Planet Yakko

C4: Re-wiring network rack

C4 — 2010-09-07T03:18:04+00:00

It has been a long time coming for this project. The network part of our rack at work needed to be re-wired. It looked like a spaghetti mess. On my defense it was like this before I got there. I assume this happens all too often with small companies growing and adding more equipment without having a network plan.

When I started planning this out I had to go a route with minimal disruption on the network. I decided to map everything out where it was and where it was going. I also did this on a holiday weekend when no one was at the office. I started with the green wires. (phone) Once those were done I moved to the blue wires. (data) I also added a third color, black. Black denotes a machine that is in the rack directly connected to the switch. The project took about 6 hours including moving servers around in the rack to make space for the additional cable management pieces.

Here are a few pictures.

Start.

Stripped.

Finished.

jesseisageek: A couple of exciting new projects

jesse — 2010-09-06T05:37:19+00:00

This week I’m happy to announce that I’m starting two new projects that I’ll be working on over the course of the next year. The first will be my master’s thesis: a program to help bioinformaticians analyze gene expression networks, utilizing high performance computing clusters. The program will parse the data and suggest workflows based upon that data. There will also be an accompanying book that explains the ins-and-outs of gene network inference. This will deploy to client’s clusters in a portable, standard way. The best-of-breed algorithms will be collected from the literature, and a very nice interface for interacting with the data flow will be provided. This project is going to be a blast!

The second project is a personal project. For a long time now, I’ve been unhappy with music playing solutions. The closest I’ve gotten to a program that I love is Amarok, however I use Ubuntu’s Gnome interface, and Amarok does not integrate with Gnome in a clean fashion. Also, since I am rarely at home anymore, I want my music to travel with me. Thus, the obvious solution was to write a web application that my server would run. I’ve decided to start this project in Scala using the Lift framework with Comet actors. The client side player will be flash based, embedded in the webpage or in a pop-up, and all of the application functions will be handled through the web interface. A similar program to this is Ampache, which is a wonderful program. However, the interface is not what I want, and the on-the-fly transcoding can be flakey. I require something that has a very fast interface, is playlist oriented like Amarok (as opposed to library oriented like iTunes), web accessible, on-the-fly transcoding and streaming, and large-scale database support. To my knowledge, nothing like that exists. It’ll use an Apache Derby database by default, but it will support MySQL and PostgreSQL databases.

I’m very excited to start these projects this week, and I’ll be blogging about both of them as they happen (with, hopefully, some screen shots).

Of course, both of these projects will be free and open source under the GPL when they are released.

C4: Starting a prototype board

C4 — 2010-09-03T14:15:21+00:00

I got some stuff in from mouser yesterday. I basically ordered most of the stuff from here with the exception of changing the crystal to 8mhz instead of 16mhz and I didn’t need a reset button. I am going to use 3.3v power so I need to clock the MCU down.

I also got a new iPhone so the pictures on here should be a lot better quality now.

Pic of the ninja badge. (from old phone)

C4: Slow.

C4 — 2010-09-01T16:35:42+00:00

I have gotten a chance to play with a few ninja badges in the past week or two. I Started laying out the screens and menus on the Arduino platform.

I also ordered some parts from mouser to make a prototype badge. (without RF) Those should be coming this week. I will have some progress picture up then.

Travis Thompson: My Life, an Update

Travis Thompson — 2010-08-29T10:37:33+00:00

I guess to deviate away from my typical techie articles, I'll write a bit about my life and what I've been doing in the last 6 to 8 months (since I know nobody reads my blog for the tech stuff anyways, so here's to you faithful readers, if you even exist O.o). My life is [...]

jesseisageek: The Actor/Message Passing System of Concurrency

jesse — 2010-08-24T02:03:41+00:00

Lately, a lot of research has gone into how to make concurrency easier, both conceptually and programmatically. One of the models, originally created by Erikkson for the language Erlang, is the Actor/Message Passing system. The idea behind this system is that you a dispatcher creating tasks in response to some data. Information about the tasks are bundled up into objects, and each object is sent to an actor. The actors are sitting on top of a thread pool, waiting for a task. When they get a task, it goes into their mailbox. The next time that actor checks its mailbox, it retrieves the information in the message, grabs a thread from the thread pool, and begins performing that task. When it finishes that task, it sends the output of that task either back to the dispatcher or to another actor, and it checks its mailbox again.

