Posts on duckland.org

New Home

Sat, 11 Apr 2026 04:00:00 -0700

Moved to a new/old cloud provider

What Do I Use Revisited, Revisited

Fri, 20 Jun 2025 11:00:00 +0000

Revisiting another old article

Check-in 2025Q2

Tue, 17 Jun 2025 04:00:00 -0700

Check point 2025Q2

TUI Challenge: Day 7

Sat, 14 Jun 2025 04:00:00 -0700

This is the end, my friend

TUI Challenge: Day 6

Fri, 13 Jun 2025 04:00:00 -0700

Every Task In Its Place

TUI Challenge: Day 5

Thu, 12 Jun 2025 04:00:00 -0700

A Song For The Terminal

TUI Challenge: Day 4

Wed, 11 Jun 2025 04:00:00 -0700

A Song For The Terminal

TUI Challenge: Day 3

Tue, 10 Jun 2025 04:00:00 -0700

A Web of Trouble

TUI Challenge: Day 2

Mon, 09 Jun 2025 04:00:00 -0700

Email in the Terminal!

TUI Challenge: Day 1

Sun, 08 Jun 2025 04:00:00 -0700

TUI Challenge starts

Check-in, 2024-01

Mon, 15 Jan 2024 04:00:00 -0700

Time Has Past

Hum…it has been almost 6 months since I last posted here, And only two total last year. Not very good record on my part.

The ${JOB} has not change, still building Linux stuff for a large bank. The family is still doing well. And the weather sucks. It is currently 27F (-2C) with a windchill nocking it even colder. This time, it supposed to only be 36-48 hours, unlike two years ago

Finding Film

Tue, 18 Jul 2023 04:00:00 -0700

Retro Photography

NixOS Challenge, pt 1

Sat, 07 Jan 2023 04:00:00 -0700

So, I had a bit of free time between Christmas and New Years, so I decided to blow away my Dell XPS13 install of ArchLinux which has been on the for a long time now and install NixOS. I have been playing with it for a bit on some other computers, so I started with a mainly working config.

I was able to complete a week of work on the new OS just fine. In fact, the only two issues I currently have is that the version of darktable is behind (4.0 vs. just released 4.2) and my qutebrowser is not playing any DRM protected content like Netflix or Amazon streaming. I am not sure if that is NixOS or qutebrowser. I should look into it more, but for now I am just using firefox when I need to access that suff.

Check-in 2022-Q4

Fri, 30 Dec 2022 04:00:00 -0700

Where did the year go?

Check-in 2022-Q2

Sat, 18 Jun 2022 04:00:00 -0700

School has ended

Check-in 2022-Q1

Thu, 31 Mar 2022 04:00:00 -0700

What has been keeping me busy

The Start of Fall Update

Tue, 19 Oct 2021 04:00:00 -0700

No updates, but things done

July 2021 Check-in

Fri, 30 Jul 2021 04:00:00 -0700

Getting back to basics

Where Have I Been?

Sat, 24 Jul 2021 04:00:00 -0700

Time goes missing

Heart for Everyone

Fri, 25 Jun 2021 21:46:01 -0500

Everybody needs love….

Quick Photo Walk

Sat, 19 Jun 2021 13:31:10 -0500

Lovely day to take a stroll

GitHub Payback Time

Fri, 04 Jun 2021 20:26:45 -0500

Time to payback

Color After Freeze

Sat, 29 May 2021 11:34:27 -0500

Nature Recovers

March 2021 Check-in

Sun, 04 Apr 2021 04:00:00 -0700

Things are getting better

Firewall Saga, pt II

Sun, 21 Mar 2021 04:00:00 -0700

The saga continues

Crash of the Firewall

Sat, 06 Mar 2021 04:00:00 -0700

Box go Boom

February 2021 Check-in

Sun, 28 Feb 2021 04:00:00 -0700

That should have been a fun month

New look, again

Wed, 24 Feb 2021 04:00:00 -0700

Cha-cha-changes!

Well, that was fun

Sun, 21 Feb 2021 04:00:00 -0700

Snow Days Still Exist

January 2021 Check-in

Thu, 04 Feb 2021 04:00:00 -0700

Not gone yet

Still Alive

Sat, 17 Oct 2020 00:00:00 -0700

Still alive and kicking

Butterfly on Yellow Flower

Thu, 13 Aug 2020 04:00:00 -0700

Macro or not to Macro

Life in the new world

Sun, 09 Aug 2020 04:00:00 -0700

Strange things are up at the QuickieMart

Another week (or three), more weird

Fri, 15 May 2020 08:00:00 -0700

Settling in to the ‘New Normal’

Week 5

Sat, 18 Apr 2020 04:00:00 -0700

How are you coping?

Lockdown, week 4

Tue, 07 Apr 2020 04:00:00 -0700

Life among the family

Life Is Weird

Sat, 21 Mar 2020 04:00:00 -0700

Changes are afoot

February Update

Sat, 29 Feb 2020 04:00:00 -0700

Small steps to full self-hosting

Progress to Self-Hosting

Sat, 25 Jan 2020 04:00:00 -0700

Walking the path to Self-Hosting

Wi-Fi Issues

Sun, 29 Dec 2019 22:00:00 -0700

A good reason to de-cloud my life

Happy Christmas!

Tue, 24 Dec 2019 00:25:08 -0500

Photos of Christmas 2019

Path to Self-Hosting

Fri, 29 Nov 2019 04:00:00 -0700

De-Clouding my life

Hill Country Camping

Sun, 27 Oct 2019 00:25:08 -0500

Camping in the hills

Thoughts on the GPD Pocket2

Mon, 30 Sep 2019 00:25:08 -0500

The little laptop that almost could

Huntsville State Park Camping

Wed, 11 Sep 2019 00:25:08 -0500

Camping in the woods

A Duck Approaches

Sat, 03 Aug 2019 22:17:02 -0500

Just Silliness

What Do I Use Revisited

Mon, 29 Jul 2019 11:00:00 +0000

Revisiting an old article

The PixelBook Which Is Not ChromeOS

Tue, 23 Jul 2019 22:00:00 -0500

Swapping out ChromeOS for Ubuntu

Black and White School Park

Mon, 01 Jul 2019 00:25:08 -0500

Park study in Black and White

Photos from Bournemouth 2019-06

Sat, 15 Jun 2019 00:25:08 -0500

More British Photos

Photos from the Park

Mon, 03 Jun 2019 00:25:08 -0500

Ducks, Squirrels, and Photo Gallery, Oh My!

Once More, A New Look

Sun, 26 May 2019 23:25:29 -0500

Boring(?) Web Site News

Houston's Graffiti Wall

Wed, 08 May 2019 22:10:45 -0700

Some Houston Street Art

A Quick Note on Citrix

Mon, 01 Apr 2019 07:37:11 -0700

Just so I remember this next time I do an install. The package to install under modern Ubuntu is the Web Receiver, not the Full Package. Sadly, both show up as icaclient under dpkg, hence the confusion.

And, another note.

sudo ln -s /usr/share/ca-certificates/mozilla/* /opt/Citrix/ICAClient/keystore/cacerts

Where did the month go?

Sun, 31 Mar 2019 11:39:58 -0700

Life got very busy, and I have not had a chance to write in a while. And, the ‘hard drive’ in my R810 died, so I am in the process of recovering from backup. Joy

And Then, No More PixelBook

Mon, 25 Feb 2019 20:11:59 -0700

So, when we were last here, I was talking about how I had been happily using my PixelBook for a year, and everything was just fine. Then, life happened, and things changed, and I found myself working out of the house for a while.

Why should this be a problem? Well, the program I use to remote into the office has a desktop client as well as a web-based one. Under Chrome OS, all I could figure out how to use was the HTML5 web based one. The HTML5 one is fine for the getting and checking email and doing web work. However, it leaves a lot to be desired for any development work.

12 Months of Chrome OS

Mon, 07 Jan 2019 12:15:50 -0700

For the last 12+ months, Chrome OS has been my daily driver. And for the most part, it has treated me okay for all that time. Recently, some issues have cropped up.

I have successfully used my PixelBook in my day to day life doing things. Telecommuting to work a few days a week. Taking online training for work. Doing basic photo editing. Talking with the family whilst traveling. Helping launch a great father/child program. I can run Linux apps, android apps, commercial apps, in addition to web based apps. It has been great.

A look behind, and a look ahead

Mon, 31 Dec 2018 12:15:24 -0700

As 2018 draws to a close, it is the way of things to look at the year past, and then look ahead.

