iTower Progress

Formerly an iMac...
Originally uploaded by The One True Stickman.

Heralding the first photo post from Flickr and previously mentioned here, the now-named iTower (Gromit) is progressing. The next step is building another chassis piece so he can stand up properly. The ports you see on top are technically the back of the machine. The stand piece will also house such things as the speakers, airflow, and possibly a fan, and make it possible to connect a monitor cable without tipping the whole rig over - currently the mac Video connector is pointing straight down, requiring some extra room. Normally it won't be too much of a problem, given that he's going to be a server, but we'll need it occasionally.

Oh, and it all runs! Debian Sarge installed and booting, though not quite all set up. I mostly wanted to make sure it was good to go before school started and before I finished things off. The last thing I want to have to do is pull it all apart again just to hook up a CD-ROM drive to (re)install.

Once I've got further along (and got my conversion done website) I'll post a full write-up with lots more pictures of construction detail. Promise.

Weekend Windchills & Websites

I heartily congratulate Old Man Winter for getting off his duff and freezing ours solid for a change. Saturday (14th) our high was 51°F - our high today was 40°F at about 12:01am and it's been dropping ever since. NWS forecast for tomorrow is a high around 27°, wind chill values between -3 and -13. Now let it snow!

In other news, using TT2site isn't really as hard as I thought (although I've yet to tackle the menu thing). It is, like a great many new things, mostly a matter of actually putting in a little time to try to understand it and realizing that it's really all fairly straightforward, just a little complex at first bite. As soon as I get NateNet fully migrated I'll write up an idiot's guide. Once I figured out sort of how the variable hash works it got easier - the Template::Toolkit manual might have been helpful, in retrospect.

On Preserving Dead iMacs

Since well before the analog board on my parents Bondi iMac died, I've been contemplating what to do with it. Well, ok, not what to do with it, just how. Since most of the bulk of an iMac is the monitor, the obvious solution is to put the brains in a smaller box. There have been a number of ATX powersupply conversions - such as the kMac, this other site and a bunch of others - but I don't have to do that, my power supply works fine. It's just the monitor bit that doesn't. Why go through all the bother of rigging a boxy ATX supply when I've got a working one with about the same form factor as the motherboard and it Just Works(tm)? This guy did it with his iBox and there's the infamous 21-inch iMac. The only problems are 1) the iBox is sorta ugly, and 2) I don't have any extra big monitors lying around to hack up even if I wanted to. So, since necessity is the mother of invention and insanity the father, we set higher goals: we want to take the guts (mobo, PS, hard drive, switch board, speakers, and irDA port) and stick them in a nice, Mac-looking box. Hopefully.

We'll tackle the size thing first. I can fit it in a box smaller than a NeXT cube, but (obviously) larger than the G4 Cube. The thing is getting the components together with in a way that a) uses as much stock cabling as possible, b) allows access to external ports, c) fits in the smallest box possible, and d) allows for adequate air flow and some service without complete disassebly. So far I've got the Motherboard assembly and power supply board mostly bracketed together and the hard drive mount integrated. We're mostly good on (b) - the monitor port is slightly awkward, but this is probably going to be a server so heck - and (a) is doing spiffy except for the IDE cable. (c) is bigger than I'd like, but really can't get any smaller. (d) will be fine, once I figure out the fan placement, and I'm doing as well as can be expected on the service end. PS replacement will require a lot of take-apart, but we have decent access to the HD and Proc./RAM.

Once we've got that done up a little more, it gets itself more of a chassis structure of some sort (Still need more of an exoskeleton in some parts, legs, and (maybe) CD mount) and then we figure out how to make a decent looking box for it all. Simple, quoth the beautiful beast of theoreticals. Not so simple if you have great visions of nicely bent lexan and all that jazz, but we'll cross that bridge after we burn all the others.

Welcome To January, It's 50° and Sunny

This is Maine. This is supposed to be winter. Instead we get wonderful springy weather complete with a thunderstorm. Where is our snow? Where is our Ice? Why do we have stinking rain and mud puddles? I suppose I really shouldn't be complaining, what with heating oil prices and all, but it just seems wrong to have green grass growing in your backyard this time of year.

