irnbru_man

Where am i

2007-08-23T19:30:12Z

I haven't posted here for a while. I switching from using live journal as my rss aggregator to reader.google.com, so haven't been on live journal as much. I also wanted a little more control over my blog, especially being able to view the logs so all my new entries are going to www.imacdonald.co.uk. I orginally thought I would do public type posts to imacdonald.co.uk and private stuff to livejournal, but that doesn't seem to worked out that way.

So I figured I would do a post here to let people know I have moved. There is an rss feed available at http://www.imacdonald.co.uk/rss if you if you are using google reader or something similar.

Morning commute on the toll road

2007-06-21T03:11:18Z

Playing with my new camera

irnbru_man @ 2007-06-03T15:15:00

2007-06-03T20:15:17Z

Test
test

St louis

2007-06-03T18:51:31Z

We spent the last two days in Columbia Missouri, on the way back to the airport we stopped in to see the arch in St Louis

irnbru_man @ 2007-05-18T17:55:00

2007-05-18T22:56:19Z

Bikes stats from this morning
TRP 19.9
ODO 179
AVG 14.6
MAX 26.6
Time 1:22:04

bike stats from the weekend

2007-05-16T13:22:16Z

We biked from court house to bethesda. I was on my old mountain bike since the C&O cannal isn't that fun on skinny tires

there and back
Time: 1:18
Average: 13
Dist: 16.99
Max: 23
Odo: 334.8 (since I bought this odometer)

Irvine Welsh

2007-05-10T23:24:57Z

Irvine Welsh

2007-05-10T23:23:27Z

Book signing at the wonderland bar in DC

irnbru_man @ 2007-05-08T12:38:00

2007-05-08T17:37:39Z

mac vs pc south park style http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id_kGL3M5Cg

kinetic races baltimore

2007-05-05T16:08:22Z

irnbru_man @ 2007-04-30T12:47:00

2007-04-30T17:48:47Z

This is a very interesting and well done warning for anyone who posts on social network sites

irnbru_man @ 2007-04-28T16:17:00

2007-04-28T20:28:23Z

I finally gave in a bought a mac mini. Microcenter is running a $100 rebate on the cheaper one. I have moved over the Battlestar Galatica episodes I bought on itunes and am loving front row. I have a dvi to hdmi cable enroute that should hopefully solve the wide screen issues. Till that comes I just have to use zoom on the tv to remove the black bars. I also experimented with handbrake to see what it was like to convert dvd's to mpeg4 files and I can report success. After adding the test file to itunes I can use front row play back movie. This should remove the final laziness of having to take a dvd off the shelf and play it. I am also surprised at just how small the mac mini is compared to the mini-itx box it is currently sitting on top of. So I am happy and I got the thumbs up from the wife.

irnbru_man @ 2007-04-26T18:06:00

2007-04-26T22:06:28Z

bike stats from this morning
ODO 139
AVG 14
max 24.9
TRP 19.6
time 1:23:53

irnbru_man @ 2007-04-23T21:57:00

2007-04-24T02:23:09Z

I am torturing my self again with MythTV. I picked up a Compact Flash to IDE converter last week and managed to get miniMyth installed on my mini-itx box. MiniMyth can be booted from a compact flash card or PXE boot server. After much pulling of teeth I managed to build a minimyth.conf file and get it in the correct place on the flash card for everything to boot.

Now that I have it up and running it, I can finally use the mini-itx box for watching tv from my myth backend server. This is all good but I have a nice tivo that does all that for me already, so what I was really want is a DVD juke box. MythTV has a DVD ripping module built in but I lost some more hair before working out that the miniMyth box needed a large hunk of disk for saving the temporary files before the backed mtd (myth transcoding daemon) would start. I exported a nfs share from my file server to the miniMyth box and I managed to rip a DVD for testing. Since miniMyth is designed to be used with the via EPIA motherboard with hardware mpeg2 decoding it doesn't include include the transcoder app for converting to Divx. This also means that only options for ripping dvds are perfect or iso. Never of them seem to play back very well on the box so it looks like I may be retiring it for good and buying myself a mac mini to use as a media server.

I have been using the mac port of mythfront end for a while but I still haven't worked out how to get it to rip dvd's yet. My file server also seems to have a funky usb controller that doesn't work well with linux so I can't use that for ripping dvds from my external dvd drive. So the next plan of action is to move the firewire card to my file server and hook the external dvd drive using that.

Oh and to top it all one of the fans on my file servers power supply has died so the the machine powered off and beeped very loudly a couple times over the weekend so i need to look into getting it replaced.

So over all a successful geek weekend.

irnbru_man @ 2007-04-17T22:58:00

2007-04-18T03:05:56Z

I bought my self a 320 external firewire drive and I have been trying to back up my mac. One thing that is becoming obvious is I have a lot of files on my computer.

quick and dirty file count

for a in * ; do echo "$a" ;ls -Rl "$a" |wc -l ; done

Applications 267746
Applications (Mac OS 9) 1214
Desktop DB 1
Desktop DF 1
Desktop Folder 0
Developer 120859
Documents 12
Library 204173
Mobile Stream CDMA 1
Mobile Stream GSM 1
Network 3
System 100808
System Folder 1945
Trash 0
Users 288162
Volumes 10
automount 9
bin 39
cores 0
dev 309
etc 1
mach 1
mach.sym 1
mach_kernel 1
man 28
opt 47104
private 1898
sbin 63
tmp 1
usr 39331
var 1

irnbru_man @ 2007-04-17T18:08:00

2007-04-17T22:09:08Z

Another job scam, seem deal the URL in the message ends in 5992383

"Reecently my assistant saw your resume online and forwarded it to me as a possible candidate for a tutor position with our company"