The above model is conceptually very simple as long as your tasks are easily broken up into repeatable chunks. For example, it would be very easy to write a log parser. I have an actor polling the log, and when a new line comes in, it sends it to one of the parser actors. The parser actor figures out what to do with it, such as printing it to a different file if it is a particularly important event, and then returns to checking its mailbox. This works wonderfully where, say, the parser must go to the web or to disk to fetch some data to complete the task. The parser gives up the thread while waiting for the network or disk to return the data, and another parser gladly picks it up and begins executing. When the waiting parser is ready to complete its task, it gets back in line for a thread in the thread pool. Eventually, the operating system will assign it a thread, and it can finish its task.

This works well for systems where you have many similar tasks to perform concurrently, such as running the same program with different parameters many times. It also works well for networked solutions, as the messages are easily encapsulated and sent over a network to a waiting receiving dispatcher.

A modern implementation that has been gaining a lot of traction lately is Scala. Scala is a functional language that runs on the JVM and uses a Python or Ruby-esque syntax. It embrasses the actor/message passing system and makes it trivial to write code that utilizes concurrency with this model. As an example, I’ve written a simple IRC bot that uses this model. Polling the socket is done by a function running on one thread. The entire body of the polling function, once we’re connected to the socket, is:

val responder = new IRCResponder(connect, ircBotNick, ircBotDescription, homeChannel)
responder.start()

while(true)
{
val line = in.readLine()

if(line != null)
{
if(line.substring(0,4).equalsIgnoreCase("ping")) {
val pongmsg = "pong " + line.substring(5)
responder ! IRC_Response(pongmsg)
}
else {
responder ! IRC_Message(line)
println("SENT TO RESPONDER")
println(line)
}
}
}

Note the lines with the exclamation point. Those are the lines that send the IRC_Message object to the responder actor. Really easy, right? responder.start() tells the responder object we just created to start running as an actor. When objects are sent to the responder, different actions are taken depending on what type of object was sent.

def act() {
// This thread will throttle the parsing threads by only allowing one thing to write at once.
// So when data is sent back to here, write it out in the order that it came in.
loop {
react {
case message: IRC_Message =>
// Figure out which parser to send this message to and send it
listOfParsers(findParser()) ! message

case response: IRC_Response =>
// Write the response to the socket
sendData(response.response)
}
}
}

The above code is the code the Responder object uses to figure out how to handle the object sent to it. If a IRC_Message is sent to it, then find a parser (this function finds the parser with the smallest mailbox) and send it to that parser for processing. If it is an IRC_Response, then we are getting a response back from a parser, so write it to the socket. The Parser’s act function looks a lot like this, except that the only case is for IRC_Messages, and then it probes the string in that message to see how it should respond.

The code is similar for the parser:

def act() {
loop {
react {
case message: IRC_Message =>
val line = message.message.toLowerCase

// So we've received a message from the responder, figure out how to parse it.
if ( line contains "define" ) {
sender ! IRC_Response(toChat(getDef(line)))
}
else if ( line contains "find" ) {
sender ! IRC_Response(toChat(getTorr(line)))
}
else if ( line contains "roll the dice" ) {
sender ! IRC_Response(toChat("4."))
}
}
}
}

Using this method, the same bot could easily handle several chat rooms at once, including requests to grab data from the internet (such as torrents, Wikipedia summaries, definitions, etc.) using screen scraping or APIs. It would also be trivial to write a simple web server using this model, just treat each HTTP request as a separate task to be completed by an actor. In fact, using a very simple web server with a file cache, I was able to easily handle over 3000 conn/s with under 150 lines of code. Try it out, I think you might end up enjoying it. It is a very fun model to program with.

C4: Playing with the display buffer

C4 — 2010-08-20T17:36:55+00:00

I got a chance to play around a bit with the display buffer on Wednesday. The Ninja badge buffer images and Ladyada’s images are stored and written into the buffer differently. The ones in the ST7565 Library fill the buffer using 8 bits at a time drawing down to left. For example; 10000000, 01000000, 00100000 (0×80, 0×40, 0×20) would draw a diagonal line down 3 pixels wide. This is different from the way other code writes to it. I was able to go through and view all of the characters that are in the badge. There was one that was kind of confusing, echelon….what?

Here is the Ninja character that is displayed on the badge.

