Pink Panther

Simple Gifts

Just like Firefox, it has a system of add-ons. The Notify Me add-on allows you to get Growl notifications when the song changes. Unfortunately, the add-on hasn’t been updated in 4 months. Here’s how I made it work with the latest version of Songbird.

Download the add-on from the Songbird Add-ons page. The .xpi file is just a zip file, and we have to unzip it to modify the contents. In Terminal, change to the directory where the .xpi file is (mine was on my desktop). Make a temporary folder to put the add-on files into when they’re unzipped. Put the .xpi into that folder and unzip it, then move the .xpi file out of there. Here’s the process in Terminal:

cd ~/Desktop
mkdir notifyme
mv notifyme-osx-1.1.0.xpi notifyme/
cd notifyme
unzip notifyme-osx-1.1.0.xpi
mv notifyme-osx-1.1.0.xpi ../

Once unzipped you’ll find a file named install.rdf. Open that up in a plain-text editor (Not MS Word) and change the maxVersion variable to whatever version you want. I’m changing it from 1.1.0rc1 to 1.2.0a.

<em:maxVersion>1.1.0rc1</em:maxVersion>

Save install.rdf and zip the add-on back up (notice I changed the file name):

zip -r ../notifyme-osx-1.2.0a-unofficial.xpi .

You can then go to Tools -> Add-ons… in Songbird, click Install… and find the .xpi file you just zipped. It shouldn’t warn you about the version being incompatible anymore.

Although I just detailed how to do this and it worked for this add-on, I don’t recommended it. The max version is there for a reason. There may have been changes to Songbird that make an add-on incompatible with a higher version. Don’t blame me if you try this and your computer catches fire.

Here’s the finished product: notifyme-osx-120a-unofficial.xpi

Here’s a video I made last January, but I’ve updated it by recreating it from the original photos, and I added an audio track “1 Ghosts I” from the Nine Inch Nails album Ghosts I-IV.

Metallica at the TD Banknorth Garden.
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Metallica played at the TD Banknorth Garden in Boston on January 18th, 2009 for their World Magnetic tour. I ordered tickets a few months ago as a bundle deal, with which I received two tickets, two Death Magnetic CDs, and two codes to download digital copies of the show afterwards. The TD Banknorth Garden has a maximum capacity of 19,580, and from what I could see, there weren’t many empty seats, so the total attendance was probably close to that number. While there, I took a few photos with my iPhone.

There were two opening acts, The Sword and Machine Head. The set was 18 songs, which represents (by my count) only 15% of Metallica’s original songs, and only 12% if you count the Garage Inc. album, which was only cover songs.

1. That Was Just Your Life
2. The End Of The Line
3. Harvester Of Sorrow
4. For Whom the Bell Tolls
5. One
6. Broken, Beat And Scarred
7. Cyanide
8. Sad But True
9. …And Justice For All
10. All Nightmare Long
11. The Day That Never Comes
12. Master Of Puppets
13. Battery
14. Nothing Else Matters
15. Enter Sandman
16. Stone Cold Crazy
17. Hit The Lights
18. Seek and Destroy

It’s weird to think that the RCA Dome has been demolished.

I was most recently there in the Fall of 2007 with the UMass Minuteman Marching Band when they were there as the exhibition band for the Bands of America Grand National Championships.

Previously I was there with the band in 2004 for the same reason.

The dome was held up by air pressure (really!) and had giant airlocks that had to be opened in exactly the right way or the dome would collapse. I remember being in a huge room with 20 foot doors on either side, waiting for the interior door to open so me and the hundred or so band people with me could get onto the field. There were also smaller revolving doors (that were always hard to push) for faster one-at-a-time access to the field.

The photos from top to bottom:

• The RCA Dome in 2004 at night.
• Me, Jimmy and Melissa (2004 UMMB Equipment Staff) on the 50 yard line on top of the Colts logo.
• The RCA Dome in December 2008 being imploded.

