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Archive for the 'Geekery' Category


I (Will) Have Power!

Posted by pete on 5th August 2008

I’ve been having issues getting a car charger for my 3G iPhone. Turns out, once I did some research, this is a known issue. Score one for the “careful, planned purchasing” approach. Anyway, in my research, I found this blog post. My main problem was not getting enough juice to the device, it was stopping the buzzing. Apparently, the iPhone isn’t shielded correctly and when the car charger and the headphone out / auxiliary input to my stereo are both plugged in, terrible noises abound. According to Carl’s post and other reviews I’ve found online, the Griffin Autopilot should fix that problem. As an added benefit, there’ll be fewer cable to connect to the iPhone and I’ll have external controls, which should make life a bit easier.

Now, to find one in the area that’s not too freaking expensive.

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One Week With An iPhone 3G

Posted by pete on 21st July 2008

Last Tuesday, I got an iPhone 3G through work to replace my Motorola Q9h. Overall, I’m very happy with it. My biggest complaint would be the battery life. I could do a few more things to squeeze out some more minutes, but because I can usually tether it to my laptop somewhere, it’s not _that_ big of a deal. There are a couple other minor issues: some of the third party apps are a bit crashier than I would like and nobody seems to have a good SSH or network utility app, but I’m sure both of these will work out in a bit.

Even better is the fact that Gracie can use it too. She’ll ask if she can watch a movie or play a game on it and off she’ll go with it. This _never_ could have happened with the Q.

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My Blog, My Memory

Posted by pete on 8th May 2008

When you need to hot-add a SCSI disk to a Linux server, the following command will get the OS to re-scan the SCSI bus:

echo - - - >/sys/class/scsi_host/host$NUMBER/scan

$NUMBer is usually 0, but if you have more SCSI busses, you need to verify.

For more information on this, check here.

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Never Forget

Posted by pete on 5th January 2008

I’m posting this in the hope that I’ll never waste another few hours trying to fix this problem again. This is probably only of interest to me.When installing Jira and other application that use (pooled?) JDBC connections in Tomcat 5.5 (others?) on the Redhat-based distros (Fedora, RHEL, CentOS…), if you see an error message looking like this…

2008-01-04 23:22:59,963 main WARN [core.entity.transaction.JNDIFactory] [ConnectionFactory.getConnection] Failed to find DataSource named java:comp/env/jdbc/JiraDS in JNDI server with name default. Trying normal database. javax.naming.NamingException: Could not create resource factory instance [Root exception is java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.apache.tomcat.dbcp.dbcp.BasicDataSourceFactory]

…the problem is with the distro’s use of the Jakarta Commons version of DBCP and Tomcat’s expectation that the BasicDataSourceFactory class being in Tomcat’s naming-factory-dbcp.jar file. For whatever reason, the distro preferred the Jakarta version.This can be simply solved by adding the following to your JAVA_OPTS environmental variable:

-Djavax.sql.DataSource.Factory=org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSourceFactory

…which is most likely in /etc/sysconfig/tomcat5.To give credit where credit is due, I found most of my info about this problem and the solution here.

May I never waste more time on this problem.

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AppleTV / YouTube Trick

Posted by pete on 23rd June 2007

This isn’t some super nifty trick or anything, but it’s kind of nice if you are sharing an AppleTV with multiple users. Now that the 1.1 update is out and you can view YouTube on your AppleTV, create a dedicated YouTube account for your device. Log into this account on your AppleTV, then on your computers. When one of you wants to share a YouTube video with the other or you would rather view the clip on your TV instead of your computer, save it to that account’s favorites. These favorites can be accessed on the AppleTV. Viola! Simple YouTube viewing on your AppleTV.

See? Told you is wasn’t anything special, but at least you don’t have to type in a YouTube URL into your AppleTV. What a pain that on-screen keyboard is.

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That Was Easy

Posted by pete on 26th May 2007

The Wordpress 2.1.3 -> 2.2 upgrade was pretty easy. All done.

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Apple TV

Posted by pete on 25th March 2007

Right after it was announced — and I mean right after – in January, I bought an Apple TV unit. I’ve been occasionally playing content from my MacBook Pro on the big screen, but it was awkward. There was no way I was showing Lis how to do it and she has stuff she’d like to display there and play on the home theatre sound system too.

