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OffTheHill.org

OffTheHill.org
Cars, Technology, and Art. Posts cover everything from amateur motorsports like autocross to Linux, software development, and art.

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Articles: 1, 2

Articles

Amazing Heavy Machinery Tricks…
2008-05-31 01:15:00
How to Load a Bobcat without Ramps…. And how to unload a backhoe without ramps:
More About: Tricks , Amazing , Heavy , Machinery

Never Before…
2008-05-31 00:42:00
… has something so beautiful been made out of something so awful… Kind of makes me nostalgic… almost…

Repairing a Corrupt Aperture Library Myself
2008-03-27 02:44:00
When I upgraded from a PowerBook to a new MacBook Pro, I used Windows File Sharing (also known as Samba or SMB sharing) to transfer all of my files from one computer to the other via a network, and it looks like that corrupted my Aperture Library . It look me a few days to realize the problem, but here are a few symptoms I noticed: Images that were in the library BEFORE the move were not visible in iLife applications (iPhoto, the screen saver, etc). The projects appeared in the listings, but the images themselves were not visible. For example, the screen saver would always say “The selected folder contains no pictures. Please choose a new folder that contains pictures or add images to the folder.” Managed RAW images would not display correctly. I would click on them and the image would appear with a ‘loading’ message, and then eventually I would see a solid red or maroon background with the text “Unsupported Image Format”. Knowing that the ...

How To use the Java mDNS Wrapper
2008-01-10 23:21:00
A few days ago I posted an article about my wrapper API which unifies the mDNSResponder and JmDNS packages behind a single interface, but I neglected to provide usage examples or a usage guide. I’ll try and correct that now. In addition to unifying multiple mDNS implementations under a single API, I think my API reduces the amount of work needed by the developer for registering and listening for services to a minimum. Building the code First off, all you should need to compile and run my package is Maven. Once you have Maven installed, cd into the jmdns directory, and run: mvn test This will compile JmDNS, my add-on API, and run a few unit tests. The API in question is tested by org.jmdns.api.DiscoveryFactoryTest. I would expect the JmDNS portion of the test testJmDNS() to pass under almost any circumstance, but the testmDNSResponder() will only pass if you are running on Linux and have mDNSResponder (or possibly the avahi compatibility layer) installed successfully. ...
More About: Java , Wrapper

A JmDNS / mDNSResponder Zeroconf Compatibility Interface
2008-01-08 17:54:00
My company has given me permission to release a Java Zeroconf API. The advantage of this API is that it allows the application to select which implementing library to use at runtime, and eases developer work implementing mDNS / DNS-SD. I also think my API is easier to understand than the raw interfaces of the underlying implementations. Currently there are two implementing backends, one for JmDNS and one for Apple’s mDNSResponde r. I would really like to see one written for Avahi, but I probably won’t get to it myself. The API is in the org.jmdns.api package, which both implementations are in the org.jmdns.impl package. A unit test is also included which demonstrates usage and verifies operation. I’ve implemented this version within the JmDNS source tree, but ideally the API, JmDNS and mDNSResponder portions of the code would be broken out to be separately distributed, with the JmDNS and mDNSResponder portions functioning as plugins implementing the API. I&r...
More About: Interface , Compatibility

Installing Lotus Notes 8 on Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy
2007-12-12 23:16:00
Ubuntu isn’t a supported platform for installing Lotus Notes 8, but the installation is surprisingly easy, once you know a few tricks.Before you begin, make sure you have the “ttf-xfree86-nonfree“ packag e installed: sudo apt-get install ttf-xfree86-nonfreeIf you don’t, your fonts will be horribly ugly, and in many places, down right unreadable.Next, you need to run the regular setup.sh install script:sudo ./setup.shThe installation creates a directory called ~/lotus, (in your home directory) but owned as root. I guess it assumes you logged in as root to run the install. I had to remove that (you could also probably just chown the directory, but Notes recreates it, so either way works):sudo rm ~/lotus -r -dI also had to make the binaries readable and executable by every user:sudo chmod o+rw /opt/ibm/lotus/notes/*Then I ran this (not sure if it is needed, but I saw it on another website):sudo chmod R 755 /etc/lotusNow you should be able run Notes and everythi...
More About: Ubuntu , Gutsy

