Geekology

List of MongoDB GUI clients

2012-01-14T11:13:00.002-06:00

Below is a list of GUI clients for MongoDB that I have discovered. I haven't had a change to try them all out, so I plan to update this post when I develop some opinions on them.

MongoExplorer

Database Master

Vagrant, VirtualBox, and a day wasted

2011-10-25T21:30:00.001-05:00

I love Vagrant. I have about 10 instances that I use for my work. About six months ago I moved closer to family. This put me about 45 miles from work. The only reason I moved, commuter rail. So I work on rail. I have 4G, but it is spotty at best. This makes having a local VM a huge boon.

So I recently updated to Lion on my MacBook. Along with this updated I updated VirtualBox to 4.1.4. Today I'm creating a Vagrant instance and during Chef provisioning, my machine hard locks. Nothing responds. Soon the fan kick up and I'm afraid my lappytap will either explode, or take off.

After digging around I find the the process `kernel_task` is using 106% cpu. After some searching online I discover I'm not the only one with this problem. I found a post explaining that we running Ubuntu on a VirtualBox guest in Lion, during the unpack stage it can run wild and kill the kernel.

I poke, I prod. I eventually figure out the issue might be that the virtualbox additions in my VM are for VirtualBox 4.0.4, and version behind. So, off I go to update the additions.

I think, "great, all should be good now". Nope.

Now Vagrant won't provision. Seems that there is an incompatibility with how Vagrant shares folders with the 4.1.4 guest additions. I learned this after three hours of poking around. The most important of these is the Chef cookbooks. Well, that explains the CookbooksNotFound error.

I do notice that my folder shares that are set to nfs => true are still working. Ah ha! I just have to set all the shares to use nfs. I check the documentation, nothing. I ask on IRC, nothing.

A quick aside: Every time I've looked for support on the Vagrant channel on IRC, I've been left hanging. The project has a real issue with there not being enough experts answering questions on the IRC channel. I think it's a symptom of explosive growth. Too many amateurs, not enough pros.

Anywho. I fork the Vagrant repo on Github. Dig in the code thinking that I'll set the nfs flag wherever it's creating the share for the cookbooks. Digging I find that lo and behold a setting exists. Nine hour of work. My solution:

config.vm.provision :chef_solo do |chef|
    chef.cookbooks_path = [:host, "cookbooks"]
    chef.add_recipe "git"
    chef.add_recipe "python"
    chef.nfs = true
  end

chef.nfs = true

Emacs

2008-06-08T23:18:00.001-05:00

"Your first time using emacs you'll just cadge someone's .emacs file and pray you never have to understand all those parentheses. But you'll have to, before you can witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational text editor."

Breaking out the Django Tests

2008-04-29T15:33:00.000-05:00

So I'm using Django at work, and I'm finally getting into this testing thing. My biggest annoyance with django's way of testing is that it forces you to put your tests in either app_dir/tests.py or app_dir/models.py What I want to do is to either break out the tests into files in the test directory, or wherever I want.

Django uses python's unittest framework. Digging through django's code, I see that It basically imports the app.tests module and runs the unittests loadTestsFromModule. Inspecting this code shows us,

def loadTestsFromModule(self, module):
"""Return a suite of all tests cases contained in the given module"""
tests = []
for name in dir(module):
obj = getattr(module, name)
if (isinstance(obj, (type, types.ClassType)) and
issubclass(obj, TestCase)):
tests.append(self.loadTestsFromTestCase(obj))
return self.suiteClass(tests)

As you can see it looks for any names the module has defined. So I can put my tests in the test module and in __init__.py do import file_name.class_name to make django find my tests

The mistake of clean install perception in Linux

2008-03-30T10:16:00.000-05:00

From here

The day where I can recommend that my father use Linux (without the fear of him calling me on a daily basis to fix things) is the day I’ll proclaim the “year of the Linux desktop” has arrived.

Sorry, but that day was three years ago. I've had Ubuntu running on a machine where novice computer users connect to the internet to do work for a very long time. After the initial setup, not one of them has had an issue.

I spent years installing the maintaining Windows machines. Without the initial setup, they are much more likely to be missing the required software for daily use, the required drivers to take advantage of their hardware.

The difference is that people are used to installing and setting up their windows machines. They know that they will need driver x,y, and z along with software suite a and b.

Most of the time there will be maybe a single issue on Ubuntu that will need fixing by a first time installer.

The amount of universal direct out of box compatibility and feature set expected out of Linux is unreasonable, plain and simple. Just like any other OS (yes, even OS X), it will need setup by an OEM or a technician to be a 100% smooth experience.

