So, starting today, I’ve begun the process of migrating my websites out of my apartment and onto the server. In another 3 hours, the data transfer should be complete and at that point I can begin testing to make sure I’ve remembered to install all the software and have the server configured correctly. Once I’m satisfied that everything is ready, I’ll update DNS to reflect the address of the new server and everyone should (hopefully) see a seamless transition as I’ll implement redirects while the new DNS settings propagate.

For those of you using Linode, do you have any suggestions for me? Nifty tips and tricks? Things to watch out for? If so, please, let me know.

UPDATE:

And the transition to Linode is complete. If you notice any problems, please let me know.

The solution is pretty simple: remove the case, open the tray and then unplug the unit. Inside you’ll see the portion that spins the discs. Give this a few good whirls and start it up again. If it doesn’t spin on its own, spin it around yourself a couple times and it should start up.

So, for a multitude of reasons, I can’t easily put my lattitude, longitude and elevation into my photos. The camera doesn’t support it, the GPS doesn’t support it and Garmin doesn’t support OS X. Luckily though, I’m not the only one that wants to do this. My friend Gowtham informed me of an application called GPSPhotoLinker which uses track logs to find the appropriate coordinates and enter that data into the photo’s EXIF data. (Track logs being a log stored by most GPS receivers containing information about longitude, latitude and elevation with a timestamp.)

Since my GPSr allows me to save these track logs to the microSD card I have installed, I can simply use a card reader to pull the logs. (Fear not though, the program claims to support pulling them off the device over USB.) Once I have the log on my machine, I simply load it into the program via the button at the top of the screen.

After that, load the photos. Upon going to the batch menu, you’ll be presented with some options. You can tell the program to ignore images with location data already in the EXIF tags (which I recommend) and set tolerances for how close a track point must be to the timestamp in the photo’s EXIF data. You can also set it to link to the nearest track point or a time-weighted average point.

Once you’re done, simply push the “Batch save to photos” button and sit back while you wait.

I knew going in that Garmin has horrible support on both Linux and OS X. In fact, basically the only thing you can do on OS X is upgrade the GPS receiver’s firmware. On Linux, well… don’t even bother. What I didn’t anticipate was the difficulty I’d have figuring their software out once I had it installed in Parallels on my Mac. While I got it working eventually, this isn’t something I’d expect my parents to figure out. What’s more, Garmin’s GPS receivers that use USB interfaces (like the Legend HCx) don’t output NMEA data streams. And of course, it’s a closed spec, so don’t expect to hook your GPS up to anything besides Windows and get a data stream. So yeah, Garmin ignores everyone who doesn’t run Windows. Those of us who have been free of it for a while are used to that though.

How does the unit actually perform? That’s the important thing. Simply put, the reception is amazing. If you need to know the exact position of your toilet in a windowless bathroom to within 3 feet, this is the unit for you. The reception is great, the only place I’ve been with it where I can’t get a fix on my location is the basement of an 8 story building. That’s no surprise though as it is basically a concrete bunker. It handles my car, the woods, valleys and even canyons remarkably well. Besides spelunking, I wouldn’t hesitate to take it anywhere with me.

What about battery life? It’s pretty good as well. The Legend HCx runs on two AA batteries (I use rechargeable NiMH ones) and Garmin says you get 25 hours on a set. I’m seeing closer to 30 hours per charge, but I’m using 2650 maH batteries.

Storage isn’t a problem either. While the unit doesn’t have much built in, the microSD card slot in the battery compartment means effectively unlimited storage space for maps, tracks and routes. You’ll definitely want to take advantage of this storage to put better maps on the unit. The Legend HCx basemap is incredibly sparse and only shows major highways. Features on the landscape are often out of place as well… more than once the GPSr claimed I was walking in Lake Superior as I drove along the highway.

Auto-routing with the unit is pretty good… though it has it’s moments of sheer frustration. On a recent trip to Green Bay, the GPSr really wanted to route me over a particular bridge. There was only one problem… the bridge had been torn out to be replaced. I obviously couldn’t drive over it and the Legend HCx doesn’t have a way for me to tell it the bridge is gone (like on a Tom-Tom). So, I backtracked, drove to another bridge and crossed the river, at which time the Legend recalculated my route… and directed me back over the bridge. Luckily traffic wasn’t heavy at the time and I was able to use the street maps on the device to navigate my own way the last few miles. Beside that one incident though, the unit has been spot on using maps from Mapsource Metroguide (Garmin’s mapping software). Once a newer version of City Navigator is out, I’ll put out the $150 for that.

All in all, I’ve found the Legend HCx to be a good product, and it is probably one of the best GPS receivers I’ve ever used. Garmin’s interface is easy to learns, the auto-routing is pretty good overall and it’s performance under cover (outside and in) is outstanding. This is a solid win for Garmin. For those considering buying one solely for auto-navigation: look at a Tom-Tom, you’ll probably be happier with one of those.

