All posts by Kris

About Kris

Hardware hacker, technology integrator, and maker. He enjoys staring blankly at code and voiding the warranty.

National Standard for Identifying Milk

creativity

I went into a local market today and they had two different brands of milk. Both were labeled 1%, yet one was a purple cap and one had a green cap. I have purchased a bottle of milk with a yellow cap (expecting 1%) and received whole milk.

NSIM-MILK_COLOR_STANDARD.gif

There. It’s done. I have ended the confusion. I have set forth this image into the public domain for the creation of a milk color standard. We will no longer be confused when inside the market or store. No more puzzlement as to the contents of a container of milk. Nor will we be forced to drink what we didn’t intend to buy. If your grocers milk cap colors vary from this document, please ask them why their milk and dairy distributor is not NSIM (National Standard for Identifying Milk) compliant.

A hi-res .png copy of the NSIM reference is available here.

Public Domain Dedication

The National Standard for Identifying Milk is dedicated to the Public Domain. Some keywords for consideration: red whole, blue 2%, green 1%, yellow skim, milk cap color national standard.

Feel good link.

creativity

This has to be the feel good link of the month. :D Want some happiness? Check out this search I did under technorati for “first post”. It gives you an idea of just how many people are trying out this blog thing. You capture people at their innocent, sometimes awkward, first moments. Other possible titles: “A blog is born.” ; “Somewhere, someone right now is opening up their heart.” ; “Is there anybody out there?” For extra karma points: Leave some comments. You never know who you might be inspiring.

Live Journal tanks – nobody around to blog about it…

rant

Yikes. What’s going on there… :eek:

Our data center (Internap, the same one we’ve been at for many years) lost all its power, including redundant backup power, for some unknown reason. (unknown to me, at least) We’re currently dealing with bringing our 100+ servers back online. Not fun. We’re not happy about this. Sorry… :-/ More details later.

Update: Article on slashdot about Live Journal outage. Looks like they’ll have it back up soon.

Inexpensive Mac announced at MacWorld.

rave

mac_mini.jpgThis thing is cool. I’ve been thinking about getting a mini PC for the last year now. Upgrade my current beige box into a server. Place it on a rack in the closet with a fresh stack of drives, maybe a RAID device. Take the Firewire, USB 2.0, and second video cards out. Put them gently on the ground and stomp on them.

Macintosh and I are friends. I used to call myself a “Mac Tech” back in the days of the IIsi and PowerPC. Over the years the relationship has fallen apart. The Mac has also never been very “gamer” friendly. You don’t see them lugged to a LAN party with a fresh copy of the latest first person shooter on them. This made the price point hard to swallow. It’s like buying a $50,000 hydrogen fuel cell car. You paid a lot of money for a neat looking reliable car, but you can’t just fill’er up at the Mobil station next door and it’s sometimes a pain in the ass to get parts for it.

So I went for the $500 Honda that I could put anyones motor in, and get a million low cost upgrades for. It runs okay most of the time, gets good mileage, and chugs along. It stalls occasionally and won’t run in the higher altitudes, but it’s been good to me.

The one thing I need is the ability to import and edit DV video. I know that will be 1000X better on a Mac. Unix for me will be a no brainer. I used to be a big LAN gamer but those days are gone. I’m older, more sophisticated now. Maybe it’s time to buy the BMW.

I need to price one out with the super-D-duper DVD toaster drive. As they just announced it the site is slammed. Click here for the complete specs and info on the iMac mini from Apple.com. But I think this is going to be my next computer. Might even get one for the girl too.

Fun with home networking. Two WAN IPs, one LAN.

creativity

wrt54g.jpgI finally picked up the Linksys WRT54G Wireless Router. Before I even got it out of the box I was thinking up ways to connect it to my network. I’ll be talking about basic networking and configuring 2 routers to talk to each other, creating two separate networks both with internet access. You should be comfortable with router settings, giving your machines static IPs, CAT5, and other basic networking concepts.

A not so unique situation: You have the ability to get multiple IPs from your ISP over the same connection. For example: At my brother’s house they have broadband cable split with a switch into two routers. They want to have 2 internet IPs for several different reasons:
1. They want two servers on the web with different IPs. Both can dish out websites at the same time and still co-exist on the same network.
2. PS2s and other game systems get wonky when they are more then one of them on the LAN. It won’t work correctly if they both are trying to play the same online game as they have “technically” the same IP. Network address translation does a good job, but the online game server still can’t deal with 2 game systems on the same IP.