Wonka's Many Flavors

This is one of those very rare posts where I talk about movies. It's a combination of things, really - I've lately been on a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory kick, having just read the book, and (in a rare fit of something) watched both of the movies based on that book back to back. The contrasts are quite interesting.

First off, I love the book. It's zany, it's light, it's deep, it's funny, it's classic. It's the sort of thing I wonder how I made it this far in life without. This naturally colors my perception, so keep that in mind.

I like the second movie best. (For clarity, I will refer to the first movie, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, as "the first movie". I will refer to the recently released Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, with Johnny Depp, as "the second movie". It would be terribly confusing to refer to the movies by their rather similar titles, necessitating a note about which one Johnny Depp is in every time to make sure everyone understands, and also noting when I'm actually talking about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory the book vs. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory the movie.)

As I was saying, I like the second movie best. And no, not because Johnny Depp is in it. (Though I do think he's a very good actor and does a generally better job than Gene Wilder, but we'll get to that later.) It's a combination of things, really, partially due to technology differences between 1971 and 2005, but also casting and general story line.

The first obvious difference is casting. Just to hit on a couple major points: I really have nothing against Peter Ostrum, but he just doesn't look like a poor kid who's practically starving. He looks like he just walked out of some California Suburb and probably going surfing tomorrow, after he finishes his paper route. Mr. Bucket is also another notable figure, partly for his absence in the first movie, but also for his casting. He comes across very well as a young, but very tired and careworn man. The second Grampa Joe is also rather more effective in my opinion. Much more the wizened old man one would expect to have been in bed the last twenty years. The first is almost too young. (Never mind the fact that he might have been Einstein in another movie.)

Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka also lacks some sort of pep. The image I constructed from the book is of a spry little man who can't sit still, has a White Rabbit complex (So much to see! So little time! Hurry along, I'm Late! I'm Late!), is seemingly out of touch with much of reality and happily naive. Mr. Wonka from the first movie (that's Gene Wilder) seems slightly lethargic in comparison. Humorously oddball, yes, but a little to far up in the clouds somewhere. The second Mr. Wonka (that's Johnny Depp) is a little more odd and less kindly, but comes across as less of a polite mad scientist with A.D.D. and more of a mental case with a really bad haircut. He also seemed more rather more nervous about the things happening to the kids. I can understand some of that - who wouldn't be nervous if someone got pushed down your garbage chute by your squirrels - but my ink & paper mental image smiles and nods politely and does what little it can to help deal with consequences. The whole thing is (partially) rigged, anyhow. Oh, and what's up with the flashcards? Chalk one up for the world-class-mental/weirdo nomination. Happy mediums are elusive things.

The technology, however, really helped with things in general for the second movie. Quite frankly, a lot of the first movie's factory innards were rather lame. Brown water don't pass for very good chocolate in my book, and you think that waterfall is the source for the world's supply of Wonka Bars? Colossal and Vast and Fantastic are supposed to describe the factory of Mr. Wonka, not Boston Flower Show, amazing as it is. I also have problems with the the boat, it's so very...er...unimpressive. (We're working on the colossal and fantastic, remember?) I'm sorry to say this, but that bell (when the boat first appears) brought back images of Mr. Roger's Trolley and Mr. Roger's Trolley was better. Never mind that the tunnel scene is just plain out of place weird. Oh, and I almost expected the Everlasting Gobstopper machine to start churning out sock puppets or something - never have I seen such a hilariously ridiculous machine, covered totally in a custom cloth cover, with that goofy pink thing sproinging into the air.

Somehow, story lines are always the first victims of script writers or movie producers or whoever does these sorts of things. The changes in the first movie amounted primarily to the Everlasting Gobstopper Plot Device, which, in my humble opinion, was quite unnecessary. I don't really see any problems with the original plot. (There was also a notable absence of the Great Glass Elevator, but I relinquish the benefit of the doubt as far as technical feasibility.) The changes in the second movie were mostly Willy's history, in the form of flashbacks. Which also affected the end but provided some extra food for thought. The literary purist in me rankles at the liberty. The other side of me, however, really appreciates the way it was done. (I will also admit that the puppet scene is another case where I enjoy the book for what it is and the movie for what it is.) While I don't think adding in Willy's childhood and Father really adds a whole lot to the story (aside from providing a terribly convenient reason for Willy to be in the Candy business), it does add an interesting dimension in the comparison of relationships between Charlie's family and Willy's. (That's a whole 'nother post, however.) I'm not so sure about the end, though, they could still move to the factory. That, however, is just my two cents worth, through a lens of Ink & Dead Trees.

