home server

Disk failures (Dec23) which led to a new disk, and rebuild. Ongoing . . . → Read More: 6 weeks of computer hell … so far]]> So, dear reader[12], you may have noticed that it’s been a month since the last update in my $HOME rebuild, and may be wondering what’s going on. I have had ongoing issues, so here is the summary, broken down per-machine…

home server

Disk failures (Dec23) which led to a new disk, and rebuild. Ongoing issues led to cannibalisation of my home desktop to provide parts (case/mobo/cpu/ram) and reinstall the server from scratch. I still am getting issues if I push the drives too hard, but is now usable for my home server use.

home desktop

…was cannibalised for the server, and so I started using my iMac for desktop use…

iMac

Stopped returning from sleep mode reliably (would instead power up all fans to max without giving me monitor) for a few days before then failing to power up properly at all. (no power chime, disk activity or monitor,  but I’d get the power LED pulsing, and after a minute or so, fans at full speed…

so I decided it was time to build a new desktop!

new home desktop

Using the case from the server, I bought a new mobo/cpu/ram/SSD HD combo. However, the mobo does not recognise my PCI-E video card (power to the PCI-E slot on a microATX?) … so until that is resolved a little better, it’s sitting awaiting attention.

I can, in theory, use the onboard video, but then I have a shiny external card (with its own RAM) that goes unused…

iPhones

Yeah, seriously, my phone(s) gets to play too.

Vodafone offered me a new phone at a great deal, and I accepted. They sent it through along with the new SIM it needs. I got it, but the SIM wasn’t in the package. I went to the vodafone shop, and they gave me a new SIM and activated it for me… uh oh

This made my old phone not work, and I’m not wanting to use the new phone till I can backup the current state of the old phone, and then restore it to the new one. But I can’t do that, because iMac.

Technically, the new phone works and gets on the network – and I could start using it.

…But I suspect that if I do that (eg, receive SMSs), then I have a discontinuity of use between the old one and the new one that will cause issues later on. ie, when I eventually backup the old and restore it to the new, then I’ll lose any history in my ‘new’ use. I’d rather a clean changeover (and I do not want to use “someone else’s computer” (aka: iCloud) for this), so until I have a functioning and up-to-date iTunes, I can’t use my new phone, and the activated SIM means I can’t use my old phone either…

Powerbook G4

So, I pull out my old Powerbook G4, which has a broken Ubuntu install on it. One OSX disk later, and it’s back to a clean Tiger install. But research suggests that for the iPhone 4s, I need the latest iTunes, and that it will only run on Leopard. Leopard will run on the G4, I just need a install disk. The one I have wasn’t liked by the Powerbook’s combo drive (as I recall), but I decide to test it anyway…

Putting the disk into the drive = system crash!

The disk didn’t even spin up before the system crashed totally, and now nothing will eject the disk (not even open firmware), and the system profiler says that I no longer have an optical drive attached (maybe something in hardware died, and that would explain the crash)

So…

tl;dr

• server: been rebuilt, is OK if I don’t stress the filesystems…
• linux desktop: been rebuilt, I can proceed forward if I use the onboard video… and if nothing else goes wrong…
• iMac desktop: power issues of some form, so goodbye iTunes there…
• iPhone 3Gs: old one has a deactivated SIM, but I can’t back it up without iTunes somewhere…
• iPhone 4s: works, but I’m unwilling to start using it until I can restore contacts, SMS, etc, from the old one, and so have a clean changeover.
• Powerbook laptop: optical drive failure, so cannot get a Leopard install to get iTunes…

PS: I had a windows desktop machine too… it blew a power supply a couple of months ago, so hasn’t been included in this 6 weeks of hell summary

Next step?

Well, I have been saying for a while that I need a new media center/HTPC, and I wasn’t thinking about building up something from scratch… sometime later this year.  I’ve also thought for a while that for my occasional Mac usage, moving to an Intel Mac was likely to happen, though I’d not seen any great need as yet. But now I’m toying with the idea of killing two birds with one stone, and buying a mac mini. It’ll run xmbc/boxee, and also solve my iTunes dilemma. It wont be a third monitor in my computer room any more, but I guess I can deal with that…

[12] deliberately non-plural

The first thing to do with a new clean (empty) $HOME, is to populate it with my actual files. Not the configuration cruft that is of concern, but my actual “stuff”.

For my own use, these consist of a variety of directories that are a mix of . . . → Read More: new $HOME day 1: restoring my files]]> rebuilding $HOME: Days 1 and 2

The first thing to do with a new clean (empty) $HOME, is to populate it with my actual files. Not the configuration cruft that is of concern, but my actual “stuff”.

