ass cracks, Ladies homies at the track It’s my chocolate attack. Shit, I’m stepping in the heart of this here. Care bear bumping in the heart of this here. Watch me as I gravitate hahahahahaa. Yo, we gonna go ghost town, this Motown, with yo sound you in the blink you gonna bite the dust Cant fight with us with yo sound you kill the INC. so don’t stop, get it, get it until you cheddar header. Yo, watch the way I navigate hahahahahahaa.

Windmill, windmill for the land Learn forever hand in hand Take it all in on your stride It is sticking falling down Love forever Love is free Lets turn forever you and me Windmill, windmill for the land Is everybody in?

Dont stop, get it, get it, We are your captains in it (feel good), Steady, Watch me navigate, Ahahahahahhaa (feel good). (2x)

Sh-shake it, shake it, Feel good. (4x)

Ahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

-gorillaz-

While rummaging through digg.com earlier today i ran across this post about six degrees of kevin bacon. although it is a game that most people know, it was awesome to see that someone actually took it upon themselves to build a website that made the connections for you. The digg post can be found here, and the page is found below:

UVA Computer Science: The Oracle of Bacon at Virginia

For those that do not know what this game is, where have you been living for the past decade and a half? the object is simple, connect any actor or actress back to kevin bacon in less than 6 connections. for example, lets say i want to connect nicolas cage to kevin bacon, it would go something like this:

nicolas cage -> Penelope cruz (Captain Corelli’s Mandolin) -> tom cruise (vanilla sky) -> kevin bacon (a few good men)

now, having checked that against the site, they were able to make the connection in only 2 whereas mine took 4. pointless? yes. but it will drive you insane when you can’t connect that one person to him that you know if you could think a little harder you could get it.

DrunkenBlog: The most amusing exchanges

The following quote is from drunkenblog and had me rolling. This is typical db stuff, but i had to post it just to bring forth the joys of my day. i’m probably the only one, but hey, what is life without some laughable perks that only you get. Being a friend of DrunkenBlog must be really hard sometimes.

It isn’t like there are a whole lot of other Bible salesmen who happen to use the Mac and who happen to be geeky to compare myself to. This could possibly improve soon, as there is now a surprising amount of applications for the Mac that revolve around the Bible. I’m particularly impressed by whomever came up with the names ‘iBible’, ‘Hangman Bible’, ‘MacSword’, ‘BiblePod’ and ‘Got Word?’.

We complain about the lack of vertical apps on the Mac sometimes, but Linux has it much worse, aside from games. Besides lacking Photoshop and iTunes, the state of Bible software on Linux is downright deplorable — let alone Bible software with such marketable names. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re all heathens, but one could make the argument it’s implied the platform tends towards the atheist and agnostic.

“Hurt”

I hurt myself today To see if I still feel I focus on the pain The only thing that’s real The needle tears a hole The old familiar sting Try to kill it all away But I remember everything

[Chorus:] What have I become My sweetest friend Everyone I know goes away In the end And you could have it all My empire of dirt I will let you down I will make you hurt

I wear this crown of thorns Upon my liar’s chair Full of broken thoughts I cannot repair Beneath the stains of time The feelings disappear You are someone else I am still right here

[Chorus:] What have I become My sweetest friend Everyone I know goes away In the end And you could have it all My empire of dirt I will let you down I will make you hurt

If I could start again A million miles away I would keep myself I would find a way

-johnny cash

well, i am back once more having done a complete format, reinstall, and reconfigure of my box only to find out that i had a bad ram chip. next time i know to check hardware before software to avoid the headaches.

apparently my middle ram chip went bad and was causing application instability problems. the system was stable, but applications were not. obviously the system loaded in the first chip of ram and i had no reason to look at the ram as the culprit.

well, back up and running, and back to making a post once every 80 days. i need to put this thing to use!

well, it has been awhile since my last post, but oh well. so maybe this whole blog thing just won’t happen as much as i had originally planned. no worries, life will go one.

moving on….i have recently succeeded in installing linux on a powerbook 1400. it is debian 3.0 (woody) and after a lot of frustrations, it was a successful install. i threw together a pretty comprehensive guide for the process, but it is as of yet complete. one day i will have to take it back up and add a few more remarks and corrections to it, but for now i just wanted to post it for the nubus linux community. comment if you have any.

here is the guide. Installing Debian 3.0 (woody) on a Powerbook 1400

ok, so apparently my mother felt that i really need a woman since my post of the chair, or as she put it, the “grand” chair. hey, i like my chair, but i figured i might as well post about an actual living, breathing, thing. my dog.

ok, so it isn’t a woman, but its also not a chair, so i am improving right?

his name is bt. bt stand for “black tears” because it looks like he has been crying black tears from one eye. coincidently, bt is also the name of one of my favorite trance musicians. he is an american bulldog and is currently only 4 months old. the pictures you can see where taken when he was only 2 months old, so i have a few more to take, but hey, i can’t say it enough…its not a chair.

click here.

ok, so i couldn’t resist. i have been looking for a new chair for sometime now. i spend too much time at this computer to not have a chair that i truly enjoy. i finally broke down and bought one from office depot having tested several. this thing not only looks good, but is extremely comfortable to sit in. it has that new leather smell to it and has the nice leather sounds to it when you move. not too loud, but enough for the listening pleasure (that is if you like leather).

i won’t go into detail about an office chair, but look at the pictures here.

