I’ve been hanging around tumblr.com for the last couple of days and I’m quite impressed. My buddy brad — bradfortner.com — would love this. He — and a lot of others — use twitter.com and tinyurl.com to keep track of stories they want to either read or blog and socialize. Well that plus a lot more is what tumblr does. The difference being that tumblr.com is a hell of a lot more stable and allows for different types of media to be posted (Text/Blog, Picture, Video, Audio, Quotes, Chat’s and URL Links). Tumblr.com also supports interleaving RSS feeds into your tumblr page, so I for example, have my blog here at nerdlogger.com, but also use it’s RSS feed to feed stories to nerdlogger.tumblr.com and everything gets married seamlessly by tumblr’s backend services. So if you want to see the madness behind nerdlogger.com head over to nerdlogger.tumblr.com and If you haven’t tried tumblr head over to tumblr.com and sign up for an account. It’s FREE .

We’re having a extended long weekend, and I was working on my new photography site — 1stopoflight.com — when the studio bug bit me . Yeah everything was happy, I was customizing my new tumblr based photography site, when a couple of ideas started running through my head. Cassette Tapes, you know those magnetic beasts that used to store your music. I searched around the house and tried to document the last analog music storage medium. Check out more pics over on flickr.I wasn’t done yet, I had always wanted to shoot my small collection of wrist watches. So after experimenting a bit I found the black background to be more dramatic. Below is a sample, more can be found on flickr.

Well I finally broke down and did it. My new Photography site can be found hosted on tumblr at 1stopoflight.com. I’m using a modified museum theme by Paul Giacherio.The nice thing about having the site on tumblr is that I can host the physical photos on yahoo’s flickr.com and just link them into 1stopoflight.com‘s pages. It keeps things very tidy and makes it easy to maintain. Tumblr really rocks.

Just when you thought your command line life was getting boring, we discover these happy tunes for your cut/paste pleasure. Just select the entire line, copy it, open a terminal window, paste it followed by Enter and marvel at your Mac. Yeah it’s a OSX thing and works best under 10.5, so if you’ve got Vista/XP/Linux, this might be a good enough reason to do the switcheroo .say -v Good oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooosay -v Bad oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooosascript -e 'say "Dum dum dum dum dum dum dum he he he ho ho ho fa lah lah lah lah lah lah fa lah full hoo hoo hoo" using "Cellos"'osascript -e 'say "Dum dum dee dum dum dum dum dee Dum dum dee dum dum dum dum dee dum dee dum dum dum de dum dum dum dee dum dee dum dum dee dummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm" using "Pipe Organ"'osascript -e 'say "oh This is a silly song silly song silly song this is the silliest song ive ever ever heard So why keep you listening listening listening while you are supposed to work to work to work to work its because i hate my job hate my job hate my job its because i hate my job more than anything else No its because youve no life youve no life youve no life and you better go get one after forwarding this crap" using "cellos"'Who said you can’t have fun on the commandline?

If you read our “Open Source Lovin’ for your Server” earlier this year and thought “that’s too much trouble”, here is an even easier way to sample preconfigured Open Source Application Servers at your own leasure. Be it for developement, fun, backup or even production, you can not beat JumpBox at simplicity. What they’ve done is basically created a virtual machine running linux with all the preconfigurations done for you. What this means is that I can — just by downloading a ~160MB file — run a full blown, preconfigured WordPress site in 2-3 minutes — of which 1-2 minutes are used up by parallels to boot the JumpBox virtual machine. You can even jump over to their blog and check out how you can setup your JumpBox to run off Amazon’s EC2 service…..Cloud Computing for the masses……yeah baby .

I used their parallel configuration on the Mac — JumpBoxes will run on all of the popular virtualization platforms including VMWare, Parallels, Microsoft Virtual PC/Server, Virtual Iron and Xen — and the static IP was all I had to configure to get the server up and running. If you have DHCP on your subnet/homerouter it’s even easier…..no thinking involved.

