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Month: June 2008

Download Tools

Published June 11, 2008

You all know those shiny download tools which open loads of connections on a file to try and get it quicker? Those are crappy and put lots of unneeded load on servers. Here’s an example:

I host this simple page for a friend of mine in the UK for when he needs US-based hosting or some place high speed to distribute files from. As part of this he hosts the animations found on this page, which overall aren’t very big. However, someone in Thailand (125.24.191.195) is deciding to get them as quickly as possible using some stupid download tool.

What I see is that the workload on the httpd is at ~277, up from it’s typical of 2 or 3. netstat shows lots and lots and lots of connections (currently 276) from that box, all of them established.

The http log currently shows 9291 these:

125.24.191.195 rowla.dyndns.org - [11/Jun/2008:16:58:34 -0400] "GET /justin/img/piston_std4.mpg HTTP/1.1" 200 32768 "http://www.wis.co.uk/justin/deltic-engine.html" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.00; Windows 98)"

Load on the box itself is .23, which is tolerable, so I’ll probably let this continue. If it’s still going at midnight I’ll take some action, but for now it’s just a bit of irritation. Yes, I know I could limit connections on a per-IP basis, but I prefer not to do this unless it’s actually a problem. If I do need to block that IP, I’ll probably just fail to return anything on that vhost to that netblock. Hopefully they’ll finish getting their file sooner than that.

If you’d like to see it, here’s the current netstat: netstat_11jun2008_1.txt
Here’s a capture of a minute or so of 45 seconds of traffic with that address. Note that each GET results in a whole conversation of only 10k or so: 11jun2008_weird_1.cap.gz

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iPhone 3G In My Future?

Published June 10, 2008

With Apple’s announcement of a new 3G iPhone, I think one might be in my future.

I’ve had my old Nokia 6600 since October 2004, and it’s just starting to fail. The screen is becoming dark and blue tinted, the photos (example) just aren’t that great, and some of the buttons are starting to fail. The battery on it is also really quite bad, and I have to charge it every day else it’ll fail.

Currently I pay around $47/mo after taxes for 600 anytime minutes, unlimited nights and weekend, and no data via T-Mobile. If a plan via AT&T can give me ~300 anytime minutes and the same unlimited nights and weekends, along with a comparable data plan, for a somewhat similar price, I think I’ll go with an iPhone.

I need to be sure that it will work with my custom iPod setup in the car, which ties the line out into the stereo and power into the iPod for charging. I also want to be certain that when the iPhone is receiving power via the dock connector and playing that it automatically pauses when power is cut. I use this feature to ensure that the iPod automatically pauses when I turn off my car, and I’d like the iPhone to do the same thing.

I figure that I’ll probably end up getting a Bluetooth headset for use when actually talking to people while driving. I rarely do this so I’ll probably first try using my old headset first, then maybe get a new / better / longer lasting one.

Hopefully this will work out well and meet all the goals of getting a phone with a better camera, display, and battery, while at the same time providing me with a nice mobile network terminal and one less device to carry.

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It’s Raining Leaves

Published June 8, 2008

The storm on 08-Jun-2008 blew over one of the shrubs near my condo. It was partially rotted, and the storm seems to have broken it off and bent it over.

It seems that today’s storm took out one of the shrubs right near my condo. It was partially dead and located at a point which funnels wind during storms. (See this drift at the same point in 2005.)

I had just left Target when I looked up and saw what appeared to be The Nothing coming from the west, so I hopped in my car and headed north on Schoenherr. Before I could make the Michigan left it started, and all through my drive along Schoenherr from M-59 to home it was as if I was driving sideways through a rainstorm. After turning east on 22 Mile and hitting 40 MPH there was still rain pelting the rear window of my car and making streaks from the top of the windshield to the bottom.

While driving down Schoenherr I kept noticing large clusters of leaves falling out of the sky, and at a few points the road was littered with 5′ – 8′ branches. I even saw an overturned trampoline in the road.

After getting home and checking the radar I noticed that everything was beginning to take on a greenish cast and the rain was lightening up. I headed outside with my camera, but beyond the strange light I didn’t see anything indicative of a tornado. No wall cloud, nothing. Oh well.

Here is a detail of the base of the shrub pictured above. Some of the decayed branches can be seen, which is likely what led to the failure.

One other thing which I’d failed to mention previously is that someone has cut down the other shrub near my condo. I’m not sure why this was done; the only thing I can guess is that it’s to allow easy access to the gas meters.

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50 Miles: Check

Published June 7, 2008

A large inflatable monster holding a sign reading &quote;CONGRATS MINI GOOCH&quote;, seen outside of a house in Shelby Township one Saturday afternoon.