unsigned char ninja_large[] = {
 50, 46,
 0xfe, 0xfe, 0xfc, 0xf9, 0xf2, 0xf0, 0xf1, 0xf1,   /* 0x0 */
 0xf1, 0xf1, 0xe3, 0xe0, 0xe0, 0xc0, 0x80, 0x80,   /* 0x8 */
 0x03, 0x03, 0x01, 0x00, 0x00, 0x80, 0x80, 0xc0,   /* 0x10 */
 0xe0, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff,   /* 0x18 */
 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff,   /* 0x20 */
 0xff, 0xff, 0xfe, 0xfc, 0xf9, 0xf0, 0xe0, 0xe1,   /* 0x28 */
 0xe3, 0xff, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,   /* 0x30 */
 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xfe, 0xfc, 0xf8,   /* 0x38 */
 0xf8, 0xf0, 0xf0, 0x70, 0x0c, 0x02, 0x01, 0x00,   /* 0x40 */
 0x80, 0xc0, 0xe0, 0x20, 0x60, 0x60, 0x20, 0xe0,   /* 0x48 */
 0x03, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff,   /* 0x50 */
 0xff, 0xff, 0xfe, 0xfc, 0xf8, 0xf0, 0xe0, 0xcd,   /* 0x58 */
 0x9b, 0x37, 0x6f, 0xdf, 0xbf, 0x7f, 0xff, 0xff,   /* 0x60 */
 0xff, 0xff, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,   /* 0x68 */
 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,   /* 0x70 */
 0x10, 0x0c, 0x03, 0x01, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x80,   /* 0x78 */
 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x03, 0x48, 0xd0,   /* 0x80 */
 0xc0, 0xe0, 0xfc, 0xf4, 0xf0, 0xf0, 0xe0, 0xc0,   /* 0x88 */
 0x80, 0x07, 0x0f, 0x1f, 0x3f, 0x7f, 0xff, 0xff,   /* 0x90 */
 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff,   /* 0x98 */
 0xff, 0xff, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,   /* 0xa0 */
 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0x3f, 0x0f, 0x0f, 0x0f,   /* 0xa8 */
 0x0f, 0x0c, 0x38, 0xf0, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,   /* 0xb0 */
 0x00, 0x01, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0xf0, 0xfe, 0x13,   /* 0xb8 */
 0x41, 0x21, 0x83, 0x07, 0x07, 0x0f, 0x3f, 0xff,   /* 0xc0 */
 0x7f, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff,   /* 0xc8 */
 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff,   /* 0xd0 */
 0xff, 0xff, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,   /* 0xd8 */
 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xfc, 0xf0, 0xc0,   /* 0xe0 */
 0x00, 0x08, 0x10, 0x10, 0x08, 0x00, 0x0f, 0x7f,   /* 0xe8 */
 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0x7f, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x10,   /* 0xf0 */
 0x88, 0x90, 0xc0, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff,   /* 0xf8 */
 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff,   /* 0x100 */
 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff,   /* 0x108 */
 0xff, 0xff, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,   /* 0x110 */
 0xf8, 0xf0, 0xe0, 0x80, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,   /* 0x118 */
 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x04, 0x3c, 0xfc, 0xfc, 0xfc,   /* 0x120 */
 0xfc, 0xfc, 0xfc, 0x0c, 0x04, 0x04, 0x04, 0x04,   /* 0x128 */
 0x04, 0x04, 0x04, 0x84, 0xc4, 0xe4, 0xf4, 0xfc,   /* 0x130 */
 0xfc, 0xfc, 0xfc, 0xfc, 0xfc, 0xfc, 0xfc, 0xfc,   /* 0x138 */
 0xfc, 0xfc, 0xfc, 0xfc, 0xfc, 0xfc, 0xfc, 0xfc,   /* 0x140 */
 0xfc, 0xfc, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,
};

I will have more time to work with this over the weekend. I need to get my hands on a official Ninja badge to figure out the way the application is supposed to work.

Eric: Wells Gardner 19K7201 Cap Kit (P757-D)

rancor — 2010-08-17T20:04:25+00:00

Well, we ended up buying our cap kit from WG because we couldn’t find a list of capacitors needed for the 19K7201 Deflection Board. In case anyone else is looking for a list, I thought I’d share what came in our kit. There are a couple revisions for the K7200 series boards, you should make sure this is the right one for you before ordering anything. If you find any errors or have any comments on the list, leave a comment so I can keep this as accurate as possible.

Here it goes:

Location	Item Number	Description	Quantity
C42	045X0560-006	1000 UFD @ 16V	1
C45	045X0560-020	470 UFD @ 16V	1
C40	045X0560-033	2200 UFD @ 35V	1
C101	045X0560-052	100 UFD @ 160V	1
C57	045X0560-052	100 UFD @ 160V	1
C12, C18, C22	045X0560-514	1.0 UFD @ 50V	3
C13, C20, C21	045X0560-518	10 UFD @ 25V	3
C015	045X0560-532	100 UFD @ 63V	1
C48	045X0560-532	100 UFD @ 63V	1
*C50	045X0560-042	680 UFD @ 35V 105DEG	1
C011	045X0560-060	22 UFD @ 35V 105DEG	1
C80	045X0560-504	100 UFD @ 16V	1
*C204	045X0566-004	4.7 UF @ 160V	1

* The kit came with a 50V capacitor, but higher voltage capacitors won’t cause any issues so I’m guessing we just got what was more readily available.