X-Files returns

2008-03-30T10:03:00.000-05:00

Maybe I'm atypical of my friends out there, but my mother raised me on X-Files. So today I was really pleased to hear that they are making a final movie, supposedly to tie it up. If you watched X-Files, you know that they let it drag out way too long. It's one of the main reason's that show now limit themselves to typically five seasons from the get-go.

There is much more information here. Including some tidbits of info on producing and directing the series.

Xen on Gutsy

2008-03-19T15:31:00.001-05:00

My installation of Xen on Gutsy went well as far as getting the host(server) up and running. I had an issue when it came to getting my guest(image) running under Xen.

Xen has a few strange things about it, the first being that it uses terminology that I'm not familiar with and is no where explained. Example: "Provision VM" Which I eventually found to be configuring a virtual machine.

Xen also doesn't just emulate the metal. It boots off a kernel from your host's file system. If you build a guest by hand then you need to bootstrap it with a distro of your choice.

My guest would always boot through the kernel, but never init. After messing around for a while I came across this. Seems like there is a bug in the Gutsy Xen-tools configs.

Finally, a bit of my frustration with Xen was not with itself, but with the third party gui setup and management tools. Xenman, Virt-manager, and Enomalism all had show stopping bugs that I'm sure could be fixed if I really tried, but that's not the point.

Over all, the core suite of Xen is very good. With some better intro documentation, and some mature attach on tools, it could be great.

Update: I may not have made it clear, but the guest OS was gutsy also, which is what requred the hooks in Xen-tools to boot.

PHP issues. Part 1.

2008-01-29T16:24:00.001-06:00

Some of you out there know that I hate php withh a vengeance. Why? Well, as I come across them in my work, I'll show you my problems with php. This is the first part. Expect many.

usort:

Usort has a special place in my heart. It's very useful, but like most things in the hack that is php, it's got issues. The first is that it modifies the array by reference. While this is fine, you can never really tell in php if a function operates on something by reference, or if it returns a copy of the array. The second, why is it that types in php aren't objects. In my mind, it makes much more sense to do things like $a.sort() or $a.length(). Making these separate functions is antiquated in my eyes.

The final, and most important. If I want to pass an object member to usort to use as the comparison function, I have to pass it as array("objectName", "memberFunctionName"). Eh? Did I also forget to say that if that object and member don't exist, it fails silently? (if you turn on some level or warnings, it will throw one, but your comparison function being non-existent should really be an error, and not some level or warning)

Php is full of little things like this.

Take that

2007-11-27T01:50:00.001-06:00

For years I've been saying what in the linked article. People, for all intents and purposes, called me a kook. Now I have the help of the NY Times to back me up a bit. Take that! :)

Liberty Dollar

2007-11-16T16:16:00.001-06:00

I'm usually a pretty hard person to anger, but today something pushed me. I've got confirmation that the FBI and Homeland Security raided the Liberty Dollar offices and their mint and took everything. While there is a little teeny chance that the guy running the Liberty Dollar operation actually is committing "mail fraud" and other such things, I doubt that is the case. I think it's more likely that the dollar is tanking and the mint doesn't want there to be an exit strategy.

Remember that a government employees job is to ensure a job for himself. With the way the government has been run in the last 6 years, then I don't believe it's very far fetched to believe this to be true. This is a note to those out there I'm sure will think I'm just a kook, if you think that Bush lied about WMDs, and all that Jazz from the Administration, then it's not far fetched that they'd use a few FBI agents to throw their weight around.

This is very scary to me, and one of many things happening lately as we slowly slip into a police state. I think that electing a Democrat in November isn't going to change it either. I think any "politician" will just grab the power taken by Bush and company and run with it. It's a sad sad time. I know it's not the first time it's happened, I just hope it reverses.

Eric4 on ubuntu

2007-11-08T12:04:00.001-06:00

I came across a python development tool called eric. Eric3 is in the gutsy repo, but not eric4. If I'm gonna judge something, I should judge the latest.

Building eric4 is a little bit of a headache, mostly because Ubuntu doesn't have qscintilla2 in the repo. After digging around, I found that the debian .debs here will work just fine to fullfill the dependancies.

Writers on Strike

2007-11-06T00:14:00.001-06:00

I heard on the radio that writers on strike make an average of $200k. If this is the case, then they can suck it. To find out, I went looking and found this thread on newsarama.com

Okay, a lot of numbers have been bandied about lately regarding the average salary of WGA members. Here are 2 figures I've seen (sources noted)...

Quote:

Originally Posted by LATimes.com

Burbank

Jay Leno pulled up to NBC's West Coast headquarters on Bob Hope Drive
atop his Harley, wearing a black leather jacket and blue jeans. He took
off his helmet and delivered three boxes of Krispy Kreme doughnuts.
"This is writers' food. See the bodies of these people. They don't get
that way eating tofu," he said.

