musings from the sleep deprived

So algae. How frustrating is this stuff. Short answer? Very.

We did a bunch of research, and the prevailing wisdom says that there are a few different causes of algae growth. Phosphates, Nitrates, lack of filtration, lack of circulation, not enough competing life (macro-algae in the refugium) and lighting cycles.
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So I need to prime the pump of this post with a bit of foreword. It should be noted that I am decidedly NOT a mac fanboi. I’ve used a fair portion of their kit over the years for a variety of purposes, both liesure and work related. From the technical perspective, I have evaluated their products on those basis, and am willing to state the following things about their products and mentality:

• They have, on a regular basis, been able to innovate decidedly outside of the box
• Their ecosystem is proprietary and exclusionary, and has allowed them to make gobs of money at the expense of a healthy market (they are definitely NOT the only company guilty of such practices. That doesn’t make the fact any better)
• iTunes software and store sucks. Sorry, it just does. And it is getting worse as time goes on
• Their products are incredibly sexy. They take aesthetic design to a level that most companies don’t even know exist, many more simply emulate, and almost noone can rival. Off the charts
• They have excellent support, in my experience. I’ve not had to make that much use of it over the years, but when I’ve had to, it has not let me down
• They have managed to create a brand and consumer loyalty index that is also rarely rivaled. Those who have bought in are damn near rabid. In markets where there are so many other options, and in the few cases where an otherwise healthy competitive market exists for the particular product set… that is pretty invaluable, and might have been one of the most important reasons they’ve stayed in business during some of the tougher times
• They support educational markets. I dig that. Even if it isn’t for purely altruistic reasons, they at least recognize that it pays off in the long run, and have (and continue to) leverage this fact. Well played, sirs … well played
• I’m not fond of their pricing model. I speculate that part of their strategy is (or at least, was), to play to people’s vanity and price their products as the “premium” model in the markets they participate in. Yes, sure… I can chalk some of that up to needing to recover the costs associated with their high quality of engineering and design, but not that much. Also, it just isn’t true anymore. Yet they still participate in their markets with prices 20% or higher than the nearest equivalent product, and I’m sorry, but those differences in product that were once arguably differential are, quite simply, no longer true

Ok, so now you know my stance on them. I own several of their products, and where I can rationalize the price, I may very well purchase them in the future as well. But at the moment, my general “one liner” about their current product set is “I’m kind of over them”.

Well, that was yesterday. This is today. And holy shit. If I really take a damn hard look at this, and try to noodle out what the real differences are between this product (that I’m about to link) and its competitors … the list is probably reasonably short, but not insignificant. However, maybe its just I’ve got that glossy sexy shiny thing making my eyes all blurry and all, but HOLY SHIT. Apple, I gotta hand it to you… you make some sexy stuff. Without further ado… please feast your eyes:

http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/

You’re welcome.

So once I got the XBMC server setup, I started ripping all my DVDs onto the NAS drive and making them available to that server. I also found a neat too (xbmchtml) that lets you rip the Library out into a nice HTML formatted view. So I added a link to that up in the top header (Media) so you can go there and check out all the movies and tv shows we have ripped down. Very neat. Oh, and the link back to the blog is up at the top left of that page when you’re ready to navigate back.

Enjoy!

So thanks to my main man Mohtaram Eyang Kakung Signore Rhino-ji, I have a Raspberry Pi (model B). If you’re not familiar with what that is, clickie the linkie and go check it out.

When I first was thinking about rebuilding my media server, the RaspPi immediately came to mind. There are literally dozens of online blogs, readmes, tech sites, etc with details about how to set that up. And honestly, even if there weren’t, this was ridiculously simple to do. First step, figure out which version of xbmc to use. If you don’t know what that is, go take a look here. Essentially, it is a front end for media servers. In addition, it has several dedicated builds supporting the Raspberry Pi. Foremost among them are OpenELEC, RaspBMC and Xbian. You can do your own investigation around which of these (or others) is best, or you can just trust this guy. I ended up going with RaspBMC.

