July 2, 2002

Got a new segment from last thursday's CFOX geek of the week. Apparently they thought I was listening to them, although I was just trying to download the streaming software they use so I could. Anyways, here it is.

July 1, 2002

Time to sell out?

Its getting to the point where I'm getting adaquate hits to justify posting ads or something else to draw revenue. However, all the easy options I'm uncomfortable with. I don't want to plaster ads of ANY sort on the page. I like a nice clean page. I also don't want to charge for membership, because, as much as I like the site myself, I realize that nobody in their right mind would pay to access it. I could ask for donations, but I can't rely on that for a revenue stream, so that's a no-go as well.

The site as it stands has a very constant expense. More hits does not increase my expense, it only scales the rest of the people watching. And likely, I will not increase my bandwidth potential unless I REALLY feel I need to.

Here's what I am willing to do. I'm willing to sell something. Something useful. Products or services, doesn't matter. But if I take your money, you're going to get something worthwhile in return. Perhaps webcam starter kits, or kits that allow you to configure your place like I have. However, a lot of things like this are simply not in any shape that I'd feel comfortable in selling, or worse yet SUPPORTING.

Ultimately, I would love if I could support myself completely with this site, or from revenue from items sold from it. If I could pull enough to cover my monthly expenses and had enough left over to tinker with, I could make some fulltime investments developing new products to sell, and I have a lot of great ideas. But I have neither the time or motivation to do so for free right now. Seems almost like a catch-22 right now.

For now, I'm picking up a second job. It'll mean I'm busy ALL the time, but at least 2 days a week I'll be lounging around, so I can start working on things in that time as I'll have some extra cashflow to cover the material expenses. If I can start funding projects with this, and I am able to sell things, I'll be able to continue this trend.

However, until then, things will continue as they have. No ads. Its not an option. If you're worthwhile, I'll link to you. Otherwise, forget it. This site IS my advertising. It shows who I am and what I can do. For that, people around the world freely link to me and bring me visitors. And what would I be if I decided to milk that traffic just for the sake of it. If someone advertises me for free, I reward them my advertising them back, no matter how small they may be. If I took a more commercial stance, then those people might not so freely link to me. It would look less like a cool geek site and more like a "I wonder how much he gets paid to do this" site. Not me.

June 28, 2002

Well, I'm still getting hits from cfox. Today, someone from the show sent me an mp3 of the geek of the week segment so I could hear it, since I wasn't even aware of it when it initially aired. Go grab it if you want to hear it. I don't know if I'm allowed to post it or not, but nobody reads the news anyways, so I doubt it will matter. :)

June 27, 2002

How Awesome is this!

Today I was the topic on the morning talk show of a radio station. I'm the "Geek of the Week" on CFOX radio in Vancouver. I attempted to listen in on them while they were talking about me, but it took too long to get connected and I needed to leave for work, but someone was relaying to me what they were saying. Not to mention, I'm getting a LOT of hits. Gawd I love the publicity! :)

Now I just need a local station to pick me up. :)

June 26, 2002

An Introduction to Port Scanners for clueless script kiddies

A port scanner is something someone uses to figure out which ports are open on a particular host. The more benign ones simply attempt to open each port and result back a positive if the connect is successful. Some of the more proactive varieties will attempt to notify you of open ports if they're used by common backdoor programs, and some will even attempt to gain access, or at least point out known vulnerabilities, such as known exploitable versions of ftp, for instance.

Most server admins consider port scanning to be the equivalent of walking around someone's house testing all the doors and windows to see if they're locked. Granted, you're not breaking in, but that doesn't really make the occupants of that house feel very comfortable, especially if they see a large number of strangers try it every day. However, if someone comes to the front door and rings the doorbell, nobody gets freaked out. Why? Because the doorbell is an open port that the average homeowner expects people to utilize. This is why server admins don't lose their lunch whenever someone accesses the webserver. The point here is that port scanning without concent is a BAD THING. So don't do it without permission.

Here's the part where a brain is required. Your port scanner might return useful information on the type of data that various ports provide. They'll recognize that port 80 is a webserver, port 23 is a telnet server, etc. And they might also recognize that 12345 is used by netbus. Well, if you're portscanning your own windows box and you discover this, you might have cause to be alarmed, and you can therefore check your system and remove a trojan if there turns out to be one there. However, if you're portscanning your linux box and that same number shows up, you won't be concerned at all. Why? Because netbus doesn't run on linux. Nor does Back Orifice, or Sub7, or any of the other popular windows based trojans.

Lets say you're a clueless script kiddy. You run some portscanner on my network and lo and behold, it screams out that my primary linux server is running netbus. Well, its not running netbus, but someone on my server with an eggdrop is using port 12345 as their telnet port, so the portscanner will report it anyway. Next, you try to connect to this port, but it denies you access. I mean, after all, its not REALLY a netbus port, so you won't have any such luck.

This happens between 10-20 times a day to me. Most of the time I ignore it and sometimes I don't even notice. I can't watch logs like a hawk ALL the time, I just secure my system and let the portscanners do their thing. If someone is especially tenacious about it, I'll just block them from my network, end of story. Its like people who toilet paper houses. It pisses me off, but its not like I'm going to do anything about it. Unless I know who you are.

But if you contact me to tell me that you were snooping around where you weren't supposed to be and you discovered what you thought was a hole, I'm not going to thank you for your concern. I'm going to berate you for snooping around in the first place. Its nothing less than an insult to my intellegence (and as it would be, yours) for you to come forth and admit that while tampering where you shouldn't be, you discovered something that wasn't there. You can't find netbus running on my linux server. I know this. Most people even remotely clued in know this. You apparently don't know this. And since you don't you have NO business even touching a portscanner.

Portscanning is still somewhat of a grey area. It doesn't reach the severity that packetflooding, spamming, and cracking do. Police are unlikely to do much, and ISP's probably won't consider it to be much of an abuse complaint. But you never know. And if you don't know, you better put your script kiddy toys away.

June 25, 2002

Leslie has a new page. Well, not really really new, but new enough that nobody knows about it, including me until she bonked me on the head to tell me about it so anyways, everyone go here immediately and tell Leslie exactly what you think of the site.

Hey!! Did you click on the link?? You better go do that right now. Don't worry, the news will still be here when you get back. And make sure you read the rants. They're important. Really. I think.

Actually.. there is no other news. That was it. Well, I could go into a lengthy discussion about anus shades, but you wouldn't really want to know anyway.

June 24, 2002

For those of you who are new here, there are some simple facts that have been brought to my attention over the years. I will relay them to you here, so just in case you feel you've discovered something new, I can save you the trouble of bringing it to my attention.

Depending on your mood, or mine, I'm a geek, nerd, dork, smartass, or loser.
I am a fatass, foureyes, freckleface, and I have a striking resemblance to bill gates.
I have no life, I spend too much time on the computers, I need to get laid, I need a girlfriend, I need a wife.
My site has to be fake, even though it would be harder to fake it than to do it for real
Of course, there's NO good reason for me to do this, therefore I must be wasting my time..

And just in case you are one of these people, I happen to be proud of all of that, regardless of what you might think. And here are a couple theories of my own.

Anyone who will spend 3 hours telling me I have no life, probably doesn't have one either.
Anyone that says the site is fake only displays their own ignorance about the ease of interfacing computers to appliances. The very electronics stores you shop at sell devices to do these very things.
Anyone who blindly passes out insults only does so to cover for their own insecurities. By insulting me, you only say "I'm a bigger loser than you are". Was that REALLY the point you were attempting to make?

Not that any of this matters. Those who need to read this never will. But in case anyone wonders why I have a huge shit eating grin on my face when someone tries to put me down, should at least understand the perspective.

June 23, 2002

Well, the fark effect has subsided, now that I'm no longer on the front page. Now I'm getting hit primarily from all the sites that linked to me after fark posted me.

Whenever a large group of people stumble upon me, some of them inevitably feel the need to act like immature little jerks. Of course, I'm immune to any such artifical harrasment, but sometimes people ask what people say. I can't always remember at the time I'm asked, but this time I selected one such individual to point out an example. Do keep in mind, this person is calling me a loser with no life. However, he seems to have quite a bit of free time on his hands himself.

Read the logs here.. Warning, not suitable for family friendly entertainment.

June 21, 2002 18:30

Analysis of the fark effect.

Actually, I'm still being farked into oblivion, but I'll update later. For now a quickie analysis. A week ago, I was getting about 200 hits per day on average (a hit being a visitor accessing the home page). I then started plugging my site in my slashdot sig. A day later, fazed.net linked to me, and the traffic picked up.

A week of steady traffic at around 1500-2000 hits per day continued. Then early this morning, I got linked by fark.com. All hell has officially broken loose.

Then, as if just because it appears on fark.com, nobody has any idea it exists, numerous forums and other websites start listing my link as well. Here are some I've noticed over the last 24 hours.

dslreports.com

ptenthusaists.org

walters.bright-noise.com

interealms.com

nonlight.com

3dgameman.com

consilioetarmis.com

binnes.com

newsisfree.com

ezboard.com needs registration

cultofdarian.com

livejournal

clubsi.com

livejournal.com

ANOTHER livejournal

hardforum

theforumz.com

sixfeetsmall.com

Probably others too. I'll add them as I see them.

June 21, 2002

Just for kicks, some treats from my referrer logs. Here are some of the things people were searching for when they stumbled upon my site. I don't know if I should laugh or cry.

opera+show+and+software+and+teenager+check+their+instant+messages
doorbell+camera+rc+video+car+lights This person was PROBABLY searching for me.
You+are+being+watched+Message+on+ICQ Didn't know there was such a message on ICQ
the+muppet+movie+analysis While I actually wrote something like this, I can't imagine for the life of me that someone would actually LOOK for something like this.
glossery+of+castle+terms No idea.
critical+analysis+of+Paul%27s+case
holes+in+each+ear
hornets+insects+cartoon I dunno
black+people+in+history+alphebetical
Michael+Jackson+Pepsi+commercial
watch+your+house+being+built+webcam That's actually not a bad idea.
unkempt+people+pictures Definitely came to the right place.
anything+interesting+that+is+not+porn And it returned my site. Gotta love google!
nuclear+missle+travel+as+far+as+pluto
child+molester+name+list Move along. Move along
little+brother+webcam Wrong brother
drawn+aligators
submarine%22hull+thickness Whats with the freaking submarines?
nuclear+missle+destruction+radius Webcams... nuclear missiles.. hmmmm What's the connection
cute+girlfriend Nobody ever looks for "ugly girlfriend"
critical+analysis+of+somewhere+i+have+never+travelled Either thats a name of something, or someone's asking an awful lot of the search engine.
payback+girlfriend+pics
video+character+strange+dos+program Mmmmm... strange dos programs...
pokey+the+little+puppy Hmmm.. ok.
overalls+"pictures+of+me" Why would I have pictures of you in overalls?

Ok.. that's enough for now. I'll post more later.

June 20, 2002

The night of the forums. Today's been busy. I do my typical shameless plug for this website on slashdot. A few days ago fazed.net linked to me, so I've been getting hits from there. Then tonight, about 5 different forum posts have linked to me. Busy night.

