The Beckman Chronicles "...and that's kickin' yer ass." 2010-01-02T16:10:20-05:00 beckman http://www.angryox.com/blog/index.php beckman@angryox.com tag:thebeckmanchronicles,2010:TheBeckmanChronicles Pivot Copyright (c) 2010, Authors of The Beckman Chronicles PurpleCow.com has changed! 2009-08-08T22:50:00-05:00 2009-08-08T22:50:00-05:00 tag:thebeckmanchronicles,2010:TheBeckmanChronicles.51 In 2007 I sold the domain PurpleCow.com to a group in Florida named City Auto Credit. I was happy, they were happy. Then for the last 2 years, I hosted DNS for them, at my own expense, since they hadn’t had a chance to set up things on their end. It worked for me because people were still able to get to old links to stuff on purplecow.com, and I guess it worked for them because they never complained. I only noticed the change because email that should be active for at least another year ceased. Here’s the new site at PurpleCow.com: In 2007 I sold the domain PurpleCow.com to a group in Florida named City Auto Credit. I was happy, they were happy. Then for the last 2 years, I hosted DNS for them, at my own expense, since they hadn’t had a chance to set up things on their end. It worked for me because people were still able to get to old links to stuff on purplecow.com, and I guess it worked for them because they never complained.

I only noticed the change because email that should be active for at least another year ceased. Here’s the new site at PurpleCow.com:

The NEW PurpleCow.com. Auto Credit? Seriously?!?

]]> beckman Dead-simple Netmask/Netblock/CIDR Matching Code 2009-07-12T15:59:00-05:00 2009-07-12T15:59:00-05:00 tag:thebeckmanchronicles,2010:TheBeckmanChronicles.50 So I’m writing up some code to check if an IP address is within a given netblock given a CIDR notation. If you don’t know what CIDR notation is, move along. I’m writing in PHP, but this code can be applied to any language. At the end of the day, IP addresses are all simply big numbers written out into a notation that helps us remember them. Most of us can’t remember a number between 0 and 4,294,967,295, but for some reason remembering 198.6.1.1 is easier. So if you own 198.6.0.0/16, you own the IP addresses between 198.6.0.0 and 198.6.255.255, or 3322281984 to 3322347519. Now, how do you figure out if 198.6.5.22 is in that group, programatically? OK, this example is kind of easy, but what about 198.6.5.0/27? Is .22 in that netblock or not? It is. How do you tell your code that? Instead of using some bloody library that uses regular expressions and some bizarre foreach loops, you could do this. $cidr = ’198.6.5.0/27’; $checkip = ’198.6.5.22’; list($startIp, $netmask) = split(’\/’, $cidr); if (ip2long($startip) So I’m writing up some code to check if an IP address is within a given netblock given a CIDR notation. If you don’t know what CIDR notation is, move along.

I’m writing in PHP, but this code can be applied to any language. At the end of the day, IP addresses are all simply big numbers written out into a notation that helps us remember them. Most of us can’t remember a number between 0 and 4,294,967,295, but for some reason remembering 198.6.1.1 is easier.

So if you own 198.6.0.0/16, you own the IP addresses between 198.6.0.0 and 198.6.255.255, or 3322281984 to 3322347519. Now, how do you figure out if 198.6.5.22 is in that group, programatically? OK, this example is kind of easy, but what about 198.6.5.0/27? Is .22 in that netblock or not? It is. How do you tell your code that?

Instead of using some bloody library that uses regular expressions and some bizarre foreach loops, you could do this.

$cidr = ’198.6.5.0/27’; $checkip = ’198.6.5.22’; list($startIp, $netmask) = split(’\/’, $cidr); if (ip2long($startip) <= ip2long($checkip) and ip2long($checkip) <= (ip2long($startip) + pow(2,32-$netmask))) { echo “Yes!\n”; } else { echo “No!\n”; }

And to validate that the first part of the CIDR block is valid:

if ((ip2long($startip)%pow(2,32-$netmask)) != 0) { echo “Invalid Netblock notation.\n”; } else { echo “Netblock notation good!\n”; }

I thought I was being all smart and whatnot, finding libraries of 100 lines of code to do what I figured out how to do in 2 or 3 lines of code. Then I found this little beauty in the comments on php.net:

function netMatch ($CIDR,$IP) { list ($net, $mask) = explode (’/’, $CIDR); return ( ip2long ($IP) & ~((1 << (32 – $mask)) – 1) ) == ip2long ($net); }

Hurrah for bitwise operators! $matchThisIp AND NOT 1 shifted (32 – $mask) -1 == $net. WTF? I’m sure it works, I’m sure it makes sense, and it sure is a lot shorter than my version. But bitwise math just boggles my mind. I’d like to leave that to the Assembly crowd. So now you have TWO ways, bitwise and, well, mine, to check to see if a provide CIDR block is valid, and if an IP Address is within a CIDR block using only a few lines of code. I’m sure this could easily be ported to PHP, Python, Ruby, Perl, .NET, Cocoa… I’ll leave that trivial task up to you.