Leno milled about with the 50 or so writers carrying picket signs.
"We're not on tonight," he told the picketers of his show. "I don't
know what were going to do. I don't know how long it is going to last.
We will see what happens."

When NBC's funnyman was surrounded by reporters, he said that he was backing the writers.

"I've been working with these people for 20 years. Without them I'm not funny. I'm a dead man without them. There
a lot of misconceptions about how much these people make. Most of them
are not highly paid. Some are, but the average make about 30 grand a
year. I'm out here to support the writers. I'm on the writers' side."

Quote:

Originally Posted by ABC7.com

Studios maintain that writers are getting a fair share of the revenues from television shows and movies. The average writer makes $200,000-per-year.

So, where can we find out the actual numbers? Is there an impartial
source that can give us the median salary the average Hollywood writer
makes?

I hope this helps you decide what side you're on. Of course, if you even want to pick one. ;-)

Ajax Frameworks

2007-10-29T12:33:00.001-05:00

So, I'm finally able to start looking into Ajax frameworks. It's about time, and maybe right on time. Until now I haven't been able to use javascript in my projects. While this was a help for a good while, it's become a burden as UIs evolved and our webapps do not.

For about two days I've been browsing and looking for suggestions for frameworks. I've come down to two, Mochikit and Dojo. From what I understand Mochikit is more Python like, with better docs and testing, while Dojo is more complete and mature, but lacking some docs and less light than Mochikit. Mochikit can work with Dojo and vice versa. Dojo also has the advantage of having some big names behind it. In a year I don't want to come back to a framework just to see that it's dead and not able to provide the guidance needed to add feature x and fix y.

So what is your experience with frameworks?

My poor pump

2007-10-18T11:40:00.001-05:00

Came out this morning to find that someone stole the pump off my bike. What's strange is that they took nothing else. It's pretty easy to take off the lights, the bag, etc. They didn't, just the pump. They also decided to cover my bike back up before leaving it. I have the strange feeling that one of my neighbors in the building "borrowed" my pump.

To Tow a Fat Boy

2007-09-28T00:58:00.000-05:00

Earlier this week you may have read about my chain bending (cezar.livejournal.com), well, tonight on the way home it broke. How to get home? This video will help with the answer.

Credit Card

2007-09-19T20:57:00.001-05:00

My old Linux fund card will be coming to an end sometime in the future, so I have a few choices. One, should I get the new Linux Fund card from US Bank? Are they a reputable bank and won't find a way to screw me? Two, should I get a credit card from my credit union? They've always been good to me, but other than that I don't have a reason. Three, should I go find a rewards card or something to replace my beloved penguin?

Microsoft, ISO, and corruption

2007-09-11T08:25:00.003-05:00

Someone asked me "Why do so many people had a problem with Microsoft?" After negating the crappy software argument (not the it isn't crappy software, but that's no reason for the extreme hatred seen), I tried to express the idea that Microsoft strong-arms other organizations. I had a difficult time with this, until today, when I found this open letter to the ISO which explains a current situation nicely.

Behold

2007-09-07T16:12:00.000-05:00

My new idea!

My Personal Blog

2007-08-08T18:35:00.000-05:00

I wanted to let those of you out there interested in what's going on with me personally can go to http://cezar.livejournal.com/

That's my personal blog.

When?

2007-08-06T23:10:00.000-05:00

In a quick, and very superficial discussion, last night the question came to my head, "What would have to happen for Anarchy to be possible?" To clarify my stance, I don't believe that Anarchism is possible yet. I think as a race, humankind has a bit to evolve until Anarchy is feasible. How far off is this? I think it's at least 50 years, if not a few centuries.

The first thing that needs to happen is the humans become more rational. Irrational emotional responses is one of the main reasons we have hierarchical systems in place to create a buffer between the rational and irrational.

The second, and along the same lines, is the individual people must learn to negate fear and stand up for themselves. This is another reason why government exists, at least modern government, to protect the unnamed masses against those that are too smart.

Of course each of these has some problems, mainly being that those at the upper echelons of the hierarchy must be rational, and their intent must be to protect. This is why I believe that government must be as decentralized and as bureaucratically independent as possible. This allows a "bad apple" to affect the least amount of lives as possible.

In the mean-time, the short-term goal of the governmental tool is to use as much empiricism as possible to achieve the above stated goals. Science should be the driving rule and method of government. If a program doesn't work, then it should be tossed or changed. Studies should be conducted.

Take our little current spout on Universal Health care. America argues about "shoulds" and "problems", but no one put together a study on the programs of other countries. If the issue is too large for a study to be performed, then the issue is too big to be addressed by politicians.

