Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Monday, December 29, 2008
Warning Rock Climbing Makes Me Horny
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
OS X 10.5.6 on a msi wind u100-420us $350
Someone at work bought a MSI Wind tiny laptop for $350 and installed OSX on it. As you can see, even Software Update works on it. Rad!
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Eclipse Update Problem

After running for a few seconds, I'm unhelpfully presented with this dialog:

Clicking on the Details button, I get this dialog which does nothing to help me resolve the issue.

Dear Eclipse, why do you tease me so?
Monday, December 22, 2008
Hypermotard 1100
My friend Jeff went to a motocycle show. I asked him to pick me up a Hypermotard 1100 (my current drool bike) and this is what he got me. Ha nice one jeff, I'm sure I won't have a problem flat footing this one.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Academy of Science
At work, we had a field trip and went to the San Francisco Academy of Science today. I was really impressed, it was much larger than I expected and there were some really great exhibits.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Canon pixma ip4500 printer + linksys wpsm54g + Mac OSX
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Eclipse + Subversion
Monday, December 15, 2008
Mike Huckabee
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Subversion Inconsistent line ending style error message
svn: File 'jboss-4.2.3.GA/server/default/deploy/jbossws.sar/jbossws-context.war/index.html' has inconsistent newlinesSeriously, what the hell? Don't kill the entire commit with fail. Just give me the option to either fix the problem myself, fix the problem for me (default option and pick unix linefeeds) or finally give up. Additionally, why can't the client just do this check before getting 100 files into the commit? Grumble, why do you software developers make my life so difficult sometimes?
svn: Inconsistent line ending style
svn: Your commit message was left in a temporary file:
svn: 'svn-commit.tmp'
Tonight's fix:
Install dos2unix since OSX doesn't come with it (assuming you have MacPorts installed): sudo port install dos2unix
Then run it against any suffixes that need to be converted: find . -name \*.html | xargs dos2unix
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
The Big Three (Losers)
This CNN article asks some hard questions and instead of answering them truthfully with some semblance of humility, Ford Motor Company chief executive Alan Mulally defends his companies total disregard for the environment and the current economic situation that they helped create. To say that you have been concerned with fuel efficiency from day one is a total lie, otherwise you would have actually delivered on your words or even better, been in a position to not need to be bailed out with my hard earned tax dollars.
I say that it is time to fire this guy and put someone with some real concern for the environment (first) and economy (second) into his position.
Update: One down.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Controlling Spam using Gmail
[email protected] -> [email protected] -> [email protected]
[email protected] is the only account that I actually read on a regular basis.
I just had a case where a spam message to [email protected] which can be viewed in my Inbox on [email protected] In other words, it wasn't auto filtered to ABC's Spam folder. Well, that message never got forwarded to [email protected] I can't explain why and so far, all of the valid email has gotten forwarded.
So, my Spam folder on [email protected] stays clean except for spam that was sent directly to [email protected] Thus, there is barely anything that I need to skim over when purging my Spam folder on XYZ. Very handy.
[email protected] has been around since 1996. It gets a lot of spam.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Loader constraints violations
Java5:
15:27:34,647 WARN [ServiceController] Problem starting service jboss.j2ee:service=EJB3,module=heart-biz.jar
java.lang.LinkageError: loader constraints violated when linking com/kink/heart/biz/admin/i/LiveShowData class
Java6 (it seems they tried to improve the error a bit):
15:15:46,205 WARN [ServiceController] Problem starting service jboss.j2ee:service=EJB3,module=heart-biz.jar
java.lang.LinkageError: loader constraint violation in interface itable initialization: when resolving method "com.kink.heart.biz.content.ContentMgrBean.getLiveShow(Ljava/lang/Long;)Lcom/kink/heart/biz/admin/i/LiveShowData;" the class loader (instance of org/jboss/mx/loading/UnifiedClassLoader3) of the current class, com/kink/heart/biz/content/ContentMgrBean, and the class loader (instance of org/jboss/mx/loading/UnifiedClassLoader3) for interface com/kink/heart/biz/content/i/ContentMgr have different Class objects for the type com/kink/heart/biz/admin/i/LiveShowData used in the signature
Well, after finding this JBoss FAQ page, I followed the directions on it. They were really helpful!
