I have updated all the category indexes, the style sheets and all the other crap with new pics and a new layout. Enjoy!

Today I upgraded to the latest version of MT (released yesterday) and the production version of MT-Blacklist. Everything appears to be working correctly, but it looks like I may have to upgrade my hosting capabilities to include MySQL if I want to use the dynamic templates functionality in the new MT. If something breaks while browsing my blog in the next few days, by all means, send me an email.

Since I have upgraded to 3.0D of my blog software, you may have noticed that unless you had a TypeKey ID, your comments weren't displayed until I approved them. This was to keep blog spam (people posting unrelated comments with commercial links) under control. Jay Allen has just released a beta of MT-Blacklist that filters this spam out, and I have installed it. This means that if you post comments, and they don't trip any of the Bayesian filters, they should instantly appear on the blog. All without signing up for a TypeKey ID. The final version of MT-Blacklist is slated to be included in the next major release of Movable Type (3.1). So enjoy!

Today, in an effort to diagnose my recent video problems, I separated the RAID1 pair on my computer in order to install a fresh copy of XP and see if the OS was the problem. This meant I left a copy of my old disk on the spare drive. The fresh install didn't fix my video probs, so I was going to put my old disk back into service. So I rebooted and logged into the HighPoint RAID utility and started re-mirroring the drives. Of course I forgot to switch the master and slave jumpers on the drives so I actually ended up remirroring with the source being my new fresh copy of XP. MAJOR BUMMER! I lost a lot, fortunately not any source code or business documents, but all my email spanning several years is gone, along with anything I've done on my local machine (like house plans, old taxes, etc.) So for the rest of the week I will be picking up the pieces and trying to move on. I feel like somebody died. It's kind of strange to think that 5+ years of communications with friends and crazy ideas I've had are now just a bunch of irretrevable ones and zeros. I guess I finally understand what the Buddhists say about "impermanance". Of course, my mother sent me some interesting links that I was going to put up here yesterday-- but those too, alas, are gone. In other news, Jakki and I are going up to Eureka Springs this weekend. Clyde is busy with his kids, so we are just going to kick around a bit and enjoy a weekend out of town.

I've been looking at different PVR (personal video recorder) solutions lately. Tivo is kinda cool, but they are expensive and you have to pay a monthly fee just to get program listings. So I began looking around within the open source community. There are two major packages, Freevo and MythTV. I ended up choosing MythTV because there is a complete package called KnoppMyth that has the Knoppix kernel and everything already compiled. I bought a cheapo PIII/600 off of Ebay for $90 and picked up a Hauppauge PVR-250 card that has an onboard MPEG encoder, and a 160GB hard drive to store content. This means that I can record live TV with almost no hit to the CPU for about a month continuously. After some jockeying and cursing I've finally got everything working except for the closed captioning, but I can live without that. It's pretty cool because it does a lot more that a dedicated Tivo box. I can stream MP3 audio to it, show slideshows of images, emulate video games (including the really old stuff, like the Atari 2600), rip DVDs (if I had a DVD drive for it). I'm going to hang the box on my WiFi network so I don't have to pull CAT-5 over to the TV. Because it's an older Compaq Deskpro, it doesn't have a fan on the CPU so it's very quiet. Also, the Hauppauge card comes with a remote control (that KnoppMyth recognizes right off the bat) so I don't need a mouse or keyboard. Because it's network attached, I also get weather and RSS news feeds right on the TV. Anyway, I'm pretty happy with it, and I just need to change out the video card and it will go out to live under the TV. And the punchline is that no Microsoft components were used in it's construction. Windows XP Media Center Edition can bite my Linux butt. (ed: added on 7/15/2004 -- here's some pics to show it off)    

Using the Stitch Assist function in my camera, I created this panoramic view from my front door. I can't wait to take one from Bob & Linda's view of Puget Sound when I'm in Seattle this weekend. Click on the photo below for a much larger version that pops into a new window.

This is waaaay geeky, but so what. Recently, I've been playing around with modifications to Smoothwall, a Linux-based open-source firewall that Bayly and I both use at our homes. I began looking at these custom fixes in an effort to secure my Wifi network away from my LAN due to some flaws in WEP and WPA encryption (and due to the fact that my bridge to the Neoware client in the kitchen won't speak WPA-Radius). Eventually, this led me to the Homebrew forums on the Smoothwall webpage. While perusing these forums, I noticed someone express an interest for a plan to add the nmap tool (a security scanning tool) to their Smoothwall installation. I played with the RPM package of Nmap 3.50-1 and got it taken apart enough to add to Smoothwall. Another forum member then created an installation package and it was off to the races. This marks my first developer-level contribution to an open-source software project. You can see the final install thread in the forums here (I post under the name BespokeEng). Yeah, yeah, I know I should get out more.

Is astronomy geeky? Probably more so than astrology… That being said, today is one of 2 days all year that the sun will set directly in line with the grid that New York City is laid out on. In case it's cloudy, the other day is July 12th. See a few pics and a better explanation at http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap040528.html. For me, today is a little different as well. This morning I was awakened by the plaintive screaming of my battery backup UPS because the power was off. After finding clothes by candle light, I came down here to the bakery (and thier wi-fi) to try to do some work. Of course all the source for the project I've been working on is on my server at home-- now turned off. So I guess I'll make the best of it by eating toasted everything bagels with cream cheese and a gigantic cup of java.

Here is the time lapse video I shot out of my front window today. It's 1.51MB and stored in MPG format.

I have upgraded the blog to Ver. 3.0D of MovableType. It looks pretty neat so far, and now you all can become Registered Commenters! That means it will remember you, and it will further protect all of us from spam. Go to www.typekey.com to become a Registered Commenter. If you are not registered, then the comments go into moderation before they show up on the site. This is because MT3 breaks the blacklist spam filters I had in place, so until that's fixed, I've got to be able separate the spam from the real comments. If you get registered, then all your comments are auto-approved unless you get banned.

Since I can't think of any other subject matter right now, here are some test pictures of the cats:

Alice:	Lucky:	The WRX:	Afro (Clay's cat):

This part may get a little geeky. With the arrival of the new laptop last night, I've got everything set up to be mobile. Today I put in a 802.11g wireless access point and set up 64-bit WEP encryption. Now no one can get on my wireless network without knowing 4 different 10 digit hex keys. Plus, with an extra Neoware ICA thin client, I set up a wireless bridge in the kitchen, so now I can listen to music and browse the web while I cook. This is pretty cool because I use www.foodtv.com a lot. So right now, I'm sitting on the front porch writing this blog entry. Life without wires is a good thing.