Shanti’s Dispatches

Maybe it’s just that all this news about unauthorized wiretaps and possible backdoors being intentially put in windows is hitting at once, but it sure seems like the era of Big Brother is a lot closer at hand than we’d like to admit.

Here’s an idea that would really piss off the NSA / unauthorized wiretappers:

- Create a soundboard (like this one for Dr. Phil) containing a bunch of terrorism-related terms like “jihad”, “9/11″, “CIA”, “Bin Laden”, “please stop illegally listening in on my calls mr. spook”, etc. taped in various Middle Eastern voices.
- Let the scr1pt kiddies go crazy making foreign calls with the sound boards, potentially tripping up the NSA’s call monitors.

Note: I actually think this is a bad idea but if you violate the kids’ civil liberties enough, you’ll start getting these kinds of reactions.

I really, really hope the situation isn’t this bad. It’s pretty scary to think that if you happen to use the word 9/11 or Jihad when on a call with someone (even if they’re overseas), that you’ll trip some CIA/NSA monitoring system and someone will automatically start listening in on your calls (or they’ll be recorded for later use). I’ve heard reports that this is happening / that it’s possible, and at this point, don’t know what to believe…

George W. Bush Article in The Nation. Kinda makes Lewinskygate seem a bit pale in comparison. Could just be me.

On the official ChuckNorris.com website, a new post reads ‘IN RESPONSE TO THE “RANDOM FACTS” THAT ARE BEING GENERATED ON THE INTERNET’:

I’m aware of the made up declarations about me that have recently begun to appear on the Internet and in emails as “Chuck Norris facts.” I’ve seen some of them. Some are funny. Some are pretty far out. Being more a student of the Wild West than the wild world of the Internet, I’m not quite sure what to make of it. It’s quite surprising. I do know that boys will be boys, and I neither take offense nor take these things too seriously.

Read the rest here…

I guess this new website chucknorrisfacts.com is making the rounds.

Of course, the cool kids have been creating Chuck Norris facts for years at Chuck Norris Fact Generator, including:

• Chuck Norris’ tears cure cancer. Too bad he has never cried.
• Chuck Norris is currently suing NBC, claiming Law and Order are trademarked names for his left and right legs.
• Chuck Norris can touch MC Hammer.
• Chuck Norris ordered a Big Mac at Burger King, and got one.

Looking forward to meeting up with the gang at Refresh Phoenix tonight.

Hopefully tonight I can put a few more faces to names / vice versa.

Shout out to James Archer, James Britt (who runs Phoenix.rb which I was unfortunately unable to attend last night ), Joshua Strebel of obu Web Technologies, Brad Webb of vSocial, and the man with the plan who’s done an awesome job of organizing and putting together Refresh Phx — Aaron Post of 30 Second Rule.

Update: Turns out I was unable to attend. Bummer - hopefully next time! (Catching up on some much-needed sleep, however, was indeed the bomb though.)

Just checked some referrer stats here for sablog.com and it looks like I’ve achieved search engine referral zen. Getting ranked for those terms has been a long time in the coming… but now that I’ve made it in the top #10, I’d like to thank the Academy and all those who’ve supported me along the way. It’s been a tough journey, but we’ve persevered, managing to rise above the comment & link spammers that abound on this web in ranking for those terms. What should we shoot for next?

Backstory: As part of a recent system administration task I needed help with, one of my requirements was that the individual document how they performed the task. Nothing simple, just a few key steps or especially complicated compilation strings, whatever.

Enough for someone moderately skilled in *nix administration to repeat the task w/o reinvinting the wheel.

I do this all the time on my own system, say, when I’m compiling php or apache. Or even simple one-liners like Subversion checkout/import/etc. commands.

First I’ll type the commands into a notes.txt file, run them, fix any errors, and keep the notes.txt up to date with how I performed the task so its there as an easy reference in the future. It adds maybe 15-20% of time to the process but saves an incredible amount of time in the long run.

For tasks that other people I’m working with might have to use… I’ll post them to a wiki like Backpack. (Here’s an example that I wrote for a buddy new to Rails: Rails Newbie Getting Started Guide)

So, I was a bit taken aback when I got this response back from a system administrator:

I have done the easyapache thing and had compiled so. But if you are asking for a step by step description of how to go about compiling, then I guess no sys-admin will be willing to give you the details.

This frankly boggles my mind.

I know there are people in Office Space environments who hoard their knowledge and try to build up their fiefdoms.

But for those of us lucky to work (or also work) in Web 2.0 environments … this kind of attitude is unacceptable.

Welcome, knowledge hoarders, to the era of blogs, wikis, open source and distributed web collaboration –
     Your value to my organization is inversely proportional to the amount of knowledge you hoard, not the other way around. Goodbye.

I just came across Lynyrd Skynyrd: Extended Versions in my cd collection. Play Freebird, man!

What’s the most embarassing album you own?

More time wasting fun! I’m in the process of cataloging every book I’ve ever read (that’s worth mentioning) in the past 10 years (even beyond if they’re still in my library, i.e. Catcher in the Rye). I’m even trying to include the dates that items were “consumed.”

