evanroberts.com

I’m not ashamed to admit it: I like the “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” advertisements. Some of them are silly, and some of them are downright hilarious.

Personally, my favourite one is the one where the Vista security guard keeps asking for permission to do things (”Cancel or allow?”), which if you are not familiar with, you can see here:

http://movies.apple.com/movies/us/apple/getamac/apple-getamac-security_480×376.mov

(The above link is a *.MOV. You’ll need Quicktime.)

There is a new one that just kills me. The PC guy is hiding in a pizza box in an effort to lure college students over so he can “get them”. The way he keeps popping out of the box is amusing, but I laughed out loud at his last line: “…come eat me… I’m a delicious pizza…”. Totally appeals my warped sense of humour. Check it out:

http://movies.apple.com/movies/us/apple/getamac/apple_getamac_pizzabox_20080818_480×272.mov

(The above link is a *.MOV. You’ll need Quicktime.)

Some may claim that I am an Apple fanboy… and I guess I am. It’s hard to not be one when you appreciate such great products.  

As per usual, once I get my head wrapped around the desire to tweak the settings of my site, I’ll sit here for hours until I get it just the way I want… or eventually give up as things aren’t working as how I expected them to. In this case, I finally fixed an issue that I’ve had for months.

For the longest time, I wanted to have a different header image, chosen at random, whenever the site was loaded up. Some may find it irritating, but I’ve always liked them. Gives the site a bit of randomness, and I also get to chose a number of header images that I like. However, with this theme, I couldn’t figure out where to implement the code. I found some sites with some suggestions, where they said to place a bit of CSS after the stylesheet was called, yet my attempted “randomness” was always ignored. It drove me nuts, and the worst part is that I’m not really a PHP/CSS expert, so I got irritated when my poke-and-see-what-happens method of updating the code didn’t work.

Fast forward to tonight, things just seemed to make sense. Perhaps it’s some experience in PHP/CSS that I might have gained without realising, or just because my head was clear or whatever, but I figured out where the hidden extra call for the stylesheet was, and took it out. Voila! I now have random images. Now the only issue is figuring out what images to use. I have three to start off with, and we’ll see how long it takes to get some more together.  

Other than that, little things that I’ve been meaning to do that I finally got done:

• Bring the “Daily Shots” out of their own page, and put them in with my regular posts. I found that I updated the daily shots more than I posted regularily, yet they were hidden away. I like how I’m taking daily pictures with my iPhone and am able to post them up when I feel like it, so I’ve made it a regular thing on my main page. Woohoo.  
• Enable Lightbox for the “Daily Shots” category. As I am posting my daily shots from my iPhone, I don’t have the ability (or desire) to add the code to have Lightbox bring the images up nicely when they are clicked. I hated how they would be enlarged on a separate blank page, and so I installed an updated version of Lightbox that will do it all for me. The gallery will still be displayed with Thickbox, until Lightbox has proven itself to me.
• Ensure that the comments are always on by default. A while ago, I set it so that I would have to enable comments on the posts I wanted. This was when I was mainly updating my blog with my “Meals & Activity”, and didn’t see the need for comments to be submitted for those posts. I kept forgetting to turn them off, so I set them to be off by default. However, as I started to post more and more outside of my eating habits and daily activity, I would occasionally forget to enable comments. Not a big thing, as I don’t get as many comments on my site as I used to, but still… it irked me.
• Added a link to a larger graph. When I started to track my weight and have it displayed in a graph, it was fairly legible. However, as time went on, and more data was entered, the graph started to look more like a blob than anything else. I still want to keep the starting weight, as I like seeing the decline, but I figured that a larger version of the graph would make it easier to read, so I included a link.

Anyway, just a few updates, and I guess I’m mainly posting this blurb about them for myself so I can keep a record of what I did.

Aren’t you glad you wasted some of your precious time reading about inconsequential tweaks to my site?

I am. 

…well, he saved the early morning, at least!

This morning, there was apparently a complete power failure up at my Dad’s place where my server is located. This is different from the usual brownouts that occur throughout the week… small 2-3 second blips that would be enough to trip out the server. They were getting mighty annoying, and so my Dad and I bought a UPS which I have since named Thor.

