Nick Shobe

New Favorite Android App

2012-01-06T11:08:00.000-08:00

I just installed SMS Backup + on my Nexus S, it is really great. The app exported all my sms messages into gmail as full conversations and tagged them as SMS. It also added all my phone logs to google calendar in my new "Phone Calls" calendar. So now I have a great record of pretty much everything on my phone in my google account. As an added bonus, the app is licensed under the Apache license and is hosted on Github.

Satirical Office Humor

2011-12-02T11:18:00.001-08:00

I share an office with several of our new media confederates one who has a great deadpan sense humor.

Co-worker from accross the hall comes in

Co-worker: "I sent you a funny lol cats"

Office Mate: Oh really?

Co-worker: Well you should like that cat stuff, you having cats and all... Right?

Office Mate: Well no… Actually I don't have cats anymore.

Co-worker: Oh (puzzled look)?

Office Mate: They all died... Thank you for reminding me of that fact though!

Ruby compact only compacts one level deep

2011-10-19T17:55:00.000-07:00

My simple solution... recursively remove nil. Kinda lame but oh well.

#
# Recursively clean nils out of our array structures...
#
def arrayDeepCompact(array)
array.each do |element|
if element.kind_of?(Array)
element.compact!
arrayDeepCompact(element)
end
end
end

Or if you prefer an extension

#
# Recursively clean nils out of our array structures...
#
class Array

def deep_compact()
dc(self)
end

private

def dc(array)
array.each do |element|
if element.kind_of?(Array)
element.compact! #compact first so won't need to itter over nil
dc(element)
end
end
end

end

Serving a broken world in a critical hour!

2011-08-03T01:42:00.000-07:00

Recently I have been involved with some technical mission work from the relative comfort of my home. I helped setup a Concrete5 site for Malamulo hospital http://www.malamulohospital.org/. The main need was to have a nice face for the international public and grant writing. What I am seeing though is, although we met the requested need for a nicer website/cms, there doesn't seem to be anyone with the time or skill to pick up the actual content entry. What is frustrating is I have time, but no content, so I am really just stuck waiting for something to happen.

I also discovered that they have several other software/IT related needs, but I don't have enough on the ground incite into their real world practices to properly address them. At OSCON this year I did meet a gent named Isaac Holeman http://www.isaacholeman.org/ that does have such experience and incite, and he seems quite willing to share some with our team.

All this leads to why I titled my post specifically in a critical hour. I am firmly convinced that far to many of my fellow technology professionals(including me) have been far to complacent with the endless success of open source and technology as a whole and are ignoring the basic needs of billions across the globe. Doesn't it seem horrific that we would stand in line for hours to get an iPhone, but not think twice about those who waste away their lives building them for a wealthy western world. I don't want to run a major guilt trip here, but it as populations grow, those in need grow ever faster.

As a Christian, I feel ever more responsible for the wellbeing of my neighbors, both spiritually and physically. After all, how can one address the emotional, spiritual and beliefs of an individual without attending to the basic needs of hunger, shelter and safety. It is now ever more important that I stand for what is right, good and true and not waste time chasing after fake success and fun times. God asks us to serve others where he has placed us and with the talents and skills he has given us. I don't want to squander them on "my pursuits".

Graduation

2011-06-05T12:56:00.000-07:00

The last few months have been quite busy, but I finally have my BSIT degree. What a relief it is to come home and NOT log in to school and do homework! I haven't become used to the whole idea yet, but I am sure that in a month or two I will accept the idea. I have been having the typical late assignment dreams and it's only been 5 days since my last class ended ;)

CRM Definition Language

2010-11-18T13:11:00.000-08:00

After working with SalesForce and now SugarCRM for several months I have experienced the growing pains that come from reaching the bleeding edge of functionality needs yet again.

One thing that hit me recently is the idea of separating the CRM application from the application's presentation space. I began thinking that CRM designers shouldn't need to specify the data layer, nor the presentation layer during the application design phase. Sugar does a pretty good job with abstracting away the database maintenance, however it comes at a significant cost. Most of the default objects in Sugar cannot be replicated in the included module builder nor studio. This specifically includes advanced object relationships and the transfer of ownership between parent data types.

