AlexCline.net » Interesting Links

Stop PIPA/SOPA!

Alex — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 20:51:45 +0000

Happy New Year everyone!

I just got notifications that all my domains were successfully transferred to my new registrar. I’m now using DynaDot which is a vocal opponent of SOPA. The reason I transferred was partially to promote anti-SOPA messages and also for privacy reasons. Hopefully I’ll be much happier with my new service.

Check out the video below for information about PIPA/SOPA and why you should join the fight to oppose these proposed laws.

Installing FreeNAS to a flash drive on a Mac

Alex — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 03:45:34 +0000

I’m building a NAS and decided to use FreeNAS to deploy it (rather than buy a hardware solution). The installation instructions were easy enough though they didn’t include instructions on how to install FreeNAS onto a flash drive while running a Mac. I found a 512MB flash drive that was perfectly suitable for the install.
Note: The instructions below include terminal commands. The command is presented with an example of expected output.

Download the latest release of FreeNAS from the downloads page. The version I downloaded was titled ‘FreeNAS-amd64-embedded-0.7.2.5543.img’. Make sure you get the .img file, not the .iso.
Plug your flash drive into your computer and open a new terminal window.

Using diskutil, find the device node for your flash drive:

mac:~ alex$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                  TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0: GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
   1:                   EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:             Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            499.8 GB   disk0s2
/dev/disk1
   #:                  TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                       CDROM                  *512.5 MB   disk1

The flash drive’s device node in the above output is /dev/disk1. Now, unmount the drive:
```
mac:~ alex$ diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk1
Unmount of all volumes on disk1 was successful
```

Next, we’ll extract the image’s contents onto the flash drive. Warning: This will delete all of the data off of the drive.

mac:~ alex$ sudo dd if=~/Downloads/FreeNAS-amd64-embedded-0.7.2.5543.img of=/dev/disk1
203632+0 records in
203632+0 records out
104259584 bytes transferred in 66.608632 secs (1565256 bytes/sec)

Lastly, eject the drive.

$ diskutil eject /dev/disk1
Disk /dev/disk1 ejected

Now you can use the flash drive to boot off of and run your FreeNAS instance from. Good times!

MAMP? More like LAMP.

Alex — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 22:27:03 +0000

So I was looking for web servers to run on my MBP. I came across MAMP which looks like a pretty good piece of software. While downloading I became curious if the MAMP team actually used MAMP servers.

Checking the HTTP headers revealed the following:

Server: Apache/2.2.4 (Linux/SUSE)

I’ll take that as a No.

For the record, I use the LAMP stack for my sites. I am messing around with offline development and needed an environment.

MineDraft.net

Alex — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 05:11:53 +0000

I, like many other Minecrafters, have lots of wonderful ideas to share with the Minecraft community. Frequently, we share our ideas by starting Minecraft, building our idea and taking screenshots and videos. These images and videos are uploaded to imgur or youtube and the links are shared. I found this to be a bit of a hassle.

Thus, MineDraft was born. With MineDraft, you can create your ideas in a simple to use interface, create a link to the design and share it with your friends. No more video editing or image cropping. No need to upload anything. Just draft and share.

MineDraft.net

Check it out on Reddit too!

Diaspora Released to Developers

Alex — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 06:14:13 +0000

The Diaspora Team made available the first public release of the new Diaspora open source social networking platform. I spent a couple hours tonight installing and playing around with it. So far, it looks pretty good. It’s very usable though not without its bugs. Since it’s a developer release, bugs are expected, right?

More information is here: http://www.joindiaspora.com/2010/09/15/developer-release.html

WordPress 3.0 Released

Alex — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 20:30:46 +0000

Blargh. I just finished the redesign of the site and the WordPress team goes and releases 3.0! What bastards! Why did they have to include all kinds of awesome features, like:

custom backgrounds and headers
shortlinks
menus (no more file editing)
post types
taxonomies
long-awaited merge of MU and WordPress

It also includes a new default theme called Twenty Ten. It looks pretty sexy.

Hopefully I’ll get to upgrade everything soon.

Portal 2 Demo at E3!

Alex — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 16:37:42 +0000

Portal 2 looks like it’s going to be wicked sweet! I can’t wait to play.

Hmmm, maybe there’ll be a beta. I would love to be part of that!

Part 1:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5THiN8szSKM

Part 2:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bq2mZoKkqMw

Part 3:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGlyQmmvj0w

Thunderbird 2.x Movemail Account on Fedora Core 8

Alex — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 18:55:37 +0000

Sadly, Fedora Core 8 doesn’t ship a packaged version of Thunderbird (2.0.0.9 as of this writing) that includes movemail capabilities. Movemail is the account type (in Thunderbird) that allows you to read mail from your local system (in /var/spool/mail/[username]). If you run cron jobs, you should be getting emails about the status of those jobs in your local mail directory. Instead of having to read them through the command line, I wanted to read them through Thunderbird. Here’s a step-by-step on how to get it working:

Download movemail.rdf from the Mozilla repository. This includes the account type ‘Movemail’.
Save a copy of movemail.rdf to /usr/lib[64]/thunderbird-2.0.0.9/isp
Run the following: chmod 777 /var/spool/mail
Restart Thunderbird
In Thunderbird when adding a new account, select Movemail as the type, and follow the directions as usual.

All done! Hopefully, future versions of the Thunderbird package in Fedora’s repo. will be updated to include movemail, but until then, this works.

Amazing cover of Outkast's Hey Ya

Alex — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 20:23:16 +0000

What do you get when you mix a hippie with Andre 3000 in the desert? A great cover of Outkast’s Hey Ya. We’ve been checking out the best of the best for our new Southern Arizona guide that should be out later this week and came across this amazing video of Mat Weddle from the local band Obadiah Parker playing in Tempe, Arizona. Enjoy.

Trackback: http://tripcart.typepad.com/tri…utkast_in_a.html
Digg: http://digg.com/video…of_outkast_s_hey_ya

Save the Bell Labs Holmdel Facility!

Alex — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 16:56:21 +0000

While browsing one of my favorite tech-news sites, Digg.com, I found out that PREI has plans to demolish the old Bell Labs Holmdel Research Facility. While I am not old enough to have been a direct part of the historic research which was conducted at the facility, I am directly indebted to the men and women who did groundbreaking work there. Without them, I probably would not be pursuing a degree in Computer Science.

I first learned of the Holmdel Facility in my Networks class sophomore year. We learned all about cellphone technologies, network protocols, topologies and interfaces, as well as encryption algorithms. All these things were pioneered in the Holmdel Facility. Without that facility and the people inside, technology would not be what it is today. Hell, I might not be writing this entry on my blog if it weren’t for the folks in the Holmdel facility.

I think it is important that PREI looks past the financial gains which may be had at the expense of the destruction of one of the birthplaces of computing. Surely there is a fate more suited to such a historic site. It has been suggested that the site be converted into a technology and computing museum, or used to house offices for new technology companies. Sadly, this is probably a fate the site will never see.

Link: http://www.engadget.com/20…ace-of-the/