HDTV for Linux

Yes!

I finally found it! A HDTV card that works with Linux, ONLY! :D
So since I haven't gotten any firm commitment on how long I'm going to stay in the US I'll just wait until I know. Hopefully I'll end up staying the whole 2008, and it that case I've decided to get some stuff, just to pass time.



                pcHDTV HD-5500                   Epson PowerLite Home Cinema 1080

Yes it's going to be pricy but hey. Who doesn't want to watch HDTV on a 100" screen or rock some Wii games for that part?

Making some music

So I don't know why but I ended up trying to write some music. Surely I haven't been able to finish any and I'm just doing it to pass time.
Personally I don't like to hear myself singing and I don't expect someone else to, so I've warned you!

Anyways, I've uploaded the stuff I've made so far to my server at home. You can access it at:
music.garnser.se

Dynamic updates of DHCP

So as I came to the office today I thought, wouldn't it be great if there was a tool that re-wrote the dhcpd config file based on a perl script?

Obviously I thought of doing this myself (as the programmer I am). But to make life a bit easier for myself I made a lookup at Google for dynamically updating ISC DHCP.
And woho! There's a pre-built API called OMAPI and someone built a tool on top of this called OMCMD.

After a couple of hours trying to get the stupid key to work (TSIG hmac-md5) I finally got it working.

For those of you who're used to update the DNS dynamically the syntax is about the same:

omcmd [-K keyfile | -k keyname key] [-s server] [command]


Adding to DHCP
omcmd -K keyfile -s 10.1.32.10 create host name=test ip-address=1.2.3.4 hardware-address=ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff hardware-type=1;

What OMAPI does is to write the new config to
/var/lib/dhcpd/dhcpd.leases, it looks a bit funky to me

hostname {
 dynamic;
 ip-address 1.2.3.4
 hardware-address ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff;
};


But it works.

The script that I'm using looks like this:
HOSTNAME=hostname.domain.com
IP=1.2.3.4
MAC=FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF

omcmd -k keyname md5hash create host ip-address=$IP name=$HOSTNAME hardware-type=1 hardware-address=$MAC


An issue that comes with using omcmd (I don't know if this is part of the IMAPI API) is that you cannot add DHCP entries pointing at hostnames rather than an IP-address.

Taking a different route

So I've decided to take a different route on my blog.

The reason for this is pretty simple. My new mobile doesn't support uploading to the blog and I'm simply to lazy to take the time to do it manually.

So I've decided to post more linux/network related stuff here. I'll still post some stuff that's about me as a person every now and then though.

Continues issues getting into the american society

So I've been an employee in the US for 2.5 month now and things are going pretty well at work. I'm enjoying my life overall (it's always nice to start off from the beginning) but obviously there's obstacles which one has to overcome.

One of these is the Social Security number.
So at first when I went to apply for it I ended up in a 4 hour long q, and no I'm not that patience so I dropped of after 1 hour saying to myself that I had better things to do, well working that is.
So I went back to Sweden for a month, at this point I cannot get my payment cause I can't use my US bank accounts without a SSN, woopie!
So I got back here, applied for one only took 30 minutes this time since I was there before they opened. Lucky me I guess, now that's in progress. At least I hope so cause a couple of days ago I realized that I had different names written on my I-94 and my application and I've honestly no idea of if I'm going to get a SSN or if I've to re-apply. ARGH!

So secondly is my driver license which wasn't to painful to get. Well, get in the sense of passing all the tests. So after I made the tests they told me that I should have my driver license in 4-6 weeks which sounded fine, sure it's a lot slower than in Sweden but I couldn't care less since I was going back for a month anyway.
So now when I got back I still hadn't received my driver license so I ended up calling DMV. And guess what they tell me? "You didn't apply your SSN when first applying for a driver license". Well that's just awesome. Couldn't they've been a bit more predictive and tell me that when I first applied? So this will effectively mean that I wont be able to get my driver license until I get my SSN plus 4-6 weeks. And that is if I get my SSN due to my miss-writing in the application. Not that I've a car or anything but this really bugs me out to the extreme. What's the reason of having all of the procedures when you aren't told anywhere all of the things you need?

But yet again, I still enjoy living here. Likewise work it sucks plenty some days but there's something keeping me. We'll see how it goes.

Pre-review of Transcend solid state disk

So far I haven't succeeded in getting Ubuntu installed on my solid state disk which has been somewhat of an disappointment, apparently Ubuntu isn't to friendly about installing the OS on a USB disk (which the disk appears as), there's some fixes but I'll wait with it until I receive my new laptop.
For now write and read performance hasn't been tremendous but it's at least faster than my 80GB 4.2k rpm disk. Hopefully it's better than the 100GB 7.2k rpm disk which follows in my new laptop. Since I'll only have my OS on this disk it should be fine either way.

Pimping table

So I went to IKEA yet again and found some cool LEDlamps so I decided to pimp up my table

Preparations for the crayfish party

Yes I look ridiculos but so will everyone else at the party ;)

Buying stuff

So I started shopping again, to much but whatever, I'm a geek, what to expect. So here's the list:

First off, a solid state disk Transcend 16GB Express Card


Second, speakers Creative GigaWorks T20 (I've 2 pairs of these back in Sweden)



Third the 3rd gen iPod "fatty" Nano


And yes I'll give you a small review on all of them as soon as I've tried them out.

Bottle finally opened!

So since I forgot to buy a tons of shit at IKEA a capopener for example I 've been kinda owned by myself a couple of times like when cooking dinner or having some beer but as you can see I managed to get one bottle open by using my keys.

My sweet guitar

So you may wonder what I'm doing on my spare time except for working? As I posted before I bought this beauty, a Paul Reed Smith SE Custom, must say that I'm really pleased with it, and so far my neighbours haven't complained, guess I should start rock out a bit more ;)

Some beer at Marks place

So Jason dragged me along to Marks place were we ended up drinking some beer, playing random old-school games and so on. Obviously I had a bit to much to drink so I cannot say that I remember to much..