Once I looked up the offending class (LiveShowData), it became instantly clear what the problem was:
### Instance0 found in UCL: [email protected]{ url=file:/Users/jonstevens/checkout/jboss-heart/server/default/tmp/deploy/tmp54117z-ads.ear ,addedOrder=40}
### Instance1 found in UCL: [email protected]{ url=file:/Users/jonstevens/checkout/jboss-heart/server/default/tmp/deploy/tmp54118heart.ear ,addedOrder=41}
Sync up the two jar's which contain my EJB3 interfaces and suddenly everything is working again.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Friday, November 7, 2008
Sunday, November 2, 2008
TimeMachine via AFP (netatalk) to a DroboShare
On my MacBook Pro, I used an Ubuntu vmware image to cross compile netatalk , dbus , avahi , openssl , expat , libdaemon and berkeley db to the embedded Marvell-Linux (arm-gnueabi) running on the DroboShare. Anyone who has experienced cross compiling knows it is an extremely complicated thing to do and not for the weak. Especially when dealing with so many different products which all have to integrate together. It is also amazing that I can use two different operating systems to compile code for a third operating system.
After getting all of those projects compiled, configured and started, I can now say that I'm the first person to successfully perform a Time Machine backup to the Drobo connected to the DroboShare over AFP. This is something that Apple has put a lot of effort into making very difficult to perform because they are trying to sell more of their proprietary and expensive TimeCapsule devices and now I've beaten them at their game. =)
Time to put this project down and next weekend I'll package things up and make it available to other owners of DroboShares.
Update: I've created a Google Code project called DroboCapsule and put up a binary package for you to download and install. Enjoy.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
I'm a dreamhost'er
Second, after a recommendation from a friend, I have bitten the bullet and signed up for a dreamhost.com account. The part that pushed me over the edge is that they are having a special offer with lifetime unlimited diskspace and unlimited bandwidth. I purchased a year subscription to try it out and used the Promo50 $50 discount code. Total price for a year $69.40. The benefit here is that I will be able to migrate all of my email, websites and domain names off of my home server (an old G4 dual 500mhz) and be able to turn that off as well. I can then mirror the entire contents of my Drobo up to dreamhost as an additional offsite backup.
I estimate that the yearly power savings alone will pay for this service, but I will also be able to sell off the two servers and the money from that can go towards the hosting. I really welcome not having to manage these services any longer. It was fun for the last 15 years, but I'm over it now.
Monday, October 27, 2008
LookFirst™
Sunday, October 26, 2008
4 year fix
Saturday, October 25, 2008
MacBook Pro Inconsistent Clicks
That said, the new glass trackpad misses clicks. I click and it just doesn't register as a click. This is starting to drive me nuts. One blog posting suggests that it is a software issue. I'm going to use it for a little while longer, but I think this week I'm going to call Apple Support and see what the deal is. Anyone else having these same problems?
Update: Found some discussion in the Apple forums . Seems a lot of people are having these problems. Sigh.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
I heart Google Code project hosting

Google just recently announced that you can now embed Gadgets in your Google Code wiki pages. This is a major feature for this service! The reason is simple. Before this feature was implemented, you couldn't embed anything other than wiki markup. Adding the ability to put Gadgets on the pages enables one to resolve a long standing issue which was that you couldn't embed Google Adsense in your project pages. So, I believe I can now claim that I'm the first person to do this. Woot!
