Well… I decided to write my own PHP script to rip out the old comments (from when this was a Blogger blog), parse them, format them and insert them into the database for WordPress.
The cool part is it all worked on the first try. That’s pretty amazing if you ask me (and that’s why I’m awesome.. hehe). 🙂
So anyway, the 400+ comments that were made when this was a Blogger blog now show… And we can once again enjoy people telling me I have a small penis. 🙂
Okay, so Apple *did* announce quad processor PowerMacs today. The top-end being a 2.5Ghz x 4 G5 machine. I know what I’m getting myself for an early Christmas present (they aren’t shipping them until next month though). 🙂
Alek has setup his halloween lights this year so you can view them with a webcam. Even more fun is that fact that you can control them in realtime too.
Personally, I like raising Frankenstein from the dead, only to kill him off. 🙂 hehe
Rumor has it that Apple is announcing dual processor PowerMac G5 towers with each CPU having two cores to give it four logical processors. If rumors are right, they should be announced on Wednesday (October 19th).
I have a 30″ Apple Cinema Display on the way, and it requires a dual link DVI video card (which I don’t currently have). So I’m thinking I’ll just get a new computer (with the necessary video card to drive the 30″ monitor) if they do indeed announce quad processor PowerMacs on Wednesday.
We’ll see…
Mologogo is a free GPS friend-tracking service that works on Nextel phones with Java and GPS. Over at the MAKE: Blog, Phil Torronne took Mologogo for a walk. It’s a really cool use of the Google Maps API. This one lets two (or more) people you use GPS enabled phone to show on a map where they are in relationship to each other.
Cool little friend finder application there. But now they just need to make a GPS enabled Motorola RAZR so I can use it.
Not that anyone would really notice, but I’ve switched this blog from Blogger to WordPress (finally). It’s been something I wanted to do for a long time, but I hated all the templates for WordPress. So I finally got off my butt and made my own.
Comments were lost… not that you guys had anything important to say anyway, so no biggie there. 😉
Since it’s PHP and MySQL driven, it lets me have control over the underlying code. For example you can see what I’m listening to in iTunes and I made it show a random picture from my photo gallery on the sidebar.
After rumors have been swirling the last few weeks about Apple releasing an iPod that can do video, it’s official now. They have a 30GB and 60GB iPod with a slightly larger screen that is capable of doing video (realtime decoding of MPEG4 and H.264 with 260,000 colors). Pricing doesn’t change ($299 and $399). It’s also 31% thinner than the previous model it’s replacing.
It also comes in black like the Nano. I’m tempted to throw away my existing 60GB iPod Photo and get one of the black 60GB Video iPods…
For the last two months or so, I’ve been having a strange problem with my primary MySQL Server that required that the mysqld process (not the server itself) be restarted. The first image shows the CPU usage of the server, with the red arrows being the points I restarted the mysqld process (queries per second and types of queries do not change over time).
The server itself is a dual processor Xserve G5 with 5GB RAM, 1.2TB drive space, etc. so resources really are not an issue. Also, I should point out that no other services (like a web server) are running on the machine (it’s strictly MySQL only). Basically the longer the database server ran, the slower it would become (there are no “bad” queries anywhere either). After 24 hours it was slow enough that it needed to be restarted. I tried tweaking MySQL config options, throwing more memory at various aspects of MySQL.
While watching the processlist, I noticed something strange a few times. Something that should be blazingly fast (like an insert into a tiny HEAP table) was taking a VERY long time (sometimes 90 seconds), and not only that it was hanging all the query threads (even ones hitting unrelated databases). So then I had the idea to look at the query cache since that’s shared by all databases, and when you update a table, it needs to flush the queries from the cache for that table (which would explain why unrelated databases’ queries would hang while it was flushing the query cache for the HEAP table being updated). So to test this theory I rolled the query cache memory allocation from 256MB to 2MB. Low and behold… it worked! In my situation, the less memory you allocate to the query cache, the faster MySQL was. Then I remembered something that was added to Mac OS X 10.3 (I believe) and that’s the ulimit functionality. It’s actually a nice feature and can prevent a runaway process from taking down a machine. But in my case it was preventing MySQL (which really is the only process) from using very many resources. Still not sure why it would slowly get worse, but maybe it has to do with the more memory MySQL wanted to use over time, the more swap disk memory it was forced to use. Who knows… and to be honest, I don’t care, I’m just glad it works now.
