Javier Isassi

My birthday animation.

2011-12-16T21:25:00.006-05:00

Zabel Corn Candy Animation.

2011-11-01T20:53:00.001-04:00

Click on the empty box.

Play Podcast using mplayer Ruby and zenity

2011-03-26T14:08:00.005-04:00

The following updated to previous post uses the program ffprobe to get the name of the podcast. Also uses clases. Just because.

#!/usr/bin/ruby
require 'find'
#this ruby script lets you access and play your podcasts or any mp4 file from your usb device mounted
#in the directory: media in a Linux system (maybe Ubuntu). Notice i have my Ipod directory hard-code.
#You can hard code yours or modify this script to pass the directory as a paramter.
#Provecho. Javier Isassi

MYDIR ='/media/Javier\'s Ipod/iPod_Control/Music/*/*.mp4'

#first extend the String class with a method to strip quotation marks or any character for that matter.
class String
  def strip_str(str)
      gsub(/^#{str}|#{str}$/, '')
  end
end

class PodcastPlayer
 def initialize(dirname)
     @pcasts = Dir[dirname].sort_by{ |f| File.ctime(f) } 
            @pcastStr = ""
            @_pcast = ""
            @titles = []
            @idx = 99
        end

def getPodcastTitle(p)
              album = ""
       podcastInfo = `ffprobe -v 0 -show_tags \"#{p}\"`
       podcastInfo.each do |l|
                  l.chomp!
                  tokens = l.split(/=/)
                  if tokens[0] == "album"
                      album << tokens[1]
                  end
       end 
              album
        end

def play
          if @idx != 99
      cmd = `mplayer \"#{@pcasts[@idx]}\"`
          end
        end

def displayPanel
   @pcasts.each_with_index do |p, index|
      album = getPodcastTitle(p)
             if album == ""
          tokens = p.split(/\//)
          @pcastStr << "\"#{index}.- #{tokens.last}\"" << " "
             else
          @pcastStr << "\"" << "#{index}.- #{album}"  << "\" "
             end
   end
          #puts "da string is #{@pcastStr}"
   @_pcast=`ans=$(zenity --width=120 --height=500 --list --column \"Podcast\" #{@pcastStr} --separator=\":\"); echo $ans`
          if @_pcast.chomp! == ""
             puts "goodbye!"
          else
             @idx = @_pcast.scan(/\d+/)[0].to_i
             puts "idx is now #{@idx}"
          end
        end

def start
             displayPanel
             play
        end
end

myPcast = PodcastPlayer.new( MYDIR )
myPcast.start

Another way to play your media in Linux using Ruby and Zenity.

2011-03-23T09:03:00.010-04:00

Ruby Code below.

#!/usr/bin/ruby
require 'find'

#this ruby script lets you access and play your podcasts or any mp4 file from your usb device mounted
#in the directory: media in a Linux system (maybe Ubuntu). Notice i have my Ipod directory hard-code.
#You can hard code yours or modify this script to pass the directory as a paramter.
#Provecho. Javier Isassi

#first extend the String class with a method to strip quotation marks or any character for that matter.
class String
  def strip_str(str)
      gsub(/^#{str}|#{str}$/, '')
  end
end

#the following command reads all my podcasts and puts them in array called pcasts from oldest to newest
#powerful ey?
pcasts = Dir['/media/Javier\'s Ipod/iPod_Control/Music/*/*.mp4'].sort_by{ |f| File.ctime(f) }

#The following routine returns the index in my array contaiing the podcast file location
def findPodcast(pcasts,pcast)
  ix = 0
  # the string pcast comes riddled with quotation marks and a newline character at the
  #so first with strip the quotation  all as one-liner 
  pcastClean = pcast.strip_str('"')
  #let us now search each element for the sub-string pacastClean, here I use regular expressions
  pcasts.each_with_index do |p, index |
      if p =~ /#{pcastClean}/
         ix = index
      end 
  end
  ix
end

#The following routine creates a string using the pcasts array for use with zenity..more about that below
def createString(pcasts, pcastStr)
  pcasts.each do |p|
     tokens = p.split(/\//)
     pcastStr << "\\\"" << tokens.last << "\\\" "
  end
end

pcastStr= ""
#create the string to use with zenity
createString(pcasts, pcastStr)

#this is zenity. A program that creates quick and easy GUI menu's to make your life a bit fancier.
#Comes standard with most Linux distributions today.
pcast=`ans=$(zenity  --width=70 --height=500 --list  --column \"Podcast\" #{pcastStr} ); echo $ans`
#blast the new line at the end of the string
pcast.chomp!

