junk

Today I went to the garage to try to find some treasures and of course I wonder why I haven't given away more things as I have stuff that takes up space. Lots of cables, old APC UPS with dead battery that I wanted to recharge with the panel that Mike built, but never got to do it. We kept too much, sold, and trashed to little.

new office, new job, kinda

it has been a while since I have woken up in the middle of the night thinking, I got to blog, however tonight I was thinking about our new SFSF offices in SSF, they are really nice, but the green hill they are sitting on was impacted by this building, so I was thinking how to minimize the impact by taking that removed top soil and planting a green roof on top of the building as the California Academy of Science does. This would make it less of an impact, now you only take from the environment the shadow that the building casts, however since the sun moves all still gets light at some point even reflected light most of the time.


Since the office is now further away I carpooled there Tuesday and Wednesday trying to take the shuttle, but I have to say that some people in the old MS Office world with the attached PDFs make finding information so hard it took me 30 min to find the departure time of the bus from Mountain View at 7:30 and 9:00 am, amazing when a simple time and link to the location would have made it so easy to read and find, but having to email image PDF files to people because they have a paper mindset isn't very useful, maybe this info could be included in the google transit, but it is a private shuttle, so I guess they don't want the whole world to know the info so Google would have to know who gets to see this info.

R said today that he wanted to see a sunrise at least once from the building, cool I thought this would be a great view to watch the sun rise and your looking east as well so it works great.  However then this night I am thinking, hmmm, does he think of staying late at work or going early? Since R isn't an early riser, I am thinking it might be a toss.

I have earned 15.46 on this blog since my last payout a few years ago, I guess it proves that putting the ads in a hard to see place does cut revenue. I have also posted much less, which will also impact revenue.

Google Voice *&^%%^&*((^&%%$%^^

Don't get me wrong, I love Google Voice, except for my wife's account, she can't get phone calls from Virgin Mobile or CISCO they go to a Verizon error message saying the number is not in service, however if you call the number form any other carrier the call reaches her.  This is a minor annoyance, and my number doesn't have any issues, but there you go, the inability to call, email or any place to post this on support.google.com/voice is a problem after all.  I have tried all the obvious things like removing the forwarding numbers in case they are going to Verizon.  I think the only chance to get a new google voice number.

circular buffer fs

I was googling for a file system that will let me backup like a circular buffer, but didn't find it.  The idea is that I keep the disk full at all times, rather then deleting files to make space for new backups, the file system will then overwrite the oldest files with the newest data.

bitcoin counter

PS The post below is a bit dated now that InstaWallet folded. I was acutally able to move the .002 to another wallet after it folded through the recover process, it took 3 months, however the .2 cents are still there, not that I can do much with them.

OUTDATED POST: If you haven't used BitCoin before try this, it is free. It has occurred to me that I can test how many people who read my blog might actually try this bitcon transaction without it costing them anything or me.  Mind you I won't make anything either as I don't plan the spend the bitcoin that I get ever, I wil donate it to some worthy cause, maybe let the comments to this post inspire me what that might be.

So here is what you do if you haven't ever transacted in BitCoin, this is a fun experiment:

goto https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/ and send Balance: 0.001 BTC to
1LqRz7ZPvwbKt7RFj1jdwE87oSUpg7VgnF or even better create your own account at
https://www.instawallet.org this will be your first BTC transaction, so you see how not scarry it is :) If you choose to create your own account, you can further play with it by sending the .001 to 1LqRz7ZPvwbKt7RFj1jdwE87oSUpg7VgnF so that I can keep a tally of how many people tried this procedure.  I will publish the results at my blog: http://ralferix.blogspot.com/ and don't forget to give suggestions on where to donate the proceeds too in the comment section below.

So if you want to see how many have done this, check out the block explorer at: http://btc.to/746/be http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LqRz7ZPvwbKt7RFj1jdwE87oSUpg7VgnF. If you don't know what a BitCoin is worth, it changes all the time, there are charts available with past and present exchange rates to many currencies or this one is to the US$ at MtGox.