Once I got that squared away, this is what my MySQL server CPU usage looks like:
Now, hopefully someone out there will find themselves in the same problem and this will be your solution, rather than spend months screwing with it (this ulimit stuff would apply to other BSD variants like FreeBSD, not just Mac OS X).
Run this from the shell (as root):
This allows a single process (mysqld in my case) to have up to 102,400 files open at once at the kernel level (more than enough).
Add this to your /etc/sysstl.conf file (or create it if needed):
This makes the settings work when you reboot the machine.
Edit the /Library/StartupItems/MySQLCOM/MySQLCOM script that MySQL installs (it’s part of the automatic startup package), and somewhere near the beginning, add this:
You could put it somewhere else, but I chose this file since it doesn’t get overwritten when you upgrade MySQL. This lets the mysqld process use more than the default per user resources that Mac OS X Server allows.
You may want to adjust your settings as you see fit for your situation, but that’s what I used.
I’m just happy it’s no longer a problem for me!!!!! Yaaaayyy!!!!
If you are buying an HDTV anytime soon, make sure it has at least one HDMI connector on it. It’s pretty much the new standard for connecting audio/video (and soon computers) together. It’s built upon the older DVI interface, but it adds digital content protection for the content owners (keep the studios happy) and also carries audio on the single cable (DVI does not). The lack of content protection on the current HDTV signals is the main reason there are no realistic options for HDTV DVRs yet (see previous entry).
Another nice thing is it’s backwardly compatible with DVI (also Type B HDMI is backwardly compatible with dual link DVI connections).
You can also get equipment to carry DVI/HDMI signals over fiber optic cable, so if your connected equipment is more than 25 feet or so apart, that is the way to go.
Now for my complaint (heh)… What would be really nice is if they just do away with the physical DVI/HDMI connector, and go straight to fiber optic and basically putting the DVI/HDMI <-> fiber optic equipment inside the TV, cable box (row whatever else you are connecting).
How come there isn’t any good options for a high definition digital video recorder? TiVo doesn’t have one, Windows Media Center can’t do it, etc. The only one I’ve run across (that didn’t end up being some home brew Linux setup) is the one built into some of Mitsubishi’s high-end TVs.
Weird.
Why do all home automation systems suck? It would be relatively easy to make a universal system that was modular (with just code) that could control anything… So I don’t get why all the “big players” are so proprietary.
Maybe I need to start a home automation company, because the guts (software) which is the expensive part is really the easiest part. Weird.
I’ve been doing a little tuning with one of my MySQL database servers today, and it’s pretty amazing how fast it is. Just ran a benchmarking thing on it before I applied some optimizations (so this is with no tuning), and this is what it looks like:
Uptime: 747 Threads: 1 Questions: 1409737 Slow queries: 0 Opens: 41055 Flush tables: 1 Open tables: 197 Queries per second avg: 1887.198
Notice the queries per second. And even more impressive is this is for a single threaded benchmark app.
If nothing else, Apple really does come up with cool ideas. They came up with the iPod, and seem to come with with something completely new as far as iPods go just about the time the competitors are getting around to copying their previous idea.
Here’s something for all the super dorks… The iPod Linux guys have started to port Doom to the iPod (they also were the ones to get video working on an iPod).
Check it out:
So I’m thinking about getting a system for my new house where you can get an implant and doors will unlock for you automatically. But I also thought it would be cool if you could use those to track where someone (or a pet) was in the house in real time. Well I talked to the VeriChip guys today and they say that only the active RFID tags (ones that have a battery and transmit a signal at all times) can be used for that. The implants are tiny passive RFID tags (they have no battery) so they don’t have enough range to do it.
That sucks… now how am I going to find my cats in the house?? 🙂
A South Korean man (identified as “Lee”) died of heart failure stemming from exhaustion after playing an online video game for 50 hours.
Lee thought it would be a good idea to quit his job so he could have more time to play video games, which by the way, doesn’t seem like a solid plan for your life if you ask me. I’m not much of a gamer myself, but for everyone else thinking they need to quit your job so you can have more gaming time, maybe you should think twice… because gaming KILLS.
