by cg on September 30, 2006
Just as we reached the top of the hill where Stanford’s Big Dish radio telescope is located on our Saturday 6-mile jog, spouse Linda yelled. I, with my head down and puffing up the steep (for me) trail, had missed this very pretty brown-and-white hawk perched on a signpost immediately opposite the Dish.
Mr./Ms. Hawk didn’t seem to be too worried as I sidled up for a series of portraits: it wasn’t until a 3rd jogger approached that (s)he left the perch, briefly. After we cleared out, (s)he returned to the outlook..
by cg on September 30, 2006
Lately, spouse has needed to record some interviews. At the recommendation of one of Linda’s colleagues, I wound up setting her up on our Mac with Audacity, the open source audio digitizer/recorder for Mac OS X, Linux and Windows. Linda was collaborating with colleagues on other platforms, and it was nice to have source files that were interchangeable.
The MP3 export of the interview was the easiest thing to exchange, however. Everbody could listen to it: iTunes would play it back, as would dozens of other commonly available free or cheap software packages. I took note of that, given that I was thinking of replacing my trusty Olympus Pearlcorder J300 (which was standing by, in case of tech problems with Audacity and/or the Mac).
I used the Olympus, a microcassette recorder, while I was working for NewsForge, to conduct interviews, record speeches and presentations et al. Mitch Kapor, Jonathan Schwartz, some officials I talked to about the 2003 blackout and others were among the many who spoke into this diminutive machine.
My early years as a journalist taught me always to buy the most reliable technology when it was something you had to rely on every day, and that wasn’t always the latest and most expensive thing. In 2003, digital audio recorders were available, but they were expensive, and among the machines that allowed moving a digital file to a computer, most required you to use proprietary software to decode a proprietary format.
So rather than spend $300+ on a machine that would make something called DSS files, I opted to spend $70 on a microcassette recorder that was well regarded by fellow writers, who noted that its built-in mic and electronics did a remarkable job in everything from giant halls to one-on-one interviews to phone interviews. All who had tried recording direct-to-PC noted it was usually more awkward than just using a purpose-built machine like the J300.
I figured I could always digitize the tapes if need be, and bought the Olympus. In practice, the microcassettes were inexpensive and easy to use and store, and I never bothered digitizing. I could put on good headphones, and type my story as I played back, rewound and replayed the interview.
It worked fine for speeches in giant halls like San Francisco’s Moscone Center, on podiums at press conferences, phone interviews (with a $25 Radio Shack adaptor) and, once, during a cell-phone interview conducted in my car at the side of a road. The biggest drawbak of the Olympus was turning the tape over after 30 minutes, and/or putting in a new tape.
So I replaced the Olympus, not with a $300 digital recorder, but with a $50 RCA model. The main reason is that the $50 RCA RP 5030 records direct to mp3. The Sony and Olympus models I looked at, all recorded to WMA, and some of those models required Windows and a proprietary app to move files over USB. The RCA is a USB mass-storage device – just plug it in on Mac, Linux or Windows and grab the mp3s. Its UI is straightforward, it uses AAA batteries and has mic and earphone jacks, as well as voice-actuated record… if it doesn’t work out, the investment has been modest…
by cg on September 29, 2006
Our Mac OS X 10.4 Server, which has been turned off for a couple of months, has just been booted. Not sure exactly what, if anything we’ll be doing with this machine, but we’re going to give it another hard look.
Earlier we had thought our inexpensive half-terabyte array and some lightweight software and a couple of Mac Minis would take over our LAN chores and experimental work. But, as we’ve chronicled, the NAS SMB shares are not particularly stable on our Mac LAN, and copying large directories (e.g., the contents of all our old hard drives) is a minor nightmare: SMB doesn’t support the same character set as Mac HFS, so the copy process stops dozens (or hundreds) of times during a large transfer when a filename contains an ‘illegal’ character.
The first thing OS X Server did was prompt to be upgraded, to OS X Server 10.4.8 (which patch seems to have appeared just today) and QuickTime 7.0.1 – 250.8 MB of updates (rather reminds one of Windows XP). After a restart, we fired up the admin program.
DNS admin still appears to be broken: it doesn’t know what version of BIND we’re running, or when it started (even though the other admins know this info). It also doesn’t show any zones, even though the log file shows the zones being loaded without error, and the DNS works when accessed from the LAN. At issue, I think, is that I placed DNS host and config files in BIND’s directories before booting (the normal way that BIND is configured), and OS X Server Admin won’t display them.
It apparently shows zones et al. only if you configure via OS X Server Admin program. But I have the files already from my old Linux server, so why re-enter the data host by host? I’ve noticed grumbling about DNS in OS X Server on Apple’s and other user forums – I can’t see any reason Server Admin doesn’t support a standard technology in its BSD core.
Just for fun, we did fire up the built-in blogging server (seen above) and have created the world’s most secret (and, possibly, pointless) blog. No one can see it but me… and I wrote it. Some may think it’s perfect… I can vainly peruse my thoughts, without inflicting them on the ‘net. Heh. This might be a good place to keep a diary, come to think of it.
