Archive for June, 2007

SSL support for Apache in my prefix-portage overlay

Thursday, June 21st, 2007

I’m working on getting our Rails-based app, at work (OBT – obtech.net), working with SSL.
Since we all use OSX as our main dev boxen here, as well as Gentoo Linux machines, I long ago started hacking and helping on the Gentoo-Alt Prefix Portage project, so that I could help create one software repository we all [...]

Creating stream-able video

Tuesday, June 19th, 2007

I spent much to much time trying to figure out the right combination of video/audio encodings that would would from an RTSP streaming server (went with a RealServer demo, for now) to a variety of clients (QuickTime Player, VLC, various phones, etceteras.)
First, VLC is a champ. Every time I tried a new streaming server, [...]

Rails and “legacy” DB’s

Sunday, June 17th, 2007

I’m importing a (so-called) “legacy” db, and was having some issues with creating associations because the primary key wasn’t named id. To fix this, simply use set_primary_key on the class, and then use foreign_key to create associations between classes as usual.

class LegacyDatabaseTable < ActiveRecord::Base

  set_primary_key :this_is_not_named_id

  # …

end

The Pandava sons are the chakras

Saturday, June 16th, 2007

Even though I’m a self-admitted hinduphile, and am — at best — a student of traditional ashtanga yoga (yeah, the 8-limbed tree / 8-fold path, not “power yoga”), I’ve never been a big believer of kundalini, that is: the flow of spiritual energy back up the spine; the spine often symbolized as a serpent, and [...]

MPEG4 Streaming woes

Friday, June 15th, 2007

I should right a whole post about the lack of robust video streaming servers, but I’ll save that for another day. For now, I’ve settled on RealServer (RS) (which is the commercialized version of Real’s open source Helix Server), and video actually streams to a plethora of apps, including: QuickTime Player (QT), VideoLan Client [...]

New lamp

Friday, June 15th, 2007

My cat destroyed my old pharmacist-style lamp last week. I decided to replace it with a floor standing lamp with shelves.

… I give it a week before the cat destroys this one, too.

built-in iSight on my MBP can’t record video

Friday, June 15th, 2007

Somehow, my MBP’s install is messed up, and the built-in iSight camera cannot be read from in video mode — but yet, still pictures work. I discovered this, as I could not get QuickTime Broadcaster’s preview view to show any video (or for it to broadcast). Then, I discovered that iChat cannot initiate [...]

Let’s see if I can do this …

Wednesday, June 13th, 2007

I’m trying to once again actually use my blog. There’s so many exciting things going on related to work and life that I feel I need to talk about it. And about work …

notes about computers and lifestyle