well, here it is. the home setup. i have been meaning to snap a few shots and put it online, but have never gotten around to it. i couldn’t get far back enough to fit the whole thing in one shot, so i had to take multiples. i will try to do a little better next time, but these should be sufficient for right now.

the next thing to do will be painting the office a different color and putting a line of clocks along the wall behind the desk showing the world’s times. i am currently thinking of a charcoal color for the walls as i have never seen an office that color before, and i believe the metal desk pieces would look nice against the color as well. but that is for another day, another week, and quite possibly another month.

see it here.

i don’t know if you can really call it speculation, but ever since the mac mini was announced people have been drooling over the idea of the perfect home theater box. i for one could not agree more with the idea and am doing a little searching to find the perfect equipment that will work alongside the little machine to make it the perfect digital jukebox/moviebox.

the very first thing that needs to be tackled is the sound. yes, the mac mini has a stereo plug in the back, but what good is a 2 channel plug going to do when 5.1 has become the minimum anyone wants and 7.1 is the sound that people desire to have. well, the option is now simple really. the mac mini features some other very useful ports on the back, firewire and usb. since the mac mini doesn’t exactly have any pci slots to fill up, we have to go with an external soundcard. let’s look at our options:

griffin technology firewave - i mentioned this a few days ago when i initially talked about the possibility of the mac mini becoming a home theater system. this little box allows for 5.1 surround sound, and being from griffin, is mac compatible straight out of the box.

m-audio high resolution 7.1 sonica theater - this external soundcard is a usb interfaced soundcard that is fully powered by usb and offers up 7.1 surround sound in addition to the standard dolby digital 5.1 and dts.

terratec aureon 7.1 firewire - this looks to be the box i want, although i have yet to confirm mac compatibility. this beast gives out 7.1 surround sound through firewire and allows you to connect to it with analog line and phono inputs (with preamp) or digital i/o (s/pdif, optical). it has a headphone jack with separate volume control, a mic input with a gain knob, and a master knob to control the overall volume. an added benefit: it also comes with a remote.

sound blaster audigy 2 nx with remote - another one that i have been unable to confirm mac compatibility as all that is said is that it is the requirements are pc specs. this one is highly unlikely to be mac compatible, but certainly worthy of a mention. it has a usb interface, comes with a remote, and in addition to offering 5.1 and 7.1 surround sound, claims to improve cd and mp3 playback through eax acoustic enhancements.

next up: using the tv as your monitor (dvi, s-video, etc) and how to interface with the mac mini wirelessly.

it has been reported by the register that the next upgrade for ibooks and powerbooks will happen within the next 6 months (in q2 ‘05). this upgrade would not be just a speed bump for each machine, but rather a bump in processor from a g4 to a g5. let the speculation continue as i do not see how this is possible. this topic has come up many times before and recently as in the quarterly report conferences as reported by macslash. this news from the register is currently being discussed at slashdot with much doubt.

apple . com

well. it has been quite some time since my last post, but oh well (once again that is)

well, the macworld expo is over and was a very big success. among the items announced were iwork, ipod shuffle, and of course the mac mini. there were many others, but these were the top 3 on my list, and these are how they hold up in my book.

iwork - this is an excellent surprise that the apple/mac community have been begging for for quite some time. this too is a blow to microsoft, but unfortunately not as big a blow as i had hoped. yes, this is the revamp that appleworks has needed for quite some time, but it is missing one huge app…a spreadsheet application. being in the business world, i would be unable to do my job without a spreadsheet application such as excel. hopefully this is in the works and may be announced at the apple developer conference?? but pages? wow, now that is how you do a word processor, and as everyone knows, keynote is superb. keynote 2 is much welcomed as the successor. both are absolutely beautiful in every way possible. we now have exchange compatibility (not perfect, but its there), a microsoft word killer, and a powerpoint destroyer. now for the spreadsheets apple. let’s move on.

ipod shuffle - now this is the way to gain what is left of the mp3 market. apple, very impressive pricing as well. you have taken what was a horrible way to do mp3 players and once again blown it out of the water. the shuffle idea is a very smart move as is the autofill feature in itunes. i believe the ipod shuffle will take over the remaining portion of the flash market for 3 main reason: the current reputation of the ipod, the compatibility and use through itunes, and the amount of space compared to others at the same price point. the fact that it doubles as a usb flash key is simply a bonus. the surprising aspect is that the pricing is even competitive to usb keys. nice touch.

mac mini - now for the item that i have been waiting to see apple release. although a little bit hesitant on the desire to see a “cheap” mac available, i believe that apple has pulled it of with a little more pizzaz than even i could have thought. the computer is one tiny machine, but more importantly, it is priced for anyone to buy. now, there have already been discussions as to what geeks can do with the machine. there have already been mention of beowulf clusters for little geek projects to a replacement machine for pc people to switch (the reason that steve noted for its existence). but the one that really has me desiring one is the media center concept. i have wanted to use my mac for this for years, but now the mac mini opens the door and screams, “sit me next to the dvd player, stereo, tv, and vcr.” with an item like griffin technology’s firewave we will be able to enjoy 5.1 surround sound. add an express remote to the mix and you are on your way. then of course you may want a mac “tivo” right? well, your choices there would be an elgato eyetv 200 or mythtv. you see where i am going with this. a movie and music jukebox the size of a few slices of bread. this little mac will be sold out for months to come, but like all apple’s current products, you will see a steady stream of updates to current lines, and plenty of third party accessories. the sky is yet again the limit.

all images copyright apple computer, inc.