Fun Little Math Problem
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Lost in Translation
Saturday, October 18, 2008
SimCity for the Economy
Somali Pirates
Friday, October 17, 2008
Thursday, October 16, 2008
The Real Joe
CERN Porn
The forces on the vacuum barriers attached to the quadrupoles at the subsector ends were such that the cryostats housing these quadrupoles broke their anchors in the concrete floor of the tunnel and were moved away from their original positions, with the electric and fluid connections pulling the dipole cold masses in the subsector from the cold internal supports inside their undisplaced cryostats.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Snowed Over
http://☃.net/
Friday, October 10, 2008
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
The Dock
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
He's got a good point
Mr. Jobs is only 53. One of our presidential candidates, hoping to be the most powerful man in the free world, just turned 73. I expect Mr. Jobs to remain at Apple for as long as it pleases him, many more years and to outlive John McCain.
Job's for president? =)
Monday, October 6, 2008
Web Inspector Redesign
slashdot news in your inbox
This has the advantage over straight RSS in the following ways: a) I like the articles in my inbox. I've got a nice searchable archive of /. with tens of thousands of emails. b) The RSS feeds don't include the links that are in the articles so you have to go to the /. site to actually get to the referenced material. c) I dislike the formatting of the /. site.
So, recently, the script broke due to a parsing change on the /. site and Brian no longer wants to maintain the script and list of subscribers. Thus, I volunteered. It was a fairly simple fix and I setup a mailing list using nice open source SubEtha Mail mailing list server that I helped write. It is all hosted at a well connected colo on my friend Jeff 's box.
Anyway, I'm posting here cause I figure others might be interested in this script. If you would like to subscribe to get the emails, go here.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Numbers
McCain spokesman Michael Goldfarb said Palin will do at least one news conference before election day.
The Democratic vice presidential nominee, Joe Biden, has given more than 89 national and local interviews over roughly the same period of time.
That could mean that the person who could potentially lead the free world will have done one national press conference before being sworn into office.
Eclipse 3.4.1 Poopy
Google to the rescue, I found this article which pointed me in the right direction.
Solution: Edit the /Applications/eclipse/Eclipse.app/Contents/MacOS/eclipse.ini file and change the path to the launcher to be: ../../../plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.carbon.macosx_1.0.101.R34x_v20080731
Friday, September 26, 2008
Please Vote This Time!
Mike Sheppard writes "I'm a graduate student in Statistics at Michigan State University and spent some time analyzing past US presidential elections to determine how close they truly were. The mathematical procedures of Linear Programming and 0-1 Integer Programming were used to find the optimal solution to the question: 'What is the smallest number of total votes that need to be switched from one candidate to another, and from which states, to affect the outcome of the election?' Because of the way the popular and electoral votes interact, the outcome of the analysis had some surprising and intriguing results. For example, in 2004, 57,787 votes would have given us President Kerry; and in 2000, 269 votes would have given us President Gore. In all there have been 12 US Presidential elections that were decided by less than a 1% margin; meaning if less than 1% of the voters in certain states had changed their mind to the other candidate the outcome of the election would have been different."
Thursday, September 25, 2008
I'm not impressed
[Couric] Well, explain to me why that enhances your foreign policy credentials.
[Palin] (with accent and pursed lips) Well .. it certainly does because ... our ... our next door neighbors are foreign countries. They're in the State that I am the executive of. And there is Russia ...
[Couric] Have you ever been involved in any negotiations for example with the Russians.
[Palin] (nodding yes) .. we have trade missions back and forth .. we... we do .. It's very important when .. when you consider even national security issues with Russia as .. Putin ... Where's his head? ... and ... and ... ahh ... comes into .. ah .. the airspace of the United States of America ... wh .. where do they go? It.. It's Alaska .. it's just right over the border. It is .. from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation .. Russia .. because they are right there. That are right next to our state.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Diesel: SFW XXX
Giant Smiley Faces
Citizens of the Russian town Chelyabinsk calculated when the satellite, QuickBird, which takes images for Google Earth and Google Maps, would cross above their city and used people to make a giant smiley face. A rock concert on the main square attracted many people and everyone got a yellow cape. It looks like someone at Google was quicker than usual to put up the new data. Maybe Google likes the idea of an entire town working hard to get its 15 minutes of fame. The article has a screenshot of Google Maps and images taken directly at the event.