]]> beckman OSX-based Screen Capture Software Blogoff 2009-04-19T16:12:00-05:00 2009-04-19T16:12:00-05:00 tag:thebeckmanchronicles,2010:TheBeckmanChronicles.49 Scott Gruby, author of the fabulous ReceiptWallet, recently raved about Little Snapper over my personal favorite, SnapzProX. I have a license for LittleSnapper as a result of the recently ended and always fabulous MacHeist III . Click to read on. Scott Gruby, author of the fabulous ReceiptWallet, recently raved about Little Snapper over my personal favorite, SnapzProX. I have a license for LittleSnapper as a result of the recently ended and always fabulous MacHeist III . Click to read on.

I still live in a world where my email sits on my personal server in a not-so-quiet colo near my house, and I ssh to the server and read my mail using Alpine. I haven’t used an integrated, native email client in a very long time because I’m just so used to typing everything in vim and I’m not ready to move from the keyboard to the mouse, or be forced to constantly use the arrow keys and mouse to move around in a message.

Because of this, Scott’s reasoning for using being invaluable flies out my window. Not only that, but I was able to tell Snapz to save to a specific directory in my ~/Pictures directory named “Screenshots,” automatically organizing my screenshots well enough. Most of my screenshotting is similarly temporary as Scott mentions, and with Snapz you do have to remove old snaps manually.

On top of it all, the not-really-maintained Paparazzi! does my full-page screenshots done oh so rarely. And between that and SnapzProX, which also does Video and a few other handy features, I don’t think I have a need that LittleSnapper fills.

To be completely fair, I haven’t installed LittleSnapper, though I did spend about 15 minutes watching and reading their site. If I were doing more than maybe 2-5 screenshots per week, and using it as an archive of web pages, or spending a lot more time doing screenshots for development tasks or bug reports, I might be singing a different song. LittleSnapper’s organizational tools, non-destructive annotation and easy sharing of screenshots are very sexy, and if I needed to do more annotation of screenshots before sending them along, I think I’d be all over LittleSnapper.

It can’t fully replace SnapzProX due to its lack of video capture (it’s the only screencast software I have and it works for my needs), but LittleSnapper does take screenshots to a whole new level, much further than just capturing a piece of your screen to an image file.

]]> beckman My first day with the Kinesis Freestyle 2009-04-09T11:01:00-05:00 2009-04-09T11:01:00-05:00 tag:thebeckmanchronicles,2010:TheBeckmanChronicles.48 At the prompting of my friend Jay, and with a surprise refund from the Federal Government, Jay suggested it was time to upgrade my typing experience. I sit here, in front of my computer all day long, and sometimes all night long, doing what? Typing. Mousing, Using the computer. One would think that the three most important things are: chair, monitors, and input devices. Click read to read the rest. At the prompting of my friend Jay, and with a surprise refund from the Federal Government, Jay suggested it was time to upgrade my typing experience. I sit here, in front of my computer all day long, and sometimes all night long, doing what? Typing. Mousing, Using the computer. One would think that the three most important things are: chair, monitors, and input devices. Click read to read the rest.

Logitech G15 KeyboardI had a Logitech G15 for a while, the one with the orange LCD screen and backlit keys. It’s pretty cool, and it works on the Mac. But it is still a normal keyboard — straight, nothing special other than the LCD. I got the keyboard because I did a bunch of gaming and I had to use TeamSpeak2 or something to talk to the folks playing Team Fortress 2 over at Jiggly’s Fun House. When you type millions of keystrokes a week, it’s probably a good thing to have a really good and comfortable keyboard that’s all ergonomicky.

