I realize that my entries have been sparse lately. That thing called "life" tends to get in the way some times.
Well, the gist of this is that I've been really busy. I was running around all weekend and rebuilding my local network (yet again). Saturday, I went out to a "debate" with Larry Lessig and a few others about copyright. I hesitate to call it a debate, as all participants were agreeing and there was no-one to represent "the establishment". It was a nice thing to do on Saturday night and Holly enjoyed going. Fortunately, Lessig's forehead is not as big in real life as it is in all his photos.
Earlier that day, I went into Best Buy for the monthly 10% off coupon day. I was interested in getting a digital camcorder for making home movies with iMovie, and my sights were set on a Sony. I ended up leaving with a much cheaper JVC that was better for my use anyways. I also ended up getting "Smash Brothers Melee II" to fill my current GameCube gap. I picked up "A Link to the Past" for Holly to go with the GameBoy Advance I picked up for her over Christmas. I was worried about spending so much money, but it was within my means and I ended up getting a decent deal (at least 10% off on everything I purchased).
Sunday was spent rebuilding my home network. I did a slight re-architecting earlier when I picked up the LinkSys 802.11b hub, and relocating machines to the closet -- but I decided that my "horsepower" machine should really be my server and I could liberate the laptop from the closet with an WinXP install since I only use XP for Quicken, Streets & Trips, and occasional scanning. So, I wiped out the Debian install on the laptop (201 days uptime prior to the reinstall) and I wiped XP off the desktop (Athlon 1500+ / 512 MMB RAM). I swapped operating systems and gave things a go. The laptop is working well for my purposes (XP's killer feature is Remote Desktop), and I'm starting to use the Linux box for more than simple web and e-mail serving. At the moment, I'm experimenting with ripping DVD's to DivX files to create a local video media library. Since the TV tuner is in the Linux box also, I will probably be doing some pseudo-PVR stuff pretty soon. One think that I will say about all this is that WiFi really is a great technology. The bulk of my network use is mostly 802.11b and the lack of cable clutter is great. The wired part of my network resides solely in the closet now, making things much cleaner and manageable. I can still use wired connections from the closet via 100-BT connections, but it's largely unnecessary now. I imagine that once some interesting online content comes out for the GameCube, it may also be sucked into my wireless cloud.
Work has been pretty busy. I'm doing three things at the moment. The most work is currently going into getting Oyez in a decent enough shape in the back-end that Jerry can manipulate content until his heart's content. Unfortunately, the database schema is not well thought-out, so I've been redoing bits and pieces as it goes along. Mythryn has been doing some really good stuff with the layout though. I've also been testing emerging video-conferencing technologies with Larry Amiot. We're currently trying to get a Microsoft Greenwich server up and running, so that we can test out some SIP clients. We've been successful with point-to-point connections using Session, but we're also trying to get the latest iterations of MSN/Windows Messenger working. The upside to all this is that Microsoft has been flooding us with equipment, and I've picked up a tripod, Logitech web-cam (slick on the Windows side), and a USB headset in the last two days. On the Mac side, I took in my JVC camcorder and used it as a camera via the Firewire port without any issues. Finally, I'm working with Martin Mueller again on the Chicago Homer. I imagine that I'll be spending a good portion of the rest of the month trying to move the client-side JavaScript document object model from one focused on IE4 to one that works with IE, Mozilla, and Safari. IE behaves a lot different than both Mozilla and Safari, but since Mozilla and Safari's "quirks" on the current Homer are similar, I hope that I can move to a single common JavaScript platform that works on these newer browsers. Time will tell how well that plan will fare.
Well, the first DVD rip is finished. I'm wrapping this up to see how well the process works and to go go to bed soon. Ciao.
Trackbacks
Comments
Post a commentNote that by posting a comment on this site using this form or any other software tool, you have agreed to the advertising terms of this site and you agree to submit payment for any advertising in the comment above as outlined in the advertising terms. This applies to ads posted in the URL or Comment fields above.
![XHTML](../../xhtml.png")