Back Home

2007-08-02T18:55:00.000-05:00

I'm back home again. My mom is in the hospital because the cancer has moved into her brain. They have the swelling retarded. It'll never stop though. She's in Fairmont, I wish she'd let us move her to Morgantown, which has a much better hospital, but she's stubborn.

Anywho, the place has wifi. Now, I post on livejournal too (http://cezar.livejournal.com), so I was gonna update this. I find that they filter out livejournal and the first 3 or 4 pages of results on google for "proxy".

My immediate response is to tunnel into my work machine. I then learn that ssh can setup a socks server when you connect. Check out this site.

New Bike

2007-07-22T23:09:00.001-05:00

It's been an eventful weekend, most of it today. Today I went to Working Bikes at 11am. Kevin told me that was the time I should show up. What he didn't tell me was that they opened at Noon. So I waited. I decided to get some lunch. Now somehow the guy at Pizza Hut express misunderstood "a cheese personal pan pizza" to mean two cheese pizza combos with drinks.

Anyhow. I walked back to Working Bikes and the dood opened the place up. Now here is where some background is warranted. I originally went to Working Bikes a week ago. I needed a strong bike to hold me till I loose some weight. He told me to go to Rapid Transit and talk to Sam about getting some wheels made. I did so. Turns out that the wheels I want come to $450 after they are constructed. That's fine, because they are supposed to last 10 years of heavy ridding.

Ok, back to story. He points out a bike that he thinks will work for me. An older mountain bike, tough. So I buy it ($80). And a bike lock ($30) I ride it around with Kevin and come home. I'm very excited about this. Dan and I go to Rapid Transit to get a new seat (the one on it is small and hard). We spend two hours there talking to the manager about different bike things. At one point she said to Dan, "Here, let me show you positions" (for a bike lock). I bust out in a laugh. I get the bike seat ($45) and the cable for the lock for extra length ($15).

Ok, so now I need a helmet. My head is too fat for a helmet from their. So they send me to Kozy's, a bike shop. They don't have it, but another Kozy's does. Dan and I road up to Addison and Halstead. There I find my helmet. ($45). I also find an extra gel pad for my seat ($30).

In the end, I ride ten miles on my new bike. My ass hurts. I've also found that bikes are expensive, all in all it should cost me $700 dollars for this bike.

Edit: As Kevin points out in the comments, I got a chance to nerd out. The guys at Working bikes play magic and I got to talk about it with them a bit. Maybe I'll even call up and setup a game.

iPython

2007-07-18T12:45:00.000-05:00

I recently got a chance to sit down and look at the features available in iPython. iPython is an extended python shell. When they say extended, they really mean it. Some notable features include (note: shamelessly ripped from the iPython site):

Dynamic object introspection. One can access docstrings, function definition prototypes, source code, source files and other details of any object accessible to the interpreter with a single keystroke ('?').
Tab Completions
Numbered input/output prompts with command history (persistent across sessions and tied to each profile), full searching in this history and caching of all input and output.
User-extensible 'magic' commands. A set of commands prefixed with % is available for controlling IPython itself and provides directory control, namespace information and many aliases to common system shell commands.
Alias facility for defining your own system aliases.
Complete system shell access. Lines starting with ! are passed directly to the system shell, and using !! captures shell output into python variables for further use.
Background execution of Python commands in a separate thread. On a grid if you want.
The ability to expand python variables when calling the system shell.
Filesystem navigation, via a magic %cd command, along with a persistent bookmark system (using %bookmark) for fast access to frequently visited directories.
Automatic indentation (optional) of code as you type (through the readline library).
Macro system for quickly re-executing multiple lines of previous input with a single name.
Session logging (you can then later use these logs as code in your programs).
Session restoring: logs can be replayed to restore a previous session to the state where you left it.
Verbose and colored exception traceback printouts. Easier to parse visually, and in verbose mode they produce a lot of useful debugging information (basically a terminal version of the cgitb module).
Auto-parentheses: callable objects can be executed without parentheses: 'sin 3' is automatically converted to 'sin(3)'.
Auto-quoting: using ',' as the first character forces auto-quoting of the rest of the line: 'my_function a b' automatically becomes 'my_function("a","b")'.
Extensible input syntax. You can define filters that pre-process user input to simplify input in special situations. This allows, for example, pasting multi-line code fragments which start with '>>>' or '...' such as those from other python sessions or the standard Python documentation.
Flexible configuration system. It uses a configuration file which allows permanent setting of all command-line options, module loading, code and file execution. The system allows recursive file inclusion, so you can have a base file with defaults and layers which load other customizations for particular projects.
Embeddable. You can call IPython as a python shell inside your own python programs. This can be used both for debugging code or for providing interactive abilities to your programs with knowledge about the local namespaces (very useful in debugging and data analysis situations).
Easy debugger access. You can set IPython to call up the Python debugger (pdb) every time there is an uncaught exception. This drops you inside the code which triggered the exception with all the data live and it is possible to navigate the stack to rapidly isolate the source of a bug. The %run magic command -with the -d option- can run any script under pdb's control, automatically setting initial breakpoints for you.
Profiler support. You can run single statements (similar to profile.run()) or complete programs under the profiler's control. While this is possible with the standard profile module, IPython wraps this functionality with magic commands (see '%prun' and '%run -p') convenient for rapid interactive work.

