MiguelitoNet

Yeah, so I decided to move to WordPress.. as you can see.

Miguelito — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 06:13:35 +0000

Had problems (again) after upgrading Movable Type, and wordpress has really matured in the last couple years, with tons of cool plugins. So I’m giving it a try.

Got a fairly decent setup similar to what I had before FAR faster then it took to do the same with MT.

The only negatives I’ve seen about WP really, are periodic security issues, which isn’t exclusive to WP. I’ll have to make sure to keep and eye on logs and such and keep up with any updates, that’s for sure.

You think I’d learn..

Miguelito — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 08:27:02 +0000

not to update late a night or when I don’t have a lot of free time on my hands, but I figured, eh.. update from MT 4.1 to 4.21 can’t be that big a change, right? Well as you can see, it broke the layout/widgets somehow and it’s not clear how. I’ll have to fix when I get a chance. Basically had to flip layout to get sidebar to show up at all and everything is squished. Bah.

NX server auth suggestion… local/passwd auth without allowing passwd auth on public sshd

Miguelito — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 05:41:38 +0000

I thought this was pretty simple, but after chatting with a few, apparently not a lot have thought of it. If you want to use NX to connect to a server from the internet, but also want more security on that same host by only allowing known rsa/dsa keys the ability to login, and you don’t like the nx passworddb option; you can use the following setup:

Leave the “public” sshd process listening on port 22, only allowing known keys (and don’t allow root logins IMO).
Setup a 2nd “local” sshd process listening on another port. My setup is as follows:

Create /etc/ssh/sshd_config_local, in that file there will be 2 differences…
Port 222
UsePAM yes (or set PasswordAuthentication yes if you don’t use PAM).
For extra super security, also set: ListenAddress 127.0.0.1

Setup another init script (I just copied sshd to sshd_local) and add the following to the line that spawns the sshd process:

-f /etc/ssh/sshd_config_local

Setup your links, run chkconfig, whatever your distribution does, and then start the service (sudo su – root -c ‘/etc/init.d/sshd_local start’). You should now have another daemon running that looks like:
/usr/sbin/sshd -f /etc/ssh/sshd_config_local

The only configs needed for nx (I’m using the free nomachine server, not freenx, might be slight differences) are (in /usr/NX/etc/server.cfg):

SSHDAuthPort to 222
EnablePasswordDB = 0

..and that’s it. Now connections to the server connect to port 22 as user nx using the key that came with the client (or you can setup a custom key… you figure that out) and then it does the ssh step (to auth/fwd the connection) via basically doing an ‘ssh -p 222 -l $USER localhost’ on the server, so it uses your “local” sshd copy and passwords work.

Temporarily disabled comments

Miguelito — Wed, 28 May 2008 22:43:10 +0000

Not that I get all that many.. but I see odd entries in apache logs and see grumblings online about a possible exploit in mt-comments.cgi to send spam again. Just to be safe I disabled comments until it looks like it’s ok.

ImageMagick… had issues, again.

Miguelito — Tue, 27 May 2008 06:02:01 +0000

Found my system run out of ram a few times lately. Just again tonight. Found there’s a fairly well known bug in ImageMagick in re: to libgomp.so.1 in gcc-4.2.x (See this Gentoo bug entry for an example). Didn’t see any openmp flag check in the ebuild for imagemagick so I added the –disable-openmp bit to configure and re-emerged imagemagick and it’s ok now.

So if you tried to comment recently and it never came back… sorry. Should be fixed now. Will try to comment to this myself to make sure.

Finally

Miguelito — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 04:07:44 +0000

Only took them a month.. but my 360 finally showed back up last Friday. They never bothered to even send an email letting me know it had shipped so I could be there to sign for it… luckily they left it with my neighbor who called me (first time he ever did.. at first I was worried my house was on fire or something until he said he had a package). Sadly… either swapping out a DVD drive is far too difficult for MS techs or something on the mobo itself was failing (maybe the sata controller) because they sent me a replacement unit. Why that took 4 weeks to do is beyond me.

However it seems to be running fine. I have to at least give them credit for getting me back a working unit. There have been plenty of stories out there about people sending in broken 360s that come back and are DOA.

Haven’t had a reason to complain about Microsoft in awhile…

Miguelito — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 02:40:24 +0000

Boy do I have a reason now though. I now have had 2 out of 3 Xbox 360′s fail. That is so pathetic.

I’ve had gaming consoles going back to the original 8bit NES (and we had an old Pong system in the 70′s that my dad bought) and I don’t remember any ever having issues on the level the 360 has had. Yeah, eventually (after several years) the NES and Coleco systems both suffered from oddities where you had to do things like blow in the cartridge slot and/or cartridge itself… click the NES game up and down a bunch of times to get it to lock properly, or you’d suffer graphics glitches. However, they continued to work long past the time the next gen consoles came out and still worked by the time they were retired.

