Take 2

And then it dawned on me, blogs are public! I don’t write here much not because my mind isn’t coming up with interesting things, it is more that there are a whole lot of people who don’t read words the way they are written. Anything that is written or spoken can be taken out of context by people who are blinded by their beliefs or simply ignorant. There are horror stories about companies who have done research on candidates and discovered things they didn’t like about them by reading their blogs or social network pages. I don’t want to fall into that catagory. Only things that are non-debatable will show up in the public portions of this site. If you would like to talk about debatable matters in an intelligent setting, feel contact me.

From http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-secret-to-raising-smart-kids&print=true
Our society worships talent, and many people assume that possessing superior intelligence or ability—along with confidence in that ability—is a recipe for success. In fact, however, more than 30 years of scientific investigation suggests that an overemphasis on intellect or talent leaves people vulnerable to failure, fearful of challenges and unwilling to remedy their shortcomings.

The computers are never large enough or fast enough. Each breakthrough in hardware technology leads to more massive programming enterprises, new organizational principles, and an enrichment of abstract models. Every reader should ask himself periodically “Toward what end, toward what end?” — but do not ask it too often lest you pass up the fun of programming for the constipation of bittersweet philosophy.

I just got done setting up my joystick similar to a mouse in OS X.
That’s not all though. The app I used was controllermate
http://www.orderedbytes.com/controllermate/ , it allows for logical
combinations of various physical device inputs. For example, I can
press up on the joystick and have it move the mouse cursor up.

One can also combine devices into virtual devices. I could make a
virtual mouse that uses the x and y access input from my real mouse, but
then uses some keys on the keyboard as the actual mouse buttons. On the
joystick I set up, I used the analog control to be like a mouse. I then
set up a couple of the top buttons to scroll up and down like a mouse
wheel.

Very very cool stuff. Check it out if you’ve got a mac handy.

I’m gonna set up a Wiimote as an input device next.
http://blog.hiroaki.jp/2006/12/000433.html

“An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex.”
-Aldous Huxley

Phoronix: Out of all of your achievements up to this point, what would you consider the most rewarding?

Mark [Shuttleworth]: Staying unmarried.

I just got my server upgraded to Centos 5. CentOS 5 is the best operating system I’ve ever used. However, there are some not so fun issues with it. Specifically, if you want to transfer a xen domain from a previous version. Here’s what you need to know.

Redhat and CentOS do not include the xennet and xenblk drivers in initrd. This means that you will never be able to mount the root device. To fix this, make a new initrd with the command: mkinitrd /boot/initrd-xen-img –with=xennet –preload=xenblk . Make sure to add that file in the ramdisk option of the xen config.

The next trick is a doozy. The console device is no longer /dev/tty0 but is now /dev/console. I had to edit the /etc/inittab files on all of my vm’s to spawn a getty on /dev/console. This is the issue if everything looks good, but the machine won’t display a login. To fix this, either mount the xen disk and do the mods from dom0, or add the line extra = “1″ in the cfg file to boot into single user mode and edit the file from there. I see alot of talk about /dev/xvc0 as the console, but haven’t had to use it yet.
Nash-hotplug is a little evil. The process was taking up 100% cpu on my jailtime CentOS 4.4 image. To fix this, I added a killall line to rc.sysinit. I was in rc.sysinit already since udev fails to start now. This isn’t a show stopper since all the needed device nodes were already created. If you need to create the device nodes yourself, try:

cd dev ; /dev/MAKEDEV null zero random urandom console tty pty hda xvd loop

The Debian image faired about the same. I had to fix the console as described above. There was another issue though. An error message with 4gb seg fixup in it kept appearing. The fix for that issue was to move or delete the /lib/tlb directory.

This is too hard for the normal person to figure out. If not for google, I would’ve been down for days.

I’ve been an off and on follower of WWE wrestling. Yes, I know it’s fake. I like to watch the athletic moves that they pull off. My wife bought me tickets for my birthday and we attended the RAW showing on March 26. Here’s a few observations.

They don’t allow cameras into the event. I wanted to take some pictures to remember the event by, but couldn’t. The security guard stated that the event was a production. I thinks it is more of a seen it once seen it a thousand times issue. If they allow pictures to be taken, why come back?

The event really did feel like a production, specifically, a play. The different wrestlers seemed to be part of acts that they played roles in. The audience was simply an audience and didn’t play a role at all in the play.
The wrestlers are big people. The don’t look bigger in real life then they do on television. I came within a couple of feet of the Great Kahli. That guy is big.

The moves the wrestler’s perform are directed towards the camera. I was sitting on the opposite side of the ring. The moves looked much more staged from that angle. Without the camera shake that you get when watching on television, the moves don’t look that painful at all.

I was lucky enough to be on the kiss cam. That’s right, I kissed my wife while on the big screen. I’m looking to see if that part was televised. My climb to fame continues.

It wasn’t a great time, but it was a good birthday present. The audience participation was too low for it to be something I’d be interested in doing again soon.

The new disk drives came today.  This post is somewhat of a placeholder to make sure that all the posts were copied over.  Soon, the server will be a Xen box with about 5 VM’s.

Yes it’s possible to steal internet from an airport by using MAC address spoofing.  You’re reading the proof.  I also proxied the connection through an ssh tunnel.  So l33t.