** This capacitor is on the neckboard only, and can vary if your neckboard isn’t the matching one for a 19K7201. (This was the case for ours)

Hope this was helpful!

C4: New Stuff

C4 — 2010-08-16T15:29:00+00:00

Some new toys came in last week. A while back before I started the badge project, I ordered a thermostat because it said it had built in Zigbee, a LCD, and some input buttons. I figured It would be a cool device to hack on but after looking into it more, most of the sites including the manufacturer side said that it was a Zwave module. So I kinda wrote that off as a bad buy. But after getting it in I found out It did have Zigbee. It had an Xbee module that I could remove and use in other projects. Possibly to dev on the badge project.

Second I got my Arduino Pro 3.3v in. I didn’t realize how much easier it would be to have the nice FTDI cable to program it. I don’t have a built-in Serial adapter (Macbook Air) so I tried to use a the USB to Serial adapter while supplying the board with 9v, but the adapter I have kind of sucks so that board is on hold until I order the FTDI cable.

I was able to get some input buttons working on the dev board. I also switched to a bigger bread board to accommodate some more components. I had 6 push buttons but after doing some testing I found that only 4 of them actually worked. So I wired up the 4 that I had and I was then able to to move up, down, left, and right on the bottom menu. Next I need to figure out what this thing is going to actually do, be it a game or some other type of application.

jesseisageek: First month of Vim

jesse — 2010-08-16T02:59:42+00:00

I’ve recently made the upgrade from the wonderful Mac text editor Textmate to Vim (in the form of MacVim). What initially led me away was a hope to be able to run SPSS syntax from within Vim, which would allow me to avoid SPSS 16′s abysmal syntax editor. While this turned out not to work quite as easily as I had hoped, and is still a bit broken (a post for another time), I learned quite a bit about Vim’s scripting language. Seeing how easily extensible Vim was, I decided to make the switch full time. I downloaded a copy of MacVim and started creating my .vimrc.

The first thing I did was create an easy way to update my Git repositories when I was finished editing them. This turned out to be ridiculously simple. Just put this in your .vimrc:

command -nargs=+ Commit :!git commit -a -m "<args>"; git push</args>

creates a new command in Command mode called “Commit”. So if you hit “:” to switch to Command Mode in vim, and type:

Commit Version 0.96 Updated XXX to do XXX, fixed bugs in XXX

and hit return, it will commit the changes to the repository and then push the code for you. This makes it effortless to keep your repositories up to date from within Vim.

I’m still retraining myself to navigate around the document using the shortcut keys. The shortcut keys, when I am in the mood where I actually use them instead of arrowing around, sped up my code development greatly. Also, being able to run terminal commands from within Vim has provided me with countless new ways of interacting with my code. I’d highly recommend everyone spend a month or so using Vim. The learning curve is a bit harsh at first, but the payoff is fantastic.

Here is what my MacVim looks like:

More Vim tips to come, along with some zsh tips and the SPSS/Vim bridge.

jesseisageek: First Post

jesse — 2010-08-16T01:19:21+00:00

I’ve decided to give the website a revamp graphically, finally update my CV, and begin adding details on my research. This website is primarily here in order for me to share handy programming tips and tricks, espouse my viewpoints on various things, and generally engage in narcissism.

Keep posted, I’ll try to actually update this thing this time.

C4: Added Small Font

C4 — 2010-08-11T22:52:48+00:00

I added a smaller font to the library. I wanted to fit some more text on the screen but didn’t have enough room with the default font.

Here is the font and a comparison.

Here is a start to a game menu. The goal of this project is to have a fully customizable and fully open Arduino board with a mounted LCD and Zigbee wireless. There are a lot of other shields out there that can potentially do the same thing but I personally would like to see it all incorporated onto one board.

If you would like to use the small font in your project you can download it here: ST7565-smallfont

Travis Thompson: Connecting to WMU’s Cisco VPN from Linux

Travis Thompson — 2010-08-11T21:10:57+00:00

So if you're like me and you happen to use Linux instead of Windows or Mac OS X and you want to connect to Western's VPN (or any Cisco based VPN really, though I'll go though some Western specific steps) then I'm writing this for you. For this guide I'll be assuming you're running Ubuntu [...]

C4: Display Progress

C4 — 2010-08-10T14:11:01+00:00

I took some time yesterday to sit down and play with the display. As I mentioned before I’m currently using Ladyada’s ST7565 library. I used a program “bitmap2LCD” to make a 128×64 background image. In that program you can choose which direction you want the display table to be laid out. If you are using this program and ST7565 lib then you want to choose the “down” arrows when exporting your bitmap to a file. Here’s a pic of one of the display images I was playing with.