A look behind…

My main tech experience this year has been using the PixelBook as my main computing device. This for the most part has worked out well. Everything I needed to do I figured out a way to do it under ChromeOS, and most of the time it was as easy to do as under Linux.

TRF 2018 Photos : General

Fri, 14 Dec 2018 12:15:27 -0700

Part four of my TRF Photos series. This time the photos which did not fall into any of the other categories.

Fall Colors I

Fall Colors II

Yellow Dragon

Sunflower

Green Man

Press

Hanging Shadows

Rat Pack

Bird Whistles

Here Be Dragons!

Straw Brooms

Play with Me

TRF 2018 Photos : Holiday

Tue, 11 Dec 2018 12:15:26 -0700

Part three of my TRF Photos series. This time looking at Holiday decorations.

Beaver and Tree

Hanging Ornament I

Hanging Ornament II

Hanging Ornament III

Window Cat

Holiday Duck!

TRF 2018 Photos : Water Lilies

Sat, 08 Dec 2018 12:15:50 -0700

Part two of my TRF Photos series. Today, Water Lilies from the Water Lilly Garden.

TRF 2018 Photos : People

Wed, 05 Dec 2018 12:15:36 -0700

This is the first of a few posts on the photos from the second weekend we went to TRF.

This time around, I brought my main camera and took more photos. Lots more.

This is a few of the people pictures that I think turned out well. There were some others I took, but I was not happy with the results. Photographing people is not something I normally do, so it is an area I do need to explore and work on.

Quick Photos from TRF

Mon, 19 Nov 2018 20:52:27 -0700

As is our habit, we often go to TRF. This weekend, we finally made it. However, the weather was less than perfect. Around 50F and raining off and on. I still had a good time, and the family mainly enjoyed themselves as well, but I kept the small camera I brought with me away for most of the day.

I did manage to get a couple of keepers, but not a lot.

Fall is Coming

Mon, 12 Nov 2018 14:54:17 -0700

Spent some time in the Pine Woods this past weekend with one of the kiddos. In between playing, got a chance to take photos.

Gemini PDA

Sat, 13 Oct 2018 21:48:00 -0700

Gemini PDA

Last year, I backed Planet Computer’s Indiegogo campaign for the Gemini PDA. Now, if I had this nice PixelBook, why would I need something like this?

Well, for one thing, I have always been a sucker for PDAs. While I never had the original PDA, the Psions, I have owned a few over the years. An Apple MessagePad, a Sharp Zarus, a WindowsCE device (forget which one), and many, many Palm devices (including a PalmPilot, Palm III, Palm IIIx, Palm V, Palm Vx, Palm m505, Tungsten C, and Tungsten T2 (which I still have)).

Yet Another Trip To The UK

Tue, 25 Sep 2018 20:54:45 -0700

A while back, I was transferred to a new team at my $JOB. This team is more aligned with what I normally do, so this is a good thing. Plus, I know all other folks on the team, and I like them, including the manager. The only drawback is that I am the only US-based person on the team, as the rest of them are in London. Upside, I got to go over for some training and planning.

Treatments of Ice Cream Cone

Fri, 14 Sep 2018 04:45:22 -0700

10 Months on a Chromebook Check-in

Thu, 23 Aug 2018 18:58:00 -0700

So, way back in November, I decided to use ChromeOS has my main OS. And, then in January, I did a check-in on using ChromeOS for a month. Fast forward to-day, and I am still using my PixelBook as my daily driver for all things.

I still use the R810 and the x260 to test new Linux distros just to see what is happening in that space, but not to do anything else.

Random Photos from Around Town

Sat, 11 Aug 2018 16:27:08 -0700

Nothing really big, just doing some random photography. Been using either the phone, or some small point & shoot cameras that are not the newest.

I did pickup a book the other week called 50 Photo Projects by Lee Frost, but I have not had time to read anything yet.

Tripping In Austin

Sat, 04 Aug 2018 08:19:04 -0700

Took a couple of days in Austin. Since we used to live there, we spent some time visiting old haunts like Conan’s Pizza. We also spent some time wandering around the UT campus. Since it was between sessions, the campus was pretty empty.

4th Of July 2018 Trip Photos

Sat, 07 Jul 2018 21:32:25 -0700

This past week, the family and I headed to San Antonio for the 4th of July holiday. I naturally wanted to take some photos, and we wanted to see some fireworks. In addition, the eldest wanted to start looking at college campuses.

The trip was a lot of fun, and I did get some good photos (see below), but the weather did not cooperate for the fireworks. There was some serious rain in the afternoon, and the Powers That Be(TM) decided to cancel the displays.

Happy BDay, USA!

Wed, 04 Jul 2018 08:16:42 -0700

Hope your celebration is safe and fun!

Reflecting on 12 years and counting

Tue, 05 Jun 2018 06:00:52 -0700

I was reflecting on something today. 12 years ago today, I posted something on one of my first blogs (which has since been merged into this one).

In the years in between, I have had two photo blogs which I did a very good job up updating on a regular basis.

One of them, I posted almost daily for around 8 years, with over 1950 posts.

The other, I took, processed, and posted a new picture every day for a little over a year back in 2009. I tried to restart it two years ago, and did not get nearly as far.

Another Trip to the UK

Mon, 21 May 2018 09:37:25 -0700

As I teased before, I was back in the UK for some meetings. The original plan got all sideways when my main person I was meeting with left for paternity leave just before I got over there. No worries, as I was able to use the time to meet with others and get some good work done.

This time, I brought my main camera over with me, and spent some of the downtime taking pictures, mainly in Bournemouth, as I was only in London for the Monday, and was in meetings all day.

Sorry about that

Fri, 04 May 2018 15:09:15 -0700

I upgrade my web host yesterday, and it seems that the web server bits got confused. I have fixed it, and now we are all good.

A tease

Thu, 03 May 2018 16:35:50 -0700

A little teaser. I have something new coming, but I am too busy right now, so here is a quick tease:

Move along, little web site

Mon, 16 Apr 2018 21:30:29 -0700

So, I decided that I did not like the performance of the site where I was hosting it, so I went over to Digital Ocean (referral link).

The process was pretty easy. I used the native tools to back up the old site, then after using the ‘one-click install’ process over at DO, I used the import function to import the backup. As an added bonus, the pictures and everything imported as well. After a few checks, I updated DNS, and bam! Running on new host with better performance. Easy-peasy.

April Showers Bring Spring Flowers

Wed, 04 Apr 2018 08:07:05 -0700

We spent the last weekend in the Texas Hill Country, and I got a chance to wander a bit with the small camera. Still learning its limits and strengths.

I did get some images I think I like.

'#NeverAgain'

Sun, 25 Mar 2018 22:34:40 -0700

The numbers are unbelievable. As I write this, we are 12 weeks into 2018, and there have been 17 school shootings in the US where someone was injured or killed. 1.4 per week. And, if you look outside of schools, there have been to date 50 mass shootings where 4 or more people were injured or killed, not counting the shooter. 50 since January 1, 2018.

Never Again.

I plan to talk to my US and Texas Representatives and Senators about the issue. Yesterday, I went with my two oldest to the March For Our Lives protest in Houston. I am proud to say, it was my kids who wanted to go.

Site links updated

Mon, 26 Feb 2018 16:53:35 -0700

I had some time over the weekend, so I went through and cleaned up the links from the older posts as promised a while back. Amazingly, only one of the links is gone without a replacement.

The good thing was most of the updates where to change the URL from https:// to https://, which I think is a good thing.

Sunset Over Road

Wed, 21 Feb 2018 09:09:16 -0700

February, Already?

Sun, 18 Feb 2018 21:51:47 -0700

I am shocked to look at the calendar, and realize that February is almost over.

Where to begin? Well, the test with ChromeOS is going well. I have found that I need the access to my R810 less and less as I move things over to the Pixelbook. I have even found myself doing some light python coding on it. The flexibility and the speed is very nice. I have also been enjoying one of the major benefits of the Chromebook life style: major battery life. I can take my Pixel out of the bag when I get to the office and not plug it in all day, and still have a couple of hours of juice left over when I get home.

A month in, using ChromeOS only

Thu, 25 Jan 2018 09:58:59 -0700

As I pointed out a while back that I was moving to ChromeOS more seriously. Well, since Christmas day, I have parked my R810 to the side, and installed Chromium OS on my Lenovo X260 and started using it full time. What is Chromium OS? It is the open source version of ChromeOS.

So far, everything has been working great. The only thing that has not worked for me is DRM protected video stream, things like Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Video. Not a major lost, but I missed it on a recent trip.