Even now I have the 3 current consoles: a 360, a PS3 and a
Wii. I haven’t had a single problem with the PS3 nor the Wii, but the
360 has been a pain. My first 360 died (the well known heat/graphics
issue) just after it was a year old (and I hadn’t read about the
extension of warranty to 3 years that had just happened) and wasn’t
thrilled about the idea of paying for a fix that was damn near the cost
of a new console anyway. I followed some of the online ideas for
fixing the problem… and failed miserably, bricking the thing (yay).
Yes, I was a part of that ultimate failure, but the system was already
dorked and basically useless and would’ve cost a ton to fix. I ended
up buying the low end system then.. one good side effect of the
swappable HDD I guess.

Late last year I bought an Elite model
for 2 reasons.. 1. the HDMI connection (upgrading TV soon). 2. the
120Gig HDD and 3. I bought 2 Rock Band kits and figured I could use the
one to take the 2nd kit to family gatherings and such without having to
unhook my setup (have done this a couple times.. been a blast).

Well
last weekend my Elite ate it. No RROD or anything, but the DVD drive
seems to haved died. I was playing through Portal on The Orange Box
again, and about 2/3 of the way through it, it hung.. the drive started
making a grinding noise, and that was it.. from then on it won’t read
any discs at all. I either get the “Cannot read disc” error, or other
things like the disc bar sticks on “reading…” I’m pissed.. these
consoles aren’t exactly cheap, and for 2 out of 3 to fail on me is
beyond sad. There are widespread problems out there with overall
failure rates on them too, so I know it’s not just me. Even the HD-DVD playback hasn’t exactly been very good either (boy am I glad Blu-ray won the HD disc format war).

So I’m on my “backup” 360 console.. meanwhile my PS3 runs perfectly..
damn near every day (I use it as my defacto DVD player now too).

I filled out the support forms online and they’re supposed to be
sending me a box to ship in the busted Elite to fix it, and it’s on
warranty too, so it should be free. I’ll follow-up with how that goes
(I’m betting it’ll take awhile).

Update (3/18): The return box finally showed up a week later, I dropped it off at a local UPS Store on 3/4… 2 weeks later and the online status still shows “Repair Status: Device Received at Service Center.” Whee. Hopefully I’ll get it back, or at least an update, sometime this month.

The HD battle.. and why I would rather see Blu-Ray win

Miguelito — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 03:58:15 +0000

For those who don’t know.. or just haven’t paid attention, there’s a battle going on in the marketplace right now about which format should replace the current DVD one.. the 2 competing formats are HD-DVD and Blu-Ray (HD and BD from here on out). If you really want more info, I suggest this page at Wikipedia as a good starting point. They have a few pages there, with a really good chart comparing HD and BD with DVD for added info. You’ll note from the linked page that there are a few other competing ideas too, and there’s downloads, but these are the 2 big dogs. I pretty much discount downloads for Hi-Def content anyway, as the data sizes for storage and the required download times just won’t really work… today.

Anyway, if you check the nice table near the top of the linked wikipedia entry, you’ll note that when it comes down to it, HD and BD are very similar. As far as codecs go for video and audio on the discs, they’re pretty similar. BD does edge out a bit in tending to prefer higher bit-rates for most stuff. Basically where there are differences, BD wins.. aside from Dolby True-HD audio which HD requires a higher bit-rate on. BD has higher data transfer rates and because it has a lot more storage (50Gig vs 30Gig for the 2 dual layered) BD movies are more likely to have the uncompressed audio stream and can have the video done at a higher rate for better quality. Of course the resulting quality all depends on how the studio has the video and audio done… and right now the studios that release both will tend to do well enough for HD, then just dump the same thing onto BD (I would too.. why pay more to have another version done for BD?).

Most of the arguments for people that want HD to win tend to boil down to 2 things:

1. HD players are cheaper. This is true, however that gap is closing fast, especially things like today’s announcement that Sony dropped a player’s price to $299.99 which is a pretty big change.

2. People say they’ll never trust Sony again after the Rootkit scandal from a couple years ago. True, Sony was stupid here, but frankly this is a dumb stance considering Microsoft is the developer of the HDi interactive layer on HD disks (BD uses a Java version) and is a HUGE backer of HD… I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ll pick Sony over Microsoft as a company to trust any day.

So basically the format war boils down to.. they’re very similar, most people can’t tell the difference, and I really don’t care that much who wins.. though right now I give an edge to BD. The larger space available and higher bit rates for data transfer win me over as well.

