News

I just got done adding an auto refresh to the weather page. It will auto refresh every 5 minutes or you can also use the refresh button at the top right to force a reload of the images. There is also now a nice countdown timer to let you know when a refresh will occur. Along with those fixes I have fixed the issue where the browser would cache the image and not refresh it for a long time.

I have finsihed updating the weather page. So If you need to see the local area radar, the regional radar, lightning probabilty map for the north east or the current conditions in heath then check out the weather page.

Baby Sean has arrived today at 8:17 pm, 7 pounds 11 ounces and 19.5 inches. Welcome to this world little guy.

Hey every one just posted the 2010 fireworks pictures that I took over the past two nights. Fireworks: 2010

Just posed some new lightning pictures that I took last night. These are the best from the series. Click the pic or any of the links in this post for more of the lightning pictures.

Just got done adding a new style to the site. You will need a wide monitor to check it out.

The project has been posted over in the projects section. Read about the DIY Entertainment Center.

Soon I will post a "shoot off" between both camera's as well as giving a good over view of what you are getting with Canon's 7D and why you want it / need it.

Just got done processing some of the spring pictures I took the other day. Take a look at the rest in the gallery under nature. I hope you enjoy them.

Just wanted to let every one know that I have completed the monitor stand and it turned out good. Also the RFM12B's have arrived from spark fun and they are much smaller than I expected. Plenty big enough to solder to with out any issues. Now I just need to figure out how to send a full 16 bits with the 16f88's hardware spi interface. Right now it will only transmit 8 bits and then pause and send the next 8 bits. I have heard the RFM12B's don't like that.

I also have gotten rid of the old mini-fridge that would always ice up. To much hassle keeping it free of ice.

Now that I have a crap ton of monitors I need a stand to hold them all. Rather than pay for an expensive setup I got some parts from the hardware store to make my own. Tomorrow I will finish the project up and get a proper page posted about the whole thing. For now though all you need to know is that its DIY and its setup for four monitors.

I have decided the next project I am going to embark on is one to make my own wireless flash triggers for the flash units I just got. I'm going to be using the RFM12B wireless modules from sparkfun.com as well as pic 16f88 chips for the logic. Should be a very good intro to wireless work with microcontrollers.

I have mad a change to the css for the site and have used a fixed position menu. That way if you have scrolled down to read some thing then the menu is still accessible on the left with out scrolling any more.

Its the dawn of a new era. The era of supreme commander 2. The first one was such fun but suffered from major slowdowns on every machine. I have played the supreme commander 2 demo and have high hopes that this will not be an issue. If so there will be massive battles the likes of which no game has seen before. I have pre-ordered supreme commander 2 and can not wait to play the first skirmish with the highest unit cap and four other AI opponents.

Just did some shoveling and man there is a lot of snow out there. Some places it is up to my knees. Good thing I came home early Friday.

One of the brand new seagate drives I bought tanked in my raid5 array. Normally not a big deal but for some reason it freaked linux out and linux could only see one of four drives on the system. Not knowing how to deal with this I ended up doing unrecoverable damage to the raid set. What I should have done was reboot the computer with the bad hard drive removed. Then tried to run mdadm -Asv /dev/md0. If that failed I should have then ran this command.

mdadm --create /dev/md0 --verbose --level=5 --raid-devices=4 /dev/sda /dev/sdb /dev/sdc missing

The key here is the word missing. What mdadm will try to do is recognize that this used to be a four device raid5 setup and will just think that one drive is... you guessed it missing. As far as I know if your raid schema supports multiple failed drives you can use more than one missing clause in the command. The key to using the --create option successfully is making sure you specify --raid-devices with the exact number of disks the array had when you set it up and not the current number of active drives of the raid array.

So ubuntu 9.10 is just a big ball of crap on this hardware. I switched the server over to fedora 12 and I think every thing is up and running. I am going to restart one last time to make sure every thing auto loads and mounts like it should.

I think I still need to configure samba (pain in the ass) and a cron job to update dynamic dns for the domain.

Wow is the only thing to say. Even after seeing this movie two times it is still amazing. If you want to read just a bit more read the Avatar Review.

I just wanted to wish every one who visits the site a happy holiday and I hope you got every thing you wanted.

Read the new review of the RF Wireless Handheld Keyboard and Touchpad.

I have updated the Replug Review with some new info about issues resulting from leaving it in the cold.

There is a good chance of the site being down tomorrow as I move the server over to modern hardware. Out with the Pentium 2's and in with the Athlon X2.

So I was bord and used jquery to replace all <p> tags with <p><blink> that way all text in a <p> tag blinks at you.

Blink Bookmarklet

Just finished replacing my mixer motor in my van. Now I wont have to freeze this winter driving back and forth to work. For any one with a Windstar mini-van that is having this issue with the heater making a clicking noise or banging noise check out the link. Only took about an hour and I found the part at advanced auto for $50 with tax. One tip I would suggest is to remove just the radio and the bezel around it and you can get at all three screws to replace the motor.

Looks like a tech blog linked over to the site in there 15 DIY Guns That Will Blow Your Mind artical. I really need to find some thing good to follow up the nerf sniper riffle with.