Over the years, I’ve primarily used bash with occassional forays into zsh (and oh-my-zsh). zsh never seemed significantly better than bash, and it introduced enough friction in writing and running scripts that I’d inevitably switch back to trusty bash after a few months. I’ve played around with fish in the past, but I never took the time to make an honest go at it. This time I’ve decided to spend…
Sky Blue Lake Back in early January my good friend Dave sent out an email to 20 or so people asking if anyone would be interested in doing the John Muir Trail with him. He mentioned something about going ultralight and doing it in 10 days, but I really didn’t think those were important details at the time. I had never gone backpacking for more than a long weekend, over a very short distance, but…
Mount Fuji
Christchurch, New Zealand
#ThatWanakaTree
Mount Cook, New Zealand
On the way to Mount Cook
A little late, but this is my 2014 Year in Review. It’s so hard to summarize an entire year into a few paragraphs and a handful of selected photos. I’ve spent hours over the last few weeks going through photos and videos that I took the year, some of which I’m looking through for the first time. I’m reminded of all the trips taken and places seen, some which seem so long ago but most just seem a…
Lower Manhattan at Dusk, from the top of 30 Rockefeller Plaza
View from Brooklyn of the NYC New Year's Eve fireworks show Last night Rebecca and I watched the NYC New Year’s Eve fireworks show from our Brooklyn apartment. We are fortunate enough to have a direct view of the Statue of Liberty from our living room, around which the fireworks were clustered. It was a nice, relaxing end to an eventful year. We moved to New York City in August when an opportunity…
NYC Snowflake
Chinatown Fishmonger
EC2 Disk Overview Amazon’s EC2 service is really neat, but its disk subsystem has some peculiarities that are not initially obvious. Up until very recently, root directories (’/’) at EC2 were limited to 10Gb, a limit defined by the maximum size of an Amazon Machine Image (AMI), essentially a template of an EC2 instance. In order to use more disk space, Amazon provides ephemeral disks that one can…
Memory is really strange. On the one hand, I’m amazed at how fast the last three years of my life has gone by. I remember walking into my hotel room on the day I landed in Stuttgart, a full month before Rebecca would come, and putting down my bags and really wondering what I had gotten myself into. I had decided to take a job in a city I had visited only during my interviews, in a country I had…
I went to Brussels last weekend for FOSDEM 2008, which was held at ULB Campus Solbosh. The free event was a good way to check in with the overall Open Source community and to see all of the interesting things people outside my normal circles are working on.
Pretty scary stuff, even if you trust all of your users: victor@mercury ~ $ ./exploit ----------------------------------- Linux vmsplice Local Root Exploit By qaaz ----------------------------------- [+] mmap: 0x100000000000 .. 0x100000001000 [+] page: 0x100000000000 [+] page: 0x100000000038 [+] mmap: 0x4000 .. 0x5000 [+] page: 0x4000 [+] page: 0x4038 [+] mmap: 0x1000 .. 0x2000 [+] page: 0x1000…
For the last few years I’ve been using Gmail exclusively and have been forwarding emails to @victortrac.com to my Gmail account. Google’s spam filters are the best I’ve ever seen, and the interface is elegant and fast, and combined with loads of storage and IMAP access, Gmail is nearly the perfect email application. The XMPP integration is just icing on the cake. Because of these features, I…
There’s been a bunch of press lately about Google Reader’s new features, most notably the “Friends’ shared items” section and Profiles. A handful of people were instantly complaining about the lack of privacy and control, but I don’t really see Google’s implementation as a problem. It seems pretty simple to go to “Manage friends” and hide the contacts you don’t want looking at your shared items,…
A few hours ago, Rebecca and I were walking through the Schwabstrasse S-bahn stop in Stuttgart, and as we reached the escalator to go up, we felt a cold wind coming down from the street level. I was wearing only a short-sleeve polo shirt and a pair of light pants, and so we stopped to put on warmer clothing. Only a few hours earlier, we were having paella on a warm Malvarrossa beach in Valencia,…
For a few days now, I’ve been unable to reach http://de.php.net, not because the site has been down but because of incorrect DNS configuration by de.php.net’s Germany host. When you request a PHP manual page, PHP.net does this trick of geo-locating your IP and redirects you to your closet PHP.net mirror. If you take a look, de.php.net is actually a CNAME record for php3.globe.de, which is in turn…
I’ve been mulling over upgrading my iPhone’s firmware to 1.1.1 for the last few weeks but have been put off by the complexity of it. All the tools and steps had been outlined so it was merely just running through the steps, but there were a ton of them, and it seemed like more of a pain in the ass than it was worth. Well, the hacker community has come through again with a easy solution, and now…
This is the first time I’ve been back in the States since the iPhone was released, and after getting a chance to play with one yesterday, I decided I had to go out and buy one today. The problem is that AT&T-locked JesusPhone doesn’t work in Germany without a little bit of hackery, and Apple’s just-released-last-week 1.1.1 firmware is reported all over the internet to brick hacked iPhones. Would…
The Network is becoming more the Computer.
