JDPFu.com 2025

I was clearing undergrowth from my back yard again this morning – doing a little every day – and hit a yellow jacket hive/hole/something. At first, they looked like sweat bees and I was trying to decide how to photograph them best (nature photography as a hobby) … then a sting … and another and 10+ of them were on me.

Running like a little girl back to the deck … I found more stuck to my shirt and still stinging. Take off the shirt and find 5 stingers stuck all around it. Three on my work gloves … stinging, but not getting through the fabric.

I feel stings on my calves and behind the knee, but don’t see anything down there. Then another on my thigh. Still don’t see it. Pull off the shorts (Go UT!) quickly and find another stuck inside them, still stinging at the cloth. My sandals make good YJ killers.

By now, there are a few pimples where they stung me good and the venom is still a dull ache. Thankfully, I’m not allergic to bees, wasps or yellow jackets, but it still hurts. Most of the stings aren’t showing any signs and even the big pimples are going down now.

Life gets in the way of living sometimes.

Ok, so where’s my bug killer?

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.

This region free hack was successfully applied to my Philips DVP3982

1. Turn on the unit
2. Open the loading tray
3. Press the "Setup" button on the remote
4. Navigate to the "Preferences" page using the right arrow key
5. Enter 138931
6. You will now see the current region code displayed
7. Use the Up/Down arrow keys to select the region required or "0" for all regions
8. Press the "Play" button on the remote

That’s it.

BTW, I wouldn’t buy this player again. Why?

• DSP chipset sucks. philips uses MediaTek something according to VideoHelp.com – eh. Never again.
• It doesn’t play any HD content – at least not with Component Video connections (RGB), so anything over DVD (720p) won’t be played. This is bothersome for x264 and other non-MPEG content. Perhaps HDMI connections will playback – I don’t know.
• No go to this time function. What’s the big deal? Well, if you have non-DVD content and want to get to 45:00 into it, you have to fast forward. Even at 32x speed, it takes awhile.
• Limited scaling. There are preset scales – 1/2, 1/4, 1:1, 2x, 4x, etc… My 8 year old Norcent (Mecotek) with SigmaDesign chipset let me scale horizontal and/or vertical in extremely small steps. That infinite scaling worked to easily correct source aspect ratios too. Too bad this Divx player doesn’t.
• Remote sucks. Pushing any buttons on it takes a few seconds before anything happens. My Home Theater Master universal remote can’t learn the functions either.
• The box and the sticker on the player claims DivxUltra certification, but Divx.com doesn’t say anything.
• No long filename support – when you’re viewing JPG DVDs from travels and the first 15 characters of filenames are close, long filenames are critical. Idiots.
• No Toslink optical audio out!!! Seriously? Good thing I have an open RCA digital audio out left on my THX receiver.
• Playback of some newer xvid encodes stutter. I’m seeing this on other newer devices, but not on computers or my 5 yr old MediaGate. I’m guessing the playback buffer defaults have changed (smaller) with firmware updates.

It isn’t all bad. When it does work with your content, it looks beautiful. The up scaling of TV resolutions is nice. If you are primarily a DVD watcher, this isn’t a bad player to get. The sound is good – 5.1 is nice. It does have HDMI out among other outputs. I used the component out and RCA digital for Dolby5.1 for over a year, but have recently changed to HDMI with a new TV.

Here’s the manual from Philips site.

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.

Stolen from Wikipedia

Here’s an interesting story about Victoria Falls and how close to the edge you can get.

Ok, so I’m migrating my servers from Ubuntu 6.xx to 8.xx and adding Xen virtualization along the way.
So far:

1. Regulus – Athlon 1800+
   1. Xen Dom0 (reg0/regulus) running 8.04 and Xen from the Ubuntu repository.
   2. 1.2GB RAM
   3. 2×250GB Disks (sw mirrored)
      1. Dom1 – reg1 256MB RAM w/ 2GB Virt Disk
      2. Dom2 – reg2 256MB RAM w/ 2GB Virt Disk
2. Romulus – Core 2 Duo still at 6.xx
   This blog is running on reg1 at near native speed.

Next, we will:

1. Migrate the old website from romulus —> Dom2 (it will still be slow)
2. Update our load balancer to use the new xen1/2 domains for all traffic
3. Validate that email, web, SIP, and other traffic works without romulus powered on. Romulus has an external array attached to it, so we’ll lose most of our protected storage.
4. Unplug the external array, do an upgrade upgrade from 6.0x → 7.10 → 8.04 with Xen – not touching the HOME directories. We hope no data lose happens, but it will. It will just be OS related data loss, not HOME or external array stuff.
5. Bring Xen up on romulus Dom0, rom1, rom2, rom3, rom4.
6. Romulus is an Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 that is only pressed into real CPU service running 2 mencoder jobs at the same time. Hardly a worthwhile experience for a CPU like this. It also has 2GB of RAM and well over a TB of external storage in RAID5 config.