So after my last post, I was poking around the Internet regarding RFID access control systems for buildings (for a house in my case), and I found a company called VeriChip. They offer systems that are wearable (what I originally was looking for), but also implantable inside your body, which seems pretty cool to me. It would be pretty hard to lose your house key then.
The US Department of Homeland security is going to start requiring foreigners to carry a “card” with them at all times. It will be an RFID type of card that can be read from 20 feet away.
Anyway… I don’t care a whole lot about that and the whole privacy concerns (I’ll let the privacy activists deal with that). But, it would be a neat technology to use for my house that I’m going to be building soon.
Maybe a card you carry in your wallet or something could automatically unlock the front door as you approach the door or something. Has anyone seen or heard of a company doing any RFID stuff for the home?
Well, Microsoft has finally started beta testing IE7, which you can get (if you are a developer) over here.
Internet Explorer is a really sucky browser that I don’t really feel like going into WHY (because most people already know, and the ones that don’t already know, probably don’t care anyway). But hopefully they will put enough band-aids on it that people designing websites don’t need to make compromises on what they can do because of Internet Explorer limitations.
And more importantly, maybe I won’t feel the need to write such lame blog entries like this.
Just another note from me to tell you how crappy Internet Explorer is. Hope they fix it with verison 7.
Google Earth lets you generate .kmz files by right-clicking a marker and saving it. Pretty handy, but I wanted to be able to adjust the tilt and direction the default view comes up as, so I poked a little bit (well not that much… heh). The .kmz files are simply zipped .kml files (which are just normal XML). So it’s pretty easy to manipulate them.
My only complaint is that you can’t have multiple
Anyway, for those of you with Google Earth installed, I made two little .kmz files that will plot my old and new property at Cielo.
Okay dude, this thing is pretty cool. It’s a full blown computer packed into a double-DIN sized chassis. the thing is made by Infill (a Korean company). I still have a hard time believing they fit it all into the chassis without a hide-away unit, but it seems like they did. It’s basically a tiny PC and includes 40GB hard drive, DVD drive, TV tuner, GPS, voice control, USB ports and even an mPCI slot. Rumor has it you could even install Windows on it if you wanted.
The site is in Korean, but you can find it over here:
//www.infill.co.kr/product/main.asp
Not only that, but the default GUI on it looks like it’s pretty awesome, and it’s cheap (compared to other car stereos with GPS/navigation)… around $2,300 USD.
Since the thing has a GPS and Internet connectivity built into it, and the $20 version of Google Earth has support for GPS, you could install Google Earth on it and have that be your navigation system.
Damn I want one of these!
Okay, I think I have it down to two companies for the home automation stuff…
AMX, which seems to be more widely deployed (the installers I met with last week have an office here in San Diego). It’s really impressive stuff (although for the price, anything is going to be impressive).
The other company is a German company called visiomatic. I think their hardware looks much better (so does my buddy which made the comment that visiomatic’s hardware looks like art, and AMX looks like computers) and judging from their site, it looks like it has more functionality (will automatically turn off the water main if there is a problem, can detect individual people in the house and automatically adjust music and lighting to their tastes, etc.) But the thing I don’t like about visiomatic (besides the fact they are on the other side of the world) is I can’t get any info from these guys. I’ve put in three different requests for info and/or contact, and I’ve gotten nothing so far. Makes me a little nervous with such a huge investment.
This is kind of interesting… it’s a mannequin that falls forever in a universe of balls, all the time obeying the laws of physics.
Also, you can throw her around with your mouse if you want. 🙂
Thankfully, I downloaded Google Earth a few days ago (when it first was announced) because they suspended new downloads for it temporarily.
It’s hands down the coolest computer application I’ve ever seen. It’s the entire earth in 3D. It brings together satellite images, maps and lots of other stuff Google does into a single really cool interface. For major cities, it even has the buildings in 3D, so you can fly through them.
One thing that’s especially cool is the elevations are accurate, so I can go to my new property and actually check out the views (which are totally accurate) from my computer. It’s really neat.
They are working on a Macintosh version, so I’ll be even happier when that’s out.
It looks like the Motorola RAZRberry is getting close to being released (the latest ETA is within the next 3 months). It’s a pretty slick phone. It’s about 1/4″ wider, .5″ taller and slightly thinner (if you can believe that) than the Motorola RAZR V3.