At my house I have the unique situation – off a college campus network. This means that I have several drops (ethernet jacks) around the house at my disposal. I also believe that they throttle the connection according to “drop” not according to “house” or “account”. Not only do I get the benefits of two separate IP addresses, but I get an added performance benefit as well.*
1. Network upstairs has three computers using file sharing, etc.
2. Network downstairs has a networked PS2 and soon to have some sort of PVR like Tivo.

Now you kids at home can duplicate this setup by splitting your cable connection with a switch or adding a second cable modem (for an additional fee from your cable provider) to your house. You won’t have one huge fat pipe, like multi-home or connection teaming. *The performance will come from the fact that being online with your PS2 won’t tank your music downloads going on upstairs.

The main problem: You have two routers, two separate subnets. How can I send movies to my PC from my PVR if I can’t see it on the LAN. How can I backup my PS2 games (There’s a way you can do that?!) onto my server if I can’t ping my PS2 from my PC.

The answer is static routing and a crossover cable or uplink port. Here is what my network looks like:
net_layout.jpg
Continue reading Fun with home networking. Two WAN IPs, one LAN. →

Road Trip USA II or (I hate Texas)

popcoaster, travel

So much has happened in the last two weeks that it would be impossible and tiring to document all that has happened. So I will focus on the “highlights” and let you piece it together. The trip looked like this: Went East for Christmas. Picked up the rallycar and drove it to Maine. Stopped for tires and tax free shopping in New Hampster. Spent a few days in Maine then drove back to Jersey. Celebrated Christmas. Packed up and left for Irvine with the rallycar. Cape May ferry. Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. Stop in South Carolina. Stop in Mississippi. Stop in Texas (twice). Six Flags over Texas. New years in Tucson, AZ. New years day we got home to Irvine, CA.

Don’t take a ferry when there is a 40 knot crosswind and 8 foot seas. Halfway to Delaware we start lashing port and starboard. I want to say 30 degrees but I’m not sure if that would be too much or too little exaggeration. When we hit a big wave the tables and chairs that they have setup all slid left. At that moment I could see nothing but sky from the windows on the right and nothing but Atlantic to my left. Little kids puking. Gift shop destroyed. Christine and I were doing okay. Having rode the T in Boston for most of my life I have my “sea” legs. I crossed the deck and grabbed a fistful of napkins for the father of the little girl that hoarked all over him. “I’ve never seen it this bad” mumbled one of the ferry operators. The rocking started to subside and soon we were protected by the breakers and then the jetty. First ferry ride for me… Check.

I think I know why Texas is so wide. Louisiana is mostly flat. Very fertile. That fertile earth dies off when you get into Texas. Arid petroleum wastelands. Once the elevation changes and you begin to see mountains, you are in New Mexico. There is almost nothing in between. Just about every town on I-10 is there because of oil. Just the following would not constitute hating it. No, I would need a better reason than that – and a diagram.

texas.jpgWhy I hate Texas: Here is every intersection off every highway in Texas. You’ll notice that they took time to build an over pass but not the exit ramps. When you exit the interstate you are greeted by on-coming traffic. You are then hit with a two or four way stop roughly 30 yards later. An intersection where stopping is optional – apparently. Then to get back onto the highway you must swerve into on-coming traffic again. Wind your way to the on ramp that tightens right at the end. This slows you down to about 22MPH. A good speed to merge onto a highway with a daytime speed limit of 75 don’t you think?

The Neon was not happy above 2,000 feet. It would cruise fine, but when we stopped for refueling she would stutter and run really rich. Crappy Texas gas didn’t help this. I still don’t understand why the one place in the US where refineries and oil wells outnumber people they have 85 octane gas. So I bought 87 which is “mid-grade” gas in Texas and “swamp gas” everywhere else. Then dumped a bottle of octane booster in.

Six Flags Over Texas was an added downer. They had literally like 4 rides open. The thing that sucks is they post this big board outside stating that A LOT of the rides will be closed during the Christmas season. Yet no mention of it on the website. We were able to ride Titan and the train that goes around the park… I have never spent only 3 hours at a Six Flags.

We celebrated the new year in Tucson. We lucked out with a room that had a hot tub. Filled the tub, pressed the button, and nothing happened. I picked up the phone to try and get some help with the lack of water jets. “Did you press the button on the back of the tub?” “Yes.” I explained that the only reason we upgraded was because of the hot tub. They took the $119 room off the bill. :) Drinking bad pre-mixed Long Island Ice Tea in a huge bathtub is rather anti-romantic. Taking the complimentary soda, popcorn and bath items from our free room was the next order of business.

Saturday we made the dash from Tucson to Irvine. I was excited to be home. Felt good to have the Neon in Cali. I have a lot of projects ahead of me and taking Sunday to do nothing was just what the doctor ordered. It could have been better. It also could have been a lot worse. Drive across the country again – check.