There is a risk that we could lose access to the external array – it uses software RAID, not hardware.

As I’m writing this, it seems I’ll need a better method for naming servers with Xen domains on them to limit confusion. – Romulus – rom0, rom1, rom2, rom3 …. Regulus – reg0, reg1, reg2, etc. With matching IP addresses .41, .42, , .51, .52, .53 ….

Why bother with all this?

1. WinXP runs under Xen iff the processor supports VT in hardware. My Athlon doens’t, but the E6600 does. Having an XP machine available will be nice – that is, besides my aging laptop that’s almost 4 years old and still going, but has been beeping every 30-45 minutes for over 2 years.
2. Protected storage – all the Dom1-Dom2 will be on RAID5 storage.
3. Nice monitor, keyboard, mouse -
4. Lower noise
5. Lower heat means lower power consumption – my server room/office gets really warm during the summer.

Firefox3 uses Internet Explorer settings from the Control Panel. This is just stupid. If I wanted IE settings to be used, I’d run IE!!!

For example, I have IE setup to be very safe for the “Internet Zone”. This is to prevent noobs who don’t know anything from causing my machine to be compromised by stupid surfing. I don’t want these settings shared between IE and Firefox. Why should I have to enable file downloads for IE when I only want file downloads to work in Firefox?

Thanks Mozilla team. Genius at work.

You may experience this problem if the Windows option for Launching applications and unsafe files is disabled. To fix this:

1. Start → Settings → Internet Options
2. Select the Security tab.
3. Select the Internet zone and click the Custom level … button.
4. Scroll down to the option, Launching applications and unsafe files (under “Miscellaneous”).
5. Select Prompt (Recommended).
6. Click the OK button.

You hear all the time that to be secure on your PC or server, you need to disable unused services. A few of us have done this, but even for the most experienced person, knowing what each service does isn’t easy.

What are we all to do?

How do you explain to a non-technical person what they need to do?

This guy at BlackViper.com is a trusted source of this type of information. At a minimum, turn off MS-Messenger if you don’t use Microsoft Live. You know, that icon that nags you to login using your old passport login.

BTW, I’ve NEVER had an MS passport login. It hasn’t always been easy since they NAG, but it was worth it to me.

Technology and Travel – what to take?

In General, you want these items

1. Cell phone – GSM with a replaceable SIM card, data plan
2. Portable camera – be certain the memory is compatible with other devices and have an extra battery
3. Portable computer – I use a Nokia N800
   1. encrypted personal files; encryption software with plausible deniability
   2. Skype
   3. email
   4. web browser
   5. any specialized software you need
4. Portable keyboard (if not built in)
5. MP3/Video player
6. GPS or other Mapping device + a simple compass
7. Method to connect the computer, camera, keyboard, MP3 player and to the Internet
   • Bluetooth
   • Cables
   • WiFi Travel Router
8. Chargers – use USB when possible and have the widest voltage, current, wattage support. 100V-240V and 50Hz-60Hz; basically, it is just a plug compatibility issue and no transformer is needed
9. Sound isolation headphones
10. USB thumb drive with encrypted files
    1. Passport images
    2. Personal contact list(s) Family, Work, Friends (also carry a paper version)

My specifics

1. Cheapo Motorola V195 w/ Bluetooth and data
2. SONY DSC-55W camera w/ USB connector cable and USB—>miniUSB converter (my next camera will use SDHC memory that is compatible with the N800)
3. Nokia N800 Internet Tablet (N810 includes GPS and Keyboard)
4. iGo Bluetooth Keyboard
5. Zen Vision:M MP3/MP4 player (N800 can easily perform this task now)
6. Mapping software, Maemo Mapper, is built into the N800 (no GPS)
7. Compass is on my whistle/flashlight/mirror/magnifying glass device
8. SONY has a proprietary charger for their camera battery, but the camera takes 300+ photos between charges. That’s usually a few days for most people. For me, that’s 1 day at most. Bring an extra battery that is charged!
9. Cellphone and MP3 player share a USB charger
10. Nokia N800 has a proprietary charger, but has long battery life with nominal use – 2+ days.
11. D-Link Travel WiFi Router since some hotels only provide wired ethernet

Test it all BEFORE you leave AND make a written packing checklist

Go to a friends home with all the stuff your plan to take, take a photo, transfer it to the computer, upload it to your server back home. Next, write a blog entry. Did it all work?

There’s nothing worse than getting to a location and finding out that you can’t transfer videos because you don’t have a cable or connector or way to connect to the internet. The N800 only supports WiFi or Bluetooth network connections, not an RJ45 cable. Some hotels don’t have wifi yet, but do have wired Internet connections. I’d be SOL in that case.