The Rumbling Edge: Shredder Alpha 1 QA sign-off completed

The Rumbling Edge: Shredder Alpha 1 QA sign-off completed: "Following in the footsteps of John Resig, I also have a sort-of-reverse birthday present for Thunderbird fans: Shredder (Thunderbird 3) Alpha 1's QA signoff has been completed, with no significant blockers discovered, the release should come out in the next couple of days. Please note that the release is not recommended for production use and may eat / burn / lose your messages / mail / computer / cat. A list of almost-everything-that-has-gone-into-Shredder Alpha 1 can be found here. (On a sidenote, not everyone can proclaim a QA signoff of alpha-quality software on their birthdays. :) )"

iPhone firmware 1.1.1 released, WiFi Music Store included - Engadget

iPhone firmware 1.1.1 released, WiFi Music Store included - Engadget:

• iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store • Louder speakerphone and receiver volume • Home Button double-click shortcut to phone favorites or music controls • Space bar double-tap shortcut to intelligently insert period and space • Mail attachments are viewable in portrait and landscape • Stocks and cities in Stocks and Weather can be re-ordered • Apple Bluetooth Headset battery status in the Status Bar • Support for TV Out • Preference to turn off EDGE/GPRS when roaming internationally • New Passcode lock time intervals • Adjustable alert volume

Slick: Vaio Zoom Concept is Exactly How We Want Laptops to Look in the Future - Gizmodo

Slick: Vaio Zoom Concept is Exactly How We Want Laptops to Look in the Future - Gizmodo: "This Vaio Zoom laptop concept is one of the coolest we've seen. Featuring a holographic glass screen that goes transparent and a keyboard that turns opaque when turned off, it's slick and beautiful. And sure, a touch keyboard like this would be extremely annoying without haptic feedback and screens like that don't really exist yet, but it's an interesting look at what we'll be playing with a few years down the line. Despite the fact that this isn't an official Sony concept, we still think they should work at making it a reality. Check another image after the jump."

Sony VAIO TZ Review

Sony VAIO TZ Review: "The Sony TZ is the latest offering from Sony in the ultra portable market. With its small size and extreme low weight, it is a must on any business traveler's notebook list. The Sony TZ combines a new LED backlight display, solid state drive, over-sized battery, and ultra low voltage processors from Intel to make it an all around extended battery performer. Read on to find out how the paper specs stack up in real world use."

DailyTech - NBC Universal to Offer Free TV Show Downloads

DailyTech - NBC Universal to Offer Free TV Show Downloads: "According to The New York Times, NBC Universal isn’t stopping there. The media conglomerate will offer a new online service called NBC Direct. With NBC Direct, customers will be able to download TV shows to a Windows-based PC for free immediately after they have aired. Once downloaded, the episodes would be viewable for one week."

install pfsense on a CF card

Having just gone through my first pfsense & m0n0wall installation *yawn* I thought I would share and record this before I forget. Installing pfsense on a compact flash can be pain since the embedded images are meant to be used on a small appliance device that doesn't have VGA support. You will hear the line that it supports serial access only.

If you try to boot up a CF card with the regular embedded image you will get a message that looks like this:

Searching for Boot Record from IDE-0..OK

BTX Loader 1.00 BTX version is 1.01 Consoles: internal video/keyboard BIOS drive C: is disk0 BIOS 639KB/257024kB available memory

FreeBSD/i386 bootstrap loader, Revision 1.1 (sullrich@builder.livebsd.com, Sun Oct 29 01:30:00 UTC 2006) Loading /boot/defaults/loader.conf /

and then it hangs. It is actually working in the background, just not echoed to the screen.

In order to get pfsense onto your compact flash card with vga support you will need a 3rd party modified version of the image. Hacom is currently a source for those images:

Network Appliances \ pfSense Appliances \ pfSense Firewall Software

When you get there, you will see file names like this:

• pfSense-1.2-RC2-1gb-ad0.img.gz

You will notice that there are several version of each firmware:

pfSense-1.2-RC2-1gb-ad0.img.gz

The first part is the firmware version, in this case it's version 1.2 RC2.

pfSense-1.2-RC2-1gb-ad0.img.gz

The second portion is the the size of the compact flash card you will be using not RAM (e.g.128, 256, 512, 1gb). The example is for a 1 GB memory card. They have already expanded the images to make up to that size usable, I'm guessing this is much the way a Tivo hard drive upgrade works).

pfSense-1.2-RC2-1gb-ad0.img.gz

The next part is the location of the CF card on your IDE chain (e.g. ad0, ad2, da0). I'm no expert but I believe this is what they mean:

• ad0: primary master IDE (/dev/ad0)
• ad1: primary slave IDE (/dev/ad1)
• ad2: secondary master IDE (/dev/ad2)
• ad3: secondary slave IDE (/dev/ad3)
• da0: USB memory stick (/dev/da0)

and the final section just shows that it is a gzipped image.

To write these onto a compact flash card, unzip them and use physdiskwrite.

http://m0n0.ch/wall/physdiskwrite.php

1. Connect your compact flash to your computer.
2. save phydiskwrite.exe and the ungzipped pfsense image (pfSense-1.2-RC2-1gb-ad0.img) to the same directory
   • c:\temp\phydiskwrite.exe
   • c:\temp\pfSense-1.2-RC2-1gb-ad0.img
3. open DOS window
   • start > run > cmd
4. navigate to the directory
   • c:
   • cd \temp
5. start phydiskwrite
   • phydiskwrite pfSense-1.2-RC2-1gb-ad0.img
   • if the image file you're writing to the compact flash card is larger than 2GB then you may need to use the "-u" switch. Currently 1Gb is the largest size downloadable.
     • phydiskwrite -u pfSense-1.2-RC2-1gb-ad0.img
6. phydiskwrite will now ask for which device to write to. If you pick the wrong one you could over write your hard drive. Make absolutely sure before you select one.
   • Roadkil's Disk Image is another utility to write an image and is GUI based, it looks friendlier than phydiskwrite, but I haven't used it before. Try at your own risk.
7. Get those thumbs twiddling. If you are writing the 1GB image, it will take a looooooong time, over an hour.
8. Properly drop the compact flash using the Safely Disconnect Hardware utility in your system tray.
9. YOU'RE DONE!!!!!!!!!!!

Sept 20, 2007: Just an update that everything is amazingly still working great!

Fujifilm FinePix F50fd, Image Stabilized: Digital Photography Review

Fujifilm FinePix F50fd, Image Stabilized: Digital Photography Review: "FinePix F50fd Ups Ante With Dual Image Stabilization, Face Detection 2.0 Technology and ISO Levels Of Up To 6400"

Pet Moustache

Pet Moustache

Give yourself or someone else a 'stache

dryers and stupid clothing companies

There should be a rule. EVERYTHING CAN GO IN THE DRYER UNLESS IT SAYS IT CAN'T! If the clothes will shrink if they go anywhere near heat then there should be a label on them with exact instructions on what should be done with them. I don't see labels on each individual sock I own, they all go in the dryer. 100% cotton into the dryer. And what's with the stores and you ask them if the clothes will shrink. Every store says it might shrink a little bit in length. It won't shrink in width...

Networking and Communication: Cables To Go Unit Gives You USB Function Up to 150 Feet from a Computer, by Arlen Schweiger - Electronic House Product N

Networking and Communication: Cables To Go Unit Gives You USB Function Up to 150 Feet from a Computer, by Arlen Schweiger - Electronic House Product News: "The USB SuperBooster Wall Plate from Cables To Go runs over standard patch cords so your USB-connected device can be in a different room than a host computer without harming room decor."