Also, I don't like it when someone's guardians call me, freaking out, looking for their child, and assuming that A: I know something about where you are, and B: I shouldn't know you in the first place. I'm not a bad guy. Yes, I sometimes hang out with people that are significantly younger or older than I am. Some of these people are young enough that their parents still keep a close eye on them, yet they're old enough to legally do what they please. If you're 15, I expect your parents to be worried and concerned and pestering me about who I am and why they're here and how long they'll be here, etc etc. When you're 18, I'll assume you're responsible enough to take care of yourself and to make the right decisions. And in the event that you're not, I expect you to not involve me in any family crisis that results from your inability to keep the peace.

Am I someone that your parents wouldn't want you to hang out with? Fine. Do the following. Make sure they won't have any reason to find out. Because if they do call me, I will make sure that the next time they call me, I can easily say "I'm sorry, I don't know that person anymore, in fact I haven't seen him or heard from him since the last time we talked". This way, they will go away and leave me alone.

In other, non rant related news... actually, it IS rant related, but not a rant... anyway.

I'm planning to add a page of rants. Silly rants. We daily bitch and groan about stupid silly things that on any other day we wouldn't give a second thought. And, of course, there are the more serious rant subjects. I figure that would be a better place to put them rather than my news page. Because news is supposed to be about the daily events of my life, not about my personal gripes. So I'll move the gripes to another page. Certainly people want to read them. Of course, now I'll have to find something to put on the news page, but that's a crisis I'll solve later.

June 19, 2002

Disrespect. Or better yet, "How to abuse the people you call your friends without really meaning it." Today I want you to try something. Go out and find someone. Consider, in your own demented way, that this person is your friend. Now, invade this person's life just sufficently to cause a great deal of grief, however temporary. Pretend that nothing is wrong and everyone is as happy as you are.

Now, while realizing that this person owes you no favors, request things from him. Call him every so often at 3 in the morning and ask pointless, stupid questions. Request the use of some free services and when your request is granted, ask frequently for assistance on how to use them. After all, your lack of patience is far more important than the trouble you cause others.

All the while, be very careful. Don't accidently slip and offer anything in return. No offers for dinner, no invitations to any "friends & family" events. No acts of good faith on your part to repay this kindness in any way. After all, you're only concern is number one. All other issues are irrelevent and not worth the energy fretting over.

Now its time for the final blow. Some night, when nobody's expecting it, you will abuse the services this person has offered you. Make sure that resources are low, and don't make any effort to stay within the means. Dump a ton of crap. Fill up all available resources with this crap. Cause countless problems as a result. And when your access to these services is cut off, don't apologize, just bring the issue up and pretend you had no idea that you were being abusive. Act like a punk, its ok. REALLY.

Oh. And now, make some token offer. Find some pointless, worthless token resource that is no use to you OR him, and offer it up as if it will somehow make everything better. That all the shit you've shovelled will somehow just wash away, all is forgiven and forgotten. Now sleep good tonight. Be proud of yourself. You've still got quite a bit to show for your obvious lack of moral clarity. You might even be able to blindly convince some people to give you respect with no strings attached. But you won't get it from him.

And you won't get it from me.

June 11, 2002

End of an era

I'm currently in an email war with a good friend of mine. I'd talk to her online, but she never seems to be available anymore. I don't really seem to see what's the point anymore. She appears to be in a place of her life where she's so stressed out by everything, that she'll blow up at the slightest sense of conflict. I don't try to create conflict, but at times I'll state my opinion and at times I'll razz someone. Doesn't mean I care any less, and doesn't mean I intend to act with malice.

But what do I know anyways. When am I ever right. To I just need to accept the fact that people as young as she is will fuck up everything until a clue hits them squarely across the face one day? Yes, sometimes you need to let someone make some mistakes. But there are some mistakes that NOBODY should make. Her problems lie somewhere in between. I've tried, hard as I can, to make her aware of these things. But nothing has worked. And now I've dug myself a hole. I'm now the bad guy who never has anything positive to say and just constantly focuses on the negatives. To the point she won't talk to me anymore.

Some things that people do are stupid. People might be perfectly content doing stupid things, but that doesn't change the fact that they're stupid. Do I do anyone a favor by ignoring it? So I come across rather forceful about it. I don't want anyone to get the idea that I'm not passionate about the ideas I preach.

And now, she's so stressed out that I say one thing and it pushes her over the edge. This is the happiest time of her life, and she's miserable. That doesn't bode well. And I'm supposed to sit back and watch her descend into this spiralling grave of misery and do nothing. Well, in all fairness, I can't even do that anymore, since she took the one outlet I had to gleen some insight into her life and closed it off to me.

Perhaps thats the price I pay. I'm not going to feel guilty about it though. I did what I felt was necessary, and at the time she expressed her appreciation for it. How soon she'll turn it against me to prove some silly point.

Fine.

June 10, 2002

Rude People

You know the types. I perceive two types of rude people. Those that don't make a small effort to appease someone where appropriate, and those that go out of their way to intentionally annoy/harrass/insult/degrade someone.

The first type first. You walk into a store and lets the door close even though you are aware that some old lady with a cane is trying to come in after you. Its considered rude to not hold the door open, but you justify it because it would have taken an extra 30-60 seconds of your time. Or you're in a hurry, so you cut someone off in heavy traffic. Or you raise your voice to get someone to pay attention to you and service you faster. It all comes down to laziness and a lack of respect for other human beings. But these people don't suck anywhere nearly as badly as the next type.

This type of jerk will hunt down peaceful, kind individuals who aren't bothering anyone, and intrude on their lives to insult and degrade them. For no reason whatsoever. In many cases, these people are strangers. What motivates someone to act this way? Do they feel so low and empty inside that the only thing that gives them a reason to live is to realize that others are as miserable as they are, and when they notice that others seem to be so happy, they must be brought down to the same level.

Someone who visits my chatroom is French. She speaks english well enough to be understood, but has the occasional grammatical gaffe and its obvious that english isn't her first language. However, there is no language barrier. Yet someone feels the need to disparage her. And for the life of me, I can't figure out why. She bothers nobody. Well, perhaps her good nature bothers the rude person because the rude person just has that problem. Oh well, he's gone now. I just... don't know what to make of it anymore. I can accept that this happens, but I don't think I'll ever really understand it.

June 9, 2002

Yay. More things to bitch about! :)

However, my head is a big ball of mush at the moment and I can't adaquately express myself right now, so I'll just update later.

But trust me, I have things to bitch about. :)

June 6, 2002

With some assistance, both Leslie and Snumpy have "won" the first game. To celebrate this wonderful event, I have released game #2. This game has very little to do with me. However, I'm still testing formats to see what works. So go have fun anyways.

My electric bill for April was $5.63. This includes a $5.34 base charge. This means that I was actually charged 29 CENTS for electricity usage for the month of April. Let me put this into perspective. A 100 watt light bulb would use up that amount of electricity in 15 hours. I have 12 computers, a fridge, and a porch light that run 24/7/365. Either they're all extremely efficient, or something is wrong. Of course, try as I might, the AC does push the threshold, so in the summers, I DO get higher bills. Not shockingly high, but the graphs showing usage look REALLY funny. Peaks 5 months of the year then flatlined the rest. Not that I'm complaining. :)

And several years ago, I had a free phoneline for 18 months. I used to have 4 phone lines. Three residential and one business. The business line had serious issues and would short out and hang up for no reason. I eventually canceled that line, but kept the 3 residentials. In late 97, I had an isdn line installed. Since I no longer would need two extra lines, I figured I'd cancel one of the lines and have them install the isdn on that pair. I knew I didn't want them using that other line, so I figured this would work.

Of course, GTE screwed it up. They installed the isdn on that bad line. And for 18 months my isdn line was partially stable. It would just drop for no reason every so often. It was a pain in the ass to get that fixed. The big problem was the fact that it took 15 minutes to get through to customer service at GTE and by that time the line was functioning again and they couldn't see a problem.

All during this time, that third line that I had wanted disconnected was still alive. They stopped charging me for it, so billing at least understood what I wanted. But they never cut service to the line. It was active. With the same phone number. I could dial out on it, I could call in on it. When my regular service was disconnected for nonpayment, that line still worked.

I eventually managed to convince GTE to send out a tech to just stay at my house all day until the line dropped. During this process I explained what I had wanted to do, and let him "discover" the magically working third line, then expressed shock that it was still working and why wasn't the isdn on that line, *smirk*. They finally switched the isdn to the correct line and all was well with the world. But I wonder, how could GTE "lose" a phone line for 18 months? Then again, this is the same phone company that cut off the entire city of Plano, TX for 8 hours once because of a cut in one line, so perhaps I shoudn't be surprised.

The gas company on the other hand is extremely vigilant. I got a notice that my gas would be cut for nonpayment and was given a date to pay the bill by to avoid disconnection. They disconnected me anyways, 12 days prior to that date. I suppose I shouldn't complain. I'm still ahead of the game here, but its nice to see that TXU still has some degree of balance between their various services. :)

June 4, 2002

I have added a cam at work now. It only updates once every 10 seconds, but its better than nothing.

I've also added a simple game, which right now is just a bit of personal trivia, but hopefully something I can expand on in the future.

June 2, 2002

A Number of changes.

First of all, I've managed to increase the refresh rate for some of the webcams, and eventually all of them. You will now get up to 10 fps, which is about as good as you're going to get even if you're on my local network. Of course, it will scale as more people watch or my bandwidth is cut short for other stupid reasons.

The living room computer has been upgraded. Not really a big deal from your perpective, but it allows me to do other things.

There is now a microphone in the living room as well as the office now. I'm planning to play with the site format a little so the option to listen in shows up when you're looking at the appropriate cam, instead of extra links on the side where realestate is already getting a little scarce.

Added several new webcams to the links page. I'm considering making a new page for actual webcams, and then the links page will be the regular links to pages. This way it will become more of a portal and I can standardize the format somewhat. This will allow you to capture pics from those cams as well as mine, have a favorites list, an archive list, etc.

Jessica and I broke up. Not much has changed really, we're just not "going out" anymore.

May 30, 2002

The Morons at Microsoft

Everyone knows that I tend to avoid microsoft products whenever possible. I still use a few old windows 95 boxes for the webcams due to lack of linux support, but the days are coming when I dump them completely. However, due to popular demand, or monopolistic pressure, the majority of people browsing their way to my site use internet explorer, and an increasing number of them are using IE6.

Everyone who has seen the site in the last 6 months has noticed the little light bulbs. What many of you don't realize is that the original intent was to have those little lightbulbs turn on whenever the lamp they represent is on. It automatically updates whenever someone is watching, even if they're not actively doing anything. These lightbulbs are preloaded images that refresh whenever theres a change. Preloading is a really cool way to save bandwidth by loading the image ONCE with the intent that it can be manipulated later without using bandwidth in the process. Microsoft seems to have missed that point.

