bohnsack.com

Believe it or not, Beef is now the proud owner of his very own blog.

Screencasting the heavy metal umlauts entry on Wikipedia (actual entry). Also check out this GoogleMaps screencast.

Via Luis Villa.

More on screencasting

This legislative session up in Santa Fe, there's been some hubbub, as I understand there is almost annually, over the continued legality of cock fighting in New Mexico. The arguments go something like:

• Pro: Long-standing Hispanic tradition that's part of New Mexico culture
• Con: Evil animal cruelty, bad crowd, etc.

I have two observations:

1. If this is such a wonderful part of our culture that's so worthy of preservation, where are the billboards for local Albuquerque cockfights? Where are the webpages? Promotional radio ads? Celebrity roosters?
2. I want to go see I cockfight and find out for myself -- I'm totally serious. Where are they? Are they safe? Would anyone be willing to escort me to a fight?

Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications: Asynchronous JavaScript + XML. Think GoogleMaps or GoogleSuggest and new web apps made to have functionality and interactivity that has only traditionaly been possible with desktop apps (Microsoft Word, etc.). Powerful stuff!

slashdot discussion

I'm sure most of you know about the Wikipedia's glory, but did you know about Wikibooks - a collection of open-content textbooks that anyone can edit?

1. Finish getting old MT permalinks redirected to WP-style ones. I've already got the IDs right, now I just gotta get the rewrite rules to function correctly. See this. (Not perfect, but it works)
2. Postfix accepting mail on this box and mutt reading mail. Qmail turned off on the old box
3. Anti-spam measures (Postgrey, etc.)
4. mod_perl, HTML::Mason, and and least http://bohnsack.com/photos/ working.
5. The rest of the of old mod_perl/HTML::Mason pages
6. djbdns dnscache setup
7. virtual domains in general and sackvsbeef.com specifically

If things go well, this website will be hosted on a new server, possible with fancy new software by day's end. As soon as the DNS changes propagate through the Internets, you'll go there automatically. Until then, you can reach the new site by IP address: http://66.135.40.86/.

There are going to be some changes:

In other news, here's Beef with Whoopi:

Beef might appreciate this photo I took at White Sands National Monument.

As part of my server move, I'm moving the xcat-user mailing list to someone else's host. The transition isn't done yet, but at least the archives have been moved from here to here.

Huge fan. Half a muffin every day for breakfast for the past two weeks.

It's been revealed that George Soros, the man who wasted millions of his own money trying to swing the recent Presidential election to John Kerry through moveon.org and other means, funded the defense of Lynne Stewart, a civil rights lawyer who just last week was convicted and will face up to 20 years in prison for smuggling messages of violence from one of her jailed clients -- a radical Egyptian sheik -- to his terrorist disciples on the outside.

What truly motivates George Soros? The destruction of the United States of America? There's also a money trail from Soros that leads to Ward Churchil, via his Open Society Institute. Wow. Find out more about Soros.

Less than a month away, the 17th Annual National Fiery Foods & Barbecue Show is coming to Albuquerque in March. It runs from the 11th to the 13th.

Move over NetFlix: PeerFlix. Now, if I only had time to watch movies...

I'm strongly considering the purchase of a Windcheetah for use in this year's RAGBRAI (and New Mexico touring afterwards). It's not a sure thing yet, because Spenser, the only one signed up to go with me right now, is still tentative, but I'm really looking forward to going, if we can make it happen. We're planing a fairly self-sufficient trip, using panniers to haul all our gear, but we'll be getting an automobile ride to the start and from the finish line. I'd really like to start out a day ahead of time in South Dakota, but we'll see.

Anyone else want to go?

According to this story, both the blogs on the right and the blogs on the left are helping Bush and the Republicans. I couldn't agree more.

If you have a Windows box that's slow and loaded with possible spyware or other crap, Security Task Manager is an awesome product to use.

I was going to write a screed about how uncomfortable I get while shopping at Whole Foods, and maybe I still will later, but much of what I have to say has already been said here. For now, I'd only like to add that Albuquerque's Whole Foods on Wyoming and Academy has more Hummer H2s and other giant SUVs in its parking lot than any other store I've shopped at in town.

Oh and.. I find the the Vitamin Cottage on Montgomery to be a much calmer experience. It doesn't have the same food selection, but it has more supplements, sober staff that clean the stink from their bodies, and way fewer (if any) freaks roaming the aisles. - Highly recommended.

Albuquerque's hosting the first ever Enchanted Desert Bluegrass Festival at the Balloon Fiesta Park. 05/14/02005 - 05/15/02005. Tickets are availble from ticketmaster.

This website is currently hosted at Rackspace. They're way too expensive and didn't return my phone calls when I left messages to negotiate on price, so they're history at the end of the month. I was going to switch to HostingMatters, but they gave me such poor service, that I was forced to look for someone else. I'm now going with ServerBeach, who have much better service, but are also cheaper with better hardware and more bandwidth.

