things have been slow lately, well, as far as my posting on this website is concerned. but in actuality, i've been doing tons of behind the scenes type work. first of all, i might as well put a link to the new site, http://thoughtbit.com. www.yzzerdd.net will probably change once i fully move over to the new site, but who knows.

so, obviously thoughtbit was taking up some time, especially as it's designed mostly in "ajax" or however you want to call it (javascript,xml,mysql,css,php). all the coding and graphics are, again, done by me and brent *edit* (well most of the graphics are home-made - some of the icons are not).

lately i've been working on building xorg-7.1.1 (if you're saying to yourself, "what the hell is that?!", then you should just skip forward to the screenshot). so, i have xorg built (with aiglx), and i've managed to also compile beryl, so now i have a spiffy graphical desktop.

Here's the screenshot:

http://thoughtbit.com/xorg-build/slackware-aiglx-beryl.png

and here are the slackware xorg and beryl packages and build scripts:

http://thoughtbit.com/xorg-build/

d=(^.^)=b

i don't normally like to post from work, but i figured i had some stuff worth putting up... so here is a quick post that proves i am still alive and kicking, and coding, just not posting regularly.......

View Source Chart is a neat program that lets you view generate html output from javascript and things - very helpful in debugging.

the second thing i'd like to show you today is the new gallery brent and i developed:

ajax/javascript gallery on wwwyzzerddnet

gallery on relevasius/forsaken skyz

that's it for now, let me know what you think of the gallery, and leave any comments about it here.

here's a useful harddrive recovery tool:

Linux Disk Editor

it lets you view hard drives' contents even if the partitions and whatnot are messed up. i just found it today though, so i haven't really tested it out. it is on the current Knoppix Live CD.

in windows, i use Winhex. i've actually used winhex to recover mis-resized ntfs partitions, as well as deleted ntfs partition tables.

i couldn't think of a better title...

went home this past weekend, and i got to take part in a huge clam-boil. i ate some dinner, ate some cake, and ate more dinner. it was great. brent and i also worked on his new design a bit, check that out:

Amachi

if you're going to watch a movie, ever, i strongly advise you NOT to watch "Elephant" (an HBO film). the "tagline" from the Elephant website sums the movie up nicely:



that line is deeper than the movie itself, which has absolutely no real plot, climax, character development, nothing. it's just garbage. don't waste your time, i felt sick after watching the movie. apparently it was only 81 minutes, but i could've sworn it was around 3-4 hours long.

well, brent and i also did some "behind the scenes" work for our sites, mainly in the form of a gallery posting page to allow us to upload images to a new or previously created image gallery... but that's neither here nor there, so i'll stop for the night (morning? shit).

happy 4th of july!

i almost forgot... the google browser sync works beautifully! i've installed it on two linux machines (home and work desktops) and on a windows box, and i haven't had a problem yet. if you forget to close your webbrowser on one computer, the google sync will disconnect that browser and let you connect at your current location.

figures... a month after i convert all my bookmarks to rss feeds so i can keep the same ones on all my computers... google comes out with google brower sync - a firefox extension that allows you to use the same bookmarks, passwords, history, and cookies on all your computers. and i happen to use at least 3 regularly. i've just installed it and will post my experiences with it soon...

...so i walked up to dunkin donuts, the nearest being at 96th and Broadway - 21 blocks north - and now they're not crunchy anymore.

brent finally convinced me to stop being so lazy and sign up for a last.fm account, so i did, and here's my profile. so the whole point of this was to make the spiffy "Listening To:" section on my sidebar, down there on the left... now you can see what tracks i've recently listened to. the last.fm integration is done seemlessly by amaroK which doesn't even need any extra software to upload my current track info.

normally this would be the end of interesting things, but, lucky for you!, i have one more update. i've put up a new gallery, if you look down there on left again, below the "Listening To:" area, there's the "Newest Gallery" that i've put up. it's got some pictures of my cats (this one is pretty hilarious), some pictures of my new apartment, and my desk! i finally have a desk! hurrah!

oh yeah, brent and i also are putting our new maltsweb design into use tomorrow, you can take a peak here

things have been quite crazy around here lately... Columbia's Class of 2006 has graduated, my IT group has been totally restructured (and thus I have* moved into a different office building), and I just moved apartments (and thus my website was offline for a while).

will post more soon....