As mentioned yesterday I had hoped to ride 50 miles today and I did. My bike computer, which I believe to be fairly accurate, logged 50.73 miles by the time I returned out to my house. The GPS logged distances are over 50 miles as well.

(Brian) met up at my house and set out towards the Paint Creek Trail, turned back 6.5 miles from Lake Orion, then wound our way back to my house. We were originally going to ride down Schoenherr to Dodge Park then to Metro Beach then back (a combination of these two rides: 1, 2), but the rather high temperatures (~91°F when we left) made us want to ride somewhere with shade.

After getting back to my house and racking up 30-some miles, Brian headed home.

I had to ship a package (an iSight Tripod Adapter) at the post office, so I strapped it to the back of my bike and headed off to the post office. After shipping the package I decided to keep heading west down 22 Mile, and I ended up riding through River Bends Park for a while, including along the trail where I’d scraped up my leg. Winding my way home I added on a few more miles taking routes in and out of subdivisions, ending up right near my neighborhood right as the bike computer tripped the 50.00 mark.

All in all it was a good ride. There weren’t any close calls with cars, I didn’t fall, and while the weather was hot it didn’t rain. The only problem I had was that my shirt, saturated with sweat, kept rubbing on my nipples, eventually giving me a case of what seems to be known as Jogger’s Nipple. When I first viewed the Wikipedia article it was lacking a photo, so I took one of my very sore, inflamed nipple and posted it, releasing it under CC. My hosting of the photo is here, the copy in Wikipedia’s stores is here, and it’s been embedded in the article.

There weren’t too many out of the ordinary things along the route, except for this giant inflatable monster holding a sign reading “CONGRATS MINI GOOCH” (as seen above) which was out in front of a house hosting a party.

The ride was long enough that the KML file from the ride won’t display all at once in Google Earth, so here it is broken up into two files:

· Everything before the post office stop. (View in Google Maps)
· Post office stop and back home. (View in Google Maps)

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Things Need Done

Published June 5, 2008

First off, thank you everyone for the kind wishes, visitations, conversations, and everything that helped Danielle (and I) these past few weeks.

Now I’ve got a few things I want to do. I’m going to write them down and then hope I get them done ASAP:

· Obtain CISSP certification. (Hope to do this by the end of July.)
· Design and make available (CC) PCB for a lightning detector. (Unknown estimation, but before thunderstorm season finishes.)
· Finish migration to banstyle.nuxx.net. (Maybe the end of July as well?)
· Cycle 50 miles in one go. (This weekend, if things go as planned.) (Done on 07-Jun-2008.)

I keep thinking about picking up a ruggadized point and shoot camera, but I think I should just ride around with my old one and hope it doesn’t fail, then if it does I’ll replace it. I’m hoping to replace my bike wheels soon as they are rather out of true and somewhat flattened in places, and one of the rims has a gouge out of it.

I’ve been quoted ~$320 for a hand-built set with Mavic XM 317 rims, Shimano XT front and rear hubs, and black DT Swiss spokes. This seems pretty reasonable, I just have to be sure I want to afford it. They’d definitely be usable on whatever bike I end up getting next, though…

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Linda Hall

Published June 3, 2008

Danielle’s mom, Linda Hall, died this morning at just about 9:28am EDT.

If you’re interested, here is her obituary on the Martenson Family Funeral Homes which lists the visitation and service times and such.

Also, if you are interested, this photo album contains some composite / collage images of her mom that Danielle and I together for people to look at while at the funeral home, along with JPEG copies of all the source images. (As I type this they are currently uploading.)

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Friendly Goat

Published June 1, 2008

The very friendly, but very wrinkly goat at the learning farm at Wolcott Mill Metropark.

This is very wrinkly, very stinky, and very, very friendly goat who currently lives at the Farm Learning Center at Wolcott Mill Metropark. If you walk up to it and call it over, it will hop up on the fence and press against you as you scratch and rub it. You’ll smell strongly of goat afterwards, but that’s the price you pay for time spent with a friendly goat.

Also, my thighs are really, really sore today. This is the first time I’ve been sore after a bike ride. I suspect it is due to the extra effort required with the ~30 MPH gusts. At one point yesterday I was riding at 17 MPH with the wind, and a gust felt like a strong breeze blowing on my back. I was also able to hit 32 MPH on mostly flat pavement while riding with the wind, and while coasting down a highway overpass into the wind I couldn’t top 14 MPH. I normally coast down that area at speeds of at least 20 MPH.

Hopefully I’ll be able to do a 50 mile ride next weekend.

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