Planet TLLTS

Wow! Long time no post! I didn’t realize it had been so long. Lots of things have happened since I last wrote here. I had a little vacation time where I did pretty much nothing, I had a great belated birthday party that many of my friends attended, and I finally got my new NAS.

I really needed a new NAS. I keep running out of room on my old 500Gb NAS, which holds all my backups and media files and such. I have been putting off getting a new one for a long long time (I am a great procrastinator). Finally I broke down and picked up a Western Digital 1TB MyBook World Edition. I quite like it!

This NAS, priced around $170 depending on where you buy it, is actually pretty featureful. It offers cifs, afs and nfs filesharing, has optional ssh login ability and serves an itunes share and streaming media share. This NAS uses green technology, so not only does it automatically go into powersaving mode when not in use, but it uses a low power drive as well, so very little heat, no fan noise, and very low power draw. The gigabit ethernet affords decent speed on data transfers and the built in software is easy to setup and use and will let you get things like individual user accounts running quickly.

All in all, not a bad NAS for the price. In fact, this is probably the most inexpensive NAS I looked at with the featureset I needed. I have never yet been disappointed by Western Digital and that holds true on this purchase as well.

A while back I was talking about wireless problems with my wife’s Compaq laptop. That laptop’s wireless card has never worked well and I mentioned that I was now in the market for a USB wireless dongle for it as I couldn’t find a replacement mini pci-e wireless card that would work.

This weekend while laptop shopping I ran across a Belkin Wireless G USB Dongle at a Target store. I decided to bring it home and try it and it works perfectly. The only issue I had is I needed to remove the old wireless pci-e card because network manager kept switching between the two randomly.

If you are looking for a wireless USB dongle that works, at least, on Mint 8, this is it and it was only $30 at Target. Honestly, I should have just went this route long ago and forgone the hassle of trying different mini pci-e cards.

So you have some servers at home like I do. What do you put them on? Where do you put them? Well, for quite a while I had them sitting on a table, out in the open, right at ear level. Obviously this is not an optimum placement. In fact, it can get downright annoying with the noise and all. Servers really should be in a rack, but what if you dont have the space or can’t afford one? Enter the LackRack.

This website is a great resource for the LackRack, but essentially, it’s an Ikea “Lack” endtable, which just happens to be the correct size to fit rack-mountable equipment between the legs of the table.

In my case, my servers were a little longer than would fit inside the endtable version. Luckily enough, Ikea makes a “Lack” coffeetable too! This is what the LackRack people refer to as a LackRack Enterprise Edition As you can see, the Enterprise Edition has a middle rack drawer board that comes in handy for your first couple U worth of servers. It’s surprisingly sturdy too! For the grand sum of $20, I purchased my LackRack and set it up in just a few minutes and I think the results speak for themselves. The look is stunning in comparison to what it was before (wish I had pictures of the ugly mess to show) and the new rack cuts down on the noise considerably. I think having the servers closer to the floor and having a surface above them to deflect the sound helps quite a bit.

All in all, this is a wonderful way to inexpensively rack some equipment. Do check it out and if you get a LackRack for your house, share some pics!

Oh My.

Finally, after carrying around cellphones for over 10 years, *I* got a decent one.

It was time for me to re-up my contract with Verizon and high time I got a good cellphone, so I picked the Droid, at the behest and recommendation of several of my friends. To be honest, this thing kicks butt and takes names.
The best comparison I can give is that of it to an iPhone. I use an iPhone at work on my on-call rotation. Up until this point, I thought it was *very* cool and fast. Now I know different. The Droid whoops it without batting an eye. The Droid has a huge, bright lcd touch screen, it’s ultra thin and hides a full querty keyboard. It plays all your non DRM encumbered media – and beautifully I might add. It browses, it emails, it texts, it takes notes, it plays games, it has HUNDREDS of other apps and, hell, it even makes and takes phone calls if you can imagine. This thing is even better than the other android phones I have seen, being faster by an order of magnitude with a bigger screen and more storage (16Gb by default). The best praise I could give it it what I told Dann about it earlier, and that is this is what the Nokia N series Linux handhelds could have and should have been if Nokia had pulled their heads out of the sand. And did I mention that it’s fast, because it is. Stop reading this and just go buy one! You’ll thank me later – from the gmail account on your Droid.