*thanks ben

here's a screenshot...

http://www.yzzerdd.net/images/wyz-slamd64-dlg.png

the commencement ticket exchange for columbia's class of 2006 is up and online. check it out:

commencement ticket exchange

i've also installed slamd64-current on my dual-core dell computer, with dlg64 2.14.1... and it is sweet.

more website work coming soon. brent and i also came up with an interesting bookmark sync'ing idea, so i'm going to try working on that a bit today.

just upgraded to dropline gnome 2.14.1 and its running pretty damn well. here's a little eye candy (not much different from before, but now i have a slick integrated beagle search tool):

wyzDLG2.14.1.png

i also got around to making some bluetooth packages with the dropline build system, so expect those up on my packages page sometime in the future (for all my avid slackware package users...)

yes, i am still here. i've been working on some ajax (wikipedia.org). so here it is so far:

wwwyzzerddnet in ajax

brent and i are also working on a graduation commencement ceremony ticket exchange page for columbia's class of 2006 (each student only gets 4 tickets for their family). that site is here:

columbia ticket exchange

after spending this weekend messing around with bootsplashes, i decided to make a little guide to setup a fully graphical boot. it can be seen here: slackware/bootsplash

it's pretty late, and i just finished it, so it might need a little work...

anyway, here's a screen shot of one of my splash screens:

well, instead of hacking into mplayer to include gnome-vfs support, i found a way to play files through ssh shares in mplayer.


sftp://192.168.1.102/media is my ssh share for gnome-vfs, and in this example i'm using a 4MB buffer in mplayer
to see what ssh shares you already have setup, you can do this:

so far today has been great. i woke up at about 1pm, and haven't done anything since i got up (i'm taking today and monday off of work). in a few hours i'll be flying down to virginia for some real excitment. anyone have any suggestions about movies to see this weekend? i'm going to bring my camera, so expect some new photo galleries being posted soon (which reminds me, i need to make a module to display a random image from a random gallery on my index.php page... maybe i'll get that done this weekend too).

on another note, i'm going to put up a compiled copy of mplayer-cvs soon, even though i love totem + dropline + gnome, totem (well xine-lib) just can't play dolby 5.1 channel sound in aac files. mplayer plays them fine, but mplayer can't play things gnome-vfs. do i smell a project coming on? (mplayer gnome-vfs support...?)

new versions of amaroK (1.4beta2), libgpod (0.3.2), gtkpod (0.99.4), and mpeg4ip (compiled for slack-10.2 stable) are available on my slackware/packages page.

i'm sure you are all bristling with excitement

of course, another bug poped up... trying to fix it now

edit: seems to be fixed now, i had forgotten to set one of the if matches

get all your mouse buttons to work in linux

it seems that "Abe Usher, a 10-year veteran of the security industry, created an application that runs on an iPod and can search corporate networks for files likely to contain business-critical data. At a rate of about 100MB every couple minutes in a process dubbed 'pod slurping.'"
i haven't tried it out, but here is the link to the iPod slurp website

extra info
podslurping howto: http://www.sharp-ideas.net/podslurping_howto.php

i've grown up in the midst of the electronic age, surrounded by tvs, computers, the internet, and shared information. well here i am, sharing a piece of my childhood... my dad bought one of these when we lived in switzerland, one of the first, if not THE first personal cd player. anyway, i've always thought it was pretty sweet looking, even when it was retired in the late 80's (or early-mid 90's, i can't remember) due to a semi-broken laser/motor. anyway, check it out:

http://www.thevintageknob.org/DAD/DA1000/DA1000.html

well, i no longer really use cd-players at all for playing my music collection, so i figured i'd mix the old and new. here's amaroK 1.4-beta1, with support for mysql, aac files, and the ipod. as with all new things, it comes with some burdens - you have to install mpeg4ip and libgpod before using these spiffy new features of amaroK (don't fret, i've made packages for them all):

slackware/packages

i woke up at 6am this morning (well, around 6am...) and actually made it to the
bus (with the help of eva and chris - i could never do that alone) by 7am sharp! thus was the start to a wonderous day of snowboarding at hunter mountain http://www.huntermtn.com/. unfortunately, it was only my second day of snowboarding this season.