If the image on the website is the same as the image in the cache, there is NO reason whatsoever to refresh it automatically. The user can still do a manual refresh if he wants to. Now lets say for the sake of reasoning that it just makes sense to load the images everytime the page is loaded regardless of the cache. This is somewhat silly, but fine. Its just a one time load, so who cares. I can accept this as well. However, when an image is PRELOADED, the ONLY reason to do this is to avoid downloading it again later. Yet, when on a default IE6 installation, if you copy a preloaded image into the document image, it will download the image from the website again. This is absolutely moronic.

Even more moronic than that is the fact that the cache mode that causes this activity is enabled by default. The only reasoning I could find is that "Users with broadband often find it easier to simply download everything rather than waste time checking cache entries." That doesn't explain the preloading problem though. In a fit of reluctant desparation, I decided to query microsoft's knowledge base to see if there were any complaints regarding this. And after some diligent searching I found a workaround. And I got pissed off all over again. Why you ask? Because some crackhead at microsoft seems to have the nerve to claim that this "feature" is "by design". HUH??!?!?!!

What pedantic moronic loser came up with THAT bright idea? What sloppy bug of yours did you have to cover up by implementing this stupid feature? Why do you insist on breaking standards and causing excessive bandwidth abuse and downtime because its just so much easier to ignore the problem than to fix it? And why do you CREATE problems to fill a need that nobody on the planet ever required, or even wanted for that matter? Morons. All of them. Get off the crack guys. Really.

May 27, 2002

There's a new Myth book, by Robert Asprin. I don't know how long it's been out, but I just now discovered it, so there.

Azure got married. I think. The fact that I have heard nothing from her would suggest that everything has gone according to plan. In that event, congradulations.

PDA's, laptops, and other portable computers. I have no portable computers. Every single computer I have (and I have a lot of them) is a desktop, plug it in the wall, wire it up to the network kinda computer. Well, I have a couple calculators, but they don't count. Why don't I? Here's why.

They're expensive. I'm a cheapskate as everyone knows. Now, the expense is of limited concern. If I could actually USE one, I'd get it. But I've never needed it, at least not badly enough to justify the extra expense. Laptops are fragile. They suffer from the "no serviceable parts inside" propritary crap, and they follow no standard at all. They require batteries. They're combersome, hard to type with, and bulky. PDA's are more convienent to carry and a bit more sturdy, but are less powerful, and have an interface that is nonconventional and inefficient.

Both of them suffer from the lack of network capabilities. Sure, you can do the 802.11 thing until you get out of range of your WAP. After that, your only real choice is dialup cellular. Slow and by the minute. Eventually, the entire country MIGHT be bathed in wireless networking traffic and there will always be a link within range. Not for a while anyways.

While I'm sitting in the theatre waiting for starwars to start, I start thinking. And since its a 4 hour wait, I get a lot of time to think. I could watch the previous movie while I'm waiting for this one to start. If I had a portable computer anyways. Of course, hauling around a laptop in the theatre didn't make much sense to me (although others seemed to have no problem doing it). But a PDA would be perfectly ideal for this. Its the perfect size to carry anywhere you go, and could easily fit a 320x240 resolution movie. Of course, the processing power in these things is still rather limited, but it doesn't take a lot of power to playback an mpeg at that resolution. The other limitation is storage space. Without a HD, you can't store much data. And I don't want to waste my time loading 1400 meg files onto a 2 gig laptop HD which cost as much as the PDA just so I could watch a movie while I was out, when typically I wouldn't be out anyways. Regardless, I'd have to plan in advance. However, if that pda had easy access to a 11 mbps wireless connection, it could work. But that conneciton wasn't there. And so my use for a PDA is nil.

So I can play movies. Lets say the network DID exist and that much was possible. Great. Now what I need to be able to use it for is all my other computer based activities. I don't plan to be limited just because its a portable. They need dictation software. I need to be able to talk to it, and it needs to dictate what I'm saying, preferably in a word processor directly. And while I'm at it, let it export X, so all the applications available to me elsewhere are available here. We have limitations of screen space, which will always be a problem. But MOST applicaitons can funciton in a 320x240 area if they really had to. The trick is to not run them locally. The PDA is a terminal. It uses the network as its primary resource. All the work is done elsewhere. And that's where we can get around the processor limitation. I can have entire networking clusters of computers at my disposal, the little pda only has to handle the exported X screen.

In fact, it doesn't even have to be X. It could be a semi-compatible or even not compatible GUI system, streamlined for that interface, to save bandwidth as well as provide efficient data transfer for graphics and other high bandwidth data. Even modularize the programs. Split the processing that is done on each side. An Xterm program is low overhead, but generates graphics traffic for every keystroke. So send the whole application over, and only transfer back the actual data. Export not only the appearance, but the entire application's interface to the other side, within the means of the PDA of course. This way, the pda has to store nothing but the minimal necessary to get the interfaces activated.

But sadly, we need the bandwidth, and we need voice recognition that works perfectly, and when that day comes, the PDA will be more than a geek toy. It will be USEFUL. And I'll actually want one.

May 23, 2002

Last night was cool. One of the more famous open source developers managed to find his way to my website last night, and ended up chatting with some of us for a good 4 hours. Of course, to say he's famous doesn't mean I recognized his name until he listed php.net as his homepage. :)

Not only did he start the development of php, but he seems to have a hardware geek mode that rivals even mine. Managed to add a few more projects to the ever growing list last night.

May 22, 2002

This is a useful skill. Learning to think outside of the box. Anytime you have a insurmountable problem, with an obvoius but seemingly unattainable solution, just forget the solution. Figure out what you know works, and more importantly what you know you can get working. The most obvious solution isn't always the best way, although it might be the right way. You might be able to cheat and get around the problem. Just don't apply this philosophy to class. :)

And when it comes to knowledge, the best thing you could ever know is that you don't know everything. The internet has empowered the very people who might not know much, but know how to find out anything they need to know in a short amount of time. You can solve any problem, know anything. Everything you ever wanted to know is available from a keyboard. Its just a matter of knowing where to look.

And don't give up. Sometimes people you know might have the perfect solution when your exhaustive efforts have failed you. And sometimes people know better than you. It would behoove you to take their advice. Of course, some people are loons. And it would behoove you to tell them where to stuff it. Pure wisdom is in identifing the differences. :)

May 20, 2002

What is the deal with people?

Especially the younger people. Someone I don't really know very well has a rather popular webcam (or did anyways). I would look in on her every once in a while, but never really got to know her. Her name's Charisma.

Anyways, So I'm bored and trolling the webcams sites to see what's up with people and when I venture onto hers, I notice that the cam is gone, she's turned into an alcoholic, and apparently can't find it within herself to go on living, or at least that's the impression I got from the page I read.

I suppose I just can't figure it out. I didn't have a perfect childhood. Being the geek that I am, I missed out on most of the popularity opportunities, and managed to subject myself to ridicule and harrassment on an almost daily basis for a significant portion of my developing years. I've had my bad experiences, and I've done some stupid things I'll always regret, yet in a strange way thing I'm better for getting it over with sooner. Hard to say, but all I can say is, everything turned out ok. And I've managed to get through all that crap without killing myself and without turning to drugs or alcohol as an escape. I don't even recall considering those viable options.

So what is it with these spoiled, whiny children. Is your only problem that everything went your way all the time, so that when reality settled in and life in general turned against you, you weren't ready for it? Is that it? Are you really so shallow to think that because you're in your late teens or early 20's that everything worth doing has already been done? Have you exhaused all your options yet? Are you just ready to give up?

Too all of you kids I have a message. One day you will wake up and everything will just suddenly make sense. Its hard to describe, but it hits you quickly. You just don't feel the same anymore. All the confusing, annoying crap that seems to occupy your entire life will seem insignificant. Maturity hits you like a brick. You stop thinking about yourself so much and start to see the bigger picture. You might know exactly what you want to do and what you want to be right now, but chances are good, eventually you'll have a change of thought. Some things aren't as appealing when you're older. Suddenly the you see the point of all those "useless" classes you took in school. Trust me, it really WILL MAKE SENSE.

Just try not to give up too soon. It gets better. And in some cases it gets worse, but you'll be ready to handle it when it does.

May 18, 2002

Motivations of the Sith.

Sith Lords are motivated by thier lust for power. That is the reason why there are only two of them at any one time. The Master and the Apprentice. The Apprentice could never defeat the Master, at least, not alone. However, if there were more than one Apprentice, they could gang up on the Master and defeat him.

Therefore, they attempt to recruit assistance from other sources, specifically, the good Jedi Knights. Vader attempted to gain assistance from Luke, and Dooku attempted to gain assistance from Obi-Wan. This is why Dooku told Obi-wan the truth about Sidious. He didn't care if too much information was revealed as Obiwan's refusal would result in his death.

Of course, in the end, the only plan here was to get the war started. The fact that some Jedi survived was of little consequence. Certainly, it would have been a nice bonus if they were all wiped out in the process, but Sideous has other plans anyways. He has his eye on Anakin. And before he can recruit Anakin, Dooku has to go. We'll see.

May 17, 2002

A quick lesson in common sense.

Thankfully, I have never used drugs, I have had no desire to try them, and I have therefore managed to avoid legal problems with drugs as a result. But I have talked with people who have had problems in the past. Just in case you don't think its a big deal, lets take a look at a few things.

Pot. If you listen to the rationalizations of those who smoke a lot of it, its perfectly harmless. Its safer than alcohol. It increases brain activity. Blah Blah blah. I don't care. Even if all of that is true, one simple fact remains. Its illegal. And it just so happens, that drug related issues are difficult to talk your way out of when confronted by the police.

But it's just pot. And it always depends on the amount. If you don't have enough of it, then it's just a misdemenor and you get a slap on the wrist and laugh it off like nothing happened. Although I'm not familiar with the drug laws in states other than Texas, let me explain a probable "wrist slap".

You will probably get 6 months probation, 40-120 hours of community service, and a few hundred dollars in fines. On top of court costs which will cost you a few hundred more. And each month you're on probation, that will be another $40 or so each month. You'll have to tell your employer that you're a criminal now, and you'll have to tell any new employers when you're getting hired. Yes, I know they only ask for felonies, but if you're on probation, you'll STILL have to tell them, even if its a misdemenor.

You will frequently be called in to take drug tests. If you break any law more severe than jaywalking, you will have your probation revoked. If you drink, you will have your probation revoked. Miss a probation meeting? if you have a nice officer, you might get lucky. Otherwise, revoked. Get arrested for anything, revoked.

Ok, so you figure for 6 months you can stay out of trouble. At least you'll have it easy there. You won't be able to drive anywhere to get into trouble. Thats right, they suspend your drivers license. Think you can go 6 months without driving?

Alright, you're convinced. You'll never smoke pot again. But your friends still do. And you give them rides. And you get pulled over. 9 times out of 10, your best friend in the world, will stuff his stash under YOUR seat to get the heat off of him. That means you get to take the rap for him. But he's a great friend, so he's worth it. Well, all the rest of the time anyways. And maybe they only smoke pot to get warmed up to something else. Who knows what more they stuff under your seat. What do they care. You'll be locked up in jail for quite a while. They'll have plenty of time to disappear. And your friends, even the nonmalicious druggies, might just accidently leave something in your car. You never notice it until you get pulled over, and the kind officer points it out to you.