Tonight though, I had my first experience that makes me dislike HD even more. First a little info: I have both a BD and HD player… well, actually I have a Playstation 3 and an Xbox 360 with the HD-DVD addon. Thus far I have had no issues with my PS3 at all… and every movie I’ve bought (I have about 24 BD movies to 7 HD ones) in BD has worked flawlessly. Including all the interactive bits I’ve messed with, like the interactive Liar’s Dice game on the 2nd Pirates of the Caribbean set. I have had, however.. issues on the HD side. First off, I’ve yet to see a BD get scratched to where it won’t play.. in fact, I’ve not seen a scratch show up (one big thing Sony pushes in the BD spec is an anti-scratch coating it uses). I have had one of the “hybrid” HD/DVD disks scratched to unplayable out of the case though (the movie was Smoking Aces)… because the cheap box’s hub that holds the disk broke.

The problem tonight was with the much-touted release of the Bourne Ultimatum “hybrid” disc. I booted up my 360 and put it in.. and the disc failed to read popping up a warning. I reset the xbox and it read… immediately telling me there was an update for the “game” (stupid xbox message calls movies games too), which I applied. When it started playback again, it asked me if I would allow a cookie for some web content thing it wanted to do.. I said yes, and a “loading” screen appeared.. and then stopped. I could exit playback but re-entering the disk showed the same loading screen, and it froze again after 2 seconds. I did a quick search online and found people mentioning the online part sucking (apparently Knocked Up has issues too). I found that I could get past the frozen bit by either unplugging the console’s network cable (yeah, that’s a good fix) or if I hit OK inside the 2 seconds I had before the thing froze. I was then able to disable the network access from HD movies altogether (else it locks every time). I even snagged a quick video of it to show what it does (yeah, quality isn’t exactly up there):

Once I’m into playback, the disk seems fine… looks great, sounds great, etc. The fact that the HDi layer is this fragile though (HDi includes the web bits and/or interactive programs from what I understand… check wikipedia) is beyond asinine. I shouldn’t be surprised, Microsoft isn’t exactly known for stable software. This is nonetheless very frustrating when the PS3 just works.. every time. Granted BD doesn’t require network access in every player (though the PS3 will support it if it doesn’t already I’m sure).. but who really needs it all the time for movies anyway? This difference in how the two have performed for me is just another small push over to the BD side.

Small other note that likely has nothing to do with the HD/BD spec vs the consoles… the 360 takes about double the time to just read and start playback of the HD discs when compared to the PS3 and BD movies. Notice it’s a good 14 seconds from the time the xbox menus go blank (very first frames of above video) before the “loading” screen shows up. Oh, and frankly, the playback on the PS3 is just nicer then the 360.. the interface is better, and the info you can display is better. That’s personal preference of course, but the PS3 clearly shows nice info like video codec and bit-rates, audio codec and bit-rates, and you can quickly toggle between time displays (up or down) for title or chapter. The 360 just seems to show time played and time remaining and I don’t see anything on codecs. The remote for the PS3 is a lot nicer.. both in look/feel and that they stuck to bluetooth whereas the 360 remote (maybe there’s a new one, not sure) is IR and frankly it sucks rocks when the unit isn’t directly facing you. I used to have my consoles installed in a cabinet facing 90 degrees from me and the 360 was a pain to use the remote with, and I HATE using the game controllers for movie playback. Why they even bothered with an IR remote when the console also already have wireless built in for the game controllers is beyond me.

Update: After some net searching, I found suggestions to clear the 360 cache. Doing that fixed the hang, so I can hit OK to skip even after 2 seconds, but the download appears be barely get anywhere (if at all). Thus I refer back to the line above with asinine in it again.

Update (a bit later): *sigh* I get about 2/3 into the movie and run into tons of playback issues. The thing hangs, I can hear the disc trying to re-read again and again, until if eventually gives up (15+ seconds each time) and usually poorly catches up again after several more seconds of jitter and audio-sync issues. It got so bad I finally gave up and flipped it over, and moved it into my PS3, and watched the standard DVD to finish it. Yes, I checked for dust and it seems fine, nor can I see scratches. First ad on the DVD side is a pro-HD-DVD bit too.. oh the irony.

Update (again): I removed “(barely)” from the title. After the later problems I had with playback (and it’s not the first time I’ve seen that on the HD side) it pushed my support for Blu-ray over even more.

Update (ok, this is getting crazy): For those that wonder about my mention of the problems, you can see from a google search that there are a lot of issues with the web content hanging, and playback issues in general out there.

I got a fever, and the only prescription…

Miguelito — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 18:04:23 +0000

Rock Band is extremely cool. Yes, it’s basically just a compilation of the Guitar Hero, Karaoke and a drum game.. but when put together, it’s more then just the sum of it’s parts. The solo careers are pretty much run of the mill; much like the previous games already listed. However, when you play in a group, it’s so much fun it’s insane. We played for several hours over at my parent’s house on Thanksgiving, and man was it fun. Of course my parents and grandparents didn’t care for a lot of the music included, but even they were singing along with some of the songs, like Bon Jovi’s Wanted Dead or Alive.