I’m not really sure what the name of the badge is going to be when I get done but I just threw that in there for lack of a better name.

EDIT: another pic for those mega man fans.

C4: LCD Testing

C4 — 2010-08-09T13:28:48+00:00

My LCD came in on Saturday from Adafruit. I would recommend them if you are looking for some kit type stuff. No hassles and fast shipping (from NY).

Here is the LCD with some wires that I soldered to it.

Adafruit included a library (which is awesome) that you can download from their github page. It comes with an example which is great for testing it out. I thought it was funny how they loaded their logo into the buffer when you load the library. It took me a second to figure out why I couldn’t use glcd.display(); without getting their logo to show. I have a feeling I will be tweaking the header file when I get some time.

That’s about a far as I got on Saturday night. Looking forward for the Arduino Pro 3.3v to come in this week.

C4: LCD Ordered

C4 — 2010-08-06T14:34:35+00:00

I order this LCD a couple days ago from adafruit.

After doing some research into electronic badges I found out that most of them are using somewhere around 3.3v instead of 5v+. This LCD’s input is 3.3v. It does come with a 4050 level shift so that I can test it with one of the Arduinos I already have. I was also thinking about getting an arduino pro 3.3v (they also have 5v version) so that I didn’t have to use the extra level shifter. Sparkfun has one.

After doing some more poking around, I saw that the Ninja guys started with the same approach.

Hopefully the LCD comes in today/tomorrow so that I can do some testing this weekend.

C4: Starting some development

C4 — 2010-08-04T13:31:48+00:00

I got another Arduino in the mail yesterday. I am going to look into which GLCD is going to be best for this project. I think I am just going to order the generic 128×64 LCD for now to get started.

Travis Thompson: The Uberman Sleep Schedule

Travis Thompson — 2010-08-03T06:28:54+00:00

So I've decided to try a Polyphasic sleep schedule while I still have a month left of my summer. After doing a fair amount of reading, I was going to start a Biphasic sleep schedule but then after considering it more and reading more I decided the Uberman would be the most fun to try. [...]

grg: A (new) Taste of Kalamazoo

Greg — 2010-07-31T04:49:36+00:00

Central City Taphouse is a new bar that opened downtown Kalamazoo just 5pm yesterday evening. Some Computer Club friends and I had heard it was opening, and decided to check it out.

Most of the domestic beers on tap we were all quite familiar with: Dogfish Head’s 90 Minute IPA, Bell’s Two Hearted, etc; and some of the imported beers seemed a bit cliche, such as Stella Artois and Hacker-Pschorr. Despite that, it was nice to see some foreign beers on draft instead of in bottles. Opportunities to try foreign beers that are not bottled are quite rare, and I would not recommend trying many bottled beers that have traveled a great distance.

The first beer I had was called Blonde by Aflingen which was a belgian strong pale ale. I’m normally not a fan of belgian/yeasty type beers, but I was quite satisfied with this one. The second beer I had was on special for $5, and is listed on the menu as $9. It was a Maibock beer by Hofbrau, and it was higher in alcohol content and the flavor was quite complex and full with a noticeable honey taste to it, which made it quite delicious.

My friends and I decided to split a margherita pizza, and a bread plate that came with a few different spreads. The bread came out first and we were pleasantly surprised with the pesto and hummus and other spread (of which I have forgotten the name.) Mix that with a few sips of excellent beer, and you’re in heaven. The pizza was also quite delicious. There was some dispute/bribing over the last piece of pizza involving trying to get someone to start smoking again (or quit quitting)… but luckily I was able to get my fill.

The atmosphere was pleasant, the music was European, and the waiter was quite friendly and helpful. I would highly recommend it if you are looking for a great meal downtown.

Update:

Revisited the Tap House once more this weekend, and decided to try their BEER FLOAT! The beer they used was Cocoa Loco from Arcadia Brewing. They also drizzled on some chocolate syrup and put some whipped cream on top. Overall, quite a delicious treat.

Travis Thompson: L4D2 on a 6600GT

Travis Thompson — 2010-07-25T22:26:05+00:00

So a few weeks ago my "better" graphics card died (granted it wasn't anything great, a Nvidia 7900GS) and I was left with only an old Nvidia 6600GT (minimum required graphics card for L4D2). Now if you follow graphic technology at all, I went from a 4 year old card to more like a 6 [...]

Eric: WordPress Security and Database Prefix Alterations

rancor — 2010-07-22T19:31:28+00:00

Just a note on an easy way to keep your WordPress install a little safer. Beyond keeping your WordPress version up-to-date, the WP Security Scan plugin is an easy way to quickly check for unnecessary vulnerabilities(file permission errors, missing .htaccess files, etc) that could leave you exposed.