This this is god's gift to python programmers. It really comes off as being a _python shell_, in the same way that bash is a bash scripting shell. It almost seems possible to replace bash with iPython. I'll keep everyone abreast of my iPython adventures.

My biggest problem with Universal Health Care

2007-07-06T15:32:00.000-05:00

A bread analogy. I come to you for bread.
I say, "How much".
You say, "$500".
I say, "I can't afford that! We should have a government program".

No one says, "Why the hell does the bread cost $500?"

Edit: We should have a government program. Why you ask? Because I can die because I don't have $500. Or it can ruin my life.

Trolling Political One-liners

2007-07-06T14:54:00.000-05:00

"Socialists are communists who have realized that the government won't procure them lattes"
"Conservatives are liberals who have paid taxes"
"Libertairans are conservatives that have been pulled over by the cops"

Your turn

Government and corporate collusion in the airline buisness

2007-07-03T17:48:00.000-05:00

Just another example of collusion.

Yet another agent in the Midwest admitted that airline personnel were deliberately and knowingly coercing people into showing government ID by saying "it's the law." According to him, the reality is that the companies are simply tired of people selling their frequent-flyer tickets. The airlines wanted to stem this practice by checking everyone's ID, but knew there would be BIG problems if they instituted this procedure as a private corporate policy. It was so much more convenient to say it was federal law and make the government the scapegoat. So this policy meets the airlines' private financial goals, and the government's goal of ever-increasing social control.

Tim responds!

2007-07-03T15:19:00.001-05:00

Flame on!

Healthcare

2007-07-03T12:19:00.000-05:00

I was going to respond to the post by Kungfooguru, but it got so long that it deserved it's own post.

I do have a real issue with the assumption that something should be a "government" service. I have this issue because I have a distrust of Hierarchies. Hierarchies include government, corporations, and any other.

The real issue is that government, like anything, can be good or bad. Unlike a private organization (private != corporation, non-profits are private, charities are private), a government becomes the _sole_ provider of a service because of it's power to be a monopoly. If the government is good, transparent, and fair, then it works out fine. When Bush is president, and corruption is rampant, then I have no where else to go for a service and must suffer under the government "program".

This does not mean I don't believe in Universal Care. I don't believe that it is something that the US government can do and not totally mess up. I think charities and non-profits, along with a reform of medicine regulation will go far to help those that are unemployed.

Even if it is all covered under "single payer", it won't make a difference is the costs to run the hospitals continues to rise. Either the government program will go bankrupt, or my insurance will go backrupt. This problem _must_ be solved before any idea of a program can come into our minds.

People have failed to show to me that a government health care system is anymore "fair" to the people. If someone dies from lack of money, or from waiting for an inefficent/corrupt government system to help them makes no difference. The person died. At least under the current one, it is possible for me to go somewhere else and get service. If there is a problem with "NHS", then I have nowhere to go. Unless I'm super-rich and can fly to another country. Which is the same difference.

Healthcare

2007-06-29T12:40:00.000-05:00

With the release of Michael Moore's "Sicko", has come the discussion of health care. My friend Dan passed on to me an article he came across on MTV online of all places.

Some interesting quotes

In the case of Canada — which Moore, like many other political activists, holds up as a utopian ideal of benevolent health-care regulation — a very different picture is conveyed by a short 2005 documentary called "Dead Meat," by Stuart Browning and Blaine Greenberg. These two filmmakers talked to a number of Canadians of a kind that Moore's movie would have you believe don't exist:

A man tells about his mother waiting two years for life-saving cancer surgery — and then twice having her surgical appointments canceled. She was still waiting when she died.

...

A man in critical need of neck surgery plays a voicemail message from a doctor he'd contacted: "As of today," she says, "it's a two-year wait-list to see me for an initial consultation."

What I read from this article and others is that health care is a limited supply commodity, and with all such things, there are shortages, under all systems. The issue then shifts from the claim that socialized health care can solve the problem, because it can't. Is it more efficient? That is the question.

