Concepts in the Paradox » geekery http://markballew.com/blog The writing of Mark Ballew Wed, 17 Mar 2010 23:53:12 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 You are ENTJ http://markballew.com/blog/2006/12/10/you-are-entj/ http://markballew.com/blog/2006/12/10/you-are-entj/#comments Mon, 11 Dec 2006 06:16:27 +0000 MarkBallew http://markballew.com/blog/2006/12/10/you-are-entj/ What is your programmer type?

I went to the 24 Hour Fitness at 45 Montgomery this evening, and I was surprised at just how clean and new it looked. I haven’t been to the gym in about 3 weeks, and having a clean and uncrowded place to go to is a big motivator for me. Also, it is one hop on Bart or Muni, or a 2 minute average wait if I select Muni at any time during the day.

The Zaurus is up with pdaXrom, which is pretty slick if not minimal. It’s fast too, way faster than the stock Zaurus ROM. I guess they are keeping the code page in the ROM, because ABIword loads in a half-second. The Wifi isn’t working yet, but it’s more likely the case of I don’t know what I’m doing when it comes to iwconfig. I might get a CF Bluetooth card if I can find one on the cheap, they run about $89 anywhere I look. Having internet-via-cell phone would be nice; I already do that with my Macbook. If you have a CF BT card kicking around, I’d be willing to take it off your hands.

]]> http://js-kit.com/rss/markballew.com/blog/p=107 0 Expanding my geek horizons http://markballew.com/blog/2006/11/27/expanding-my-geek-horizons/ http://markballew.com/blog/2006/11/27/expanding-my-geek-horizons/#comments Tue, 28 Nov 2006 06:31:26 +0000 MarkBallew http://markballew.com/blog/2006/11/27/expanding-my-geek-horizons/ For a long time I thought my geekery was simply based in the computer realm, but as it turns out, my geekery works in many different realms.

Normal geekery would be something like getting my Zaurus to boot a Cacko ROM. I have that working, but alas it locks up after I set the date. :(

Expanded geekery includes reading exceptionally dry books on why Free Parking is bad, and enjoying it.

Normal geekery is trying to get the voice activation on my A900 phone to work properly.

Expanded geekery is reading the San Francisco City Code, just because it seemed like something I should read (I’m not done yet).

Does this mean I should get a girlfriend?

]]> http://js-kit.com/rss/markballew.com/blog/p=100 2 Server migration in progress… http://markballew.com/blog/2006/09/12/server-migration-in-progress/ http://markballew.com/blog/2006/09/12/server-migration-in-progress/#comments Wed, 13 Sep 2006 06:12:06 +0000 MarkBallew http://markballew.com/blog/2006/09/12/server-migration-in-progress/ Over the next 3 days I’ll be moving this site, along with my hostees, email, blogs, image server, and database to a new swanky machine courtesy of DataSieve. I have tons of data to move, so I’m going to have to move services over one at a time, so if the site is inaccessable or images are broken, don’t panic, I’m all over it.

For the technically inclined, I’m going with a Dell PE w/Dual PIII’s at 1Ghz + 1GB memory, 60GB disk. Not high end, but this is a shoestring operation! OS: FreeBSD 6.1, jails as ‘containers’ for various services. I’ll have an implementation doc posted as soon as I’m all done.

]]> http://js-kit.com/rss/markballew.com/blog/p=83 0 Project launches http://markballew.com/blog/2006/08/27/project-launches/ http://markballew.com/blog/2006/08/27/project-launches/#comments Mon, 28 Aug 2006 03:45:17 +0000 MarkBallew http://markballew.com/blog/2006/08/27/project-launches/ Since I’m going to be fairly busy this week, I’m going to go ahead and “officially launch” my two blogs ahead of Sept.1 launch date:

First:

LastMuni, the San Francisco transportation blog. You can add this blog as a Livejournal friend to read updates on your Livejournal friendslist: LastMuni syndication feed

Second:

XenJournal, the open source virtualization blog. You can add this blog as a Livejournal friend to read updates on your Livejournal friendslist: XenJournal syndication feed

On other projects, my thesis project is a go again. This is process suspension between virtual machines in a cluster, the idea being to pause unwanted processes that talk over tcp and resume them at a later time.