The Troubles With Websites

Scalability. That's the bugger - especially with sites that start out small and simple. After a while, they grow and end up not so simple. Which is why I'm trying to convert my personal site over to use a template based pre-processing system to generate the static site prior to upload.

So far the one I've settled on is tt2site. (Reasons: it's easy to install and it looked simpler than WML.) Now if I can only figure it out: the features are plenty but the documents few, and Google's no help either.

The main problem is that there is little explanation of operation. Sure, I can figure out how to run the final generation command. That's easy. But how do I set up templates exactly? (I don't know how Perl's template thing works, and why should I? Tell me.) What exactly do all these config files do? Providing example configs is great - how do they work? I don't know. Tutorials would be nice. Start here. Do this, and why. See what happens? Great, now if you want to change it, do this. Cool, you just made a simple site! Now, add this file structure. Ok, in order to set up the menu things you need this config file, this is how the options work, this is how it will interpret that file structure.

I need more detail, a little bit of hand holding. I guess I'll just have to do a lot of poking and write my own Tutorial. Grokking someone else's creation is always so much harder than using something you thought up. If anyone wants to help, by all means - leave a comment or drop me an email.

Fishing For Fords

Today was supposed to be a fairly normal day. Go shovel out the church, plow the Neighbors pond before lunch, eat lunch, and spend the rest of the afternoon working on odds and ends of this and that and organization, maybe help Dad work on the Buick. Unfortunately, I didn't get past the 'plowing the Neighbors pond' part.

The fun part: I get to drive a 1950-something Ford 9N. (Update: it's actually late '30s.) The more-fun part: it's got a 6-volt electrical system and took me 45 minutes to get it started. The slightly-odd-but-still-fun part: it's got a landscaping plow on the three point hitch, so we plow in reverse. The make-my-day-fun-part: The ice on one side wasn't as thick as we thought, so we get an afternoon course in Tractor Fishing 101.

After a bit of a 'kersploosh' and a startled reflexiv motion that kept the driver dry, the tractor settled (still running) with it's rear axle in four feet of water about six feet from shore, front end still on the ice and pointing towards the middle of the pond. Since it was so close to the bank, the original idea was to loop a rope around the blade and haul the tractor out with the Suburban. Of course, that'll dunk the (so far) dry engine and electrical system in. Hmm. Go home for lunch, Mrs. Neighbor has to take kids to Ballet. Dad wants to hear the whole story and immediately starts figuring. We'll see what we can dig up for useful stuff over at Mr. Skip's shop - the Buick is there anyway, waiting for work. Collect some useful planks, chains, etc. Mr. Skip shows up and we, not being fools, inquire of advice. "Let's go take a look."

If there's anyone to have around when you're lifting, towing, hauling, or otherwise moving anything big, it's Mr. Skip. Grow up on Farm equipment (they guy was backing haywagons at seven - you try that) and spend a few years in the house-moving business, and you have what you call expertise. We end up with a trailer load of planks, cables, chains, miscellaneous ice cutting tools, and the big Hough Payloader. All for the sake of Ford 9N. It got her out, though, and six hours later she sits in the barn with a shiney coat of greasy ice and pond weed and a fully drained engine and rear end, awaiting the kind services of somebody. We didn't manage to manage to get her out without dunking her nose, unfortunately. (To quote the neighbor, who saw her when she was nought but a steering wheel and the top two inches of hood, 'That doesn't quite look like where she's supposed to be.')

A short word to the wise: Don't sink tractors in ponds. It's a pain.

The Joys of Technology

I'm working on creating the most complicated desktop computer setup possible. Start with four computers. Add a KVM to switch so I only need one keyboard, monitor, and mouse. Now add a second head to the main desktop, so I have a 15" monitor connected through the KVM and a 19" that isn't. Got that all right?

