CompHobby! - PersonalTech

Where I've Been What 's Been Going On

nospam@example.com (Dale M) — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 07:02:00 -0500

Missed putting anything up on the website ~~last month~~ the last two+ months as my job is keeping me really busy and probably will continue for the rest of the summer or even the rest of the year. Working in a new industrial complex certainly keeps one exposed to plenty of fairly advanced technologies even at the humble position of production shift supervisor. Having been in this line of work for about 30 years it is amazing to experience the amount of changes that have been implemented over the years.

When I do find that I have time to myself lately I generally am not going anywhere near a PC for anything but the most leisurely of activities such as music, video, light reading, and shopping. Since the hours have been long lately I decided to get myself a new car. I got to thinking about different vehicles I have owned and decided this time around I wanted something a little sporty for a change. It had to get reasonable gas mileage, be relatively fast, comfortable (in an unpolished sort of way), and most importantly fun to drive. I went and test drove a 2008 MINI Cooper S Hatchback at one of our local car dealers. I was simply blown away by the cars performance which MINI likens to driving a go cart ...a really fast powerful go kart. They in my opinion coined it pretty well although I've haven't driven many go karts lately but in as much as the car can can turn very sharp, stop in very little distance, and accelerates in the 0-60 range very well (rated 6.7 seconds) it does at feel a lot like a go kart would I guess. Cliches aside though the way the car moves it really is a totally capable "city" vehicle fast enough to stay ahead (or get away from the SUV crowd) with enough maneuverability to keep every one else in the rear view mirror if one wants. Sport style seats keep the driver in place very well in relation to the task of darting through traffic at what feels likes "negative G" pulling forces. Hell it's just fun to drive. Cheap however it is not with options the MINI Cooper can very easily cross the $30,000 mark fairly quickly but it is the level of available customization that makes the car very popular with many people. "Youify" is what MINI calls it and there are scores of options available for their vehicles. Just for the record I have this PDF file with the exact details of the one I bought if anyone wants to know how much frivolity I actually possess. When I get a chance I will post a couple real pictures but I have no way of knowing when that might be. Until next time thanks all who have emailed or stopped by the page I haven't gone away just gotten really busy.

Ubuntu 8.04 Beta

nospam@example.com (Dale M) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 02:10:00 -0500

Well as almost always I decided to give the latest beta release from Ubuntu a try. I always start from scratch just like someone trying it out for the first time might do it. As usual I burned two CD images the i386 desktop and the alternate install ones. My experience has been that only one time I have been able to get the desktop image fully booted and installed. This foray proved no different than what I am generally used to. I just gave up I didn't want to spend hours with the task and used the alternate install CD instead. All went smooth with that except the part near the end where it comes time to install GRUB not only did the install program not ask me where to put it, the program itself couldn't figure it out either and kept giving some message to the effect of "/target" wouldn't work. Luckily good old reliable LILO boot loader thing was available and even asked where I wanted to put it (complete with a list of reasonable choices so I had to just pick one). Not exactly beginner stuff but not that bad as long as one pays attention to the whole install routine as it happens. Since this was a from scratch type install I repartitioned the drive on which I always put my Ubuntu installations as I had saved everything that mattered to me to a my rather recently acquired NAS device. One thing that was different this time was that my drives were being identified as sda* and sdb* instead of the usual hda* and hdb* flavors if the LILO thing had not been so automatic, not noticing this might have been an issue. Well that was it the system was installed and I was ready to reboot back into XP just long enough to modify my boot.ini file and then continue on to Ubuntu.

I used to use another boot manager utility which worked really well but somewhere along the line I lost my license for it and most of the cooler features were tied to the license so the last couple times I went another route. The instructions make using the thing sound difficult but basically it just boils down to something similar to this.

Download th zipped archive
Copy the executable bootpart.exe to Drive C:\
Run bootpart.exe (there is a tool to simplify even this)

At this point the program will read the partitions on the hard drives installed on the system and output a list with information about the different partition types.

Next run:
bootpart 4 c:\bootsect.lnx "Some Linux I Like"

After this the executable bootpart.exe can be deleted or moved as it is no longer needed and leaving it in the root of ones system drive is some sort of risky behavior I would think. Although on second thought one might want to successfully boot Linux first.