Yes, the news is out. Apple is releasing the iPad, to start shipping in 60 days. There has been much discussion amongst the peanut gallery on this one, but I, for one, am exceedingly happy about the release, although maybe not for the reasons you may think.

The Apple iPad (I keep wanting to type POD) is basically a 10 inch version of their iPod Touch, with some really nice new features. The iPad does all the standard web browsing, games, iPod Touch / iPhone apps (minus the phone part of course), and games that you would expect but it also includes iBook, a really slick looking ebook reader program and iWork Spreadsheets/Presentation/Document software, etc.. What I was most impressed with was the 3G access. For $15 a month you can get 250meg of 3G access from AT&T with NO CONTRACT! That alone almost makes it worth buying for me as Verizon wants to soak me for a 2 year contract and an extra $30 a month…

Do I want one of these myself? Well, I probably wouldn’t turn it down as I think Apple makes some good lookin’ hardware that does what _they_ want it to do well. There are a few problems I see with it though. It does not multitask. That’s right, want to play music while you are editing that spreadsheet or reading that ebook? Nope. No camera on there either. Would have been a killer app for them to have a built in camera for an iChat, or Skype or what have you. It needs a fold out keyboard. I don’t care how slick the touch screen keyboard is, it’s fundamentally flawed as you suck up screen realestate by using it. Lastly, no real OS on there. For most people this isn’t really a problem, but I would like something a little more than an appliance….

So why am I happy about the release? Well, in a word, competition. Now that Apple has set a “standard”, other manufacturers have something to aim for and above for their own product releases. I see manufacturers turning to Linux for this because it’s developer friendly, easier to shoehorn into embedded or strange / smaller devices, and the price is right. I hope to see a multitouch tablet with a full functioning and/or upgradeable/replaceable Linux distribution on it. I want it to have a rollout/foldout keyboard. I want it to have 802.11n and 3G available, and I want to see the price point at or below what the iPad is. Think this sounds too goo to be true? I think we are all going to be surprised. At least I hope so. And just to get things going, check out the TouchBook, which by the way was available BEFORE the iPad. I think we are headed in the right direction and I, for one, am eager to see what happens!

Quite a while back, in September in fact, I ordered a big honkin battery for my Acer Aspire One. I bought the 9 cell version through Amazon from a place called NewMP3Technology. The battery came, I charged it right up and used it on the upcoming Ohio Linux Fest. My only note on it was that Allan bought a similar battery, obviously from a different place and seemed to get a bit more battery time out of it, but all in all, I was happy with it.

Fast forward to Christmas time. I took the family to my parents house for Christmas this year and brought a couple laptops with me for some recreational surfing while there. They live in upstate NY where there is little else to do While using my AAO there, I let the new battery completely drain. When I plugged it back in, it would not charge. I googled around for similar problems and found that there was a bios update that fixed some of these, so I updated the bios and, you guessed it, that didn’t work either. After I got back home, I checked the original battery which charged fine.

I checked my paperwork for the new battery and found that the original listing on Amazon had a 1 year warranty on the battery. Elated, I wrote the seller through Amazon’s contact form and asked them how I would go about getting a replacement. Well, long story short, I wrote them 5 times over 3 weeks or so and never received a response other than a form email stating that the exchange time limit on the purchase had expired (30 days). Now Amazon has an A-Z guarantee that is 30 days as well, but I had passed that too. I looked the seller up in the Better Business Bureau’s website and it said they were probably out of business. Frustrated, I sent off an email to Amazon anyhow, explaining the saga and telling them that these guys were still listed as active sellers on Amazon’s site. I figured I had done my good deed for the general populace and that Amazon would remove the seller and at least nobody else would get bit. To my complete surprise, Amazon, *extended* their A-Z guarantee for me and completely refunded my money (including the shipping!) I, of course, ordered another replacement battery from a different seller through Amazon.

It’s just so uncommon these days to find a person or a business with some integrity that I just had to pass the story along. And especially so with the anonymity that the web provides. Many thanks and kudos go to Amazon. I know I’ll keep buying from them. If you are going to buy things online, you can’t find a better place to do so.