After about a month’s delay, it finally arrived this past Thursday. The setup was dead simple. Plugged the component video and optical audio outputs into my receiver, where I linked the two together as one device. Turned on the TV, then powered up the unit. Not including the run out to Radio Shack for an optical cable and dinner at Friendly’s with G, the setup probably took five minutes at most. And, yes, it works fine on our seven-year-old HD (1080i) capable, 4:3 screen. (Side note: the initial boot on our 4:3 screen had the Apple logo a bit distorted as it was assuming the TV would be running in a 16:9 aspect ratio. After you go through the setup, though, the problem disappears.)

The Apple TV allows you to sync on iTunes to the device itself. Other (Windows or OS X) computers that want to display iTunes content on the screen will have to stream to the device. There’s a five streaming device limit. I have no idea why.

Our home network as two access points. One’s an open 802.11G AP. The other device is a closed Airport Extreme that does 802.11 (pre-)N. To avoid a performance hit on the pre-N network, we keep both devices running. Lisa’s first-gen MBP, without (pre-)N talks with the G AP and my second-gen, (pre-)N capable MBP talks with the Airport. The Apple TV also talks with the Airport as it’s also a (pre-)N device.

Since Lis will be the one most using our TV and is connecting over the slower of the two APs, I set her up as the sync source. I sync to the Apple TV. (Well, my MBP does. :) )

Overall, I like the Apple TV. Here are a few thoughts I have on it:

  • I’m a bit concerned about the 40GB hard drive on the device. We’re only about 1/3 used now that all of Lisa’s content is synced over, but I can see this growing quickly. From what I’ve seen on the inter-tubes, though, this might be not-too-annoying to swap out.  [Update: Well, hey-ho-howdy, here's one.]
  • The interface feels a bit slow. It’s not terribly slow, but it is a bit.
  • It crashed at least once on me. On the plus side (or worrisome — depending on your perspective), it has a watchdog timer that auto-rebooted it after it locked up. This is a 1.0 device, though, so I’ll give it some leeway, as long as it’s not very frequent.
  • Entering a 50-character, random character string as the WPA2 key using their sluggish on-screen keyboard interface is a pain in the ass. Entering it a second time after you have a brain fart is even more of a PITA.
  • I was surprised that the device doesn’t aggregate the iTunes sources that it’s configured for. You have to explicitly choose the source iTunes DB that you use.
  • Apple’s remote-enabled devices (such as Lisa’s and my MBPs and the Apple TV) allow you to pair with a specific remote, which makes the device ignore all other Apple Remote signals. As far as I can tell, they will respond to any Apple Remote by default. This is really fun when you’re sitting back on the couch with two MBPs and you hit play on the remote; all three devices respond by playing different things. On the plus side, the Apple Remote has a very wide range of coverage.
  • Speaking of the Apple Remote, it’s a very simple device. It’s got six buttons: up, down, left, right, play/pause, and menu. Using this remote to watch Lost on my laptop’s screen with Front Row was easy, but, for whatever reason, I’m having issues controlling playback with it on the Apple TV.
  • Streaming is surprisingly smooth, from both of our MBPs. It thought it might get a but chunky with Lisa’s over the 802.11G network, but it’s not.
  • Good Lord, I really don’t like that default Ken Burns effect in the slide show mode. I need to find out how to turn that off.
  • I had some DRM (grrrr!) issues trying to get some TV shows from my MBP to stream to the Apple TV. Eventually, I read on the Apple forums that I had to de-authorize my MBP, then re-authorize. After this, there was no problem.
  • I was also surprised that, while you get lots of previews of songs, movies, and TV shows from the Apple TV interface, you can’t directly purchase anything from that interface. How long do you think until that’s enabled? I can’t see Apple not making it easier for people to buy from their store.

Anyway, I like the Apple TV. It’s got a lot of potential, but it’s still got some rough edges. Still, it’s a good, useful device now. I think it’d give it a 4 out of 5.

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Baseball Schedule

Posted by pete on 15th March 2007

Actually, it’s the Yankees‘ 2007 schedule, not baseball’s, but, hey, baseball’s nothing without the Yankees…. :) Anyway, I went looking for the full NYY 2007 schedule in a Google Calendar format yesterday and couldn’t find it anywhere. I found the weekday day games. I found the west coast games. I found the Yankees’ and Mets’ (shudder) day game schedule. I found 2006 schedules and results, but I found no 2007 schedule.

“No problem!” thought I. “I’ll just find an online source, find the right format, some magic happens, then, *Poof!* schedule.”

