David Raynes

Recently, I have finally found some time to play around with some new geeky toys. Specifically, I brought SQLite up at work, which brought me to playing with it at home, which lead into finally starting to futz around with a Ruby on Rails application to see how it works. I have to say, I am more astonished with each day that I work with Rails. I'm always stumbling across something new each time I sit down and play with it some more.

Rails then lead me into an interesting new web server: lighttpd. I am so impressed with that, that I am planning on trying to migrate off Apache entirely and onto lighttpd instead (a problem with the most recent Apache, or at least the Debian apache2-mpm-prefork package, contributed to that as well somewhat). The only problem that I have with lighttpd currently is that it lacks something like mod-security, so I am writing my own plugin for lighttpd. It is currently working (just barely), and when I finally get more completely implemented (at the moment, it is only a blacklist for POST data), tested thorougly, and cleaned up, I will go ahead and release it to the public.

When you walk into our house now, the three switches next to the front door do the following:

• Turn on/off the porch light
• Turn on/off the foyer light
• Turn on/off the internet

With some of the changes we have made here in the last few weeks to put the office together on the top floor, there were no longer any computers (being actively used) in the basement, which is where the cable modem and wireless access point/router were. With the signal strength and speed problems we have been having this past week, I finally decided to rip the modem and router out of the basement and move them up to the electronics hub that is our entertainment center on the first floor. Now I could wire up the TiVo and Xbox (I am rayners on Xbox Live now), and hopefully improve the signal strength to the laptop and to the office upstairs (it did).

Now, when we bought the house, we tried to work out which switches controlled which outlets in the house, but we were never able to determine which outlet was controlled by the third switch on the panel by the front door. Turns out it was the floor outlet into which I plugged in the surge protector that powers the cable modem and wirless router.

So, when we turn out the lights each day, we absolutely need to be sure that we do not accidentally switch off the internet. :)

Just for the heck of it, I have decided to start hanging around in #mt-plugins on irc.freenode.net. It's not an official channel at the moment, but if others start coming in, I will take that step. I figure I can do a little real-time plugin support there, along with gathering up ideas and suggestions for new and current plugins.

It would appear that I have achieved a new level in geekhood. I discovered this week that my little pet project, the Plugin Manager has been added to the FreeBSD ports system. It is an older version, but I have already tried to notify the port maintainers. Hopefully it will be updated soon.

So, for all you FreeBSD + MT users, enjoy!

(Oh, and there is a MT port as well)

Seems an old highschool teammate of mine has been up to no good. :)

From robots.net:

Devin Balkcom and Matt Mason, working at the CMU Robotics Institute have created the world's first origami folding robot. The robot can fold a variety of traditional origami shapes. While the shapes are simple, the interesting part is that the robot determines the sequences of moves and folds needed on its own. What have they learned from the exercise? "For now, human hardware and software are superior: human fingers are great tools for manipulating delicate paper, and human intuition and intellect far outclass robotic planning capabilities." Devin's website includes a Quicktime video of the robot in action.

Found via Lockergnome

I've started collecting 'em. I can't help myself anymore. :)

I got Lord of the Rings Cave Troll and an Easterling.

And looking at what Todd McFarlane has coming later this year, I'm really excited.

Woo hoo! The new issue of Knights of the Dinner Table is here. So far, I've actually received issues 70, 73, and 74. Seems 71 and 72 must have gotten lost in the move somewhere.

How oddly appropirate? I send out a notice that I am going to try and run a CoC game around Halloween, and KoDT has just started a storyline about Scream of Kachoolu.

Then again, come to think of it, it's probably because we are nearing Halloween. Therefore, I am an idiot. :)