traffic on the brooklyn bridge
I upgraded my server’s apache from 2.0 to 2.2 today (see http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/new_features_2_2.html" target=_new”>Overview of new features in Apache 2.2) and it was painless except for a few minor hiccups. I like to keep my server’s packages up to date with Gentoo’s stable packages not just for new features but mainly to make package upgrades as easy as possible. I find that by staying…
A little bit of the YUI Library, lots of Drupal, and about two weeks of on and off work has resulted in a new theme for my site. It’s been long overdue for a makeover. The overarching goal was simplicity and good UI, and I’m pretty happy with the results so far. Yahoo’s YUI is pretty easy to integrate into Drupal, and allowed me to get started quickly. From the YUI library, I’m getting a good…
auschwitz Rebecca and I went to Poland a few weeks back, and visiting Auschwitz is one of the most humbling experiences I’ve ever had.
I shot this video while I was a DJ at WSBF, Clemson’s student run radio station. It was a fun event, although the video probably could use a bit more editing to make it shorter.
I live in Germany but maintain a US-based VoIP number through a VoicePulse.com account. The VoIP account allows Rebecca and me to cheaply call the US, and gives our friends and family a “local” US number at which they can reach us in Germany. I’ve got a standard digitally cordless analog phone (heh) that plugs into a Fritzbox supplied by my ISP - 1und1.de. The Fritzbox is a wonderful piece of kit…
Stuttgart has these wonderful little hidden little charms that make it a really great place to live. One of our favorites are the Besenwirtschaften, which are traditional Swabian wine houses. They’re operated by the families that own the numerous vineyards around the Stuttgart area, and by law they are allowed to open 4 months out of the year. They are scattered throughout the city and its…
I just came across Streamburst via Techcrunch. Within minutes, I was happily downloading In Search of the Valley at a blistering 8-9 megabits per second, probably the closest I’ve ever gotten to topping out my 16-megabit ADSL connection. By the time I finish this blog post, a full DRM-free 1.1 gigabyte DVD-quality movie will be ready to watch, all for $7.99. That’s brilliant. I went to ISOTV’s…
The Samsung ML-2010 is a great bargain laserjet printer. I bought it from NewEgg last year for $49 after a $50 mail-in rebate, which I quickly recieved. While it doesn’t see too much more than 5-10 pages per week, I’ve never had to replace the toner cartridge. Using the Splix driver, it works great under Linux, specifically Gentoo AMD64 (x86_64) in my case. Here’s how you can get it to work,…
That’s my friend Tim with our final project as Clemson EE students back in 2004. We were given a computer running QNX and told to build a pendubot: The Pendubot is a two-linked inverted pendulum actuated by a single motor. The links are connected to each other by a rotational joint, and the base of one link is connected to the motor. Control of the Pendubot is available only at the base of one of…
A few months ago I was asked if I could create a small website for my high school graduating class' 10 year reunion. My immediate thought was "Wha? It's been 10 years already?!," but it turns out no, I graduated high school only 8 years ago. I've got another two years to go (Yes, the reunion is a long ways off, but look how quickly the last 8 years passed!).
