Izikistan

Tree drain

isaac — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 00:40:06 +0000

Oliver and I hang out under a huge old oak tree in Rock Creek Park to watch the Metro trains and eat daffodils. Last time we were there we noticed this dripping pipe hanging out of the tree around 15 feet up. It’s near a dead part of the tree – I guess that’s got something to do with it?

Inset box shadow test

isaac — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 01:46:24 +0000

Just testing out this example at bavotasan.com. It appears to work well, as long as you don’t mind linking your inset-shadow images. I’d imaging using a div or span wrapper would work fine too.

Silly trick to get yum to update installed groups

isaac — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 19:35:06 +0000

When I upgrade Fedora using yum or PreUpgrade my installed groups don’t really get updated. The packages in those groups get updated and any dependencies get resolved, but packages that have been added to the group in the new version of Fedora don’t get installed. So, after updating Fedora I make sure my installed yum groups are really up to date by running “yum groupinstall ” for the groups I think are important. This time I wanted to do this for all of the groups I have installed so I:

got the list of installed groups using “yum grouplist”
copy-pasted the installed ones into a text editor
search-replaced to get the groups wrapped in quotes with spaces between
pasted that into a “yum groupinstall” command, eventually adding “–skip-broken”

That installed more than 800 packages! There’s probably a shell script out there somewhere to do this automatically.

Pork and beans

isaac — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 15:22:29 +0000

I know what you’re thinking: “Isn’t pork and beans something Yogi steals from overweight campers?” Maybe, but what if you want to relive the teenager experience of eating whatever you want, but want to do it in a way that fits in with your current gourmet tastes? After all, what is cassoulet but high class pork and beans? Let’s make some classy pork and beans!

Preheat oven to 300-ish F. Sauté onion, carrots, celery, whatever you’ve got around in bacon fat. Even better, start by rendering some chopped bacon or lardons and soften the vegetables in that. Add about four sausages. Add a can of diced tomatoes or a couple of tablespoons of tomato paste. Add a regular-sized can of beans, cannellini preferred. Add spices like Dijon mustard, cumin, thyme, etc. Once it’s bubbling, cover and bake an hour-ish. Cut up the sausages into bite-sized chunks and serve.

Update! It’s not exactly pretty, but here’s a photo of a bowl of it:

Network interface renamed in Fedora 15

isaac — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 23:14:57 +0000

I was trying to get non-NetworkManager networking running in Fedora 15, but kept failing. When I tried to start the network daemon it failed and something about eth0 missing got logged. Finally, I looked more closely at my dmesg output and noticed that at the end of the network section udev had renamed the interface from eth0 to something like p7p2. Changing my networking script to use that instead fixed it.

Tips for moving a domain to a new PS at Dreamhost

isaac — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 13:57:59 +0000

I finally got nginx to work with WordPress at Dreamhost, so I’m moving more domains (including this one) over to it. When you edit a domain in the panel at Dreamhost there’s a handy-looking way to move from one PS to another, including moving all of the files. Sadly, I don’t think it’s ever worked for me. Here are the issues I’ve encountered and their solutions:

“Site Temporarily Unavailable” after you move a domain, whether you try to move the files or not. Scary! Editing the domain again and saving with the same settings usually works for me, but sometimes I have to do it a couple of times. This is apparently due to slow DNS propagation, so you can also just wait it out. Why DH can’t manage to still serve the site from the old PS is a mystery to me.
Failure to move the files. This seems to happen when your domain has a lot of files – like a WordPress install – and the source PS is overloaded. To fix this I just use rsync to sync the files to my local machine, sync those to the new PS, then move the domain in the panel (unchecking the box to move the files). Upping the resources for the source PS would likely work too.
Sometimes nothing works. This is when most people would wisely contact tech support. I’m too stubborn for that, so I move the domain back to the old PS and try again later. Oddly, trying again the next day has always worked.
If you do use the panel to move a domain, the file ownership can be weird. Fix this by setting up an admin user for the new PS in the panel and using chown.
When you change an nginx conf file for a domain you’ll need to restart nginx (sudo /etc/init.d/nginx restart) using your admin user. I think it’s possible to reload the config without restarting using /etc/init.d/nginx reload instead.

Developed some film

isaac — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 00:05:08 +0000

First time and it worked! I used caffenol – a mixture of washing soda, instant coffee, and vitamin C.

No sound with RealTek ALC892

isaac — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 19:09:57 +0000

Every now and then my computer’s sound dies and my speakers only produce pops and clicks. I have a Biostar TA880GB+ motherboard with a RealTek ALC892 sound chip. I assumed the fault was with the driver and went on a quest to reinstall all of the audio-related stuff in my Fedora 15 install. Sadly, after much driver reinstalling and audio reconfiguring the speakers were still only emitting pops and clicks. I finally tried powering down the computer (who ever does that?) and now it works. I had rebooted several times – for some reason the system needed to be powered down completely.

Alaska 2011

isaac — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 23:56:34 +0000

I caught some fish and stuff!

We spotted the TARDIS along the road to K-Bay Caffe in Homer.

The major sights of Sterling, Alaska.

Vivitar 135/3.5

isaac — Thu, 19 May 2011 00:11:01 +0000

I got this manual focus m42 screw-mount lens a little more than a year ago at Hampden Junque in Baltimore. Overall it’s a pretty nice lens. It’s compact, shorter than my Super Takumar 135/3.5 but a little fatter. It’s got lots of aperture blades so it produces the bubble-shaped bokeh blobs that I like. The 2.8 widest aperture is fairly fast for low-light shots and easier focusing, and it’s pretty sharp wide open. It even has a built-in sliding lens hood, much better than the screw-on hood on the Super Takumar.

Sadly, I don’t use it much because my 50/1.4 works well for me most of the time. So, the Vivitar 135 mostly gets used around the house to take candid pictures of cats.