If you intend to use their tool for renaming your database prefix(I’d recommend it!), a note about the process to do so. When I was running the tool to change my database prefix, I made the mistake of not making my wp-config.php file writable during the process. The process failed near the end and I had a few things I had to update afterwards as a result.

The first update that was required was changing the wp-config.php file to include the new database prefix, which was as simple as changing the text “wp_” to “xyzwp_”. Unfortunately though, when I went to go make sure everything was working properly again, I found out that my site was completely borked because it hadn’t finished updating the database.

Fortunately, a few other people have run into this same issue, and I was able to find a workable solution here. I was able to get my wordpress install working again by running:

UPDATE xyzwp_usermeta

SET meta_key = REPLACE( meta_key, 'wp_', 'xyzwp_');

Since this isn’t the average fix you’d immediately try after running into this issue, I figured I’d pass along the info in case anybody else happens to run into it.

Travis Thompson: Why Root Your HTC Droid Incredible

Travis Thompson — 2010-07-22T15:55:23+00:00

So, you just rooted your droid and now your thinking to yourself "sweet, now what?" Well here's a list of apps that require root that will make you wonder how you ever lived without in no particular order. 1. Wireless Tether This is by far my favorite app. It makes my phone into a mobile [...]

Travis Thompson: Rooting the HTC Droid Incredible (the easy way)

Travis Thompson — 2010-07-22T01:22:50+00:00

So I've had my Droid Incredible for about a month now, and I have to say I'm very happy with it. The 1ghz snapdragon processor is very responsive and the phone is really nice to use. I upgraded to this phone from a RIM BlackBerry 8330 and anyone who's used one before will know how [...]

Brian: Brian and Halley go to Hawaii

endenizen — 2010-07-11T02:46:14+00:00

Halley and I went to the beautiful island of Oahu for a romantic getaway over 4th of July weekend. Also, we got engaged! Check out some more pictures here: Hawaii Trip July 2010.

Brian: SF Pride Parade 2010 Pictures

endenizen — 2010-06-28T23:21:47+00:00

I went to the Pride Parade yesterday and snapped some pics. It was a beautiful day and everyone looked like there were having a great time. Check out the rest at my flickr set: San Francisco Pride Parade 2010.

Brian: Sponsor ING drops Bay to Breakers

endenizen — 2010-05-26T17:22:48+00:00

The outlook is bleak on the yearly Bay to Breakers race as ING has decided to stop footing the bill. The official word from Sam Singer, a spokesman for the race, is that they simply “chose not to renew for the 100th anniversary next year”.

Unofficially, however, word is ING is fed up with all the bad publicity that the race has generated in recent years, especially the complaints of residents around the Panhandle and Alamo Square about revelers and runners urinating, defecating and generally behaving rudely.

Let’s hope someone else steps in as the sponsor. The beer industry should be able to get behind this, right? Budweiser? Or is Tecate more the San Francisco style? They’re practically the official sponsor of Dolores Park already.

[Via: Sponsor ING drops Bay to Breakers.]

Brian: Google IO: The Hits Keep Coming

endenizen — 2010-05-20T18:42:50+00:00

First, an announcement from today: the next version of Android. Better performance, wifi tethering (!), ‘update all’, and more! I can’t wait to get this. These are much-needed updates that make the platform much more powerful. Check out the embedded video below for details.

[Via: Google Announces the Next Version of Android.]

Next, an announcement from yesterday: easy web fonts! The previous solutions to non-web-fonts-on-the-web involved rendering images, embedding flash objects, or using canvas (when it was available). These methods might have gotten the job done, but they were difficult to implement and each had its share of drawbacks.

Along comes Google Font API and all those problems disappear. Now you can easily use real fonts without adding complexity. Best of all, it’s cross-browser (even IE6!) and works just the way it should: just set the font-family in css. I’ve already added a new font to my blog which you can see in the screenshot. It really was as easy as they say:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Tangerine">
<style>
  body {
    font-family: 'Tangerine', serif;
    font-size: 48px;
  }
</style>

(Note: I’m not actually using Tangerine. I tried it, and it’s gross.)

[Via: Making Good Typography on the Web Easier: Google Introduces Font API and Directory.]

Brian: Mama’s Kitchen Coming to the Haight

endenizen — 2010-05-17T23:00:07+00:00

Another new restaurant coming to the Haight? Parada 22 turned out to be very impressive (not to mention delicious) and we could certainly use more of that.

Mamas Kitchen, previously located at 321 Kearny Street and not to be confused with the ever-popular Mamas in North Beach, is looking to reopen in the Haight in place of what is currently a tattoo parlor called Soul Patch 1599 Haight.