Now, lets see where *I* fit into this equation. You might be clean as a whistle. But I know you give rides to druggies. Should I get in your car? If you get pulled over, and that shit is in there while I'm in the car with you, not good. The chances of me being pinned for it are slim, but why should I risk it. Park that car in my garage, and its in my house. Also not good. Possession is 9/10 of the law, no matter how you look at it. And ANYTIME you lapse in vigilance to prevent someone else from taking advantage of you, you've lost all credibility in my eyes.

May 16, 2002

I watched starwars last night. The movie rocked. And so did the audience.

Never before have I had so much fun sitting in a movie theatre with the lights on. Never before has passing around a beach ball been so entertaining. Never have I gone somewhere and hung around a bunch of perfect strangers who might as well have been my friends my whole life.

I do however have a few observations. If you are not a die hard starwars fanatic, please do us all a favor, and don't go to the 12:01 AM showing. It kinda sucks that one person ruins everyone's fun because they showed up not expecting a wild crowd. The theatre is full of people who are so stoked that they have gone to the trouble to purchase tickets a week in advance, and show up for a movie hours, in some cases DAYS before it starts, not to just get a good place in line, but to hang out with all the other crazies. Its just part of the whole experience. So that beachball bounced off your head. We're terribly sorry about that. We hope that the damage isn't life threatening and that the scars heal in time. Thank you for making a bad guy out of that poor usher who had to tell the happy crowd to quit having fun because of one person who didn't really want to be there anyways.

Another subtle hint. When people start lining up for a movie more than 24 hours before the movie starts, it would be a good idea to get there yourself sometime earlier than 5 minutes before the show starts. Wandering around the theatre asking if perchance that group of three seats is already taken, while everyone else is chanting "5 MORE MINUTES!!!", just makes you look like a moron. There's some seats in the very front still available. We reserved them just for you. You may not feel justified showing up 3 hours in advance for a movie. That's fine. But don't go to 12:01.

We do have some future ideas when Episide III comes out. Most of us were in the theatre 3-4 hours before showtime. One or both of the prequels could have be shown in that time. Or anything other than those stupid advertisements. We did finally bribe the ushers to turn off the elevator music and turn on the lights while we were waiting, so we could enjoy ourselves more. I and a group of fellow geeks actually discussed the feasibility of bringing along other movies as a way to pass the time while waiting. We have at least one more event to plan for here. Sadly, it'll probably be the last. I know of no other movie that gets this kind of fan loyalty, and Episode III is supposed to be the end of it. That will definitely be the last hurrah. And I plan to make it a memorable experience. Ushers be damned! :) -Restil

May 13, 2002

BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR ROGUE STRANGELETS!!!!

Actually, you won't be able to see them, so don't bother. They're moving at 900,000 miles per hour. They are as small as a grain of pollen, but they mass over several tons. They crash into Earth, releasing energy equivalent to several thousand tons of TNT. We're talking a small nuclear explosion here. This is no laughing matter. And it could happen at ANY TIME. And the most scary thing about this is, THERE IS NO WAY TO PREVENT IT!!!! OH the HUMANITY!!!!

Would you like one of these quark grains landing in YOUR backyard? No? Then you had best call your representatives immediately and recommend planetary defense systems to protect us from these hostile strangelets. You could be the victim of a horrendous strangelet attack at ANY TIME!! Do you WANT to die? I didn't think so. With millions of orbital defense platforms, solar system wide sensor nets, and large, powerful, anti-strangelet cannons, we just might be able to defend our planet from these hostile aberations of nature. There is no time to waste!

Read all about strangelets here, before its too late!

May 7, 2002

Stress and bad people kinda things.

I think I am unlike most people. Of course, I pride myself on my unique nature and this is no secret to anyone that knows me. However, I seem in many ways to differ on how I react to basic emotional issues. Take stress. Everyone has it. I'm no exception. However, for me, it usually doesn't reach the degree that I approach an emotional breakdown as a result of it.

I think this is why. I like many people have had a few rather traumatic experiences. Its part of life. Yet some people choose to dwell on those events and live with them day after day, year after year, slowly letting it eat them alive. And when someone piles yet another stressful situation upon them, they simply can't take it anymore. I look at it from a completely different perspective. I take a single stressful situation and put it into perspective with what I've already gone through. The painful reality of it is, that you would be hard pressed to put me into any situation where I haven't already had it worse. And knowing that, I realize that the current situation, however gloomy it may seem, is insignificant in comparison to the crap I've already gone though. It simply doesn't deserve to get worked up over. I can either ignore the problem, or solve it quickly and move on.

Yet stress doesn't work that way. I think it does, but it really doesn't. See, I have shaped my life in such a way to accept and deal with the stressful situations such that they simply don't affect me. Some people are suddenly burdened with unemployment, I live cheap to avoid that potential burden. I take care of everything I own, because if I don't destroy that $10 object, then I won't need to burden myself with dreaming up $10 later to replace it. It takes time for me to get myself into a mode where I'm actually productive, and when people call me, they interrupt my train of thought and screw up that productivity. So I either accomplish nothing, or I avoid all phone calls when I'm busy. Avoiding phone calls is the no-brainer solution. The simple fact of it is, as long as I'm in complete control of my life, everything runs smoothly.

But as soon as someone else starts tampering with that well oiled machine I call my life, everything goes to hell in a handbasket. I live on a margin. I can't afford any great degree in wavering over and above what I've planned for. This is why I don't waste money on a domain. This is why I don't get the car fixed. These things are petty and useless expenses that will bring me no added benefit, but will cost me beyond what I can afford. $10 makes a significant difference in my well being at any one point in time. And so, when I have a visitor that causes damage to something, and I have to spend that $10 to replace it, its not that I'm just out $10, I'm potentially putting myself into a financially perilous position. I get lax on paying bills because I'm suddenly too short on cash, and when things get cut off for non-payment, the fees put me even further into financial straights.

Of course, I realize all of this the moment the first snowflake starts the avalanche. And it pisses me off. Of course, nobody should get pissed off over something so trivial, so I keep it bottled up. I don't like walking around complaining endlessly about every silly little "insignificant" thing that someone does, because I'd be bitching all the time, and that's simply not a possibility. But this does mean that every once in a while, some little tiny thing will cause me to explode. Not a huge violent explosion, mind you, just a little 10 second walking down the hall pounding on the walls, swearing at the top of my lungs, get it all off my chest kinda outburst. But to the person that dropped a few crumbs of cheeze on the bed or smudged my glasses will see this and think I'm an emotionally unstable person.

And maybe they're right. And quite likely, if I was in better financial shape, the "insignificant" things that poke at me all the time wouldn't be an issue and I'd be a more calm reasonable person when people constantly show a lack of respect for the comfort and property of others. I love having guests, but I'm also happy when they leave. It gives me time to cool off again. The REAL problems are going to happen when someone moves in with me. Unless I'm in the black by then, or whoever moves in is a paragon of respect, walking on eggshells, never creating a burden at all for me kinda person, things will get ugly.

REALLY ugly.

April 15, 2002

Happy Tax day.

A minor update on the Tomz issue. He got contacted by security at his ISP for multiple TOS violations, including pingflooding and hosting servers. He posted all about it in a new thread.

April 10, 2002

With regards to the Tomz/dslreports.com incident, here is a quick summary.

Tomz is some 14 year old spoiled brat who has been visiting my site for the last week, along with my chatroom. On the evening of the 8th, he said some rather disrespectful things about his recently deceased grandmother. I decided at this point that this, along with his general annoying behavior, completely justified me banning him from the chatroom. Of course, its my chatroom, so I could ban him for any reason I wanted, or no reason at all.

He then spends the next hour sending me messages, first whiny complaints to let him back in, then threats to pingflood me if I don't, followed by pingflooding me. The whole time, he continues to watch my webcam and listen to my icecast stream. At this point, I call ool to ask where to report abuse, and am refered to a website, along with appropriate email addresses. I promptly fire off an email to abuse@cv.net with his ip and a brief description of the current situation.

At some point he checks his firewall logs and notices a lot of packets from my ip address, coming from port 80. Anyone with half a clue about networks realizes that this is a response from my webserver. He was watching one of my webcams, which on a high speed connection will probably generate around 6 connections per second. However, he must not have gotten this obvious hint and instead started a thread on dslreports.com claiming I was pingflooding him and fails to mention that he was currently pingflooding me. It is a rather long thread, through which a few less than enlightened individuals decided to join his "cause" and pingflood me as well. When I discovered the thread from referrer logs, I posted a reply to the thread explaining the situation and the issue was almost immediately dropped. By the time my post went through, a number of other posters in the thread had already brought to light the truth of the situation. At this point, I figured it was over.

The next day, he starts a thread in the security forum. Needless to say, nobody seemed to take him very seriously. Even those not familiar with the issue realized that his pingflooding me, FOR ANY REASON, was unjustified and lame. A couple posters also drew attention to the original thread and my supporting evidence. I posted a reply to this thread as well to give people a heads up.

So far, I have exchanged three emails with ool security. At this time, I've stated that I'm not planning to pursue any further abuse complaints. However, they had already discovered, on their own, the original thread posted by tomz on dslreports and will be monitoring his connection for future acts of abuse. I've also been contacted by a couple forum moderators who expressed displeasure with Tomz's actions and are planning to recommend his removal from the forums on dslreports.

That summarizes the situation so far. If there are any further developments, I will gladly post them here. Thanks for all the support from everyone!

-Restil

April 9, 2002

An Introduction to Ping for clueless script kiddies:

Clue #1: When you're pingflooding someone, and their downstream exceeds your upstream, then you will use up ALL your upstream for your pingflood attempt. This means that your internet connection will get rather laggy. The lag does not imply that you are getting attacked, it is YOUR attack that is causing it.

Clue #2: For every ping packet you send out, you will get one back. This is not an attack, this is a design of the ping program. You see, contrary to popular belief, the ping command was NOT created to be abused by script kiddes, but instead as a network diagnostic tool.

Clue #3: If you suspect a site is flooding you, before you set up logging software to find out, first do the following. 1: Stop pingflooding the site. 2: Stop downloading from the site. 3: Quit talking to people from that site. This will ensure that you're not getting any packets from that site that are the result of something that you requested.

Clue #4: If while you're pingflooding someone, you suspect they might be pingflooding you back, don't post about it on dslreports.com. Leaving evidence of your misdeeds everywhere, then complaining about an alleged retalliation will not get you much sympathy and will only increase the chances that you'll get in trouble later.

And in a completely unrelated issue, if for some reason I'm not talking to you for an extended period of time, its probably because you said something REALLY stupid. It also is very likely that you've said a LOT of stupid things in the past that led up to the final incident.

April 5, 2002

Yesterday I had another encounter with lameness. This time, it came from the myg0t chatroom, whatever the hell that is. I am both inspired and dismayed by this. Inspired, because regardless of the number of places that have posted about this site, 99.9% of the people who visit seem decent, or at the very least they don't say anything to betray that impression. Oh sure, I get the occasional person who thinks I have no life and am wasting my time, or figures they can be clever and script the lamps to turn on and off very fast (which only works for a few minutes before the automated countermeasures are activated). But by in large people are nice.