Kiva Robots hit Youtube
2007-12-12 17:47:00
My company’s Kiva robots are staring in a new video on YouTube:
More About: Youtube , Robots

Cleaning and Optimizing Windows Mobile 6
2007-11-15 02:28:00
On an optimization kick, I found SK Tools. It was able to find a free up about 12 megs of disk space, mostly by finding and clearing the IE cache. You could save yourself the money and just clear your cache yourself I suppose. SK Tools does some other useful stuff though. Using its “Tune Up!” feature, you can tweak PIE to store its temporary files on your storage card, which will keep it from sucking up your fixed storage memory again. You can adjust the size of the font cache and other settings to tweak memory usage for performance, memory, or stability. Lastly, there is a backup utility (with scheduling), a benchmark utility, system information page, and a registry editor. The only real downside I can find is that the UI crams a lot of information into a tight space, and it suffers for it. While I don’t think I’m willing to spend $13 on this tool (but I’ll let you know if I do), as neat as it is, its a pretty good bundle. I wish there was an o...
More About: Windows , Mobile , Windows Mobile , Cleaning , Windows Mobile 6

Uninstalled .cab files Wasting Space on Windows Mobile 6
2007-11-15 02:13:00
After about a month and a half, my T-Mobile Wing has started to run out of free storage space. Whenever I searched the built in storage for large files, nothing ever turned up, but then I stumbled upon something: Missing Sync for Windows Mobile was putting all of my .cab files into /Windows/AppMgr/Install, regardless of whether I told it to put the cab on my storage card or not. Quite a few of those cabs never got installed for whatever reason, so they were just sitting there, unused, taking us space. I just deleted them. So if you’ve ever installed cabs to your Windows Mobile device, but the program never got installed, check the /Windows/AppMgr/Install directory, they might just be sitting around taking up space.
More About: Space , Files

Review: Egress RSS Reader for the Pocket PC
2007-11-08 05:06:00
I’m still on the quest for a good RSS reader for my T-Mobile Wing. Ideally it would be free and open source, but open source Pocket PC software seems few and far between. Why aren’t more Pocket PC applications designed for finger based operation? The stylus is a huge time-waster. I tried PocketRSS, but discovered that despite the fact that I didn’t think it was running at all, it had consumed 850+ MB of my storage card’s space! I have no idea how that happened, but I wasn’t having any of that for such clunky software. It was summarily uninstalled. Next up, I decided to try Egress, by Egress. Its not open source, or even free, but it looked attractive enough on the website. On first startup, I got an error message that My DocumentsChannels cannot be found. The dialog is not intuitive, but I clicked “No”, and tried to select “Storage CardMy DocumentsChannels”. For some reason, the same dialog popped up twice, so I ha...
More About: Pocket Pc , Review , Reader

MiniReview: ADBWeatherPlus 3.1.7 for Pocket PC
2007-11-07 19:28:00
I tried ADBWeatherPlus for a few minutes in my T-Mobile Wing, and I couldn’t get it set up. Maybe I’m not following the directions correctly, but the screen says ‘Add a location’, but when I try and add a location, I get as far as selecting the US, then Massachusetts, then my town. When I click ‘Next’, I get a dialog box that says something about “Fatal, no message”. So I gave up.
More About: Pocket Pc , Pocket

Kiva In The News
2007-11-06 22:57:00
AT&T’s Tech Channel website did a video spot about my company’s robotic order fullfillment system. check it out. Update: We Kiva n’s can now publically talk about our latest client: Walgreens! We had a contract with Walgreen’s for quite a while, but weren’t allowed to talk about it till now. PS: And if anyone at Kiva spots this, let me know how you found it!
More About: News , In the News , The News

Are your arrows keys not working in less and vi?
2007-11-06 00:58:00
I’ve had this problem sporadically with iTerm on my Mac, and I seem to remember this happening recently on my Linux machines as well. If you have this problem, try this: $ export TERM=linux If this works, on a Mac you can set it in your .profile: if [ "${TERM_PROGRAM}" == "iTerm.app" ] then export TERM=linux fi On Linux, you can do the same, but leave out the if and just do the export line.
More About: Keys , Working , Workin

