Brew Day

Making beer today. A German Hefeweizen. Similar to the Sierra Nevada Kellerweis that I just ried for the first time today. Moderate Banana, clove Bubblegum flavora that are so classic to that style.
We'll see how it turns out.

Complicated...

In my efforts to increase options, functionality and features for my home network, I have run my total of computers, servers, switches, routers and other networking devices up to 15 total.
The days of simply hooking up my computer to my phone line are long gone.
Today, my Linksys WRT54GS comes in, via a big brown truck, and in a matter of hours I will be uploading a replacement firmware for it. This third party firmware is called Tomato and is advantagous to what the router comes with in that it has a very strong reputation of being stable efficient and easy to use.
I will disable any router type functions on my craptacular DSL "Modem" and run all of my QoS, port forwarding, and any other routing functions on this modded Linksys.
After that is set up and realitively stable, attention to the voip adapter wil be next on the list.
It is a GS-502 and I just need to do some configuration tweaks to get its sound quality acceptable. I am still undecided weather this device should go at the "top" of my network, just after the modem, or have it hanging off of one of the ports on my switch. Experiances and opinions seem to to be mixed on the forums I have been trolling on about this.
Somewhere during all this, I'll also be calling Qwest to purchase the new 7MB line.
Then there is still, getting the website transplanted onto the Linux LAMP that is up and running, currently hosting the Teamspeak server. and more of course...

After a realatively painless ordeal, I have my Linux server up and running. It is an Ubuntu 8.10 LAMP that was actually pretty easy. The whole thing pretty much sets itself up, even though the "15 minutes to a LAMP" guide was a bit of an optomistic title. Here is the guide I used.
After that, I knew that i would need SOME kind of GUI to manage it, but wanteed to avoid an actual "desktop" installed on teh server itself. 1.3Ghz and <1Gb of RAM will make yo uwant to stay "lean and mean".
A web based management tool called Webmin seems the way to go. After about an hour of following the install instructions for Windows XP and having it stillnot work, I realized that Webmin is supposed to be installed on the webserver...not on the PC you want to use to manage it.
DUH !. So I then followed the much simpler instructions for adding the necessary "packages" to my ubuntu server, using a slightly scarry but elgently simple command line.
Then it was just a matter of "surfing" to its IP address on a special port https://192.168.0.5:10000 and BAM! A login that wanted my ubuntu server user and pass.
Now I am faced with dozens of toools switches and features w/o a clue what to do with them. But hey, it works. At least I think it does. I've never seen a broken one so I can't say for sure.
No error mesages anyway.
Now I just ned to develop some actual content.
We'll see.

American Idolatry

We are upon yet another season of the insanely popular "American Idol" TV show on FOX. Even if you have never seen it before, you undoubtedly have seen the eleventy-billion commercials and teaser spots that FOX shows ever 12 seconds.
I have a few problems with it and rue the day every year it begins its several week run for the season. This is season 8 now and after this many times around, I have no longer considered it one of the signs of the impending apocalypse, directly, but I'm afraid to think what could be worse.
I realize that the point of nearly any company is to make a profit, and TV programs are not excluded from this economical constant. As a capitalist, I am all for "going for it" in that pure sense. Even if I don't particularly like the individual(s) that stand to gain the most from each instance of it.
If American Idol is really about the talent and the exceptional performances that it and its fans claim that it is, then it wouldn't take a few months to cut to the chase. Instead we see for several weeks, the miserably pathetic auditioners that we are expected to laugh at for not realizing their own lack of talent. This and the drummed up drama, grandstanding, the suposed back stage stress, arguing, and trash talking, crying on the phone to mom cuz Simon was so mean etc, etc...blah..blah...
It just seems to contrived, fake and manufactured. The blatant dragging out of the results on the votes that come in. "The results...that YOU the fans voted on are here in my hand...and they are.....coming up right after this message.." Coca-Cola commercial "... Joey, I have the vote results here in my hand. and they are.. ...quite a shock... Joey...you are..." (looks at the camera to make sure we are all haning on the next word out of Ryan's mouth) "...NOT..."
(looks at the camera again) "...voted off.." Pandemonium ensues because now there are only 73 centestants remaining in the semi-semi-semi-half-way finals and there is only 11 weeks to go.