#Now that zenity let me select the podcast I want to play, I call findPodcast to return the index, I could just
#have put the whole string in zenity but looks messy, not withstanding that APPLE makes us all a favor by
#mangling the names of the files inside the ipod.
ix = findPodcast(pcasts, pcast)

#Presto I have a file location. Now I play this file using the program mplayer which also comes with any
#Linux distribution. You couls use VLC or whatever media player you fancy.
if pcast != "" 
    cmd = `mplayer \"#{pcasts[ix]}\"`

end

The happiest place on earth.

2009-07-05T08:18:00.008-04:00

No, it is not Disneyland, it is Costa Rica. http://www.happyplanetindex.org

2009-07-03T10:54:00.002-04:00

A few weeks ago Bill Maher let Obama have at it for not doing enough. It rings true. The only thing that Bill doesn't take into account is that when it comes to fixing the world, people have to listen to what you say. To have people listening to what you say, you have to be on TV.

Computer Glitch Stops Flight at O'Hare Airport

2009-07-02T09:24:00.003-04:00

And while we are at it, some field validation software doesn't check for not properly escaped characters. From chicagotribune.com

467,000 Jobs Lost in June 2009

2009-07-02T08:57:00.001-04:00

Around 8:50 EDT the headlines hit all mayor networks. Just following the trend.

Pesky c++ interview questions.

2009-06-30T15:59:00.053-04:00

Things you are suppose to regurgitate during c++ screening interviews (yep, in the real world you can't look up things on the Internet). Mostly lifted from Wikipedia. Posted looking for clarity and avoiding fire-hose effect (bucket loads of information cramming your screen

Smart Pointer: Data type that simulates a pointer while providing additional features, such as automatic garbage collection or bounds checking. These additional features are intended to reduce bugs caused by the misuse of pointers while retaining efficiency. Smart pointers typically keep track of the objects that point to them for the purpose of memory management.

Virtual Function: Function or method whose behavior can be overridden within an inheriting class by a function with the same signature.

Dynamic Cast: Operator, which allows the program to safely attempt conversion of an object into an object of a more specific object type (as opposed to conversion to a more general type, which is always allowed).

STL Vector. A vector is a dynamic array. It is one of several data structures called container, others being sets, maps, ... It is implemented as a class template. Access time to any member is constant. The vectory access mechanism is a random iterator.

Copy Constructor. A copy constructor is a special constructor in the C++ programming language used to create a new object as a copy of an existing object. This constructor takes a single argument: a reference to the object to be copied.

Default Constructor. Constructor without parameters.

STL Map. Standard C++ container. It is a sorted associative array of unique keys and associated data.

STL List. A doubly-linked list; elements are not stored in contiguous memory. Opposite performance from a vector. Slow lookup and access (linear time), but once a position has been found, quick insertion and deletion (constant time)

Virtual Destructor. A virtual destructor is a destructor that can be overridden by subclasses. In C++, use of virtual destructors in inheritance hierarchies facilitates proper clean-up of objects, preventing resource leaks and heap corruption.

Abstract Class A Base class without implementation. The implementation must take place in the derived class.

Local Class A class defined within the scope of a function.

Conversion Constructor. Constructor with a single argument used for type conversion.

class Boo
{
 double value;
 public:
 Boo(int i);
 operator double ()
 {
     return value;
 }
};
Boo BooObj;
double i = BooObject; // good heavens you can assign Boo to double!

Time Is up!

2009-06-26T09:54:00.029-04:00

Now that the kiddos are idle and asking to use the computer (watch videos rather) the script below, with the right permissions (root), can be used to abruptly terminate the user's session (just a minute I'm almost done!) when the timer expires. And you don't even have to be there.
Usage: ./kickuser.py username time
time is in minutes
>cat kickuser.py


#!/usr/bin/python
# Python script to time out a user.
# basically I'm allotting some time for a given user to use the system and after
# the time is up, I zap the user pretty mean eh?
# after time expires destroy all programs used by that user, time is given in seconds
import time
import threading
import sys
import os

username = sys.argv[1] # the username is a string
timeout  = sys.argv[2] # the time out is in minutes

class Timer(threading.Thread):
   def __init__(self, seconds):
      self.runTime = seconds
      threading.Thread.__init__(self)
def run(self):
      time.sleep(self.runTime)
      cmd = 'ps -U' +  username + ' | awk \'{print $1}\''
      for pid in os.popen(cmd).readlines():
              kill_command =  "kill -9 " + pid
              print kill_command
              os.system(kill_command)
              #now lock account
              lock_cmd = "passwd -l" + username
              os.system(lock_cmd)

t = Timer(int(timeout) * 60 )
#start the timer
t.start()
print "setting time out for " , username , " " , timeout , "minutes"

And that's that. Easy to execute and timely executed.