Well kids are you ready for todays lesson in transcoding DV video. So first you need a decent machine. I’m using a P4 2.4Ghz oldie that has Firewire on-board and am chewing up 50% CPU for NTSC encoding. Then you need to get Ubuntu 8.04 installed. Once that’s done use the following command to install vlc (Video Lan Client):
sudo apt-get install vlc
Then either follow this guide or if you’re using 8.04 (Hardy Heron) ONLY, use the following command to add Medibuntu to your repository sources.list:
sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/hardy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list
followed by
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get update
to add the GPG key for Medibuntu Repository. You may be asked to accept this package even though it cannot be authenticated. This is normal; typing “Yes” means you trust Medibuntu.
Now do the following commands to get libdvdcss and other codecs installed on your machine:
sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2
sudo apt-get install w32codecs (for i386 architecture) OR
sudo apt-get install w64codecs (for amd64 architecture)
Now that we have all the goodies installed and ready to go you can go ahead and connect that DV camera to your Ubuntu box using Firewire. Make sure it’s in Camera mode (NOT VCR) and open up a command line and type in the following command to get the encoder setup:
sudo -i (This will put you in superuser mode.....ie: root account)
cat /dev/dv1394/0 | vlc - :demux=rawdv -I dummy --sout '#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,vb=1024,acodec=mpga,ab=192,scale=1,width=720,height=480}:duplicate{dst=std{access=udp,mux=ts,dst=IPAddressofDestinationMachine:PortNumber}}'
You could also run the above command from your user account by adding sudo infront of it and supply your password followed by Enter key.

The above command (in case you’re wondering) will literally open device zero on the firewire chain and redirect it’s raw output into the VLC program. VLC is told to accept input from a pipe in rawdv format and to transcode it to mpeg4 Video @ 1Mb/s with mpeg1-layer3 audio @ 192 Kb/s.

Once the above command is running you’ll need to go to your receiving machine (the machine who’s IP you supplied in the command above), run VLC and from the File menu choose “Open Network Stream” and go with the default UDP/RTP on port 1234 (or whatever port you chose in the encoder command line).

Another neat thing you can do with your new found opensource goody bag is capture DV from your camera/settop box and save it in mpeg4 format for archival purposes (or mpeg2 for editing maybe). I’m not gonna get into the details, but assuming you’ve done the above commands, skip the encoder command and issue the following command to get your DV stream saved:
sudo -i
cat /dev/dv1394/0 | ffmpeg -f dv -i - -f mp4 -s 720x480 -vcodec mpeg4 -acodec aac -ab 128 -ar 44100 -deinterlace -b 3000k -y yourfilename.mp4
This command will take rawdv from the camera, pass it to ffmpeg, which will chew on it and spit it out as mpeg4 video @ 3Mb/s with AAC audio @ 128Kb/s into a file named yourfilename.mp4 (if the file exists it will overwrite it). Stopping is accomplished by CTRL-C. More info on this command can be found on ffmpeg’s man page.

Have Fun….

Head over to wordle.net and try your hand at creating a work of art using only words. It’s fun and if you’re lucky will only entertain you for a couple of hours (not days). Now back to WRDL for more ANMTD WRD PLY FN.

Yeah, now I know what I am gonna do with the packing foam that comes with the purchase of our next 50 Dell Servers. Michael Salter’s creations can be viewed at San Jose Museum of Art, Robots:Evolution of a Cultural Icon, up thru 10/08. Totally cool and creative. Definitely one for the “I wish I’d thought of that” category . You can also watch Michael build the behemoth from the ground up below.

giant styrobot from michael salter on Vimeo.

Just came across Idée’s new baby, TinEye. Have you ever wondered why it is that you can’t just go to google images (or similar image search engine) and look for images based on image content and not tags, names and such. Well it’s because it’s damn hard to do and frankly until now I haven’t seen one that actually worked properly. That said, I think the guys at TinEye have it figured out quite nicely. Their system does NOT use keywords, text, names or tags. They have developed a proprietary image identification technology that creates a image finger print for a given image. This allows them to do amazing partial matches, even if the image has been cropped, resized or modified. Although their database of images is not as large at google, their algorithms run circles around pretty much every other technology in this field.
If you don’t believe me head over to tineye.com, sign up for a e-vite and once you get invited get a beta account and try it out. You’ll be amazed and how cool this technology is. They even have a firefox plugin .