* I also show up at position 15 for the keywords “i hate ie”. I must really hate Internet Explorer.

** My YouTube video of a Partial Time Lapse Sunrise also comes up at #4 on a search for “gphoto timelapse”.

Drobo seemed like the perfect candidate. It features the RAID-like ability to swap drives in and out to expand capacity or to replace failing drives, and to mirror your data to keep it safe when (not if) a drive fails. What makes the Drobo special is that it requires no tools whatsoever to swap drives, and it can all be done while it’s on. Other systems have this ability too, but there’s something about poking around a running file server with a screwdriver that makes me uneasy.

Low power requirements are also a plus with the Drobo. While on, it ranges from only 5 watts in standby mode to 40 watts with four drives installed and in use. That’s less than a typical laptop takes when plugged in. Noise is another issue that I was concerned about, but I haven’t heard the Drobo get very loud at all. I only have two drives installed now, but maybe with 4 drives running and the fan on it might get a little louder than your desktop computer.

Unpacking

Drobo’s packaging was simple but nice. I’ve heard it referred to as “Apple on a budget.” Opening the outer box reveals black cardboard inside, and an accessory box that says “Welcome to the world of…” The Drobo itself was wrapped in a soft pouch that was closed with a “Drobo” sticker, which completed the sentence on the box on top of it. Holding the Drobo in place were black foam blocks. The blocks weren’t the crumbly kind that leave styrofoam pebbles everywhere. The shiny face and back of the Drobo were covered in a plastic film that was easily removed.

• Opening the Drobo box.
• The Drobo wrapped in a soft black bag and black styrofoam.
• The box with the AC adapter, USB cable, and simple setup instructions.
• I bought 2 500GB Seagate Barracuda 16MB drives from TigerDirect.
• The first view of the Drobo, with protective plastic still covering the front and back.
• The front of the Drobo.
• The back of the Drobo.
• Simple instructions on the back of the magnetically-attached front panel. No tools necessary.

Turning It On

When Drobo is turned on, it will light up all of its lights, I assume as a test. This process takes a few seconds, and once done, only drive bays that are filled will have lights. Green means everything is OK, while Red means a drive needs to be replaced. Drobo also has 10 blue LEDs across the bottom front that show the current amount of storage used.

• Turned off.
• Powering up.
• Turned on.
• Turned on with the cover.

Formatting

I installed two 500GB Seagate SATA II drives and formatted my Drobo as HFS+, meaning I’ll only be able to interact with it on a Mac. The two 500GB drives give me a total of just under 500GB of storage space, which is more than adequate for my needs. Right now I have no reason to attach it to Windows or Linux, but there are ways I could do so. Linux has the ability to read HFS+ drives, but not write to them. Windows has software called MacDrive available which would allow me to read and write just fine.

• Drobo attached to my PowerBook.
• How Drobo appears in Disk Utility just before formatting.
• Drobo appears as a 2TB drive regardless of the size of your drives.

Drobo Dashboard

Since Drobo reports itself as a 2TB hard drive no matter what drives you put in it, there is optional software called Drobo Dashboard that remedies the situation. Dashboard allows you to monitor all aspects of your Drobo. You can see what drives you have in it, see your current usage, see exactly how its using your storage, and perform operations such as blinking the lights. The best feature of Drobo Dashboard is the pie chart usage monitor that goes in your menu bar on Macs. You can hover over it to see exact usage numbers, or just look at the green portion of the pie chart to get a rough idea.

• Drobo Dashboard shows how much of your storage is being used, and how it’s used.
• The status of your drives and their capacity is made clear in a nice diagram.
• Tools such as Standby and Blink Lights are available.
• Drobo’s status is shown in the menu bar while Drobo Dashboard is open.