Using Maven to create a Mac OS X app bundle
2007-11-05 21:57:00
I came across this post and this Maven plugin today. Call me cynical, but I was shocked when it worked out of the box, building our application as a Mac friendly .app which can be run with a double click. To test it out, all I did was change into our application’s trunk directory and ran: mvn package osxappbundle:bundle -DmainClass=com.mypkg.MyMain And it worked! So I extended integrated it into our pom.xml with the following. Now whenever our app is packaged on a Mac, in addition to the other artifacts, an .app, .dmg, and .zip of the My App tool will be created. <profiles> .... <profile> <id>package-osx-bundle</id> <activation> <os> <family>mac</family> </os> </activation> <build> <plugins> <plugin> <groupId>org.cod...
More About: Create , Bundle , MAC OS X

Smugmug and Zenfolio evaluated
2007-11-05 04:58:00
I’ve been evaluating Zenfolio and Smugmug, as more professional alternatives to Flickr. I don’t have the money to waste on two subscriptions, so I got trial accounts for both (you don’t need a credit card for either, which is great), and gave them a shot. I soft of gravitated to Zenfolio, its admin interface made more sense to me, I liked the page layouts better, and its wicked fast. I know a few people with Smugmug galleries though and they are pretty slick too. Unfortunately, Zenfolio doesn’t have a Wordpress plugin, but they do have an API, and offer direct links to various sizes of your pictures. Here’s a photo I took over the Vermillion lakes in Banff. I had to do the formatting manually, but was able to quickly cut and paste the links from Zenfolio’s admin page: Feel free to click here and order a print for yourself!

Already I like it
2007-11-04 03:52:00
Sitting in Anne Taylor waiting for Sharon, I was able to ssh to my Dreamhost account and then use lynx to download (and install) the wordpress mobile edition and mobileadmin plugins. Now I can easily post from anywhere (And with Shozu, even photos) And iPhone and Win-Mobile users can read offthehill anywhere. That should double my readership (2x Zero is still Zero)

I’ve Switched from Typo to Wordpress
2007-11-04 03:51:00
I’ve switched offTheHill from Typo to Wordpress . Typo has some great features; its simple, easy to set up, the pages are elegant and nicely AJAX enabled. I loved the live preview when writing new posts. Also, the Ruby-on-Rails code is elegant and simple. The problem is, I got tired of the Application Error – Rails app failed to start properly” messages, and I’m sure that wasn’t getting me any repeat readers (like anyone reads this anyway). So, I used Dreamhost’s one-click install to install Wordpress onto a development sub-domain. Then I used Max Newell’s typo4.1 migration guide to import my articles and comments. Categories didn’t seem to carry over, but since I have less than a hundred posts, I don’t mind manually updating them. I also needed to install the Textile 2 plugin because I used Textile in all my Typo posts. Now I can keep using it, and I don’t have to update my old posts. Lastly, I installed the Flic...
More About: Switched , Witch

Carnies
2007-11-03 13:12:00
We were in London a few months ago. I was going to do a big long post, but I ran out of time.

More Track Day Photos
2007-10-31 04:18:00
Here are some more pictures From the track day Over all it was a great day, I got about 80 minutes of driving time in four 20 minute sessions. I learned a lot and by the end of the forth session I was really driving a lot more smoothly. I need to work on my shifting, making sure I’m in the right gear before I enter the turn, so I don’t have to shirt during the turn. Other than that, I think I’m doing fine for a beginner. Can’t wait till next year!
More About: Photos , Track , K Day

More Track Day Photos
2007-10-30 21:27:00
Here are some more pictures From the track day Over all it was a great day, I got about 80 minutes of driving time in four 20 minute sessions. I learned a lot and by the end of the forth session I was really driving a lot more smoothly. I need to work on my shifting, making sure I’m in the right gear before I enter the turn, so I don’t have to shirt during the turn. Other than that, I think I’m doing fine for a beginner. Can’t wait till next year!
More About: Photos , Track , K Day