It’s codename is Franklin, has all the stuff the RAZR V3 has, and adds a full QWERTY keyboard, 192MB memory, a bigger/higher resolution screen and it also runs Windows Mobile 5.0.
Today at ninja school, we got our first uniform. What I want to know is how am I going to strike fear into my enemies wearing something like this? It definitely doesn’t make me look like I can kick ass.
It wasn’t quite what I had expected, but I guess it’s a good first step.
Update… A little Googling and I realized that they probably got them from Think Geek. What the hell?? When do we get to assassinate people? Or at least look like we can?
The Digital Point forum is now live with vBulletin 3.5 beta 1. I spent some time today and last night recoding all the little hacks I made on vB 3.0.x, and turning them into plug-ins for 3.5 (yay for the new plug-in architecture).
Along the way, I even found some bugs (some of which I fixed on my own). Hopefully it will get fixed in the distribution though so I don’t have to fix it every update. 🙂
Most of the changes are for admins and moderators (inline moderation, plug-in system, template history system with diff, etc.), but man it’s nice!
There are some cool things for end users too though, like AJAX stuff… you can double click a post to edit it “live”, pretty tricky. Also dumped vBulletin’s internal search engine for MySQL’s fulltext search engine. It also support persistent marking of read threads which is so much nicer.
Uhm… does anyone care? If you read this far, you have less of a life than me. heh
Well, it looks like CNet and the Wall Street Journal was right. Apple is indeed switching from IBM’s PowerPC architecture to Intel processors.
I think it’s probably a good thing for the long term, but not so hot in the short term. I bet Apple hardware is going to drop now that everyone knows the PowerPC machines are going to be dropped starting next year. I bet a lot of people are going to wait to buy a new Mac now.
Looks like the iPod Linux guys have finally figured out how to play video on an iPod. Pretty neat for all the dorks out there. I’m not going to risk messing up my 60GB iPod Photo, but maybe I’ll mess around with my 1st generation 4GB iPod.
Check it out over here.
Apple switching to Intel processors has been an on and off rumor for more than a decade. But CNet is reporting that Apple plans on scrapping the PowerPC processors and move to Intel as soon as next year, with the official announcement coming next week at the Apple developer conference.
Personally, I find it a little hard to believe, but we’ll see I guess. Maybe Apple is using Intel as a pawn to get IBM to fix their manufacturing issues with the PowerPC chips.
It also seems like an odd time to do it because all the new gaming consoles moving from Intel to the PowerPC based architecture. If nothing else, the hundred million or so orders for PowerPC chips might be a good incentive for IBM to get on the ball with the architecture.
Since people don’t have enough to worry about with all the spy-ware, hijack-ware, ad-ware, etc. these days, now they can worry about ransom-ware. A malicious program comes in and encrypts all your documents, and you get to pay for the encryption key to be able to decrypt them… Nice! 🙂
//www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/internet/05/24/internet.ransom.ap/
One more reason to buy a Macintosh, or at the very least, use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer.
Tired of the sleek look of your iPod or PowerBook? Well now you can look like your straight out of the 70s and get a wooden case for them.
They are custom made by Peter Kinne out of, “about 50 percent recycled or reclaimed wood from old hot tubs and tables, and stainless steel from salvaged bikes.”
If you want one of these bad boys, $39 will buy you the iPod case over here.
Okay, so I’m addicted to XM Radio (satellite) since I bought my truck. I didn’t think I would use it at all, but it came with a 3 month trial (like a crack dealer… give you enough to get your hooked) so I tried it out. To make a long story short, my truck has a 6 disc CD changer that has never had a single CD in it (no exaggeration… it might not even work for all I know).
Anyway, I realized yesterday that if you have an XM Radio subscription, that also entitles you to listen to any XM Radio station online by streaming it live. The only thing I don’t like about it is that it requires Windows Media Player. Would be cool if they made it a normal Internet radio stream so you could listen to it with whatever you want (I prefer iTunes).
Not new news, but something I just read… Motorola is working on a new version of their RAZR (which BTW is a really cool phone).
Basically it’s going to be as thin as the existing model, but wide enough for a QWERTY keyboard. It should also run some flavor of Windows Mobile as the operating system.