Hawk's Babble-Log

This seems like a good idea:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57412225-281/this-internet-provider-pledges-to-put-your-privacy-first-always/

http://www.indiegogo.com/calyx

http://youtu.be/ZodMIdYkKJI

iPic Gold Class Theaters in Pasadena are amazing, rich, posh, and fun. Also very expensive, but if you’ve got the coin, and if it’s for a special occasion, it’s well worth it.

What was the special occasion? My roomie’s birthday. He loved it!

It’s underground. Enter from Miller Alley, get your tix and go down two escalators. Once underground, you show them your ticket and either take a seat in the Salt lounge or go right in to your theater. You can order up a drink, or go for a full meal. Yup, Salt is a full restaurant and bar. The food is excellent! My roomie reported that the drink he got was outstanding.

We got there early so we ate in the lounge while we waited for our theater to empty out. Because my roomie got a drink I became the designated driver. I’m always the designated driver.

These theaters are small, only holding about 40 people. The seats are huge cushy recliners (look for the buttons on the inside-side of the chair) with huge armrests, blanks, pillows, and a storage compartment under one armrest. All seats are paired up, and there is a small cocktail table between and in front, with a green-lit button which changes to red when you push it to get their attention.

Inside the theaters you can order food or drinks or desert or whatever and they bring it to you. The service is excellent!

http://www.ipictheaters.com/

I did not take any pictures when inside. Why? 1) It’s pretty dark. I would have had to bring my regular camera with the flash built-in and I didn’t. 2) All pictures on the website are accurate. Check it out.

We had an AT&T tech come out the other day to fix what the first AT&T tech screwed up. He reviewed our account’s history before coming out and he knew exactly what the issue was before he even stepped foot inside the door.

Turns out, when our U-verse/DSL was first set up, it was installed on a “dry loop”, which is a pair of copper which doesn’t have a voice line already on it. Recently, I ordered up a second voice line so that I could put another DSL on it, so that we could finally drop goddamned U-verse/DSL. Well, that messed up how our existing U-verse/DSL was connected.

The second AT&T tech figured it out and had us back online quickly.

We thought the original network was on the original voice line. Not so. Now the original network is on the new phone line, and the new network is going in on the original voice line.

I think part of the problem is that AT&T has gotten so big that one part doesn’t know what the other part is doing. The voice-line guys don’t talk to the DSL-line guys. And the DSL-line guys don’t talk to the U-verse guys. And the U-verse guys don’t talk to the voice-line guys.

BTW, the U-verse/DSL connection still sucks. Sometimes, only half of a webpage will load. Sometimes the images won’t. Sometimes it’ll be a complete DNS failure. Sometimes the page will come down without CSS. Sometimes it works fine. When I’m having trouble hitting a site, I can pull it up on my phone and it works perfectly. So I know it’s not the site. It’s the U-verse/DSL connection. Something is still wrong with it. I can’t wait to drop it forever.

I’m getting another voice line installed. The AT&T technician is scheduled to come out between 8am and noon. He arrives around 11:59am.

This guy then proceeds to disconnect my existing DSL line (actually, it’s U-verse) AND my neighbor’s phone line! For a 13-year veteran of the phone company, he’s looking pretty incompetent to me. He said something like, “Well, the wire had no signal on it, so I yanked it!” Well, at least he did hook up the phone line. So that works.

Right now, I’m online via my phone. It’s slow, but at least I have it as a back up.

You’ve probably heard about the fuss. A company called Carrier IQ developed some spyware for cellphones which reports everything you do, text, surf, etc, on your phone. It started when an Android developer, Trevor Eckhart, noticed the traffic and reported it. Carrier IQ tried to silence him. He brought in some big guns with the EFF. Check it out:

Software maker sorry for trying to silence security researcher:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/24/carrier_iq_about_face/

Assange: ‘iPhone, BlackBerry, Gmail users – you’re all screwed’:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12/01/julian_assange_surveillance/

Does your smartphone run Carrier IQ? Find out here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12/01/apple_sprint_carrier_iq/

http://betanews.com/2011/12/07/android-users-can-detect-carrier-iq-everyone-else-is-out-of-luck/

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/networking/finding-and-cleaning-out-your-smartphones-carrier-iq-poison/1697?tag=mantle_skin;content

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=17612559&postcount=110

I have five words:

Class Action Lawsuit!

… and …

Criminal Prosecution.