The way the program fleshes out is "bootpart 4" is telling it what partition is the root partition or contains LILO or GRUB and this would be whatever number the program identified "4" is just an example. "c:\bootsect.lnx" is where the program will create a small image file that allows XP's bootloader to hand the booting process off off to GRUB or LILO and last "Some Linux I Like" is what will appear in the OS choices menu when the system boots (could be almost anything really but Iwould probably stick with letters and numbers). The only reason I am getting into all this is because the installer gave no options on how to boot other operating systems and I didn't feel like restoring XP's mbr later. Again not exactly beginner stuff but not that bad as long as one pays attention to the whole install routine as it happens. Fooling with way ones computer boots can and often does have consequences attached so proceed with caution.

The first reboot into Ubuntu was a seamless experience and not long after I was greeted with the message that I could install some 400+ updates which I went ahead and did the update thing and was suggested to that I reboot for best results. I forgot the first time to enable my restricted drivers and was obliged to reboot again. After that setting up is sort of like shopping add some additional repositories to simplify things somewhat and then get to picking and choosing what packages one wants. My printer/scanner both worked straight away with no additional configuration which is always a plus as I actualy like to print a fair amount of things like instructions for instance. Included of course is Firefox 3.0b5 (don't really know if that was the original installed version or from that initial 400+ package upgrade). Interesting thing is that while it still has a few rough edges it runs smoother on Ubuntu than same version for XP on the XP side of my PC. I am basing that on certain pages from CNET in particular (the next link could possibly lock your browser or even result in a BSOD) LIKE THIS ONE freeze Firefox on either Ubuntu or XP but in Ubuntu it recovers and asks if I would like to stop running the embedded script and then all is fine. On XP though it ends up being an end process type event and has caused the PC to crash completely. It only seems to happen on the CNET pages but that is not completely tested as it could be just certain CNET pages. Not scientific or anything just a observation on what I have experienced. So for the most part Ubuntu provides me with a decent multimedia PC experience (music, movies, light text-graphics editing, web, email, simple 2D game capabilities, printing...etc).

Once one gets it all up and configured Ubuntu is a very well behaved OS. It is not not for people who don't like tweaking however and therein is why it remains sort of an an anomaly, perfect for some (tweakers) to much trouble for others (pointers/clickers) even though the learning curve is really not all that steep. Once either group has it configured properly it is extremely easy to use. Each subsequent release gets more features and since they occur in a predictable cycle it is more like upgrades to than a radical departure from the base system. Unlike some commercial offerings Ubuntu seems to try and compliment the current installed hardware capabilities of the average user whereas some other OS products seem more like they are out to consume the current installed hardware capabilities of average user. I have been able to install 5 successive versions of Ubuntu on the same PC each improving over the last and to me that is impressive. If Ubuntu (I know I am looking at this from a beta release standpoint) ever gets some polish on some of those rough edges... who knows what could happen! Finally as always here is my new again Ubuntu Desktop Picture.

Safari For Windows

nospam@example.com (Dale M) — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 11:09:00 -0500

Saw this on the ARS Technica site. This doesn't make me want to give up Firefox, Opera, and IE just yet but will at least keep Safari in the mix every now and then. The funky looking bold text thing was a hindrance to any continued use of the software for me anyway. The exact details of the fix can found on Surfin' Safari Blog on the The WebKit Open Source Project pages.

A Backup Strategy of Sorts!!

nospam@example.com (Dale M) — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 12:07:00 -0500

I've actually always had one really. A very haphazard one but a backup strategy none the less. On most of the PCs I've owned until recently anyway, always had more than one hard disk installed. The plan was to take valuable files and make duplicate copies on the additional drive. Then I would always make duplicate copies of stuff on different PCs as well, also I always seem to copy files from one OS to another on the same PC if possible. Things I would tend to copy would be pictures, un drm'd musics files, copies of databases, my web and mail servers, install programs, user keys, personal settings, configurations ...etc. Then there were the several USB flash devices I had acquired that I put various files I deemed necessary for one reason or another and they were of course very useful for moving stuff from one machine to another. The word centralized was not however in my vocabulary as the scattered method had always gotten me through the few emergencies I ever encountered without to much pain.

Recently though the idea of a network attached storage device had been intriguing me as a means of sort of automating the process and a way of centralizing everything. I at one point considered building such a device or maybe getting a bring your own disks type rig. There is certainly no shortage of options in the market right now and it almost seems like if one can visualize what they want they can either find a solution out the box or make it themselves. My criteria were pretty simple I wanted it now so it had to be available locally which is really huge as where I live as shopping choices for hardware are somewhat limited. It also had to be fairly compact because I wanted it hanging off my wireless router, and most importantly it had to be dead simple to to use. I wanted to plug it in, find it on my network, set it up, and start using it period without installing any additional software to access it. It also had to be accessible from Linux as well as Windows. With my criteria in mind I set out to one of the chain computer/home electronics style stores located around here. Very few choices were available but I was expecting that so I settled for one of these in the 500GB flavor from Circuit City.