This level of functionality requires a good deal of custom coding, which would be fine except the coding must be done to the database queries, vardefs and viewdefs and application front end code. So I ask myself, why include functionalities in the first place that aren't available when building a new custom module?

I looked at several other CRM options like vTiger and openCRX, but it still seems they all suffer from a similar issue. The underlying issue is application portability and the separation of CRM data and application.

I think there needs to be a shift in the design methodologies for CRM and other relationship management applications. The design shift should be towards application independence and an open CRM specification.

The specification would be an open standard for the definition of an applications data and functionality relationships. The application would then exist in the specification only, and would allow the rendering application to handle the construction of data structures, GUI design, interaction between users, application and data.

Ideally an application's specification would be represented in a simple XML document. The design could be done by hand or by an application and then published to the service provider or front end application. The front end application would consume the specification and generate the appropriate database schema and structure and corresponding GUI elements.

I have begun to outline the functionality of my .01 version of the specification in and eventually I hope to publish it and see if anyone has some valuable feedback or if it could possibly scratch a few itches.

My first XOR gate in Minecraft Woot!

2010-11-12T01:39:00.000-08:00

I decided to implement this XOR gate to allow my doors to open and shut from either side... Only issue is I need to implement some slightly more complex logic to really get the functionality I want... Maybe tomorrow night eh.

Who ever said gaming wasn't educational, obviously hadn't played with Minecraft red stone circuits.

Fix for an odd Kubuntu 10.04 resolution bug

2010-07-30T01:42:00.000-07:00

This fix is for the Dell Optiplex 620 running Kubuntu 10.04

Ok so here goes

The 915 resolution package has been superseeded by the normal intel driver. So all you need to do is set the correct modeline. I thought it was odd that my work optiplex 690 didn't have any problem and an XBMC box sucked hard core with the resolution. Since they are both Ubuntu 10.04 and both the exact same models. That is... until I dropped Kubuntu on one at home. It only allowed a few resolutions and not 1280x1024. I think it has to do with the DVI to VGA converter I am using. Some how the EDID info gets messed up or something.

First run:

Xorg -configure
sudo cp xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Now go to http://www.arachnoid.com/modelines/

I used a modeline:

Modeline "1280x1024_60.00" 108.88 1280 1360 1496 1712 1024 1025 1028 1060 -HSync +Vsync

edit your xorg.conf and place the modline in

Section "Monitor"

add your resolution to the

Section "Screen"

For each depth

Modes "1280x1024"

Now that I could change the resolution, I needed it to stay through flippen reboots! Kde kept reverting back to a default resolution
SO!
Run:

xrandr

it will print out your current configuration and available resolutions you can choose...

For KDE I had to change the file /etc/kde4/kdm/Xsetup. I added this line and used data from running xrandr without arguments:

xrandr --output VGA1 --mode 1280x1024_60.00

I am not sure where this would go for gdm or other window/login managers but it should probably go some place in the initial xorg startup sequence.

Hope this helps! Sheesh what a fix eh ;)

OSCON

2010-07-23T21:01:00.000-07:00

This week I attended my second OSCON event, and as usual it was quite inspiring! Of the presentations there where two in the development/sys admin area that I particularly enjoyed. The first was on developing web apps for mobile devices with JQuery, JQtouch, and Phone Gap.

Over the past few years I have been toying with a project that involves a clipboard sync web service. Now I have some cool tools to roll out web and native apps quickly for the iPhone and Android devices quickly. (I do mean quickly) I just need to land on the best framework for my client apps... I am leaning toward Python still. I already have some code that I have been tinkering with for the client side but I ran into several snags on the OSX platform when dealing with the putScrap method (pout).

