Today was better. I arrived in class at 12:29 and 30 seconds, just barely in time. The psych teacher was the first one to actually be on time and ready to go. The class room was pretty full so I ended up getting a chair in the front of the room against a wall. The teacher ended up being at a 90 degree angle to me for the majority of the class, so I had to have my legs off to the side. Note: whoever invented the integrated desk (where the tabletop is physically joined with the chair) deserves to have bad things happen to them. My back is now sore.
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College
College
I have to say, I’m not impressed. Math teacher who doesn’t teach? Check.Classes as interesting as always? Check. The vast majority of the population that is still stupid (though I have to give them some credit for at least trying)? Check. It’s like high school, but with better hours. At least I have a college savings fund that is paying for this. Maybe some of my other classes will be better. So far I have yet to see the appeal of working four years for a sheet of paper that will land me a job that I hate. I’ll see how the rest of the week goes and then report back.
Cheers.
Life
College
I’ve set up a page on my server to host video for the Edison High School Marching Band. I’ve set it up so that it has links to Youtube in order to stream content to a web browser and also has links to download the file directly from my server to save to your local computer.
Edison Marching Band
This Site, Video
band, ehs, marching, site, Video
In order to setup a system to use a static IP address you have to edit the /etc/network/interfaces file.
The first step is to backup the existing file, just in case you screw something up by accident, or something otherwise doesn’t work as it should.
#cd /etc/network
#cp interfaces interfaces.backup
Next, edit the file as root with your favorite text editing program. I personally like Vim.
#sudo vim interfaces
add the # symbol beside what is already there for the interface you want to configure. The # makes whatever comes after it in the line a comment, and the computer doesn’t read it.
Next copy the following text and edit to fit your needs:
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.0.3
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.0.1
Save the file and quit. The next time you restart your computer it should automatically setup your network interface as you programed it to.
Computers, How To
address, ip, static, ubuntu
As you most likely know, if you use bit torrent at it’s maximum speed, your internet connection seems to slow to a crawl for everything else. Web pages may fail to load, ping times shoot into the stratosphere, and tempers may rise from others trying to use the connection. But what level of traffic causes these issues? Is it simply because most of the internet connection is used, or do torrents increase ping times no matter what?. I decided to find out, and here are my results. Read more…
Computers
bit, bittorrent, internet, ping, response time, speed, torrent
Clonezilla is a utility similar to Norton Ghost with a few key differences. First of all, Clonezilla is open source, which means that it is free to download and modify. It is also very good at what it does. You can make an image of your computer using an external hard drive, a windows folder shared over a network, or even mount another computer’s hard drive using SSH. It is compatible with any type of partition because it has the ability to copy a partition block by block. Clonezilla also compresses the saved image file in order to save space. I’ve been using the Clonezilla live CD for about a year and have never had an issue with it, it simply works.
Computers
clonezilla, image, linux, samba, share, ssh
I found an old PDF file on my server that I wanted to read, but it had a password. After some guesing I figured out the password, but I thought to myself ” Gee. Wouldn’t it be nice if I didn’t have to type in a password anymore.” After some googling I found a simple to use command line tool for linux. Basically what the program does is convert the password protected PDF file into a postscript file and then back into a password-free PDF file. Here is the Guide I Found detailing how to do it with Ubuntu. I ran into a few issues, but take a look for yourself and see if it helps you.
Computers, How To
password, pdf, remove, ubuntu
After coming back from a geek get together and swapping some videos and linux distros I’m getting close to filling up a 1TB hard drive. In order to more streamline the upgrading of my backup hard drive for the coming upgrade, I’ve purchased a dual 3.5″ SATA external enclosure that has plenty of space for another terabyte of data. As of this writing there are only 30GB to go, which I can easily fill up with my HD video camera.
Computers
full, hard drive, hdd, SATA, terabyte
I got my new Canon Vixia HF10 camcorder recently and had to figure out how to convert the AVCHD files that it makes. I’m running Ubuntu 8.04, which means that I can’t use any of the available windows applications, but after some searching I was able to convert my MTS files into perfectly working AVI files. In order to save others’ time I decided to make a how-to guide. It is still a work in progress and some things are probably missing, but hopefully it should be enough to help you out.
UPDATE: 12/4/2008:
I’ve found that this guide is now outdated to the point of not being useful. I would highly reccomend using HandBrake to convert your .MTS files. Although it does not give you an .AVI file directly, it does give you an easy to work with .mp4 which you can then convert into AVI if you need to.
How To, Video
avi, conversion, guide, mts, ubuntu
I’ve received my Toughbook and I have to say, I love it. It’s stronger than a rock and it works flawlessly. After completing all of my upgrades and buying an extra battery my total cost is just above $1000 for a CF-29. Each battery gives me between 4-7 hours of run time, meaning I can go for up to 14 hours without having to plug in to a wall. The reason that I got the Toughbook in the first place is two-fold. The first reason is that my previous laptop had broken and I wanted to get a replacement. The second reason is that I wanted something that got good battery life and would survive hundreds of bike trips, and maybe even a crash. I’ll be biking to school a lot this fall and I wanted a laptop that could keep up with me. Even with only one battery this laptop will be able to stay running for a full day of classes, and the extra battery will allow me to continue running for hours after my last class. Over all I am very happy with this laptop.
Computers
bike, laptop, toughbook