Ok, so after doing that reading, I still need a few things. The Pi doesn’t come with any “extras”. So in order to make this go, I needed a power supply, some kind of rudimentary case and a memory stick for it. I opted for the acrylic case from Adafruit. I also ordered a power supply from them as well. And finally, I ordered a 4GB SD (Class 10) from B&H Photo, my preferred site for all things camera related. Total cost, about $35. About a week later, everything arrived, and I was ready to rock. I snagged the Windows installer from the RaspBMC site, and that “burned” the image to the SD card. The installer also lets you manually set the ip address, instead of using DHCP. I want a fixed address so I can point tablet/phone based remote apps to it, so I set that as well. I popped in the freshly minted SD card, attached network and power, and up it came. Note that I did not attach it to the video or USB keybd/mouse yet. I was hoping to complete configuration through an SSH connection. This turned out to be less effective than I would have hoped. You can’t just use the web interface either. You can, however, avoid the keybd/mouse since the app remote called Yatse (check your droid store, not sure if there is an iOS version) has a remote keyboard function as well. It takes only a minute to point it to the right host, and you’re good to go for controlling it over the network.

It goes through a couple quick setup steps to pick locale and timezone. At this point, I needed to point it to my network storage where my Videos are, which is quick step as well. I have a Synology NAS that I’m sharing out Videos from (via NFS) and for each type (Movies or TV Shows) it “scrapes” your collection to gather info and locally cache that info. At this point, I just need to get it hooked up to the real TV and receiver and I’m good to go.

And therein lies the rub. Basically, I’m just out of HDMI ports. My receiver is an older SONY model that doesn’t have any, so the video signal is not going through the receiver. The TV has two inputs, currently occupied by the DVD player and DirecTV thinger. Also, since my A/V gear is in its own “closet” (read; the furnace room), I’m dependent on those long runs to get signal to the TV. So, I’m going to put an HDMI switch in my rack, push the HDMI outs from the Pi, DVD and DirecTV device to it, and just use one of the long runs to the TV. I picked out this model. Monoprice is my default vendor A/V gear and network cabling and supplies. They’ve always done right by me, orders big and small. Anyway, that should arrive sometime next week, at which point my install will be complete.

Oh, one final note. Since my receiver doesn’t use HDMI ins/outs, it also isn’t taking advantage of the HDMI audio signalling. I’m using digital coax or fiber connections from the various devices currently. I’m hoping that switch’s digital coax connection can be used to get the HDMI signal’s audio over to the receiver and that way I can take advantage of the full audio I’ll get from that instead of using the Pi’s 1/8″ audio jack. I’ll see how that works once I get it all hooked up. Worst case, though, I just use that jack.

I will follow up on this post once I get it hooked up and running and watch my first movie!

PS – might be time to consider getting a modern receiver. Ah well… something to add to the list.
PSS – I’m very pleased with the RaspPi performance thusfar. My testing using my HDMI monitor had really high quality output with no smearing. I can’t wait to see this on the big TV.

So there has been quite a bit of progress on the fishtank front. Where to begin…
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So I have a peculiar brain. I say this because it has managed to take four completely unrelated, seemingly innocent facts about the current state of my life, and turn this into insomnia. Note the time of the post. I’ve been up for about an hour now, and here is the reason:

1. I’m currently reading Sherlock Holmes Complete Works. This isn’t really notable, except in that if you’ve read it, you might recall the precision with which the main character goes through crime scenes and observes things. Watson’s descriptions for his methods, and the narratives describing those examinations borders on the pathological. A minor nod must also go out to the style of language involved in the dialog. This is certainly a function of the era and perhaps also the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s command of it.
2. I’m playing a game called XCOM: Enemy Unknown at the moment. This is an odd sort of game that you don’t often see these days. The relevant point here is that it is a turn-based, squad combat game. For those not familiar with computer gaming parlance, what this means is that, during at least the action-heavy parts of the game, combat is slowed down into turns. In each turn, you get to choose an action for each of the 4-6 squad members in your strike team. Things like “move over to this spot”, “fire your gun at that enemy” or “use your special blow things up especially well ability” might be example actions. At the end of every round, each enemy unit on the field likewise chooses its own action and tries to foil your well laid plans. If you think about how this plays out, it makes what would otherwise be a very quick SEAL-team-like combat sequence play out in very long carefully scripted action sequences, broken into little chunks of action only several seconds long, mixed in with long pauses of your own strategic decision-making about what each member of your team should do to end the combat with minimum losses.
3. I am capable of lucid dreaming. For those of you unfamiliar, I will link to the wikipedia page, and steal its first line here to explain: “A lucid dream is any dream in which one is aware that one is dreaming. The term was coined by the Dutch psychiatrist and writer Frederik (Willem) van Eeden (1860–1932). In a lucid dream, the dreamer may be able to exert some degree of control over their participation within the dream or be able to manipulate their imaginary experiences in the dream environment.”
4. I wear a CPAP at night. Again, I link you to wikipedia if you happen to be unfamiliar. It is basically like going to bed wearing an oxygen mask, prescribed to help with my sleep apnea.

