JDPFu.com 2025

This site may be up and down the next few days as we upgrade operating systems on the main machine.

We plan to migrate almost everything to a backup server and have it perform the services, but sometimes plans don’t work out.

For the last few years, we’ve all seen the iPhone, iTouch, WindowsMobile, and Blackberry options for portable computing. Each has there place, especially when you aren’t paying for them.

I have a few problems with them – the radio and that they aren’t general purpose computers with lots and lots of free software. Basically, I wanted a platform that could do the following things in a highly portable container, securely, with great battery life.

1. IMAPS email to my server
2. Browse the real web, not some mobile-limited sites only
3. wifi with WPA2 as the default network
4. Skype and SIP clients for voice calls (I use my cell phone tho)
5. MP3 playback (other formats supported too) OGG or other codecs you decide, not Apple
6. Occasional video playback – mp4 and many, many other formats via mplayer
7. rsync/ssh to servers
8. Mapping/GPS (with a tiny GPS Receiver added on)
9. Blogging and note taking device (with an iGo Bluetooth keyboard)
10. Nearly unlimited expansion via memory (SD cards)
11. disconnected from the cell network, so the connectivity can be upgraded outside this device. I use a cheap Motorola cell phone with a 3G data plan via Bluetooth when there’s no wifi available.
12. USB connectivity to pull photos from a camera during travels (yes, swapping memory would be better, but I sadly bought a Sony camera). External HD also support this way.
13. Youtube to kill some time. Other video formats are supported, but some are challenging for playback – it is only a 400MHz CPU after all. That doesn’t mean you can’t convert with a simple script into whatever format works best.
14. High res screen (800×480)

So there’s a bunch of bluetooth happening here. Why? Bluetooth connection mean the cell phone radio can be upgraded as desired – -fairly cheaply. It also stays in the backpack – same for the GPS receiver, and keyboard if you plan to type much.

My solution? Why, a Nokia N800. It runs Linux, so there are many, many free applications. It is backed by Nokia, so there’s a commercial GPS app. I use Maemo Mapper – completely free. Since it runs Linux, when I’m at home, I can ssh into the device and setup files, move music or other files over, and pull photos off it. The uses are nearly unlimited and completely under your control.

The best part? In Feb 2008, an N800 costs $219. That’s half the price of an iPhone – with no monthly data plan payment needed. AND I can load the apps I like, not just apps that Apple or Nokia think I should. Pick an audio file format, you can probabaly use it, provided the DRM works. If it doesn’t, convert it to any format you like – FLAC, OGG, MP3, MP4, whatever you need. Same for video.

The Nokia isn’t perfect. Typing without an external keyboard sucks. It is a read-only device then. That means replying to email isn’t something you’ll do very much. If that’s what you need – get a Blackberry. But when you are portable and on the move, read-only is generally what you need. Reading PDF docs, recording voice notes, using Skype for international calls, using the GPS to find a shortcut or simply listening to your favorite music for a few hours on an airplane. The N800 does all these things nicely, without the extra cost of the other alternatives or the weight of a full laptop. Even taking a keyboard, GPS receiver, and tiny router, we’re still way under the size and weight of most laptops.

Sometimes you just want a small cell phone and don’t want to carry more. How’s that iPhone then? Some more reasons
and a demo of an N770 you may like. That is an older model.

Comparison between the N800 and iTouch might be better? They cost about the same amount. Here’s the big differences, as I see them:

1. swap the memory or not?
2. General purpose browser (Mozilla) or specialized?
3. OSS Apps or Apple-only approved apps?
4. clunky UI or beautifully designed UI? – this could be important to some
5. Multitude of audio file formats supported like FLAC, OGG, MP3, whatever or just iTunes?
6. Multitude of video file formats supported (mp4, avi, mpg2, whatever or just iTunes?
7. IMAPS email or not?
8. GPS or not?
9. Skype or not?
10. Lots of peripherals or lots of expensive peripherals?
11. General purpose portable computer or specific Music player?

It’s your choice. How much is usability on a limited device worth?

Update 2020 at the bottom.

Tonight I got an automated call from Comcast asking how well my recent service calls had gone. My answers got me handed over to a real person, which turned out to be a good thing.