Anyway, checking my email this morning, I had two alerts sent via the UPS monitoring app I have running. I’ve stripped most of the data to the most important info:

• callisto Power Failure !!!
  DATE     : Fri Aug 01 02:41:46 EDT 2008
  HOSTNAME : callisto
  UPSNAME  : Thor
  MODEL    : Back-UPS RS 900
  UPSMODE  : Stand Alone
  STATUS   : ONBATT
  LOADPCT  :   9.0 Percent Load Capacity
  BCHARGE  : 100.0 Percent
  TIMELEFT :  71.4 Minutes
• callisto Power has returned
  DATE     : Fri Aug 01 03:44:55 EDT 2008
  HOSTNAME : callisto
  UPSNAME  : Thor
  MODEL    : Back-UPS RS 900
  UPSMODE  : Stand Alone
  STATUS   : ONLINE
  LOADPCT  :   9.0 Percent Load Capacity
  BCHARGE  : 024.0 Percent
  TIMELEFT :  19.9 Minutes
  XONBATT  : Fri Aug 01 02:41:44 EDT 2008
  XOFFBATT : Fri Aug 01 03:44:54 EDT 2008

That’s SO cool!! This is the first time that we’ve had a power failure since we bought and installed Thor, so it was great to see that everything worked as expected. I still have yet to test a complete train of Thor’s battery, which should result in the UPS monitoring app initiating a shutdown, but I’ll do that when I have the time and under controlled circumstances.

Thanks to Sparky for helping me with my initial configuration, and thanks to Thor for kicking ass!!!

One of the perks about Leopard (OS X 10.5) is that it comes with a feature known as “Time Machine“. Basically, it is a built-in backup solution, runs in the background, and mirrors your drive to another drive via USB or Firewire, and even over your network, if you have Apple’s Time Capsule.

Personally, I have no need for another wireless router, even if it comes with a hard drive, as it is one more thing on my network to worry about, maintain, and the thing ain’t cheap to begin with. Yes, this is a gadget that I decided NOT to get due to cost. How weird is THAT!? 

Anyway, last week, the drive for my work Macbook died. When I say ” it died”, I mean the type of drive death where it clicks, clunks, grinds, and won’t mount. Basically, I can’t do anything with it, so everything I had on it is gone. Was I backing it up? Nope. After setting up everyone else’s machines to backup their data, I never got around to setting up mine. Not much is gone, I use IMAP at work so my email wasn’t stored locally, but all the images, documents, and other things I’ve worked on for the last 3.75 years was lost. Either it hasn’t hit me yet, or I just don’t care. Dunno. But, it made me paranoid about my own machines, so I figured I might as well set up Time Machine at work, ensure it does the trick, and then set it up at home.

I heard rumours about people being able to set Time Machine to use standard SMB (Samba) mounts using 10.5.2 or higher, which makes sense, as OS X is based off Unix, and pretty much operates within the same standards. Sure enough, I came across this site, and it was easy as pie:

http://www.stocksy.co.uk/articles/Mac/getting_time_machine_to_work_how_i_want/

A quick snippet of what was involved:

Within Terminal:

sudo defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

Then:

sudo hdiutil create -size [number_in_GB]g -type SPARSEBUNDLE -nospotlight -volname “Time Machine” -fs HFS+J -verbose ~/Desktop/[mac_network_name]_[eth_mac_addy].sparsebundle

Transferred *.sparsebundle to desired remote directory.

As I have a few Linux boxes that are there only for storage, it made sense to set up Time Machine on my Mac Mini to use one of them rather than spending a chunk of cash on a new device. I had to reinstall Leopard as years of upgrading left me with an operating system that had issues with permissions over network mounts (the weirdest thing), so I backed up my Mac Mini to my Macbook, and started from scratch. After Leopard was installed, it took no time to set up Time Machine. The initial backup took FOREVER, as was expected, but since then, all has been well. I’ll move over the important documents as time goes on, but for the moment, only 14GB on the Mac Mini was used. I’ll have to clear some more space to be able to back up the Macbook via Time Machine, but that shouldn’t be too difficult.

So, long story short: if you’re not backing up your data, you might want to look into that. If you want to use Time Machine, and you have a machine on the network that you can use as a network mount via SMB, check out the link above, and save yourself some cash. Why Apple doesn’t allow you to do this by standard, who knows, but I’m glad that the process to do so wasn’t too much of a hack.

Thanks to Stocksy for the instructions.  

Greedy bastards.

So, here in Canada, we’ve been itching to get out hands on the iPhone since it was released in the States. Some even went so far as to get one anyway and have it hacked to work upon the Rogers network. On June 9th, Apple announced that the iPhone would officially be coming up to Canada (and the rest of the world). Needless to say, this will be the hot item of the summer around the world, if not the entire year. It was no surprise that Rogers would be the carrier in Canada; they’re the only one up here who has the infrastructure. This roughly translates to them having a monopoly, which again roughly translates to them being able to charge whatever the fuck they want.

Many thought that this would be the turning point for Rogers… that Apple would pressure them into FINALLY having an unlimited data package for a decent price. For a time, it looked like this might be a possibility. Rogers caving to demand for fair prices. Ha.

Guess what? Rogers said “bollocks” to that (yes, they used that word), and released the following:

400MB per month at the lowest rate? It’s not like I’d be surfing a lot on the thing, but I don’t want to have to worry about paying extra should I go over, especially at $0.50/MB. That shit adds up. I also have the “$20 Value Pack” already with my Nokia 5300, as I like being able to send txt msgs without a cap, and the early evening calling is nice (usually their unlimited evenings and weekends starts at 9pm?! WTF?!), so I would need that too with the iPhone. Right there: $80/month. Then, their system access fees, and taxes, blah blah blah… I’ll be paying close to $100 per month for the damn thing.