So I dropped $160 and got a Kinesis Freestyle Mac Keyboard. Split in two separate pieces. It’s weird. I think I’ll like it eventually, but I’ve had it since 4:30pm yesterday, and only used it for about 3 hours now (plus writing this). Kinesis Freestyle Solo Mac KeyboardI’ve been using a regular keyboard for soooooo long using something ergonomic kind of makes my right wrist hurt, which is really the opposite of what I want to happen. I didn’t get it because I was getting carpal tunnel syndrome, nor because I was having any difficulties in typing — just wanting to try something new. I’ve got a 60 day return window with Kinesis should I decide that it isn’t for me, but I’m gonna put in at least 30-45 days to really try it out.

My initial impressions — well made, easy to type on, more quiet keyclicks than most of my other keyboards. The white color doesn’t bother me, though I would have preferred black. A few gripes that I may be able to work around.

First, the ESC key. I know why it was put way over there, but on every other keyboard in the world the ESC key is above the tilde. Not here — F1 is in the way. While I know it’s possible to remap the F1 to ESC on OSX, it looks complicated and I’m lazy. Jay says I’ll get used to the ESC key where it is… we’ll see.

Second, a feature that was touted as a good thing is the sticky FN key. With the FN key off, all the F-keys do their alternative action — Expose, volume control, etc. Well I got used to the F-keys doing what I wanted them to. F8-F12 were expose, and F1-F7 I just didn’t use. I can get that back, but I have to enable the FN key. When I do that, FN-ESC starts up Force Quit dialog, which screws me when I’m in VIM or something that requires using the ESC key.

Lastly there is no Expose key for showing the windows of the active application. I use this with relative frequency, and the fact that I have to hit FN F10 FN in order to get there drives me nuts.

I’m sure there are workarounds or configurations to fix this, and if you know them, sound off in the comments. I’m excited to try something new, but new things take time to get used to when they are different from what you are used to (that sounded redundant). Anyway, I’ll try to remember to post every few weeks about my thoughts. One thing is for certain: my right hand was used to typing the b. Oops.

]]> beckman Soon to be hit by lightning. 2008-06-04T01:46:00-05:00 2008-06-04T01:46:00-05:00 tag:thebeckmanchronicles,2010:TheBeckmanChronicles.47 Just heard some thunder, and thought to look at the radar before going to sleep. Take a look at this lightning map — it’s like that shadow monster from Lost is heading straight for DC. Whee! Should be fun. Just heard some thunder, and thought to look at the radar before going to sleep. Take a look at this lightning map — it’s like that shadow monster from Lost is heading straight for DC. Whee! Should be fun.Lightning Map! June 4, 2008 1am

]]> beckman Save the Environment: Stop Biking! 2008-05-20T13:26:00-05:00 2008-05-20T13:26:00-05:00 tag:thebeckmanchronicles,2010:TheBeckmanChronicles.46 I was reading a post over at AutoBlog Green and started to think about why Biking across America would help us save money on gas. And in my calculations, biking actually is significantly less green than driving a pure electric vehicle. Most EV companies say you pay about 2c/mile for an electric vehicle to run. Power that from solar or wind sources, and you have ZERO emissions. For our estimates, lets assume DOUBLE that estimate, or 4c/mile for an EV. Take a gasoline car. Average fuel economy is about 22mpg. Though US average for regular was put at $3.69 yesterday, I’m going to use $4, because that’s what it will be in a month. Assuming you have an average car, you are paying 18c/mile for your petrol sucking car. Plus you are spewing CO2 emissions in the air; not as much as your parents were, but there are emissions. Now look at biking, cycling or generally using a bicycle. Using a few different sites on the web, they average about 1000 calories for biking 15mph for 1 hour. I don’t know if this assumes hilly or flat terrain, but I don’t care — the number seems reasonable. For healthy food, not power bars but actual food with health value, I’m guessing you pay about $4 for 1000 calories. The calories have got to be sustainable over 8 hours of biking, and I’m guessing 32 power bars (at 230 cals per bar) isn’t the ideal consumption for long term performance. At $4/1kcal, you are paying an astonishing 26c/mile. And you’d like to think that biking is emissions-free, but it isn’t. All of your food is shipped and carted around this great country on diesel trains, trucks and boats, spewing more CO2 into the environment, just to process your healthy food for you to burn 26c/mile, forcing you to breathe all that pollution along the way, stupid bike. But for skeptics, let us say $2 for 1000 calories. you are still at 13c/mile, 3+ times more expensive than our DOUBLED estimate per mile for an EV. And on top of that, YOU are spewing CO2 into the environment!!! At a much greater rate than if you were sitting in a nice, quiet, efficient and ZERO EMISSIONS EV. Bottom Line: Stop biking, you pollution loving hippies, and get yourself an EV. Where to get an EV? The Aptera does 85mph for 40-60 miles on pure electric, and you can get up to 120mpg for longer drives, all for $29,900 (or the pure EV for $26,900 with 120 mile range). Or consider the Triac that does 80mph for 100 miles, and only costs $19,995. Or my favorite and future vehicle, the Venture One that does 0-60 in 7 seconds, goes 100mph, with all three types (1 EV, 2 gas-hybrids) doing better than 100mpg, and does it all while you feel like you are flying a fighter jet. Pricing between $18,000 and $23,000. Excellent. PS — I guess you could almost say that food these days isn’t really green. So stop eating America! Save the environment! PPS — Just kidding. The Aptera Typ-1h Typ-1e Typ-1I was reading a post over at AutoBlog Green and started to think about why Biking across America would help us save money on gas. And in my calculations, biking actually is significantly less green than driving a pure electric vehicle.