The Ruby way. vs. The Python way

2009-06-25T17:21:00.010-04:00

Here are a the python examples of the Active Python Python tutorial and their Ruby counterpart. By comparing simple operations the strength of both languages come to show. When you instruct the script to read an integer from STDIN. In python:

>>> x = int(raw_input("please enter an interger: "))

in Ruby:

irb(main):041:0> p "please enter an integer: " "please enter an integer: " => nil irb(main):042:0> x = gets.to_i

In Ruby there is no raw_input equivalent. In Python the int() operation converts the input string to integer while in Ruby the string object returned by gets invokes the to_i method to convert the string to an integer. Interesting.

spin bing

2009-06-14T11:31:00.002-04:00

The conspiracy theories started with bing.com. Search in bing "microsoft ie explorer alternatives" your first hit: 1. News about IE explorer alternatives Microsoft faces EU threat of prompts for rivals Search in google "microsoft ie explorer alternatives" your first hit: 1. Firefox Web Browser: Faster, more secure, & customizable. ------ Now you draw your own conclusions. I for one see that bing.com com CLEARLY, but tactfully, steering you away from Firefox (comes up in the 5th) hit. The Internet is a big democracy and everybody has an opinion. Event the search engines.

Food, Inc.

2009-06-12T19:49:00.002-04:00

Where is Food, Inc.? I wanted to see this movie which is highly rated but is not been distributed in my city. This movie is highly critical of the American Food Industry. While I'm not the kind of movie viewer that likes to believe things because "I saw it in a movie" I know that the consequences of the mass production process of any consumer good. If you want to become a more informed consumer you can visit http://www.goodguide.com Meanwhile when driving by a Burger King, just keep rolling and head to your nearest farmer's market.

Action reaction and the rattler.

2009-06-06T11:30:00.004-04:00

For every action there is a reaction of equal or less magnitude (entropy and what-not). Here's a cool toy that likes to get a little even before call it quits. If you want to stop the madness, you have to create your own context and move with your thoughts in mind.

Building cars the way we build computers.

2009-05-31T06:58:00.004-04:00

As an end user: Can you build your own PC? You sure can. And the quality? Top notch, you can exceed performance and sometimes price if you apply yourself. Can you build your own car? You sure can. And the quality? Poor. You will never match the cost and efficiency of any car, even a Hundai Elantra. Why? That's the question poised by a good article in Wired magazine entitled: Detroit. It compares today's big three car assemblers with the IBM of the 70's. Can you imagine if you could swap the transmission of a Toyota Camry the same way you swap your video card in any PC. If we want a more efficient transmission in our cars, are large manufacturers up to the job or in their struggle to survive they put innovation in their wish-list (due to their large social responsibilities) and keep dishing out the same thing. The most poignant assertion made by the article is that true innovation happens in small scale, when the entrepreneurs risk it all for ideas larger than themselves. True visionaries with the next revolutionary concepts invariable will be bogged down by stock holders and labors unions. This "Wired" article got me split 50/50. For one part I do believe the car industry total-control manufacturing approach stifles innovation. Another part tells me that a computer crashing is a manageable/quantifiable cost to pay for an open architecture. A car crashing, well, you get the idea.

Ubuntu 9.04 bug in libtool 2.2.6

2009-05-28T08:31:00.003-04:00

I go ahead and install Kdevelop IDE. I am command-line/script developer because is faster and less resource intensive. But IDE's have so many bells and whistles that Is fair to give one a try every now and then. I launched Kdevelop, created a new C project and when I hit Build I get the following error.

../libtool: line 804: X--tag=CXX: command not found

Uh? And after that the whole configuration goes down hill. I'm running libtool 2.2.6 The latest greatest in Ubuntu Jaunty. After poking around the web I stumbled with the error and the fix at the following site: here Turns out that is a messy bug. For those running large projects on Kdevelop I don't envy the headache of the built-in dependencies with an IDE. The fix I took was change line 162 file: /usr/bin/libtool -ECHO="echo" +echo="echo" that little work around get the new projects working because the project creator copies libtool to the local project directory but for those upgrading they have to go and do it manually for every project. Pretty annoying.