Oh, and stay away from NewMP3Technology.

WOW! Dann pulls through again!

I have had my Sansa Fuze for quite a while now and I completely dig it. It’s just simply one of the best “mp3 players” out there. Of course it does much much more than that . It plays Ogg natively and other formats too, and it’s not DRM magnet either. It also has a great fm radio tuner and does slot radio to boot.

The only thing I have not gotten it to do is video. It has some wacky format that it uses and no matter how many attempts I have made at it with ffmpeg or mencoder I get bupkis. That is, until last night.

You see, Dann broke his Sansa Clip a couple weeks back and for a replacement he ordered a Sansa Fuze. He received it and was reviewing it on the TechShow and mentioned that the video worked great. When I asked him how he got it working under Linux he pointed me to http://code.google.com/p/video4fuze/. Absolutely Brilliant! I downloaded this software and tried it right away, and, just as Dann had said, it works flawlessly. This truly completes and rounds out the Sansa Fuze for OpenSource users.

There really is nothing bad I can say about this little player now. I highly recommend it. I also highly recommend trying out Video4Fuze to encode a couple videos for your new player.

Almost time for me to go watch a movie!

What’s your tech wish list look like? I know mine is pretty impressive as they are always coming out with something I am sure I could make great use of.

That being said, there are a LOT of people out there who would love some tech themselves but just can’t afford it. I say, let’s compromise! Do yourself and others a favor by cleaning out your old computer inventory and putting it up on FreeLinuxBox. You can make some room (and a good excuse) for getting your new whizbang laptop while simultaneously giving the gift of a working Linux computer to someone who could really use it. Don’t wait or hesitate. Do it now and you’ll be glad you did.

You may be thinking that nobody wants your old junk, but let me assure you that is not the case. I just recently put up an old used laptop with a bad display and I had several people emailing me asking for it within mere hours. Unfortunately, I had to turn them all down but the one who got it. They are waiting for you to post yours now.

It’s really simple. Get your old computer out, the one that you were saving for your kids when they get old enough, or the one you were holding on to for that special project you will never do. Install Linux or BSD on it and make sure it works. Write down the specifications of the machine like make/model/ram/hdd etc. and post them on FreeLinuxBox. It only takes a few minutes and you can be making someone really happy with their new Linux/Unix toy within just a few hours.

How would you like to pay 4 cents a piece for your music? Well, the price was definitely right for me. I stopped at BestBuy and bought a SlotRadio card to use with my Sansa Fuse.

Slide this little card in your Sansa Fuse and you get access to 1000 songs over a variety of genres. It works a lot like radio in that you cannot really choose what songs are going to play next, however, you can switch the genre channels and skip songs.

So far I am really digging this. The audio is encoded at a high quality and the actual songs are all popular (no bad B sides). For 4 cents a song, you just can’t beat this. It would be nice if the format was a bit more portable and I could get the songs somewhere other than my Sansa Fuse, but really, that is what I listen to most of my music on now anyway

While I was picking up my SlotRadio card I did also notice a few Slot Music cards as well. These are the pretty much the same thing as the slot radio cards but filled with one album. The price is about the same as the regular album and, word has it, this music is slightly more portable as an unencumbered mp3 that you can move from device to device. I will have to put one of these on my hot list of things to get and see for myself. I would have grabbed one already but the only albums available at the time in person were not to my musical taste. Ordering online seems to have quite a few more choices though.

What do you do when you work an hour away from home in an urban jungle? Well, you have to take what you need with you.

That is one of the first things I noticed when I started working in Phily. Almost everyone there is carrying some sort of backpack or big shoulder bag. In fact, many people carry 2 or three (really). It didn’t take long to figure out that when you are that far from home for that many hours a day, you sort of have to be like a backpacker in the wilderness and carry everything with you that you need.

I am always interested in what other people need to tote around with them to get by, so I thought I would share what I take with me most of the time. If you click on the picture, I will go from top to bottom, left to right…

The Bag: I bought a SOLO polyester expandable messenger bag. I used to carry around a Targus computer backpack, but it started to hurt my one shoulder so I opted for a messenger bag which rides across my body more. Although this bag holds all my gear and is pretty rugged, my preference would have been for a nice leather messenger bag. The price difference is what got me the SOLO as it was around $20 and the leather version I wanted was $150.