As I’m on a rooted Android system, Cyanogenmod, I don’t have Carrier IQ installed and never have. I do recommend you get an Android smartphone, root it, and install Cyanogenmod. It’s totally free and well worth the trouble. In fact, you can get a fully unlocked and rooted phone with Cyanogenmod already on it from people on Ebay. That saves you from even doing the work.

On a related note, I do recommend you get the app Lookout from Lookout Labs. For a free app, it’s pretty darn impressive! They also have an app which can detect the Carrier IQ rootkit/spyware called Carrier IQ Detector.

My fellow Code Monkeys…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5W_wd9Qf0IE

Ever seen a Violinist rock out? This is the first video I saw Lindsey Sterling in (she can dance while she’s playing her violin!):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2APZN9FJNY

She makes me smile just by her enthusiasm alone! Check this out (she’s playing all three parts):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCaOS3TAjbI

And she can dance while playing her violin on stage live!:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwqDDFkOaCc

I love this song. Here’s the official video for it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxIOUJ7by6U

She did a half-time show at a basketball game:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nF7MgtIT3PQ

Search YouTube for “Lindsey Sterling” for more. She’s got her own channel here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/lindseystomp

Yayyy! I got my Kindle Fire and it’s pretty darn awesome. You get tremendous value for your money.

Well done, Amazon! It looks like someone at Amazon read my open letter to Jeff Bezos.

It has a nice, solid feel. The back is a soft, slightly rubbery material which makes it not slide around the desk when you’re sliding your finger across the touchscreen.

Speaking of the touchscreen, it is very sensitive and very responsive. I like it a lot.

The screen is very bright, clear, and sharp. The colors are rich; the lights are light and the darks are dark. Very nice. I could watch a movie on this.

Speaking of movies, you’ve got instant access to everything Amazon has to offer, which is impressive. That’s nice. Also YouTube vids work very well, even the hi-def ones.

The system is fast and responsive with very few delays.

Reading books is nice. Reminds me of reading on my phone, but with a much bigger screen.

Now the bad stuff:

No Google Marketplace!

What app store do you get? Amazon’s app store. Most of my favorite apps are not on Amazon’s app store:

• You want the Gmail app? You’re screwed. But you can get your Gmail via their web interface.
• You want a different browser such as Opera? You’re screwed.
• You want Google Maps? You’re screwed.
• You want Catch so you can take notes? You’re screwed.
• You want Google Translate (which speaks!)? You’re screwed.
• You want the Google Talk app? You’re screwed, though you can get there via a their web interface.
• You want the Google Calendar app? You’re screwed, though you can get there via their web interface.
• You want an ssh client like Connectbot? You’re screwed.
• You want a VNC client like AndroidVNC? You’re screwed, though they do have some other VNC clients which I didn’t bother with because I can’t pipe them over a secure SSH connection via Connectbot.

Shipping an Android device without the Google Marketplace is like selling you a car without any tires, wheels, or axles. The engine will run, but you won’t be able to go anywhere. It seems that Amazon is trying to make the device closed, when they should be trying to make it as open as possible. Once the device is open, then all the geeks will jump in and customize it. Once that happens, and people see what can be done with it, it will sell even more.

This first item, no Google Marketplace, is the most annoying; it cripples the device.

No card slot(s)

It’s got about 6.5 Gigs available out of the box. This is not enough to store all my media, but it’s a good start. If the device had a card slot (or two!), then I could buy lots of storage, load up those cards with all my crap, and put them into the device. Then I’d have my library (or a good portion of it) with me when I’m out of network range. Amazon may have made it too dependent on the network.

If you’re only going to use it for reading Kindle books, then there is no problem. But if you’re only going to use it for that, then get one of the e-paper versions. It will be cheaper and the battery will last longer.

Other Annoyances

No GPS, but I can live without that.

If they are not going to allow me to install Google Maps, it doesn’t much matter that the device doesn’t have a GPS receiver built in.

No cellphone network, but I can live without that, too.

I can get the Kindle Fire online when I’m on the road and away from wi-fi networks by turning on wireless tethering on my phone. Then my phone becomes a bridge between the cellphone networks and wi-fi for the Kindle Fire. It works, but it’s not fast enough to watch videos.

No camera, but I can live without that, too.

It’s an appealing idea to take pics on a device with such a large screen.

In Summary

I really like the device, but it could be so much more. Perhaps someone at Amazon will read this and make the Kindle Fire v2.0 even better?