brent and i also made a nifty code box for posting examples of code. here is an example:



since my slackware page has lots of code, i've update all my slackware pages to
use this new layout. let me know what you think.

since i was dorking around doing all this, i figured i'd clean up my html code and make my site html 4.01 certified. i have an icon at the bottom of my page attesting to this now, hurray!

and it's snowing out! should be the first serious storm of the season!

brent has graciously updated my icon, thanks!

i'm so bad at keeping my bookmarks sync'd between all my computers (and displayed somewhere on my site), if anyone has a good solution, let me know. in the meantime, here's a sweet looking tool that i need to try:

http://www.gnome.org/projects/NetworkManager/

and the dropline packages:

http://dlgwiki.dot42.org/index.php/Wireless_in_Dropline_GNOME

i found a really cool computer case today, check it out:
http://www.metku.net/index.html?sect=view&n=1&path=mods/whiskypc/index_eng

i built amarok 1.3.8, it's on my packages page.

there's also a copy of beagle on the dropline contributed packages forum:
http://dropline-gnome.sourceforge.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4745

finally figured out how to pipe md5sum into diff.... yay



http://www.hollenback.net/index.php/NamedPipesInBash

i've moved my server back onto campus, so hopefully it at least won't lose its internet connection anymore (my cable is out AGAIN).

this is more of a reference post.

here is a link to an AJAX login page:
http://evolt.org/node/60505

and a link to a MySQL database replication setup:
http://www.howtoforge.com/mysql_database_replication

just putting up a link to my idea for a slight tweaking of brent's website. https://www.yzzerdd.net/newrelevasius.png

also testing my calendar a little, the new year has caused some bugs.

my ati install page has been updated with info on the current ati drivers (8.20.8) and the current kernel series (2.6.15).

so there i am, 4:05pm, sitting at my desk about to embark on my work. i lean back in my chair, grab my coffee, and tip the mug back for a sip. suddenly i'm gasping for air while drowning in my coffee and breaking into a cold sweat! i coughed my coffee all over the place - well, mostly back into the mug, some onto my screen and hands - impressively not messy actually. it took about 10 minutes before i got my first full, deep, coffee-free breath. man that would've been a lame way to go...

on a lighter note, my dad sent me a picture of the family gathering in california for christmas 2005 / new year 2006. there was very intense red eye though, so i did my best to clean it up (view the original here and my first red eye reduction here).

that's the number of errors your ram has to get when being tested (after already being sent to sony once without them fixing anything) in order for sony to replace it...

i just made a theme (well, hacked two together really) for gnome, check it out:

welcome to the new year. i had a nice time in cali, visiting brent and my family, and i finally got to try a snowboard that i really like (burton baron). i'll try to write something more inspired later, but at least my website is back online...

happy holidays! brent has captured the essence of the season perfectly, so there's no need for me to reiterrate...

i completely amazed myself yesterday, with an impromptu exit off 95 south (coming from Fall River to NYC) and taking a few semi-random/semi-good-guess turns - i was not only able to avoid the horrible rush hour traffic that was already piling up on 95 at 4pm, but i saved about 10 minutes driving to my apartment!

now for the good stuff. i found a nice linux tool that compares to the windows "dvd shrink" program, which helps with making backups of your dvd movies. tested it last night, seems to work. it is called k9copy, and there are two other packages you need to get it working. you can find all the binaries in my slackware/packages section (which I know I need to clean up a bit...)

today at 3pm i head to the airport to fly out to california to meet up with my parents who are staying at my sister's place. then tomorrow i get to go snowboarding, and then the next day i should be meeting up with brent to check out his west coast crib.

...
end transmission

hurrah, the strike has ended.

www.nytimes.com

also, brent arrives tonight, hurrah! expect some flashy new web stuff coming soon...

it has been a pretty crazy week. in nyc, the MTA has gone on strike - two days so far of no public transportation, and no end in site.

www.ci.nyc.ny.us

well, i'm pretty uninspired tonight, so that's the end of the update.