[Via Mama’s Kitchen Coming to the Haight -- Grub Street San Francisco.]

Brian: True Blood: Season 3 (Trailer)

endenizen — 2010-05-17T18:12:15+00:00

In case you missed it… HBO unveiled the first trailer for Season 3 of True Blood. Looks good.

Brian: New Programming Jargon

endenizen — 2010-05-14T18:24:14+00:00

Categorization is hard. Categorization of code is boring. This list (made up of responses to a question posted on Stack Overflow) spices it up a bit by giving you FUN ways to talk about your most dreaded bugs, design patterns, and lack of documentation. A few of my favorites:

Banana Banana Banana: Placeholder text indicating that documentation is in progress or yet to be completed. Mostly used because FxCop complains when a public function lacks documentation.

Bugfoot: A bug that isn’t reproducible and has been sighted by only one person.

Counterbug: A defensive move useful for code reviews. If someone reviewing your code presents you with a bug that’s your fault, you counter with a counterbug: a bug caused by the reviewer.

Shrug Report: A bug report with no error message or “how to reproduce” steps and only a vague description of the problem. Usually contains the phrase “doesn’t work.”

Smug Report: A bug report submitted by a user who thinks he knows a lot more about the system’s design than he really does. Filled with irrelevant technical details and one or more suggestions (always wrong) about what he thinks is causing the problem and how we should fix it.

[Via New Programming Jargon — Global Nerdy.]

Brian: Adam Sandler taking ‘Pixels’ to big-screen

endenizen — 2010-05-13T17:11:20+00:00

Remember the short film Pixels, where video game characters from the ’80s take over New York? Happy Madison is turning it into a feature-length film. This news comes just a week and a half after Heat Vision noted that Hollywood is feeling shorts fatigue:

Now Hollywood is suffering a shorts overdose. Execs and agents realize a guy with a computer can create a spaceship over a city but wonder if that person can tell a story. And not just once, in a hyped-up short.

Adam Sandler seems to think this short has something special. Watch it again below because it’s just that awesome. Here’s hoping they don’t screw it up…

The French filmmaker behind “Pixels,” Patrick Jean, has teamed up with Adam Sandler’s production banner Happy Madison to develop a big-screen take. The team is in talks with Columbia, where Happy Madison has its first-look deal, to set up the project at the studio.

[Via Adam Sandler taking Pixels to big-screen.]

Brian: HTML5 & CSS3 Browser Readiness Visualized

endenizen — 2010-05-12T20:38:54+00:00

Trying to decide whether to implement that great HTML5 or CSS3 feature you just read about? Take a look at the HTML5 & CSS3 readiness dashboard to see if it’s supported in your target browsers. It’s not the most visually informative or user-friendly way of presenting the data but it works. It’s also neat to compare the state of the browser in 2010 with 2009 or 2008.

[Via: information aesthetics]

Brian: Fallout: New Vegas Collector’s Edition Details

endenizen — 2010-05-11T16:37:01+00:00

I’m a big fan of Fallout 3 (and of the greater post-apocalyptic genre) so I am very excited for New Vegas. Destructoid has the details on the collector’s edition which will be available when the game is released this fall.

[Via: Destructoid]

Travis Thompson: Welcome to dev-random.me

Travis Thompson — 2010-02-16T00:02:45+00:00

So, I decided it would be fun to move away from Blogger and onto WordPress since it seems to be the popular thing to do. So far, I like it. It's a lot more customizable than Blogger, especially since I get to host it myself. I also enjoy WordPress themes more then the Blogger ones. [...]

Travis Thompson: And so it continues

Travis Thompson — 2010-01-18T02:38:00+00:00

Well, it's been a while. I've been telling myself I'm going to write a blog entry since ... November. Woops! Oh well, at least I'm working on one now. So I guess to start I'll summarize my last semester real quick, meh. It wasn't bad, defiantly an improvement over last year, but I could have done things a lot [...]

Matt Scott: Update

Matt Scott — 2009-11-19T03:10:50+00:00

I finally got around to updating wordpress. Woohoo!

Travis Thompson: The New Direction

Travis Thompson — 2009-10-13T07:01:00+00:00

Just so everyone (and no one) knows, I am aware that nobody follows my blog, but that is alright, I thought I would at least explain my change in direction to the Internet ghosts. The past few months have taught me a lot about life and one thing I've learned is that if you want [...]

