CheckThisShitOut.com

Halloween Fun & Possible Cat Abuse?

admin — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 00:21:04 +0000

Halloween has come and gone, naturally like every year I worked straight through it. But I can’t say we missed all the fun. Well not all of us had fun.

[Show as slideshow]

Unboxing the eeePC

admin — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 03:46:12 +0000

So for some of you who know me, I’ve been going on about the eeePC laptop for sometime and I recently (today) received a free eeePC 4G Surf from my bank. As I switched to some new account type and jumped through all their hoops. Needless to say I am pretty pleased so far and can’t wait to get hacking on this thing. Enough with the talk, on with the pictures.

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Wedding Blitz

admin — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:02:18 +0000

Every once in a while I get invited to a wedding, I have for the most part been able to avoid these gatherings through various external factors that are beyond my control. However this time I made it. The following shots are from a wedding I attended in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. If anyone would like the full size images, just send me an email.

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The Yellow Dook

admin — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:04:07 +0000

Where to begin with this one? Well the parking lot where I work is like most parking lots, a place to store your vehicle and a hobo’s washroom. Needless to say, someone took a dook in the parking lot and it sat there for sometime. Apparently the building maintenance people won’t deal with that sort of thing.

Shortly after this event there was some construction and scaffolding was erected. The scaffolding was on wheels and was stored along the wall where the dook was placed. Needless to say the wheels flattened the dook and it sat there for sometime. This weekend they repainted the lines in the parking lot, and the below is the result.

I proudly present “The Yellow Dook”.

The Battle

admin — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 03:39:10 +0000

Obligatory Wii boxing video.

[See post to watch Flash video]

mkdvdiso

admin — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 17:17:05 +0000

A simple perl script utilizing mkisofs that takes a VIDEO_TS directory full of vobs and creates a dvd iso image. It needs a bit of further modification to make it more robost, but the basics are there and its fully usable.

#!/usr/bin/perl
#
# a script to create dvd iso images using mkisofs
# created by: Michael Sutherland, May 22, 2008
#
 
use warnings;
use strict;
use Getopt::Long;
 
## variables ##
my $mkisofs = '/usr/bin/mkisofs';
my $path    = '';
my $iso     = '';
my $title   = '';
my $cmd;
 
## user options ##
 
GetOptions(
        "path=s"        =>      \$path,
        "iso=s"         =>      \$iso,
        "title=s"       =>      \$title,
);
 
## sanity checks ##
 
if ( ( ! $path ) || ( ! $iso ) || ( ! $title ) ) {
 
    &usage();
}
 
if ( ! -f $mkisofs ) {
 
    print "unable to find mkisofs at $mkisofs\n";
    exit 2;
}
 
## flush the buffer ##
$| = 1;
 
## program start ##
 
$cmd = "$mkisofs -dvd-video -J -L -r -V $title -o $iso $path 2>&1";
#print "running: $cmd\n";
 
open (MKISOFS, "$cmd |"); 
 
while () {
 
    chomp($_);
    printf "\rmkdvdiso: %40s", $_ if /estimate finish/;
}
 
printf "\rmkdvdiso: %40s\n", "completed at";
 
## subroutines ##
 
sub usage() {
 
    print "mkdvdiso - a quick utility for creating dvd iso images\n\n";
    print "usage:\n";
    print "\t-path\tpath and directory containing the VIDEO_TS 
            & AUDIO_TS folders\n";
    print "\t-iso\tpath and name of iso image to be created\n";
    print "\t-title\ttitle for the dvd iso image\n";
 
    exit 1;
}

Lirc and iMon Receiver Pauses

admin — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 17:14:34 +0000

Well recently I split my two myth boxes into a true slave and master configuration. I have to admit this was more troublesome that I expected. I decided my myth box in the living room would be a slave with no tuner. Since the case (silverstone lc10m) has the built in imon IR receiver, I figured I was all set.

I was even more impressed when I found out lirc now offers direct support and I no longer had to use venky’s build.

However as usual I encountered an issue. I was able to compile and install lirc without issue. Using irw produces output from the multi-median remote. But it also highlights another issue. The ir receiver just randomly stops receiving signals and hangs for about a minute. This was very frustrating and I hit the forums trying to find an answer. All I could find was from an earlier revision of lirc from around 2005, after that nothing.

As far as I can understand it, it appears that LCDproc is interfering with the ir receiver somehow. So here I am stuck with lirc that kinda works and no real solution. I will continue to search for the answer but until then, I’m stuck using a keyboard, which is not ideal.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Where’s The Disk Space?

admin — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 17:12:41 +0000

Interested in what exactly is consuming most of my disk space on my laptop I took a look using Disk Inventory X. The little utility fired up and scanned my hard drive in no time.

When the scan was complete I was given a detailed map of everything on my hard drive, organized by directory. Optionally there is also a side menu showing file usage by type. This comes in very handy for finding out where all your disk space is being used.

Maybe I should just get a larger disk?

Internet Security

admin — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 17:10:00 +0000

I’m ready to surf the web!

Mike Simpson

admin — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 17:08:18 +0000

Well for all of you who have ever wondered what you would look like in the world of the simpsons, just head on over to simpsonsizeme.com and upload a picture of yourself.

After a few manual final touches you yourself can become a springfield resident.

Thats me after I uploaded a simple head shot and let the website do its magic.