But yesterday was the exception. Massive hoardes of lame 13 year olds flood my site and my chatroom and ALL of them act as one with making my life as difficult as possible, spamming the chatroom with vile remarks, posting captions, and renaming all the mp3's in the incoming directory to immature names. Guys, if you wanted to piss me off, you have.

Of course, some of them actually DID do stuff thats considered illegal, and they DID cause some destruction of property, not that I care THAT much about it. But hey, this is about the principle of the thing. All of them were stupid enough to do so from their own accounts, so I have a nice collection of traceable ip addresses. I'm currently obtaining home addresses for these individuals, or at least having the ISP contact them for me. My most likely mission will be to just contact their parents, inform them of the potential legal liability that their children are involving them in, and certainly have the lame idiot removed from the internet, if only for a little while.

Was talking to one guy who is 20 yesterday.. and claims that he supports thier actions. Saying they're "good at heart" and its perfectly acceptable to be assholes. These people are vandals. The fact that they're kids is no exception. While yes, indeed, there is NOTHING illegal about being an asshole, I gotta wonder what their parents think. Certainly they aren't aware of the activities of last night, but these kids can't be perfect angels in real life and rampage online. The parents obviously turn a blind eye. Nothing short of a potential legal hurdle is going to make them wake up. But they will have to wake up. For their own benefit, I hope it happens BEFORE the police knock on their door.

In other news, Jessica and I have settled our differences for the most part and we're doing better. She'll be coming to visit in 2 weeks.

April 2, 2002

Well, I think I've done it. In the process of attempting to figure out where my relationship was going and if it had a future, I may have inadvertantly ended it. We're still together, but I get the feeling that what was once there is now gone, and its mostly my fault. And I've managed to screw up a couple of other friendships at the same time.

Of course, all of this was intentional. I'll attempt to explain why. I don't really expect anyone to understand though, least of all those that I hurt. But I've been through an empty relationship before. I put everything I had, everything I was into it. All my emotions, my finances, my life. I walked away from my parents, I walked away from all my friends, because I wanted to make that girl happy. I wanted to make it work. I wanted it to be something. And yet, there was nothing there. And I practically destroyed myself before I figured it out. In the end it did none of us any good and I would have done both of us a HUGE favor if I ended it early on. If not on my own, than at one of the MANY opportunities she handed me.

That ended seven years ago, yet I still am paying off debts from that relationship. I absolutely refuse to ever subject myself to that again. This is not about selfishness. This is about survival. I was literally willing to accept death as a way to get out of that relationship. I NEVER want to feel that way again.

So... when I saw that pattern repeating itself, I was very keen to pay attention. It always starts with the little things. Multiple phone calls every day. Pointless nagging. Checking up on me. I made a point that this needs to stop, but it didn't. So I grew VERY agitated about it. I knew where this might be leading, and I was NOT about to take it to that extreme again. And after one especially ill-timed phone call one morning, I came to the conclusion that considering a breakup might be a good idea.

I still cared about her, a great deal. And I love her. But all that was completely overclouded by what I considered would be me spending another year stuck in what I perceived at the time to be an empty relationship, and expecting her to spend all her time, constantly nagging me to the point that I either went insane or broke it off in a fit of anger. Neither of those seemed like valid options. If I was going to end it, it was going to be a well thought out, and mutually accepted and understood decision.

Needless to say, after several days of discussing the issue at length, and after some minor modifications in the frequency of phone calls, and after some soul searching, I've decided that I don't really want to end it. That I do feel more than I thought I did. But now I fear I've gone too far. While I was seriously mentioning breaking up as an option, I didn't mean to say that it was what I wanted, or that I even thought it was the BEST option. I didn't want to throw things away without trying to work it out. But I'm afraid that's how I came across. And now she feels differently about it. About us. And I'm afraid now that its over. And what was once there is now gone. I've hurt her badly.

But I'd do it all over again if I had to. While I don't like the outcome, I still feel this was necessary. Perhaps in the future I'd paint a less gloomy picture up front, but I needed to say what I was feeling. I'm not going to be dishonest or hide what I'm feeling just because it might hurt somebody. Hell, its SUPPOSED to hurt sometimes. I certainly put up with a lot of it when I was waiting for her to make up her mind if she was going to leave me for some other guy. I was even ready to support her decision in the matter, and give it my blessings, even though I didn't want it to happen. I've done it before.

My point is, sometimes it just takes some time to think things over. And sometimes you end up thinking things that are rather unpopular. Its discussing these things as they come up and trying to work through them that makes for a healtier relationship, even if they cause some grief at the time. At least, thats my opinion on the matter.

So now I've made up my mind. I've decided that I will continue with this, and make it work. But now I have to wait and see what she's going to do. Hopefully she'll figure it out before the process repeats itself again.

March 31, 2002

Happy Easter.

Its been a long week. I don't even quite know what to say about things. Every day this week has been an experience in duality. At first, we don't have ANY clue what we're gonna do. It makes sense to end it all, then by the end of the day, its all worked out. Everything's gonna be fine. Then it starts all over the next day. I don't know what to feel anymore.

Of course, nothing's perfect. I'm willing to accept that fact. In fact, what was annoying me the most is no longer an issue. At least not for now. So I suppose there's no reason to not spend time making things work. But now, I'm growing tired of the changing positions, and lack of resolve. I don't want to end it, but I somehow doubt I'd care too much if it did. Its difficult to get a grasp on the situation when I don't really have much of an opinion on the matter. Right now, I just want the conflict to end. Make a decision and go with it. Even if its wrong, we can always change later.

For those of you who haven't been paying attention, I've been putting most of my efforts into an AI bot that resides in the chatroom by the name of Jeeves. He's still rather primitive, but someday he might be able to do something useful.

-Restil

March 22,2002

Oh boy what 10 seconds can do to your attitude. I find out this morning that my water was disconnected for nonpayment. Not a huge crisis. Its happened before. So I go pay it, then go back home and wait patiently for someone to come turn it back on. And wait. And wait. What typically takes 30 minutes starts rolling into 2 1/2 hours and now I'm getting annoyed. I need to get to work and I'm sitting at home. I haven't showered yet. And then I get a call.

Someone I care deeply about decided to greet me by first complaining that I wasn't at work. Why she calls me at home several times a day if she expects me to be at work is beyond me. And then after telling her WHY I was stuck at home, she decides to rub salt in my wounds over it, which results in me slamming the phone down, and knocking it, the caller id box, and half the other contents of my desk onto the floor in a fit of rage.

So now I'm fuming mad. STILL. I can deal with bullshit. I do it all day. Its easy dealing with it from people I couldn't care less about. It takes someone that's really close to get a rise out of me. But rise I did. I spend my day in a certain mode. Usually a frustrated, high strung mode. I don't really mind, it keeps me focused on things. I deal with this situation by not talking to people socially. I concentrate on my work. And when I go home at night and play, then I relax, and then I can handle the casual phone conversations, where I can happily laugh at the trials and tribulations of my day, AFTER all the crises's have been taken care of.

And to think, this was all unnecessary. I specifically tell people to not call me when I'm working, and to not call me when THEY'RE working. Even if I'm not otherwise busy, I don't like being put on hold every 2 minutes. Its a waste of time. And I would SO fire an employee of mine that was making social calls on company time, and on their dollar too since these are long distance calls. If you have to call me during these times, it better damn well be an emergency.

March 17,2002

The object of the day feature hasn't been updated in a while. I plan to return to this again shortly.

I'm researching a simple way to incorporate outdoor sprinklers into my setup.

And a rant. To everyone who visits my site, my home, knows me, etc. This is your notice. I am a geek. I have always been a geek. And I most likely will always be a geek. This is a surprise to NOBODY. Also realize, I won't change. For anyone. If you don't like me being a geek, then go bother someone else.

I realize my life might seem weird. I realize people might look at me funny, or make fun of me, or chastise me, or complain that my life in some strange way is just wrong. Or that my furniture is ugly. Or that I have no style. Or that I spend countless hours working on things that have very little probabability for reward. But guess what, thats who I am.

If what I do, am, or hope to be bothers you, please express your opinion in the following way. Turn around, and run away as fast as you possibily can. Don't look back. Don't call me. Erase the bookmark and quit loading my page. Or if you'd prefer, you can choose to ignore me. Or you can silently laugh about me behind my back. As long as you're watching me, as pathetic as you might I am, you support my position. I am entertaining you, which would mean that YOUR life is just that much more pathetic by comparison. I won't get TOO excited about it.

Just don't expect me to change. I won't. Ever. And if I DO choose to change in the future, it will be because of my own personal desires and will have no effect whatsoever based in any part on the opinion that others have of me. I have done my time acquiescing to the desires of others, and drove myself to the brink of insanity as a result. And in the end, I lost everything. I lost my dignity. I lost my self control. Everything I was, everything I wanted, all my hopes and dreams were shattered. I didn't even know what was real or fiction anymore because I had subjected myself to such extreme brainwashing that I had to unlearn things that I had convinced myself were facts of life. It was a painful memory that I will never forget, and I definitly will not live through again.

So this is who I am. You can love me as I am or go away. But there is no other option. I will not be anyone other than I am. I will not take the advice of others when it is uncalled for. If you want to get me to do something, tell me its a waste of time. I will go out of my way to prove wrong those of you who attempt to tell me that my life in any way is worthless. You may never buy it, but I don't really care what you think. How I live my life is in no way reflected by the feelings of others. I obey the law. Beyond that, I live by my own rules, and I follow my own dreams. You're free to follow along with me if you want. And you're also free not to. But if my life is in some strange way an inconvience to you, then by all means, shut your fucking mouth, and GO THE FUCK AWAY. -Restil

February 18, 2002

Well, another visit has come and gone. Jessica visited for the weekend and we had a lot of fun. Took her to meet my parents, had a party, hung around a lot. Same stuff we usually do. Lots of fun.

After she left, its back to the projects again. I've built a VERY crude telephone interface for the computer. As you may recall, this was the first stage of implementing a telemarketer tarpit. I'm still having difficulty streaming the phone call over the internet, but I've got it working through the line-in and can listen to it over the computer's speakers.

Had the power go out for a moment yesterday morning. It only lasted a few seconds, but it took me well into the day before I had the primary server back up and running again. I love it when fsck doesn't want to let you boot until its HAPPY. grrr. Anyways, thats back up and running and the site is going strong again.

February 10, 2002

Got some new features. First of all, I changed the doorbell log format. Now it only shows one picture per ring on the first page. However, there are now 20 shots taken instead of only 3. Those 20 shots are linked off of the main doorbell page. Now you can examine the visitors better and it won't take twenty years to load the page.

I've also added a feature to allow people to take snapshots of the office cam and add captions. The captured image and caption are then appended to the page here. Right now, only the office cam is set up to perform captures. Just click the link under the office cam picture to start recording random acts of embarassment.