I still think my cell phone is the best “tablet” available, but without the big screen. It’s Android, has Kindle for Android, B&N Nook for Android, and Google Books for reading, YouTube videos, a video player I found on Google Marketplace (Mobo Player) to play virtually any video I put on the micro SD card (yes, it has a card slot!), three music players I found on Google Marketplace (XiiaLive Lite, iHeartRadio, and TuneIn Radio) for my music (and for streaming music), a GPS receiver (Google Maps/directions!), digital compass, a camera dictionary + Google Translate (which speaks!), VoIP clients such as Sipdroid, Barcode scanner (it has a camera), Ustream (for both broadcasting and receiving), ShowMee, games such as NetHack and OpenCacheing for GeoCaching… I could go on and on.

So, it seems my Android phone (which is several years old now) is much more advanced than the latest slate from Amazon. I’m keeping my hopes up that the Amazon Fire v2.0 will be a truly outstanding dream device with Google’s Marketplace.

Keller’s Riverside Store CHL radio ad

After watching the video, I decided to get more info so I read the book. After that, I was sold. So I tried the RAVE Diet.

After having been (mostly) on the RAVE Diet for well over half a year, I can highly recommend it.

Go here and get the video plus the book:

http://ravediet.com/

The video is called “Eating”, and the book is called “The RAVE Diet”. You can order the DVD+book combo here: http://ravediet.com/order.html

I’m not making any money off this recommendation. The only affiliate program I belong to is the Amazon Associates program. But I’m not linking to the book on Amazon, I’m linking straight to the author’s site. Go there, get the video and the book. Watch the video first, it’s only 90 mins. If it seems to make sense to ya, read the book.

Note that you only need to read the first half of the book; the second half is nothing but recipes. If you’re really in to cooking, well then you’ll want to read the second half. I’m not so much in to cooking, so I skipped it.

I know so much more after reading the book. I feel like I know a big secret. Well, I guess that’s true. When I travel around and see what people are eating (and their sizes) I feel like I’m in on a really big secret. Actually, it kinda is a secret. Watch the video and read the book to see what I mean. I bet you’ll look at society differently.

This game looks awesome!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ic6dKnv3WdU

And it comes out 2011-11-11!

After most updates, Ubuntu wants to restart/reboot my system.

In a word: No.

I’m not running a Microsoft product here. One thing I like about linux is that it can run virtually forever. I run my system for months, sometimes years, between reboots. Why? Simple: I have a lot of stuff open. It takes a long time to set all of it up and get it running. I’m not going to do that every other day or every week. Not even every month. If that means I only update once or twice a year, then so be it.

I forgot to post this update on what happened.

My monthly “re-up” date rolled around and, of course, Simple Mobile would not charge my card (because they don’t want my money) so they turned off my service. I tried, fruitlessly, many times, to re-up using their website. Their website constantly declined my card. My card worked fine with Amazon.com (they do want my money), PayPal (they do want my money as well), and other miscellaneous stores such as ThinkGeek (they also want my money).

But it seemed Simple Mobile didn’t want my money. I fear they’re going to be canceling a lot of people when their re-up dates roll around and they can’t charge any cards. I hope Simple Mobile stays in business because the phone I got works on the T-mobile network and I don’t really want to sign up with T-mobile.

Anyway, after several days of complete website re-up failure, and calling Simple Mobile (they could not help me either), I decided to swing through a local Simple Mobile store and see what they could do for me. Turns out, if you have cash, they can re-up right then and there. I didn’t have enough cash, so I couldn’t do it right then. But it’s nice to at least be able to pay for the service.

I went back again a few days later and paid with cash and was able to re-up via the store. The store called a special number, put in a special code, entered my phone number, then waited about 3 minutes (of silence), then it was done and my phone worked.

Here’s the best part:

The plan I was on was $60 / month. This was their “unlimited talk, text, and web” plan. I don’t know when it happened, but now their “unlimited talk, text, and web” plan is only $40 / month. I logged in to my account on their website (yes, that part worked), and switched my account from the $60 / month plan to the $40 / month plan and now I’m working again.

So because of all this trouble, I’m saving $20 / month. I’m really kinda happy that they didn’t automatically re-up me at the $60 / month level. Hopefully, they will have their website fixed next month so that I don’t have to go back to an actual store to re-up.