I created a new gCal, made a few entries, then exported it to iCal (VCAL?) format. Looked around the internets and found a good schedule on the ESPN site. A little cut&paste later and I had a nice, one-game-per-line entry for the month of April. Wash, rinse, repeat for May through September.

Looking through the iCal, I could make out the parts pretty easily. Some of the fields were a little odd, but they didn’t look like anything I needed to bother with. I decided to repeat them verbatim. I whipped up a Python script, knocked out a couple silly bugs, then produced the full, iCal-formatted file. Google Calendar didn’t like importing it.

“No problem!” thought I. “I’ll just tweak some of the vcal…. There.”

“What? Still not importing?”

“Hmmm, OK, I’ll tweak this vcal…. There.”

“What?!?! Freaking vcal! I wonder if Apple’s iCal can read it.”

“Oh, nice. iCal reads it but gCal won’t. Heeeeey…. iCal has an export function…”

And that’s how I wound up — more or less — with a fully public, shared 2007 New York Yankees game schedule.

I think the problem was that every line in the Google Calendar-compatible file needed to be terminated with a ^M (ctrl-M). I still haven’t figured out how to get Python to print a literal ^M character. I thought it involved raw strings, but that didn’t help any. I figure I might have to try Unicode strings and embed the hex value of ^M in the string, but I didn’t know the right value and didn’t want to spend too much more time on the issue, especially since I already had my gCal set up.

Oh, and that program I wrote? I found out later on that I could have just manipulated the schedule files I got from ESPN and saved them as a CSV and imported them. Much less work there. Oh well. Live and learn.

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Posted in Funny, Geekery | 1 Comment »

CYA Security

Posted by pete on 22nd February 2007

Here is another good post by Bruce Schneier on why we continue to poor so much good money into broken security and why those broken systems continue to persist. It makes complete sense to me: it’s not stupidity, it’s lack of… backbone and there’s no incentive for public officials to do otherwise.

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EXTREME Networking

Posted by pete on 11th February 2007

The other day I was over at the Apple Store picking up a replacement power support for Lisa’s MBP. (I have no idea how she managed to fray this one, what with the mag-safe and all, but she did….) Anyway, while there, I saw the Airport Extreme and, well, it was too powerful.

The next day, I plugged it into our home network. It’s a pretty nifty little box. Nicely designed and packaged. I’ve never worked with one of Apple’s Airport base stations, so setup was a complete mystery to me. I knew what I wanted, but I wasn’t sure how difficult it’d be to do. I’ve already to a Linksys WRT54GS v2 running OpenWRT. This is my main gateway device and sits connected to our cable modem. I still wanted the WRT to serve as our non-802.11n AP and do all the normal stuff it’s been doing, but I wanted to be able to connect to the Airport Extreme with all 802.11n devices, such as my MBP and the soon-to-arrive Apple TV. In other words, I wanted it to run in bridge mode, with WPA2 PSK encryption, MAC filtering, and no beaconing.

While in the process of trying to set up the Airport Extreme, I messed up the WRT. It seems that I missed the recent release announcement, so when I updated the packages on it, things got all hinky and the wireless part stopped working. Luckily, I had the Extreme, so I quickly replicated the WRT’s wireless settings and Lisa was back online wirelessly. I waited until she was done, then went about applying the appropriate updates to the WRT. After it was back online, I, once again set the Extreme up the way I originally wanted it.

Of course, this is when I notice that the Airport Extreme has support for profiles. Had I known ahead of time, I could have put our default config in one profile and a “mimic the WRT” config in another and switch them back and forth. Easy-peasy.

Overall, I’m very happy with the Airport Extreme. It’s a nice, flexible base station. I don’t think its flexibility comes anywhere near that of the WRT54GS running OpenWRT, but as a stock base station, it’s the ginchy-ist and in the not-too-distant future, I can see us adding an external USB hard drive for easy backups.

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Ella

Posted by pete on 31st January 2007

If you’re reading this, then the upgrade to WordPress 2.1 Ella worked.

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Posted in Geekery | 4 Comments »

All Atwitter

Posted by pete on 10th January 2007

Part the first: TiVo

Our series 3 TiVo arrived yesterday. It shipped much quicker than we thought it would. After Lis sent to bed, I set it up: no need for her to see this sausage made. <beep> <boop> <bong!> Oh joy! We got our TiVo back and it’s looking sweet. I can’t wait to play with it when the cable cards are installed, which should be this evening. After we’re sure the cable cards are working, the hated Cox DVR will be banished from our house!