Anyhow, the second event I attended was the a session on using puppet to manage our IT infrastructure. The nice thing is, I convinced my boss to go to it also... I guess since I kept on ranting about this mystical "puppet" thingy he thought it might be interesting or something ;) I don't think I'll be the butt of any more Pinocchio or puppeteer jokes p;

In the ideological realm, the presentation by Rolf Skyberg(eBay) "Doctor There's a Problem With My Innovation" on the innovation cycle hit really close to home! It seems at work we now have an innovation portal. Oh no! That was one of the most obvious signs of an innovation crisis, one that will likely end in disaster unless action is taken to correct it. Good thing I'm just an intern for now.

When it comes time to release my clip sync app, I will probably find todays talk about promoting my project on a shoe string budget quite helpful. I thought the tips where quite helpful...

As a funny side note; during the closing keynote today, I was telling a co-worker how helpful I thought the sessions information was and that the presenter did a really good job... and was startled when he(the presenter) suddenly turned around and was like "thanks man I'm glad you liked it." Boy am I'm glad I was praising it! That could have been really embarrassing for both of us.

First jQuery Experience

2010-06-25T15:58:00.000-07:00

I've been following the jQuery project for a while now and have been impressed by it's simplicity. I hadn't actually used jQuery until this last week. So far it's been incredibly powerful, except for several small issues.

The first issue came up when I was trying to implement drag and drop functionality. The first example from the jQuery website kept failing miserably. After a while I found solace in the sortable option once I discovered that it could be linked to other elements to implement the d&d functionality I needed.

After a while though I discovered some unwanted side effects do the sortable object. It seems that the sortable applies to any of it's child elements, this included the desired sortable divs, and the not so desired span, and anchor tags I was using for titles and other formatting.

I looked all over, google, irc, jQuery docs... No one seemed to be experiencing my exact problem. I was just about to create some special containers just for sorting when I found a semi-related post mentioning the .hover method.

What I had been trying was to disable the sort on specific elements by applying the sortable('disable') method to them... however, this didn't work because the child elements don't have the sortable attributes themselves ): Instead what I needed to do was disable all sortables when the mouse hovered over the targeted elements.

The code:

$(".sortables").sortable({
connectWith: '.sortables',
placeholder: 'ui-state-highlight',
distance: 5,
opacity: .5,
});

//disable and re-enable sortable on hover(in, out)
$('.noSortable').hover( function(event,ui){
$('.sortables').sortable('disable');
},
function(event,ui){
$('.sortables').sortable('enable');
});

Access Linux partitions from windows

2010-05-09T21:14:00.000-07:00

So I decided I wanted to access my Linux partitions safely from windows. After brief research I decided to take a unique approach and here is my solution.

Use VirtualBox, and mount my Linux hard disk from a Linux guest OS(ubuntu server). I then install CIFS(samba) and create a share to my Windows 7 install. The only drawback is I have to run a virtual machine, but in theory, it's safer then allowing Windows raw read/write access to my Linux partitions. Another issue is I must run VirtualBox as an administrator in order to read raw disks.

A few pointers
Run Cmd as admin (win7 type to run)
cmd
Ctrl+Shift+Enter (runs as admin)

VBoxManage.exe internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename C:\Users\myuser\.VirtualBox\HardDisks\sdc1.vmdk -rawdisk \\.\PhysicalDrive1 -register

Then add that vmdk to your Linux VM. Also remember to run VirtualBox as an admin...

link properties->run as administrator.

New Project

2010-04-24T00:26:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted for a while, because I've been super busy with work and school.

Any how this week I bought a DLink DIR-825 and installed openwrt on it. At first I followed the steps on the site and installed a nightly build... Which worked, but the nightly build's web gui(LuCi) wasn't compiled/packaged correctly and wasn't included in the router image. After a few hours of digging I finally installed the latest release "backfire" it's working much better, although I do need to install the wireless drivers for my two radios. This router is an amazing platform. It has 8 megs flash and 64 ram, 680 mhz cpu, 2 radios 802.11g/n, and 5 gig lan ports. I have a 4gb usb stick that I am planning on using to hold software. This should allow me to do some pretty cool things with this router.

I am may look into dd-wrt... not sure yet though, I really like openwrt.

fail2ban vuurmuur plugin

2009-11-14T01:58:00.000-08:00

I made a decent vuurmuur firewall plugin(action) for fail2ban. I am debugging it, because it takes a good minute to stop the service... I will update this post when I figure out what the heck is taking so long. I am also going to submit this to fail2ban for possible inclusion.