How lame are the total and complete lamers over at HostingMatters (Stacy Tabb specifically)? Witness the following exchange. I'll mostly let it speak for itself:

Author  Contents Matthew Bohnsack Posted on 07 Feb 2005 01:24 PM Hello, I was billed over a week ago for a new dedicated server. When can I expect it to be online? Thanks Stacy @ Hosting Matters Posted on 07 Feb 2005 01:27 PM The server has arrived but the on-board video in the motherboard is stubbornly refusing to function, so we're having the mfg ship us a new motherboard. We'll keep you updated. We'll adjust your billing date to when the box is actually turned over to you. Matthew Bohnsack Posted on 10 Feb 2005 11:16 AM Fine, but you didn't answer my question: When can I expect my server to be online? I have a deadline to meet and have to start migrating my site soon Thanks Stacy @ Hosting Matters Posted on 10 Feb 2005 11:42 AM As previously noted, we're having a new motherboard shipped in to replace the bad one. We will let you know when the server is ready. Have you already given us a hostname and preferred root password? Matthew Bohnsack Posted on 10 Feb 2005 01:04 PM Thanks, but why do you refuse to answer my question? I've clearly asked it twice. I fully understand that there's a bad motherboard, it must be replaced, and you're waiting for a replacement part to be shipped to you. However, this paying customer would like to know when you expect the replacement to arrive. Is is coming today? Tomorrow? Next week? In April? May? Further, after the replacement arrives, how long do you think it will take to install it, test it, and bring my system online? What happens if my motherboard or a different system component fails, after the system is in operation? Will I have to wait two weeks for a fix, without ever receiving guidance about a window of expected repair time? Is this the kind of poor service I can expect from hostmatters? If so, I'd like to to cancel my service immediately. Answering, explicitly, your questions: a) hostname: ... info deleted ... b) root password: ... info deleted ... Thanks, -Matt Stacy @ Hosting Matters Posted on 10 Feb 2005 01:16 PM No one is refusing to answer your question. We have ordered the replacement part, it ships, as most things do, to arrive within a few business days. We can neither predict nor control this sort of thing and giving you an arbitrary timetable would serve no one. Since you're so unhappy with the level of service already we'll gladly refund your payment this evening and use the server for our own needs. Matthew Bohnsack Posted on 10 Feb 2005 05:44 PM You have, for the third time, refused to answer my question. Please refund my payment and cancel my service. Thank you -Matt Stacy @ Hosting Matters Posted on 10 Feb 2005 06:07 PM I have already indicated that this is what we'll be doing this evening. Ticket closed. Further responses will be ignored.

I have never recieved poorer customer service in my life.

In closing and for Google's benefit:

• Avoid Hosting Matters, Stacy Tabb, and Sekimori Designs at all costs. They suck big time!
• There's a little thing called on-site spares. You might have heard of them.
• Bad reviews travel fast on the Internets.
• I love the smell of free enterprise in the morning.
• The Cluetrain Manifesto

Update (see the comments) - Stacy has a history.

Update 02005-04-04: More at INDC Journal

I was going to buy a gob of GOOG at it's IPO (up ~ 100% since) and I was going to register http://nostalgiaforinfinity.com/ (now some lamer has it).

Lesson: Instinct is powerful. Consider embracing it more often.

As a homework assignment for my ECE 540 class (Advanced Network Topics), I'm doing part of an RTP/RTSP implementation in Java. This is my first experience bit twiddling programming in Java, and I'm a little frustrated:

According to all the documentation I can find (example), bitwise operators should work fine on the 8-bit Java byte type:

byte a = 10; // 0000 1010 in binary
byte b = 6;  // 0000 0110 in binary
byte c = 0;  // 0000 0000 in binary
	
c = a | b;   // 0000 1110 in binary (should work fine)

However, my Java compiler doesn't like this:

$ javac -version
javac 1.5.0_01
	
$ cat Foo.java
public class Foo
{
	
    public static void main( String args[] )
    {
        byte a = 10;
        byte b =  6;
        byte c =  0;
	
        c = a | b;
	
        System.out.println(c);
    }
}
	
$ javac Foo.java
Foo.java:10: possible loss of precision
found   : int
required: byte
        c = a | b;
              ^
1 error

What's going on here? Does Java's bitwise OR now only work on 32-bit integers? Suckage:

1. I can't find were this change is documented, although it's clearly the case.
2. I'd like to do bit shifting on bytes for the homework assignment.

Here's what I'm trying to do. The first byte of an RTP header looks like this:

I'm trying to fill it using variables defined thusly:

int Version   = 2;
int Padding   = 0;
int Extension = 0;
int CC        = 0;

You'd like to be able to stuff these values into a single byte like this:

byte mybyte;
	
mybyte = mybyte | (Version   << 6);
mybyte = mybyte | (Padding   << 5);
mybyte = mybyte | (Extension << 4);
mybyte = mybyte | CC;

The above, however, would be too easy. Java now forces us to do either do all bit operations
in an integer and then cast to a byte at the end:

byte mybyte;
int myint;
	
myint  = myint | (Version   << 6);
myint  = myint | (Padding   << 5);
myint  = myint | (Extension << 4);
myint  = myint | CC;
	
mybyte = (byte) myint;

or sprinkle casts all over the place:

byte mybyte;
	
mybyte  = (byte) ((int) mybyte | (Version   << 6));
mybyte  = (byte) ((int) mybyte | (Padding   << 5));
mybyte  = (byte) ((int) mybyte | (Extension << 4));
mybyte  = (byte) ((int) mybyte | CC);

Two hours of my life down the drain...