Bug in gnome-terminal for Ubuntu 9.04

2009-05-27T12:34:00.003-04:00

Slowly but surely I'm starting to stumble with certain bugs in Ubuntu that I did not encounter in Fedora. I usually run my remote sessions from OS X. Before I would connect to my Fedora box and launch gnome-terminal while running a X11 session locally and take it from there. But now that I run Ubuntu when I tried to launch gnome-terminal I get the following error:

Failed to contact the GConf daemon; exiting.

Uh? Of course gnome-terminal works locally but how is it that remotely it blocks me? Needing to get some stuff done I opted to use gnome-terminal counterpart: konsole. The program konsole launches fine and works just right from OS X. Needless to say, my search in the Ubuntu forums talk about gconfd not running, which is running in my system. Like always I need to poke around the find the work around. Or just leave gnome-terminal alone for a while until the bug gets taken care in next update. Maybe if I have a GUI session running locally? Beats me.

Don't try to stream to an Apple's Airport Express device through a router.

2009-05-24T11:56:00.003-04:00

For years know I stream my music to my stereo using Apple's fabulous gadget: Airport Express. I plug it to my stereo, open my laptop, launch Itunes and bam! I know can start listening to music in my stereo. I remember vaguely (like we all do) how I set up the device years ago(5 or so). One thing always intrigued me. Why iTunes running wireless see the service but iTunes running on over Ethernet on my Mac mini sees nothing. When I launched Airport Setup Utility and hit scan, it finds nothing so I have to hit "other" and punch the IP of the device. Then it finds it. Why the scanner doesn't work? I never minded the issue since my laptop worked fine so I have no need to stream over the wire. That changed last week when my company reduced ranks and took a way my laptop (yeah, their laptop) and found myself unable to play my tunes over the Ethernet. After poking around the Net I found no good leads that resembled the problem. I can ping the damn device. I can set up static or DHCP for the device. It works every time but ...the big but ... the utility scanner doesn't detect and iTunes says "nothing here, move along". Short from opening wireshark and start sniffing packets I went ahead and removed the Airport Express from the Linksys router BEFSR41 and plug to my baby switch Linksys EXXS55W (an itty bity workgroup switch) Bam! The Airport setup app instantly detected the device and iTunes popped the option to connect to it. Meaning. The streaming is not an IP based protocol? That would be my conjecture. Short to go on the web and find out the nuts and bolts of the protocol I just made a memo to self: Memo to self: When using an Airport Express device and there is a need to stream to it over Ethernet: DON'T PUT THE DAMN THING BEHIND A ROUTER, IT WON'T WORK. Enough said.

Goodbye Fedora 10 hello Ubuntu Jaunty.