I opted to go with the default behavior of fail2ban, which is to remove all bans on a restart. It is trivial to hardcode the network, and groups, if you don't want fail2ban messing with your vuurmuur structure or removing bans when it restarts.

place this in /etc/fail2ban/action.d/vuurmuur.conf

# Author: Nick Shobe
#

[Definition]

# Option: actionstart
# Notes.: command executed once at the start of Fail2Ban.
# Values: CMD
#
# Create a zone in vuurmuur called fail2ban... this script will add the "" network and all the hosts... you can use a custom rule in vuurmuur to block ports by network
# You can make multiple rules that block specific ports if you don't want to globally block an ip... Do this like any customized rules.
actionstart = vuurmuur_script --create --network .fail2ban
vuurmuur_script --modify --network .fail2ban --variable ACTIVE --set Yes
vuurmuur_script --modify --network .fail2ban --variable NETWORK --set 0.0.0.0
vuurmuur_script --modify --network .fail2ban --variable NETMASK --set 0.0.0.0
append=''
for int in `vuurmuur_script --list --interface all`; do vuurmuur_script --modify --network .fail2ban $append --variable INTERFACE --set $int ; append='--append' ; done
vuurmuur_script --create --group ..fail2ban
vuurmuur_script --modify --group ..fail2ban --variable ACTIVE --set Yes

# Option: actionstop
# Notes.: command executed once at the end of Fail2Ban
# Values: CMD
#
actionstop = for group in `vuurmuur_script --list --group .fail2ban`; do vuurmuur_script --delete --group $group; done
for host in `vuurmuur_script --list --host .fail2ban`; do vuurmuur_script --delete --host $host; done
vuurmuur_script --delete --network .fail2ban
vuurmuur_script --create --network .fail2ban
vuurmuur_script --modify --network .fail2ban --variable ACTIVE --set Yes
vuurmuur_script --modify --network .fail2ban --variable NETWORK --set 0.0.0.0
vuurmuur_script --modify --network .fail2ban --variable NETMASK --set 0.0.0.0
append=''
for int in `vuurmuur_script --list --interface all`; do vuurmuur_script --modify --network .fail2ban $append --variable INTERFACE --set $int ; append='--append' ; done
vuurmuur_script --create --group ..fail2ban
vuurmuur_script --modify --group ..fail2ban --variable ACTIVE --set Yes
vuurmuur_script --reload

# Option: actioncheck
# Notes.: command executed once before each actionban command
# Values: CMD
#
actioncheck = vuurmuur_script --list --host .fail2ban | tr '-' '.'

# Option: actionban
# Notes.: command executed when banning an IP. Take care that the
# command is executed with Fail2Ban user rights.
# Tags: IP address
# number of failures
# unix timestamp of the ban time
# Values: CMD
#
actionban = vuurmuur_script --create --host `echo | tr '.' "-"`..fail2ban
vuurmuur_script --modify --host `echo | tr '.' "-"`..fail2ban --variable IPADDRESS --set
vuurmuur_script --modify --host `echo | tr '.' "-"`..fail2ban --variable ACTIVE --set Yes
append=''
for x in `vuurmuur_script --print --group .fail2ban --variable MEMBER`; do append='--append'; done
vuurmuur_script --modify --apply --group ..fail2ban $append --variable MEMBER --set `echo | tr '.' '-'`
vuurmuur_script --reload