D&D Game Night

Sun, 31 Dec 2017 00:59:05 -0700

A while back, the kids found out about D&D. So, we started a campaign. We do quests whenever we get the time and energy, but not on a regular cadence.

Tonight, I was playing with my camera whilst playing the game, and here are the results:

Trip to the Park in B&W

Tue, 26 Dec 2017 00:12:50 -0700

Mainly B&W, and mainly from the park. 🙂

'Snow Day! In Houston!'

Wed, 20 Dec 2017 00:34:02 -0700

Forgot to mention, that back on December 8th, we had a snow day in Houston. It was pretty different for us, as we normally do not get any snow, let alone any accumulation of it.

Of course, I took some pictures.

On Smartphones and Two-Factor Auth

Tue, 19 Dec 2017 10:40:28 -0700

So, my trusty Nexus 5X gave up the ghost suddenly on me. Given that it is an Android device, I was not worried about losing things like my contacts and photos, or even my apps as Google does a pretty decent job backing those things up.

However, there was one application I use which does not get its data backed up. FreeOTP which is a One-Time-Password application for Two Factor Auth. This allows me to have another layer of protection on web sites past my password.

Really moving in on the Chromebook

Mon, 13 Nov 2017 00:03:15 -0700

As I mentioned a while back that I was experimenting with using a Chromebook, I decide to see how far I could take it. On my recent trip to the UK, I only took my Acer C720 with me. During the trip, I used it for things like uploading photos I took, Skype to chat with the family, checking email and news, and remote access while in the hotel room.

This worked out pretty well, to the point where I am trying to use it or my HP Chromebook 11 G1 full time. While I can get lots of things done in a browser now days, there are some things I find my self sshing back to another box to do. So, I decided to see if I could do that on the Chromebooks.

Sunday Afternoon Photo Expirements

Sun, 01 Oct 2017 21:18:20 -0700

<figure class="fg-item-inner"><a href="https://i2.wp.com/www.duckland.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/PA010422-1.jpg?fit=4608%2C3456&ssl=1" data-caption-title="Wild Onion" data-attachment-id="627" data-rel="lightbox" title="Wild Onion" class="fg-thumb"><span class="fg-image-wrap"><img alt="Wild Onion" title="Wild Onion" width="150" height="150" data-src-fg="https://www.duckland.org/wp-content/uploads/cache/remote/i2-wp-com/4051988093.jpg" class="fg-image" /></span></a><figcaption class="fg-caption">

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    Wild Onion
  </div>
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</div>

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    Gnome BW
  </div>
</div></figcaption></figure>

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</div>

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    Old Rose BW
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    BW Flowers
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Had some spare time this afternoon, so I was playing with my Olympus OMD E-M5. I liked how a few turned out.

Back from London (again)

Mon, 18 Sep 2017 11:16:36 -0700

So, when I started the new job last November, my boss told me that the new position was not a traveling position. Well, after three trips this year (including one to Columbus, OH), and the one I just got back from, I think he was wrong. *grin*.

So, this time, I was in London for most of the two weeks, but I did get a side trip to Bournemouth to meet with the team there. I was over there to get brought up to speed on a new project I am starting. This one will be more project management vs development.

Aftermath of Harvey

Wed, 30 Aug 2017 22:30:07 -0700

We have been very lucky. Our house sits at 125 feet above sea-level, and the reservoir near us which everyone is very worried about tops out at 107 feet, so no worries about flooding from that. Plus, we are the highest house in the subdivision.

We also kept power, water, and internet through the whole process. Most of the people I know who live in town took some damage from flood waters. Thankfully, no one I know either lost their home or loved one lives.

Night Mode for ChromeOS

Wed, 30 Aug 2017 06:46:48 -0700

So, what is night-mode? It is a mode for changing the color temperature of computer screens to be ‘warmer’ (more red-tones, less blue tones). Why? The strong blue tones (and whites) from most computer screens help trick your mind into thinking it is still day, and therefor you need to be awake.

I have been trying to enable night mode on all the things for a while now. For my android phone, I use twilight for Android (IOS has something built in now), Solus Linux added it in the most recent release, Gnome has it in the later releases, and under i3, I use xflux.

waiting for the sun

Mon, 28 Aug 2017 14:38:25 -0700

Rainy day

More rain. So far, we are good. Family in town is fairing well, friends not as much (a few flooded houses and cars, thankfully no injuries).

So ready for this to be over. And, with Downtown Houston all but closed, I am working from home for the foreseeable future.

Harvey, after landfall

Sat, 26 Aug 2017 22:15:51 -0700

Harvey at Sunset

almost 24 hours after land fall, Harvey is still a big storm. Rain has slowed down, but it is still coming!

Weather's a-changing!

Thu, 24 Aug 2017 14:14:08 -0700

Hurricane Harvey approaching Texas

Heavy weather is approaching. Keep it safe, ya’ll

Welcome to the New Look

Wed, 16 Aug 2017 22:11:02 -0700

I have been running a bit of an experiment recently by using a Chromebook while not at home. So far, it has been going fairly well with the exception that I cannot easily update this site. So, I switched to something which lets me use the web to update.

I have all the posts moved over, but I will have to do a bit of cleanup around categories and move the photos over. A lot of the older posts suffer from being imported into a few different blogging platforms, so that may take time.

4th of July Break

Wed, 05 Jul 2017 19:12:05 -0700

The family took to the road again for the 4th of July holiday, returning to Galveston, TX. This time, just three days, but it was a nice break.

This is just one of the pictures I took. The others that I like are here.

More Travel

Mon, 19 Jun 2017 11:42:45 -0700

Well, I had to open my mouth and say that I thought things were going to slow down. About that…

So, I get word late on a Friday I needed to get to New York for a meeting with a vendor. A frantic hour or so later, and I have things booked, and that Sunday, I have this view:

In my rush to pack (I had lots of little things to get done before climbing on the plane, including a quick round of D&D with the kids: ), I totally forgot my camera. So, I spent some time playing phone-photographer. The results are here.

Trip To Bournemouth, UK

Thu, 08 Jun 2017 10:07:10 -0700

Sorry for the lack of updates, but the last few months have been very busy with work and everything going on with the kids and their activities. It is summer time, so now I might be able to get some rest.

So, last month I got to go visit Bournemouth, UK for work. I was going over for a kick-off meeting on a new phase of the project I have been working on for a while.

P365 - Monthly Checkin 02

Tue, 28 Feb 2017 22:24:12 -0700

Another quick update on how I am doing with my Project 365.

See my previous update for how I did last month.

This month, while I posted a pic every day, aside from some of the Lego macro shots, I am not as happy with the subject matter. I need to work on that.

Quick nmcli notes

Thu, 16 Feb 2017 19:38:42 -0700

This is a quick post so I can remember these details.

So, on the R810, I am currently running ArchLinux, which uses by default NetworkManager, which I have a love/hate relationship with. At my last job, I recommended removing it from our servers, as under RHEL6, it does very odd things to the network and is hard to manage. I have heard that it is better under RHEL7. But, it does let you do some really cool things. On the R810, there is a cellular modem, and on previous installes, I have had it configured and scripted using nmcli to easily bring up and down the cellular connections.

P365 - Monthly Checkin 01

Tue, 31 Jan 2017 22:51:20 -0700

Just a quick check on how I am doing for my Project 365.

As you can see, I missed one day so far.

Flower Experiments

Sat, 21 Jan 2017 07:55:44 -0700

As you may remember, I have been working on my Project 365 (take and post a picture for 365 days). Well, so far, I am 20 for 20!

But, in getting one for yesterday, I ended up taking a bunch of pictures. I decide to share the best, and you can find them here. Enjoy.

More Photo experiments

Fri, 13 Jan 2017 06:20:21 -0700

So, with my little project, I have been playing around with some new techniques in my photo work-flow. This is an example of a before and after image on one of the new things I am playing with:

Photo Experiment

Tue, 10 Jan 2017 22:54:17 -0700

Had a bit of down time tonight, and started playing with a new version of the photo editing software I use most of the time. Found a new plug-in, and I like the results:

New Year Check-in

Mon, 09 Jan 2017 06:36:14 -0700

First week of the new year is behind us, and how are things looking? Well, aside from the cold over the weekend, I think things are going okay.

I have not done formal resolutions for a while, but I have tried to improve myself, and sometimes a new effort matches up with the calendar. Aside from my New Year’s Day Post

Happy New Year

Sun, 01 Jan 2017 22:26:50 -0700

Hello, and welcome to the new year! If you are reading this, then you are one of the lucky ones who made it through 2016. We lost a lot of important and highly entertaining folks in 2016.