Most EV companies say you pay about 2c/mile for an electric vehicle to run. Power that from solar or wind sources, and you have ZERO emissions. For our estimates, lets assume DOUBLE that estimate, or 4c/mile for an EV.

Take a gasoline car. Average fuel economy is about 22mpg. Though US average for regular was put at $3.69 yesterday, I’m going to use $4, because that’s what it will be in a month. Assuming you have an average car, you are paying 18c/mile for your petrol sucking car. Plus you are spewing CO2 emissions in the air; not as much as your parents were, but there are emissions.

Save the environment - stop biking!Now look at biking, cycling or generally using a bicycle. Using a few different sites on the web, they average about 1000 calories for biking 15mph for 1 hour. I don’t know if this assumes hilly or flat terrain, but I don’t care — the number seems reasonable. For healthy food, not power bars but actual food with health value, I’m guessing you pay about $4 for 1000 calories. The calories have got to be sustainable over 8 hours of biking, and I’m guessing 32 power bars (at 230 cals per bar) isn’t the ideal consumption for long term performance. Food Ain't Green!At $4/1kcal, you are paying an astonishing 26c/mile. And you’d like to think that biking is emissions-free, but it isn’t. All of your food is shipped and carted around this great country on diesel trains, trucks and boats, spewing more CO2 into the environment, just to process your healthy food for you to burn 26c/mile, forcing you to breathe all that pollution along the way, stupid bike.

But for skeptics, let us say $2 for 1000 calories. you are still at 13c/mile, 3+ times more expensive than our DOUBLED estimate per mile for an EV.
And on top of that, YOU are spewing CO2 into the environment!!! At a much greater rate than if you were sitting in a nice, quiet, efficient and ZERO EMISSIONS EV.

Bottom Line: Stop biking, you pollution loving hippies, and get yourself an EV.

Where to get an EV? The Aptera does 85mph for 40-60 miles on pure electric, and you can get up to 120mpg for longer drives, all for $29,900 (or the pure EV for $26,900 with 120 mile range). Or consider the Triac that does 80mph for 100 miles, and only costs $19,995. Or my favorite and future vehicle, the Venture One that does 0-60 in 7 seconds, goes 100mph, with all three types (1 EV, 2 gas-hybrids) doing better than 100mpg, and does it all while you feel like you are flying a fighter jet. Pricing between $18,000 and $23,000. Excellent.

PS — I guess you could almost say that food these days isn’t really green. So stop eating America! Save the environment!
PPS — Just kidding.