But you know what? As much as I bitch and whine about the prices, I’m going to be paying them, as I want the iPhone… and Rogers knows this. Sure, they throw in unlimited Hotspot access, which is cool of them, but how often will I hang out at a Second Cup? Almost never.

It’s so fucking irritating that Rogers gets away with this. Looking at the rates down in the States, this hardly seems fair. Rogers makes hand-over-fist in cash, and they still feel the need to squeeze even more pennies out of the average customer. Sure, it’s all about business, but this goes beyond that. This is just simple greed.

All said and done, though, I can’t wait to get the iPhone.

Update (July 3rd, 2008): To hell with Rogers. I’m not going to get roped into a three-year contract where I essentially agree to pay ridiculous prices just to enjoy an innovative device. I’m going to sit back and wait for the competition to get their act in gear and offer the iPhone on their network. Rumour has it that Telus is working on this for early 2009, and I’ll be taking my number over to them if they’re successful.

Just one of those useless little things on sites, but I wanted to have my own favicon, which is the little picture that displays right next to the URL in the address bar. I used to have one, waaaaay back in the day, which is sort of a funny story:

I found this little red maple leaf image that I liked, but it wasn’t a favicon. I was using my Windows machine a lot during that time, and so I opened up MS Paint, imported the image, and then saved it in *.ICO format, which is necessary. During that process, MS Paint reduced the colours in the image to 16, which effectively turned my innocent-looking red maple leaf into something that resembled a marijuana leaf. I found this hilarious, and installed that on my site. However, a few years later, during a crash which resulted in the hard drive in my old FreeBSD box melting, I lost the image, and the site. Turned out to be a good thing as I wasn’t happy with the site, and hardly updated it. I was also using PostNuke, which at the time was a pain the ass to maintain and update.

Anyway, this one wasn’t that difficult to create as all I had to do was take a snapshot of myself, crop it, resize it to 16×16 pixels, and then used “convert” to change the image format from PNG to ICO. Then, placed the file within my theme directory, and voila! Searching for instructions on the ‘net resulted in all these shareware applications that would convert the image for you… blah blah blah. It’s amazing how many programs are out there that you have to pay for to do the most simple things if you’re too lazy to look up how to do the task yourself. I’m not paying for a one-time process… that’s idiotic.

So. There we have it. Yet another mugshot of myself on my site. Exciting, eh? 

So, the UPS is charged, installed, everything is plugged into it (server, router, cable modem), and I can monitor it’s stats at my leisure. Its a GREAT relief to finally have a UPS ensuring my server isn’t brought down due to a brownout, or even a blackout… as long as it doesn’t last more than 68.9 minutes.  

Stepping away from my usual naming convention of planets and moons (and sometimes sci-fi), I decided to name the UPS “Thor”. If you don’t know who that is, then I suggest some light reading here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor

Many thanks to “System Control” (aka, my Father) for setting the hardware up and plugging everything in!!

The thunderstorms we’ve had here in Toronto have pretty much made me aware of two things:

• My love of watching lightning strike things is fairly normal.
• I need a UPS for the server.

All it takes is a minor brownout to bring the server down, which isn’t too much of an issue as the machine is set to turn itself back on should the power go out, but it can lead to database corruption… which isn’t so cool. Last night I had to restore a part of the database that my website is based upon, which was a pain in the ass. Never did something like that before, and there’s no better way to learn how to do something than by flying by the seat of your pants!

One could argue that this is only MY site, and it’s not like it is a company website worth millions of dollars, but I like my site, and I’m sure some of you do as well. Thank you for visiting.

Anyway, Sparky has had a UPS for a number of years now, and it has worked fairly well for him. His server remains up, his connection to the ‘net remains up, and should he want to watch TV during a blackout, he can… for about 20 minutes. At his recommendation, we got an APC RS-900, which can theoretically provide around 40+ minutes of power; more than enough for one Mac Mini, router, and cable modem. Another thing that is completely cool is that there is a daemon for Linux known as “apcupsd”, which can be used to monitor, manage, and grab information from the UPS, which just rocks.

Check it out:

I *really* like how the UPS logs the “recent events”. For example, with last night’s thunderstorms, Sparky’s UPS logged when there was a power failure, noted that the batteries were being used, and then logged when power was restored. He’s also mentioned how you can set the daemon to send emails detailing the status of the outage (which should work, as a power outage doesn’t necessarily affect cable or phone lines), and that you can even set it to perform a controlled shutdown should the batteries get low. How neat is that!?

We’ll see how this works out, but I’m sure it will be MUCH better than the current configuration.