What I did this weekend...
2007-10-29 23:16:00
Driving around NHIS at a BMWCCA track day: Click to see more of my photo-blog.
More About: Weekend

Another Killer Mac App
2007-10-29 23:02:00
I saw a link to Mail.appetizer on LifeHacker, and decided to give it a shot. I have been using GrowlMail, but it tends to lock up Mail for a log time as it parse through the 50 new messages I get each morning. Mail.appetizer doesn’t seem to have that problem, plus you can read most of the message and do some basic message management right from the popup, making it pretty useful.
More About: Killer

What I did this weekend…
2007-10-29 16:19:00
Driving around NHIS at a BMWCCA track day: Click to see more of my photo-blog.
More About: Weekend

Using Maven with Eclipse
2007-09-06 00:20:00
I uninstalled M2Eclipse and installed q4e and gave it a shot. All the core functionality seems to be there (dependancy management is the big one for me) and importing from a project pom seems to work (although It didn’t seem to import a multilayer project, I had to import each module separately, but thats ok for me). Its nice to add dependancies manually, although I’d like to see a dependancy search page like m2eclipse has and a place to cut and paste dependancy XML chunks (I use mvnrepository.com a lot). The dependancy graph is a nice feature although the controls on the side seem a bit buggy. A pom view somewhat like the built in Ant view would be nice, where I can double click a phase or a plugin:goal and run it, although I understand it might make sense to be able to manually which goals / phases appear in the workspace. So far so good, I hope the m2eclipse and q4eclipse projects can work together in the future.
More About: Maven , Clipse

Parting out My Corrado
2007-08-31 05:14:00
I’m sorry to say, but I’ve got to throw in the towel. I’ve spent to much money and time on my Corrado and could never get it running, and its distracted me from my real toy, my Saab Sonett. I loved the Corrado when I could drive it, but its just too much now to work on. I’ve put ads up on the VW Vortex, Bay State Dubs and Maine Vw Scene Its basically a complete ‘91 G60 Corrado with a 2.0 liter 9A block turbo engine swapped in. I have the full interior including both a B3 glass sun roof, manual seat belts from Germany (including all the trim pieces), as well as the original sunroof and belts. If you’d like anything, please let me know, I’ll take best and first offers. On interior OEM stuff, I’ll be very reasonable. On the go fast parts, well, I know what I spent on them, and I know how little they are used, so please be reasonable. For pictures, check here 16 valve 9A Block Turbo Garrett T25 Disco ...
More About: Rado

Parting out My Corrado
2007-08-31 05:14:00
I’m sorry to say, but I’ve got to throw in the towel. I’ve spent to much money and time on my Corrado and could never get it running, and its distracted me from my real toy, my Saab Sonett. I loved the Corrado when I could drive it, but its just too much now to work on. I’ve put ads up on the VW Vortex, Bay State Dubs and Maine Vw Scene Its basically a complete ‘91 G60 Corrado with a 2.0 liter 9A block turbo engine swapped in. I have the full interior including both a B3 glass sun roof, manual seat belts from Germany (including all the trim pieces), as well as the original sunroof and belts. If you’d like anything, please let me know, I’ll take best and first offers. On interior OEM stuff, I’ll be very reasonable. On the go fast parts, well, I know what I spent on them, and I know how little they are used, so please be reasonable. For pictures, check here, interior pictures are on page 2. 16 valve 9A...
More About: Rado

Electric Pusher Trailers
2007-08-02 07:36:00
Some co-workers brought up the idea of creating an electric pusher-trailer to take the load off a gas-powered car… you know, incase you wanted a hybrid but couldn’t afford a Prius… or maybe you just can’t give up your Ferrari, but the gas bills are starting to get to you. Anyway, I was curious if anyone else had ever thought of this, so I did some digging. It turns out no one has ever built an electric pusher, but the concept of pushing a car with a trailer is nothing new , except that usually its an electric car being pushed by a gas trailer. Here are a few examples . I did find two electric pusher trailers for bicycles however.
More About: Trailers , Electric , Pusher , TRAI , Trail

More articles from this author:
1, 2