On to more silly things, I've started the Object of the Day feature. Each day, some random object will be featured, along with a history.

In the near future, I'm planning to add polls and maybe public comment forums, in a format more useful than the message page provides.

February 7, 2002

Got another one. Another site I've never heard of linked me and is causing my network to approach meltdown. Ernie's House of Whoopass has decided to send a few people my way. Judging by their page format, I'll probably be feeling the effects for several days to come. Not to mention, every time this happens the word of mouth effect spreads. I was holding out until I was receiving 3000 visitors a day before I decided to make an effort to look for revenue. Now if this pace keeps up, I'll be exceeding that two times over.

February 6, 2002

Yesterday I got linked from ilovebacon.com which appears to be a daily updated site of links to strange sites, including as it would appear, mine. :)

Yesterday was the second heaviest day for hits with 4800 visitors, topped only by the time I got linked from the front page of slashdot. Everyone who visited from that site was nice, in stark contract from the excessive lameness that came from [H] a week ago. Perhaps there's some hope for the world yet. :)

In any event, I would like to thank ilovebacon.com for their plug for my site as well as everyone who visited who made it a joyous affair.

January 31, 2002

LAME PEOPLE

Someone linked to my site from [H] yesterday. While I always like the hits, I was appalled at the nature of some of the visitors. I typically link to my site from my slashdot sigs. And I get a few hits from that. Everyone knows there are trolls on slashdot and the occasional idiot. But from what I've seen by the people visiting my site, everyone seemed pretty good natured.

For the last week or so, I've had the option to have people upload mp3s so they could play them back for me (and hear them as well if they were listening). This is a cool feature, and I set it up mostly as a novelty. I didn't put a whole lot of protection in the incoming directory, except to prevent downloads from it (I don't need to become a warez server). But I didn't prevent people from overwriting or deleting files. Why? Well, it didn't really matter.

Well, last night, someone deleted all of those mp3s, almost 800 megs of them so far. Not only that, they created two directories, named "child pornography" and "gay porn". Like I said, the loss of the mp3s was insignificant. Its not like I was collecting them or anything. Its just the principle of the thing. Someone intentionally went out of their way to be nasty, and for what reason? Just because their own lives are so pathetic that they can't stand living in a world where the rest of us basically get along? It's been a rather neat experiment. I've gotten to listen to a variety of musical tastes (some of which I hope I never have to listen to again). But its been fun. That someone would intentionally try to sabotage that makes me sick.

But I won't let it get me down. Feel free to reupload any mp3s you like. I've prevented people from deleting files now. A necessary safety measure I wish I didn't have to implement.

January 30, 2002

Added a camera at the place I'm working. Its rather limited as the equipment hosting it and cable lengths don't allow much flexibility in positioning it, so thats the best view you're going to get. But I got one of the lamps internet controllable, so all is good.

A new project is in the works that will be extra fun for those of you who have been enjoying the streaming audio. I plan to build a phone tap so you can both listen in on and to some extent contribute to phone conversations. While I don't plan to allow all phone converations to be broadcast to the world, I DO plan to broadcast my telemarketer conversations. With a twist.....

I'm designing an automated system that will answer telemarketer calls and listen to the incoming audio. As long as someone is talking, recorded sounds of me (or anyone) saying "yes", "hmmm" "uh huh" every few seconds will play. When the telemarketer stops taking for a few seconds, one of many prerecorded phrases will play back "That sounds interesting, what other products do you offer?" "Is it possible for you to go over that again so I can take notes?" "Could you hold on for a minute, I have something on the stove." etc. Anything to keep them going and keep them tied up on the line for as long as possible. The game will be to see how long it takes before they catch on, or give up.

Then, I plan to have a bunch of prerecorded phrases, and let people over the internet control their playback, so they can effectively "talk" to the telemarketer, although with a 6 second delay. The automated system would take over if nobody's playing. Combine this with a good voice synth and realtime voice recognition system, then we could REALLY have fun. :)

January 24, 2002

A few changes.

I now have a web based interface to control my winamp playlist. The icecast server seems to be working great, although winamp has trouble with it. There is a winamp workaround which I advertise at the time someone tries to listen in. Its not seamless but any users too confused to figure it out probably won't have winamp installed anyways. You're also able to upload via anonymous ftp any mp3 files you want to play. I must say, some of you have very STRANGE tastes in music.

I've fixed a few more bugs on the page that made some netscape browsers balk. I didn't see the problems at first when testing with netscape, but a different release on a different platform exposed the problems. Fixed.

I still have some cookie related issues to solve. Once I have cookies working reliably, I plan to add customization features, and optional basic user information, messaging, etc.

Although the plans aren't set in stone yet, my girlfriend and one or two of her female friends are planning to visit around Feb 14. Once I have an exact date/time of arrival I'll be adding the countdown timer.

January 21, 2002

I'm back!

My ISP seems to be under the impression that I'm supposed to pay my bill every month. Silly ISP. Anyways. I'm back online. I took the downtime as an opportunity to make a few minor changes to the site. The main cam page has been reorganized to make more efficient use of space. It will now completely fit on a full screen at 800x600 resolution.

I have installed icecast to attempt to reduce the latency between the time I make a sound and you actually hear it. Right now, locally, its running at about 10 seconds. Your mileage may vary but I think that should be about the norm. I can live with 10 seconds. So can you.

Although I have yet to find the perfect solution, you can now control the music I'm listening to through one of several ways. None of them are particularly user friendly at this point. The best way right now is to telnet to 206.54.177.102 port 6508 and follow the instructions. Its using Zal's general shell plugin for winamp and has a bash feel to it. I'm going to continue working on this project though to come up with something better, including an option to upload mp3's you want me to listen to, then play them.

I have fixed some of my javascript problems so netscape and other browsers won't misbehave. Some of you might now notice that the lightbulbs actually represent the current state of the respective lamps. I removed the lamp status link since it was redundant and made the chatroom pop open a separate window instead of loading in the main window.

I have designed, although not yet built, a dual axis rotor. Today I intend to track down parts and start building a prototype. In the (hopefully) near future I plan to make the doorbell logs less combersome to navigate. Also on the adjenda is a phone tap you can listen to and an electronic switch to swap between audio sources.

January 8, 2002

First of all, I've added a slideshow cam now. This is NOT a live cam. When people come over, I sometimes take snapshots at 2-5 second intervals, to have records of the visit and for gallery photos, etc. Anyways, the slideshow will go through and display these pictures in the same timeframe they were recorded. However, just because you see someone on that cam does not mean they are over here. Also, any lamp or rotor action won't work, obviously. :) I've taken some effort to clean out massive expanses of pictures where the room is empty so you are able to see SOME activity, even though nothing is happening at the time.

Due to popular request, I will periodically set up the RC car to play with. The video transmitter on it is still broken, so you can only drive it within view of the living room cam, but its better than nothing. Msg me if you want to play with it.

Traffic has been increasing rather dramatically the last couple weeks. I've started including my website in my slashdot sig, as have a few other people. I've also been discussed in a few IRC channels lately and that has resulted in some added publicity and traffic.

As traffic builds, I will need to upgrade from my dsl connection to handle it. I will therefore need an additional source of funding, but I do NOT want to accomplish this by plastering ads all over the site. First of all, the payback on banner ads is not worth the eyesore they cause, and secondly, I am not a firm believer in the way banner ads are typically utilized.

Therefore, to support this site, I will probably be selling products related to this site, including webcams, rotors, and home automation equipment. I will provide these in ready to use and kit form, and of course, all software required will always be provided free with source. I am currently developing some products that can compete well with other similar alternatives. It is my desire that the consumer can have a working setup for under $100. Proceeds from sales will then fund additions to the site, as well as paying my salary to work on it more often if I get adaquate sales.

January 1, 2002

Happy new years everyone!

Lots of changes to the site. First of all, now ALL the lamps listed on the page work. You'll also notice that the format has changed slightly. The bulbs are no longer links, but show the current status of the lamp specified. This updates every 30 seconds or anytime you click a link.

The site now uses cookies to keep track of individuals visiting the page. Soon I will add a user data page where you can enter a nickname you'd like to go by, assuming you plan to ever return.

December 4, 2001

Working on a new design for the site, although due to complications between browsers, I won't be replacing the main one for a while yet. If you want a sneak preview, look here.

I am still trying to figure out a good design for this page. Right now, place the mouse cursor over a room, and if there's a cam in that room, the cam window will change to reflect this. Although not implemented yet, clicking on a light will toggle that lamp's status (turn it on or off). Audio sources will be displayed and clicking on them will open an audio stream so you can monitor the sound activity over here. Audio sources will include any soundcard output and also some microphones. Clicking on a room will cause the camera in that room to center on the spot clicked.

Also there's a new link on the page "Listen In". Click here and you'll be able to listen to what I'm listening to, and if no music is currently playing, there's a live mic so you can listen in on what's happening over here. This may only be available at certain times. Check in and try it.

November 30, 2001

Well, hit another snag with my marquee sign. Turns out I get flicker in LED's that aren't supposed to be lit. Not sure if its a side effect of the parallel port I'm using or if its something else. It only happens when things are refreshing quickly. I'm thinking of buffering the LED values in another d-flipflop IC before displaying them. That might help a bit.

Expect a large number of new internet controlled lights right after Xmas. The timing is not coincidental.

The main cam page is going through a site redesign. More eyecandy. More glitz. I'm having difficulties getting it to work with all browsers though. As is life. I'll keep you informed.

I'm considering developing webcam kits and selling them online. Each package will consist of a camera, a dual axis rotor, a parallel port interface for the computer, and software with source code for linux and windows. If there is adaquate interest, I might also start a seamless portal of sorts with the new layout. We'll see how it goes.

A new weekend is here. Expect visitors as usual. Its also a sidewalk sale. We'll see what I can find.

November 27, 2001

Last weekend was busy. Had people over every day. On Friday, Jennifer and Brittany came by as usual, along with Jessica Peters and Emily.

Then on Saturday night, everyone except Emily came over again, along with Stephanie.

Then Sunday night, Spazi came over so we could finish playing Discworld and attempt to install Linux on her Sparc 1+. Well, we spent most of the time on the Sparc, and we were absolutely successful in not accomplishing anything, except to determine that most tftpboot images don't want to work. Except Redhat. GO REDHAT!!! Too bad its not my favorite distro. :)

This is the point where I'd include a funny joke about not running red lights when there's a cop sitting there facing you, but you really had to be there to appreciate the amusing nature of the situation. :)

The manifest page now has a lot more subgalleries. Click on those pics to see what you can see. Also, I'm in the process of adding captions to some of the pics. I also went back through old backups and found some OLD (4-5 year old) pics of some of the people who've been around that long. Nothing like old embarrasing pictures to make people shine. :)

Behind the scenes, I've written my first IRC bot from scratch. It doesn't do a whole lot. It performs two major tasks. First, it provides a status indicator for the manifest page to show who's on IRC and under what nicks. It also forwards any messages sent to the webpage to me on IRC and to the #cam channel on my irc server (the same channel the webpage chat room is in).