Matt Scott: AT&T Uverse vs. Aastra 55i

Matt Scott — 2009-10-05T01:35:33+00:00

Several months ago we switched from AT&T DSL to AT&T Uverse at my home. It offered “cable” TV and quick Internet for a price that worked or us. Uverse also offers its own VoIP service but we declined that part of the service in favor of using a 3CX remote extension using a Sipura SPA3000 that I bought a few years back.In my experience so far, Uverse is not a Voip-friendly provider unless you use their service. For one, you are stuck with their gateway box. Yes, you can use the “DMZPlus” mode to add your own firewall into the mix but it’s far from perfect. I did manage to get my SPA3000 to work. The Aastra 5xi series of phones doesn’t have as many NAT traversal options however so it wasn’t quite as easy.

First I went to the Global SIP screen and set things up in the usual way so that the phone had the information needed to register to the PBX, etc.

This would work great if the phone could route directly to the PBX and back again but with Network Address Translation occurring on my end throws a monkey wrench into the works when it comes to SIP and RTP.

So next I looked on the Network settings. This is where all of the NAT options live. With typical cable or DSL service, I’d just set a STUN server, maybe check the Rport box and go. In the case of the Uverse 2Wire Residential Gateway, however no combination of these options that I tried worked.

So in the end it seemed necessary to take a look at the available settings on the 2Wire device and see what my options were. There weren’t many.

I ended up explicitly allowing the UDP ports that the phone uses. On the Uverse gateway. Here are the steps:

First I went to the Firewall tab and then Firewall Settings. I selected the phone from the Computer drop down and selected “Allow individual application(s)” like so.

Next, I clicked Add a new user-defined application and created a user-defined app as below.

The phone sends and receives RTP traffic on ports beginning with UDP 3000. I opened up ten ports allowing for five simultaneous calls. This seemed like more than enough for my purposes.

When I was done I clicked “Add Definition” and then the new user-defined app was ready to go. I Selected it on the following page, clicked Add, and then Done. After that the phone worked great.

What I did find odd is that I didn’t need to define a stun server on this phone to get it to work in this situation. The 2Wire residential gateway must do some sort of manipulation of SIP packets because from what I could tell all of the fields looked correct with the appropriate public IPs in the right places.

It’s unfortunate that the phone couldn’t be made to work without making changes to the firewall. But something with the way that the 2Wire handles RTP seems to make it necessary.

Enjoy!

Matt

Travis Thompson: travis-thompson.info

Travis Thompson — 2009-06-12T15:44:00+00:00

Today I bought travis-thompson.info for 99 cents from godaddy.com. So far I'm much happier with godaddy than I was with 1and1, admin interface is much nicer (the number of features and ease of use is great for 99 cents a year). I already have it registered with Google Apps Standard Edition to handle email (travis [...]

Dan: NCUR 2009

Dan — 2009-04-19T03:44:49+00:00

On Thursday, I spoke at NCUR (National Conference of Undergraduate Research) about my neural network battery prediction model.

Me in front of the UW-La Crosse clock tower

Matt Scott: Snom 370 SIP Phone Through NAT to 3CX

Matt Scott — 2009-04-13T20:30:46+00:00

My article relating to this was accepted and posted in the official 3CX blog. You can read it here.

Matt Scott: More Mead!

Matt Scott — 2009-02-09T02:16:00+00:00

I made yet another batch of mead today. This batch had the usual 15 lbs of honey in it but this time I also added cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, cloves, and two vanilla beans. It should prove delicious. We’ll find out for sure in about a year.

Matt Scott: American What?

Matt Scott — 2009-01-06T02:38:17+00:00

I need to rant.

What is the deal with American Cheese anyway? I don’t understand how people can call it cheese at all? What’s sad is that it is the type of “cheese” that many people in the U.S. were brought up on so they continue to buy it not even knowing that something that doesn’t taste like processed pond scum is readily available.

According to Wikipeda Kraft Singles contain:

“milk, whey, milkfat, milk protein concentrate, salt, calcium phosphate, sodium citrate, whey protein concentrate, sodium phosphate, sorbic acid as a preservative, apocarotenal (color), annatto (color), enzymes, vitamin D3, cheese culture.”

What is milk protein concentrate anyway and why does color need to be added? What color would these things be if they didn’t change it?

Velveeta is even better. According to another Wikipeda article about Velveeta “In 2002, the FDA warned Kraft that Velveeta was being sold with packaging that described it as a ‘pasteurized processed cheese food,’ which the FDA claimed was false (’cheese food’ must contain at least 51% cheese). Velveeta is now sold as a ‘cheese product,’ using a term for items that contain less than 51% cheese.”

Cheese product? Less than 51% cheese? I sure am glad that the FDA has such standards as to ensure that something called cheese is more than half made of cheese. It’s no wonder that all you have to do to make a product sound substandard is to paste the word American on the front of it. Are we that stupid? What is the matter with real food anyway?

I’m done…for now.