# Option: actionunban
# Notes.: command executed when unbanning an IP. Take care that the
# command is executed with Fail2Ban user rights.
# Tags: IP address
# number of failures
# unix timestamp of the ban time
# Values: CMD
#
# If you want to keep known bad ip's around for review and moving to a perm ban list... use "--modify --variable ACTIVE --set No" instead of --delete You may need to change the way hosts are added to account for repeats.
# this script prints all of the current group members, deletes and recreates the group... without the member to be removed.
actionunban = vuurmuur_script --delete --host `echo | tr '.' "-"`..fail2ban
append='d'
for member in `vuurmuur_script --print --group ..fail2ban --variable MEMBER`;
do if [ $append != '--append' ];then
vuurmuur_script --delete --group ..fail2ban;
vuurmuur_script --create --group ..fail2ban;
vuurmuur_script --modify --group ..fail2ban --variable ACTIVE --set Yes;
fi;
tmp=`echo $member|grep -E -o "[0-9]{1,3}-[0-9]{1,3}-[0-9]{1,3}-[0-9]{1,3}"`;
if [ -z "$tmp" ]
then
tmp='d';
fi
if [ $tmp != `echo | tr '.' "-"` ];
then vuurmuur_script --modify --group ..fail2ban $append --variable MEMBER --set $member;
fi;
if [ $append != '--append' ];
then append='--append';
fi;
done
vuurmuur_script --reload

[Init]

# Defaut name of the chain
#
name = block

group = blockedhosts

Use this just like a normal iptables action file, only consider it is using vuurmuur. In vuurmuur, create a rule that uses the "blockedhosts" group under the appropriate network to block the appropriate traffic. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Update-- Multi threaded debian package download script

2009-10-21T14:24:00.000-07:00

I recently discovered aria2c. Aria supports many download formats including metalink and torrent files. I want to use this to allow:

multi mirrored downloads of large files.
saving and downloading of large update sets using metalink files.
resuming partial downloads.
downloading from non repo mirriors... (can do this now actually)

Multi thread debian package download script

2009-09-03T23:42:00.000-07:00

This script uses the wget download script that can be generated in synaptic. It requires sed, wget, synaptic(for generation), split, and bc.

The basic idea behind it is to utilize the internet connection by multithreading the apt package download. You can add as many mirriors as you like to get it up to the threshhold. This script should also lessen the load on your primary mirrior.

Things I'd like to add:

progress indicator (would be a big +).
download speed indicator (a little difficult due to the process backgrounding).
download control.
ability to adjust download ques based on rate of completion.
kill and resume.
installation on download completion.
threaded installation.

Just a funny note, I decided I didn't like wget's verbosity in the log files so I wanted to pass the -nv flag. Well alias's only work on interactive shells so I made a script that calls wget... called wget and added the dir to the system path... well lets just say I wasn't paying close enough attention the first time I tested it, and I fork bombed my Linux box. I fixed it by referencing the real wget by direct path as you can see in my script.

Script:
#!/bin/bash
##requires wget,bc,grep,
FILE='download.sh'
FILEPRE='download'
SOURCE0='debian.osuosl.org' #sourc0 needs to be your primary mirrior
SOURCE1='linux.csua.berkeley.edu'
SOURCE2='mirror.rit.edu'

NUM=3
##set the wget command params for the wget scripts

SPLIT=`wc -l $FILE | grep -o -E "[0-9]{1,5}"`
SPLIT=`echo "$SPLIT / $NUM" |bc`

split -d --lines=$SPLIT $FILE $FILEPRE

## start the building download env.
if [ ! -d "cache" ]; then
mkdir 'cache'
fi

cd './cache'

x=0
while [ $x -lt $NUM ]; do
CURRF="$FILEPRE"0$x
mv "../$CURRF" "./"

## prepend an alias to the file
cp $CURRF 1$CURRF
WGET=`which wget`
echo "PATH='../:$PATH'
export WGET=$WGET" > $CURRF
cat 1$CURRF >> $CURRF
rm 1$CURRF

if [ $x -ge 1 ]; then
ACTIVE=`eval 'echo $SOURCE'$x`
sed -i "s/$SOURCE0/$ACTIVE/g" "$CURRF"

fi

bash $CURRF &>out$x &

let x=x+1
done

exit

The wget replacement file:
Save this as wget in the same directory as the above script. Make it executable.

#!/bin/bash
$WGET -nv $@

For crying out loud

2009-08-18T19:02:00.000-07:00

At work today I tried to explain to my boss how two subnets can do and will work on the same hardware network layer... In this case 1000fx,1000tx aka(gig dual mode fiber and gig lan).