For my own use, these consist of a variety of directories that are a mix of traditional unix system style directory names (eg: etc, lib, var, bin, public_html, Maildir, sin (for tempting tmp files) – with expected purposes, and more modern GUI styled names (eg: Photos, Videos, Public, Desktop), as well as a few of my own naming (verb, ketchup (for sauce src files )

Restoring these has largely been a matter of a paranoid comparison between my old recovered $HOME and the last nightly backup (I now have many ~/*/.md5sums files!)

In many cases both versions of a directory were the same, so restore was easy. In a few cases, they were different and a series of `diff -r` between the backup and recovered directories clarified that the changes were only new files, not the corruption of old ones.

Without too much difficulty, some 218 of the 221gig of my original $HOME was restored.

Regarding dotfiles… I moved a few over quickly – .ssh .cliverc and .tmux.conf for example (the latter two moving into ~/etc with symlinks), and a few others were created in opening usages (.selected_editor, .lesshst, .cache

Once I start using a GUI again, the dotfile population will explode. I hope I have a greater measure of sanity before then.

Coming soon: shell and email configurations…

But I think it’s wrong. I’m not a fan of chrome, basically. This is how I see them…

Specifically, jpegtran can (with . . . → Read More: Multi quality JPEG hack]]> tl;dr: In which I attempt to montage jpeg which comprises areas of differing internal jpeg quality, for fun and, er… artistic geeky interest.
You see, once upon a time, I was thinking about lossless jpeg editing. The sort that jpegtran can do.

jpegtran (1)         - lossless transformation of JPEG files

Specifically, jpegtran can (with some understandable limits) rotate/flip and mirror losslessly, and also crop – for values of “lossless” that only apply to the cropped image data.

I soon got to wondering if the reverse could also be true. If jpeg image data can be cropped losslessly; then it must not rely on surrounding data and so surely paste is equally possible.

I researched some and found… http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/formats/#jpg_lossless. If you scroll down to the ‘Mixed JPEG Quality’ section it’s suggested:

* use jpegtran to merge the q60 on top of the q100

“So”, I thinks to myself, “…jpegtran can do that, huh?”

Turns out that it can’t. Not the version currently in Debian anyway.

…But an experimental version can. See the version that the chaps have here: http://jpegclub.org/jpegtran/

Only the original 1600x1024 is a true quality hybrid

The information on that page indicates to me that the ‘drop’ option has been experimental since 2000 at least… and I wonder why it’s not mainstream then. But, let’s take a look anyway. There are helpful binaries and a sample script provided, but I had something a bit more fun in mind.

One download later, and some fiddling around… and here is this! IMAG KWALITEE for all!

Counting from the bottom where it’s most evident, the rows of 80 pixels high each are of quality 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 15, 20, 50, and the final 144 pixels at the top are original (ie, camera sourced jpeg with text composited in and saved at quality 100).

The resulting image is 153k in size. In this example, a normal save of the source (captioned) image at a quality of 72 results in an image of equivalent size.

Speaking of size, since the cropped rows exist as images on their own, I can also see how much space each quality section uses.  So the q1 row (80pixels high – or about 8% of the final image) is just a tad over 3k in size – that is, about 2% of the bytes, and even the quality 50 stripe is only 8k – 5.5% of the bytes. However, the q100 stripe at the top – 144 pixels comprising 14% of the pixel space, and is a whopping 66% of the bytes!

In another example image, I discovered that you cannot drop a colour segment onto a greyscale image (but you CAN drop a greyscale segment onto a colour image, and then subsequently drop a colour segment within the greyscale. The resulting possum is shown, but I wont go into the making-of here.

Additional notes

In creating this, I found a few caveats…

This tree is terrible! It has a monotone border bits AND bad compression

• Make sure the crops and drops are aligned on the jpeg iMCU boundaries, or headaches ensue since the crop size will be silently altered in position (as, I think, is the drop). I made all my changes on the boundary of 16×16 blocks, though 8×8 is also possible (I believe this may depend on the jpeg)
• I had to set the caption text to a light grey after I found that pure white would cause jpeg errors when dropping (DCT coefficient out of range). I don’t know if this is a bug, or just a limitation in what’s possible due to jpeg encoding.
• A colour jpeg loses it’s colour when dropped onto a greyscale jpeg. Specifically:
  1. crop ‘cropped.jpg’ from colour source.jpg
  2. also create greyscale.jpg from source.jpg
  3. drop ‘cropped.jpg’ back onto the original location within greyscale.jpg to create merged.jpg
  4. merged.jpg is not a grey-with-colour-segment jpeg, but is all grey. in fact, it’s so grey that merged.jpg and greyscale.jpg are binary identical!
  • note: tested just once :)
• real-world practical applications of this? http://www.photopla.net/wwp0703/stripes.php …that’s probably about it. Any stylistic effect from this is likely achievable with less effort via a standard photo editor (The GIMP, etc) with the cost of a few % in filesize when saving at a high enough quality to ensure actual jpeg artifacts don’t spoil the effect.

