Delta Heavy – Overkill
Overkill/Hold Me – Single
Dom & Roland – Rollstar
Last Chance Saloon/Rollstar – Single
Foreign Concept & Bringa – Cemetery
Shogun Audio Presents – Way of the Warrior
High Contrast feat Tiësto and Underworld – The First Note Is Silent
The First Note is Silent – EP
Nero – New Life
Promises EP
S.P.Y – Bloodshed
Fierce Presents Oblivion – Single
Telekinesis – Sacrifice
Sacrifice/Polaris – Single
Trei & L.A.O.S. – The Light
The Light / Mumbo Jumbo – Single

And for your convienience I’ve put them all in a youtube playlist.

Finally I like to point your attention to this album compiled for the 15th birthday of Drum & Bass Arena. It contains 50 gems ranging from oldskool classics to this year’s hits. Even if you, like me, already have most of the tracks there are probably enough left that make it worth buying (€6.99 on iTunes).

Drum & Bass Arena: 15 Years
dnba15.breakbeat.co.uk

Mix of the Month
2012 Jan
2011 Oct Nov Dec

Lots of Javascript

The entire functionality (API calls to retrieve the location and weather, user input and the animations) is in the javascript front-end. Not my most elegant because all animations are (slightly) different and the whole application flow is basically displaying the current step and then waiting for user input or the response of an API-call.

Location and weather APIs

Stan Wiechers has created geo-location-javascript which I gladly use to determine the location of the user. I’ve used the Google maps API for three reasons:

1. Visualisation of the location
2. A convenient way to let the user input his location if it cannot be determined automatically
3. Reverse Geocoding (Address Lookup) which, according to the TOS, you can only use if you actually display a map.

For the weather I use the Google weather API. The downside is that is it an unofficial API so there is no official documentation and chances are the functionality will change without notice. Unfortunately there is no good alternative if you want the weather based on a longitude/latitude location (there are some US-based weather API’s that support long/lat locations and Yahoo! uses its own WOEID which means adding extra steps (reverse geocoding, obtaining an WOEID, retrieve the weather).

SVG images

Almost all images on the site are SVG images, because they were created as vector images anyway and vector graphics are the shit! SVG images, even though they are uncompressed XML, are way smaller than bitmap files and resize beautifully. Because MSIE support is poor (not supported below version 9) I’ve added some javascript that replaces all SVG references to PNG images.

Inline

I exported the image to SVG using Adobe Illustrator, loaded the XML in my favorite editor and went back to Illustrator. Naming the layer I needed to animate and exporting it again was faster than guessing which path I needed based on the d attribute. The inline SVG code worked immediately in Firefox, but not in Safari and Chrome (both use webkit). This is where the lack of documentation really got anoying. After lots of experimentation the solution was to place all gradient definitions in a <defs> group.

Aminations

One animation (the thermometer) was a perfect case to dig into SVG animations, which much more elegant and probably more efficient than a javascript setTimeout() based animation. Because the animation had to be triggered by Javascript after the local temperature had been determined an inline SVG image seems the best way to go. At this point it was apparent that SVG isn’t widely used on the web as there were few good sources of documentation. Using the W3C specification because no one has written more friendly documentation and tutorials was a good cue.

<path id="kwik" fill="url(#kwik_1_)" transform="translate(0,161) scale(1,0)" d="…">
    <animateTransform id="kwik_tr" attributeName="transform" attributeType="XML" type="translate" from="0,161" to="0,0" dur="2s" additive="sum" fill="freeze" begin="indefinite"/>
    <animateTransform id="kwik_sc" attributeName="transform" attributeType="XML" type="scale" from="1,0" to="1,1" dur="2s" additive="sum" fill="freeze" begin="indefinite"/>
</path>

The animations are done with animateTransform, the to attribute is changed with javascript so the thermometers output is based on the actual temperature, and because begin is set to indefinite the animation can be started with some simple javascript:

var _sc = Math.min(1, Math.max(0.1, (temp+10)/40));
var _tr = 161 - Math.round(_sc*161);
$('#kwik').attr("transform","translate(0,0) scale(1,1)");
$('#kwik_tr').attr('to','0,'+_tr);
$('#kwik_sc').attr('to','1,'+_sc);
document.getElementById('kwik_tr').beginElement();
document.getElementById('kwik_sc').beginElement();

