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Quick website updates

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 12:55:00 GMT

Looks like a recent update to the website killed the ability to submit comments, this should be fixed now.

Currently listening to: Easy Fight Rambling by X-Japan

Ubuntu, VMWare and accessing the iPhone

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:46:00 GMT

Turns out a bit of extra work is required in order to access my iPhone under VMWare when the host OS is Ubuntu.

The first problem I had was related to the usb audio trying to add my iPhone as a mic device. The simple fix is to add snd_usb_audio module to the blacklist although if your computer does have a usb audio device this will cause it to stop working. To add the snd_usb_audio to the blacklist under Ubuntu edit '/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf' and add

blacklist snd_usb_audio

After that is done it's just a matter of doing an `rmmod snd_usb_audio` if it has already been loaded.

The next problem was keeping the hald/dbus from trying to load and mount the iPhone as a camera device. A couple of rules added to hald policies will fix this problem. In Ubuntu create the file '/etc/hal/fdi/policy/10-iphone.fdi' with the following content.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
  <device>
    <match key="info.product" string="iPhone 3G">
       <merge key="info.ignore" type="bool">true</merge>
    </match>
  </device>
</deviceinfo>

NOTE:The string value needs to be the exact same as found in `hal-device`, to find the exact string try running the following command while the iPhone is plugged into the computer:

$ hal-device | grep iPhone
 usb_device.product = 'iPhone 3G'  (string)
 info.product = 'iPhone 3G'  (string)

Thinkpad T400 and Ubuntu 9.04

Tue, 12 May 2009 19:58:00 GMT

So my new work laptop arrived the other day, it’s a Thinkpad T400 with a 2.6Ghz processor, 4gigs of ram and a 160gig 7200rpm drive. I decided to go with Ubuntu for the OS this time since I have not tried it before and some other people I know appear to have had good success with it on their Thinkpad laptops. They also had just recently release the new 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope version so what better time to give it a try.

So far I have been very happy, the only hick-up I ran into was when I loaded the proprietary hardware driver for the ATI videocard. After installing the ATI driver and rebooting the system it would start to load X and then lock with corrupted graphics on the LCD. After some digging I found a post about other Thinkpads with a switchable graphics card that can operate between a low-power mode and a discrete mode. After turning of the OS detection and forcing the BIOS to only use the discrete mode all of the graphics lock up issues went away.

For everything else, the wireless, ethernet, suspend, bluetooth, sound, webcam, dvd burner all worked out of the box with no configuration required.

2009 Iditarod Standings KML Feed

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 13:44:00 GMT

Every year at work we create a KML feed for the Iditarod race standings. This year is no different with the addition of some GPS data added in from the IonEarth Iditarod website. Unfortunately I couldn’t add in all of the GPS locations for each musher due to the ITC charging for the service this year but I did add in the data feed from the free demo that is available.

Checkout the KML feed for the 2009 Iditarod Standings here

Server/CMS Updates

Sat, 14 Feb 2009 00:47:38 GMT

Over the next week I’m going to transition the website over to a server and cms system. I’m not really happy with typo, it’s a great system but I really want something that is a bit easier to customize and hack on myself, I am a web developer after all. Of course the server upgrade is being prompted byt he fact that the current host is a bit limited on resources and we have several users currently trying to use the system. I really wish that I hosting service I am purchasing from would over a Gentoo install but alas it is not and most places that offer them tend to be a bit to expensive for my budget, so I’m going with the next best alternative CentOS.

So my current plan for the new CMS to try out is Radiant. We recently starting using it at work for the new versions of a couple sites we host, and it has been fairly painless to get used to working with and creating content in. The main developer appears to be fairly available and easy to interact with along with a lot of other community support that I have found lacking with Typo. It also looks like it will be simple to bring over the current content, especially since I haven’t lived up to my goal of posting every week so I don’t have much to move over currently.

New Server and CMS

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 12:50:48 GMT

Hurrah for a new server that works! Took long enough to get all the hardware working correctly but it looks like I finally have a new functioning system. Things left to do

Look for the extensions I want to use
Test various markup for posts to see if they look fine
Convert content from old CMS into new CMS
Find a new header image, something a little better than a flower.

1 Class Foo
2   def bar
3     puts 'foo bar'
4   end
5 end

Using Linux and VMWare to update iPhone firmware

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 00:41:00 GMT

So I was finally able to get update my IPhone to use the 2.2 firmware using VMWare The problem is seems is caused by the restart of the USB interface on the IPhone during the update process. This is done to put the IPhone into the recieve mode for the update but when it reconnects the USBHID module detects the camera and will grab control before vmware is able to. The solution then becomes making USBHID ignore the IPhone when it is put into its receive mode.

WARNING: There are still other things that can go wrong during the update, please make sure to sync your IPhone before doing any updates. If something does go wrong you can restore your phone from another computer running windows and then go back to the VM image to restore your backup.

Here are the things you’ll need:

IPhone that needs an update of course
Some flavor of Linux – I’m using Gentoo with a 2.6.23 kernel. Note: Your kernel must be configured to load USBHID as a module
VMWare >= 6.5.1 – Any 6.X version will probably work it, but 6.5.1 doesn’t require focus to be on the VM inorder for it to capture the USB connection from the IPhone.
Windows VMWare Image with ITunes – Using Windows XP SP3 with ITunes 8.0.2

Displaying your RSpec results in Mumbles

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:34:00 GMT

I have been very happy with my recent work using RSpec and AutoTest (ZenTest) for a project at work. If you ever have to refactor a major piece of functionality, like the authentication, and then being able to ensure the behavior of the app is the same is very nice. The only thing that isn’t very nice is having to switch to a console or browser window to see if everything passed or not.

Then yesterday I ran across Get your Rails tests results via Growl notifications and I thought it should be fairly simple to use Mumbles instead. If you haven’t seen Growl it is a sexy looking popup notification app for Macs, Mumbles is a very simple replacement that runs under Linux. It supports sending and receiving network message can talk to a Growl network.

So after jumping through a couple of hoops to get Mumbles working under Gentoo, here is what I did to get sexy popup notifications:

Create a ~/.autotest file with the following

UPDATE: I made a couple of changes to the autotest file, there was still some old cruft from the Growl autotest config that I never dealt with.

 1 module Autotest::Mumbles
 2   def self.mumble title, msg
 3     system 'mumbles-send', title, msg
 4   end
 5 
 6   Autotest.add_hook :ran_command do |at|
 7     mumble "Test Results", at.results.last
 8   end
 9 end

Now restart your autotest and watch for the popups! I said it was simple right? Now I don’t have to switch to another terminal and look to see if everything passed.

That's one fast dog

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 00:32:00 GMT

Zoom zoom, throw the ball and watch that dog run. Taken during our last fishing trip to Homer while we were stuck in Nenana waiting for the car to get looked at by the mechanic.

2007 Fishing Trip: Sleeping Otter

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:25:00 GMT

Here is a picture from our 2007 fishing trip to Homer. We managed to drift pretty close to this guy before I made a noise that woke him up.