Since this is a new year, I have decided that I should try those silly resolution things again. My two big ones I am willing to go public with are to get into better shape and the other is to complete another Project 365. So far, I am 100% on the second goal!

Happy Christmas

Thu, 29 Dec 2016 07:31:44 -0700

Note- This is late due to software breakage

Just a quick note before the end of the year to wish everyone a happy Christmas, holidays, and/or New Year!

TRF 2016

Wed, 30 Nov 2016 21:53:56 -0700

This last weekend was the last weekend for the 2016 Texas Renaissance Festival. Since the fall has been a bit crazy with sports and the new job that we only got to go one time this year.

Naturally, I took my camera, but as luck would have it, the battery which said it was full before I left was actually flat, and died on me. I ended up using my phone (Nexus 5x), which turned out took decent pictures within limits. Action shots were out. However, I did manage to get a a few I liked, so on the photographic front, it was not a total loss.

TLS everywhere

Wed, 23 Nov 2016 18:24:44 -0700

So, I decided it was time to go TLS (aka https) with all my websites. This is something I have wanted to do for a while, but I held off due to the way I had to get my laptop on the wireless at the previous job. Now that I have left, there was no need for that, so away I go!

On the job front, this was an odd week to start with almost everybody on my new team being out due to the holiday. I finally got my accounts all settled today, and spent the day doing that every populare on-boarding trainnig which while is a drag, is very much needed.

Exit, Stage Left

Mon, 31 Oct 2016 12:11:43 -0700

So, the current gig is not what I expected when I interviewed. While the people working there are dedicated, intelligent, and hard-working, the fit is not right for me. I’m going to rhetorically vote with my feet and go elsewhere — in the words of the immortal and beloved Snagglepuss, “Exit, stage left.”

Starting November 21, I will be transitioning into a new roll. The new gig is a home-coming of sorts, as I will be re-joining GTI at JPMC here in Houston, but in a different role then I was before. The new position is in more engineering/architecture than the old one, and it promises to be a lot of fun.

Harley Hates Bad Drives

Wed, 28 Sep 2016 22:30:36 -0700

Drive failed. Harley does not like that….

More Random Things

Fri, 23 Sep 2016 00:04:47 -0700

As Fall has according to the calendar, but mother nature has something to say about that. We are going on something like 13 days where the low does not get below 72F. Ug.

The Fall sports have started back, with all three doing something. Soccer, Volleyball, Tae Kwan Do, and Wrestling. A very mix bag, to be sure.

So, over the summer, I took part in the Windows 10 Free Upgrade on the kids machine, which turns out to be a bit of a mistake. The box is a Compaq desktop with an AMD CPU from about 5 years ago. Even with 16GB of RAM, it started running very slow, until Tuesday, when it rebooted by itself and then did not restart. I was planning on upgrading it at the start of next month, so of course, it fails now and I am forced. But, at least I had done research, so I could just order it in a few seconds.

Houston's Amazing Comic Con 2016

Sun, 11 Sep 2016 23:21:22 -0700

This weekend, we went to the Houson’s Amazing Comic Con. As normal, we had fun, and as normal, I brought a camera. This one was not the big rig, but a small, older point-n-shoot type, so I am not totally happy with all the pics, but I did get some some good ones

I still have some other pictures to process and post, so there will be more coming….

Deadpool BOFH

Mon, 29 Aug 2016 21:33:17 -0700

There is a new sheriff in town.

Random Mid-Summer Updates

Sun, 31 Jul 2016 21:33:17 -0700

Wow…summer is almost over. Three more weeks until school starts again.

Need to spend more time putting pictures up from some of the trips we have done. I think there is time to squeeze another visit to the beach before school starts up, but we will see.

One of the projects I have been working on is taking over web hosting for an organization I volunteer with. The old hosting was with a former member at his hosting company, but he is retiring as of the end of July, so I stepped up to host it. Some of the code used has not been updated in a while, and one of my first projects on it will be to wrap it into a more modern frame-work so other people can help maintain the site.

Home Network Updates

Thu, 16 Jun 2016 21:51:50 -0700

So, in the last couple of weeks, I have had the following issues:

The CMOS battery dies on my file-server (a FreeNAS box), taking it, and the zpools down with it. I fought over a long weekend to recover the data, and in the end, got it mounted read-only, and copied it off. New hardware, and new zpools, and we seem to be going again. Recovering services is taking a bit of time.
There is a bug with the ZFS on Root for Antergos Linux. Seems that it does not put all the kernel drivers in the init image when you upgrade. Last time, I booted off the instal media to fix it. I lost that USB stick, so I downloaded a new one. Guess what? They have turned that feature off ZFS, so there is no way to recover. Since FreeBSD still does not support suspend/resume on the Acer C720 that is my small travel laptop, I have to reinstall Antergos and reload my data. Which I had to do because
My main laptop, the HP R810G1 seems to be having major battery issues. I bought a new battery in Novembers, and it died. I bought a new one a couple of weeks ago, and it at first did not seem to be holding a charge. Now, the OS does not see the battery. I think I might need a ’new’ laptop.

I am torn between getting something one or two reves old with a solid record in the size I want (sub 13", under 1" thin, and good 6+ hours of battery) or the latest shiny.

SpaceCity Comic Con 2016

Mon, 30 May 2016 21:11:46 -0700

Many, many, many years ago, I went to a comic/game convention in Austin. This was pre-internet, and really pre-console gaming, so the games were all table top type. Steve Jackson Games was prototyping something called ‘Car Wars’. Pretty cool stuff.

But, I never really had a chance to go back to one. Until this year. This past weekend, we went to SpaceCity Comic Con 2016. It was a hoot. Learned a few things (pay for the tickets at the door, as the line was way shorter; don’t leave the food area with food and expect them to let you back in; silly things like that).

And May is almost over

Sun, 22 May 2016 15:36:23 -0700

The month is almost over, and again, this site is quite. Sorry about that.

Last week, I was in Austin, TX for OSCON 2016. The show was fun, and it was the first time in over 5 years that I was just an attendee instead of a presenter or booth worker. While OSCON seems to be targeted more for developers and the DevOps scene, there were a few things I could use in my current Ops role.

Spring Showers?

Thu, 31 Mar 2016 22:08:35 -0700

Making it once a month, but I should do more..

Spring break is over, and now, we moving to the crazy season. With number 3 starting to play soccer (as is number 2), I am still coaching number 1 at volleyball. For those keeping score at home, that is 3 games a week on two days for 8 weeks. I might have time...

Why, hello there

Mon, 29 Feb 2016 15:36:05 -0700

Happy Leap Day!

Another month has gone by, and things have been busy. In addition to all the normal crazy that is life with kids, I have been elected to the kids pre-school board of directors. Now, the oldest two no longer go there, but the youngest will be there another year, and my term is three years, so there will be a bit of time when I will not have a kid there. They did ask me before, but that was years ago, and I was not in a position to be able to do that back then.

Where did the time go?

Sun, 31 Jan 2016 14:53:31 -0700

Wow...end of January already? Where has the time gone?

We are already three weeks into the Winter Volleyball season, and the team is doing great. Going into last Friday's game, we are undefeated, and in second place out of 7 teams.

This weekend, the boy and I did the sleep-aboard program on The USS Lexinton, and he had a blast. I did not get a chance to take too many photos, but I will see if I can get some up.

A Christmas Present for you

Fri, 25 Dec 2015 22:14:38 -0700

Happy Christmas day for those who celerbate, and happy Friday for those who don’t.

I have added two new links to the sidebar. The first is just a link to my privacy statement. No big deal…I don’t store stuff, and I don’t collect stuff. Simple.

The other is to a local photo gallery which I will try to remember to update as I get more interesting pictures to share.

Here is to 2015 being almost over.

Happy Thanksgiving for the US crowd

Thu, 26 Nov 2015 22:17:21 -0700

I really need to work on this.

For the US based folks reading this, Happy Thanksgiving. I have a short break, and then it is back to the office. For the first time in years, I am being a real sysadmin and running systems. The major problem is that I have not done this in 4.5 years, and the place where I have landed has not had enough staff to keep up with everything. So, I am in firefighting and clean-up mode. I have spent part of my day in the production data center this week, and I get to go back tomorrow. All simple stuff, but just needed somebody to go do it.

Halloween

Fri, 30 Oct 2015 21:06:42 -0700

Another month gone by. But, at least the weather is getting better.

The commute is still a drag, but at least I get a chance to listen to some good technology talks which makes things better.