Transfer

The first thing I did was to transfer 30GB of photos from my PowerBook to the Drobo. I take a lot of pictures, and with RAW image files between 5 and 6 MB each, my library grows quickly. At 34 minutes to transfer all of my photos, it comes out to about a 15MB/second transfer rate. Not especially fast, but more than adequate for regular usage. Since I only transferred the “heavy” files once, I won’t need to do it again. I’ve been happy with the quick response time of browsing RAW images that are stored on the Drobo with Adobe Bridge. I don’t know if I’d normally use the Drobo as a “work-from” drive, but it’s great as storage that I can be confident in.

As of now, I attach the Drobo to my laptop when I need to access files on it. Perhaps in the future I’ll permanently setup my PowerBook as a file server sharing the Drobo across the network. The bottlenecks of USB and the network wouldn’t be pretty, but I could see it more than adequate for say, streaming video to a client computer attached to a HD TV.

• Darth Vader drawn with oil pastels.
• A “Life Support Suit” drawn in pencil.
• A motorcycle drawn in pencil.
• A “Lava Proof” building drawn in colored pencil.
• A cat in a window drawn with colored pencil.

Darth Vader’s not bad; it was probably drawn from a reference picture. I found the motorcycle on the inside of an old folder. The cat in the window was probably a drawing of Jasmine.

The “Life Support Suit” boasts a pretty impressive array of features:

• An oxygen pack
• Fuel tanks for the rockets (to move in space?)
• Batteries to power the electronics
• Missiles
• Life boat with a 200 mile radio
• Hand-warming gloves
• Super-lite snowboard that attaches to the back of the pack
• Parachute
• Arm Strap Monitor to control everything
• Flashlight on the arm strap runs on its own batteries

The “Lava Proof” obelisk-shaped building is amazing as well:

• 2 (maybe 4) 50-foot pure titanium beams holding the building in the ground
• Soft sand around the titanium beams, to allow the building to wobble rather than crumble in earthquakes
• Heavily compacted dirt around the sand for strong support
• Alternating concrete, titanium, and insulation shell
• The titanium in the shell is apparently so lava doesn’t get inside
• Each floor is concrete surrounding titanium

Amazon’s purchasing process was so easy that it’s scary. First, you download the Amazon MP3 download software which handles the downloads outside of the browser and also imports your downloads into iTunes automatically. Second, you find the song you want on Amazon’s site, and click “buy MP3″ and you’ll be prompted by your browser to download or open a “.amz” file which you open with your Amazon downloading software. Depending on your connection, about 10 seconds later you’ll have a shiny new 256kbps DRM-free MP3 of the song you wanted, and it’s available in iTunes right away!

Most songs are only 89 cents a pop, and albums are only $8.99. You can’t beat the price, and since I only rip CDs to my computer as soon as I get them and then quickly relegate them to storage, it’s about time for something this simple. This is a great way to buy songs one at a time, but like I’ve said before, I probably won’t stop buying CDs or complete albums altogether.

• 500 GB Storage (increases weekly by 2 GB)
• 5 TB Bandwidth (increases weekly by 40 GB)
• Unlimited MySQL 5 Databases
• Unlimited Domains and Subdomains
• PHP 5, Ruby on Rails, Subversion

As part of the migration process, I needed to modify the Cycling WordPress plugin I created to track my cycling stats. On the old server the data was coming from a PostgreSQL database. Unfortunately, DreamHost doesn’t offer PostgreSQL databases, even though they’re really cool. So, I had to create a whole new plugin from the ground up that uses MySQL, which is what WordPress requires and uses to store its data. I call it CycloPress, and I’ve added it to the WordPress Plugin Directory. It’s very cool, and I’m using it here now. On a side note, the Subversion hosting WordPress offers for plugin creators is very nice as well.

You’ll also notice I’ve added my Twitter feed to the sidebar. I’m using a plugin called SimpleTwitter, which is just as simple as its name suggests. I type in my username, an expiration time in minutes, add a PHP tag to my sidebar, and it all works.