Yesterday TSG (Toronto Strobist Group) had their 3rd meeting at the Rogers Communications Centre. Lots of new faces, lots of new ideas. I definitely learned alot and generally had a blast. Got to try some of my homemade equipment which was kinda cool and also got to try my hands at shooting some fake kick boxing . The full gallery can be found here. And you can always check out our members contributions.

Running and administrating mysql can sometimes be a hassle especially if you’re running a semi-secure environment. This usually means that your mysql server will not accept connections from outside and only localhost connections are allowed. There is a quick way of getting around this if you’re stuck somewhere and really need to use that graphical admin/browser tool to get to your DB server. All you really need to do is forward port 3306 on your local machine to port 3306 on the DB server through a ssh tunnel. Here is the ssh command you need to issue to start things up:
ssh -L 3306:127.0.0.1:3306 yoursshloginid@yourserver.yourdomain.com
Once you supply the password for the ssh session you’re in business, the encrypted tunnel is up and running. All you need now is to point Mysql Administrator graphical tool at host 127.0.0.1 (localhost) and port 3306 like the picture below:The only thing you want to make sure you get right is the 127.0.0.1, DO NOT use localhost. The tools you’re using automatically assume a local socket connection to the DB when you use “localhost” as the Server Hostname. Another thing is that all checks that mysql administrator does locally on the server files will not work (ie: the interface will report that the server is down since it can’t find mysqld.pid), but all users/schema manipulation works fine since they are network based.

If you have mysql daemon installed on your local machine (the machine you initiated ssh from) you need to change the local port to something else other than 3306 and the command will look something like this:
ssh -L 7777:127.0.0.1:3306 yoursshloginid@yourserver.yourdomain.com
In this case I’m using local port 7777 which means I also have to tell mysql administrator to connect through port 7777. You get the idea……

These should probably also be installed under other linux distros (might already be). But for the sake of completeness here they are:

1) denyhosts: great little package that’s already 98% configured after apt-get install process. It runs as a daemon and monitors /var/log/auth.log file for unsuccessful ssh logins and takes measures to ban the originating IP in /etc/hosts.deny. The cool part is that it does not need access to firewall or anything. Config file is /etc/denyhosts.conf and is pretty self explanatory. Ubuntu package is called “denyhosts” and needs python to work.

2) chkrootkit: another little gem that you install via apt-get install process. Ubuntu package is called “chkrootkit”. After install do “man chkrootkit” for more info, but the gist of it is that when run from command line it uses it’s own utils (located in /usr/lib/chkrootkit) to see if the system is infected.

3) rkhunter: this util is really a giant shell script, but it’s really nice and easy to use. Again use Ubuntu package name “rkhunter” to install it. It’s config file goes into /etc/rkhunter.conf and is pretty nicely setup by default. Next run “rkhunter –update” to update the discription/signature files from their website, then run “rkhunter –propupd” to grab a snapshot of the various files installed on your system. This will be used later, every time you run the command to see if anything has been changed by trojans/rootkits. Finally run “rkhunter –check” to actually run all the tests and see if you’re good to go. At the end if there are warnings check /var/log/rkhunter.log for a list of explanations about those warnings (suspicious filenames, hidden file locations, etc.)

4) ufw: The netfilter (firewall) interface for the rest of us. If you’re like me too dense to remember the iptables lingo, this might be for you. See this page for a good introduction.

Have fun and remember kids Vitamin U(buntu) is good for you.

Yep, you can. Here is the recipe:

1) You need to install “curl” for your OS. OSX comes with it by default which is nice. Most unices out there also have it installed or have it available for download (Ubuntu, Debian users can use “sudo apt-get install curl” to install).
2) Edit a text file using your favourite editor and add the following line in there:
curl --basic --user "youruserid:yourpassword" --data-ascii "status=`echo $@|tr ' ' '+'`" "http://twitter.com/statuses/update.json" -o /dev/null
3) Make sure you replace youruserid and yourpassword with appropriate strings.
4) Save the file as something like twitter.sh and make it executable by issuing this command:
chmod 700 ./twitter.sh
5) Twitter away by using the following command line:
./twitter.sh "Put your twit in here and press Enter"
6) Done.