On the firewall front, a new slim SSD and we are back up and running. At some point, I need to find the time to finish some tasks on the network to make things run smoother overall.

Random thoughts

Mon, 05 Oct 2015 20:51:42 -0700

Another month, another post.

Life is going. School is back in session, and the crazy has started. The commute still sucks, and not getting as much done in the personal world sucks, too.

And, to top it all off, the weather turned to Fall (Yeah!), but my motorcycle has a short in a switch (Boo!)

Need to fix it.

But, on the plus side, the firewall is back up and running.

And the Firewall goes POP

Wed, 23 Sep 2015 22:37:41 -0700

For some reason, we have had a bit of power issues around the house recently. No big deal, just enough to cause non-UPS computers to reboot. Well, one of them was the firewall (the UPS on it pop a while back, and I just have not gotten around to replacing it). But, it would not come back the last time. Drag a it over to a monitor and have a look at the console. No HD. Nuts. On a backup solution until the new SSD to replace the dead (non)spinning rust shows up.

Another Month, Another Post

Wed, 09 Sep 2015 21:47:02 -0700

Wow…September already? Where does the time go?

With the time given to the commute and the lack of access at the office (since I do work for a firm which does have pretty tight internet access policies), I have decided that I cannot do the photo-a-day thing, so I am not going to be updating my photo website on a regular basis. Sorry about that, but then since I started back this summer, the traffic was not there.

Do I Stay, Or Do I Go?

Wed, 19 Aug 2015 21:31:26 -0700

No, this is not about my job.

This is about my web sites, email, and my digital life. For years, I have had my domain (duckland.org) and my email address there (duck), and I am not going to give those up. I have collected a few others domains over the years, and the family has started asking for their own as well.

Now, if you know me at all, you know that for most of my professional career, I have been in Unix operations, specifically Linux. It is what I do. But, I am wondering if it is time for me to 'outsource' one of the more difficult parts of keeping my own domain: email. Recently, I have gone back to not hosting my email due to various reasons, and went back to GMail. In the years since I left it, it has gotten much better UI for someone who likes keyboards over mice, and the Android clients are very nice. Plus, the addition of **Google Now **in the Chrome browser has been very handy.

Add to the fact I still cannot find a good calendar solution which I can host which will work seamlessly across my computers (home and work), tablets, and cell phones, as well as let the family share besides Google, and it makes GMail very attractive.

But, on the other side, Google makes their money on ads, and they make no secret that they analyze your email (GMail), your appointments (Google Calendar), and your web browsing (Google Chrome) to try to market to you better. I am still undecided if I want to keep swimming up-stream or just give in and use the Google services, because they will be better than anything I can set up on my own.

*sigh*

However, I have finally made another change to the blogging solution, and I should be able to start writing more. I do have some ideas in a back log to talk about.

Speed goes to 11 (113, that is)

Sun, 16 Aug 2015 11:33:39 -0700

So, that is what I can get at the house...nothing major...just showing off. ;)

\

Galveston, Summer 2015

Sun, 19 Jul 2015 00:18:22 -0700

We took a quick vacation to the island, and of course I took my cameras.

20021208120000th

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First Day

Mon, 22 Jun 2015 21:53:00 -0700

{.align-left width=“100px” height=“100px”}

The first day at the new gig went like any first day normally does. Paper-work and meeting lots of new folks. The office is in a part of town where I used to live, so I know it fairly well. This is a repeating theme, since the HP office was near my high school.

Since I got into the office early, I was able to swing one of my favorite coffee houses. While the customer base has changed a bit from 20 years ago (more suits and no nose-rings) and the menu has a bit more on it (beer, anyone?), the coffee drinks were the same, and they tasted as good as I remember.

Light Sail!

Tue, 16 Jun 2015 19:51:49 -0700

{.align-left width=“125px” height=“125px”}

Growing up in Houston, I have followed our space program off and on. I am also a big reader of Sci-Fi. So, when I heard about the Solar Sail Kickstarter Project from The Planetary Society, I jumped on board. And, while they have raised almost 4 times their goal, I think that this is a project which will have more of an impact on humanity than some of the other projects.

Moving

Fri, 12 Jun 2015 10:30:39 -0700

Well, after 4 years (almost to the day), it is time for me to say good-bye to HP. The team I worked on is a great team who really know their stuff. However, I am a geek, and I want to be doing things with tech, and not talking about tech, and for the most part, talking is all I have been doing. I have learned a lot and was given a chance to do some [traveling <travels>]{role=“doc”} which I do not think I would have been able to do.

Updates to AUR packages

Tue, 09 Jun 2015 17:19:48 -0700

So, with the migration of the AUR to version 4, I looked at the 12 AUR packages I had created over the years which I have not looked at in a long, long time.

The list started out with:

chronicle - A simple blog compiler written in Perl
perl-leocharre-basename - Very basic filename string and path operations such as ext and paths
perl-leocharre-cli2 - Some quick help for writing cli scripts
perl-leocharre-debug - Debug subroutines
perl-leocharre-dir - Subroutines for general directory needs
perl-leocharre-strings - Combines string procedures I frequently use
perl-string-prettify - Subroutines to cleanup a filename and or garble for human eyes
perl-wordpress-api - Management of Wordpress API objects. Inherits WordPress::XMLRPC and all its methods
perl-wordpress-cli - Command line access to Wordpress
perl-wordpress-xmlrpc - API to Wordpress XML RPC calls
usbmount - Automatically mount and unmount USB mass storage devices
xlhttp - An Excel spreadsheet (.xls) and PowerPoint (.ppt) to HTML converter

In the end, I only kept xlhttp as I do not use the others anymore. Surprisingly enough, only one of the packages (chronicle) was out of date. I disowned all the others, so if you want, you can pick them up.

Vegas, again

Sat, 06 Jun 2015 10:06:48 -0700

Once more, off the Las Vegas for to work a trade show. This year, I was helping present training, so I was tucked away in a basement most of the trip, and did not get out to do much in the way of sight-seeing aside from walking around the hotel.

::: {.slides} /images/Vegas-2015-06/20150531194530.webp /images/Vegas-2015-06/20021208120000_1.webp /images/Vegas-2015-06/20021208120000_2.webp /images/Vegas-2015-06/20150602214415.webp /images/Vegas-2015-06/20150603092013.webp /images/Vegas-2015-06/20150603092026.webp /images/Vegas-2015-06/20021208120000.webp :::

But, I did find time to snap a few pictures.

Quick Ansible Tip

Wed, 27 May 2015 07:24:16 -0700

This is a quick post to capture something seen. Ansibel is a configuration management tool that I have been learning recently. More details in a future post. This is just to capture this idea:

From: Smith, Chris (Big Data)

To: ansible

Ansible Galaxy is a centralised Github repository of public Ansible content, see: https://galaxy.ansible.com/ It uses a local routine that is installed when you install Ansible, called ‘ansible-galaxy’, to create a blank template for your Ansible content. What is not well known is you can run ‘ansible-galaxy’ in offline mode to create a blank template using the command:

April recap

Sun, 03 May 2015 20:51:09 -0700

April has come and gone, and I did not manage to find time (or energy) to post anything.

I spent most of the month at work getting ready to and then delivering some training remotely in Nashville, TN, US. Now, I can say that I have stayed at the largest non-casino hotel in the world, The Gaylord Opryland. Now that that is over, I get to gear up to design a new training plan for internal product training. Such is the life of a Linux guy stuck working for a marketing group.

March Update

Tue, 10 Mar 2015 23:15:02 -0700

Does updating the theme of the site count as an update? No? Okay...time to type.

Life is busy right now, and extra things are gonna have to give. I have not had a chance to do much photography (both making and processing them), so I am putting the daily site on hold, again. For the sharp eye among you, you would have noticed this last week.

On the upside, I have lost about 20 pounds since the beginning of the year. While I am not where I want to be weight-wise, I have lost a pants size which puts me back were I was about 10 years ago. Life is good.

FreeBSD Challenge II, End Report

Fri, 06 Feb 2015 06:43:32 -0700

And, again, I hit something which is causing massive disk performance issues. That, and suspend/resume does not work on either laptop.

I would try to debug the issues, but that means learning a whole new set of tools, and I will not have time for a while. Next week, I am in week long meetings which will run late every day, and then I have to finish writing and present a training class the last week of the month. The hour or two I can spare will be far better spent for me by backup, re-installing ArchLinux than by starting to learn the tools. Yes, a bit of a cop-out, but I need the machines to do what I need to do. I will keep the servers FreeBSD, however, as it works great there.