Great article on Kink.com
Peter Acworth's fetish porn empire takes over the San Francisco Armory to create a new kind of dot-com
If you are on digg, please bump it.
Body Parts Made Of Bread
Friday, September 19, 2008
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Scalability problems
[JOB] Customer Service Representative/QA
Kink.com is looking to fill a Customer Service Representative/QA position. We also really need a Java Software Engineer. Click the link above on how to submit your resume.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Crazy Airport Landing
Toncontin International Airport serves as the major airport in and out of Tegucigalpa. The origin of this name is unknown. This airport is frequently criticized for being one of the most dangerous in the world (due to its location next to a sierra, its short runway, and difficult approach, which requires large commercial jets to execute a tight hairpin leftward u-turn turn at very low altititude to land on a very short runway--American Airlines pilots, for example, receive additional, specific training for the Toncontin approach).
...
On May 30, 2008, there was a plane crash in the airport, in which TACA airline jet skidded off the runway, across a busy road and slammed into an embankment, crushing several cars. The crash killed five people and injured 65.That got me digging further, because my gf, and her fear of flying, would require her to be knocked out cold to be on that flight. I found this video:
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
iPhone 2.1
Smug Politics
* My step-grandfather is 90 and can send emails just fine, so McCain has no excuse.
Update: Maybe it is a good idea McCain doesn't use email.
KachingDesign
My friend Pearlyn is a super talented artist with a wide variety of designs. She recently released a few new works and I think that this piece is one of the best that I have seen her do. If you see it in person, you will really appreciate the amount of work it goes into hand screening 4 different colors. It is very clear that she puts a lot of hard work into her art and I really appreciate her skills. Now if only I could get her to make more guys clothes. =)
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Sun JDK + Linux = Timezone Issues
import org.joda.time.DateTime;
public class TestDate {
public static void main(String[] args) {
System.out.println("Current date is: " + new DateTime().toString());
}
}
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Shared Dictionary Compression over HTTP
b - kink
c - sex
d - nose hooks
e - bondage
f - butt plugs
Monday, September 8, 2008
The Power of Conformity
Oh! Now *this* is interesting...
I just watched the most excellent pilot of Fringe. I highly recommend. It is such a good combination of Silence of the Lambs + Twilight zone + X-Files + Altered States. So, maybe I'm being a bit more conspiracy theorist than normal.
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Converting Gays
Goodbye!
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac lost a combined $3.1 billion between April and June. Half of their credit losses came from these types of risky loans with ballooning monthly payments.Goodbye american economy. I can't believe the government is going to have to take over Fannie Mae AND Freddie Mac. This economy is so fucked. Another choice quote:
A government takeover could cost taxpayers up to $25 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.Sigh.
Friday, September 5, 2008
Dear Internets
Monday, August 25, 2008
Monday, August 18, 2008
Y Combinator Startup Ideas
- I don't have a good answer.
- Flock , BlackTop
- NewsTrust
- IT won't ever go away.
- JBoss
- Will always be custom.
- An enterprise porn affiliate tracking system. The existing solutions suck.
- Very interesting to me.
- Flickr (the only 'web company' I give money to... happily.)
- Yawn
- Yawn
- We need more creative people.
- Interesting, but schools are difficult to work with.
- Interesting idea, but it is more about combating politics than measuring anything.
- Nice, but a huge initial investment.
- Google won, get over it.
- VERY interesting to me. I've got an idea in this area, but I don't know the solution for it yet. =(
- Yawn.
- Yawn.
- Yelp
- Mint
- Yawn, too specific.
- I agree, Wikipedia is almost impossible to put new content into.