Ok, I’m going pause here briefly to give you a chance to read stuff at those links if needed, and maybe think about how these things might all play in concert with one another. Go ahead, I’ve got all night. Take a few minutes…

Alright, so here’s what my brain has done with all of that. I end up dreaming about Sherlock Holmes crime scenes and gunfights. Except that those gunfights and crime scene investigations end up playing out like XCOM combat sequences, with each character getting to move in little time-sliced chunks, after each move, taking a moment to have a soliloquy in Sherlockian dialog, with exactingly long sequences of observations about what is going on and with whom. If you’ve seen the recent couple of movies with Robert Downey, Jr, you might recall the sequences where you can see him planning out a method of attacking an opponent, in each moment observing how to best disable them, and then seeing it play out in real time exactly as he had surmised. That is how it happens in the dream. Now add to this the fact that I begin lucid dreaming, and I can, in fact, influence the course of the action, and it becomes exactly like playing XCOM-style in a Sherlockian novel. And then, of course, becoming aware of the sounds of my CPAP machine, adding that into my dream, and then slowly falling out of the dream state because moving through Sherlockian combat scenes in slow motion while listening to the augmented sounds of your own machine-assisted breathing is, in fact, quite disturbing and mind-numbingly boring.

So yeah, thanks brain! I owe you one. I’m going to just go in to work early and try and get some work done.

Brain? By the way? Pull this shit again, and I’m pulling out the ambien and taking your ass down. Just sayin’.

Here is a redacted cut/paste of a conversation I just had with Quicken Tech Support. I’ve redacted the name of the support person because I have no interest in throwing anyone under the bus. My initial question was to find out if there was any special/upgrade pricing as a long time user, and what the new features were. I will leave you to make your own conclusions…

XXXXX: Hi, my name is XXXXX. Thank you for contacting Quicken, please allow me a moment to read your question.
XXXXX: Hi Mark, how are you doing today?

me: very well, thanks. Happy New Years.

XXXXX: Thank you and happy new year to you to.
XXXXX: I would like to inform you that there is no update price available while upgrading from 2010 to 2013, however as you are a valuable customer, I am providing you with a link to get $20 discount.

me: that would be great, thank you.

XXXXX: http://quicken.intuit.com/blahblahblah

me: that is for the rental property manager
me: is there one for home and business?

XXXXX: You can scroll down, you will see it at the bottom of that page…

me: ah, nevermind, I just switched products, and the discount is still there.
me: Excellent.
me: so. final question… are the new features worth the upgrade? Last year, I was told there wasn’t anything significant changed
me: (by support)

XXXXX: Yes, there are many new feature plus the Mobile app.
XXXXX: Are you satisfied with the support I provided today and my efforts to help? If not, how else can I help you?

me: ok, thank you, I’ll look into it. Actually, I do have one final support type question
me: I’m trying hard to reduce the size of the file I work with.
me: its currently 40Meg + and the performance of quicken is suffering as a result
me: I’m trying to do a year-end copy to get rid of pre-2006 data
me: and after I do that, the file size is STILL over 40M (no reduction in size)
me: what am I doing wrong?

XXXXX: I would like to inform you that Year end feature is not working currently you can try the copy option to archive your file
XXXXX: Are you satisfied with the support I provided today and my efforts to help? If not, how else can I help you?

me: does it work better in 2013?
me: or work at all?

XXXXX: It is not working in 2013 as well.

me: thank you. Yes, I’m satisfied with your support.
me: have a great day