Thu - August 30, 2007

Vacuous Financial News

I saw this summary of financial news this morning:

 

It a good example of stupid reporting. On most days you can read reports along the lines of "stocks up/down because of X" where there isn't really any evidence presented that X has anything top do with the day's stock market changes. It's just reporters providing filler. Much like today.

Posted at 12:57 PM    

Sat - August 18, 2007

Fox in the Garden

Yesterday while mowing the back lawn, I noticed a fox watching me. It was just sitting there watching me go back and forth. I stopped and went in to grab the camera and was able to get this shot of him resting on one of our garden paths.

His coat was very sparse, unlike the usually full coats I'd expect from a fox, but the weather has been hot the last few weeks and maybe the sparse coat is to keep comfortable in the heat. As he trotted away his tail had a distinctive white tip.

Posted at 09:45 AM    

Thu - June 21, 2007

Tue - June 19, 2007

Info for Dave Winer

Dave -

First make sure both networks are setup and available on your server. It should look something like this:








Next make sure you enable Bonjour for the AFP server:




This is from Apple docs <http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=ServerAdmin/10.4/en/c3fs2.html> 

Server Admin 10.4 Help

Configuring AFP Service General Settings

You use the General pane of AFP service settings to enable automatic startup, enable browsing with Network Service Location or AppleTalk, and create a login greeting for your users.

1. Open Server Admin and select AFP in the Computers & Services list.

2. Click Settings, then click General.

3. To advertise the AFP share point using both Network Service Location (NSL) and Bonjour, select "Enable Bonjour registration."

4. This option lets clients browse for the share point using the Mac OS X "Connect to Server" command or the Mac OS 9 Network Browser.


Another things to check is that you are actually sharing a volume. You do this from the Workgroup Manager:






And also, here's a rough diagram of the network I work with at home:



Any WiFi enabled machine can easily switch between the two networks (portables and iMacs).

Hope this helps

Posted at 04:15 PM    

Sun - April 15, 2007

Wild Turkeys

As I was leaving for a short business trip Monday morning, what did I see out the back office window? Yes, a small flock of wild turkeys moving through our back yard.

I'd seen wild turkeys roaming Rancho San Antonio in Cupertino, California, in Pennsylvania, and even here in Ohio to our east, but never here in Delaware county. I'd read that they were common east of Columbus and over the last few years had been spreading westward. But I'd never seen them in Delaware county, until now.

Wild turkeys had finally found their way into my back yard.

I wasn't certain they were turkeys at first. We have a heathy population of turkey vultures around here and just this past Easter Sunday I briefly mistook a few turkey vultures along the side of the road for turkeys - I realized they were vultures when I noticed the road kill they were feeding on. Still, the two types of "turkey" birds do have a passing resemblance. But the fowl I saw out my office window were scratching at the ground, not looking for dead critters.

Eventually I saw five bird slowing moving across the back woods. I took a couple of photos of them hoping to have something clear enough to identify them. The photo above, shot thought a screened window, was the clearest of the bunch. Not real clear, but it's pretty obvious those were turkeys.

I look forward to seeing them come for another visit back soon.

Posted at 04:21 PM    

Sat - March 31, 2007

Apple TV

We got a new toy last week. A new Apple TV. It has taken its place atop the TiVo.

It was trivial to hook up. I used an HDMI to DVI cable along with a standard audio cable to connect it to our TV. Then, rather than use it's built-in WiFi, I plugged it into an ethernet hub so it would share the ethernet connection our Series 2 TiVo already uses. That's it. Soon it was syncing with my Macintosh, pulling down music, video and photographs.



So far I've been viewing video podcasts (Rocketboom, National Geographic Shorts, and Hot Air are three good ones). I also enjoyed viewing our photo collection on the TV. I've ripped a couple of DVDs we own which works just fine too. And finally, one of these days, I might even buy a movie from the iTunes store.

Oh, I also have ambitions to move our old camcorder videos on to it as well so we can easily watch them whenever.

Posted at 07:14 PM    

Mon - February 26, 2007

Ethernet home wiring work

When our house was built, we had it wired for telephone, cable television, and ethernet connections in almost every room. That's proven to be very useful, although in hindsight the couple of rooms that we're completely wired should have been.