She transferred me to a Tier 3 guy. Basically, he strongly suggested I plug the modem into a different wall jack with just a PC. He stayed on the line while I did this … My almost empty living room is the only open jack in the house … carry, carry, find cable A, B, laptop, check firewall is on … plug, reboot router. Speedtest … 22Mbps down, 3.2Mbps up. DAMN! Kewl!

a) I was using a gold plugged coax cable this time. Perhaps it was the cable in my office or the coax from outside to the office … or something else … start simple. Only 1 change at a time.

b) Take the setup back to the office … plug the identical golden coax, modem, ethernet and PC in. Speedtest … 19M/2.2M! I can live with that.

c) Swap just the coax – I’d figured that was the issue. Nope.

d) Add the router back in, unplug all but the uplink and cable to the PC – no switch 1.9M/110K up. My router? Nooooooooo! Swap the 10+ year old ethernet cable with the one I’d been using for the router/modem connection. No change.

e) Swap in 2 old routers … forget to reboot the modem so they refuse to get DHCP addresses … finally figure that out on my original 1-port linksys router circa 1998. Run speedtest. 7M/300K … it is 10 years old, so the network chips weren’t meant to get that much speed.

f) Back to my $20 Buffalo running an OSS OS with 1.9M/110K up. Turn off the SPI firewall and QoS – port filtering is still enabled. Now that I’m on a different phone system, I don’t need QoS. 32M/3.3M Yippy!!!!

Ok, so what did I learn today?
1) I’m not convinced it was the router slowing everything down. My connection has been 2M/256K for years.
2) Retighten your coax cables.
3) Swap any legacy ethernet cables.
4) Lastly, go to a simpler router config – especially if you are using QoS or any complex features.
5) I doubt any of this would have mattered 2 weeks ago, before Comcast found issues with my outside cable and put a line amp on the coax inside my home.

Obviously, those speeds are using the “speedboost” and aren’t real world “grab a Linux ISO” speeds. Still, they are impressive. The last wired test was 32M/3.3M, wireless was 7M/2M, that’s 802.11a with a 72Mbps connection.

So in 2020, after years of getting 15/2.5Mbps, I swapped in a GigE router running OPNsense and ran the a speedtest:
Download: 29.71 Mbit/s Upload: 5.96 Mbit/s
That’s a little more than the promised performance for the tier of service we get. I’m on a 25/5 plan (to my knowledge). Nothing else has been changed in any major way the last 10 yrs. Same ethernet cables. Same Coax cables, just more capable APU2 router hardware. Doubt I can get better throughput, but there is 1 more setting in the APU2 I need to check for getting full GigE speeds. To be fair, very little local traffic even hits the APU2 router at all. Local traffic is mostly on the same LAN or directly connected via dumb ethernet switches for the storage network.

For the last 10 years, I’ve been doing batch jobs on my server the hard way.

That’s a big confession. For 10 years, I’ve been doing it the hard way. You know, you have a bunch of things to get done, but don’t want them to all run at the same time. Hundreds of little jobs, or perhaps 20 BIG jobs, it doesn’t matter. All this time, I’ve been using at as a manual scheduler. Basically, do something in 20 min, or 60 min or 2 hours or next Friday. Whatever, at is fairly powerful, but for batch jobs where the goal is to use the CPU to the fullest, but not overtax it, at is less than ideal. There could be too many jobs running or unused CPU time. Inefficient.

Then I finally followed up on a freshmeat.net annoucement – ts. Task Spooler, ts, is just that, a queue of tasks. It is a queue where you submit batch jobs to be run. By default, there’s no configuration needed. At this point, I’m not using any configuration. Basically, you pre-pend ‘ts’ in front of your normal command and it adds each to the queue. Installation was trivial – make install
Command line options work as you’d expect – they are passed to the batch unmolested. The environment is also properly retained.

$ ts encode_video some_video_1.mpg
$ ts encode_video some_video_2.mpg
     o
     o
     o
$ ts encode_video some_video_30.mpg
$ ts encode_video some_video_40.mpg

is all that is needed. To monitor your jobs, run ‘ts’ alone.

I’ve told my ts server to run 2 jobs, since I have a dual core processor. It will always ensure no more than 2 jobs are running. The output can be captured and logged or stored into files, or whatever.

You do have to clean up the list of jobs occasionally. That’s just ‘ts -C’`.

It understands that you may want more than 1 queue – using environment variables, you can setup multiple queues with different settings. Then you can set your scripts to use whatever job queue you like. To setup different queues, just set the environment variable that controls the FIFO used. Here’s an example.

export TS_SOCKET=/tmp/tlm-stuff

Uses for different queues?

• a download queue
• a backup queue
• a CPU intensive use queue

Oh, source code is provided. I’m using it on Linux, but guess it will work on any POSIX compliant OS. Get it here.

Yesterday, a Comcast tech spent almost 3 hours at my home. Primarily, he installed their VoIP device onto my coax network. Along the way, he fixed a few other things …

My wants:

1. Phone service
2. On-Demand to work (stopped working a few months ago)

What the tech did:

1. Found and corrected a nick in the main coax to the street (nick was on the street side, not my house side).
2. Added an amplifier to the coax network
3. installed a SIP ATA/UPS in my breakfast room (my request)
4. replaced a 10 year old cable to the digital cable box – he called it “blow back” on 1 end of it. That didn’t fix my on-demand.
5. replaced a coax splitter on the HDTV
6. Swapped out my old bundle for a new bundle – goodbye Dexter, hello Entourage.
7. He didn’t have an HD cable box in the truck, so he said I needed a new one.
8. All of us are on hold with the VOIP Install Team – 30 minutes! They finally answer and ask 5 trivial questions. This call was made using my new phone service.
   Cost $0, besides the $39 install of the phone service.