2009-05-23T20:41:00.006-04:00

After 7 years being a red-hat devotee I finally had it. Last Friday I was staring at my Fedora 8 PC in the basement running Wordpress, and another assortment of applications and wondering: How the hell I'm going to upgrade this guy to Fedora 10? If you are a Fedora user you know as well as I that inserting the Fedora 10 DVD, rebooting and select upgrade is not going to cut it. So many RPM's with some many dependencies are impossible to upgrade in one shot. I have lived the aches and pains of upgrading from Red Hat 6 all the way to Fedora 10 at work and I'm I now suffer from "upgrade fatigue". I'm tired of "moving forward" when my distribution doesn't offer me a clear path, method, procedure for it. I upgrade, libraries get messed up and I spend a week or so fixing them. I used to see as a a way the project maintainers forced us to find out about the features they are deprecating and how the new stuff works. That was then, when 2 or 3 RPM's where broken. Now the amount of packages makes the task of tracking all dependancies a full time job for. Hello Ubuntu. Last winter a friend of mine asked me to take Ubuntu around the block. My first impression: "Wimpy" A distro for the neophyte, for the hobbyist, not industrial grade material. But first impressions can be deceiving. The makers of Ubuntu understand what I'm talking about when you are trying to keep your operations flowing. Sure I will upgrade after a year or so (bugs and fixes do pile up) but please, make it as painless as possible, just stay out of my way. Don't tell me that libcc-x minimum version is needed...I don't care. Create a discipline and become predictable. Red Hat understood it when the Fedora branch came to be. Except: Why the at-home single users have to suffer from the vagaries created by an army of distro developers giving us new stuff by the truckloads every few months? Every single time I had to upgrade Fedora I ended installing it clean and moving one-by-one my settings and apps to the new environment. That was the only way to assure the new stuff had priority over the upgrade not touching my old settings and apps. WIth Ubuntu is a different story. Ubuntu's Synaptic Package Manager not only offers a single point of entry for the extensive package universes, but also offers means to perform a complete OS upgrade without the need of burning DVD's or downloading ISO's. Also Ubuntu separates the updates in categories (Security, Bug patches and just new stuff) That way you can decide what not to upgrade. I was running Ubuntu Intrepid on my laptop some weeks ago and suddenly the System's Updater program prompt me? Do you wish to upgrade from Intrepid to Jaunty? I paused for moment thinking: No way Jose! This distro is just going to upgrade my whole OS with a push of a button? Can you imagine upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7 by pushing a button? No disks no EULA's no registration just push the damn button. I'm talking the whole OS. From the kernel up, in one shot. And I did. In 20 minutes I was upgraded to Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope. I turned to my other PC running Fedora 10 and thought: "You poor thing! It's time for you to go" That being said there are things I used to run in Fedora that won't run in Ubuntu. For example my Logitech Quickcam ran flawlessly Camstream with Fedora 10. In Ubuntu Camstream crashes. In Fedora 10 I ran apache okay and in Ubuntu they have apache2 that for some freaking reason when I change the listening port from port 80 to port 8080 apache no longer finds my root directories or files. It runs though, it just says "File not Found" when trying to access any webpage in /var/www Ubuntu doesn't carry the game Urbanterror, Fedora does. What gives? Other debian's quirks are more related to me not being familiar with the distro. Like choosing pico as default editor. Screw Pico ! Give me vim. Also when I run vim my history editing history is kept but not the "last line" when I reopen the file. This little quirks are annoying but not a show stopper. So move over Fedora and say hello to Ubuntu. For those looking for Linux distro with a heartbeat, try Ubuntu.

Running shoes bad for you?

2009-04-21T09:23:00.005-04:00

This article from Mail Online floats the idea that it is better to run bare footed than with running shoes. I did a global search for the word asphalt in the whole article. I got zero hits. I thought so. None of the stuff under my feet today, my feet were made to stand upon. Disturbing indeed.

Fedora 10 Update breaks ruby-tcltk

2009-03-09T13:10:00.003-04:00

So you come in the morning and the fedora 10 auto update prompts you to update packages on March 9 2009. You do so and soon afterward you execute a ruby script that was working yesterday and it doesn't work anymore. Namely a library that uses Tk Widgets. The error message that you get is:

/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/tk.rb:1102:in `initialize': tcltklib: fail to Tk_Init(). Can't find a usable tk.tcl in the following directories: (RuntimeError) /usr/lib/tcl8.5/tk8.5 /usr/lib/tk8.5 /lib/tk8.5 /usr/library /usr/lib/tk8.5/tk.tcl: version conflict for package "Tk": have 8.5.3, need exactly 8.5.5 version conflict for package "Tk": have 8.5.3, need exactly 8.5.5 while executing "package require -exact Tk 8.5.5" (file "/usr/lib/tk8.5/tk.tcl" line 20) invoked from within "source /usr/lib/tk8.5/tk.tcl" ("uplevel" body line 1) invoked from within

WTF! do they check this updates before pushing them out!!! I'm asking Anyway my work aroudn was to edit the file /usr/lib/tk8.5/tk.tcl and comment out line 20 -----> package requre -exact Tk 8.5.5 I know Tk libs don't give a damn about Ruby libs and viseversa. but someone is jumping the gun in the Fedora 10 distro. We need di-sci-pline. But can

Niña's new video: "Tu y Yo" is online!

2008-09-07T07:02:00.002-04:00

Kewl! Visit their website at: www.todomimundoacolor.com

Ther is No oil bubble.

2008-06-15T19:11:00.003-04:00

The phrase started popping out last week: "Oil Bubble" The idea that the price of crude oil has been artificially inflated by speculators in such way that soon decline on consumption will cause a sharp drop on it. I disagree. I will like to pair oil with electricity where our evolving lifestyles aims toward the increase in energy consumption fr communication and transportation. It is a more plausible scenario to see the price of gas in the US to escalate to the levels seen in Europe (5 to 7 dollar gallon) and consequently,people in the US adopting European customs like the use of mass transportation and reduced household sizes closer to work.

Jobs ahead.

2008-06-09T16:59:00.003-04:00

Have you ever felt that every time you are presented with a new job prospect..the more
bleak your future looks?

Is it time for a career change?