FreeBSD Challenge II, Day 30 Update

Fri, 30 Jan 2015 15:38:32 -0700

As the month draws to a close, I am further into the switch. I have rebuilt my main laptop to PCBSD. I am still setting a few things up, but it seems to be going well.

Two things I need to fix:

Skype: While there is not a native client, there are lots of folks who report success with the Linux client. I will need to do some research.
Nikola: The software I use for my blogs. It throws a python error when I run it, so I cannot update things. Again, I think I just need to do some more research.

Now, the fun of the weekend is here, so I am off!

FreeBSD Challenge II, Day 14

Wed, 14 Jan 2015 23:51:48 -0700

Today is day 14 (pushing day 15 at this hour), and things are looking very good. Today, I got word from the PCBSD Project that a patch which I submitted to fix the issue with the WiFi NIC. Well, I got notice today that PCBSD Bug #7330 has been resolved, and I tested on the R810. It works!

Now, I just need to get a few things configured here first, like snapshots, backups, and porting my SDCARD reading scripts over to FreeBSD, and I should be good.

Update on revisiting FreeBSD Challenge

Sat, 10 Jan 2015 22:35:04 -0700

It is the 10th day of the month, and I am 10 days in trying to use FreeBSD as my daily non-work driver. How is it going?

Well, for the most part, well. I can spend most of my personal work-flow on the FreeBSD laptop with no issues. There are a couple of things I have not moved over yet, and those relate to my photo work-flow. The main application, AfterShotPro is installed and working (see [my previous desciption <freebsd-challenge-day-4-6>]{role=“doc”} of installing in), however, I have not moved over the scripts I use in the flow. I believe they will just come over, but I have not had a chance to test them.

Goodbye 2014!

Tue, 30 Dec 2014 23:44:55 -0700

As 2014 draws to a close, I look back at the year.

Overall, it was a good year. The family staid reasonably health (just a case of the flu which every one of us caught).

Work slowed down a bit after only three trips, and the last one was in June, but I did get to spend two weeks in London which was cool. While the work has been not what I really want to be doing, it has been interesting, and next year promises to be very interesting. I have no clue if travel is in the cards or not, but I will keep the camera handy.

Another Year

Fri, 26 Dec 2014 18:33:36 -0700

Another Year

Well, 2014 is drawing to a close. For the most part, it has been a good year with the family, but time is always in short supply. I am going to try to focus a bit more on my photography, as well as technology. We shall see.

Happy new year, and make it a safe one.

New Look (again)

Sat, 06 Dec 2014 00:26:01 -0700

New Look (again)

I was having some issues with my word press site, so I decided to look around for something else. I found a static-site generator, and I think I like it. So, I flipped this site over to it. I might flip the reset RealSoonNow(TM).

This posting thing is not working right now

Mon, 01 Dec 2014 14:12:58 -0700

Wow...missed November by that much. It was a good month, but busy with the start of the holidays and all.

A bit of work in the background on some projects, but nothing to show for it. Still a new picture daily over at my photo blog, so go check it out.

Another Month Going Quick.

Thu, 23 Oct 2014 06:10:00 -0700

Well, October is almost over already. Time flies. This fall has been very busy with non-work things. Kids in sports (with me being the coach for one of them), kids doing scouts, kids doing Y Adventure program (with me in the leadership), kids in advance classes at school.

Free time, how I miss you.

Perl, Modules, and Package Management

Thu, 18 Sep 2014 05:09:12 -0700

So, even though I have been starting to [work with <back2freebsd-maybe>]{role=“doc”} [FreeBSD <freebsd-switch>]{role=“doc”} [again <one-step-closer>]{role=“doc”} , I am still running ArchLinux on my workstation.

And I wanted to run a script I wrote a long time ago to support a website of mine, which I have not updated in a while. The way I would update the site is by doing some batch editing of photos, park them in a directory, and then run my script which pushes the photos to the web server, and then interfaces with the CMS software to schedule the posts and all is good.

One step closer

Tue, 05 Aug 2014 20:08:14 -0700

So, I have upgraded my servers at the house to FreeBSD, and have set up the basic functions needed on them. So, now, I am down to only my main laptop running Linux. Oh, and the work machine which runs Windows 8.1.

So far, not much different than running Arch for the server. But, the magic will be when I start working with jails...

FreeBSD Switch

Thu, 24 Jul 2014 04:07:42 -0700

I just noticed I have not updated this in a few weeks. Sorry about that.

I have my R810 running PCBSD 10.0.2, and I just patched and configured WiFi on it. I need to figure out how to submit a patch to see if I can get the Centrino supported in the main-line kernel so I do not have to compile a custom kernel just for that.

I almost have this working where I can switch to it full time. I need to deal with getting my killer apps installed and working. I had most (all?) of them working before, so I know I can do it again.

Back to FreeBSD (maybe back to the challenge)

Mon, 30 Jun 2014 15:06:09 -0700

So, I had a bit of time over the weekend, and spent it doing a bit of hacking around.

I had re-installed PC-BSD on my HP EliteBook R810. I used 10.0.2, and everything but the wireless looked good. I decided to try to get the wireless working with the internal WNIC. Previously, I used an external dongle to get WiFi working, but it was a pain to remember to pull it out, so I decided to try again.

Rewards for Hard Travel

Thu, 05 Jun 2014 04:06:15 -0700

So, in 2013, I went to China twice, Tokyo, Las Vegas, London twice, and Barcelona. This was enough to get me some serious air miles. I decided to turn them into something to help me get back into photography, so I got Olympus OM-D E-M5. This is one of the latest in the line of Olympus DSLR. This one is a micros 4/3, with a built-in Electronic View Finder (EVF).

On the Road Again

Tue, 20 May 2014 12:05:59 -0700

The reason I was busy at work is that I was getting ready for two different trips to conduct three different training courses.

Last week I was down in Mexico City to present some training to folks from Latin and Central America on one of our new products. Next month, I head off to Lost Wages, er, Las Vegas, for our major conference and two different training courses, while supporting a third.

FreeBSD Challenge final (for now)

Tue, 22 Apr 2014 22:04:17 -0700

Well, Something broke on the main computer. The speed when trying to run a few terminal apps, firefox, and thunderbird at the same time was appalling. I never had that sort of performance issues under ArchLinix on the same kit. I would love to take the time to debug it, but I am almost four weeks behind in dealing with my photos, including those from my trip to England, and I am getting ready to do run some training courses for work which will suck up all my free time.

FreeBSD Challenge, Day 17

Thu, 17 Apr 2014 04:04:52 -0700

Today, I got my new laptop dragon up on wireless with a little Edimax EW-7811Un 150 Mbps Wireless 11n Nano Size USB Adapter. Now, setup begins in ernest. I have disabled the on-board wireless NIC in the BIOS, and started to set up shop on it.

Next major task. Configure X. :)

FreeBSD Challenge, Update

Tue, 15 Apr 2014 16:04:26 -0700

Sorry about the lack of updates over the last two weeks, but my job sent me out of country for two weeks, and I had no time to work on this project. Once I unbury myself, I will return to this with a vengence. I am planning on upgrading my two servers to FreeBSD10 from Linux. One will involve a major disk reworking as one of the disks is about dead.

FreeBSD Challenge, Day 16

Sat, 29 Mar 2014 05:03:18 -0700

Busy day with other things than play computers, but I found a little time. I have FreeBSD 10-STABLE loaded with the custom WiFi hack on my Elitebook Revolve 810 . I would have to let it try to boot off the USB stick. After multiple tries, it would finally run the installer. I tried ZFS a few times, but if I did not select MBR format for the partition table, then it would not boot (no OS error). With MBR and ZFS, it would fail to mount the ZFS filesystem with <strong>error 2</strong>. After trying the various fixes listed on-line, I gave up and went with MBR and UFS.

FreeBSD Challenge, Day 12-15

Thu, 27 Mar 2014 05:03:20 -0700

Half-way point.

Much progress made in the world of a bootable USB stick to get my new-fangled WiFi chip working. I was able to make a new image, wrote it to a new USB stick, booted it, and was able to successfully scan for my Access Points! W00t!

Tomorrow, I will take the second laptop (HP EliteBook Revolve 810), and load it with 10-Release (slightly patched). I do not expect everything to work (it has a touch screen), but enough should work that I can start using it for the daily driver. Having real wifi will help a lot.

FreeBSD Challenge, Day 9-11

Sat, 22 Mar 2014 17:03:03 -0700

Ah, life with kids…not enough spare time with soccer and volleyball practices and games.

Things are going well. Found a few more small utilities that I use under Linux and added them via pkgng, and all is good.

