Paul's Time Sink

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DRBD

Paul Westbrook | 22 December, 2005 18:06

I have been hearing about DRBD a while as a way to add redundancy for a server. DRDB is a block device that can be mirrored across a network. This is very similar to a network RAID-1.

I have been thinking about doing this for one of the databases that I use. I could set up two machines that run mysql. Only one machine at at time would be writing to the database and the file system, but both machines would have access to the files. When one of the machines go down, the other automatically takes over.

Technorati Tags: DRBD

Spam filtering in Apple Mail

Paul Westbrook | 22 December, 2005 17:25

I have been noticing that Apple Mail has been marking valid mail as spam pretty often, and it doesn't seem to be improving when I train with these mistaken spam messages.

I had been thinking that Apple's Mail was using bayesian analysis to determine the spam messages. But I just found out that Mail uses Latent Semantics analysis for spam filtering. This post has a great description and comparison of Latent Semantics and Bayesian Net.

[via Stephen Hebditch's blog]

Technorati Tags: Bayesian, Latent Semantics, spam

Wireless failure on WRT54GS

Paul Westbrook | 21 December, 2005 19:55

The wireless access point in our Linksys WRT54GS stopped working. The wired router still is working fine. I switched the Airport Express from using WDS to directly connecting it to the router.

This makes me think that it is better to use a seperate wireless access point and router, instead of integrated one. In addition to being able handle a failure in one of these pieces, it will allow easier upgrading to new wireless or wired protocols when they are available.

Technorati Tags: Linksys, WRT54GS

Annoyance in Delicious Library

Paul Westbrook | 21 December, 2005 18:09

I really like using Delicious Library. It is a pretty cool program to keep track of my DVDs CDs and books. One feature is that you can "check-out" items to people in your Address Book. By default it schedules a "check-in" date for a week.

If the item is not checked-in by the specified date, it considers it overdue. After a certain amount of time the item is automatically checked in.

(More)

USB extension cable for PS2 headset

Paul Westbrook | 21 December, 2005 17:22

A couple of weeks ago, I bought some extension cables to allow me to play SOCOM 3 while sitting on the couch instead of sitting on the floor. The extension cable for the controller worked perfectly. The problem I had was with the extension cable for the headset.

The headset connects to the PS2 through the USB port. I bought a standard USB 2.0 extension cable. When I connected the cable, the headset wasn't recognized by SOCOM 3. I think that the headset is just using USB 1.1. I would assume that you could use a USB 2.0 cable for USB 1.1 devices.

Technorati Tags: USB, SOCOM

url encode string

Paul Westbrook | 21 December, 2005 11:10

Here is an easy way to url encode a string

In python:

import urllib;
urllib.quote("string to encode");

Technorati Tags: python, url encode

Bluetooth Car Headunit

Paul Westbrook | 17 December, 2005 18:08

rjpierson commented in this post about how Jensen has come out with a head unit that supports the bluetooth handsfree profile. The Jensen MP8610BT is a MP3/WMA/CD receiver that has bluetooth so you can talk on your cell phone handsfree. I assume it will automatically mute the audio when you talk on the phone.

I was really interested in getting one of these for our Sentra. When I was looking for more information on it, I saw that the major electronics manufacturers are planning on adding bluetooth support to their head units. I assume that they will be announcing these at CES. The main thing that I want is a head unit that has built-in bluetooth and is satellite radio ready, so I think that I will wait for their announcements.
(More)

Zoë

Paul Westbrook | 16 December, 2005 17:25

I just tried Zoë for a little bit. It is an interesting email client. It is a java application that runs in the background. It provides a web interface to you email. You enter the information for each of your email accounts an it will download the messages. It can also keep the messages on the server, so you can continue to use your normal email client.

One thing that it does is that it indexes all of you email. It povides an index of all email addresses, mailing lists, attachements, and urls. And there is a search field that lets you find emails by keyword.

(More)

Get S.M.A.R.T status via email

Paul Westbrook | 14 December, 2005 07:39

This post describes a script that will send an email with the S.M.A.R.T. and RAID status for the drive connected to a Mac OS X computer.

Technorati Tags: RAID, S.M.A.R.T., system admin

sendEmail

Paul Westbrook | 14 December, 2005 07:33

SendEmail is a command line email client written in perl. This make it very easy to send email from scripts or other programs.

The benefit of calling SendEmail rather than calling mail, is that Postfix or Sendmail doesn't have to be configured, or even installed, on the machine.

[via TinyApps.org]

Technorati Tags: email, perl

Feed2Podcast

Paul Westbrook | 14 December, 2005 06:44

This is pretty cool. Feed2Podcast is a site that will take an rss feed and, using text to speech, creates a podcast.

Here is a link to the podcast feed for this blog.

[via TUAW]

Technorati Tags: podcast, rss

Effectivness of Validate Trackbacks plugin

Paul Westbrook | 13 December, 2005 21:15

I added logging to the Validate Trackback LifeType plugin. I was curious about how many trackbacks were caught by the ip dnsbl checks, url dnsbl checks, checking to see if there was a resulting trackback ping url, or the Bayesian filter.

From December 2nd to today:

5808 trackbacks were stopped because the resulting pages do not have a trackback ping url.
2830 trackbacks were stopped becuase the ip address was listed in a dns blacklist
16 trackbacks were stopped because the domain of the trackback url was listed in a dns blacklist

It looks like all of the trackbacks were caught before the Bayesian filter had to be run.

Technorati Tags: LifeType, security, trackbacks

Google AdSense and flash ads

Paul Westbrook | 12 December, 2005 19:04

Since I have enabled Flashblock, I noticed something really interesting. I noticed that one of the Google AdSense that appears on this blog had the Flashblock icon.

It looks like Google is experimenting with Flash ads. The interesting thing is that their AdSense settings don't specify this type of ad.

Technorati Tags: Google Adsense

Holiday channels on XM

Paul Westbrook | 12 December, 2005 18:32

XM is broadcasting holiday music on 5 channels. Sometimes when I am in the mood, I like to listen to these. The interesting thing is that they have replaced 5 normal broadcast channels with these holiday channels.

The new channels appear at the channel numbers that the replaced channels, in addition to a position in the 103-107 range. I wonder if they just replace existing channels, and not added the new channels, because they didn't have enough staff to program for all of the channels. I think more likely, XM is running out of available bandwidth to add additional channels.

Technorati Tags: XM

Flashblock

Paul Westbrook | 12 December, 2005 18:19

I get really annoyed when I open a page in a different tab in Firefox, and suddenly my CPU usage goes way up. Usually there is a flash animation running in the background.

Flashblock is a Firefox extension that causes all flash animations not to run automatically. You have to explicitly click on an icon to start the animation. Flashblock has just been updated to support Firefox 1.5.

[via ExtraBITS]

Technorati Tags: Firefox, Flashblock

Paul's Time Sink

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DRBD

Spam filtering in Apple Mail

Wireless failure on WRT54GS

Annoyance in Delicious Library

USB extension cable for PS2 headset

url encode string

Bluetooth Car Headunit

Zoë

Get S.M.A.R.T status via email

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Feed2Podcast

Effectivness of Validate Trackbacks plugin

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