Part the second: Apple TV

*sigh* We’re such gadget and Apple freaks these days. While the iPhone sure looks nice, our Cingular contract isn’t up until November and it’s freaking expensive: $599 with a 2 year commitment to Cingular for the 8GB version. I’m sure we’ll get iPhones at some time, but most likely not any time soon after they’re released in June. I’ll wait for Grumpy (who, apparently, seems to have stopped blogging…) and Dave to be the first movers on this.

On the other hand, I’m very interested in Apple TV. So much so, we’ve already ordered one. I’ve hooked my Macbook Pro into our home theater system before, but it’s been awkward and not a great experience. Most of that’s because of our setup, but it’s still our setup and something we have to deal with every time we want to display something from the computer on the TV. The Apple TV device should work nicely with our media and should make things very simple. It should ship in February. I’m sure I’ll be writing something about it once we get it.

Part the third: Receivers

The Apple TV (ATV) does seem to be complicating one thing though. It’s got two video output methods: HDMI (digital video and audio) and component (analog video) with either optical (digital) or RCA (analog) audio. The max resolution pushed by the ATV is 720p, which is easily reached by our TV.

The problem is, we got our home theater system in mid-2000, before any of these digital connections where anywhere near popular (and quite possibly not even commercially available). Our TV has only analog inputs, including only one component input. Our receiver has only two component inputs and two optical inputs. (Well, it’s got other, lesser-quality analog inputs too.) We currently connect the receiver’s component output to the TV’s component input. This leaves us two component video inputs and two optical audio inputs on the receiver. One component and one optical input is used by the DVR player. The other component and optical inputs are used by the Cox DVR (boo! hiss!) and, soon, the TiVo (the crowd goes wild!).

Where’s the Apple TV to go? I could downgrade one of the other devices to an S-video connection with analog audio: probably the DVR. Honestly, I doubt the video or audio quality will be noticeable, but, unfortunately, I’ll know and I know my OCD-light brain will be bothered to no end by it.

I’ve been casually looking at new receivers. The problem with this is that, in order to take full advantage of all the digital inputs, I’ll need to use a digital output and that means also replacing the TV. (Many devices won’t output signal received via a digital input to the analog output. If they do, it’s usually intentionally degraded. Just another wonderful aspect of media and electronics companies treating their honest customers like thieves.) There’s a TV I’ve been eyeing for a while, but there’s been too much spending lately and this cascade of upgrades needs to be arrested some. I think the best move right now is to deal with our current receiver and TV for a while; I’ll do my best to ignore that nagging voice.

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Dive into Geeky Parent

Posted by pete on 23rd December 2006

It’s stuff like this that you get when you cross parenthood with geeks…

http://diveintomark.org/archives/2006/12/07/rest-for-toddlers
:)

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Movin’ On

Posted by pete on 21st December 2006

I’ve been growing slowly frustrated with Bloglines and its limitations, especially with respect to its speed, spotty handling of entry graphics, lost saved entries, and only storing 200 entries per feed. Once the magic 200 entries have been received, all the other new ones are dropped. At least give me the option to keep the 200 most recent entries; use a first-in first-out queue. I’ve also seen my share of entries pointing to a blank space where a picture should be.

Over the past few months, I’ve read about people liking Google Reader, but every time I’ve tried it, it’s been an unsatisfying experience. The latest updates along with my mounting frustration with Bloglines, though, have gotten me to mostly switch. There are a few entries in Bloglines that I’ve got saved to read, but beyond those, I’m doing all of my feed reading at Google Reader now.

Now, if only they’d add a feature that would sort your feeds in ascending chronological order instead of the default descending chronological order, I think I’d be completely (vs. mostly) happy with Google Reader.

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Posted in Geekery | 4 Comments »

Go Shmoo!

Posted by pete on 5th December 2006

ShmooCon ‘07 registration opened this past weekend. Thanks to my slow RSS feed aggregator, I didn’t hear about it until today. I went to last year’s conference and had a blast. There were so many interesting things covered by so many good speakers, I don’t know where to begin. I think the thing I liked most about it was that it helped reconnect me with my curiosity. I didn’t feel like I had to justify to myself why I was doing something. “I’m curious, so I do it.” It was a breath of fresh — well, geeky-smelly — air.