its getting tired out, oh, wait...
i've compiled amarok-1.3.7 and guarddog-2.4.0 for slackware. you can get them here: slackware packages

watching incredibly bad/corny/dumb movies can be very entertaining when you're not paying attention too much. i spent the past 18 hours (give or take a few hours) watching various preimium cable tv channels (previously unavailable to me because my cable box hadn't been working properly until i finally got that whole cable fiasco resolved). so i apparently have hbo cinemax, showtime - and all the on demands associated. not to mention laura croft on TNT. although School of Rock was pretty entertaining - jack black is the man, and down with the man! that's rocking! i can't even remember the other stuff i watched - i'm way too much of a dork to pay full attention to the tv when i have my laptop in front of me. speaking of which (the dorkiness), here's a picture of my networking gear:



yes, all the ports are lit up because i'm using them all...

ok, now i'm watching Look Who's Talking Now - the movie whose script was cloned from a few clones of the orginal-ish idea of Look Who's Talking (wasn't that the one with John Travolta as a cab driver and the pre late 90's sitcom Kristie Alley? hehe).

i will end the post with a reassuring picture of my cat:

there is a pretty neat project named after my cat:

Artemis:Pku Honeynet Project

i need to do something productive today, so i'm going to try to rebuild my home LAN...

so here's the list of things to get done today:
1) finish writing firewall script
2) setup dnsmasq or something similar
3) test my linux firewall/router
4) figure out how i want to layout my firewalls/webserver/wireless
5) stop using my windows laptop as my firewall/router

also on the list of things to do:
1) setup rss feed like brent has done
2) setup a better gallery post page
3) setup some post editing pages and stuff - try to remove the need to edit stuff directly in mysql
4) maybe do something neat with my amarok/mysql db

and to get this fiesta of fun tinkery underway, i'm going to go get some coffee and doughnuts.

a bit of sun shines through the cloudy sky - Time Warner has, at the behest (read: powerful nagging) of my landlady, restored my cable with a "temporary" fix. the cable guy tried to claim that he didn't have the right equipment to fix it, even though i had explained no fewer than two times to two Time Warner phone gremlins that the cable had been physically cut where it comes in from the building next door. either way, i now have cable tv (and hbo on demand works now!), my internet, and thus, my phone. i am reconnected.

the storm-clouds are still lingering, unfortunately. the contractors working next door have not only cut my cable line, but multiple cable lines along the street - these are the main cable lines - and Time Warner must now map and rewire my street. i only hope this means i'll have faster internet - and not just more painful, disconnected reality.

so Time Warner decided not to come fix my cable last Saturday, so my cable is still not working. hopefully by Tuesday it'll be fixed.

i reworked the way the photo galleries work, and it seems to load them faster now.

I still need a post graphic though :-(

so, the building next to mine is getting renovated, and it seems the construction workers decided it was a good idea to cut my cable wire... now i get to wait until the cable company comes on saturday to fix it.

i've updated the layout for my photo gallery a bit, check it out. i also changed the way the title bar works - it now tells you what page you're looking at.

i've started work on my bookmark synchronization script... sort of. it just reformats the bookmark file so it looks pretty. you can see it [here]

designed by the ingenious relevasius.

check out his site at: www.relevasius.com

stupid cable modem isn't working, so here is my other domain, which now has a mirrored copy of my www.yzzerdd.net/newsite website.


soon i'll have my site updated with www.relevasius.com/www


i'm also working on a program/way to synchronize/view your bookmarks from anywhere.

...if you think pigeons are hilarious:


www.birds.cornell.edu

check out the linux->packages section...

amarok-1.3.6

I just made some new sidebar backgrounds... Any comments?

Check out his sweet page:


http://www.relevasius.com:90/


He needs to fix my avitar though (or perhaps I should just fix it...).

this is me reminding myself to fix my ati drivers page on the slackware part of the site.


I had to change:


/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/firegl_public.c


with these changes:


int ATI_API_CALL __ke_verify_area(int type, const void * addr, unsigned long size)

{

//return verify_area(type, addr, size);

return access_ok(type, addr, size) ? 0 : -EFAULT;

}



I also want to put the code parts of the slackware pages in dashed boxes like the comments boxes are...

I now have a "packages" section on my slackware page where you can download programs I've compiled for slackware.




slackware packages

Quake 4 works on my slackware box (2.8ghz dual p4, 1gig ram, radeon x600). I'll take some screenshots or something soon.


here are some more pictures of my awesome cats:


2005-10-22

hehe

check out some new pictures:


2005-10-17


I am working on creating a photo gallery for this site and the
blog

here's a screenshot of my new desktop:

testing

testingg