]]> beckman This computer cannot use this update. 2008-03-31T14:33:00-05:00 2008-03-31T14:30:00-05:00 tag:thebeckmanchronicles,2010:TheBeckmanChronicles.45 What a friggin’ cryptic error message, Apple. Your website on the WWAN Support Update page states all I need is OS X 10.4.8 and an Intel-based Macintosh Portable. Well, I sort of meet those criteria. Granted, I’ve got OS X 10.4.11, and I think the Intel-based Macbook Pro I have meets that Macintosh abstract inconsistent naming convention. So why oh why can’t I install you, my pretty WWAN Support? All I want to do is connect my Sprint Sanyo Katana DLX via Bluetooth (hell, I’ll even do it via USB if I must) to gain access to all the EVDO goodness I’m paying for. I even am paying for the PAM (Phone As Modem) plan with Sprint to make this work. I thought you were supposed to make things easy, Apple? Apple Logo surrounded by razor wire used without permission; From the cover of Wired 16|04. © 2008 Wired Magazine. Apple. © Wired 2008What a friggin’ cryptic error message, Apple. Your website on the WWAN Support Update page states all I need is OS X 10.4.8 and an Intel-based Macintosh Portable. Well, I sort of meet those criteria. Granted, I’ve got OS X 10.4.11, and I think the Intel-based Macbook Pro I have meets that Macintosh abstract inconsistent naming convention. So why oh why can’t I install you, my pretty WWAN Support? All I want to do is connect my Sprint Sanyo Katana DLX via Bluetooth (hell, I’ll even do it via USB if I must) to gain access to all the EVDO goodness I’m paying for. I even am paying for the PAM (Phone As Modem) plan with Sprint to make this work. I thought you were supposed to make things easy, Apple?

Apple Logo surrounded by razor wire used without permission; From the cover of Wired 16|04. © 2008 Wired Magazine.

]]> beckman OSX, ssh, FreeBSD, login delays and a glass of red wine 2008-05-20T14:22:00-05:00 2007-09-13T00:28:00-05:00 tag:thebeckmanchronicles,2010:TheBeckmanChronicles.44 I won’t bore the lot of you that could give two cents for what information I am about to offer. It’s extremely geeky, but it sucked up my entire evening of what could have been a productive night. To allow the rest of you having this problem to enjoy a productive and happy evening without banging your head against a wall, I’m sharing my solution to this annoying problem. Don’t wanna read my blatherings? Add this to your ~/.ssh/config: GSSAPIKeyExchange no Voila, no more delays. No server config changes either. Hope you don’t have to use Kerberos! Read on to see how I got to this solution. I won’t bore the lot of you that could give two cents for what information I am about to offer. It’s extremely geeky, but it sucked up my entire evening of what could have been a productive night. To allow the rest of you having this problem to enjoy a productive and happy evening without banging your head against a wall, I’m sharing my solution to this annoying problem.

Don’t wanna read my blatherings? Add this to your ~/.ssh/config:

GSSAPIKeyExchange no

Voila, no more delays. No server config changes either. Hope you don’t have to use Kerberos! :-)

Read on to see how I got to this solution.

So a new hosting company set up two fresh from ISO FreeBSD 6.2 installs and enabled sshd for me. Using my trusty MacBook Pro running OSX 10.4.9, I attempted to connect to my brand-spanking new servers. When I ssh‘ed to the boxes, there was a 30-60 second delay before I got the password: prompt. Believing it to be the standard reverse DNS problem, I mucked with the nameserver entries in /etc/resolv.conf, but to no avail. I started playing around with __ UseDNS yes or no __ settings in the /etc/ssh/sshd_config, but still no luck. It’s starting to piss me off, and my red wine levels are dwindling.

I google, I yahoo, I search mailing lists on FreeBSD.org and the MacOSXhints.com Forums but I still fail at finding the issue. I can see the problem:

debug1: Remote protocol version 2.0, remote software version OpenSSH_4.5p1 FreeBSD-20061110 debug1: match: OpenSSH_4.5p1 FreeBSD-20061110 pat OpenSSH* debug1: Enabling compatibility mode for protocol 2.0 debug1: Local version string SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_4.5 !!! 30-60 second delay !!! debug1: Miscellaneous failure No credentials cache found

I make an educated guess that it is something Kerberos-related, so I disable anything Kerberos related in my servers sshd_config, but that doesn’t help. So I keep searching. Finally I discuss the issue with my genius geek friend Jay and he says he’s having the same problem, but had given up trying to solve it.

“well – I’ve given up… I tried for a couple hours and then said ‘screw it, nobody’s paying me for this.’ and that was pretty much that.” – Jay Kuri

Jay did mention something about Kerberos, which I had tried and seen mentioned with the whole “credentials” thing, but passed over when I tried disabling it on the server. I finally came across this blog entry and it suggested to add some GSSAPI config vars to your sshd_config. Well I already tried that, but, hey, let’s throw them in the /etc/ssh_config on my OS X MBP.

Poof! No more delays. All I added to my ~/.ssh/config was:

GSSAPIKeyExchange no

Stupid, stupid OpenSSH sucked 2 hours of my life. Damnit.