You can see what I’ve read, watched, etc on my all consuming page over at allconsuming.net.

All Consuming is another fine site brought to you by the Robot Co-op. It’s written in 100% Ruby on Rails, if I’m not mistaken.

Had some free time tonight (or is 3am technically ‘morning’) to organize my mp3 collection.

There’s the joke that women say they have to stay home and wash their hair, when they don’t want to go out with a guy.

Well, I stay home and tag my mp3 collection! No, really.

For organizing your legacy (non-tagged, crappily named) mp3s, I highly recommend Jaikoz for OS X. It’s written in Java though so it also has XP and Linux versions. (haven’t tried those yet)

I’ve been using the tagging functionality (via acoustical fingerprinting and musicbrainz.org), then using its rename-based-on-tags functionality to make them all “Artist - Song Title” or whatever.

Since it is written in Java, it can be kinda slow at times. But it’s definitely worth a look, even ~ $18 for a registered copy in my case!

In unrelated news… I’m also now up 2 Gigs in mp3s in the last two gigs after ripping my extensive audiobook collection. w00t!

A few updates to my How to Setup and Configure a Linux Media Server post.

Mental note: don’t start posting random how-tos at 4am and then go over to digg and submit them, before you’ve even finished testing out your setup!

There was one huge flaw with the default Fedora Core 4 setup — Samba shares don’t work properly with OS X. A pretty huge problem for a ‘media server’ to have if you are rockin’ the mac anywhere in your household.

Uh oh, Browsing the Samba Share Doesn’t Work on My OS X Box!

I thought it was too good to be true!

The Samba version installed with Fedora Core 4 is not the very latest.

You’ll need to download and install the latest version of Samba if you need to access your linux media server from OS X. (unless you’re lucky and you can mount your share from OSX without a problem - maybe Apple’s fixed this bug in the latest build)

But if it isn’t working for ya, there are also configuration settings you’ll need to setup on OSX, and even possibly a simple AppleScript startup launcher which will perform the mount of the network share upon startup each time. (this should work in OS X but is broken on some systems, including mine)

If you’re having OS X samba connection woes, I’ll just have to point you to this thread at macworld.com. It contains most of the information needed to configure your new Linux Samba installation (this was the trickiest part), as well as a few minor settings you need to configure in your OS X “/etc/smb.conf” file.

Next, you may have problems getting your network share to auto-mount under OS X at startup time. Never fear, here’s a recipe for ya:

Auto-Mounting Your Network Share Under OS X on Startup

There isn’t really the concept of a “Mapped Network Drive” under OS X like there is in Windows (there’s mounted volumes, instead). However, you can do basically the same thing but it can be a bit tricky to do so w/o using some AppleScript-fu.

Open Script Editor and make a script like:

tell application "Finder"
	open location "smb://username:password@ipaddress/the/path"
end tell

For example, mine was:

tell application "Finder"
	open location "smb://sbraford@192.168.1.97/media"
end tell

From user Virtual1 on the thread:

Select to save as “Application”, and make sure “startup screen” and “stay running” are NOT checked.

Save the application script somewhere. Next open up your OS X User profiles / settings / configurations.

Click over to Startup Items, then drag your new auto-mounter AppleScript file onto it & make sure it’s enabled and that your settings get saved (may have to click on the Lock icon).

Next, logout and log back on to see if your new network share gets auto-mounted on startup! If so, w00t, you’re in business.

An update for those who prefer not to use FAT32 partitions on your *nix drives: You may want to format using Ext2, if FAT32 is not to your liking. The Ext2 filesystem is accessible under windows by adding some basic drivers. Thanks Pete and Blue Rowlf for the constructive feedback/comments!

And, last but not least… my version of ‘Media Server’ I guess differs greatly from other’s. Doh!

For me, the biggest thing a Media Server has to do is sit there and serve files. But for other people, it has to be a full-fledged PVR. So, here are my thoughts on adding additional functionality to your network file/media Linux server:

Regularly Scheduled Media Downloads

You have two options here. If you have cable/satellite television, you can use Myth TV as a PVR.

OR, if you only have one big fat Internet connection like yours truly, Broadcatching via RSS + BitTorrent is your answer.

Update: After playing with Azureus and its various RSS plugins for a while on Gnome/Linux, I was still unable to get it to even download torrents properly.

This could be a Linux/Firewall/Router issue, who knows. But debugging it was getting way beyond what I was trying to achieve for the common user (including myself).

Instead, the simplest approach was to mount the Linux Media Server share as a mapped network drive, and configure a Win32 BitTorrent client to do the downloading and just use the server as a file store. (not ideal, but does the job in a pinch.) uTorrent is an excellent C++ based BitTorrent client that has added RSS feed import support in its latest version.

One thing that might be cool as well in the future is setting up a web-based, ajax-powered streaming mp3 server like mp3act.

Hope these updates might appease some of the Digg playa haters out there. Though, despite the “no digg! all he did was mount a blah blah configure a blah blah shell script I can do that in my sleep” posts on digg, the article has been bookmarked 57 times on del.icio.us (at the time of this writing) at least, so hopefully lots of people found it useful!

Please let me know if you have any more tips / updates on setting up a Linux Media Server.