- I hate extortionists, don't you?
- Yea, I've had no luck selling stuff on CL recently. It is full of too much crap.
- Too much competition.
- Huh?
- I like gmail, sure it has some warts, but it works well enough for me and I like the freedom it gives me.
- Yawn
- Sales pitch.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Enterprise Java
How I read the NYTimes.com website
Friday, August 8, 2008
Download Managers
We use a CDN that allows us to create a token which we pass to the CDN in a cookie or url. The CDN authenticates that token and provides access to any request that contains that token. The token is simple, it is a md5 hash with a shared secret, future expiration time and a path to match against. It looks something like this: MD5(mySecret/content/protected.ext?e=1182665958). The url to download the content then looks like this: /content/protected.ext?e=1182665958&h=886dbef7390dfd70aea27fd41e459e7f. Everything after the ? can either be put into a cookie or passed on the query string as described above.
Now, the problem with download managers is that you can't easily script the generation of those tokens. So, anyone using a download manager has to hit the site, grab the cookie and then put the cookie into the download manager along with the urls. This is a royal pain in the ass.
If download managers supported a RESTful api such as:
https://sitename.com/getToken?username=USERNAME&password=PASSWORD&path=urlencode(PATH)
Then, when I receive a request like the one above, all I would need to do is authenticate the user, check to make sure they are allowed access to that path and return a token. If the download manager gets back a 403 Forbidden, then the token probably expired and the download manager could then just request a new token.
I would be more than happy to implement something like that.
p.s. Kink has a system called Warden that implements a token based authentication scheme similar to the one above but works independent of a CDN that we will be making open source as soon as I have some free time to put it up online.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Google Webmaster Tools Hint of the Day
Paths don't match
We've detected that you submitted your Sitemap using a URL path that doesn't include the www prefix (for instance, http://example.com/sitemap.xml). However, the URLs listed inside your Sitemap do use the www prefix (for instance, http://www.example.com/myfile.htm).
I had to go and create 14 more entries for my works domains cause once an entry is created, it can't be modified. Thank you Google webmaster tools, I'm sure that doing the right thing would have been such a chore to code up.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Review: Costa Rica Garmin GPS Map
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
El Salvador (SAL) airport
Update: The San Josa Costa Rica airport also has wifi!
Monday, July 14, 2008
Bummer about Google Maps
So, that begs the question... Why not? What is the big issue?
Also, the Garmin tools (Bobcat and Mapsource) for creating routes totally blows compared with Google Maps. So if those tools were better, this would be less of a concern.
Friday, July 11, 2008
iPhone 2.0 Software

I just installed the iPhone 2.0 software update. Now when iTunes is trying to activate my phone by connecting to the store, I get this nice error message after a several minute timeout. This means that until iTunes can do its work, my phone is a brick. Thanks Apple. I'm guessing they are having scalability and load issues, but in this day and age, properly designed systems shouldn't fail like this. Yes, I think I'm going to wait a bit on the new hardware. I just don't see a point in paying more money every month.
Update: It finally just started working after the 10th error message.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
San Francisco Politics
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Garmin Zumo 550 GPS
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Code Reviews
The issue with both of these tools for me is that they work on the concept of diffs. A developer writes some code, uploads a diff and then waits around for people to approve it. After it is approved, the developer then checks the code into the repository. This is a good model in open source projects where people are contributing patches and do not have access to check in code themselves. It is more like a patch management system. It is also a good model in larger corporate environments where controlling everything that goes into the code base is done with QA teams who test these patches before they go into the repository.
That is not how the company I work for works. We have a more agile development process where we are all expected to have at least a decent understanding of the entire codebase. Thus, we are checking in code all day long and diff are emailed to all of us. The expectation is that we read each others diffs and will comment on them appropriately. This is more of an after the fact type system. Sure, some bugs can (and do) creep in because they are missed in larger commits where we don't read the entire email, but I'm not worried because QA should catch those before they go to production, when they do testing in our preview environment.