1. I log in to my old SIP service and forward all calls to the new temp Comcast number. Test. Working.
2. Log in to GC and remove the old number and add the new number to my global phone service. Test. Working.
3. Unplug my phone system from my ATA and plug into the house wiring. All phones are working.
   The voice quality is as good or better than BellSouth ever was. $19.95/month with unlimited local and long distance. Since I did a bundle (internet, digital cable, phone, hbo/starz) the monthly price is fixed for 1 year. It should be $130/month. That is what I was paying without hbo/phone, but I had Showtime. So, for the same price, I get phone. I’ll miss shotime, but not that much. Of course, they tried to get me to get it all for $158/month – all channels – sports, HBO, SHO, MAX, TMC, STARZ, IFC, etc. everything. Perhaps after I get some income, who knows.

This morning, I:

1. took the old HD cable box to the local Comcast and swapped it out. New box has firewire output too.
2. Plugged everything back in … fixed the connections … HBO isn’t working – except on-demand. It works now. Reboot. Wait … HBO channels not working.
3. Called Comcast … they answered quickly and immediately turned on the HBO and other services that weren’t working. Good.
4. In need to figure out how to connect my laptop to the firewire port and record unencrypted QAM shows in HiDef.
   Cost $0.

While I had them on the phone, I complained that my internet speed didn’t test out anywhere near the advertised speed 8M/384K – I get 2M/180K. Transferred to the internet department … he looked at my devices and didn’t see any issues over the last 2 months except the occasional reboot. No errors. Time to schedule a tech. Monday.

Today, we make a list of important items to take with us should we need to leave home quickly for 3 days.

What’s Your Backup Plan?

Over the next few days and weeks, we’ll try to discuss what you need to plan in advance and what to take with you when a disaster occurs in your part of the world.

• Part 1-the scenario
• Part 2-Preparation is Key
• Part 3-System Backups

Don’t think disaster will happen? These people had now way to know their data center was going down.

About the author:
I’ve worked for a large telecom company designing computer and network systems that keep working after a disaster occurs. Those plans are tested twice a year – most of the time the first test doesn’t completely work, but you learn and make corrections. Over the years, you get better and better at it and learn that having the exact software stack isn’t all you need – sometimes the hardware is 1-of-a-kind too. Or the software assumed EXACT IP addresses and won’t work anywhere else or if an interfacing system isn’t at a particular IP address.
Don’t forget that all the normal people that run the computers and network are gone. They’ve been evacuated elsewhere and you need to plan for their extended absence. Not1 or 2 people, but hundreds of your critical support people. They don’t have cell phones.

Ok, so your life isn’t this complex. Neither is it as simple as jumping you and the family into the minivan and driving away. Be Prepared.

1. Thunderbird – it does email and calendaring
2. Firefox (using 3.x now) Web Browser (plugins follow)
   1. Adblock Plus – ads, what are those?
   2. NoScript – only use JavaScript when YOU want
   3. Sage-Too – RSS Feeds!!!
3. Linux and all the expected shell tools – duh.
   1. ssh – duh.
   2. tcsh – the one true shell
   3. rsync – backups anyone?
   4. Perl – for hacking together quick needs
   5. Software RAID for linux
4. TrueCrypt – keep your private data, private
5. MS-Excel – I’m embarrassed, but us it to track my stock prices
6. Quicken
7. Xming – an X/Windows server for win32
8. Firefly – SIP phone client that supports g.729. I did use X-Lite, before with g.711.
9. Launchy – a quick launch for win32 – this should be much higher in this list.
10. Hamachi – private networks for my friends; win32 and linux versions
11. ReNamer – file renamer by pattern matching – win32
12. VLC & WinAMP & Amarok – Linux & win32
13. VideoReDo Plus – win32 video editor
14. Typo for blogging – SQLite3 too – Ruby, so it runs everywhere. SQLite runs everywhere.
15. mplayer/mencoder – media processing (Linux & win32)
16. AVG Free – antivirus scanning; never pay for this.
17. IrfanView/gqview – image/media viewers
18. NoteCase – thought organizer with encryption. Runs on Win32, Linux, Mac, AND Nokia N800 with identical data files
19. MeD_MovieManager – Java-based Movie Database with links to IMDB.
20. Putty – ssh client

I’m certain that some have been forgotten. You should check out the items in BOLD. Seriously.

Today, I upgraded my backend search indexer to the latest version of swish++. I’ve been using swish-e and swish++ for YEARS and YEARS. We’re talking about 10 here. I’ve also used htdig and been mostly happy with it.

Today, we’ve turned on a new blogging system for our site. Hopefully, it will be much faster than the old site. It certainly is more network efficient.