I knew it wasn't going to be terribly fast but I was pleased to find out that it wasn't terribly slow either and by that I mean for a home user not doing automated backups, but just backing up user files using the mapped drive interface its speed is tolerable. Now on my server via software I have backup set to happen synchronously and currently is at about 1 GB of data. Since it is set up synchronously it just runs in the background and keeps up with the task as things change hopefully causing a minimal impact on the servers perfomance. The initial backup took well over an hour and I used the Memeo AutoBackUp software that came bundled with the LinkStation Live which is only a trail version as the registration number they bundled with it did not work (less than honest sh*t imho). It would not copy empty folders and as slow as it seemed to be I wasn't about to buy it. So I've been on a download spree trying almost every free product out there before settling on another trialware offering. The program is called MirrorFolder and it completed the initial copy in less than 20 minutes which might not sound all that fast but compared to the various programs I gave a shot it is lightening fast and very easy on system resources. It copies everything you tell it to and as far as I can tell does what the program's writer says it will. To a new user this is not exactly the most intuitive interface but the program's performance compared to other offerings make the learning curve a worthwhile endeavor.

As far my backup strategy goes I'll still do all the things I mentioned in the beginning of the post I've just expanded a bit to include some new automation tools and hardware. Just for the record the LinkStation Live plays very nicely with Linux (Ubuntu anyway) as my installation had no problems finding and making it usable. Still though the whole experience has been sort of a mixed one for me being somewhat tainted by the bundled Memeo trialware debacle and I found the documentation that came with the product lacking. I mean there is a PDF file on the install CD which I didn't use and it is also available on the LinkStation Live once one has managed to connect to it. I just prefer a well written quick start guide in paper form at least. After all I did not want to have to install any software to connect it. Luckily I did not have to but I can see where some users might not have any choice as basically the PDF gave that out as the first step.

Insert the LinkNavigator CD into your computer’s CD-ROM drive.
On a PC, setup should automatically launch. If it does not, manually launch setup.exe by pressing Start and selecting the Run... option. When the Run dialog opens, type d:\setup.exe (where d is the drive letter of your CD-ROM drive). Press OK to continue.

Installing Software
If you are installing the software on a Mac, open the CD and click LinkNavigator to begin installation.

Not what I was realy looking for... a minor thing but a thing none the the less.

Some Free Things I Use

nospam@example.com (Dale M) — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 18:40:00 -0600

Everyone has their favorite free softwares and web based services that they have accumulated so I just thought I would mention a few of mine here.

Web browsing
Well for me its Firefox and a matter of fact I am using the the beta version now. To get it to work like I wanted I got to use one of Firefox's most unique features the about:config screen.

Firefox excels in my opinion because of the amount of customization the user gets with extensions. Everything doesn't always work as intended though which brings me to another utility I've found useful every now and then.

File Compression
For me the program of choice in a Windows environment is 7-Zip and really not so much for its archiving abilities but its Windows Shell integration which allows me a quick way to view the contents of almost any compressed file I may have downloaded.

In addition to opening and viewing the archive files inside can be edited and then saved back to the archive which depending on what one is doing can be a handy feature sometimes.

Text Editing for scripts, webpages etc...
This is in my opinion one thing that a default install of Windows (any version I've ever used don't know about Vista yet though) sucks at. When I say open a script file of some sort I want it viewable in a human readable format but when I close it I want it saved back to whatever format it was in unaltered with no questions asked including funky unix style carriage returns or whatever. My text editor of choice has become PSPad it does all those things and more. It has that same Windows shell integration feature that 7-Zip offers so it is always easily available and ready to use.

I've really only scratched the surface here as this program is really very feature full and I don't need a text/hex editor all the time. My exposure with it is rather limited in relation to its entire feature set, but for my needs it works easily and reliably.

Misc Graphics Tools....
As with text editing a default install of Windows (any version I've ever used don't know about Vista yet though) sucks at this. I mean Linux has The Gimp which is also available for Windows but I don't particularly care for either version Windows or Linux. However the program is at least capable of providing a base off which to work with images though. Windows has Paint which on a good day almost just doesn't cut it. There is Paint.NET which is a vast improvement over Paint and as with all graphics editors has its own learning curve but can be used for most basic tasks. Now the program I generally use or the one I am most familiar with is PhotoFiltre which actually comes in two flavors a free one or a more capable studio version which is a a 30 day free trail shareware product. I can't speak about the paid version as I have only ever used the free version but I might give it a try eventually. Now recently I discovered another freeware offering called PhotosScape. and like Paint.NET and PhotoFiltre has the learning curve but yields some pretty high quality results.