This page is derived from my wiki notes on the subject, which include additional information/updates for the inquisitive.

See: http://wiki.thorx.net/wiki/JPEGhack

<QuantumNinja> if I ever decide to start a queer core band I am making sure to do a tour entirely in katters district <Screwtape> In *both* pubs! * Screwtape wonders what kind of core “queer core” is. * Screwtape checks: grep ‘ard$’ /usr/share/dict/words | sed -e ‘s/$/core/’ | . . . → Read More: getting to the core of the matter]]> Sometimes lazy bloggers just quote IRC…

<QuantumNinja> if I ever decide to start a queer core band I am making sure to do a tour entirely in katters district
<Screwtape> In *both* pubs!
* Screwtape wonders what kind of core “queer core” is.
* Screwtape checks: grep ‘ard$’ /usr/share/dict/words | sed -e ‘s/$/core/’ | less
<Screwtape> “fuseboardcore” <– high-voltage electronica
<nemo> Blackbeardcore  <– what’s inside the dread pirates…
<Screwtape> “guardcore” <– music for prisons
<nemo> Howardcore  <– for Liberals
<nemo> Julliardcore   <– for modern Liberals who hate Julia
<Screwtape> “Hansardcore” <– filled with samples from your favourite politicians
<Screwtape> “beardcore” <– ZZ Top
<nemo> Shepardcore   <– it’s what the SHEEPLE listen to
<nemo> Wardcore   <– hospital music
<Screwtape> “lanyardcore” <– Where *everybody* gets a backstage pass.
<nemo> churchyardcore   <– you aint heard Gospel Music like *THIS* before
<nemo> drunkardcore  <– what pub bands are in the FUTURRRRRRRRE
<Screwtape> “leopardcore” <– Tribal rhythms with animal skins.
<nemo> graveyardcore   <– for zombies
<Screwtape> “laggardcore” <– I was into that band *way* after it was cool.
<nemo> “heavenwardcore”  <– music for the Rapture
<Screwtape> “orchardcore” <– The Apples In Stereo
<nemo> “straightforwardcore”  <– this music is exactly what it says it is
<nemo> “substandardcore”   <– nobody listens to this much, except ironically
<Screwtape> “overheardcore” <– musique concréte
<nemo> “wizardcore”   <– from JK’s unfinished draft of “Harry Potter and the Four Seasons”
<Screwtape> “Picardcore” <– o/~ Star Trekkin’, across the universe… o/~
<Screwtape> “placardcore” <– The music video to Weird Al’s “Bob”
<Screwtape> “Rjchardcore” <– I think my /usr/dict/words has an OCR error.
<nemo> not seen that
<nemo> haha
<nemo> mine is good
* Screwtape blames Fedora.
<Screwtape> “schoolyardcore” <– skipping rhymes, with a heavy beat.
<Screwtape> “shipyardcore” <– Authentic Pirate Hip-Hop
<nemo> Rjchard   <– Scientific Linux (a sibling of CentOS) has the same problem
<Screwtape> rpm says the wordlist comes from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moby_Project
<Screwtape> I wonder where Debian gets theirs.
<nemo> not sure to be honest
<Screwtape> Apparently from wordlist.sf.net.
<nemo> there you go then
<nemo> http://dict-common.alioth.debian.org/  <– nice logo

Thanks @afda. Thafda.

The Motor Neurone disease is an incurable disease that basically prevents the muscles from working – including the heart. Some famous people . . . → Read More: Davo Double-Crossing Tasmania For Charity]]> Launceston long-distance runner David “Davo” Brelsford will soon be attempting to double-cross his adopted state of Tasmania in an attempt to raise money and public awareness of the deadly Motor Neurone Disease.

The Motor Neurone disease is an incurable disease that basically prevents the muscles from working – including the heart. Some famous people who have died from this disease include famous British actor David Niven, Australian athletics coach Percy Cerutty, and artist Pro Hart.

68 year-old grandfather Davo will start his run in Launceston on 12 March and hopes to reach Hobart three days later. Then after a day’s rest he will travel to the West coast town of Strahan, and commence to run through central Tasmania to finish on the East coast at Bicheno on 22 March. Davo hopes to average 66k per day for the total distance of 600k.

Donations to the Motor Neurone Disease Association helps to fund research into the disease, and also to buy equipment that is needed to assist affected people. Wheelchairs, special beds and crutches are just some of the things that are needed.