]]> beckman My Joost Beta Experience 2007-09-13T00:49:00-05:00 2007-04-05T15:03:00-05:00 tag:thebeckmanchronicles,2010:TheBeckmanChronicles.43 So today I was happy to see my Joost Beta invite in my inbox. I decided to install it and take a run around. I now use a Mac, so my experience is solely Mac-based, no Windows here. I have a MacBook Pro Intel Core 2 Duo 2.33Ghz with 2GB of memory, connected to my network at 1Gbps, and my Internet connection is Verizon FIOS at 30Mbps down, 5Mbps up. My MBP is connected to an external Dell 24” widescreen monitor at 1920×1200. The download took about 15 seconds for the 17MB dmg download, Firefox reporting a download speed of 1045Kbps, or about 8mbps. I was encouraged by this, hoping the video experience would be just as snappy. Not so. Click more to read on. So today I was happy to see my Joost Beta invite in my inbox. I decided to install it and take a run around. I now use a Mac, so my experience is solely Mac-based, no Windows here. I have a MacBook Pro Intel Core 2 Duo 2.33Ghz with 2GB of memory, connected to my network at 1Gbps, and my Internet connection is Verizon FIOS at 30Mbps down, 5Mbps up. My MBP is connected to an external Dell 24” widescreen monitor at 1920×1200.

The download took about 15 seconds for the 17MB dmg download, Firefox reporting a download speed of 1045Kbps, or about 8mbps. I was encouraged by this, hoping the video experience would be just as snappy.

Not so. Click more to read on.

The installation was as clean as any. The release notes were comprehensive, if not a little too wordy, though the complexity of the application probably warrants it. I started the application, at which point it took over my screen. I was prompted to log in or create an account. The account creation is simple — email, username, password twice — with nice ajax-y hints to let you know if you’ve entered your information correctly to their specifications or not.

The first thing that played was the Joost intro video, a nice sampling of videos that you might be able to come across in Joost. During playback however, my disappointment set in.

I’m not sure what I was expecting, maybe ultimate video quality, maybe amazing content, who knows. I realize I’m a more picky customer, having all HDTV in my house, running at 1080p whenever possible, and having been in the online video content delivery world for the past few years, very sensitive to digital video encoding quality. One problem may be due to a friend of mine, Dan Summer, who runs DVLABS , and it probably the best digital video expert when it comes to encoding video for use on the Internet.

Well, the video quality delivered by Joost does not rival video quality I can get, legally or otherwise, via BitTorrent. It is heavily compressed, blocky, and a bit of a disappointment. In Joost’s favor, while their About Us page mentions “great picture quality,” there seem to be a lot more features they are trying to pack into Joost than just picture quality. They talk about Instant Messaging and channel chat. Maybe they spent a lot of time on that, because the picture quality has suffered.

Additionally, I ran into a lot of “program is unavailable #121” errors during my short use of Joost between 2:40pm-3pm EDT today. When I could get video to play, it would stop to buffer 3-4 times for a 3 minute video for about 3-5 seconds, definitely not TV-esque. Additionally attempts to watch Laguna Beach on the MTV channel resulted in constant 2-3 second hiccups every 10-30 seconds, sometimes not even getting through a scene cut without hiccups. Then about 5 minutes into the show, it stopped with the ominous “unavailable #121” error, not even getting through the show during this review. I’m pretty sure the bandwidth problem isn’t on my end; during watching I ran a bandwidth speed test to make sure it wasn’t an issue on my end:

Though Joost stopped playing during the test, it is clear that I have enough bandwidth and speed isn’t an issue. I tested it to a nearby location about 200 miles away; it could be their servers are on the west coast, so let’s test that too:

Even to LA (Joost seems to connect via Level3 in Tustin, CA based on a traceroute JOOST-OPERA.car2.Tustin1.Level3.net for their web services; for this test we assume their video distribution is there as well), we have decent bandwidth and round-trip times.

One last gripe — the loading logo in the bottom right corner is painfully annoying. It’s a little jerky, it almost “blinks” when the colored gems merge into a bright white, it’s distracting rather than informative. It should be more simple, really smooth, and the same color and brightness through the whole sequence.

So while Joost has a cool user interface, the video quality is disappointing, the channel changing is worse than the slowest satellite tuner, and the selection is limiting. Bump up the video quality and minimize dropouts and increase content selection, and I’ll change my tune. But right now Joost is not as impressive as I had hoped.