New Machine

2007-06-12T00:02:00.000-05:00

UPDATE 29, June 2007: I've pretty much given up on getting a modem driver that will go beyond 14.4. I've setup a machine to share it's connection and hooked up a wifi router. I find this solution just as good and now I have wireless. 24.4 wireless, but wireless.

UPDATE: Read about my modem issues here and here

So, for a few weeks I've been playing with my new Dellbuntu. Not too many issues, but a few. I've had three issues, one minor, and two major. The first to occur was that the resolution was low. This was easily fixed by installing the package "910".

The next issue was major. After a kernel update, the package changed the boot partition from hd(0,2) to hd(0,0). This killed the system. After an edit the system rebooted fine. Dell knows about this problem and has the fix up on their forums.

The second issue is one I haven't solved yet. After a kernel update today, the modem failed. I'm assuming that the driver binary doesn't work with the new kernel (damn proprietary drivers). I booted into the previous kernel and get a dialtone, hopefully I'll be able to fix this soon.

nievity

2007-05-19T02:12:00.000-05:00

When reading the comments for this post on Reddit, the idea came to me that I should impart some advise to those that would listen. The advice is that you should be suspicious of the motives of those who may be pretending to agree with you.

The issue is that of "US government trying to seize new Michael Moore movie". Sfosparky brought they point that they situation and the article maybe contrived by those behind the movie to advertise it. The was of course responded to in a harsh manner with the idea that the movie producers would never do such a thing and the government is suspect.

I agree, with both. If one decided that big business is greedy and is profit driven, and thus "evil". Then one must also look with suspicion at any and all big business (including government).

My God! It's full of stars!

2007-05-18T13:25:00.000-05:00

When I started using Python, I assumed there would be less resources than my old PHP. I'm wrong, and I appologize for that. :-) All it took was finding the right starting point. It seems like the Python community was hiding on usenet (Google groups). This is a change in scenery for me. I'm use to the communities I've worked with being spread out over a bunch of webpages. Even with this I though that that was it. Then I came along this post. Go a bit down and you'll find a ton of links to many many pages with info on it. This is more than I ever came along with PHP. I'm quite happy.

Project Name

2007-05-15T15:35:00.000-05:00

I'm looking for a working name (code name) for a new project. It's an inventory system and I was looking into seeing if I could use the name of a famous treasury, or a LOTR one. So far, Formenos and Nargothrond have come up. Any one have any other suggestions?

I disappeared

2007-04-18T01:26:00.000-05:00

For those who do not now yet. I kinda disappeared. I'm currently home in West Virginia. My mother is suffering from cancer. I'll be back and forth between home and Chicago for a while. All you Luggers: How's the new meeting space?

Also, vim and gnu screen become much more important over a modem. I'm just learning both of them. I knew the basics of Vim for awhile and nothing about screen. If any of you have any tips, post me a comment. Thanks.

Today was a sad day

2007-03-26T01:52:00.000-05:00

Today my laptop died. I was attempting to repair a broken back light connector. During the process, something must have shorted. While the plug-in and charge light still work, I can not get the thing to power up. The poor thing is dead and I can't get it to run. :-(

I'll probably be selling the thing for parts, or to someone with the ability to repair it. It's an Emachine M2350. Not a too bad laptop, if a little on the heavy side. If anyone wants it for a reasonable price, give me a shout back, if not, I'll just throw her up on Ebay.

RIAA

2007-03-17T09:52:00.001-05:00

I've recently become fed up with the RIAA. Being an Anarchist, I find they lobbying of congress to add protectionism to their business despicable. The capitalist side of me recognizes the horrible business mistakes they are making in relation to alienating their customers with lawsuits and other signs. Another nail in the coffin was the recent decision by the Copyright Royalty Board to drive up royalties on streamed music.

From what I understand, these rates apply to compulsory licenses. Compulsory licenses allow one to play any music they like without gaining prior permission. This doesn't jive well with me, but at least it allows are somewhat, kinda, itty bitty semblance of a market in the sense that you could negotiate a different rate with prior permission, or better yet, Creative Commons licenses.

I'll be personally boycotting RIAA music, and I've found a tool to help me on this quest. It's name is RIAA Radar. Not only can you do a search and find if a cd is under the RIAA umbrella, you can see a top 100 of non-RIAA albums. You'll be surprised, there are some big names there.

The Philosophy

2007-03-14T08:48:00.001-05:00

The subject of this post is a little old. It focuses on the decision by Ubuntu to include proprietary drivers for things such as WiFi cards. The thing that irks me are those that attack Ubuntu for this decision. I understand the problem associated with the drivers. I also understand the philosophy against them. On the other hand, I understand the reason for including them.

