2 Bit Hacker

I set out with a simple goal this evening, to change my Eye-Fi card’s upload destination from Facebook, where it was putting each image in it’s own album, to simply uploading to Hindenburg via FTPS. This led to a fun filled evening of debugging and data recovery!

The configuration change on the Eye-Fi Manager side was easy enough, simply selecting FTP as the upload mechanism and filling in a few fields. For the server side of things, I decided to go with ProFTPD, largely because I’ve used it in the past and the configuration is pretty simple. I’d never used FTPS before, but it’s pretty easy to enable with ProFTPD, just a few configuration directives:

TLSEngine on
TLSLog /var/log/proftpd/tls.log
TLSProtocol SSLv3 TLSv1
TLSRequired on
TLSRSACertificateFile /usr/local/etc/kyzoku.2bithacker.net.cert
TLSRSACertificateKeyFile /usr/local/etc/kyzoku.2bithacker.net.key
TLSVerifyClient off
TLSRenegotiate none

However, this doesn’t appear to work. Based on the xferlog and tls.log, it appears the Eye-Fi client was connecting, but the data session was failing, but it did give the helpful message of “client did not reuse SSL session, rejecting data connection (see TLSOption NoSessionReuseRequired)”. This option is undocumented, and is actually “TLSOptions NoSessionReuseRequired” (note the plural), but it does solve the problem. Apparently clients are expected to reuse the TLS session between the control and data channels, but Eye-Fi doesn’t.

So, that’s working, but now my Eye-Fi card isn’t able to be read in either of our cameras or my laptop. Not sure what happened, but it appears the partition table became corrupt this evening. The card still had the only copy of a lot of our Comic-Con photos on it, and I really didn’t want to lose them. First, I decided to get a disk image of the SD card using Mac OS X’s Disk Utility. Then, I had remembered hearing about some open source software for recovering images from damaged cards, and after a quick Googling, I came up with PhotoRec.

PhotoRec is extremely easy to use. It opened up a terminal window with a curses interface, prompting through selecting a disk to scan, a place to save the found files, then initiating a scan of the Eye-Fi, turning up all of my missing images, along with a handful of other files that I didn’t realize were on the card (including an SQLite database, maybe used by Eye-Fi?) So happy I didn’t lose all those photos, and will have to work on getting them uploaded. Unfortunately, I think I’ve lost the ability to geotag those photos though…

Earlier tonight was the first meeting of the new ManchLUG chapter of the GNHLUG at Wings Your Way in Manchester. I’d been tossing around the idea of organizing this chapter for a while, but hadn’t found the round tuits. Kenta came along and wrangled things together, and this first meeting at least turned out pretty well. We had 18 people registered for the event beforehand, and I think our total turn-out ended up being around 26 people.

The meeting itself was pretty casual, just some announcements and just general chatter for most of it. I’m hoping to have more organization for next month, perhaps with some discussion topics or a quick presentation. One person brought up the topic of media center computers, so maybe we can find someone to talk about their experience building such a thing with open source tech. I’ve taken a stab at it in the past with my MythTV box, but was never terribly happy with the results, and just use a WD HD TV Live to stream stuff from my storage server today.

Overall, I think everyone had a good time, and I’m hoping this will be a successful chapter.

Sitting on the front steps of the house, enjoying the cool evening. I’ve just finished trimming the lawn and sweeping the driveway, and am waiting for Meg to get home from work. Growing up I always hated doing yardwork, and while I’m still not a fan, there is a certain feeling of satisfaction that goes along with mowing the lawn and keeping the place looking decent.

We just received our first check for the first time homebuyer’s tax credit (we each claimed half) last week, so we rushed out to buy some items we were waiting on; some new chairs, a couple tables, and some much-needed lawn equipment. Being the proud owner of a brand new Troy-Bilt, I of course had to use it last weekend. The grass was nearly knee-high when I started, but after 5 hours of walking every inch of the lawn it was cut down to size and looking much more lawn-like. Last night we went out and picked up a string trimmer to get all the little places I couldn’t mow, a Black & Decker corded electric. I was on the fence between gas and electric, but we don’t have a lot to trim and I didn’t want to muck about mixing gas. It did an adequate job, and I’m overall rather pleased with the lawn at this point.

We also had our first plumbing related fun with the house this past week. The drain from the shower stall in the master bath was leaking into our kitchen ceiling. This is covered under our builder’s warranty though, so we just had to call up and he sent out a plumber, who just tightened up something in the drain, and so far it seems to be better.