VOMIT ! ! !

How can anyone who has just been willing to sit through all that fake drama still have any self respcect after being so manipulated and patronized. How can they sit there and realize that FOX assumes they are mindless lemmings stopping their lives for an hour (or four) and hanging on to find out who "made it" and who the loser is that week.

"Who cares, as long as they keep watching..." I'm sure is the response from the advertisers who fought to shell out between $600-700 Thousand per minute, for commercial spots, and that was in 2006.

To quote Rod Tidwell, "...it's all about the 'Quan' "

Home Theater thoughts

After some thought, confusion, revelations and then more thinking, I have decided I need to organize, and better utilize my music and video collection.
I am in the process of ripping all the DVDs I own and storing the images on my NAS box. Now any computer on the network can navigate to the share where they are stored and start watching any title they double click on. That's handy, but I ned more. I need to blur the distinction between my computer network, and my TV, a modest 32" Vizio HD720p.
Apparently the "need" I just recently realized I had is something the rest of the world, Micrsoft included realized years ago. Hence, Windows Media Center, MythTV, Tivo and other such beasts. More specificlaly, what I need is a network streaming, multimedia home entertainment center, with secondary capabilities of a Digital video recorder.
Since Cable, Dish, or Satalite service is not in my near future, I mainly want to be able to call up and view, movies and music from my own collection of ripped CD's and DVD's. Preferably with a remote. A Media Extender is basically what this would be. A bridge, if you will, that lets my TV display what the extender sends it from what it can find on my network.
"Tivo" functionality that most of us are familiar with, requires a tuner, that actually picks up the signal, cable, antenna or whatever and allows live recording of that incoming signal. Even tough these capabilities would not be very useful for me now, as I only get about 5 channels.
More research is needed, but the days of popping in DVD's to watch a movie are numbered.

A little fun with PhotoShop

VoIP

A couple of factors are hearding me toward the prospect of dropping traditional phone service in favor of Voice over IP. Not least of which is the lees money I put in Qwest's deep pockets, the better I sleep at night. A close second, however is the higher level of control I will have over another piece of my home's total data and communication solution.
The money I save after dropping the PSTS conection will be partially taken up by the added expense of a faster DSL connection and of cource the VOIP providers contract.
Viatalk will likely be the provider I go with, as a co-worker has had good experience with them and the feature/price ratio is attractive.
And oh Joy, the DSL speed options have jumped up for my area. 7MB as well as 12 MB are now avalible in addition to the 1.5 I have been "limping" along with the last several years. Funny...I didn't untill today realize how slow that is. Ho ever did I manage.
Curently, 38$ for phone service plus 28$ for 1.5M DSL will be replaced by 42$ for 7M DSL and 21$ for the VOIP. The latter also has a second year free which prorates out to a total bottom line of about 50$/mo vs about 67$ now. Hey, don't laugh. While that won't even buy me one "Double Tall 2-pump Mocha" per week, I'l' still take it.
2 "virtual lines" plus another phone number that can be in any area code I want (which will give family in Western WA a local number to call that will reach us will be sweet. Especially considering the fact that as 2 of our kids are in 5th and 7th grade respectively, total phone usage is going to likely sky-rocket. Tones of fun features are included like custom VM greetings for a given caller, a home number that follows you to nearly any internet connection, configurable forwarding of your phone number based on who is calling you, the list goes on.
The "geek" factor I will freely admit, is enticing. It is very "gadgetal"
As it is now, I have procured another DSL "modem" and configured it as a backup for hot-swap fail-over coverage as more than just surfing will depen on my Internet up-time, here shortly.