Instructions:

1. Use a vnc viewer like TightVNC (realVNC didn’t work for me, only gave me a blank screen).
2. Go to one of the following server wijgalt.homeip.net
3. Connect to one of the ports, 5901 thought 5904
4. If you already see activity on the screen, just exit and try another port.
5. Go to drive G:
6. Run nlsnipes
7. If there’s a game already going it will tell you.  Just wait a bit and try again!

Enjoy!

Warning:  Nerd Content ahead!

Since I work helping companies manage their enterprise storage environment, I tend to be very anal with storing my own data at home.  It needs to be resilient, redundant, and fast. Why?  I’m retarded. Most of the time this means I end up spending more than enough money with something I have to constantly manage and tweak.  No inexpensive NAS device has had all the features I wanted in a embedded device – until now.

A few weeks ago I decided to give Netgear Stora a try and I’m very impressed with it.  Firstly, it’s a 1TB NAS device for $200 bucks that really performs.  I have a gig net at home and the Stora works very well with it’s own 1gbit net interface.

It can support usb drives on it directly and it will auto RAID1 if you install a second drive inside it, which was the main reason I tried it.

What’s so nice, is it has a web interface for file manipulation that can be accessed easily from the internet. Who cares right?  While a 1gbit network is fast, direct hard drive access is much faster.  Usually with a NAS device you have to have a computer available to upload the data from other disks onto the NAS device.  With the direct USB disk support and web interface, I was able to migrate 700Gb of data much faster than having a computer as the middle man.  Since the stora was doing the copying, I didn’t have to worry about network hiccups and file share weirdness with larger files.  Nice.

I just found out that while Netgear says the filesystem is propriety I was able to mount the internal mirrored drive on my computer by mounting it as a XFS filesystem within a ubuntu vm instance.    AWESOME.   This means if the Stora dies, I can still get to my data.

Optional RAID1, Great Net Performance, USB Disk Support, Internet support, Media Server support for my PS3 – $200 bucks. Good times.

Here’s  a demo on it:

Scenario 1:

Jack goes quail hunting before school and then pulls into the school parking lot with his shotgun in his truck’s gun rack.

1957 – Vice Principal comes over, looks at Jack’s shotgun, goes to his car and gets his new shotgun to show Jack.

2009 – School goes into lock down, FBI called, Jack hauled off to jail and never sees his truck or gun again. Counselors called in for traumatized students and teachers.

Scenario 2:

Johnny and Mark get into a fist fight after school…

1957 – Crowd gathers.. Mark wins. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up buddies.

2009 – Police called and SWAT team arrives — they arrest both Johnny and Mark.. They are both charged them with assault and both expelled even though Johnny started it.

Scenario 3:

Jeffrey will not be still in class, he disrupts other students.

1957 – Jeffrey sent to the Principal’s office and given a good paddling by the Principal. He then returns to class, sits still and does not disrupt class again..

2009 – Jeffrey is given huge doses of Ritalin. He becomes a zombie. He is then tested for ADD. The school gets extra money from the state because Jeffrey has a disability.

Scenario 4:

Billy breaks a window in his neighbor’s car and his Dad gives him a whipping with his belt.

1957 – Billy is more careful next time, grows up normal, goes to college and becomes a successful businessman.

2009 – Billy’s dad is arrested for child abuse. Billy is removed to foster care and joins a gang. The state psychologist is told by Billy’s sister that she remembers being abused herself and their dad goes to prison. Billy’s mom has an affair with the psychologist.

Scenario 5:

Mark gets a headache and takes some aspirin to school.

1957 – Mark shares his aspirin with the Principal out on the smoking dock.

2009 – The police are called and Mark is expelled from school for drug violations. His car is then searched for drugs and weapons.

Scenario 6:

Pedro fails high school English.

1957 – Pedro goes to summer school, passes English and goes to college.

2009 – Pedro’s cause is taken up by state. Newspaper articles appear nationally explaining that teaching English as a requirement for graduation is racist. ACLU files class action lawsuit against the state school system and Pedro’s English teacher . English is then banned from core curriculum. Pedro is given his diploma anyway but ends up mowing lawns for a living because he cannot speak English.

Scenario 7:

Johnny takes apart leftover firecrackers from the Fourth of July, puts them in a model airplane paint bottle and blows up a red ant bed..

1957 – Ants die.

2009 – ATF, Homeland Security and the FBI are all called. Johnny is charged with domestic terrorism. The FBI investigates his parents — and all siblings are removed from their home and all computers are confiscated. Johnny’s dad is placed on a terror watch list and is never allowed to fly again.

http://lifehacker.com/5086490/the-best-way-to-tether-your-iphone-to-your-laptop-for-free

This has been around for a while but it’s fun.  There’s language so make sure you blast this at work. Happy Friday.

Create a link to the directory of your choice on the desktop.  For instance, I created a link (By holding down the “option”, “apple/command” keys down) of my home directory on my desktop.  Now, drag that link to the dock.  Bingo! I have a dock icon that will just open a finder window of my home directory.

Me: Swipe now? oh not yet. ok now? YES ok…

Cashier: “Press the yellow button, and… wait – need to add your special member discount to the amount.  Canceling the transaction.”

Me: So… Now swipe again? oh not yet…. ok now? YES. ok…

Cashier: “Press the yellow button and it should say credit or debit, press 7 for credit… It’s not saying anything?”

Me: It says – “wait for cashier”.

Cashier: “Ok – now it should say credit, …”

Me: Ok, pressing credit.  whoops, pressed cancel.

Cashier: “Um… ok I’ll restart the process. Press the yellow button….”

Call me crazy but this whole process just seems stupid.  Stores should never trust that I could do something better than their own staff.

superbooky:Sean$ rsync -P -z -a -v -e "ssh -l sshuser"           \
                       --partial --delete-after --max-delete=500 \
                       /Volumes/disk1 bubba.com:~/disk1

While the command switches look scary, they really aren’t that bad. Here’s the explanation:

-P = Display

-z = Compress the data stream

-a = Archive mode – enables switches -rlptgoD
recurse dirs, copy symlinks, preserve permissions:mod times:group:owner:special files

-v = Increase verbosity

-e “ssh -l sshuser” = Run rsync through ssh for encrypted transfers

–partial = Leave partial files on the destination side.  This is to allow rsync to simply continue the transfer if a transmission interuption occurs. If you have large multi-GB files this is invaluable.

–delete-after = Delete any files on the destination that were deleted locally after all files have been replicated rather that during the replication.

–max-delete=500 = If rsync starts it’s deletion and goes more than 50 files, exit with an error.  This is a safegaurd in case something weird happens.

Using windows?  Sorry there’s no simple equivalent that is just available.  You’ll need to install software to get this type functionality

Why should you care?

Imagine your next computer with 10 terabytes of RAM, with no hard drive and no need to “load” programs.  Imagine the same computer powered off without loosing any information, requiring no voltage draw and at a fraction of the size of the smallest computers today – heck I could have described the iPhone of the future.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg.  Analog processors, extremely fast crossbars, and others are on the near horizon. 20-50 years?  No.  I’m talking about the next 2-5 years.

Here’s a few links regarding the memristor:

• Maintaining Moore’s law with new memristor circuits
• Memristor Wiki

If you ever get a chance to kick back at a java joint with John Common take it.

Turn a TI Graphing Calculator into an Intervalometer and Create Time Lapse Videos – More DIY How To Projects

I just started using su.pr to shorten long urls and it has the ability to do some very cool stuff if you link it into your wordpress site.  I prefer it over tunyurl and others.  Check it out!