November 20, 2001

I'm planning to add multiple pictures pages for everybody on the manifest page. In addition, I plan to add more available status information for each of those listed. Not only online status for ICQ, but also for IRC, AIM, MSN messenger, and any others in use.

The main cam page currently isn't very link friendly. Due to the framing, links can only be made to the default configuration. Without framing, each lamp or rotor command would require a screen reload. There is work in progress to solve these problems. The page as it stands will still exist for those in need, however an improved page will be developed that will use java or javascript for all buttons to avoid the need to push a page reload to another frame. Another option will be added to use a java applet to display the webcam. This will probably speed things up and prevent the rather resource intensive method thats currently being used.

Also, Jessica will be coming to visit on December 6 and will be staying for a while, so watch for her. :)

November 15, 2001

Significant progress on the scrolling marquee sign. That is, I cleared a roadblock that had been holding me back. The only issue now is how to proceed. I can continue working on the sign I had originally planned which was multiple 8x8 LED arrays that I was paintstakingly soldering together by myself. I also purchased some 7x5 LED array boxes which already have the LED's in the right configuration, all I have to do is solder together 14 wires per box and I'm all set. However, the LED's are packed closer together than I would like for a scrolling marquee sign that can be easily seen from the webcam, so I'll probably continue with the original design and use these new arrays to make a 10x14 display I can do something simple with.

I'm updating the howto with the marquee sign information as I work on it. Even though I'm doing a lot of constant backtracking, it might be interesting to watch the progress. Maybe.

November 10, 2001

Ok... where to start.

Last weekend, Jessica came to visit me for the whole weekend. We hit it off rather well, if I do say so myself. SOMETHING is happening here. I'll keep ya'll updated. Yes.. all 5 of you who read this. Of course, you all already know everything anyways. Oh well.

In other news, I have sold out and decided to just purchase X10 modules and use them instead of homebrewing my own electrical appliances. While my way would certainly be more cool, its a pain in the ass by an order of magnitude more so than by simply using X10. I now have 4 more lamps, all visible from the living room webcam.

Assuming I remain financially stable, my current plans are to add one X10 module each week, add one webcam per month, and add one nifty gizmo per month to this site.

Today's plans include installing a webcam in the den, and to get a working prototype of my marquee sign operational. Perhaps I will also install a test system in the lab for easier use with electronics testing.

That will be all people. You may now resume your spying activities.

October 28, 2001

134 hours left. THEN the fun begins.

October 26, 2001

Damn teenagers.

I made the stupid mistake of leaving my garage door open last night. I now have a good reason not to do that anymore. Did something get stolen? Nope. No thieves. Kinda wish they had. I probably wouldn't have noticed. No, instead I got visited by vandals. They took a can of oil and decided it would be funny to pour it in the bed of my truck. This truely is of minor consequence, it only took me a few minutes to wash it out. Life goes on and I have a good reason now to avoid being careless. Am I pissed? Not really. I'm worried. This is why.

I'm not a violent person. I hold no ill will toward the misguided pranksters. The problem here is, what would happen had I caught them? If I heard people rummaging through my garage in the middle of the night, I would have taken one of my legally owned firearms and gone to investigate the noise. And upon stumbling upon a number of individuals doing god knows what in my garage, where they clearly have no good reason to be, dumping flammible liquid over my property, I might well have misinterpreted their motives and taken it upon myself to defend my property with whatever means I thought necessary at the time. People! A prank is not worth getting yourself killed over!

These are trying times. The United States, and in fact most of the world, is not currently living in a "lets try to understand the woe of our enemies" mentality. As of September 11, people have taken a different attitude toward those who seek to bring us harm. I seriously doubt that for the next 50 years there will ever be a successful hijacking over US soil. People will be much more willing to risk their lives to prevent 911 from ever happening again. People have been purchasing firearms in record numbers. People are paranoid. Anthrax is currently filtering through our postal service. And who knows what the future holds. People are generally not paniced by these events, but they're more cautious, and they're not very likely to let themselves be taken advantage of.

So right now, I tell you. If you get your head blown off because you were trespassing, don't expect a lot of public support because you're some misunderstood teenager who didn't know better. Nobody fucking cares anymore. You live in a different world right now. You better grow up and accept that fact or you're going to find out how quickly the rest of us have.

A webcam mounted in or outside of my garage has now been added to my list of things to do. You have been warned. :)

October 15, 2001

News update: I am still alive. More exciting news to come soon.

September 27, 2001

Amazing. Simply amazing. For almost 4 weeks now I have been agonizing over nothing. Well, not nothing. The feelings were real. They were intense. Yet today, I discovered something wonderful. They're gone. I can be happy now. I no longer need to brood over what might have been or what might someday be. I can now just be happy with the way things are. This is a wonderful day.

September 20, 2001

The little things cause the greatest disappointment. The largest things can be taken at face value, absorbed, and forgotten about. I found suddenly what I've looked for and promptly lost it. Oh how quickly I tire of looking.

The sad thing is, I had it all figured out. It was so easy. Now, nothing has changed but suddenly the answers aren't there anymore. Have I changed so much? If so, in what way? This is not good. This is not good at all.

I have come to a crossroads. I've been stuck here far to long, unwilling to make a decision to move. Its time. 13 more days, and all shall be as once it was. I shall either prosper or I shall fade away. No sense in prolonging the inevitable.

September 7, 2001

Its really funny. Sometimes you can hear something that for all the world you'd never want to hear, and it actually makes you happy when you finally hear it. Love is such a strange thing.

August 17, 2001

Things are good. I'm VERY happy. Life is good. I have hope now that things might actually work out as they're supposed to. 'Nuff said.

I finally have the means to get the RC car transmitter replaced so expect a comeback FINALLY. Give it a couple more weeks yet though. I've got other more time consuming and enjoyable tasks to participate in at the moment and the geek toys might be put aside until things settle down a bit.

August 6, 2001

Something interesting happened last weekend. I met someone. She and I become fast friends and I at least have lost an amazing amount of sleep from staying up late talking, and I regret not one moment of it. Now I'm confused.

I don't know what to feel anymore. I've been alone too long. And suddenly out of the blue I've discovered a companion, and at that, someone I can relate to. She shares my interests, and most importantly, I feel she might actually have a chance of actually understanding me. I know not what will come of this. My feelings are jumbled and I have a tendancy to overreact, to say things that are better kept private or to do things that might be percieved incorrectly. I don't know how she feels about me at this point. I don't even know what I feel myself.

Strange though it might seem, I feel lost at the same time I feel I've found myself. I'm motivated once again, but at the same time I feel a compelling urge to lie around and think. What is wrong with me? I've been alone too long. I'm getting carried away with what might be a momentary attraction, or it might be something but and I can't see that now. I'm happy when I talk to her, no matter what we're talking about. I've been alone too long.

In other news, I've accomplished nothing. The RC car is still DOA, and I can't afford to fix it right now.. My domain is shot, cant' afford it. my internet connection is intermittant because I can't keep my isp and phone payments up to date. Unemployment sucks. Tomorrow I will actually make a more concerted effort to locate something. Anything. By the end of the week, if I have nothing I will get any BS job I can to tide me over until I can get in on something big. I dont' yet regret leaving UPS, as my reasons for leaving were to search out and find something better. And I won't go back. Forward is the only way to go now. I MUST succeed. Be strong. Be powerful. Create the world for me. I feel strangely empowered now. Really.

Oh who am I kidding. :)

June 17, 2001

Lots of changes. First of all, I quit UPS. I did this mostly because I feel while the job pays what it is worth, It doesn't pay me what I am worth with my current skillset. I made a decision to leave first, then look for alternative employment, so I could give UPS every opportunity to offer me a position which would encourage me to stay. This did not happen.

Financially, this was probably the worst month to quit, but unfortunately it was not going to be getting better, and financial issues were the reason behind me quitting in the first place. I have enough to make it a couple months as long as I skimp on stuff I absolutely don't need, but that of course means that new projects and replacement parts will be in short supply for the time being.

May 3, 2001

Yes, I know its been a while. Yes, I know nothing much has changed. Yes, I know I suck. But this is all about to change. For real this time. :)

First of all, the preliminary barcode scanning software is complete. Of course, at this point all it will really do is track my inventory. I plan to add transactions to this process as well so I can track my consumption of various products and provide more pretty graphs, automate shopping list creation, and other potentially useful features. The ONLY thing remaining for me to do now is to network a computer in my kitchen so I can start scanning. That is on my list of things to do tomorrow.

I have ordered a new video transmitter, so I can FINALLY get the RC car working again. It pains me everytime someone goes to the RC car page only to find it not working. It pains me even more when people disregard the notice and try to drive it anyways. *sigh*. I still need to do about another hour's worth of work on the car once I get the new transmitter, as I need to rewire the relays to the new RC car transmitter as I still have the old one hooked up, but that won't take very long. Then I will finally have a 24 hour a day car up and running.

I plan to rework the doorbell log page so it doesn't show EVERY entry on the page, but at the same time has more pictures available from each visit. My current plan is to show one picture from each visit from the last 10 visits, and have archives available for previous visits, and a link to 60 1 second captures from each visit. More captures ensures that I will have a decent chance of catching a good picture of anyone who rings the doorbell, a failing with the current setup.

February 26, 2001: Status Update

Its monday, and although its still early in the morning, nothing much should happen. I will take this opportunity to present the current state of the many projects.

The RC car is still inoperable. What is needed to repair it is a replacement video transmitter. After I pay all the bills this month I will see if I have enough funds available to purchase one. Its a shame this had to happen, I had all the parts available for the new car, and its going to absolutely ROCK once its up and running, but until I can get the transmitter working again, nothing else really matters.

I have designed, although I still need to build, a dual axis camera rotor which can both pan and tilt. Unfortunately, I won't be able use this with the USR cameras as they are too large and don't have any type of mounting point. The total cost for this setup will be about $80 including the camera, two stepper motors, and the required electronics. The controlling system will also need a cheap computer, as well as a more powerful system with a capture card to handle the video itself. All together, a complete cam setup (minus the host computer itself) would cost about $120. This includes camera, PCI capture card, and all misc. equipment and electronics. Since I plan to install quite a few more of these, the per unit cost is important. I might also consider selling kits in the future if I develop a good design, although plans will always be made available for free.

As for other projects, I haven't made any further headway on my marquee sign, although I plan to put some effort into it in the near future. I need to get a new power supply for it that won't blow out the chips with excessive voltage. I also need to spend a few hours and get more lamps around the house on the internet, especially in the living room where the other stationary indoor camera is located.

I have tested realproducer on several linux distributions but have been quite unable to get it working due to a library error. I'm not sure if its my hardware or a software issue. I will inquire about this soon to see what can be done. Although I would prefer a non-proprietary solution for video/audio streaming, it simply doesn't appear that any exist. At least realproducer can function under linux (or at least it SHOULD be able to). This will allow users to view any of the cameras with real streaming video. However, this will require me to build a video switching system since I can't use the same video card for both rm streaming and regular cam shots (which I don't want to lose the capability of). This will require a distributed switching system for the video, similar to what I also plan to build for distributed audio around my house. More to come on this later.