The main reason I support Ubuntu is because it is the distribution and organization that I believe to be most likely to make an impact on the computer world. I support them because in 10 years, I don't want to forced by my situation to use Windows or something else that is totally proprietary.

Ubuntu's quality of "just working" has been the largest factor of my successes of getting people to switch over to free software. Right now, desktop linux does not have a large enough market share to push hardware vendors into having open drivers. I personally think that Ubuntu, and this decision will help towards that goal in the long run.

WiiMote Javascript Library

2007-03-12T13:27:00.001-05:00

Michael Bolin has written a JavaScript library that handles events from the WiiMote. Now this brings up the issue of what to do with it? Games are an obvious direction. It also occurred to me that some interaction could be coded into a MPD front end. Wave the mote forward, goto next song. What do you think?

Guns

2007-03-08T23:05:00.001-06:00

Kennesaw, Georgia's gun ordinance.

Math and Physics

2007-03-08T11:40:00.000-06:00

I now understand why never actually got Math and Physics, but was somehow able to pass them.

Beer Launching fridge

2007-03-08T11:39:00.000-06:00

Sounds like a Lug project to me!

Beer Launching fridge

Firebug: A gift from the gods

2007-03-08T11:29:00.001-06:00

Yesterday I decided to install Firebug. Firebug is a Firefox extension meant to aide in web development, and it exceeds all expectations in this area.

Some of the better features include:

Editing the html on the fly through a collapsible interface
Editing the css in the same manner
Showing what css has been overridden
Calculating the final css.
Showing the layout of an element using visuals.

I haven't gotten a chance to check out the JavaScript tools yet, but if they are anything close to the html and css ones, I'm in for a ride. I Highly recommend you to install this extension if you do web development.

Time wasted

2007-03-05T13:34:00.001-06:00

You ever come across something that could have saved you a ton of time if you had only thought to look for it?

Well, here's mine.

Insert on duplicate
Replace Into

Hilarious Look at the Windows 2000 Source Code

2006-10-06T12:08:00.000-05:00

Lot's of cursing. Lot's of fun. Here.

Democracy

2006-09-24T05:53:00.000-05:00

It's started to occur to me that democracy may not be the best thing. What brought this up was my obsession with digg. Digg is a "socially driven" news site. And most of the time it works for chosing stories. What it doesn't work for is the comment system. The comment system works by digging comment up and down. A positive digg rating is good, a negative bad. I've found that people will digg down comments that make reasonable points, but don't fit their view of the world.

The latest example.
- A story about "Download ever Futurama episode"

Exhibit A. A comment
- "why doesn't digg have a 'this is illegal' report box.. while the link itsself isn't, dailymotion or whoever hosts is clearly breaking the law"

Not necessarily a good idea, but not a troll or flamebait. What does it get -33 diggs.

The response. Exhibit B
- "Why dont you shut up you idiot and go kiss the MPAA ass.......you retard."
Now this is obviously not constructive at all. It's digg rating... +9 diggs.

China is better for business

2006-06-23T19:24:00.000-05:00

When the head of Intel testified in front of congress about why it would put a new plant in China instead of the US, the answer was surprising. Some would immediatly jump the conclusion that the labor is cheaper. But not so. It's taxes. To sum it up, it would cost Intel a billion extra dollars to build the plant in the US because of taxes.

China gives a new business a five year tax holiday, and then 50% taxes for another five years. With a 35% tax on profits in the US, this makes wages a small difference in comparison. And all those arguing that we need to tax corporations more, should realize that we already tax them at almost the highest level in the industrialized world.

Hypocracy

2006-06-16T14:33:00.000-05:00

Researchers at the Economic Policy Institute have determined that Wal-Mart should pay thier workers more. Which is an ok conclusion, but it's strange comming from an institute whose top five members are paid more than twice as much as the other 45. Liberal politicing, Republican politicing, all hypocracy, all the same.

Democrats do it too

2006-06-16T14:22:00.000-05:00

In the liberal state of Washington, not only is online gambling illegal, it is also now a crime to talk about it. When the boot is on your throat, you won't care wether it's the right boot, or the left boot.

Possibily of Alien Life

2006-06-02T18:06:00.000-05:00

in rain!

It's getting worse

2006-05-30T10:49:00.000-05:00

Three reports from the front this morning.

In the tried and true path of Neo-Prohibition comes this article discussing the dangers of "passive drinking".

On the school front comes a story of an arrest made to stop a school food fight at Arizona's Mountain Ridge High School. And a girl suspended at Huston Middle School for the possession of caffine.

Thinking about socialized health care?

