nuxx.net
Making, baking, and (un-)breaking things in Southeast Michigan.

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January 16, 2004

All, this isn’t all that important, but it looks like I’m going to be moving dingleberrypie.com out of it’s current place and into a full-out colocated server. As part of this, I need to get the server built, configured, secured, etc. So, for a while, dingleberrypie.com will be down. That means no recipes, photo galleries, etc. I’ve also got a bunch of server-moving work ahead of me tonight.

Let’s see… The file/web server will get parted out to become the new colocated server and the file server. The firewall will be moving back to it’s old Gateway 2000 pizza box. Either a second pizza box or the file server will become the new file server, depending on if I can get an external SCSI enclosure or not.

These decisions will come tonight. :D I also need to play with using Depenguinator to set up a vinum-mirrored disk set, per ‘s recommendation. I’ve got it mostly working here under VMware, but Depenguinator doesn’t come with the vinum lkm, so I’ll have to get things working.

This should be a really, really interesting trip. But, with any luck, I’ll finally be running my own, legal, publically accessable web/mail server.

computersmoved from livejournalnuxx.net

?

January 12, 2004

Has anyone here used Shutterfly or some other similar online photo printing service? I’ve got a number of Library of Congress Prints and Photos shots that I’d like printed, and I’m thinking it’ll be cheaper and easier to have them printed by a service than do them myself.

I’m curious how the photos looked… It seems that I’m able to only upload JPEGs to Shutterfly, but they were able to accept a 4000 x 5000 7MB high quality JPEG, which should look fine printed.

These will eventually be framed and hung up in various parts of my house, bathroom, etc.

What’s really neat is that the LoC has some nuclear reactor blueprints on their site, and printed at 20 x 30 these could look *really* nice in my living room, surrounded with 1940s – 1960s era electronics.

So, anyone tried Shutterfly or any other printing services?

UPDATE: I think I might order a set of four or five test prints from each Apple/Kodak (via iPhoto), Snapfish, and Shutterfly.

acquired thingsaround the housemoved from livejournal

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December 31, 2003

Well, it seems that I should be able to use the digital out from my motherboard fairly easily. That means I only need one piece of coax for audio run from the computer to the receiver, and it should be relatively noiseless, as it’ll be a digital signal. Video seems like it’ll be a bit more interesting, though. See, iTunes visualizations only run in 640×480 when full screen, so I think that composite *should* do all right. I just need to find a way to extract a composite signal from the board. There’s a five-pin connector that hookes to a $15 Asus TV-out adapter, but I don’t want to pay that. I figure there’s a common ground, one pin for composite, and the other three pins for s-video. If I can only find out which two pins are for the composite, and if the chipset properly detects a TV when this is connected, I’ll be in good shape. :) I think the appropriate thing to do would be to order some Belden 1807A, two s-video connectors, and the Asus adapter, but I’d rather not spend any more on this project.

If this idea had only popped into my head about four days ago. :\

computerselectronicsmoved from livejournal

Cables?

December 29, 2003

One update on the last post… If anyone needs some decent-quality RCA interconnects, I’ll make them and charge only parts. Other people going in on cable will let me afford the slightly larger spool. (500′ is only 3x the cost of 100′) Let me know ASAP.

electronicsmaking thingsmoved from livejournal

:)

December 29, 2003

Well, it seems that the audio interconnects that I made need to be replaced. Turns out I was using standard, good-for-RF RG6. This has a copper-plated steel core with a 60% aluminum shield. Not bad, but it explains the extremely hard time I was having with soldering to the braid. Whoops.

Anyway, I think tomorrow I’m going to get a hold of Graybar and see if I can get 100′ of Belden 9259. It’s an all-copper coax, with a stranded core. Should be quite a bit easier to work with… I’ll just have to get some more connectors and resolder things. Shouldn’t be a big deal. :) The subwoofer does function right now, but I’m concerned about using a cold solder to hold the ground together. It just doesn’t seem like the best idea, to me.

So, hopefully this will work out for the best. I’m wondering if I should get more than 50′, in case I want to make more custom interconnects in the future… I’m just not really sure right now. I’m thinking that it might be nice to make a run from my test 2003 machine to my home theater stuff, that way I could listen to streaming audio in the basement…

Hmm…

Would anyone be interested in some coax for making custom, high quality audio interconnects / subwoofer cables / whatever? For about $0.30/ft + connectors and with a soldering iron you can make your own high-quality interconnects!

electronicsmaking thingsmoved from livejournal

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December 27, 2003

For anyone who’s interested, I’ve posted a new recipe: Pumpkin Cheese Coffee Cake.

Also, after receiving some handy advice from , I made up some cables for my subwoofer, ran them, and now my living room has a subwoofer in with the iPod, NAD705, and flat panel speakers. I may snag a spectrum analyzer off of eBay for purposes of adding some motion to the stereo area, but beyond tweaking, I think it’s done. Yay!

foodmaking thingsmoved from livejournal

DHCP Issue

December 12, 2003

Okay, well, I can now reproduce the issue I’m having with my firewall. Here’s how:

1) Reboot Firewall.
2) Log in as root.
3) Kill the dhclient process.
4) Execute ‘dhclient xl0’ to start the DHCP client again.
5) Repeat steps 3 and 4 two more times. (3x total)
6) Network connection goes poof.

I’m not sure if this is an issue with OpenBSD’s dhclient or what yet, although I see no reason why a DHCP server should be able to cause a client to go wacky. If I get a chance, I’ll try it tomorrow on a test machine at work. I’m very curious what will happen if I do this with a non-Comcast DHCP server.

If you’re interested, there are two network captures of the DHCP requests going back and forth at http://www.nuxx.net/files/dhcp_issue.tar.gz. Interestingly, the next packet after the server sending a DHCP ACK is my firewall ARPing for itself. (???)

Hmm, it seems that there is an OpenBSD Patch for arp which patches part of if_ether.c. I wonder if this patch would take care of my troubles…? I think I’ll try to grab the kernel source tonight while sleeping, then give it a try after work tomorrow.

I think I’m at least making headway… I hope?

computersmoved from livejournal

:(

December 11, 2003

I lost my fucking IP lease. I should have thought that a transparent proxy is going to cause the cable modem to think a new NIC is connected. Bah.

Stupid, stupid me.

Now I’m sniffing through a hub, but the address has changed.

computersmoved from livejournal