I attempted to explain that you can have multiple subnets running across the same cable, just like you can have multiple ip's on the same cable. Either he didn't get it(drawings included) or he just didn't whant to hear my ideas... The odd thing, he was the one wanting the firewall in the server room not me. SO why the resistance? IDK Frustrating at best. He responded in a negative tone, and said we(meaning me) would have to build a test network with a using a router(we don't have) to "prove it".

I think I was pretty patient, except for a comment about this being a basic network principal.

RANT--(ignore)
I am getting tired of being treated like an intern as if I just don't have the experience or something. I mean you guys hired me because I have 5+ years of combined networking, programming and unix/linux experience. Not to mention DB classes and a year of on the job training/exp plus three or so years of informal personal DB maintainance. (we had nice-ish words about good DB practices which ended about the same). I can code in plenty of languages, and have made some pretty cool apps over the years. SO when I say I am pretty sure you can do this with a network I MEAN IT!!!!

I did it in about 4 mins with iptables(just to make sure) this after noon. I bound the same card to a virtual interface eth0(192.168.2.x) and eth0:1(192.168.4.100). Then I changed my desktops ip to the 192.168.4.x subnet. And finally I added some iptables NAT rules to the Linux box and bam I was browsing the internet through my new Linux router... all through the same switch and accross the same ethernet cables. Worked greate, just like the many times I have done this type of networking before.

END RANT

As a side note, I hate File Maker Pro! It can bairly be called a DB, and has tons of closed source proprietary issues.

OK Really END RANT

The Situatation/Problem
The issue was we have a six pair multimode fiber pulled between our two buildings, only one pair is in use and terminated(1gig). We also have an older single mode fiber that we grew out of which is plenty fast enough for a nine meg internet unprotected connection.(100meg) We want to move our current firewall from it's present location into our(IT) server room. The catch is, we share the internet with our two other plants, both of which are on seperate subnets seperated by a router located in the same room as the firewall.

So each building has a subnet like:

buidling subnets
192.168.1.x (other buildings)
192.168.2.x (the server room and our buildings subnet)
192.168.3.x (seperate firewall subnet)

All are seperated by the router which handles the static routes between subnets. The router is the gateway for both building subnets, and the firwall is in turn the gateway for the router.

Simple works and secure.

Solution
My suggested cheap and imediately doable solution:

wait to pull the additional gig fiber.
move the firwall to the server room.
use the existing 100fx fiber for the new unsecured 9 meg fiber internet.
run both the secured 192.168.3.x and secured 192.168.2.x on the same main pipe.
either us a router to split the subs between the fiber, or just pipe them both into the switch(current). Keep in mind both are secure networks and the firewall controlls internet access so that's not an issue.
connect the backup dsl modem to the phone conn in the server room.
done.

This shoule work just fine and is relatively secure, and doesn't cost us any additional money for two new switches and the additional termination.

Lowdown SCSI Blues

2009-07-15T07:37:00.000-07:00

Until recently I had no idea SCSI had so many variants. My companies MRP server has two SCSI interfaces. The old one a single ended(SE) fast SCSI(50pin) and a newer one a High Voltage Differential(HVD) fast wide SCSI(68pin). The only issue is, most HVD drives run $120+ since HVD has since been replaced by the newer low voltage diff standard(LVD). I did some research and discovered most LVD devices will fall back to an SE bus. This is great except the target bus is the newer HVD no SE one. The older SE bus has difficulty with more then three devices ATM. After some digging, I discovered the SCSI extender/converter. These devices claim transparent support for piggybacking LVD/SE devices onto HVD and visa versa. So I should be able to purchase the cheaper SCSI wide SE drives, an extender and be good to go... in theory. It will be slower then an HVD system, but how much speed do you need when the system has a 33mhz cpu? My only concern with the whole arrangement is if the OS will accept SE devices on an HVD bus, driver wise.

Black Rock

2009-06-23T21:11:00.001-07:00

Sunday Kc, Kyler and I made our first visit to Black Rock (BRMBA). I say our first visit because it was absolutely the best riding ever!