A few years ago a good friend and I were walking through Munich's famed Englischer Garten when we came across some guys surfing in a fast-flowing canal. It was really amusing to see these guys surf back and forth for a minute or two before falling or conceding to the next surfer. While it was highly unusual to see people surfing downtown in a city, it was at least summer-time and quite hot. It…
I am impressed. After months of rumor and speculation, Apple Computer has finally announced the iPhone. From the stream of pictures coming from sites like Engadget, the upcoming iPhone looks even more impressive than anything Apple fanboys have conjured up in Photoshop. The hardware features are outstanding - high resolution 3.5" tough screen, 2 megapixel camera, bluetooth, quad-band GSM, Wifi,…
I recently got back from visiting family in Ireland, and one of the things that I did during the trip was "fixing" the family's computer. I say fix loosely because all I really did was uninstall some really shitty software, namely by a company called Symantec. The family had a decent enough computer (P4 3ghz, 512mb RAM), but no matter what they were doing, the hard disk would grind away…
I recently got married, and one of the results of marriage is that you gain some new family members. So I was pleasantly surprised to see that one of my cousin-in-laws, Jackson West, is writing for NewTeeVee, a newly found GigaOm-network website devoted to web video. It was only a few months ago that I found out Jackson was as much a pyromaniac as I am, as we tried to rig together as many bottle…
Maybe I’m just a big robotics nerd, but I actually rewound and repeatedly watched the actual moment where Asimo’s right leg collapses and he takes a nasty spill down the steps. Five times. Is it also silly that I was nervous, mostly for the engineers, the first time I saw this? Asimo looked so timid, while simultaneously courageous, as he lined up to take his first step. In front of all those…
I recently blew away my completely setup Gentoo desktop when I decided I needed to rebuild on a new RAID5 array. This meant that I got go through the entire Gentoo install, build, and configuration process from scratch, after not having had to do it for ages. I also took the opportunity to use LVM2 this time around, which I'll probably write about in a future post. Either the Gentoo process has…
These crazy guys over at Acro-Base made this video of one of them ski-gliding down the Eiger. It’s a terrifying video, at times showing the flier dangerously close to the rocks.
Apparently I’ve been to 11% of the world’s countries. I better get truckin’ if I want to join the Traveler’s Century Club anytime soon. From travbuddy.com.
Controversial "reporter" Borat goes to my home town and takes on Charleston's societal elite. Hilarity ensues. While you're at it, this is another great Borat video. This time he's interviewing James Broadwater (my favorite is the 10 minutes of silence):
Transcript: HOST: I’m curious, have you ever googled anybody? Do you use Google? BUSH: Occasionally. One of the things I’ve used on the Google is to pull up maps. It’s very interesting to see — I’ve forgot the name of the program — but you get the satellite, and you can — like, I kinda like to look at the ranch. It remind me of where I wanna be sometimes.
I stumbled upon This American Life back when I was still in college, when I used to regularly drive on Friday nights from Clemson, South Carolina to Davidson, North Carolina to visit my girlfriend at the time (who is now my wife). This drive was about four hours long and took me through such great bible-belt towns as Traveller's Rest and Spartanburg, so it didn't take me very long to sort through…
Google Map’s cameras caught this bug in the midst of an attack on Stuttgart. It also looks like it’s crapping all over the field. Crikey!
This Canadian RC modeler built this setup using gyroscopes attached to his virtual reality headgear, independently controlling the camera on the RC airplane, while a standard controller handles all the flight servos. He’s able to wirelessly capture all video data streaming from the onboard camera. It’s amazing how well the headgear controls the onboard camera. It makes me really want to build my…
We've finally recieved our pictures from the photographer, over a month after our wedding (that's another blog entry). About a third of the pictures are on Flickr.com, so head on over there to see our gallery. Be sure to add comments and contribute your own photos taking during our celebration in our Wedding Images Group. Thanks again to everyone for helping us celebrate.
It took 91 minutes, but Germany managed to pull it off in the end, and Stuttgart explodes in celebration. Within moments, thousands of cars all over the city were all honking simultaneously, congratulating each other on a well played victory. It was a Wednesday night, but for Germans it was the night before a Thursday holiday, so everyone must have been up celebrating all night. We heard yelps and…
Looking to kill a few minutes? Like Jackson Pollock?. Just move your mouse around at jacksonpollock.org and create your own. Left click to change color, and the rest is natural.