February 25, 2001

I went to pick up the girls shortly after midnight and brought them back over here since their car was acting up and they didn't want to get stranded, even though its only at most a 30 minute walk from my house to theirs. Anyways, when they got back they rang the doorbell and posed for the door cam and this resulted in a rather cute pic.

They remained here until just before dawn when I drove them all home. The night was uneventful. The typical chatting with people. Jennifer and Brittany returned later that day for a couple hours and stayed until I had to leave for work. Their next planned visit is next weekend sometime.

This promises to be a busy week. This is the big social event of the month for me, with both the 2600 meeting and the sidewalk sale. I may skip the sidewalk sale or spend only a couple hours down there. Its also possible I might drag a few people back over here like I did last time, although I promised I would make an appearance at one of the other 2600 afterparties this month.

In addition, I plan to attend the DFW Unix User's Group meeting on Thursday evening before I go to work.

February 24, 2001

During the course of the day, I have had several conversations. Far be it for me not to share these wonderful experiences with the rest of the world.

Krysta just snorted. Then she fell and hit her head on the toilet.

Erica just fell backwards out of her chair.

Celestina has a big ass clock that tells the temperature too.

February 23, 2001

The girls came over tonight. I wouldn't answer the door until they rang the doorbell. Apparently they didn't want to be seen.

I had reloaded the computer in the living room, which Brittany primarily uses since the computer used in there had a flaky harddrive. I replaced the drive and reinstalled the OS and everything seems to be working decently, but Netmeeting doesn't want to work on there, even though it installed properly. Oh well, not a HUGE loss. Brittany was planning to bring a friend, but only Jennifer and Brittany came over.

February 16, 2001

Jeremy came over tonight. Jeremy's first reponse when I opened the door was frantic inquiries where the camera was, as he knew there WAS a camera, but not where it was. He gave me a book and we spent a few hours just discussing random computer stuff.

February 10,2001

The girls dropped by to visit tonight right before midnight and stayed until about 4 in the morning.

Jennifer came over, along with Brittany and her friend Robin. This was Robin's first time visiting. She warmed up to the camera rather quickly, although I think she was a bit apprehensive at first. When I asked her what her name was, then told her that people were asking, they got a few giggles out of it. After that, they had no problem spending the next 4 hours chatting online.

January 23, 2001

I am currently on vacation from one of my jobs, so this week is an opportunity to accomplish several tasks. The primary goal for this week is to get a new RC car, as I now have a new battery and charger. The new battery will work out pretty nicely. It can run the camera+transmitter for 21 straight hours and will recharge completely in about 2 hours time. I will probably have 2 batteries that I will swap out after 12 hours to avoid having either one of them drain too much, and with all that extra battery power, I will probably have the car powered off the same battery as it doesn't use much, and I will also add an infrared "headlight" for the car so it can see at night, without bothering anyone who's sleeping.

I will also spend the week getting my house cleaned. Partially because I expect weekly parties to begin in the near future. I also need to do some reworking of the network. The ISDN is no longer part of my internet connection. The DSL is now completely responsible for my upstream and downstream feeds for all computers. The good news regarding this is that I no longer have to play funny firewall games to get everything succesfully cloaked. The bad news is that I no longer am using a firewall so I need to fix some of the minor security problems that I have been lax to get fixed due to the fact that the firewall has been in place.

A friend of mine gave me a good idea regarding old motherboards and I/O cards that I no longer have any typical use for. They like the CD's will become wall decorations. I am uncertain how this might look, but I'll probably try it out on one of the blank walls in my living room in view of that webcam to see what it looks like. Watch for this in the next couple days.

This week I'm also intending to add a few more appliances to the internet. My goal is to have 2 lamps in the living room and a camera rotor on the camera in the living room as the view in that room is pretty wide and the camera in there currently only can see a small perspective of the room. The old cam site will probably be replaced with the new one. Any functional buttons that don't do anything will be removed and the page will become the main site.

As for future plans, I had been considering the ideas if I wanted to use multiple feeds and have selectable cameras or have static webcams that are permanantly wired to specific capture devices. I have finally decided to do the multiple feed options. The original purpose of doing this was because it would allow a large number of cameras to be used with a small number of capture devices. This would allow me to save money and keep the number of computers dedicated to webcams to a minimum. However, a new use for this has come up, even if I have the same number of capture cards as cameras. If you wish to follow someone through the house automatically, an image couldn't be easily changed without reloading the page. With feeds, only the camera would have to switch, but the feed remains the same, so the change would be instantanious. Also, since I plan to use both Realmedia streaming as well as the typical webcam image reloading, this will allow me to use different feeds for the different media types, then select which camera points to the feed. As plans for this are finalized, I will provide more information.

January 7, 2001

I have developed a new theme for this site. Originally I was going to simply sell the site as a "home of the future" type of endorsement. However, as with all endorsements, the concept, while worthwhile, seemed somewhat stale.

Instead, I plan something bold, creative, and potentially mentally exhausting. I plan to host a 24/7 soap opera through this site, featuring me. OF course, not only will the audience have control of the cameras and lighting, but they will also be able to vote to help decide on future plot elements, and in the case of people who live locally, even make cameo appearances and become part of a plot element or story arc. While the soap opera will feature my life, I will be adding a fictional element as well to add mystique, humor, tretchery, romance, and all the other elements that any soap opera is famous for.

I have no schedule for starting this, and I will expect that once it does start, it will only be in a limited capacity at first. I want to get more of the rooms equipped with webcams and have those cameras controllable before I engage in this activity.

Stay tuned for more information.

December 28, 2000

I know, long time since the last update. No doubt you probably hadn't noticed. Here's the deal as it stands now. I am FINALLY getting more computers and cameras installed in the house and now that Xmas is over and I'm a tad more flush with cash at the moment, I intend to add even more. I might even, god forbid, have time to sit down and finish some of the ambitious projects I undertake for myself. The scrolling sign is almost working (1 letter only), and once that is somewhat complete, it will be mounted on the wall so you can send messages to it. I will be hooking up more lamps and other appliances so they can be interactively controlled from the webpage, and I am shopping for another RC car, this one which will be larger so it can hold a gel-cell battery and will be able to last for 12 hours at a time. With 2 batteries, I'll be able to run the car 24/7, not to mention the fact that I'll have a second car running around here (I'll still need to obtain another camera/transmitter/reciever/capture card before it will also be controllable. The Car is the cheapest part after all. :)

Otherwise, I'm considering developing some commercial aspect for this site, so I can spend more time working on the site and projects without having to worry about paying the bills at the same time. I'm considering marketing kits to perform some of the things my site does as well as selling advanced viewing options in the future if I ever become popular enough to warrant it.

October 4, 2000

Denis Leary has a song called "Life's gonna suck". Well, its true. Not that big of a deal though. Never fear, things aren't THAT bad. I just had to reload a windows machine yesterday. This isn't a problem in and of itself, since I typically do it periodically anyways just to help cleanse the system of all its inherited toxins. I'm just used to doing it under more controlled circumstances.

I managed to run a script I shouldn't have. It probably installed a trojan of some sort. This happens every once in a while, and reloading the system isn't a bad idea when this occurs since its hard to tell what it might have left behind to wait for you, but since I had a copy of the install script and I was reasonably assured I knew what changes it made, I decided to just remove the offending programs, fix the registry, and all would be good. Turned out this script set an association for all .exe programs to run the trojan and once I erased that trojan NOTHING would run. Ok, no problem, I'll just remove the association. haha. No good there either. I wasn't ALLOWED to remove it. And I couldn't run the registry editor to forcibly remove it.

I know that I could have fixed the problem some other way, but reloading just seemed simpler at this point in time. The reloading process has gotten really easy since I simply do NOT store any critical data on the windows drives. Thats all stored over on the fileservers, which means I can just reload the OS from scratch and my data will still be intact when I get back up.

In any event, this consumed all my free time for the last 2 days and I haven't added any new gadgets as a result. Tomorrow I should be able to add a lamp circuit.

October 2, 2000

Monday was a pretty ordinary day. No new gadgets have been introduced, however work has progressed toward the addition of a second lamp circut. I am unsure yet weather it will be another lamp or the Xmas tree lights. Good news though. I have enough relays for an additional 4 computer controlled power switches. All I need now are plugs, sockets, PC boards and the required circuitry. I just get the plugs and sockets at Lowes. The circutry and other parts I'll pick up from Tanner. I'll probably end up grabbing a transformer to use for the power supply for the relays instead of using the plugin power supplies I've been using lately. This would be cheaper and would allow me to integrate everything into a single project box with a single powercord.

I did get a replacement halogen bulb for my desklamp so I no longer need to use the overhead lights, which gets the light level in this room down to something more manageable for me and you can now actually tell when you turn the lamp on and off. :)

I'll be working 2 jobs on Tuesday and Wednesday, so there probably won't be any further progress until Thursday. Keep checking back for updates.

October 1, 2000

Summary of Previous Week

Well, I have finally done it. I have offically gotten off my ass and accomplished something. The last time I actually accomplished anything would be almost a year ago when I added the feature to allow you to click on the picture to center the camera. Of course, over the last couple months there has been some rearranging which has made some of the current projects possible or easier, but none of those activities directly resulted in new site features.

On thursday I discovered Tanner Electronics. That place absolutely ROCKS!. Every electronic component you could dream of. I could easily camp out in there for a day and spend my time drooling. They close too early unfortunately, which prevents me from spending quality time inspecting every little thing to discover what they have that I never even knew I needed. The good news is that I finally found a source for extremely inexpensive relays. Cost was always the restraining factor when considering house-wide projects like light control or the audio switchboard. The individual relay cost became prohibitive, but at Tanner most of the relays cost less than $2 each and they even have some of the 4PDT variety which are needed to make use of audio switching.

During my last trip to Tanner, I purchased a color camera and got it hooked up to my front door, currently snarfing the feed for the living room cam, although I'll get a more permanant feed for it once I set up another computer. I also bought a number of mini relays to replace the large ones that are currently being used for the RC car, and in the process eliminating the huge mess of wires. I spent most of today working on that and had it working when I left for work. I'll be doing the same thing for the rotor and lamp control circuit, which will result in freeing up my breadboard for the first time in 2 years. This will also let me dust and will make the units more portable.

The plans for this week are pretty well set in stone. I'll be setting up another computer as a feed for the door cam, thereby releasing the other computer to be used for the living room camera again. I will also be adding at least one, perhaps 2 more lights. Probably one lamp in the living room and the Xmas tree lights. For now on, depending on how broke I am at the time, I plan to add one camera and at least one appliace per week. Appliances could be lights or some other gadget. The remaining circuitry for the lamp will be soldered onto a permanant PC board and perhaps encased in a project box. Hopefully I can get a preliminary database for the barcode scanner in place so I can start keeping inventory of my consumables and trash. I also intend to update the news daily, even if nothing dramatic happens. Friday night is the 2600 meeting and after that I go to the First Saturday sidewalk sale and will therefore be gone most of that night.

For Sunday, I had 65 visits to the site. I had no physical visitors and nobody rang my doorbell.

Keep track of the site and news for updates to the site.