Other than that, we’ve just been running around like headless chickens. Somehow we’ve found ourselves with a fairly full social calendar between movie nights and game nights and various cookouts. To help contribute to the chaos, we’ve decided to throw a housewarming party near the end of summer, currently scheduled for late September. If you haven’t already been invited, drop me a line so we can correct that.

The bugs are starting to come out now, so I think it’s time for me to get off the stoop and head indoors.

This year for our big vacation, Meg and I decided to go to San Diego for Comic-Con International, a four-day extravaganza of popular culture. Comic books, television, movies, and various other arts gather together to take over San Diego with dozens of panels and a gigantic vendor hall.

We set out on Thursday morning, catching a ride from Jason down to Boston’s Logan Airport to catch our early morning flight to San Diego. Since we were leaving home around two in the morning, we decided not to sleep beforehand. This turned out not to be the greatest idea, as we didn’t get a lot of sleep on the flight, and were dead tired by the end of the day. We still got a pretty full day in though. Once we landed and got our rental car, we found our hotel, a decent little place in San Ysidro. Then we went up to Qualcomm Stadium to take the trolly downtown for the con. We picked up our registration badges, made a feeble attempt at the vendor hall, then decided to grab some lunch. We took the trolly a few blocks north from the con and found Kansas City Barbeque which was okay. We then stumbled back to the hotel and collapsed.

The next morning we had to move to the hotel we booked for the rest of the weekend, the Sheraton Suites San Diego at Symphony Hall, which was considerably nicer than the place we stayed the night before, and was one of the hotels on the con shuttle routes. We dropped our bags and headed back to the vendor hall where we picked up some stuff from The Behemoth (makers of Castle Crashers) and Meg got a Firefly shirt from a pretty cool artist booth. After wandering around for a bit in the hall, we decided to head upstairs and ended up in one of the panel rooms and got to see comic legend Stan Lee give a talk on some of his experiences in the industry. It was pretty incredible to see him in person, and he gave a great presentation. After the session we decided to head back to the hotel, dump our stuff and find some food. I found a nice little hole-in-the-wall Mexican place, Maria’s Mexican Cocina, which turned out to be great. Over dinner, we decided we should return the car, as we didn’t need it with the shuttles, then crashed back at the hotel.

On Saturday, Meg decided she needed to get the Doctor Who bags that BBC America were giving away at their vendor booth, so we got up early and stood in line to get into the vendor hall as soon as it opened. We rushed to the BBCA booth just to find out they weren’t giving out the bags yet, so we continued around the hall for a while. There were a ton of exhibitors, including some giant booths for Aliens, the new Tron movie, The Expendables, LEGO, Warner Brothers, and of course Marvel and DC Comics. As we were winding our way back out, we happened to be at the BBCA booth just as they started giving away the bags and Meg managed to score one for herself and one for our friend Cole, who is a giant DW fan.

We grabbed lunch at an Irish pub near the hotel, Stout Public House, which was delicious, then went back to stake a claim in the session hall in anticipation of the Mythbusters panel later that day. Leading up to the main event were panels for Warehouse 13 and Eureka, which were both entertaining. Meg hadn’t seen Eureka before, and we’d only seen a few episodes of W13, but still really enjoyed the sessions. Then there was a preview of a new show, Nikita, loosely based on the French film of the same name and other derivative works of the film. It was okay, but I didn’t feel it really felt like something new, more just a rehash. I guess we’ll see how it does when it hits the air later this year. Human Target followed, a show that neither of us had seen, but it looked fairly entertaining, so we may check it out. Then came the panel we were waiting for, Mythbusters.

Apparently this was the first convention where the entire cast appeared together, so that was kindof cool. We had actually had a hard time taking photos of Adam, as he rarely stopped moving for more than a few seconds. Jamie on the other hand was the master of the two word answer, one of them generally being “umm”. It was a very entertaining panel, though I would have liked someone to have asked them if they ever felt they had too many explosions.

On the last day of the convention, we again wandered over early to try to get into the Castle panel. When we saw the line for it, Meg wanted to give up and just wander around again, but I convinced her to wait it out, which payed off. While we were waiting in line, we met a girl who had travelled over from Australia for the con. She’s a huge Harry Potter fan, and had tattoos of a golden snitch along with the Hogwart’s house crests down her spine. She’s also how we found out about the pen stabbing incident in one of the larger sessions the previous day. As we were heading into the Castle session they were handing out shwag boxes containing water bottles. Turns out some of them had passes for a special autograph session with the cast, and Meg had handed one of the boxes with a pass to the girl we met in line on the way in. Meg was a little annoyed that she had been so close to meeting one of her idols, but was happy that it went to someone who would appreciate it. Again it was a great panel, Fillion was hilarious, reading a passage from the book supposedly written by his character from the show. In general he was hamming it up the whole time and Meg could barely contain her drooling.