Next up: system debugging. The system will slow down at random points, so I need to go find a good performance debug guide. The only thing changed was I imported my music library (~60G), but my drive is still plenty empty (~37% used), so I do not think it is ZFS, but I am not sure.

FreeBSD Challenge, Day 8

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 18:03:12 -0700

Again, work is dragging, so not much to update.

I have install btsync and I am now syncing home dirs between the laptop, desktop, and the FreeNAS.

My attempt to build a custom kernel to deal with the new WiFi was mixed. I was able to build the kernel and world just fine and it made a USB image for me. But, it would not boot...I do need to figure out how to debug this. :)

FreeBSD Challenge, Day 7

Tue, 18 Mar 2014 04:03:04 -0700

AKA Fight with Thunderbird and Lightning.

I broke down and installed a PBI for now. I could not get Lightning, the calendaring AddOn for Thunderbird to work using the native FreeBSD pkg or the linux-thunderbird one. The linux-thunderbird package actually refused to start for me. I need to go figure out how to generate a PR.

The other thing I am playing with is building a memstick image after patching the kernel using this post in the FreeBSD Forums. This is for the Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6235 WiFi Driver which I have in all my laptops. The data wants to be free! from wires. Since it is chunking away, I will test tomorrow.

FreeBSD Challenge, Day 4-6

Sun, 16 Mar 2014 18:03:20 -0700

Sorry…busy time at work and with the family.

Small updates: I have the external VGA dongle working. No config needed, just plug it in and it works. I really need to fix the WiFi so I can stop using the USB dongle on it. Also, I have updated mutt to 1.5.23, and that upgrade went smoothly. Since I am not using the default build, it was a matter of portsnap fetch && portsnap update && cd /usr/ports/mail/mutt && pkg remove mutt && make install clean and all is good!

FreeBSD Challenge, Day 3

Fri, 14 Mar 2014 05:03:44 -0700

No major work on the laptop today because I set up a FreeNAS box. I was able to get 4 x 3T drives, and set it up. Pretty easy. I am now busy moving my media over to it.

FreeBSD Challenge, Day 2

Thu, 13 Mar 2014 20:03:36 -0700

Just a quick update. Yesterday, I got abook working. Kind of a hack, though. I used gcc to compile it, vs. clang. I will have to revisit this and offer up some patches to the abook project.

I have also been playing with x11/xpra which bills itself as 'screen for X11'. That, combined with sshuttle , lets me get in from work and do some work during lunch. It may also give me a tempory way to use AfterShotPro until I get the whole Linux compatability layer thing figured out.

Back to FreeBSD aka Day 1

Wed, 12 Mar 2014 04:03:05 -0700

So, a long time ago, I had a box which was running FreeBSD 4, running on a Pentium. This housed my public server, website, and mail server. After I while, I had to rebuild it, and went back to Linux.

14 years later, I have decided to get back into FreeBSD, now at FreeBSD 10. I have it running headless on two boxes, and I have decided to take the ‘30 Day Challenge’. You know, all the bloggers tell you to try something for 30 days before you give up on it.

New CMS (Again)

Thu, 06 Mar 2014 05:03:27 -0700

Still not going with a database on the back-end, but this one has a cool real-time visualization editor.

It is called HTMLy. This should let me update this a bit more. But, I have said that before.

My Travel Map

Sun, 23 Feb 2014 17:02:00 -0700

EDIT 2019-06-22: It seems that sometime in the last 5 years, this went away. Oh, well.

cli add

Sat, 25 Jan 2014 17:01:00 -0700

I have not updated cli.donharper.org - forget the GUI in a very long time, and I did have some nice tricks and tips there, so I decided to bring it over here.

Edit 2020-04-07: I merged the content of cli.donharper.org into my main site a long time ago.

Enjoy.

Tale of Installs, Part 2

Wed, 08 Jan 2014 17:01:00 -0700

Well, as I [mentioned before <tale-of-install>]{role=“doc”}, I was trying to install OpenBSD. Well, my main workstation died, so I have to re-purposed the OpenBSD box as my workstation running ArchLinux. I am hunting for a suitable replacement.

Oh, and Happy New Year!

dd(8) with progress

Fri, 29 Nov 2013 17:11:00 -0700

I needed to write an iso image to a USB key, and the typical way is with just dd(8), but I wanted a progress bar. A quick google later, and I get:

pv -tpreb isoname | sudo dd of=/dev/sdd bs=1024

Which will write the iso image to the USB stick sdd, and give me a progress bar, tell me how fast it is writing, and give me an eta when finished. Perfect.

Tale of Installs

Thu, 21 Nov 2013 17:11:00 -0700

So, I am starting a new personal project at the house, and I need a new server. As I was wanting to learn more about the BSD, I started looking around at things like FreeBSD, NetBSD, or OpenBSD.

Since there was a security part, I started with OpenBSD. One of the things I noticed quickly while doing my research is that while there is a lot of documentation, they do not really seem to care about making it easy for new folks to join the project, nor are the trying to support new-fangled hardware, like bootable USB drives. This strikes me odd, as FreeBSD has instructions (see 2.3.5).

Clickable URL links in rxvt

Sun, 03 Nov 2013 17:11:00 -0700

So, I use rxvt as my daily interface to my computers. I also use mutt for my email reading pleasure. Sometimes, I get URLs in email and I want to read them in a browser. If I was using a GUI based mail reader, I would just click the URL to open it. Well, there is an easy way to set up rxvt to do that!

Using the fine Arch Linux wiki entry for rxvt unicode, the solution is quite easy. In the file ~/.Xdefaults, add:

Rebooting duckland.org

Thu, 31 Oct 2013 18:10:00 -0700

Today is All Saints Day, so it seems natural to let duckland.org start new again.

As is popular in Hollywood, I have decided to reboot this web site after 6 1/2 years. I have not decided about the old content.

I am planning on using this as a technical notebook. Shrug I hope to make it worth while.

An Update to 'Window Managers?'

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 17:12:00 -0700

Way back, I wrote a quick blurb on Window Managers for running under X.

Well, a while back I switched to Ubuntu for my OS of choice. As you may know, the fine folks at Ubuntu switched to default window manager to something called Unity, which caused a stir. I tried it for a while, but decided that it was too heavy, and too mouse-centric.

So, what to do? Well, I went back to my old standby wmfs, Window Manager From Scratch. This is a modern WM with systray support, full Ximirama and Xrandr support, tiles, and is mainly driven from the keyboard. Life is good.

cmus project restarted

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 17:02:00 -0700

cmus project restarted

Just a quick note. The cmus project has been restarted recently, and they are working on a new release. This one should have better integration with things like PulseAudio.

Good news!

Go check out https://cmus.github.io/ for more details.

Making life easy over flaky links

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 17:12:00 -0700

Making life easy over flaky links

I tend to work over VPN, which we know can be flaky at times, Since I work on server, I spend a lot of time ssh’ed into hosts. I was getting tired of the lost time having to restart what I was working on every time the VPN dropped (which could be as much as every 15 minutes on a bad day). While I already used screen to handle the lack of terminals (Alas, I am forced to use a Windows laptop to VPN in with), I thought there could be an easier way to do this.

Search your email!

Mon, 25 May 2009 18:05:00 -0700

Search your email!

One of the features that most of the pretty GUI mailers offer you is the ability to search your email. While this is not a feature I use regularly, it is one which when you need it, you really need it. I have used grepmail (was at grepmail.sf.net) in the past, but it slow for me (it scans the mail files every time) and the big thing for me is that is only supports mbox files, and I use maildir since I use offlineimap.

wifiroamd, Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG, and Fedora

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 18:04:00 -0700

wifiroamd, Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG, and Fedora

One of the things that has annoyed me about Fedora has been the decision to switch over to using NetworkManager to manage all network connections.

Now, on the service this has a lot of advantages. A lot of work has gone into it, and it just works for a vast majority of the installations out there. They have made it so the move from wired to wireless and back can be done without the user doing anything. They have also seamlessly tied in Dial-Up Networking if you still need a modem or use a wireless modem. They even have two-click access to your VPN which is pretty cool.

C*MUS - A music manager for the terminal

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 17:01:00 -0700

C*MUS - A music manager for the terminal

C*mus is an advanced music juke-box for *inx and Window operating systems. It can handle the modern audio file formats: FLAC, Ogg/Vorbis, MP3 , Wav, AAC , MP4, .mod, .s3m, .mpc, mpp, .mp+, .wma, and .wv . It also can deal with many different types of audio output systems: ALSA, libao, ARTS, OSS, Sun, and WaveOut on Windows. The typical features of an electronic juke-box are supported like play lists and random/shuffle play, in addition to easily switching between playing from the library, an artist, or a single album with a simple keystroke.