Anyway, the AFP performance, on our gigabit network, is snappy, and there are no file-system character mismatch problems. I may be able to get MySQL and PHP going, among other things, giving me a staging server to try out things before posting them on the ‘real’ gulker.com. Stay tuned: in learning OS X Server we clearly have a major way to tune out of other, more distressing pursuits…
by cg on September 27, 2006
Long day, now sitting in front of a Mac listenig to Los Lobos’ latest, The Town and The City, downloaded from iTunes. of course. This band does not disappoint. Moi, I love Chuco’s Cumbia and The Road to Gila Bend, but every cut has its charm…
by cg on September 26, 2006
With the Mini finally upgraded, we can get down to the fun part, architecting the new LAN. First stop will be to learn a bit more about DNS behavior, and then doing the back-of-envelope diagrams that serve as a starting point. The half-terabyte array, an SMB share, is proving to be problematic on our Mac network. The drives drop off mysteriously, and copying large directories is problematic – SMB doesn’t accept many characters in filenames that are OK on Mac and HFS, so a copy operation like a full-drive backup frequently fails. The debate is whether to bring back Mac OS X Server, or netatalk on Linux.
The DNS is already up, but we’re still seeing an issue with forwarding happening slowly: I think a dive into the log files may be necessary to figure out what’s going on. So first we’ll get basic DNS going and then begin solving the other issues…
by cg on September 25, 2006
We bought a movie from iTunes last night, just to see what the experience was like. The movie starts as soon as the first bits are down, but it stalled frequently as playback overtook download. We watched an hour of Enemy of the State, quite the topical flick given the current US government’s penchant for overiding citizen’s rights, in about 90 minutes.
In Enemy of the State (a Disney flick starring Will Smith and Gene Hackman), government zealots subvert government machinery (the NSA) to kill a congressman they see as ‘obstructionist’ and then, serially, an environmentalist whose government-grant-funded video camera captures the murder, and a private investigator, just to intimidate a lawyer who has been passed information about the murder. The film ends with thirteen people slaughtered, the denouement of a ‘black ops’ mission. It’s Hollywood, but if you haven’t been rethinking the Patriot Act et al., start now… very scary…
by cg on September 24, 2006
It was a struggle, and the Mini almost didn’t make it through the process, but the Intel Mini now sees al 2 GB of its new Techworks RAM from Other World Computing. The problem may not have been bad RAM: the problem may well have been a very small metal tab on the retaining clip on the bottom RAM slot. It had popped out of its small receptacle, which meant one side of the SO DIMM wasn’t being held quite as firmly as the other side.
I noticed this after an hour of switching the new and old SO DIMMs and repeatedly rebooting. Only Slot 0 would show up as good, regardless of which chip was where. It was the last thing I tried before I was going to send both DIMMs back and ask for a refund. Anyway, the LAN project can now progress. Whew…
by cg on September 23, 2006
Saturday has been busy: we finally have found some time not booked for other activities. We set the spouse up so she could record interviews from the phone to the Mac (with a couple panic ‘help desk’ calls along the way), did the shopping (including presents for an upcoming baby shower), bought a new Canon ip6220D printer to replace our now-dead Epson 1270, talked the Apple Store into replacing my dead MacBook Pro power supply, met ace painter Jerry Clark to get a quote on our remodel project, and, oh yeah, jogged the killer Dish run.
So, we’re ready for some down time. I didn’t even want to think about fixing the Mini, so I’m veging out with the new iTunes – I like the 3D, animated Cover Flow UI for browsing my albums and other music. First effort, buying Los Lobos’ The Town and The City resulted in a Windows-like Cascade of 14 useless error messages. After a restart, and patience while the iTunes site sorted itself out, our favorite East L.A. band’s (and my vote for the all time masters of Tejano) latest album showed up. So we’re happily listening to mellow, compelling rhythms as we blog away… heh, bliss…
by cg on September 21, 2006
With 5 months under our belt using the half-terabyte array, we are re-thinking completing the project by adding 2 more 250 GB NAS drives. These SMB shares (aka CIFS as the Mac prefers to ID them) have a way of dropping off the network. Often, they can’t be remounted without restarting them (this takes me back to the early days of network servers).
Given the cost – cheap – I guess I can’t complain, but things like automated backups fail when the NAS won’t mount. You can imagine preventable disasters while on vacation etc. under these circumstances, especially given Murphy’s near-perfect batting average.
Macs have problems with SMB shares, IMHO. I see this at work frequently enough. But then, Windows has problems with SMB, though perhaps less often (also observed at work). I wish I could say that Mac OS X Server’s AFP was take-it-to-the-bank solid, but I’ve had some issues there, too (on Server 104.x anyway – I think Server 10.3.x is better). And, the last time I tried, NFS was not particularly mature on OS X (that was a while ago, though). I’ve had good luck with netatalk Appleshare-over-IP on Linux in the past, but that defeats my plan to move the whole gulker.com LAN to our 2 Minis. Sheesh… new plan in the works… upgrade the drives in our AMD Linux box?
by cg on September 21, 2006
Even after 17 years of jogging the same circuit, there are still surprises. As I made my way past the corral by Stanford’s Red Barn this morning, I noticed for the first time that Hoover Tower was visible from this spot – silhouetted here against the morning sky. Linda was surprised that she had never noticed, either. If the rising sun hadn’t been just so, I would likely not have noticed…