BitCoin

I wonder if the next leg might be up?  It seems like based on the BitCoinCharts we could be consolidating at these levels and might go up next, I would accept this currency for my work, as I have an expectation that it will hold value better then other options, so that in itself is a bullish sign, as long as I am not the only one feeling this way.  Since the bitcoin supply has been increasing as well, I guess bullish all around.  I might fund my Dwolla so that I can buy some one of these days, but more likely I will just go to a miner in cash as this will probably get me a better rate, as I did last time when I got reimbursed for dinner when I paid for a miner's burger at UUASC. I went to BitCoinFaucent and had it send me .001 to 1LqRz7ZPvwbKt7RFj1jdwE87oSUpg7VgnF and feel free to send any unused b$ there, as I could use more of it to play with, donations will go to free meals at user group meetings. So time will tell if now when bitcoin is around 6.78, it was a good time to buy, I suspect they might go up in price again.  Probably around the time when a big publication talks about them again, this is how it went to 32 last time was when lots of financial papers covered bitcoin, take a look at the all time graph, you will see when this happened back in spring of last year.

OBi100: Free Google Voice on a cordless phone $45

I guess it might include google talk as well, but who knows, I haven't played with one yet, I saw it on the GizWiz 1372, 27 min in, looks great for sale on Amazon for $44.41 new or $37.50 used. Free calls to US and Canada for the rest of the year, paid by Google and you get a free number, which I already have had one for a decade, used to be GrandCentral in the old days, get your free Google Voice number now, order the device and cancel your landline, I will finally be canceling mine this month, as I move and won't get one in Mountain View. The OBi should be enough for my telephone needs, no 911 though. Leo endorses it, good enough for me, let me know if it works for you as I want to order one, which is why I am blogging it as a reminder. I have taken some time off this week to pack, so the last thing I want right now is more stuff, in fact drop by and take some stuff, I have a 42" plasma to give away in El Segundo, mind you the plasma leaked the gas, but the electronics work if you need a processor or power supply for an old AKAI.

Plums

I am loving the room that I rented, today I walked by the peach tree, saw some fruit on the driveway, then went back inside and to the back of the property found a plum tree with about 100 plums that had fallen to the ground, collected a few dozen, washed them up and had breakfast. My employer also treats us very well and has a nicely stocked fridge, however we do have to pay for our meals at work, being a contractor and all.

too much work

there was a time not to long ago I could get up whenever I wanted, check the markets, trade, learn, but these days, I am pulling 60 hour weeks and by Thursday I feel drained and yesterday was pretty much propped up on coffee, which I normally never drink, trying to get my mind in gear, I need a vacation, lucky it is Saturday :) I want to check out some houses, need a place to live close to Palo Alto and would like to visit the twit.tv studios in Petaluma CA, looking for someone to carpool with.

Future is now

This is so cool, I have a line to the past and am able to type back in time. Actually, I wish I could write back from the future, but this was typed in the past :( so long ago that I had long forgotten about this post, this joke is on me.

It just works!

is what I used to hear Jobs say at the keynote, but alas I got a Thinkpad with W7 on it and I hear I will get a Blackberry, wow, why would I learn old tech?  I think I have to research if I can put Outlook on Ubuntu and maybe bring my own phone to work, just use the GSM chip in another phone, but wait, the phone will be very expensive, since the free Blackberry will have used up the subsidy, rats.

I have found some great hosts in the Bay Area for all my trips, it is less polluted then El Segundo, so maybe I will have to rename this blog again, as I an not Sleepless in Palo Alto.

Radio Shack

I bought a Virgin Mobile Motorola Triumph in Mountain View CA almost a month ago, after having 2 defective ones, I tried a 3rd one and I thought the 3rd one would be a charm, it was mostly, until I started to get reboots during navigation and white screens when I would wake it up.  Given that I don't have warranty and I was at 29 days I decided to return it.  It took 3 hours, with 3 different Radio Shack Stores to do this return, the first Radio Shack on Hawthorne and El Segundo is the worst.  I hear they are the best performer in sales, but they treat the customers badly when it comes to returns.  First I was told they will not accept an item for a return that wasn't bought in their store, then that they wanted a 15% restocking fee, so I said I would exchange the phone for the same model, they balked at that too, and wanted $21 more for the phone.  I left after they tried to talk me into some contract carrier or another phone I didn't like.  So great, Radio Shack on 1908 Sepulveda, said its computer was broken, and also tried to up sell me and show me other phones, problem is Virgin doesn't really have anything like the Triumph, so again contract carriers for far more then the $25/month I have now, didn't want them either.  TheShack #3 at 15126 Hawthorne Blvd, Johnny didn't have any in stock, but had no problem processing my return, with no restocking fee.  Interesting....  not all Radio Shack stores are alike.

Cloud9

I figured out that the procedure I was using to flash the 4Gb uSD card works great, on a working uSD card, I guess the freebie I got at the trade show has a problem, no brand junk. The Cloud9 interface is really nice and looking forward to playing with node.js.