But what if I'm using my Windows box on the KVM head and want to access something on the main Linux desktop's big monitor? I have tried, quite a number of times (unsucessfully), to move the mouse off the KVM screen over to other monitor like I can on the dual head rig. And then when I switch to it I can't see what's on the Windows machine. Conundrum.

Enter Synergy, which acts like a sort of network based KVM. One computer is the server, it has the keyboard and mouse, and you can move to any of the client's monitors. (So it's really only a KM switch.) Ah Hah! If we set up the Windows box as the server and the Linux desktop as a client, presto! We can then access both the Windows and Linux machines at the same time, but fortunately only when the KVM is pointing to the Windows box. Just think how confusing it would be to acess the screen of a computer you can't see...

Reading In The New Year

So what else is New Year's good for? Reading, of course! What better way to spend the hours waiting for the ball to drop (in a completely literal sense, devoid of metaphore) than with some whimsical creation of Roald Dahl? Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator happened to be the cause of my antisocial descent. Having finally read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (due to the great wisdom of library-going siblings) I figured I could do no wrong to continue in the trend. I am now trying to figure out how my childhood could possibly have been complete without Our Hero, Charlie Bucket. Next up, James and the Giant Peach.

Also on the docket for Holiday Break:

The Design of Everyday Things (Donald Norman)

Almost done, actually. Get a good book for your Birthday, and BOOM! The nasty little School monster steals away all your precious reading time. Very interesting, if slow reading at times. It feels like he's defining and solidifing things I think I should have known but hadn't the time to think through properly yet. It makes sense. And, as a geeky type, I find myself on both sides of the page at times; alternately wondering how someone could possibly fail to understand the operation of something as simple as that and what sort of bonehead thinks up an interface I have to spend days figuring out how to use. (Sorry, concrete examples escape me at the moment.)

The Princess Bride (William Goldman)

Yes, I've seen the movie, and yes, it was good. I have, however, too much experience with book/movie relationships and seek the whole of the story, for better or for worse.

1001 Dumbest Things Ever Said (Edited, etc. by Steven Price)

I haven't read it all yet (having just aquired it for Christmas) so the Jury is still officially out, but this would be my nomination for the Misstitled Book Of The Year Award. While a lot of the quotes really are dumb, many are just malapropisms, slips of the toungue, or the curiously quaint interpretations of knowledge characteristic of those under seven years of age. Sure, they may be flat out wrong, but that doesn't make them dumb. Or, for example, the much quoted assertions of the late Yogi Berra. I don't have a clue what he was thinking when he uttered some of his most memorable sentiments, but I find them quite amusing. He seemed to have a knack for stating grains of truth with such logical impossibility that, while the thought is true, the statement obviously isn't.

For example - "A nickel isn't worth a dime today." Factually speaking, a nickel has never been worth the same as a dime and never will be. The thought, however - that a nickel isn't worth as much as it used to be - is still there. There's nothing to feed the mind like warping an old cliche into a new context. It's clever phrasing, intentional or not, and actuall quite logical construction considering the cliche aspect. Some people call them idiots; songwriters make their living off things like "It's like deja vu all over again." Illustrating the concept (deja vu) you are utilizing to make your point with your sentence structure does not really strike me as the hobby of dimwits. It's recursive nature does put a slight warp on the cranial process, but it gets the point across. It's the sort of thing I would say on purpose. But then, maybe I'm a dumb critic.

It's A Super-Duper New Year

So far, anyhow, but that's always the way it goes. Yes sirree, it's a New Year, folks! And you know what that means.........A neeeeeeeeew You! All it takes is a few little resolutions, kids, and you could have a better life! Call today to recieve your free informational packet!

Ok, maybe that's a little...commercially pessimistic. But while I don't see much depth in the whole new beginnings thing that often fizzles this time of year, it is a good time to recoup between semesters, get reaquainted with family you've mostly just seen in passing since the semester started, do some things you didn't have time to this semester, and, uh, relax.

It's not that I dislike new beginnings and bettering yourself for fun and profit. Personally, however, I find it works better to do that sort of thing the whole year instead of chucking a nicely worded dart at the Corkboard Of Despond once a year. Not that I would know (I don't play darts), but to be good at darts I think it takes practise. And when you have finished mulling over that profound wisdom, you may move on to greater things.