2006-05-12T10:18:00.000-05:00

Then think again. In and of itself it's not a horrible idea, other than the economic problems of rationing care out to people, another problem much more evil shows itself. The problem of the health state. When the government pays your health costs, they also start taking a vetted interest in your health. Health care costs are a main argument in smoking bans, and have become a main argument in the regulation of what we eat. Scottland will soon be goose stepping to the tune of mandatory healthy meals in pubs.

In the UK and Canada the waits for simple procedures can be months long, if not years. Those who can afford it leave the country to get procedures here in the United States, those who can not afford it sometime resort to doing it themselves.

This page contains hundreds of stories on the problems of socialized health care in a multitude of countries.

Socialized Health Care

2006-05-11T14:23:00.000-05:00

Here is what happens when dentistry is socialized.

Qwest is my new friend

2006-05-11T14:04:00.000-05:00

In this story. It mentions that Qwest was the only major telecommunications company to refuse the request by the NSA to turn over subscriber data.

Among the big telecommunications companies, only Qwest has refused to help the NSA, the sources said. According to multiple sources, Qwest declined to participate because it was uneasy about the legal implications of handing over customer information to the government without warrants.

[...]

According to sources familiar with the events, Qwest's CEO at the time, Joe Nacchio, was deeply troubled by the NSA's assertion that Qwest didn't need a court order -- or approval under FISA -- to proceed. Adding to the tension, Qwest was unclear about who, exactly, would have access to its customers' information and how that information might be used.

Financial implications were also a concern, the sources said. Carriers that illegally divulge calling information can be subjected to heavy fines. The NSA was asking Qwest to turn over millions of records. The fines, in the aggregate, could have been substantial.

The NSA told Qwest that other government agencies, including the FBI, CIA and DEA, also might have access to the database, the sources said. As a matter of practice, the NSA regularly shares its information -- known as "product" in intelligence circles -- with other intelligence groups. Even so, Qwest's lawyers were troubled by the expansiveness of the NSA request, the sources said.

The NSA, which needed Qwest's participation to completely cover the country, pushed back hard.

Trying to put pressure on Qwest, NSA representatives pointedly told Qwest that it was the lone holdout among the big telecommunications companies. It also tried appealing to Qwest's patriotic side: In one meeting, an NSA representative suggested that Qwest's refusal to contribute to the database could compromise national security, one person recalled.

In addition, the agency suggested that Qwest's foot-dragging might affect its ability to get future classified work with the government. Like other big telecommunications companies, Qwest already had classified contracts and hoped to get more.

Unable to get comfortable with what NSA was proposing, Qwest's lawyers asked NSA to take its proposal to the FISA court. According to the sources, the agency refused.

The NSA is starting to get scary.

Effects of Meditation

2006-05-10T16:25:00.000-05:00

"Recently, Lama Ole was a subject of cutting edge scientific researches at Universities of Zurich (Switzerland) and a sleeping laboratory in Chicago, on the ways meditation influences brain activity. In the course of the experiments, Lama Ole willfully generated the dramatic curves of epilepsy, while staying completely conscious, in a state of total awareness. He is capable of achieving extremely restful mode, a characteristic of a deep sleep, in only 4 seconds (on average a person needs about ninety minutes to reach this stage). "

From here

Animal Imagination

2006-05-10T11:10:00.000-05:00

Eric Raymond has and interesting piece on what, if any, seperation of intelligence there is between mankind and animals.

The Revolution is comming

2006-05-10T00:21:00.000-05:00

This is a video of someone playing the Nintendo ~~Revolution~~ Wii.

One More Goose Step

2006-05-06T15:10:00.000-05:00

The Wallstreet Journal has an interesting analysis of Massachusetts's new universal health care law. To sum it up, it looks nice on the surface, but it will fail. The law makes any business with over 10 employees responsible for any emergency medical cost of employees and their families if the employees do not have insurance. The government has made individual insurance expensive by only allowing individuals access to HMOs and not PPOs (a much better option), and by requiring that insurance cover such things as aqupuncture, has resulted in a situation where individuals can not afford insurance. To quote the article, "...is like passing a law that the only car you can buy is a Lexus, when all you can afford is a Ford Focus."

This means that individuals will not have insurance. The law thus says, "if you have over 10 employees, you must pay the full cost of their health care". Because of other reasons I won't go into today, this cost can easily be $50,000. What is the only logical response from business owners who's amount of employees is around 10? The response is to limit you employees to 10, destroying any potential jobs, if you have less than 10 employees, or to DROP your employee count to 10, laying off people.

Once again, who can easily afford this type of regulation? That's right, big business. McDonalds Corp. can easily cover these costs while Mom & Pop food joint can't. This is just another goose step on the path to removing anything that isn't a corporation.

Oh, one more thing. Who's exempt from this law? Union Shops. Not in the union, too bad! You're lesser than them.