Very strange. I’ve been trying to pay Simple Mobile for my cell service for about a week now. They refuse to accept payment. When I call, they tell me to go to a store and pay with cash there; they don’t take payments over the phone.

Otherwise, I’ve been pretty happy with the company and the service. Not too much to complain about.

But when they actively refuse may payments, makes me wonder… Does this sound like a company that wants to succeed? Maybe they just have sooo many customers that they don’t need me?

Very strange. I don’t know what to do except hunt down a store and pay with cash.

O M G! This book, Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, is the greatest book of all time in any universe! And I’m not just saying that ’cause I like it. Well… okay, maybe I’m saying that ’cause I like it. Watch the video.

I rreeeaaaaaally like it! I just got done reading it. I don’t think I’ve ever read any book that fast in my entire life!

It’s about a gigantic contest for one billionaire’s fortune. But this one billionaire did NOT make it easy. Also, some well-funded asswipes are trying to cheat their way through the contest. They are trying to sort-of brute-force the contest via dishonorable means.

Where does all this take place? Inside the greatest “virtual reality” system ever not-yet developed called OASIS. Weeeelll… not ALL of the battle takes place inside the OASIS. There is actual, physical danger also. But mooostly it takes place inside the OASIS.

Ernest Cline: you are Tha Man! You are sooo goddamned Airwolf! I get almost every one of your 80s cultural references. Keep up the good work! MTFBWYA.

And one more thing…

I sooooo wanna play!!!

http://www.readyplayerone.com/
http://ernestcline.com/

This is how to turn your $3,000 milling machine into a $50 miter saw:

It screamed like a banshee, but it did the job; made a nice perfectly straight cut.

A friend of mine asked me to help him make a copy of two drives. These drives work together on a RAID 0. With a RAID 0, you have approximately twice the speed, but also twice the chance of failure.

So, understandably, they would like to have a backup of the system. But they don’t want something that has to be installed, and then configured, and all that stuff. They are not “linux people”. They want something where they can yank out the old drives and insert two new drives and have it “just work”.

Here’s the overall procedure:

• Make a bootable Knoppix USB drive.
• Connect a new drive to the system. This new drive will store the two source disk images.
• Boot Knoppix and Ctrl-Alt-F1 into command-line mode.
• Make a file from the entire 1st disk and put it on the new disk.
• If the other drive is not connected, shut the system down and connect the other drive.
• Make a file from the entire 2nd disk and put it on the new disk.
• Disconnect the new drive & the USB drive, and reconnect the originals.
• Boot it up again and watch it to make sure all is well.

For the linux guru, here are the commands I used:


fdisk -l


fdisk is usually the tool you use to set up partitions from the command-line. Using it like this with the -l switch gives you a list of all the partitions on all connected drives, whether they are mounted or not. Very useful.


dd if=/dev/sdc | gzip > drive1_250g_2011-08-19.img.gz


This is the magic linux command used to actually make the file from one whole disk. dd is a command which simply routes data. Every device in linux is a file, so it’s easy to read an entire disk. In the above case, dd is getting it’s data (if = In File) from the device which represents the entire disk: /dev/sdc. sdc means the third SCSI drive detected. On your system, it may be sda or sdd.

By default, dd outputs data to STDOUT, so here I’m piping it into the gzip command, which compresses data. If you don’t compress data, then you might end up with a file which is bigger than you expect when reading raw filesystems, due to the way filesystems lay down data with sector markers and whatnot.

Finally, I’m redirecting the output from gzip into a file, and I’m making sure that it has an extension which describes what kind of file it is. But you can call it whatever you want.

The first time I tried this command, I used bzip2 because it has better data compression routines and therefore makes smaller files. But better compression also means more CPU computations, and that alone slowed down performance to an unacceptable level. Why an unacceptable level? This server that I was working on had to be fully online by 7am. I took it offline and started work around midnight. This gave me about 6 hours to copy the drives. I gave myself an extra hour to debug and get it put back together and installed where it was in the rack, which should be plenty of time.

Using the above dd command with bzip2, I was able to copy about 9-11 MB / sec. This put the total time for one drive at about 6-8 hours. I didn’t have that much time.

Using the above dd command with gzip, I was able to copy about 40-45 MB / sec. This put the total time for one drive at about 90-105 minutes. Now I had enough time in one night to copy the drives. Additionally, the files were very small with gzip, so bzip2 would not have made a significant difference but would have taken much, much longer.