I pulled an 11 hour day today, and tomorrow looks as if it should be a 12 hour day. (See what I mean about long hours?) It wouldn’t have been so bad, except the technician Dell who was sent to replace the motherboard on one of our new servers discovered the problem wasn’t actually the CPU (well, the pins in one of the sockets on the old one were actually bent). Instead, one of the ISCI cards was bad, and causing the server to spit out the CPU error. Of course, we had disassembled the machine and rebuilt it with the spare parts he brought by the time we figured this out.

But, on to the more interesting part for you non-computer people. I’ve been fairly (at least in relation to the few weeks before my last post) productive on the photography front since the 19th. I finally processed all the photos I took at the ROTC Commissioning on Tech’s Campus in May. I only put a few of the photos online. (I gave the detachments a CD with over 100 photos on it.) You can find them on flickr of course.

I took a few quick snapshots of my new apartment (I know the photos suck, I was in a hurry).

The Centennial Mine is the latest set of industrial ruins to garner my interest. I made an afternoon trip out there as a followup to a trip I made with Kevin in early June. Unfortunately, between now and then, someone had been through and locked up most of the doors, so I was stuck with what I could see from the ground and what I could climb to. It actually turned out to be a fun trip though, and I focused on a lot more of the details than I probably would have otherwise.

The 4th of July rolled around and I made the trip to Copper Harbor for fireworks again. (I went to Lake Linden on the 3rd, but a light fog kept me from taking any pictures that didn’t look like crap.) I’ve said it before, but it needs to be said again: “There’s no better place in the U.S. to watch fireworks than Copper Harbor, MI. I’ll just leave you with photographic proof.

My most recent excursion is one that I’ve been looking to for several years now. Douglass Houghton Falls is one of the most spectacular waterfalls in the area. Unfortunately, it’s not easy to get to and the path is a bit dangerous; this combined with the fact that it is located on private property means it is closed to the public. Honestly, it isn’t hard to see why, I’d be afraid of the liability issues as well. It turns out that I know the land owners though, in fact, I’m a regular at the restaurant she owns. So, my friend Gowtham and I were given a guided tour out to the falls and left to have a very fun photography session. You can see the results in my photostream.

My first, and biggest problem, is that upon rebooting into Feisty, the boot process stopped for maintenance. That’s never a good sign; Linux wasn’t able to identify several of my hard drives. “That’s no big deal.” I thought. “I’ll just log in and see what’s up, I know my data is safe.” Well, it turns out that in Feisty, the way drives are mounted has changed. No longer are IDE devices mounted using “/dev/hd*#” instead, they’re assigned to “/dev/sd*#” where * is a letter that may or may not match up with the old hd* designation.

Since I have a mix of SATA and IDE drives in my machine, things got complicated pretty quickly. My /etc/fstab (which controls which drives mount where) was in shambles. The computer was trying to mount devices that had changed names. The default way this is now handled in Ubuntu is by assigning a UUID to each partition. This ID allows devices to be mounted no matter what order they’re plugged in, which is cool. If I wanted to reorder my drives and still have them mount in the same places. It’s not so cool when your drives no longer mount and you aren’t sure what’s what.

After some experimentation, I was able to identify all my drives (by mounting every device and seeing what it contained). I then found the UUIDs for each device and edited my /etc/fstab by hand. This is not what I expect from Ubuntu however. If a “normal” user (think Mom or Dad) had run into this problem, they would have been lost and probably would have never recovered their data.

A bug report has been opened and hopefully is solved soon, this is a major problem.

My second problem is that metacity no longer starts up on login. This appears to just be a setting in Gconf that needs to be fixed (things work fine with a new test account). I’ll update this post with the fix once I find it.

Update: I tracked this error down and at some point I apparently created a .gnomerc file when I was playing with compiz. It contained the following information:

export WINDOW_MANAGER=~/.gnome-compiz-manager/openbox

Why this didn’t cause a problem before, I have no idea. I deleted the file and metacity starts again.

My previous phone was a Razr V3, and I was able to sync both Address Book and iCal with it, so I didn’t really believe it wasn’t possible. After searching around the internet for a while, I ran across a solution that worked at whopack.com. It involves changing a iSync file, so make sure to create a backup of any files before you edit them (just in case).

1) Go to your Bluetooth Preferences (either by clicking on the Bluetooth icon on the top bar or through the System Preferences)

2) Click on the Devices button.

3) If you see your phone listed under the bluetooth devices box, delete it.

4) Navigate to your phone’s bluetooth menu and enter the device history.

5) If you see your computer in the list click options and then click delete. Click back to get to the Bluetooth menu. (Find Me, Handsfree, Device History, Setup)

6) If you have synced your phone previously, open iSync and remove the device.

7) Make sure iSync is closed before preceding.

8) There are two methods you can use to add iCal functionality to iSync. The first is easier and I recommend it. If the first one doesn’t work though, try the second.

Proceed.