I have ridden Bend, Corvallis, Willamette Pass, North Umpqua and Mckenzie but Black Rock takes the cake in my book. The riding scenery and terrain are nearly identicle to the Mac forrest in Corvallis, except Black Rock has way more to offer. There are runs from green to double black, and most extreme sets have bail outs for those with lesser insanity ;)

I rode the longest ever on a construction/log combo(without bailing). Had a blast on the green Bonzia run, and practiced my jumping and drop techniques. Every one we talked to was friendly and enthusiastic and helpful... It was a great day!

I still enjoy riding Bend and Corvallis, but if you havent checked out Black Rock get too it!

http://brmba.org/

New Impreza WRX

2009-06-23T20:24:00.001-07:00

Well, I have a Subaru again. It's about time too.

Sarah and I have been looking for a new car for several months now and we finally found one at a price we liked. The gent we bought it from is throwing in a new turbo and left rear window... By new I mean parted from a salvage job. He is covering the labor so all I need to do is show up next Sunday and wait a bit.

The reason for all this? The turbo seems to have an air leak, it doesn't appear to effect the performance much, but it is fairly annoying to hear a whistle every time the turbo spools... (turbo ahhhh I'm giddy)

This baby has a 3" cat back exhaust that sounds amazing. Everything else is bone stock, aside from an ECU flash. Once everything is paid off I plan to do cold air intake and a new down pipe. Although this will increase the noise some what, I think it should be worth it, especially at 300hp!

A random idea I had today

2009-05-27T22:13:00.000-07:00

A Davinci type, I often come up with seemingly random ideas. This is one of those ideas.

Todays idea

Orbit Gum brand tooth paste. All your favorite chew flavors in a paste. "Fabulous"

"For A Good Clean Feeling, No Matter What"

Reasonings

The main reason, I love Orbit's Mint Majito flavor. They also have/had citrus mint(yum) and raspberry mint. Orbits offers a wide variety of fruity flavors that don't taste like kidy sweets. I am also bored of tasting the plain minty tastes. Most other toothe-paste flavors taste like blue raspberry slushies :(

I want the minty freshness of Mint Majito!

End Idea
$_

Drupal module install scripts

2009-05-20T10:19:00.000-07:00

The curl downloader -- for clients that lack wget

#!/bin/bash
## This script uses curl to save a web url from the net... It sets the file to the target filename.

function usage {
echo "usage: cget [opts] url
opts
-h: this help message
"
}

while getopts ":h" OPTION
do
case $OPTION in
h)
usage $OPTARG
exit 1
;;

?)
usage $OPTARG
exit
;;
esac
done

if [ -z $1 ]
then
usage
exit 1
fi

NAME=`echo $1 | tr "/" "\012"`

for X in $NAME
do
FNAME=$X

done

curl -o $FNAME $1

exit 0

The "installer"

#!/bin/bash
## This script uses downloads a zip file and moves it to the specified directory... from a package directory... This was intended to be used for drupal modules.

function usage {
echo "usage: modinst [opts] url
opts
-h: this help message
"
}

while getopts ":h" OPTION
do
case $OPTION in
h)
usage $OPTARG
exit 1
;;

?)
usage $OPTARG
exit
;;
esac
done

if [ -z $1 ]
then
usage
exit 1
fi

NAME=`echo $1 | tr "/" "\012"`

for X in $NAME
do
FNAME=$X

done

./cget $1

cd ../modules/
tar -xzf ../gzips/$FNAME

exit 0

Customizing Colors in Leopard Terminal

2009-05-14T07:39:00.000-07:00

Reason: Default colors are hideous in Terminal.app and Leopard doesn't have a way to change them.
Solution: Install SIMBL, and a SIMBL plugin(Mike Solomon’s TerminalColors).
Sources: Customizing Colors in Leopard Terminal -- Full article

Goodbyes and New Adventures

2009-04-03T21:13:00.000-07:00

Today I said my goodbyes to my fellow co-workers and boss. I am having mixed emotions, while I will miss working with them, I am excited to be starting a new job, with new challenges and people discover.