How did I know the rate of copy using dd?


kill -USR1 (pid of dd)


First, find out what the Process ID is for the running dd command. To do this, Ctrl-Alt-F2 into the second virtual terminal and run:


ps aux | grep "dd if"


The PID is the first number on the dd line. Once you’ve got that, use the above kill -USR1 command and dd will output several lines of useful information (in the virtual terminal where it’s running), including how much data has been transferred and the rate.

I set it up so that it would do this automatically every 5 minutes like this:


while kill -USR1 (pid of dd) ; do sleep 300 ; done


This while loop runs the stated command until that command returns false. The body of the while loop simply sleeps for 5 minutes. After starting this loop, Ctrl-Alt-F1 back into the first virtual terminal to watch dd‘s progress.

I was fully successful in copying the two drives to files and had the server back in operation before 5am.

Once I got home, I ordered up two new drives exactly like the old ones. Well, mostly exactly like the old ones. Once they arrived, I connected one to my SATA-to-USB drive adapter and ran this:


zcat (filename) | dd of=/dev/sdx


MAKE SURE YOU KNOW WHAT /dev/sdx is! Running this command on the wrong device will wipe out whatever is on that device, including your main linux filesystem!

How to find out the device you just plugged in?


dmesg | tail


From the output of the above command, you should be able to figure it out.

Decompressing on the fly and writing to a drive like this via a SATA-to-USB interface will be very slow. The max rate I achieved was 4M / sec. More commonly, I achieved 3.8M / sec, which is a little more than 1M every 5 minutes. That puts the total time up around 18 hours per drive. But hey, I was in no hurry. The drive finished up over night and then I did the other one. It was the same command but with a different filename.

Hope this helps.

I’m sitting at my desk when I hear two girls in the office giggling. One of them is getting married, and the other one is, like, sooo excited for her!!!

The one who is getting married shows the other one a picture of a wedding dress she printed out. The other one squeals in delight and exclaims, “Oohhhh my goood!!! It’s, like, soooo amazing!!!”

“Yeah!!! I know, right!?!?” says the other one!!!

“Ohhh my god and I love the back!!!”

“Yeah!!!”

“Ohhhhh!!!” she says excitedly!!! She handed me the photos of the dress. I looked at the picture and it was, like, sooo amazing!! I nodded enthusiastically because it was, like, a very nice dress!!!

The one who is getting married then says, “Ohhhh!!! I saw the most amazing shoes!!!”

“Really?!??” says the other one!!!

“Yeah!!! Like, soooo amazing!!! By this guy named… ummm…” The other girl fills in the name; it’s some unpronounceable name!!!

“Yeah!!! Search for (insert unpronounceable name here)…” the other girl bangs away on her keyboard, then exclaims, “Ohhhh my god!!! Those are, like, soooo amazing!!!”

A this point, they both started giggling and cackling and, like, oh my god!!! Now I totally have to buy those shoes!!!

I’ve had an email account with Ebay for a while. I nearly always register my username as ‘jedihawk’, if I can. Usually, it’s available. So I got ‘jedihawk’ as my Ebay username. That makes sense. I also have registered many email adresses over the years. I always go with jedihawk@whatever.net.

So I’m now trying to update my email address in the Ebay system and it won’t let me change it. Why? Because my Ebay username is the same as the first part of my email address.

This means I’m stuck. I can’t change my Ebay email address to any of my other email addresses. They all (or nearly all) start with ‘jedihawk’!

Ebay’s email policies suck!!! Ebay is trying to take my security out of my hands. They are trying to prevent me from “hurting myself”. Well, I’m a big boy now. I’ve been online for decades. I can spot a spoof email a mile away. I have never been fooled by a spoof email. Ebay doesn’t need to protect me. I can handle it all by my self. I’m all growed up ‘n stuff.

I called Ebay support and talked to a nice lady who tried to help, but was completely unable to. I explained how I was a “net veteran”, and how I was in no danger by having my email address the same as my username (like it already is!). She understood, but still could not update my email with Ebay.

So it looks like I’ll be missing out on Ebay emails soon, as my old email address is going away. Oh well, at least they have an internal email system I can access.

Ebay, if you’re listing: Your email “security” policies SUCK!! Grow a brain and stop trying to protect me. I can handle it myself. Put the responsibility where it belongs: with me! Rather than prevent me from updating my email address, put up a warning, then let them me the change!