Of the three if I could only pick one it would be PhotoFiltre but as I stated earlier it has more to do with familiarity than anything else. I am going to close for now but I plan on speaking to this subject (favorite free programs) in the future again. One more thing I included this post to the serving category as these and several other programs are very important to that end.

Moving The Site A Scattered Account

nospam@example.com (Dale M) — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 02:28:00 -0600

Well I have now got everything migrated from my old server to my new server and as far as I can tell everything works. Since I wasn't changing my ISP, DNS, it was was a relatively easy task after I completed some preliminary stuff. One thing before I installed the OS on the new machine I set the new hard drive partition structure up identical to the old one. For that I used a partition tool on a bootable CD. That way once I got the OS and all updates installed I basically had to just drop files onto their respective drives and install services again. I copied all my directories from the server onto a USB drive and began the task of migration. In a text file I saved some path varibles information for Apache, MySQL, Perl, PHP, and ImageMagick. Apache, Perl, and ImageMagick I actually reinstalled form the latest versions available from each products website but was careful to make the new installs mirror the previous ones from the other server. Both ImageMagick and Perl (ActivePerl) actually offer to make file associations and set the path variable during their install routines but out of a habit that comes from usually dealing with zipped archives I always decline the option and do it myself. With Apache I got it from their binary offerings and instaledl it but declined to let it install itself as a service. I use this page as a reference but during the install I chose a different directory and partition that matched the old servers directory structure and declined the offer to install it as service and did that after I added it to the path variables on the new server. I then pasted in my web directories and configuration files from the old servers Apache installation. As far as PHP and MySQL went since each offers a zipped version and my versions are nearly always current. I just used the files from the old server and pasted them to their proper places in relation to my other folders on the new server. I forgot about the my.ini file for MySQL from the old server and ended up having to create on of those again for the new server, but it wasn't that big of a deal really since the web is full of information on that task. I have always kept my php.ini file in the same directory with the PHP program so it made the trip alright. Of course all this came after installing WindowsXP again so it had begun to be a very long task and even with all the tasks I have talked about being done I still had programs that I use for other server related tasks to install as well as migrate a mailserver program and antivirus subscription type program to the new machine. Each of which had it own steps related to configuration. Finally however I finished and was doing post install clean up things like defragging the disks and setting them up to scan before the next startup. I hadn't tested any services if everything had been done right they would start automatically with the next reboot. Well everything just seemed to work after the next boot so I assume I basically did everything right. All said and done it took about half a day to complete (at least half a day) but really when it all worked there was a feeling of satisfaction which is really the motivation for this site to begin with. Computers tech really really as a hobby trying to make devices do things, to control them actually, in ways that seem amazing, to me anyway.

Now this post isn't really intended as guide but more as an account of how one Joe Sixpack type approached the task. Some understanding Apache, MySQL, Perl, and PHP is assumed but not to much though just a little bit. A stubborn attitude about completing things one doesn't understand all that well is a requirement. There are probably better ways to go about it but this worked for me.

Mini Computers I Like Em The AOpen 965D

nospam@example.com (Dale M) — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 13:50:00 -0600

The computer that I have been using to serve the pages of my websites was beginning to sound a little sick. The fan for the CPU was making a noise akin to bearings grinding and the hard disk was sounding very similar as well on boot ups. The unit in question was housed in a rather huge desktop style case sitting on stand under my work desk that sometimes when I would back my chair up I would inadvertently run it into the power button and shut it down. Of course though everything was working and might of lasted for quite a while longer. Looking around my office I realize that some of my ideas about upgrading computers run more along the lines of whims than anything else. My abandoned computers now number four and are all of the Socket A variety.

The ones I currently maintain number three which include one Dell Dimension 9300 laptop that I use as home and at work because of software licensing and software issues and the need to have many work related tools available to me at home and many home related tools available to me at work. This unit has been exceptionally reliable and when people see it they often ask questions about it even though it is over two years old.