After Castle there was a panel for Merlin we decided to stay for, mostly for Anthony Stewart Head, who Meg liked from his role in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Afterward we decided to hit the vendors again, but the hall was so jam-packed with people that we could barely move. Apparently I was several feet from Danny DeVito at one point, but missed it due to being preoccupied trying to shovel people out of my path.

After calling it quits on the con, we met up with my friend Matt. He’s been living out in San Diego for a few years now, attending UCSD. He took up to El Zarape for dinner, where I had some delicious Mahi Mahi tacos, then off to see some of the sights in the area. We got to see a children’s beach that had been taken over by seals, then a rock outcropping covered in sea lions. We wandered around a beach for a bit, and the UCSD campus, seeing their impressive library and some of their outdoor art installations. Also an odd amount of nocturnal wildlife, including a number of rabbits, a raccoon, and a guy sleeping on a lawn. Eventually we called it a night, and settled back into the hotel for our last night in SD.

Overall we had a great time. It was an awesome 4 days, but exhausting as well. We’d like to go again, but probably not for a few years. We did learn a few lessons for next time though.

1. Bring a backpack stocked with water and snacks. Buying supplies at the con is way too expensive.
2. If we want to see anything in the large halls (H or 20), we need to be up way too early to get in line.
3. Buy anything we really want from the vendors before Sunday. Sure, the deals are to be had on Sunday, but you have to beat a path through the crowds with a cricket bat.
4. Skip the rental car, public transit is more than adequate for the convention.
5. Plan a longer trip so there’s time to relax before heading back to work.

Good morning, Internet! I’ve got the day off from work to prepare for our trip to San Diego, and while I’m waiting for laundry to cycle I thought I’d post a little update.

Life in the house is going well. We’re mostly unpacked now and have most of the rooms mostly in order. We turned on of the bedrooms into a craft room to hold Meg’s yarn and my computer stuff, at least until I can get the basement set up the way I want with a server closet and workbench. Then I’ll be moving most of my computer stuff down there, and probably just have a workstation up here. I think our next steps will be getting some more furniture so the place doesn’t feel so empty. It’s time to finally get some real bedroom furniture, as we currently just have a mattress on the floor and the room looks really bare.

Work is good, I’ve been doing some IPv6 deployment, and it’s nice to finally see that getting some traction in the real world. Also been playing around with netdot, mostly for it’s IPAM features. A little hairy to get installed on FreeBSD, but once you get it on there, it seems to work out pretty well.

Meg and I are going to be heading out to San Diego tonight for Comic-Con this weekend. It’s out big vacation for the year and we’re really excited about it. Bunch of big names will be there, including Stan Lee and Ray Bradbury. Hoping to get some autographs and generally have a good time. Also, Geek Chic will be there, so we’re going to be checking out their Emissary table. We’re thinking about getting one for the dining room, but I want to see one in person before dropping that kind of money on furniture.

Time to go move laundry around. I’m sure we’ll be posting plenty of pictures from this weekend, and I’ll try to remember to post about it when we get back.

So, after talking about it for a few years now, I have a house. Well, technically Meg and I have a house. And it’s awesome.

We bought a new construction two story colonial in a small development. It’s just over 2,000 square feet, 3 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath, 2 car garage on about a 1/4 acre. Hardwood floors on most of the downstairs, carpet upstairs for the bedroom. Small deck off the back.

Moved in last month and have been slowly settling in. We still have a lot of boxes in the garage to go through, but we’re making progress on that, as well as buying all the little things we’re finding we need, like shades and curtains and a fridge and a lawnmower. There’s an unused space in the garage under the stairs that I’m hoping to rig up for my router and home storage server and such. Big Dave has offered to help me pull Ethernet wiring to the bedrooms and living room, so that’ll be cool.

I’ll have to get some good pictures to post, the only ones I have at the moment are from the construction. I’m hoping to get a bit better about writing on here as well. My personal goal is to do at least one thing worth writing about each weekend, even if it’s just some small improvement to the house.

So, hopefully more posts to come in the near future, along with a house warming party sometime in the next few months.

Been thinking a bit lately about buying a house. I know I’ve talked about it before, but I think I’m in a much better place financially than I was the past couple of time. The original plan was to try and find a place to move to when my lease was up on my current apartment, early next year, but I’ve been looking at this Federal Housing Tax Credit and thinking that I should jump on that if I can.

On the plus side, I might be able to get that 10%-up-to-$8k tax credit if I can get things all set before December 1st. On the down side, I’ll have less cash available for a down payment, and I’ll have to pay the lease break fee to get out of my current place.

Hmm…