I had some difficulty letting go of some of my projects! It's harder than I thought to just walk away from something I made and put my best effort into.

Pwned by Google!

2009-04-01T15:42:00.000-07:00

LOL's Google got me haha... I didn't realize it was Apr 1!!!

My boss just showed me the latest CADIE service, brain indexing. Their first service was semi believable, but seriously brain indexing ;) To funny.

I remember quite a few years back, Google announced their mental plex technology. It had a nice gyroscope twirly image that you looked into and thought about your desired search.

Gmail AutoPilot

2009-04-01T12:02:00.001-07:00

I just noticed Gmail's new "autopilot" feature that has been released. It seems like more of a tool for spammers then it does for the average user. I don't see much good that could come from automating email and chat responses! Besides if my mom writes me a message I wouldn't want some computer telling her that I hate her guts and that she should go smoke pot! As a christian I think anything that is coming from me, should be carefully worded. The whole thing is just weird! I can see it now, new blogger autopilot... Blog about your life without ever blogging!

Being patient in prayer

2009-03-29T23:12:00.000-07:00

Over this past week, I learned that I tend to get impatient with God. I often want to see immediate results to my prayers and spiritual growth. The amazing thing is, God doesn't get impatient with me! He sets up a lesson and then gently guides me as I discover something new and awesome. This week I discovered long suffering in my prayer life.

It started on Tuesday, I was having a discussion with my friend Jared about various things, and I expressed my frustration with how few people had responded to a the technical missions project flier that was sent to all the churches in the Oregon conference. I knew that God has a plan for this project, but it just seemed like it was moving so slowly!

The next day I received numerous requests for information about the project. I was amazed, and encouraged, but God still had something more for me to learn! That evening, Sarah and I where discussing some of our concerns about how long it is taking to get our apartment above the garage finished, when we decided to look up various verses on patience. We read James 1 where it talks about having patience during trials, and I was thinking about that in the context of the addition and Sarah's concerns. I missed the lesson He was trying to teach me.

Friday night during our visit with Jarad and Constance, we where talking about the power of prayer, and it's affect on opening spiritual doors of opportunity. We discussed how prayer, is vital to inviting the holy spirit to work in the lives of people, and about the time that Daniel was praying and the angle was delayed by a spiritual prince! It was because of Daniel's persistent prayer and patience that enabled Michael(Jesus) to help the angel fight off the prince. I started thinking about that over the next couple of days, and this morning in my worship it became crystal clear that God had a message for me, and that He was trying to tell me this all week! I was reading in Luke, and when I came to chapter 11 I was like OOOH I get it! Chapter 11 is lukes rendition of the lords prayer, but Luke adds a parable about the persistant friend that comes in the middle of the night to ask for bread. The man in the house didn't give the friend bread because he was his freind, but because he was persistant and bold in his request.

I need to be more persistant in my prayer life, but I also must be patient and have faith that God hears my paryers, and will give me what I need!

Readings:
Luke 11
James 1
Daniel 10:12-14

PHP fork() 'fake' with apache

2009-03-20T12:01:00.000-07:00

The other day at work I started working on a php script to dynamically return some results to a command line client(wget/curl)... The problem was, the php script takes quite a while to get the db results, find a set of images, and then compress them into a zip file, before streaming them to the client. I knew that my jobs where perfect for parallel processing as one set of data is selected by the file timestamps and the other comes out of the database.

Being familiar with C and linux cl programming, I naturally turned to the PHP fork() function. However, I soon found out that fork() in php one works if PHP is running in CGI or CLI mode. This code needed to run through Apache!

Since each PHP script gets it's own process from Apache, I figured that if I where to use some clever manimuplating of output bufferes and file pipes, I should be able to make this work!

So here is the prototype fork with apache: phpApachFork.php

Fixed -- missing function sendToHost()
Fixed -- sendToHost not properly handling socket closing after content length reached.

First post

2009-03-11T11:51:00.000-07:00

This, being my first post I would like to set the tone for what I hope is to become of my blog! I plan to blog about my basic daily activities, current events, my relationship with friends and family, school, work, and my relationship with God.