I have two more projects in the pipeline, one will be an NLP blog in about 6-8 months and the other is a “Muni survival guide”. If any one wants to help me with the MSG, let me know and I’ll add you to the wiki for edits.

]]> http://js-kit.com/rss/markballew.com/blog/p=78 0 Zombies attack San Francisco!!! http://markballew.com/blog/2006/08/19/zombies-attack-san-francisco/ http://markballew.com/blog/2006/08/19/zombies-attack-san-francisco/#comments Sun, 20 Aug 2006 04:15:47 +0000 MarkBallew http://markballew.com/blog/2006/08/19/zombies-attack-san-francisco/ I was on my way to return some items to CompUSA, when I noticed folks standing about Market Street with duct tape “X” symbols on them. “What could that mean?” I thought. I took a photo just in case it was a new fad.



A couple sporting duct tape

The Powell cable car turn around became very silent, perhaps eerily so. Little did I know that such markings meant that they were the next to be attacked by zombies!



Zombies devowering their brainy prey

It was a sight to be seen. Luckly, I had decided to not wear duct tape that day, so I was simply sniffed for my brains, but not eaten and turned into one of those blood lusting fiends. There were other humans around, mostly tourists, but there was one man who knew that the zombies were there because our sins. God hates zombies, after all.





God hates zombies protester (he was later eaten)

Sensing fresh brains near by, the hord of zombies headed up Powell Street…




The zombies head up Powell in search of fresh brains

From there they crowded on to Union Square, where a band happened to be playing. From there they frenzied into a dance while consuming duct-taped victums. It was chaos, pure chaos, but luckily I survived to bring you this photographic evidence.





The final frenzy and brain eating spree

After this horrific photography of todays events, you must be wondering, How can I prevent zombie attacks? What do I do in the event a zombie horde appears while I’m shopping?

First of all, don’t panic.

Second of all, make sure you’ve memorized the How to Survive a Zombie Attack guide.

Three, have your preparedness kit.

And finally, watch your local news for zombie-related events.



Tune into GETV for late breaking zombie news

Photos (c) Mark Ballew, Meme created by EatBrains. See complete photo set.

]]> http://js-kit.com/rss/markballew.com/blog/p=75 0 Time to build out http://markballew.com/blog/2006/08/14/time-to-build-out/ http://markballew.com/blog/2006/08/14/time-to-build-out/#comments Tue, 15 Aug 2006 06:40:02 +0000 MarkBallew http://markballew.com/blog/2006/08/14/time-to-build-out/ My poor colo server is taking quite a beating. I serve a bit from my colo, which is located in downtown SF at United Layer via NetPublishing. The box is an old Pentium III 1Ghz with 512MB of memory, but it is leased and the cost is pretty low for what I get.

I have a few more wiki’s and blogs I want to launch in the coming months, and even with the small amount of traffic I get the machine crawls during peak times (noon and 6pm) as everyone goes online to edit the wiki, comment on blogs or view photos. I typically have a memory use of 786MB, so I’m swapping like crazy, and the system load is almost always 3 (that is, three processes are waiting for 1 CPU to become available).

I’m now in the market for a new colo box. I talked to Greg, the colo provider, and he says he can spec out a new machine for me, which means I might get to finally run FreeBSD 6 (horray!). Moving to a new machine is going to be a pain, as I have had this machine for almost 2 years, and in 2 years I’ve collected a lot of databases, shell scripts, and odd configuration files to get everything working well. It is sort of like moving to a new house, you find all this broken stuff, and stuff that makes you wonder why you had such stuff to begin with!