Or is time to give up hope?

busted at Montclair YMCA 10K

2008-06-01T22:00:00.004-04:00

52 minutes. Pathetic. Oh well.

The Mexican Rock Band: - Niña - at Vive Latino 2008

2008-05-29T18:42:00.002-04:00

Memorial Weekend 2008

2008-05-25T10:27:00.005-04:00

Sunday 7AM. The sun bathes the back room. Warm luminescent ink paints the furry canvas.
What are you going to do?
I ask the cat, Strat, expecting nothing in reply.
On days like this one is better to sit down and remember.
Peace seem to have a way to blend invisible, immaterial, imperceptible.
War and violence will leave us deaf and mute, incapable to communicate without harm.
Just for while, if we get to survive each other.
So, what are we going to do?
I wonder.

Politics of Failure.

2008-03-29T07:19:00.002-04:00

After the mortgage crisis that caused a lot of people to loose their homes here come the 3 candidates with their half-ass solutions. McCain: Let the market sort it out. More tax-cuts! Less regulation. Clinton: Some regulation. Let's bail out the idiots who signed on loans the could not afford. Obama: More regulation. In exchange will help the lenders, not the loaners. The truth being said. 1. There should more regulation to those financial institutions that cook the books to keep investors happy. 2. Let financial institutions that dived into risky loans rot. It's called free market. 3. Let people who signed those ARM loans rot. It was in black and white. It's called a Contract. The truth is that the loaners as well as the lenders gambled with their contracts predicting a future strong real state demand and equities. They loss. It's time to settle the bets. The difference between and investment and a gamble is your willingness to lose that that is paramount to you, your family and the nation.

Indy Rock Band Niña playing SXSW 2008

2008-02-23T07:06:00.008-05:00

The Monterrey Indie Rock Band Niña will be playing in Austin TX.

Niña SXSW 2008

When: Friday March 14 2008 11PM
Where: Dirty Dog Bar. 6th Street Austin, TX USA

Excelente! Go see them! All of you!

10 Predictions for 2008.

2008-01-08T13:45:00.000-05:00

10 Predictions for 2008

Behold, Javier's predictions for 2008.

Technology

1. All major computer manufacturer's DELL, HP, APPLE will introduce 2lb laptops gear up for elementary school children. They will be priced under 200 Dlls and some schools will get them for free under some local government sponsorship.
2. 21' Monitors will be sold under $200.00 and 1 terabyte SATA drives will be under $150.00

Politics

3. Obama is winning the presidency of the United States. Ron Paul comes a close 2nd.
4. Violence escalates in Iraq during the Olympics. Death rates match previous year.

Sports

5. Patriots win the super bowl. US wins most gold in the Olympics followed by China.
6. Duke wins the NCAA final four.

Economy

7. Gasoline average nation wide $4.00 Dlls by October.
8. Technology sector drives the stock market and prevents a recession.

Gaming and Web

9. Nintendo remains the #1 gaming console in the world. Sony Play Station 3 a closed 2nd.
10. DRM is dead. All online music services no longer provide DRM locked music.

Technolgy you trust.

2007-11-23T07:40:00.000-05:00

Last night, on a after dinner conversation we start talking about Amazon's new device, The Kindle. People where enthusiastic about the new e-reader from Amazon. My impression was that if a book was important to me, I would never trust an electronic device as a mean of ownership. That night I was in charge of the music. My play list was streamed from my laptop via iTunes to Air Port express to my stereo. Someone in the party asked what was my opinion of Linux vs. Windows Vista. "What I don't show you?" I told him and rebooted my laptop which had dual-boot with WIndows and Fedora 8. He was excited because he has never seen a distribution of Linux. My laptop started booting and froze during the launch of sendmail, you know the damn thing was trying to connect to the wireless network and I forgot that I haven't configured linux to run on my home wireless network because, for the life of me, the network manager applet doesn't have a section to insert your WPA2 key. It doesn't even launch an applet to show you available networks. My guest laughed when I fumgled trying to reboot with the interactive boot option to prevent the network from attempting to load. After fumbling for 10 minutes finally we got to the Desktop GUI but then it froze again when yum-updated tried to search again for a network service. I show him some OpenOffice applications and he wasn't very impressed. My sales pitch for free stuff was not getting any traction. After a few sights I rebooted back to Windows and now Windows XP could not find my wireless network. People asked what happened to the music. I had to reboot the laptop twice and reset the Air Port Express Access Point for the thing to connect again. Meanwhile I just inserted a John Meyer CD to the good ol' CD player and that did the trick. Where was I? O yes! New technology you trust and the New Kindle e-reader vs. a book. I take the book.