Foto’s gemaakt door Nils, Patrick en Ronald

The bad part about my girlfriend moving in with me is that my friend who was living with me left and took our local sever with him. We had combined our spare hardware to build us a server and used his old computer because he had 4 ATA controllers and I had only 2. So now I had to configure my old PC to create a new server (’cause you just can’t live without one of those :) and bought an extra 1.5TB hard disk. That caused quite some trouble. Since the first wasn’t properly detected by my onboard SATA controller I returned it and the replacement seemed to work, only to be mounted as read-only after formatting it. After a while the disk wasn’t properly detected at all. I was surprised with two new disks having the exact same problem, fortunately so was the owner of the web shop where I bought it. He actually called me personally to discuss the situation and concluded that my SATA controller was probably to old to work properly with this big modern disk. So I bought an PCI eSATA controller which solved my problems.

Last weekend I took this card to my friend who also bought a new hard disk and was experiencing similar problems. After I put the card back my big disk wouldn’t mount anymore, though it worked fine when I booted the Ubuntu Live CD. Long story short (live cd: works, reinstall ubuntu: works, dist-upgrade: broken, reinstall: works, reboot: broken) there we suddenly some errors in the FS which fsck managed to fix.

Anyway, most of you aren’t at all interested in the above snipped of my life and want some technical information. Which you are going to get in the remaining part of this post. Hey, the benefit of people blogging technical stuff on their personal blog is that you have to read through the irrelevant stuff. Nothing is perfect, right?

Setting up ubuntu as an file server

I followed a great tutorial to set up AFP on my server which was very easy and everything works like a charm. Well, almost everything.

Permissions

Since there are two users connecting to the machine there are files created by both that also need to be accessed by both users. Setting the setgid bit on the shares directories and adding both users to a common group is a start, unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a way to set the umask for newly created files using netatalk, so in order for other users to be able to write/delete these files I just add the group write permission with a hourly cron job. It’s ugly, but it does the job.

Time Machine

After a short time of backing up with Time Machine I got the infamous error 109.  Since this issue seems to have no solution and chances are slim Apple will do something about it since it they do not support it I decided to make only manual backups at night so they can run uninterrupted, and make backups of my time machine sparsebundle in case the backup gets broken. Yes, that does sound kind of redundant. It’s far from ideal, but a workable situation. I don’t need hourly backups anyway, I just want to have something in case of a hard disk crash or something like that.

Yesterday I read that netatalk 2.0.5 adds time machine support! Since the current version of netatalk in the ubuntu repo is still 2.0.4 I removed it and downloaded the netatalk-2.0.5-2 (and libdb4.8 which it depends on and is also not yet in the ubuntu repo) packages from the debian site and installed them with dpkg. This was all much easier than I expected since people on the web were warning others that this is not the proper way to go and everything might get broken and so on. After some initial errors (removing the .AppleDB directories after error -5014 and removing the old sparsebundle as root after error 109 on an partially removed sparsebundle) it now seems to work just fine.

Interesting to note is that with this new time machine support I indeed do not have to create the sparsebundle by hand and that it is now named Granny.sparsebundle (Granny is my laptops name) without the MAC adres. Also interesting is that TM started to continue backing up in a copy of an old backup I made by hand named Granny_macadres.copy.sparsebundle. Apparently the name of the backup is much more flexible nowadays.

Now I’m just going to make backups wireless hourly without paying attention to it (and thus interrupting it when putting my laptop to sleep) as I used to with my old Time Capsule and see if the new version of netatalk solves the problems I had. For now I’ve interrupted the initial backup several times now and it is still running (and continuing every time where it was interrupted). So far so good, I can at least say that it works more reliable than with the previous version of netatalk.

Update: after some initial success backing up to this AFP share is as unreliable as is was before, still getting a lot of 109 errors. Too bad. I decided to just buy an external USB/eSATA case and put the disk in that. It not expensive and works for sure, though I am deeply unhappy with the situation.

PHP Warning:  PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20060613/pdo_mysql.so' - (null) in Unknown on line 0

Following instructions in the comment to remove all architectures but the x86_64 have no effect. I think I have to compile my own PHP installation and have apache use that. Which sucks so much I decided to just wait for Snow Leopard and pray that either pdo_mysql is installed or dynamicly loading libraries is allowed there. I am happy to inform you all that the first is the case. Hurray!