Computer: I carry an Acer Aspire One with me. This is the 9.1″ version with the 8gb solid state drive. I have Linux Mint 7 installed on it instead of the default Linpus Lite Linux which was a little too light on the Linux for me. I also had the ram upgraded to 1.5gb, added a 9 cell battery for 6+ hours of battery life, and added a 4gb ssd card for a little extra storage space. I have yet to find anyone who owns one of these laptops that doesn’t like them. Right next to it in the picture is it’s power cables.

Ethernet Cable: Hey, once in a while it’s nice to have a hard line to a network for speed and simplicity sake and it really doesn’t cost a lot of space or weight to make sure I have a cable handy.

Glasses case #1: Yup, for my daily wear pair. Along about the age of 38 my eyeballs decided they would just crap out and the Dr said I could start wearing “progressive Lenses”, which is Dr speak for “your eyes are now crap.” Anyhow, I used to have a normal prescription for eye strain that I never wore and now I have glasses I only wear when I want to see.

Pocket Knife: I carry a great little inexpensive pocket knife. It’s a Winchester ParFive that I bought for around $15 at K-Mart (I think). I use it for darn near anything and everything from cutting cables and opening boxes to poking holes in the film of my microwave lunches.

Cellphone #1: My home cell phone. I still have the junky one that I got from Verizon when I signed up 2 years ago. Yes, I am cheap Hey, it still works fine!

Inhaler: Some yeas ago I had a couple bouts with asthmatic bronchitis. I literally could hardly breathe. That is the scariest dang thing in the world and I have carried an generic emergency inhaler around with me ever since.

Cellphone #2: This is the cell that work gave me. I like mine better so I just set that one to forward it’s calls to mine, turned it off and I threw it into my bag where is just rides around.

Tums: I drink too much caffeine and eat spicy foods and suffer the consequences.

Eye drops: Already went over how my eyes turned to crap right? Well, they get really dry too because I stare at monitors all day.

Deodorant: Did ya ever sit next to someone on the train that just stinks to high heaven? Well, I am not that guy. In fact, as a fat guy, I am kinda paranoid about smelling bad so I make sure that I don’t

Chapstick: Especially in the winter time my lips can get so dry that they hurt. A little tube of this stuff can go a long way.

Tissues: I am a guy and probably wipe my nose on my sleeve unconsciously but I carry tissues for any nose blowing I need to handle on the train.

Glasses case #2: It wasn’t too long ago that I finally got a pair of prescription sun glasses. It is so cool to be able to see while wearing your sunglasses. Everyone who wears glasses should get a pair!

Charging cable for Sansa Fuse: My Sansa Fuse uses some proprietary USB charging cable.

Work ID’s: Gotta have those to get my in work and datacenter, etc.

Train pass: $150+ a month, but it’s better than paying parking fees. Well, most of the time.

Wallet: Bet you carry one of those too!

Sansa Fuse: (above wallet) This is a fantastic audio player that is Linux compatible and also plays oggs!

Pens: Sharpie Pens. They write well on darn near anything and don’t bleed either!

Tide-to-go pen: What can I say, I am a slob. I cannot possibly eat anything with tomato sauce without getting it on my shirt. This stuff actually works to get it back out again!

USB Sticks: I carry 2 4gb usb sticks for all those files and Linux installs I need to do whenever I need them.

New Testament: Greatest book ever written right? I also carry the occasional Linux Journal, National Rifleman and Popular Science.

Glasses cleaners: Dirty glasses are the bane of my existence. Normally I run my glasses under hot watter and clean them off with a soft towel (bowling towels work great for this), but if I am in a bind, these will clean my spectacles enough to mostly not annoy me.

Last but not least is what isn’t pictured. I carry a lunchbag. I figure I eat breakfast and lunch at work for less than $3 a day if I carry it with me from home. If I don’t, it costs me at least $10 and many times more, for something not anywhere near as healthy (but many times more tasty).

That’s the norm for me. Now what do YOU carry?