Fedora 8 Review on DELL D620.

2007-11-10T06:57:00.001-05:00

I have 2 Pentium D PC's running FC7 and DELL D620 Laptop running Ubuntu in dual boot. I'm so satisfied with the configuration and performance of FC7 that as soon as I heard FC8 was available I went ahead and tried to blast away Ubuntu from my laptop and replace it with FC8. One of the reasons I was dissatisfied with Ubuntu was because from the get go (installation) Ubuntu failed to detect my video resolution properly on my DLL620 laptop. Once I got that working right (annoying) then Ubuntu failed to get my wireless card configured properly (WPA not available). Did you notice that in that in the Title of this post I specifically mentioned the hardware being used? More than ever your experience to any Linux distro depends on the platform being installed. I daresay, is the make-brake point of a popular and unpopular-obscure distro. I'm sick and tired of those reviews that trying to give an overall experience of a Linux Distro when we know that is a hit-miss scenario with, until now, more miss than hits. Enuff said. But let's gets started shall we? Fedora 8 X86_64 torrent This the first time "evar" I installed a 64bit OS. I dloaded the FC8 distro using uTorrent on Windows XP and took about 3 hours for the 3.6 Gig iso. Once dloaded I used roxio to burn it to a DVD. To verify the burn process, I went ahead and tried to load the DVD on my other PentiumD PC running FC7. The PC complained that the disk was unreadable. My guess is that the DVD is for 64 OS so a 32 OS would say: uh? Speak in short sentences!! So I paid not much attention. The DVD works fine in the Dell Laptop. Nevertheless to quench my curiosity, I check on Wikipedia to see if the Pentium(R) D 3.00 Mhz processor supports 64 architecture. Wikipedia Intel info page says yes Pentium D. But my Asus PC won't boot from it, what gives? I looked around the web and after reading all the effing mumbo jumbo I concluded that NO, the Intel Pentium D CPU is not 64 architecture and left it like that, but the laptop has the Intel Dual Core chip and that's why FC8 x86_64 DVD boots dandy. FC8 installation was a breeze. I feel like I need to repeat this. FC8 installation on a DELL D620 laptop was a breeze. I detected another Linux installation (Ubuntu) on my laptop and gave me an option to blast it away without touching my Windows XP installation. I picked the Developers install and Grub to control my boot partitions. I let it rip and in less than 20 minutes it was done! (must be the X64?) I rebooted and went through what marines boot camp experience call "the moment of truth". You know, the system spits out the installation CD. You close the tray and the system reboots, you get the PC Vendor splash, the black screen and the fear of previous installation experiences comes back...remember this ones? a. The system freezes. b. The system boots into Linux and freezes during boot. c. The system boots into Linux and your Windows partition is a goner? d. The system boots into Grub screen, you select windows and system freezes. Or, after 10 years of travails, t he system boots into the Grub, it shows my Windows installation as "Other" and Windows XP boots fine. Then I reboot the system, select FC8 X86_64 and boots. All systems GO! Video resolution configuration. Check. LAN Network card detection and configuration. Check. Wireless Network card detection and configuration. Detection Check, Configuration Fails. Sound card configuration and detection. Check. Power management configuration and detection. BIG CHECK!!! I'm first timer on this one. FC8 did a FINE job installing itself on my DELL D620 in dual boot mode. What about the Wireless network? Dad did not go well. (did I feel a Windows fanboy cracking a smile?) Since the installation knows I have a wireless card it should install a tray icon to at leas show me the available networks in the area (Ubuntu did that). Instead nothing happens. The network settings for the gnome environment let me configure the wireless network card but the dumb applet asks me to type the network SSID instead of having some kind of applet let me pick from that available networks in my office. Perhaps my mistake was that I did not installed the KDE environment which is known to be a better bells+whistles array of configuration applets. So, If you have a DELL D620 Laptop, go ahead! Try Fedora 8. You don't have to take my word for it.

Ron Paul, Ross Perot revisited.