The new drum set (the one real new addition to the game over previous Harmonix games) are both extremely cool, and quite hard. My niece was actually the most talented out of the box. She was wailing on stuff on Medium with barely any practice at all.

Not having played the karaoke games, this is the first experience I’ve had with the singing. While everyone seems embarrassed to try it in front of a group, it is a lot of fun to do in the privacy of your own home without anyone around to hear.

Anyway, to refer back to the title. The BOC classic is included. Even better, there are periods in songs where the vocalist can hit the mic in time with some marks on the screen as a tambourine. However, in this track, you actually are doing the cowbell… I started laughing so hard when that first happened. Here’s a little taste to show you (yes, it’s crappy quality.. I just pulled out my little cam to snag this real quick):

No, I’m not posting any of me singing on here. :P

If you already knew about Rock Band and were on the fence, then you need to get your ass off there and find yourself a bundle. I’ve read that they might really be having supply issues on the east coast, but on the west coast, there are (or were before Black Friday anyway) tons of them in stock (for the xbox 360 at least) all over the place. The Best Buy in Mission Valley near me had tons of them on Tuesday when it was released.

Update (12/17/2007): Switched to much better flash player

Thank you sir, may I have another?

Miguelito — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 00:19:27 +0000

I was rear-ended today. Gee was that fun. Most people’s first thought is probably, “eh, people get rear-ended all the time.” Yeah, but I was going about 60mph at the time, and the idiot still managed to ram into me.

I was on my way into work around 1:45pm (hey, I was up until after 1:30am working on urgent stuff). I entered the 805 North from 52 West, and after I looked in my rear view, I saw a commercial truck (not a big-rig, but uhaul sized or so) coming up on me fast. He came pretty close but slowed down and fell back. He fell back enough that I didn’t keep track anymore. About 2 miles later, as I was approaching Miramar Way.. I had to slow down a little (maybe down to 55) due to slower cars in front of me. There wasn’t any real traffic to speak of, but I was going to be exiting soon and wasn’t in a hurry. The car in front of me got into the “Exit only” lane to take Miramar, and I noticed the car in front of him was an old VW (or maybe Volvo) and it was the slow car. I was catching up to him a bit (he was a couple hundred feet ahead) when he took the 2nd lane exit to Miramar. At this point I started accelerating again to get back up to 65, and seconds later I checked behind me again.. . lo and behold, here came the same truck from before. I started to think something along the lines of “here comes that jackass again,” but quickly realized he was going to hit me! I couldn’t swerve either way (short curb for exit on right, car in lane behind me a bit to the left) so I just jammed down the gas to try to minimize the speed difference. Then he nailed me.

I don’t think the speed differential was more then 10mph… but goddamn was the hit hard. Luckily I didn’t lose control at all, and immediately we both pulled over and stopped. I got out figuring the back end of my car was smashed to hell, but it turns out there was almost no damage whatsoever. I was in that fairly angry, but really shaken up mode.. so while I did get his info, I completely spaced on getting his name. I got the insurance info and wrote down the license plate too just in case. I didn’t feel any ill effects, nor do I yet. I’m pretty sure I put my head against the head rest to minimize any whiplash… still a tiny part of me worried about the horror stories you hear about people who feel fine then wake up the next day with their necks killing them… hoping nothing like that happens.

Some crazy things I noticed that gave some indication of the force of the hit:

- The moon roof in my car had opened up about 4 inches.

- I had a soda can in the center console cup holders, which barely had any soda in it.. and some of that splashed out onto the gearshift.

The only visible damage: 4 nut imprints in the bumper. 2 from the license plate, 2 from wider out on his front bumper. That and a bit of the left side of the bumper had popped out of place a bit, but it snapped right back in when I pushed on it. Took this shot as soon as I got to work… can see the 4 bolt spots. Part of why I took it was for a date/time stamp just in case too.

All in all, it could’ve been a hell of a lot worse, of course. It’s a good thing I didn’t swerve too, I’m pretty sure that would’ve pretty much guaranteed that he still would’ve hit me, but at an angle instead of flush, which would’ve made me fishtail and lose control I’m sure. All the drivers training (that drove me nuts at the time) that my grandfather put me through likely helped me keep my cool and maintain control too. Thanks for that gramps. Kudos to Toyota for building a hell of a car too.

Going to call dealer tomorrow (would’ve today but I was still really busy) and set an appointment. I have a couple things that already needed doing, but I figure it’d probably be a good idea to have them check out the car for any damage I can’t see. Just in case.