The best part: all three days of this inspiration cost only $75. They’re doing some weird ticket pricing / sales thing this year where you can spend $75, $150, or $300 on a ticket that seems to get you essentially the same thing (the $300 tickets get you a t-shirt). The idea is that, if you think the conference is worth more, you can pay more. This is all not-for-profit and run completely by volunteers. Personally, I just got back from a 2+ week vacation and a surprise 2-night stay in D.C., we’re approaching Christmas (and Christmas bills), and have a whole new bed to buy soon, so, despite my enthusiasm, I took pity on my wallet and bought a $75 ticket. The show’s Friday, March 23rd through Sunday, the 25th and I’ll be there. I’ve already put in for PTO that Friday.

There’s an interesting network setup (ShmooCon Labs) the day and a half before that that they want people to apply for. I think it’d be fun, educational, and that I could help, but I’m not sure I could (or care to try to) convince them of that.

Bring out the geek!

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Disneyland VS Walt Disney World — Fight!

Posted by pete on 21st November 2006

The family and I have been on vacation since the 14th. We’re taking our annual pilgrimage to Arizona to spend a holiday with my side of the family. We also took a side-trip to Disneyland as our present to G for her fourth birthday. This would be Lisa’s and Grace’s first trip to Disneyland and my second. (I spent a few hours there in June of 2004.)

We spent four days and three nights here and stayed at the Grand Californian on the concierge level. (We wanted a nice view of Disney’s California Adventure (DCA) and since we had stayed concierge at the Grand Floridian, we wanted to compare to something similar.)

Overall, it was a fun trip. We’re glad we went. I think we spent just the right amount of time there and were there at a good time of year. We got to see the Haunted Mansion’s “Nightmare Before Christmas” overlay and the crowds were pretty manageable. (The worst day for the crowds was Saturday, which wasn’t surprising.) We spent three days at the Magic Kingdom and one at DCA. (Well, most of one day at DCA, but the rest at the Magic Kingdom.) The Monte Cristos at Blue Bayou were tasty and the service at Napa Rose was wonderful.

Inevitably though, Lis and I would wind up comparing it to our usual Disney stomping ground, Walt Disney World, and, quite frankly, it doesn’t seem to measure up.

Disneyland has a lot going for it to be sure. First, it’s the first. This is where it all started and that needs to be appreciated. This is the only park Walt Disney was directly involved with from start to finish. We like the theming of Adventureland better than WDW’s. New Orleans Square is nice with no WDW equivalent and Mr Toad’s Wild Ride still exists at Disneyland. (Then again, WDW still has the People Mover / TTA, which I like a bit better anyway.) While we haven’t been on the revamped Pirates at WDW yet, I like the one at Disneyland better, even when the updated aspects are not counted. The updated Space Mountain was nice and the aforementioned “Nightmare” overlay to the Haunted Mansion is great fun. Lis liked their Downtown Disney better, even though it is smaller.

On the other hand, there was a lot that surprised (in a bad way) and disappointed us. First and foremost was the general grumpiness and lack of helpfulness of most of the cast members. We assumed that all Disney cast members were friendly and helpful, at least while on stage. I guess we just assumed that this level would be about the same across all the Disney parks, especially at the U.S. parks, but not so. The cast members at Disneyland are quite a bit less helpful (especially at DCA — try to find a map anywhere in the park after you’ve gone through the gate and everybody’s always pointing to someone else) and even grumpy. Sure, there were some exceptions such as the concierge staff and Poe at Napa Rose, who patiently helped us avoid a four-year-old, time-zone-related meltdown.

While on the topic of Napa Rose, the food at Disneyland is not as good as at Walt Disney World either. Now, having the default for the kid meals be fruit instead of fries is a great idea, I’m not sure if this is a Disneyland thing or something that’s across all the Disney parks. (I do know that they announced a commitment to better, more nutritious food at their parks, I’m just not sure if this is part of that initiative or something else.) As for restaurant quality, I’ve heard that Napa Rose is the tops for Disneyland. It was good, but not great. The food tasted good, but the tenderness of the steaks we got there was only a couple steps above “leather.” Nothing we had really wowed us. At WDW, the two top restaurants are Victoria and Albert’s and the California Grill. Both are easily head and shoulders above Napa Rose. And at WDW, there are so many other good choices which are also around the same level as Napa Rose.