]]> http://js-kit.com/rss/markballew.com/blog/p=73 2 Less than 24 hours until Nerdapalooza http://markballew.com/blog/2006/08/11/less-than-24-hours-until-nerdapalooza/ http://markballew.com/blog/2006/08/11/less-than-24-hours-until-nerdapalooza/#comments Sat, 12 Aug 2006 05:00:10 +0000 MarkBallew http://markballew.com/blog/2006/08/11/less-than-24-hours-until-nerdapalooza/ I need to be to Bart by 6:30am to catch my train to get a ride in Oakland to attend Nerdapalooza ‘06. It’s going to be like a vacation after my trip to Defcon, which was also like a vacation. Yes, I still need to post those photos and do a run down, but for some strange reason I am hyper and sugar buzzed. Maybe it was something in the curry I had at Naan ‘n Curry for dinner, or I’m excited for yet more geekout time.

I plan to:
* Drink (Jason is driving)
* Swim (not while drunk)
* Geekout
* Eat bbq-like objects

Now if I could only sleep. I guess I will just sit here and bounce on my yoga ball in front of the computer until I get tired.

]]> http://js-kit.com/rss/markballew.com/blog/p=71 4 The final ramping up for Defcon http://markballew.com/blog/2006/08/01/the-final-ramping-up-for-defcon/ http://markballew.com/blog/2006/08/01/the-final-ramping-up-for-defcon/#comments Wed, 02 Aug 2006 06:05:28 +0000 MarkBallew http://markballew.com/blog/2006/08/01/the-final-ramping-up-for-defcon/
The room is reserved, the Wiki is updated and tshirts and hats have been printed for Hacker Jeopardy thanks to BigEdog.

I haven’t even selected what talks I’m going to yet, I suppose I’ll update that tomorrow. Even though some people have flaked, it is still going to be the biggest turn out of my friends doing anything, ever, plus meeting new people I’ve never met before in person. I even printed up business cards for the occasion.

So let’s say you are going to the con, and you want to track me down? Well, look for me in the official llama-tipping shirt, you can’t miss it. These are printed coutesy of Finnie.org, of Finnix fame. He’ll be handing out CDs of his Linux distro — ask him for a signed copy. Beware, I will be representing the pro-zombie platform this year, so if you run Windows, I might just try to eat your brain.


]]> http://js-kit.com/rss/markballew.com/blog/p=69 2 Binary Love http://markballew.com/blog/2006/05/17/binary-love/ http://markballew.com/blog/2006/05/17/binary-love/#comments Wed, 17 May 2006 10:16:49 +0000 ballew http://markballew.com/blog/2006/05/17/binary-love/ I just bought one of these shirts:

Any guesses what it says in binary?

You can order them here until May 20th.

If you don’t already read xkcd’s comics, you should start.

]]> http://js-kit.com/rss/markballew.com/blog/p=15 0 Z update and the Mac Mini http://markballew.com/blog/2006/05/10/z-update-and-the-mac-mini/ http://markballew.com/blog/2006/05/10/z-update-and-the-mac-mini/#comments Wed, 10 May 2006 13:10:20 +0000 ballew http://markballew.com/blog/2006/05/10/z-update-and-the-mac-mini/ On the computer front, my file server seems to have forgotten about it’s network interface. I don’t know how long ago this happened, but I guess I should fix it. Backups are sort of important, and all my backups get dumped onto this box every night.

The Z is happily compiling Konqueror-embedded and xmms, and has been for a few hours now. The poor thing has some pretty terrible disk I/O, and I’m wondering if it would just be faster to do my compiles over the wireless with NFS. The disk is really slow — like it matters though. When I put it into daily use I’m not going to be compiling things all the time. I’m going to post a Palm TX vs. Z SL-C3200 review here in a few days and post my package builds as well. Openbsd doesn’t include pre-compiled packages for the Z, much to my chagrin.

I’m in the process of finding all the bits and pieces for my Mac Mini so I can put it up on Craigslist. So far I have the Mac Mini (512MB, wifi, bt, super drive, 1.42Ghz), Belkin Hub for Mac Mini, and iSight gathered together. I need to reload the OS, stick it in a box, then see how much I can get someone in the city to give me for it. I’m thinking about $600 for everything, maybe $500. I don’t know what I’m going to do with the extra cash since it counts as computer budget, and there isn’t anything I really want right now. Perhaps I’ll get a Happy Hacker keyboard for work and save the rest for later?

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