Have fun commandline twittering .

I think every admin must do something stupid atleast once….right? Well my brain fart happened during a System upgrade (another story I’ll be ranting about later). I made backups of all the files I thought were important (/home, /etc, /var/lib/mysql and other userdata we had on the system) and installed Ubuntu 8.04 on the server. Well, of course the second person who walks in to report problems, asks me about his personal crontab……DOOOHHHHH!!!! Yeah I forgot to back that sucker up. Now, the lucky part of all this is that I just deleted the old directories on that partition, I did not format it. So once I realized that, I figured why not just search for it. I mean I knew something about the file, why shouldn’t I be able to just search the raw disk and look for a specific string I know existed in the crontab file. Well guess what you can and it works like a charm….here is how:

For those of you using Google Reader…..here is a neat little distraction……type the following while google reader is the active browser window (up/down/left/right are cursor keys):

up up down down left right left right b a

fun stuff…..thank G .

If you ever needed a reason to switch to a mac and you were thinking to yourself, “well maybe I’ll wait a bit longer, after all, the malware/virus/trojan scene hasn’t caught up to me yet”, you might want to think again.

Today marks the re-release of Virus.Win32.Gpcode.ak virus for the PC platform. This sucker was released two years ago and went around RSA encrypting peoples files (including, but not limited, to .doc, .txt, .pdf, .xls, .jpg, .png, .cpp, .h) with a 660-bit encryption key. Thank god the boys at Kaspersky Labs found a bug in the code and cracked the code. This time the author(s) are using a 1024-bit key. So if you ever end up with files ending in _CRYPT, you’ve got a major problem on your hand. If the author(s) have done their homework, Karpersky Labs estimates that it would take decades (if not longer) to crack the 1024-bit key.

Now I’m sure you’re thinking I’m spreading FUD, but think about this for a second. How many hours of work would you loose if all your documents were encrypted and you were faced with a ransom note pointing you to pay up to recover them? How much do those digital camera pictures from your last trip mean to you? I don’t know about you but when a virus company comes out and says, “Let’s hope the virus author screwed up or else we’ll be in some serious heat”, I would start worrying.

Anways, something to think about while you’re writing those documents, taking those pictures or creating the next best selling computer game. At the very least you should BACK IT UP!!!! More over at Kaspersky Labs…..

Just finished adding the final touches to the pics from a recent fashion/portrait shoot I attended/organized at Ryerson. The shoot actually happened on May 24, 2008, but since I was in Vancouver for a week I didn’t get a chance to work on them. The theme was loosely based on flowers and fruits, but once the models showed up we ended up trying some other stuff as well. We also had a bit of a scare and started late since the models we had booked (all but one) did not show up. You can check out the entire set on flickr.

Came across this earlier on flickr….Very creative work done by Mike Stimpson. This guy is fantastic and his Lego recreations of important moments in history are really neat. definitely worth checking out.

Yeah, in case you haven’t figured it out yet, I LIKE GOOGLE. I like their spirit and I like the way they do their business. They just made my day (again) by releasing their desktop based google gadgets for linux for free and totally open sourced under Apache License 2.0 to boot. This is fantastic news for all Linux fanatics, as now you can leave those closed source OSes behind, format your harddisk and enjoy a great looking desktop on a OS that actually works (for a change).

Now if only MS and it’s minion (Carl Icahn) would leave Yahoo alone so they can port the Pipes engine to the linux desktop I’d be a happy man

Is google ever going to stop doing cool stuff? Can you imagine doing this type of thing for a living? Well, like it or not, the next time you decide to dive down the rabbit hole, you can turn to your computer and GE instead. Yep, Disney’s wonderland has been ported to google earth. Just load up GE and type disney world in the search field and make sure 3D Buildings are turned on and enjoy. Thanks big G, now I can scratch DW from my list of must visit sites .