More information about the disease can be found at www.mndatas.asn.au

There are three ways you can help Davo raise money for this worthy cause;

1. Straight cash to Davo, who will give you a receipt.
2. Cheque or money order made out to “Motor Neurone Disease Association of Tasmania” and sent c/- Dave Brelsford, 41 Beach Rd., Legana, Tasmania 7277.
3. By depositing your donation in the MNDA’s bank account at :

Commonwealth Bank of Australia,
BSB 067 013,
Account no. 2800 5202

The Motor Neurone Disease Association does not receive any government funding. It relies solely on public donations.

Please make a donation to help Motor Neurone sufferers now and into the future.

And I got thinking about that. I watched all of TNG many years ago, and have long held the view that I wont watch it all again. Just not . . . → Read More: TNG: Condensed?]]> A friend recently noted he was lacking in cultural awareness of Star Trek:TNG, and so struck up a conversation about what eps should be watched.

And I got thinking about that. I watched all of TNG many years ago, and have long held the view that I wont watch it all again. Just not worth it, too many crap episodes. But there are many good episodes too, and so it solidified a thought I’d had for a while – to compile approximately a season worth of episodes from the 7 seasons produced, that would cover the best that TNG had to offer.

So beginning with the opening and closing episodes, it was pretty logical then to include the entire Q arc. Not a difficult call since Q is arguably the most entertaining recurring character. Q’s arc intersects with the most famous of TNG aliens, the Borg, so the entire Borg arc was then also an easy choice. Continuing in this style, the Borg arc intersects with Lore’s arc, and with one additional non-Lore episode, this arguably covers the main Data character arc. I then included the episodes with cameos from the original series… and a few bonus that are notable for being of high quality anyway, or just personal favourites.

Season1

• Encounter at Farpoint
  • introduction, Q
• Hide and Q
  • Q
• Datalore
  • Data / Lore

Season 2

• The Measure of a Man
  • Data
• Q Who
  • Q, Borg

Season 3

• The Survivors
  • Personal favourite episode
• Deja Q
  • Q
• The Best of Both Worlds – Part I
  • Borg

Season 4

• The Best of Both Worlds – Part II
  • Borg
• Family
  • Picard (and Worf) after Best of Both Worlds
• Brothers
  • Data / Lore
• Qpid
  • Q

Season 5

• Darmok
  • Notably good episode, Picard
• Unification – Part I
  • Spock
• Unification – Part II
  • Spock
• I, Borg
  • Borg
• The Inner Light
  • Notably excellent episode, Picard

Season 6

• Relics
  • Scotty
• True Q
  • Q
• Chain of Command – Part I
  • Picard
• Chain of Command – Part II
  • Picard
• Tapestry
  • Q, Picard
• Frame of Mind
  • Riker
• Descent – Part I
  • Borg, Lore

Season 7

• Descent – Part II
  • Borg, Lore
• Lower Decks
  • Interesting episode
• All Good Things
  • Q

So what have I missed? The main arcs left uncovered would be Wesley Crusher character arc, Worf’s character/Klingon Empire story arc, and Romulan Empire arc. But, including too many arcs has the danger of this ending with “hell, just watch it all” and that would defeat the purpose.

So this posts asks… are there any truly notable TNG episodes or arcs that would be worth including for the sake of a watchable TNG:condensed “season” of episodes?

Anyone who has ever grown a moustache knows there are some key milestones in its growth, and anyone who has seen Movember come and go before will know that it, too, has its key moments.

But for the uninitiated in the ways of growing and wearing a . . . → Read More: Movember timetable]]> It’s that time of the year. Movember.

Anyone who has ever grown a moustache knows there are some key milestones in its growth, and anyone who has seen Movember come and go before will know that it, too, has its key moments.

But for the uninitiated in the ways of growing and wearing a mo’, here is a handy timetable that I have prepared…

Oct 31: Last full shave

Nov 4: Action-Hero stubble day

Nov 7: First shave to begin shaping and defining the mo’. This is when the  TYPE of mo’ you aim for begins to take place.

Nov 15: After two weeks, your mo’ is now long enough to catch food in it

Nov 16: This is about when you discover that your mo’ is now long enough to catch food in it…

Nov 17: Time to trim and shape the mo into something near it’s final form. It’s ok if you stuff it up, because even a bad mo’ looks suitable on a pornstar!

Nov 18: Pornstar mo’ day. (18 is legal, right?

Nov 23-30: In the final week of Movember, imagine that you’re in a tacky 70s cop show every time you see a policeman with a mo’. (as bonus: this experience can be shared by everyone, be they mo’ endowed or not).

Nov 30 at 10pm: Completely shave off the mo’

…10 minutes later: Enjoy the feeling of air on your clean upper lip. Also, enjoy that your partner is likely to want to kiss you for the first time this month…