One room that is completely wired is our family room. There is a handy Rj-45 ethernet jack right next to our entertainment armoire. When we got our Series 2 TiVo I plugged it in (it gets it's directory information over the internet) but it didn't work.

Later, I picked up a ethernet cable tester and it dutifully reported that one of the pairs of wires in the cable didn't have connectivity. This meant that either (1) the cable running through the walls had a break in it (2) the jack in the family room was broken (3) the connector down in the basement was broken. I was really hoping it wasn't the wiring, since I'd have to figure out how to pull cables through the wall.

Pulling cables sounded rather daunting. On the other hand, I had never attached connectors to ethernet cables either. I have done wiring projects before (I even wired up a few homemade/homedesigned computers back in college) so I set out to learn how to make ethernet cables.

The first step was to pick up some tools (most home improvement projects are ultimately just excuses to buy new tools). Attaching male connectors to ethernet cables requires a "crimping tool" and attaching receptacles requires a punch down tool. So I picked up the tool bundle shown below at CompUSA.



I sacrificed a couple of old ethernet cables and rebuilt them to get the hang of things, then tackled the problem cable running to the family room. The first step was to replaced the male connector down in the basement. The tester showed no improvement. Then I rewired the existing receptacle in the family room, still no improvement. My last hope before facing pulling wires was to replace the receptacle with a new one and wire it to the cable.

And that worked!

Now the TiVo is connected to the wired network in the house (before I was getting by using an old USB to WiFi (802.11b) adapter). More importantly, it's all set to use the fast wired network when we get an Apple TV when that comes out.

Posted at 09:28 AM    

Sun - February 4, 2007

Cable Modem Upgrade

Ever since Insight/Roadrunner upgraded our cable modem speed a few months ago, I've been having a problem downloading large files from work. In normal internet use there wasn't any problem, but for the work I do I need to download a very large file every now and then.

The file is over 6 GB in size and takes a few hours to download over the VPN connection to work. The trouble was that after about an hour of downloading the file, the cable mode would just lock up - hard. It needed to be physically reset to start working again.

I sent Roadrunner tech support some information about the problem. After a little back and forth where I explain that no, it wasn't really my fault that the downloads always failed, they decided I needed a new cable modem.

Our original Roadrunner cable modem service came a Surfboard 3100 cable modem. Apparently, while that modem could handle normal use at the higher speeds, it just couldn't handle sustained full speed traffic. Insight traded the old 3100 for a shiny new Surfboard 5101.

The SB 5101 fixed the problem. I was able to download the giant disk image without any problems. The new modem is slightly faster too. We're getting closer to the rated 5 Mbps speed than before (roughly 10% faster - about 4.6 Mbps vs about 4.1 Mbps) - a welcome side benefit.

Posted at 10:47 AM    

Fri - January 12, 2007

Mon - January 1, 2007

New Mac Pro uses a lot less power

For the last couple of years I've been toiling away on a PowerMac G5 as my main work computer. It was a sweet machine in its day, with its dual 2.5 GHz G5 processors and 2.5 GB of RAM, it was a pleasure to work with.

But as time passed, what was a fast and shiny computer became a dated and relatively slow and clunky computer.

Last month I upgraded to new Mac Pro . It's a sweet machine with its two dual core Xeon processors (four CPUs) and is a pleasure to work with.

Besides the speed advantages the new machine has (and they are welcome!), it turns out the new Mac Pro uses a lot less electricity than the old G5. LOTS LESS. Almost 25% less when it's working hard.

I recently purchased a handy device, the Kill A Watt, that measures the power use of any electrical device. You just plug in the device and the Kill A Watt displays the watts the device is using (among other options). I used it to make my measurements here.

It turns out the PowerMac G5 uses about 190 watts when it's just sitting around idling, while the Mac Pro Xeon uses about 170 watts. When working (building software using all processors), the MacPro G5 uses up to 320 watts, while the Mac Pro Xeon tops out at around 240 watts.

This generates a lot less heat in my office and the fans run a lot less. A nice improvement.

Posted at 04:14 PM