Installation

I’ve decided not to upgrade my existing installation of Leopard but to go for a fresh clean installation. Leopard was my first OS X installation and I’ve done quite some installating, customization and so forth and it sounded like a good idea to just start fresh. I remember reading something about a clean install option, but the installer just asks me for the location, gives me some options what to install and starts right away. I had to abort, reboot, and then used the disk utility on the installer DVD to first format my hard drive. Installation went smooth from that point on.

First impressions are as expected, it works smooth. I am surprised about the time it takes to wake from sleep, almost instantly, but that can also be because this installation is fresh and I was used to my old cluttered Leopard.

Afterwards

Time to install some.

• Firefox 3.5
• Growl 1.2b4, the latest beta of 1.2 because 1.1 is uncompatible with snow leopard. It seems to work fine, as does the HardwareGrowler.
• Perian 1.1.4
• Spark 3.0b9 for global hotkeys
• iWork ’09 en iLife ’09
• Software updates (10.6.1)
• Textmate
• Latest flash version since Snow Leopard ships with an unsafe one.
• MacTex

And to tweak some.

• Copied my old ~/Music directory, iTunes starts with my good old library. Hurray
• Copied my old ~/Photos directory, iPhoto cannot open (made with a newer version). Running another software update was the key to success.
• The first sync with my iPhone authorizes my computer with the iTunes store and gives me all my contacts back. Nice!
• Uncomment the line LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so in /etc/apache2/httpd.conf to enable php5. Fortunately for me, snow leopard provides me with pdo_mysql which Leopard did not (and it wasn’t possible to just add that module).

And to get stuck at some.

• System clock, going to System preferences > International > Formats > Times (customize button) and changing the medium format doesn’t work anymore :(

My ToDo list also has some.

• mail multicolumn
• mail imap subfolder check
• spark firewall status scripts
• adium

More Tweaks

Firewall scripts

I take my laptop everywhere so I want to keep the built-in firewall fully closed at all times. I do, however, sometimes take it down if some sharing/program/game doesn’t work, and I almost always forget to enable it again afterewards. Thats what the following script is for. I use the cron daemon to run it every 5 minutes and it checks the firewall status and gives me a growl notification if it’s disabled.

#!/bin/sh
if [ `defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.alf globalstate` -eq "0" ]; then
  echo Firewall is currently disabled | /usr/local/bin/growlnotify -a /Applications/System\ Preferences.app -t Warning;
fi

I also added an applescript to a global hotkey in Spark to change the firewall status. It checks the status, displays it with the options to change it with a timeout of 5 seconds.

# brings the dialog window to front
delay 1
tell me to activate

set fw_status to (do shell script "defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.alf globalstate")

if fw_status is equal to "2" then
  set dlg_result to display dialog "Allow only essential services" with title "Firewall Status" buttons {"All", "Specific", "Essential"} default button 3 cancel button 3 with icon note giving up after 10
  set res to button returned of dlg_result
else if fw_status is equal to "1" then
  set dlg_result to display dialog "Set access for specific services" with title "Firewall Status" buttons {"All", "Specific", "Essential"} default button 2 cancel button 2 with icon caution giving up after 10
  set res to button returned of dlg_result
else if fw_status is equal to "0" then
  set dlg_result to display dialog "Allow all incomming connections" with title "Firewall Status" buttons {"All", "Specific", "Essential"} default button 1 cancel button 1 with icon stop giving up after 10
  set res to button returned of dlg_result
end if

if res is equal to "All" then
  do shell script "defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.alf globalstate 0"
  display dialog "Set to 'Allow all incomming connections'" with title "Firewall Status" buttons {"OK"} default button 1
else if res is equal to "Specific" then
  do shell script "defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.alf globalstate 1"
  display dialog "Set to 'Set access for specific services'" with title "Firewall Status" buttons {"OK"} default button 1
else if res is equal to "Essential" then
  do shell script "defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.alf globalstate 2"
  display dialog "Set to 'Allow only essential services'" with title "Firewall Status" buttons {"OK"} default button 1
end if

And now I can easily change the status of my firewall

So I am puzzled. Why would Microsoft launch a new product, show off its great features and then put a website live that doesn’t do any of the promised features? Looks to me like they have just doomed Bing.

Sommige dingen zijn dusdanig banaal dat een genie ze echt niet meer aan kan.