This time it is goodgradesnow.com

irnbru_man @ 2007-04-15T14:23:00

2007-04-15T18:24:02Z

When I hear Audio Quatro, this is what I think about

http://www.germancarblog.com/2007/04/audi-rallye-heritage-movie.html

irnbru_man @ 2007-04-12T14:32:00

2007-04-12T18:32:20Z

MAC and PC Meet linux

http://www.novell.com/linux/meetlinux/

irnbru_man @ 2007-04-12T12:10:00

2007-04-12T16:26:45Z

Some time in June I am being moved from Reston to Dulles and figured I would see what options are out there to work a little closer to home. So I updated my resume on careerbuilder just to see. One thing I wasn't expecting is the amount of scam emails I have recieved.

The first one that looks suspicious was as a web developer for toospoiled.com, then there is one for worldvoicenews.com then today I got one from adminsolutionsgroup.net

What is interesting is they all have the same id at the end of the links 5992383

So in total I have had 7 job descriptions sent to me from these suspects.

======

Received: from mail.svphosting.com (svphosting.com [130.94.69.99])
....
Received: from adminsolutionsgroup.net ([130.94.69.99]) by svphosting.com with MailEnable ESMTP; Thu, 12 Apr 2007 10:12:04 -0400
Message-ID: <20070412101149.73115A3F41587B00@adminsolutionsgroup.net>
From: careers@adminsolutionsgroup.net
Subject: Ian , regarding a Technical Director position

I recently saw your resume online and I feel you would be an excellent candidate to
apply for Technical Director position we are offering at Administrative Solutions.
We are a company that combines the best of both worlds; high tech and business
support services in order to provide the best administrative services to businesses
and executives worldwide.

.../careers.aspx?J=5992383

======

Received: from gbmailhosting.com (gbmailhosting.com [66.132.211.17])
....
Received: from worldvoicenews.com ([66.132.211.17]) by gbmailhosting.com with MailEnable ESMTP; Wed, 11 Apr 2007 14:00:45 -0400
From: careers@worldvoicenews.com
Subject: Ian , regarding your resume

I recently saw your resume online and feel you would be an ideal candidate to apply
for an immediate opening as a Website Developer with our company. We are World
Voice News, the fastest growing news site on the web right now.

.../careers.aspx?A=5992383

======

Received: from mail.ajdmailhost.com (ajdmailhost.com [71.6.194.198])
....
Received: from toospoiled.com ([71.6.194.198]) by ajdmailhost.com with MailEnable ESMTP; Mon, 09 Apr 2007 09:38:23 -0700
From: employment@toospoiled.com
Subject: Ian , regarding your online resume

Your online resume has been reviewed and we have determined that you are qualified
for a position as a Web Developer with our company, Too Spoiled. We are one of the
most exciting web launches in recent years.

.../Careers.aspx?jp=5992383

last chance to shop at comp usa in the dc

2007-04-07T19:17:30Z

the comp usa in tysons has large going out of business signs. I had a look round and the are offering 20-40% off the stuff left in the store. They have a some stuff left including a few macs, some motherboards, memory and flash cards, I didn't see anything that jumped out at me but other people seemed to be picking a lot of stuff.

red line

2007-04-05T00:19:46Z

I had heard about the new red lights at gallery place but hadn't seen them till now. The photo probably doesn't do them justice. Very eerie.

shocked and stunned

2007-04-04T23:36:07Z

no I am not in the uk. The photo is from giant in arlington. They have henz tomato soup, hob nobs, and branston pickle, lion bars and bounties.

Mmmmmmmm

irnbru_man @ 2007-03-29T12:14:00

2007-03-29T16:16:13Z

My bike is now 100 miles old :)

ODO: 100
AVG 13.4
MAX 22
TIME: 1:23:10
TRP 18.6

Not being a fan of cycling for 20 miles in the rain, snow and cold I haven't been biking to work over winter. The weather has started getting warmer and this is first week I have been able to commit to cycling to work. So after walking out his morning in my cycle short and long sleeve top I quickly ran back in to get my thermal bottoms. The radio was reporting the temperature to be 40'F. It started getting a little warmer once I hit Vienna. I didn't push myself very hard this morning. I also forgot to rest the odometer before leaving so the mileage and distance are a little short. I not going to be able to do this much longer since the group is moving to Dulles and I don't think I can justify a 30 mile bike ride each way.

bathroom at the sheraton

2007-03-06T18:17:39Z

walking into the restroom at the sheraton in tysons is like walking into the scene from alien. Very cold flickering light and dark.

I don't know if they are trying to save money but the whole hotel is freezing cold.
Sent from the mobile office

This is what I call history

2007-03-01T19:22:21Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/highlands_and_islands/6407333.stm

Scottish water is going to repair sewers from the 1800's under the streets of Tain. Tain is Scotland's oldest royal burgh and received its charter in 1066 from King Malcolm III.

Update:
I did some more reading after webjedi's dad asked "where is King Malcolm on the Bayeux Tapestry"

My response was "he would probably have been fighting with the French
against the English". I then looked it up, and I was close. Harald Hardrada was king of Norway and ruled northern scotland. Haralds claim to English throne was weak. Harald had support from
the Scottish King Malcolm III. Harald invaded england in September 1066. This was
which was about a month before the battle of Hastings.

This site has a good time line of what was going on then.

http://www.timeref.com/thr00022.htm

Including Halley's comet.