]]> beckman SimpleShare NAS does NFS on OSX 7x faster than SMB 2007-09-13T00:48:00-05:00 2007-04-03T12:58:00-05:00 tag:thebeckmanchronicles,2010:TheBeckmanChronicles.42 I got a MacBook Pro in December 2006 and have been quite happy with it. I have a SimpleTech SimpleShare NAS on my network that holds my MP3s, documents, photos, etc. I had been using SMB/CIFS to connect to the SimpleShare drive, but I read somewhere that CIFS is slower than NFS, and I wanted to try. SimpleTech has instructions for how to connect from an OSX box, so I figured it would be easy. Trouble is that the SimpleShare documentation mentions NFS once, but doesn’t say how it works. Gack. Google to the rescue. Click to read on. I got a MacBook Pro in December 2006 and have been quite happy with it. I have a SimpleTech SimpleShare NAS on my network that holds my MP3s, documents, photos, etc. I had been using SMB/CIFS to connect to the SimpleShare drive, but I read somewhere that CIFS is slower than NFS, and I wanted to try. SimpleTech has instructions for how to connect from an OSX box, so I figured it would be easy.

Trouble is that the SimpleShare documentation mentions NFS once, but doesn’t say how it works. Gack. Google to the rescue.

Click to read on.

I tried all sorts of commands:

mount 192.168.0.20:/NetFolder /private/mnt
mount_nfs: can’t access /NetFolder: Permission denied
mount 192.168.0.20:/share/NetFolder /private/mnt
mount_nfs: can’t access /share/NetFolder: Permission denied
etc…

to no avail. So I googled a few times, finally falling upon this blog and reading:

“With the SimpleShare, you have to add the prefix /shares/PoolName for NFS access.”

OK, great. I tried mounting 192.168.0.20:/shares/NetFolder but that didn’t work. I kept google searching. That link came up again, so I read it again. And again. And again. Then I read it again. PoolName. Oh. You mean the Pool that share is in?

mount 192.168.0.20:/shares/SimplePool/NetFolder /private/mnt mount_nfs: /private/mnt: Operation not permitted

Sweet! A new error message to google! This lead me to this blog where a helpful comment was posted:


“Thanks a lot for posting this hack. It worked great for me, but only after I modified the NFSvolumes script very slightly. I was getting Operation not permitted. So I googled some and found that because most Linux systems require the use of a reserved port for NFS mounting, I had to change this line:

/sbin/mount_nfs $rvol /NFS/$ldir to this: /sbin/mount_nfs -P $rvol /NFS/$ldir

Could it be that easy?

mount_nfs -P 192.168.0.20:/shares/SimplePool/NetFolder /private/mnt

YES!!! Whoohoo!!! Success. My SimpleShare NAS is now connected to my OSX MBP via NFS. Wicked. And it is indeed faster!


ls -la via SMB/CIFS
Time spent in user mode (CPU seconds) : 0.013s
Time spent in kernel mode (CPU seconds) : 0.080s
Total time : 0:09.51s
CPU utilisation (percentage) : 0.9%

ls -la via NFS
Time spent in user mode (CPU seconds) : 0.017s
Time spent in kernel mode (CPU seconds) : 0.027s
Total time : 0:01.27s
CPU utilisation (percentage) : 2.3%

NFS is 7.488x FASTER than SMB/CIFS on OSX!! Damn. Always use NFS. Stupid Samba.

]]> beckman Best Online Sudoku 2007-02-22T15:54:00-05:00 2007-02-22T15:54:00-05:00 tag:thebeckmanchronicles,2010:TheBeckmanChronicles.40 I'm addicted to Miniclip's Sudoku. It's Flash, and the best interface I've found yet. Then if I get stuck, I use Sudoku Solver by Andrew Stewart. Mmmm, Sudoku. Miniclip's Sudoku. It's Flash, and the best interface I've found yet. Then if I get stuck, I use Sudoku Solver by Andrew Stewart. Mmmm, Sudoku. ]]> beckman DabbleDB 2007-02-21T18:06:00-05:00 2006-12-21T17:15:00-05:00 tag:thebeckmanchronicles,2010:TheBeckmanChronicles.2 DabbleDB, a new Web 2.0 way to manage databases. VERY very slick. Watch the demo. DabbleDB, a new Web 2.0 way to manage databases. VERY very slick. Watch the demo.

]]> Pivot team