What I would like is a system that has a log of all changes that go through the source repository. When you log into the system, you see a list of all the changes that have not been reviewed yet and a list of comments that have either been made about your code or you made about someone's code. This would be similar to the list of the diff emails sitting in a folder in my email account. I then have the option of just ignoring a commit or clicking through to see more details about the commit. The details page has a list of the files which were changed and a diff of any text based changes. I can click on any line and make a comment. That comment then becomes an issue for the developer who made the commit. The developer gets an email and has to respond. The only person who can close out the issue is the person who created it in the first place. Both people are bugged in various ways (emails and in the webui) until the issue is dealt with. The social politics around all of this is that these issues become highest priority above all else because code is already into the repository and a release can't be made until all of these issues are resolved.
Update: I posted to the ReviewBoard mailing list and got a very helpful response, but still isn't quite what I want to see (the UI isn't there to support it). Check out the comments on this posting. Crucible is very close to what I want, but costs $$$. Others are interested in starting an open source project.
Friday, June 27, 2008
New Project: svntask
The recently released Eclipse 3.4 also uses the latest Subclipse plugin which upgrades your working copy to Subversion 1.5 and thus breaks the SvnAnt task with one of those nice classic subversion 'your working copy is too new' messages.
I also don't care about and don't want to mess with javahl. I just want a 100% java solution that uses the nice svnkit library.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Eclipse 3.x and Java 1.6 on OSX
- In /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions, symlink CurrentJDK -> 1.6. Leave Current -> A
- I also changed the location of the java binary to: /usr/bin/java -> /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/CurrentJDK/Commands/java
- Right/Ctrl click on the Eclipse icon, Show Package Contents, edit the Info.plist file and uncomment the line that says: <string>-vm</string><string>/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.5.0/Commands/java</string>
Bill Gates Usability Rant
"So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated.
They told me to go to the main page search button and type movie maker (not moviemaker!).
I tried that. The site was pathetically slow but after 6 seconds of waiting up it came."
It is a good thing that Microsoft didn't succeed in their hostile takeover of Yahoo because it is the third link on their search engine and took .29 seconds the first time I tried it.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Vuze Friend Sharing Feature
What is “Friends”?This is probably one of the most important features that has been added to Vuze. Add your friends and now you have your own private tracker without actually having to run a tracker. In addition, your friends automatically get higher priority over other people who are leeching off of you. I've wanted to see a feature like this for a while now because I generally trust my friends taste and the social networking aspects of a BT network is too hard to ignore. I'm 'lookfirst' if you would like to add me.
In case you haven’t already discovered “Friends”, it is a new feature that makes it really easy to share your favorite torrents with friends. All you have to do is to become “Friends” on Vuze and then you can share any torrent with them, without ever leaving the application.
Corporate Responsibility
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Red Listing
- if someone fails more than 3 times, they are shown the kaptcha.
- if someone fails for more than 1 minute, they are shown the kaptcha.
- if someone fails because they aren't doing things correctly, they are shown the kaptcha.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Congrats LinkedIn

LinkedIn plans to grow after $53 million deal. Congrats. Now, maybe you can convince someone up high to make the "Who’s Viewed My Profile" section report useful data with or without having to pay an absurd $20/month. Oh and your site is running pretty slowly these days, now maybe you can afford to buy a few more servers. =)
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Monday, June 16, 2008
Rack and Bags
The racks came silver colored, so I spray painted them flat black in the basement of the armory. =)
The racks seem really sturdy and putting them on was pretty easy. Although, the instructions were pretty much worthless and I ended up with a bunch of extra bolts cause I was able to use some of the ones that were on the bike already. I think that if I did a really long trip, I'd need larger bags, but this will do just fine for around town. With the gf on the back and all our climbing gear on the rack and in the bags, I can finally flat foot the bike. =)