I guess trying to post daily during a holiday break, when I sometimes wasn’t near the computer all day, was a bad idea. Oh well, not the end of the world. On the bright side, I did get my workbench almost finished – I’ve got a couple more things to do, then I’ll post photos for all to see.
Power tools are a wonderful thing :>
So I missed a post for yesterday. I’ll try to do two tonight instead of just one :>
One thing is for certain, with the latest round of bitching that’s gone on in my radio club’s mailing list – proof of proficiency in understanding Morse Code has absolutely nothing to do with common sense, etiquitte or manners. If you’re privy to the mails on the list, I’m sure you understand what I mean. If not, ask me in a couple years. Maybe by then I’ll be in a mood to chuckle about it – right now, all I can do is hang my head in shame that the likes of this guy are around.
Well, that was fun. I finally tracked down the bug in Adium that was causing problems with the Bonjour protocol. A little background I guess.. Bonjour (aka Rendezvous or ZeroConf) is a protocol that is done mostly with multicast packets. The idea is, you plug into a network, and have no idea who or what is around – but all the devices on the network send out these announcements now and then, saying “Hey, I’m a printer” or “I’ve got iChat running, so you can talk to me” and such. It’s a really neat idea, and makes setup for printers a snap; just show up on a network, search for network printers, and there they are. It’s also what allows multiple copies of iTunes on the same network to talk to each other and find the shared music without the computers otherwise talking to one another (or requiring a central server to say “here they are”). Ya know what? This is going to get long-winded and probably boring real quick. Better insert a story break before that happens…
Played around a bit today with Adium beta, and Gaim, to get Bonjour running. It kinda works, moreso on the desktop than the laptop – mostly because of a bug in one of the libraries, which causes Adium to report that it’s listening on a port where it’s not listening for incoming connections. I tried for a bit today to find the bug in the code, but haven’t so far. Maybe if I’m feeling like it tomorrow, I’ll get the code to compile on the laptop, and then I can properly debug it.
What gets me is that this bug has apparently been known for awhile, but not fixed. I think they’re waiting for the original maintainer of the library to swoop in with a new version, but .. the code is 2 years old, I don’t think it’s happening. So maybe if I find it and submit a patch, they’ll fix the code before the final version comes out. Or they’ll sit on it until the next major release, which at the rate they’re putting out new versions could be another year or so.
So, for no reason other than to say I did it, I’m going to try to post something in here every day. I won’t say for how long, so that if it stops after two days I can say, “See, every day for two days. Mission accomplished.” Of course, that means I’ll need to think of something interesting to say. And my interesting thoughts are usually spur of the moment (as well as tending to be “you had to be there” comments), so I’m not sure how inspired I will be.
At the very least, I’ve got something to start it off. Within the last few minutes, Akismet canned the 200th spam on this site for me. Hooray for despaminazation. Go ahead, look it up. I’ll give you a dollar if you find it. And not in a marketroid‘s dictionary.
hello. it’s a nice day for your ideas…
very good post…
very best idea!…
These are just some of the spam comments that Akismet has caught for me. Granted, WordPress would have caught them anyway, and I’d have deleted them. But now they’re separated out, already detected as spam, and I don’t have to do anything about them (though I tend to delete them just for the satisfaction, instead of waiting the 15 days it would take before they disappear on their own).
The ironic bit? They’re all attached (or would have been) to the post I made in October, about using ROT13 to screw with spammers in ICQ. Now that gives me an additional chuckle :>
Well, it’s late, but about an hour ago I finished Phase I of the phone project. All the old jacks are working just the same, though none of them need DSL filters now, and everything goes through the new termination blocks. It’s complete overkill for the number of phone lines in the house (one) and the number of phones currently in the house (three), but this will allow for future expansion as well as keep everything neat, tidy and easy to manage. Read on if you care, or just look at the pretty pictures.
Thought I’d written something here about this already, but I guess not. I ordered (and have received) all the stuff I need to start redoing the phone lines in the house. There’s a lot of complete crap in places – lines that are run to jacks with telephone *cord* (like what you use to plug your phone into the wall) instead of proper cable, places where there’s three splices in a row on the same line for no reason.. it’s no wonder our phones are noisy, though some of that really is the fault of the lines coming in. So I picked up a butt set for testing, a 66 block and two 110 blocks (one 110 will have the phone drops and incoming lines, the other will be a bridge, and the 66 will link the permanent house wiring with the telco lines and whole house DSL filter – overkill, but it’ll be clean when it’s done), whole house DSL filter, punchdown tool, and a probe amplifier for the later inevitable “oh crap which wire is this one” moments. Plus a couple adapters for hooking up to test things. All in all, quite a lot of equipment, and good quality. Photos of the stuff, plus the beginning of the project (namely, the “before” shots) available in the gallery.
I’m hoping I can pick up the plywood this weekend and mount it to the wall, and I can start Phase I – installing the new equipment, having the NID and protector moved over, and reterminating all the existing wires to the new blocks. Then Phase II will happen right after the data network lines are run throughout the house, since I’ll be using the same CAT5e cable for phones and data. Extra benefit is that the telecom network as-is won’t go down, just the jacks will be phased out as new ones come into use.
Well, our radio club’s elections were this evening (actually Wednesday evening, since I’m writing this in the wee hours of Thursday morning). Stephanie was uncontested as treasurer, and Keith uncontested as secretary. For president we had two Davids – N0YMV and W0SNJ, and vice president was Mark N2KIV and myself. The results came in, and N0YMV is our new president as of January and I’m remaining as vice pres. Should be fun and interesting – I’ve been in this position for two years now (man, it doesn’t feel like it was that long) and I’ve enjoyed it, though there’s been a few times I was ready to throw in the towel. But that comes with any organization I think, no matter what the topic – get more than a couple people involved, and politics can take over and ruin the whole thing, if you let it.
So we’ll see what the new year brings. There’s a lot of things we both would like to do, and some of them I think are on their way to happening already. One other good thing is that David is a new mind to the board, so I’m hoping for some new ideas as well. Either way, there’s now a chance for the entire executive board to be in the same vehicle at the same time, which has to violate some law somewhere I’m sure.
We had our annual Christmas Party last night, and it went wonderfully! We had a lot of people show up, some who we didn’t expect to see but called during the day or evening and then headed up here. Plenty of food (of course, because Stephanie usually makes too much food for something like this), and lots of fun was had by all.
A big Thank You to all who attended. Hope to see you all again soon (some of you I know I will), and that you all have a joyous holiday season.