The computer I using right now is a 2.20 gigahertz AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core flavor and really serves as my primary workstation for everything music, games, videos, taxes, bills, pictures, shopping and generally just about everything else anyone can think of. It is also the computer I use to test a lot of things that may or may not find their way onto my server. So additionally I have set it up as sort of a localized development environment running interpreters for 3 different scripting languages, a database server, and web server software. It is a dual boot system running Windows XP and Ubuntu and is constantly in a state of change from the hardware and software perspectives. This machine sees a lot of web exposure between web browsing and the applications installed on it keeping it up to date is sometimes a bit of a pain as there is really a very large amount of web aware applications running on it. It just works would be the best way I could describe it to anyone.

As I said way back up at the top of the post my computer that I use as a my server was getting a little dated and because of the whim factor I wanted to update (well actually replace) it. As I have said in the past I am by now means a tech expert but rather a hobbyist so criteria for a replacement machine might not follow any real logical path. My goals were as follows. It has to be small as the space available to me is limited. Quiet for absolute sure quiet. I want it to just sit there and do its serving thing without bothering me. Powerful? Yes powerful but in a relative sort of way. Lots of fast memory, decently fast hard drive, and reasonably fast CPU; however, I really didn't care about graphics horsepower but did want it have reasonable display prowess for when I actually do work on it directly this machine will not be running any true server OS and from time to time will accessed directly to perform certain tasks. So the AOpen 965D became my unit of choice. I configured it wiith a 200GB hard drive and 3GB DDR2 PC2-5300 RAM and a fairly fast processor. Now of course this is for the most part a 99% laptop configuration to keep the thing small and power consumption down but so far it seems up to the task of providing web, email, and database services for my domains and it is very quiet!

Above it sits nicely on a cluttered desk quietly handling tasks. So in my opinion if someone wanted a fairly powerful computer (not for games though) this unit could fit the needs of many casual users if space and noise were major concerns. It is pitched as a digital engine and one model is available with a remote control but I can't really can't speak as to how well it would perform in that arena since as it has limited graphics capabilities and I have never tried to build a computer for the whole home media management role. If there is one drawback about the unit it is that it comes at a fairly high price point for the actual amount of hardware one gets. It is however an elegant solution in the small form factor/mini PC offerings area.

2008 Resolve

nospam@example.com (Dale M) — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 11:10:00 -0600

Whew it has been awhile since I last posted anything on the site. It's not like I don't want to so much as when I do have free time these days there are a lot of other non PC related things I either need or want to do as well. I started a new job about one year and four months ago and that has kept me extremely busy. I have from time to time tweaked and upgraded various parts of this site and the accompanying software that runs it but that is more of the under the hood variety of things and anyone who has possibly visited probably wouldn't notice such changes. Doing such tasks is a safety and value added practice since getting things to work has always been one of the main motivations for having a site.

In regard to the site this being a new year and all I do resolve to update at least a little more frequently than I did last year. Also in that vein the nature of this site will be even more amateur than it is already. Since CompHobby is really only one contributer (me) any and possibly everything that is posted here is a biased opinion. Things I like I will speak positively about things I don't I'll speak negatively about. Sometimes I will have it right other times I will be way off base. There will be as usual deep linking and block quotes galore perhaps taken in context, perhaps taken out of context. I do however always say what I honestly think about things and it is never my intention to mislead anyone or misreport anything. Visitors are urged to leave comments but I have no idea whether that will work or not since there are so many anti spam hacks in the site's script to prevent comment abuse I just can't be sure.

Apple's Fuzzy Math

nospam@example.com (Dale M) — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 02:09:00 -0500

I know this is old news but I am a little slow where numbers are concerned. Someone please explain to me how offering early adopters of the iPhone a 100 dollar selected Apple merchandise credit takes the sting out of paying 200 dollars more for the thing. It does however keep Apple in the news and now people can I suppose trade that credit toward the purchase of a new iPod. Apple certainly likes toying with their customers but apparently they don't mind all that much.

How Well can You Spot A Scam

nospam@example.com (Dale M) — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 13:46:00 -0500

It has been awhile since I've posted anything as I have been really busy trying to get things setup where I work. That being said though I always at least skim my compliment of various types of sites and look at what is happening around the web as far as news goes. I ran ran across this McAfee SiteAdvisor Phishing Quiz . I got nine out ten correct. So I guess that would translate into something like I could spot a fake 90% of the time. Only problem with that though is it only takes one time to really mess up one's day. Of course this kind of test isn't an absolute indication of how likely one is to become a scam victim but just an exercise in recognizing what is happening in the wild. Staying safe from scammers is in my opinion is part common sense, coupled with use of tools and best practices.