There are other things that Disneyland stuffers from just because it’s so tight on space. A lot is jammed into that space and there’s no option for some of the other niceties we enjoy at WDW, such as the bike paths, the water mice, and the wide variety of resort options.

Overall, we had a good time at Disneyland. I’m glad we went, but I have no desire to go back there anytime soon. WDW has and is so much more.

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This Annoying Life

Posted by pete on 4th October 2006

I’m a huge fan of Chicago Public Radio’s “This American Life.” My local NPR station, WAMU, broadcasts it on Saturdays at 3pm, which is not really a time I find convenient to listen to the radio. My favorite listening times are in the morning and the evening when I’m driving to and from work. My car stereo plays MP3 files, so I figured that I’d grab the MP3 and listen to it in the car.

When I first hit upon this idea, TAL was available in three formats: a CD you can buy directly from them for $13, a RealAudio stream, and you could download it from Audible.com. The CD is not really a feasible option as $13/week gets expensive, it takes time to get the CD in the snail mail, and it seems incredibly wasteful to burn a CD and ship it when it can easily be downloaded. The Audible option is also not acceptable since they use DRM (”Digital Restrictions Management”), which controls where and on what devices I can listen to content on. I refuse to submit to this.

The RealAudio stream was acceptable, but annoying. I had to capture the stream, then convert it to an MP3. I guess CPR got tired of paying for RA licenses or subjecting their listeners to the RA Player, but eventually they switched over to streaming MP3 directly. This was great! I could easily download the MP3. Apparently, they must have thought it too easy because after a few weeks, they switched over to M3U files. These are text files that list MP3s in them. It’s trivial to get the real MP3 from it and only added one extra, very minor step to my process.

Now, they want to make it a bit more difficult. Instead of letting the user chose their favorite player for listening to MP3s and let them listen to them when and where they want, TAL seems to feel that they need to force the PuPuPlayer on them. Not very cool if you ask me (which they didn’t).

This player gets downloaded to the user’s machine, which in turn, downloads the MP3 to play. Hmmm… no problem here. Just sniff the connection to see what the player downloads and grab the MP3 from the same place. The MP3s seem to be living at http://audio.thisamericanlife.org/jomamashouse/ismymamashouse/<mp3 file>. I got a chuckle when I saw the path to the MP3. Off the top of my head, there are a few things they could do to ratchet up the annoying even more (not stop, mind you, just make things more annoying) and yet still say they offer streaming MP3 audio, but let’s hope they don’t.

TAL does have a page where you can donate to the show and help cover some of their bandwidth costs. I highly suggest you toss some money their way. It’s a great show and very much worth some dollars.

The funny thing is, a) forcing people to use this Flash-based player wastes 80k right there (not including overhead), which really isn’t a lot these days, but still, it’s 80k just wasted and b) if they’d let or even encourage the sharing of their shows over P2P networks such as BitTorrent, they could reduce their bandwidth costs right there. How much they could reduce costs, I don’t know, but I’m willing to bet that it’d be more than the donation I made to their show. (And yes, it was a decently-sized donation. :)
Anyway, in a nutshell:

  1. This American Life is a great show.
  2. I wish they’d stop annoying their loyal listeners. (I haven’t missed a show in a long time.)
  3. They could save money by encouraging filesharing of their shows instead of wasting money fighting it.

Now, go listen to their show and donate. (Or don’t. I’m not the boss of you.)

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Posted in Geekery | 11 Comments »

Sudo

Posted by pete on 4th September 2006

Sandwich Unless you’re a Unix geek, this probably won’t make much sense to you. If you are, though, I’m sure you’ve had similar thoughts.

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And the bugs slowly slide away…

Posted by pete on 3rd July 2006

Thanks to MacWorld for pointing out Witch to me. One of my (minor) problems with OS X was that cmd-tab switched between applications, not windows, unlike what I was used to in Linux and Windows. Once I had switched to an application, if I wasn’t alread on the window I wanted, then I’d use cmd-` to switch to the correct window within that application. Pleh. Witch allows me to use one key sequence (opt-tab, in my case) to switch between all windows. Very nice.

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Simple Pleasures

Posted by pete on 30th June 2006

Yesterday, I found out how to get Terminal.app to use anti-aliased fonts. Finally, pretty fonts and no more slow, crashing, you’re-fired iTerm.

Posted in Geekery | 2 Comments »

 
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