BeagleBone

I got a BeagleBone playing SCALE poker, gave a talk about it at LiLAX.net which met at SpaceX, thanks Jok.  I have spent countless hours trying to learn how to do simple things like "screen /dev/beaglebone 115200" so I can even login to it, then I made the mistake of doing an opkg upgrade on the thing and messed up the Linux on it and got to spend some more time learning how the init system works on AngStrom Linux. Today I got the idea of maybe putting Gentoo on it and saying the hell with it, however I just realized that my only Gentoo system is quite old now and so is no doubt my knowledge of Gentoo. Gentoo Prefix sounds like an interesting idea:

The youngest member of Gentoo/Alt is the Gentoo Prefix project. It emerged from the Gentoo for Mac OS X project, which suffered from multiple practical problems initially. The core principle of Gentoo Prefix is that installation of packages by Portage are done in an offset, thereby leaving the host OS unmodified. As a side effect, administrative privileges are not required.

However I don't know if it is mature enough to try it, but it might be a fun diversion. I briefly considered maybe switching from OS X to Gentoo on the Mac, after all this hardware is getting slow, but reinstalling this OS X wouldn't be so easy :( without an install disk. Although maybe I could make a block copy to a USB drive, then install it from there, but wouldn't it make more sense to leave OS X where it is and install the Gentoo on the USB drive? That way the month or so I would no doubt spend getting things to work and learning how to do it, I would still have a working Mac.  However Gentoo might more happily live on one of those Windows laptops I have laying around.

BeagleBone opkg update upgrade

Took it out of the box, plugged in an eithernet cable and USB to the computer, where I can
This weekend after coming back from interviewing in the Bay Area I finally have time to play with the BeagleBone I won at SCALE10x, it is an awesome device.  I am turning it into a NAS, web server and who knows what else.  First the basics, I finally found a way to upgrade the Ångström Linux.

root@beaglebone:~# opkg update
Downloading http://feeds.angstrom-distribution.org/feeds/core/ipk/eglibc/armv7a/base/Packages.gz.
Inflating http://feeds.angstrom-distribution.org/feeds/core/ipk/eglibc/armv7a/base/Packages.gz.

...

root@beaglebone:~# opkg upgrade

Upgrading kernel-module-rt2x00usb on root from 3.1-r2a+gitr1d84d8853fa30cf3db2571a5aec572accca4e29d to 3.1-r2l+gitr1d84d8853fa30cf3db2571a5aec572accca4e29d...

Downloading http://feeds.angstrom-distribution.org/feeds/core/ipk/eglibc/armv7a/machine/beaglebone/kernel-module-rt2x00usb_3.1-r2l+gitr1d84d8853fa30cf3db2571a5aec572accca4e29d_beaglebone.ipk.

Upgrading perl-module-cgi-pretty on root from 5.14.2-r0 to 5.14.2-r2...

Downloading http://feeds.angstrom-distribution.org/feeds/core/ipk/eglibc/armv7a/perl/perl-module-cgi-pretty_5.14.2-r2_armv7a.ipk.

Upgrading perl-module-mime on root from 5.14.2-r0 to 5.14.2-r2...

Downloading http://feeds.angstrom-distribution.org/feeds/core/ipk/eglibc/armv7a/perl/perl-module-mime_5.14.2-r2_armv7a.ipk.

Upgrading kernel-module-bcm3510 on root from 3.1-r2a+gitr1d84d8853fa30cf3db2571a5aec572accca4e29d to 3.1-r2l+gitr1d84d8853fa30cf3db2571a5aec572accca4e29d...

Downloading http://feeds.angstrom-distribution.org/feeds/core/ipk/eglibc/armv7a/machine/beaglebone/kernel-module-bcm3510_3.1-r2l+gitr1d84d8853fa30cf3db2571a5aec572accca4e29d_beaglebone.ipk.

...

Upgrade took 4 hours, made the mistake of not setting up a screen session so I could disconnect for a while. Missed seeing

Downloading http://feeds.angstrom-distribution.org/feeds/core/ipk/eglibc/all/gateone_0.9-r15_all.ipk.

wget: short write

...

Configuring kernel-module-zl10353.

/usr/share/opkg/intercept/depmod: line 4: echo: write error: No space left on de

write error: No space left on device


Got to spend some more time hacking at this BeagleBoard for Saturday, presenting at LiLAX.net

Akai PDP4273m

I have a burned out 42" plasma HDTV monitor in the living room.  It was kind of out of focus for a little then popped and went black, hasn't worked since.  The remote still works and it lights up a power LED, but nothing on the screen.  Trying to figure out what to do with this thing.