If the above does not work for you, restore your backup of MetaClasses.plist and open the file (/Applications/iSync.app/Contents/PlugIns/ApplePhoneConduit.syncdevice/Contents/PlugIns /PhoneModelsSync.phoneplugin/Contents/Resources/MetaClasses.plist)in a text editor.
Find the line that reads: com.motorola.razorV3cVerizon
Before that line, insert the following:

<KEY>com.motorola.razorV3m</KEY>
<DICT>
<KEY>Identification</KEY>
<DICT>
<KEY>com.apple.gmi+gmm</KEY>
<ARRAY>
<STRING>Motorola CE, Copyright 2000+Motorola V3m-Sprint Phone</STRING> </ARRAY> </DICT>
<KEY>InheritsFrom</KEY>
<ARRAY>
<STRING>com.motorola.usb-bt.0x22B8/0x4902</STRING> </ARRAY>
<KEY>Services</KEY>
<ARRAY>
<DICT>
<KEY>ServiceName</KEY>
<STRING>com.apple.model</STRING>
<KEY>ServiceProperties</KEY>
<DICT>
<KEY>ModelIcon</KEY>
<STRING>MOTV3-black.tiff</STRING>
<KEY>ModelName</KEY>
<STRING>NC-V3m</STRING> </DICT> </DICT>
<DICT>
<KEY>ServiceName</KEY>
<STRING>com.apple.synchro</STRING>
<KEY>ServiceProperties</KEY>
<DICT>
<KEY>OnlySupportASCIIChar</KEY>
<TRUE />
<KEY>deleteContactBeforeModifying</KEY>
<TRUE />
<KEY>stringEncoding</KEY>
<STRING>UCS2</STRING> </DICT> </DICT> </ARRAY> </DICT>
<KEY>com.motorola.usb-bt.0x22B8/0x2A64</KEY>
<DICT>
<KEY>Identification</KEY>
<DICT>
<KEY>com.apple.usb.vendorid-modelid</KEY>
<STRING>0x22B8/0x2A64</STRING> </DICT>
<KEY>InheritsFrom</KEY>
<ARRAY>
<STRING>family.com.motorola.p2k.usb-bt</STRING> </ARRAY>
<KEY>Services</KEY>
<ARRAY /> </DICT>

Save the file and close it. Proceed

9) Click Find me.

10) On your computer click the Set Up New Device button on the Bluetooth Preference window.

11) Click continue.

12) Select Mobile Phone click continue.

13) Your phone should be appear in the list. Select the phone and click continue.

14) At this next screen click continue.

15) A code should appear on your computer. And your phone should make a noise and ask if you want to bond with the computer.

16) Select yes on the phone.

17) Enter the code which your computer is showing into the phone then push ok.

18) Your computer should show the phone setup with two options both are checked “Set up iSync to transfer contacts and events” and “access the internet with your phone’s data connection”
Leave both checked (or uncheck the latter if you don’t want to use that feature) and hit continue on the computer.

19)On your computer it should say “Congratulations ! your mobile phone is now set up…..” click quit.

20) iSync should have come up. If not, launch iSync.

21) If you do NOT see your phone listed in iSync click on the Devices Menu then click “Add Device” your phone should prompt you again for access click grant.

NOTE: If you do not see your phone or it is marked as not available, then close iSync and reopen it. Now try to click: Devices Menu -> Add Device. It should now show up as a valid phone. Double click on the phone and it will be added into iSync.

22) Choose whether you want to merge the information on the phone and computer or if you want to delete the information from the phone and then sync.

23) Now you should be able to click sync and have your data transfer.

On boot, I see this screen:

What’s this mean? It’s searching for a device to boot from. So, I shove my install media in (my 10.4 install DVD and my System Restore DVD) and get this during the install:

Yeah… it can’t find the hard drive. I was having the same problem when I got it back earlier this week, but was able to get it working via the system restore disk. No such luck anymore. Apple will be getting a phone call from me when they open at 9am EST tomorrow morning. This will be the 6th time I’ve mailed my iBook back to them.

EDIT: And a new box is on the way to me.

Safari’s behavior:

Notice the search box. Also, uploads to flickr aren’t working.

Firefox, Camino and Opera’s behavior:

Quite a bit of the content seems to be there, no text though…

I’m a bit clueless about what to do next. Deleting profiles and preference files seems to do absolutely nothing. If you have any ideas, please let me know.

Note: Pages that are simply html seem to render fine.

Well… technically I only have 1 major complaint. The build quality is less than optimal. And by less than optimal I mean that over the past three years, it has gone back to Apple for:

That’s not to mention the batteries I had to have replaced (Sony’s fault) and the 2 power adapters I had to replace. I honestly don’t understand it, I practically treat this thing with kid gloves. I’ve got a messenger bag it travels in and a padded neoprene sleeve for putting it in my backpack.

Honestly, I’m getting sick of it. Apple’s design choices don’t help the issue either. The construction isn’t modular or user serviceable at all. The hard drive dies, it gets shipped to Apple. The slot-loader dies with a CD that won’t eject, it gets shipped to Apple. How can this be economical when they pay overnight shipping each way?

Whatever, my next laptop probably won’t be a Mac. I want something I can use without having to mail it off twice a year to get something fixed.