Google’s Calendar on the Command Line!

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 17:12:00 -0700

Google’s Calendar on the Command Line!

You love your comfortable command line, but all the cool kids are playing in the Web 2.0 web space, and you want to stay true to your roots? Want a Web 2.0 calendar, but still love (or need) command line access?

I just found the answer: gcalcli. This little tool will let you list your appointments, get an list your events, get an agenda, print ascii rendering of your calendar for the week or month. You can even add events to the calendar.

Alerting with Remind

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 17:11:00 -0700

Alerting with Remind

Back in my article on Remind, I talked about the simple power of remind to power your scheduling needs. That is all fine and good, but how to you get it to tell you when you have an event?

In its simplest form, when you run remind from the command line, it will not only display the current day’s reminders, but it will run in the background and wake up to tell you about other reminders on the screen while you work.

Pizza Party - Command Line Pizza ordering program

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 18:08:00 -0700

Pizza Party - Command Line Pizza ordering program

Want a pizza, and do not want to fire up that pesky GUI? We have the solution for you: Pizza Party - Command Line Pizza ordering program (was at beigerecords.com/cory/pizza_party/)

Currently, only from Dominos, so if you do not have one near you who accepts on-line orders (sigh, mine does not), then you are out of luck.

So you need a calendar?

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 18:08:00 -0700

So you need a calendar?

So, one of the things we have been using computers for is to keep track of our lives. And this means a scheduling or calendaring tool. Some tools out there do this fine, and some do it very well.

I have to keep track of a lot of appointments. From conference calls for work, to each member of the family’s schedules, to random, but highly important reminders. Most calendaring programs out there will let you set up a reoccurring event by day of the month, or the date. But, what if you need to do something two days before the end of the month, every month? Or, you need to do something every full moon, but not on the blue moon? Or, you have a standing meeting with your boss every other Monday morning, execpt when Monday is a holiday, then the meeting shifts to Tuesday? Oh, and you want something that you can run over an ssh session, while on your smart phone, or you friend’s smart phone?

Command-Line blog posts

Wed, 07 May 2008 18:05:00 -0700

Command-Line blog posts

So, it only seems fitting that I should talk about a command-line interface to posting on this blog. No, I do not mean using links (was at links.twibright.com) or the like, but a way to post from the command line.

So, this post is being typed up in vim on my Fedora 8 laptop. I will use this great little tool I found called wppost to post. wwpost is part of the perl module WordPress::Post.

Pacman for Console

Mon, 25 Jun 2007 18:06:00 -0700

Pacman for Console

You are tired of hearing your GUI friends talking about their games? Tired of playing simple Adventure? Why not try Pacman for Console (was at doctormike.googlepages.com/pacman.html)?

The game play is just like the old quarter game you played long ago, and the best part, you can develop your own maps!

Screen - terminal multiplexer

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 18:06:00 -0700

Screen - terminal multiplexer

I usually have one screen running at all time, and in that screen session, I ssh to various hosts that I am working, and have screen running on those hosts.

Additional Links

gnu screen - Google Search
GNU Screen - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)
GNU Screen - Summary [Savannah]
GNU Screen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
GNU Screen - Jonathan McPherson
Remote terminal session management using screen How to use screen to detach from and share terminal sessions
screen - The Terminal Multiplexer Power Sessions with Screen

BINS Photo Album

Mon, 21 May 2007 18:05:00 -0700

EDIT 2019-06-22: It seems like the BINS website is gone. Do not know if this is temporary or not.

BINS Photo Album

The BINS Photo Album is a package to generate static web pages from the command line. Why would you want to do this? Well, most of the dynamic web photo albums require that the server do all the work when the client requests the images, thus either slowing it down, or requiring a very beefy server. Also, you introduce the chance for a script-kiddie from hacking your site. Not good.

iKog - the simple todo list

Mon, 21 May 2007 18:05:00 -0700

iKog - the simple todo list

So I am looking for a good to-to list manager, and I stumbled across ikog. ikog stands for “It Keeps On Growing”, and it is a pretty nice todo manager which has been influenced by the GTD school of thought. Currently, I am using it for my daily todo manager, and using the python gtd tool for my long term list management. Give it a whirl, you might like it!

Strayed from the path

Mon, 19 Mar 2007 18:03:00 -0700

Strayed from the path

In two ways…first, I have not updated the site in a while, and I need to get back to updating it.

Second, because I have not been true to my cli roots. I have moved from my default MUA of the last, oh, 8 years, and flirted with a GUI MUA, thunderbird. It was pretty. It was sexy. It let me see everything then and now. It tried to seduce me into using a GUI for more…

cli bug/issue/task tracking system?

Mon, 05 Mar 2007 17:03:00 -0700

cli bug/issue/task tracking system?

Fresh from freshmeat:

https://www.ditrack.org/

What is DITrack?

DITrack is a free, open source, lightweight, distributed issue (bug, defect, ticket) tracking system using a [Subversion](https://subversion.tigris.org/) repository instead of a backend database. It is written in Python and runs in UNIX environment (*BSD, Linux, MacOS X).

The project is inspired by the idea of [Subissue](https://subissue.tigris.org/) issue tracking system.

However, while Subissue aims in merely replacing the traditional database storage with Subversion repository, DITrack is a major rethought of the issue tracking system paradigm. The main difference is that instead of sticking to the centralized model (one database, one web interface, one mail integration machinery), DITrack treats underlying Subversion storage as a versioned distributed file system which enables benefits of truly distributed operation mode.

Window Manager for tty?

Sun, 28 Jan 2007 17:01:00 -0700

Window Manager for tty?

The package screen is something that has been around for a long time.

With screen, you can have many session running on on tty, and you can switch to another session with out touching a mouse. With the proper configuration, you can get notified if there is some change (like if you have a IM client up) or if there is no output (say, if you are watching a compile session).

Disconnected IMAP

Sun, 26 Nov 2006 17:11:00 -0700

Disconnected IMAP

So, in an effort to get to the office earlier, I decided to try to figure out how to do disconnected IMAP. Well, the route I took was to use a tool called mailsync (was at mailsync.sourceforge.net) which is a cool tool to allow you to sync IAMP mailboxes.

So, my tack is to sync it down to my laptop, and read the email on the bus. I sync email down in the morning, and then in the evening, sync again. So far, so good.

Screen Saver? Yes!

Thu, 23 Nov 2006 17:11:00 -0700

Screen Saver? Yes!

So, a while back I found a screensaver which is meant for the command line. It is called tss. The latest version is 0.8.1, and it is looking pretty cool.

Under screen 4.0 or higher, there is a command called idle which is set in seconds. By default, it uses screen’s built in lockscreen function, but if you define the environment variable LOCKPGR, then you can call something else. I have it call a the following script:

RSS Reader: Raggle

Wed, 22 Nov 2006 17:11:00 -0700

RSS Reader: Raggle

Well, after getting some time over the US holiday to try to get raggle built, I gave up. I am guessing that Fedora Core 5/6 are not very ruby friendly yet, as I could not find everything I needed very easily. I was able to get it almost all the way there, but I could not get the ruby-Ncurses rpm to build, and I am very strict about using the native package management system (ie RPM on a RPM based system, portage on Gentoo, apt on a Debian deviant), so I will not be trying this until I can get the RPMS.

Another RSS reader?

Thu, 02 Nov 2006 17:11:00 -0700

Another RSS reader?

Well, it seems that someone is reading this after all.

So, tonight I have been given a pointer to raggle. I guess I need to install ruby to try it out…

Thanks to Philip McClure for the pointer.

Updates after I try it out some…

Window Managers?

Sun, 30 Jul 2006 18:07:00 -0700

Window Managers?

Why would a web site dedicated to the CLI have a section on Window Managers? Well, simple.

Some times, you just have to have X running. Some web sites I have to do research at use Flash, or photo editing/managing, or my iPod (none of the CLI tools let me manage play lists very easily).

Plus, I cannot get the same resolution on the console as I can under X.

What do I Use?

Mon, 05 Jun 2006 18:06:00 -0700

What do I Use?

Software

So, What major apps do I use daily? Well, this is the list of apps that I currently use daily:

bash - my shell of choice
screen - a shell multiplexer and more
mutt-ng - a mua on steroids
centericq - IM. How do you stay in touch?
snownews - an RSS feed reader
calcurse - a calendar/todo manger
bashblogger - the CMS for this site

There are a few more, but I need to find URLs for them.