2007-10-30T21:57:00.000-04:00

Most of us suffer of politics fatigue. We hear the same drones going on and on doing the same repertoire for decades. The spin, the positioning, the media antics and so on. We are just tired. I am even tired of the third wheel candidate. You know, the candidate that splits one political party and ends handing over the victory to the opposition. The 2 names the come to mind are Ralph Nader and Ross Perot.... freaks! For 2008 it appears we have another third wheel on the making. TX Congressman Ron Paul. I gave a quick glance to his platform because I liked the fact that he opposes the war and the ill-conceived tax scheme of the last 8 years. Then, I find out that he wants to abolish citizenship for babies born in American soil from illegal immigrants to remove that incentive from immigrants. Talk about a tough cookie. Baby, go home! What's next? Id bracelets for toddlers at the daycare center? Tsk, tsk, tsk. I flat out have been disenfranchised in 2008 since there is no viable candidate there in my view that: a. Opposes the war in Iraq (get ALL the troops out now!) b. Supports Illegal Immigrants with Amnesty. c. Supports Open Borders. c. Fiscal Conservative. Not even in West Wing! Oh Well.

Comcast, tell it like it is. Spoof tactics.

2007-10-24T20:39:00.000-04:00

So the word is out, Comcast is hacking customer uploads by generating-sending them spoof RESETS. AP Comcast Comcast is messing up with the TCP Protocol in customers PC's. There 4 flow control packets on the tcp the protocol. SYN: Sync request from client "Client saying, let's create a connection". SYN ACK: Acknowledge to SYN from server "Server saying, sounds good, I'm ready". ACK: Acknowledge to SYN ACK from client "Client saying, I got your ready, here we go!". RST: Request to abort transmission from CLIENT or SERVER."Client or Server saying: something is going amiss on my end, please quit sending data and tear down this connection" The messages contain also 2 essential pieces of information: The sender info. The destination info. What COMCAST is doing is forging (constructing RST messages with false information) to control the UPLOAD traffic from a costumer is to forge packets (construct messages with FALSE information) and send them to a customer to effectively DISRUPT the activity being originated by the customer. Is this Unethical? Unequivocally yes. The message sent to the customer is FALSE (the origin of the RST message is fictitious , is not coming from the other end, the packet is generated by Comcast. Comcast is borrowing tactics from a cyber attack technique called "man in the middle". Comcast analyzes the traffic of extract the needed data to generate spoofed traffic. Comcast does it to circumvent/manipulate the TCP protocol on the victim's PC). The objective is this: By resetting the connection Comcast achieves the following: A: The Customer is not aware that of the origin of what she/he consider a problem. B: The Customer cannot claim that the service is blocked since the connection may be reestablished. C: Comcast controls at will what traffic has preferential treatment without getting their hands dirty (all the manipulation happening in the Customers PC) without the customer ever knowing who is resetting their connections. Is it illegal? Nope. If a Customer or an individual was doing that to a major ISP, it would be considered a cyber attack (sending packets with spoofed data). From the other end, since the customer is not forced to use the service, the answer is no. Is it disruptive? Big time! The whole Internet runs under the assertion that the contents of the protocols running it, is VERDICT. You can imagine people wondering: Who sent this RESET message? It wasn't the other end? Who is sending Spoofed data!!?? I hope Customers understand Comcast attitude towards them and the kind of "top dollar" service they get.

The trackers got you.

2007-10-19T10:39:00.000-04:00

What does General Electric Nokia Siemens Lucent Verizon Phillips and Cisco have in common? Their ip ranges appear blacklisted at peerguardian.sourceforge.net/list/p2p.php Meaning, when you are conducting p2p traffic, this companies may try to track your traffic. Furthermore, the very company that rents my own domain, is blacklisted! Can you surf the Internet without being tracked. The short answer is NO but this site, www.blogger.com and associated links, are not blacklisted. Why we have laws to protect us from being surveyed (spied) on the street but not on the web? Where does the answer lie? Living from day to day If its something we cant buy There must be another way The Internet must get partitioned. We all should have the right to assemble privately over the web.

Behold! the win learn series

2007-10-10T20:21:00.000-04:00

Just posted at sourceforge.net my first project.

winlearnseries

It's going to revolutionize everything!

Apples for everyone!

2007-10-01T19:05:00.000-04:00

(captions added)
This pic was floating around digg. Signs of time to come?
Step Number 1. Embrace UNIX architecture: OS X
Step Number 2. Jump into the Intel Bandwagon: Dual Core.
Step Number 3. Let competition sink by their own weight: Vista.
Step Number 4. Profit

Cougars 3rd game.

2007-09-30T13:46:00.000-04:00

Yesterday the Cougars scored big! Cougars 1. Dolphins 0.

2007-09-09T10:34:00.000-04:00

I started with a video of my Bro in Concert. He really rocks. Me, in the other hand, just brag.